NEW RELEASES
COLD CREEK MANOR Just imagine, a movie trailer that actually builds interest for the picture being plugged without (hold onto your seats!) giving away the entire plot of the film? That’s the case with the teaser for Cold Creek Manor, which never quite allows viewers to peg whether the actual movie is a haunted house chiller in the tradition of The Others, a straight-ahead thriller with echoes of pulpy material like Cape Fear, or something else entirely. Now, if only the film itself were half as intriguing as the trailer, we’d really be onto something. Instead, this commercially grasping entry from director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) is like a dead-end street in a swanky neighborhood, offering some interesting glimpses along the way but ultimately leading absolutely nowhere. Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone headline as an NYC couple who, tired of the big-city bustle, purchase a mansion out in the sticks. Everything’s fine until the previous owner (Stephen Dorff), a rube just released from prison, shows up; after that, bad things start happening (a dead horse in the swimming pool, a live snake in the bedroom), and the family begins to suspect that their new home may have been host to tragic events in the past. What Richard Jefferies’ script lacks in originality, it more than makes up for in gaping plotholes — hardly what I would call a fair trade-off. Incidentally, Figgis also composed the score, which during the tense scenes merely sounds like a two-year-old incessantly banging on random piano keys. 
JET LAG One of the plot strands in this French confection concerns the wish of one of its characters to have a life that resembled the plot of a Hollywood movie. So perhaps it’s with no small measure of irony that the weakest aspect of this otherwise delightful film is an improbable, Hollywoodized denouement that is at odds with the sharp Gallic comedy that preceded it. Two powerhouse performers, The English Patient‘s Juliette Binoche and The Professional‘s Jean Reno, are both wonderful here; she plays a chatty beautician escaping from an abusive boyfriend and he plays a curt fussbudget who was once a master chef. A local strike strands both of them at the Paris airport; eventually electing to pass the time in a hotel room, they quickly become hostile toward each other’s philosophies before finding some common ground that allows them to blossom together. In a formulaic Hollywood comedy, this set-up would have resulted in wall-to-wall slapstick shenanigans (think of Sandra Bullock’s bout with diarrhea in Two Weeks Notice, or Jennifer Lopez’s music video interlude in Maid In Manhattan), but here the emphasis is on talk, talk, talk — most of it absorbing, intelligent, and often very funny. It’s just too bad the filmmakers didn’t let the story run its natural course rather than tacking on a phony ending. Still, compared to the complete artificiality of Le Divorce, this import scores high marks for giving us likable, believable characters.
MATCHSTICK MEN Crooks too cool for words; edgy lingo to provide the street cred; double- and triple-crosses around every corner; a twist ending designed solely for the purpose of having audience members exclaim, “Wow, they fooled me!” Just as surely as there will be a celebration of Christmas every December 25, we can expect this sort of hipster, huckster flick to infiltrate our movie houses once or twice every year. And if Confidence and The Italian Job didn’t do the trick for certain viewers earlier this year, here’s yet another return to the same well, albeit one with a smidgen more heart than we usually get in this sort of preening picture. Nicolas Cage, in full “Look at me, I’m acting!” mode, actually gets more endearing as the film progresses, playing a con artist whose medical malfunctions (he’s an obsessive-compulsive agoraphobe) threaten to get in the way of his chosen crime field. And matters become even more complicated once he discovers he has a teenage daughter (Alison Lohman) just as he and his partner (Sam Rockwell) are about to embark on their biggest swindle to date. This is the sort of film in which once the climactic twists (one, easy to guess; the other, not so easy) are revealed, viewers will play the film backward to see if all the puzzle pieces fit snugly. For the record, they don’t, but viewers will be reasonably entertained anyway. Lohman, so memorable in White Oleander, is equally impressive here. 1/2
STEP INTO LIQUID Bruce Brown’s 1966 surfing documentary The Endless Summer has long been considered a classic in its field, and now here’s Bruce’s son Dana Brown following in his old man’s footsteps. The film opens with the words, “No special effects. No stuntmen. No stereotypes,” and the movie goes 3-for-3 on that claim. That third point might come as a surprise to viewers who buy into the Fast Times at Ridgemont High image of the stoned surfer (even referenced by one of this film’s interviewees), which was recently reinforced by Finding Nemo‘s surfin’ turtle Crush. Yet what this engaging picture makes clear is that the lure of the perfect wave attracts all types, from Texans who turn to the passing tankers in the Gulf of Mexico to produce their waves, to the Vietnamese men who formed their own surfing club in their homeland (with a membership of about “10 out of a population of nearly 80 million”). Even with an abbreviated running time of 88 minutes that necessitates cramming a lot of material between its opening and closing credits, Liquid is remarkably fluid (no pun intended) while painting its cheery portrait of the surf culture; it not only predictably expounds on the inward Zen appeal of what’s tagged a “selfish” sport but also demonstrates some of its participants’ selfless humanitarianism, illustrated in a segment in which three siblings effectively use the activity to build a common ground between Protestant and Catholic kids in Ireland.
CURRENT RELEASES
AMERICAN SPLENDOR Like Adaptation, this misfit movie about a misfit man draws its strength from its ability to play around with the very structure of the motion picture form — in that regard, it’s near-brilliant, even though its thematic content can’t hope to keep up with its technical flourishes. In relating the true-life tale of Harvey Pekar (aptly played with a perpetual scowl by Paul Giamatti), a prominent figure in the underground comics movement, directors Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman cleverly whiplash between using movie actors and using the real-life personalities; the inventiveness even extends to the visuals, as parts of the film are animated and framed like comic strip panels. For all its audacity around the edges, though, the movie rarely offers anything more than Teflon pleasures. Unlike Terry Zwigoff’s magnificent 1994 documentary Crumb, this film is content to stay on the surface, never digging deep in an attempt to examine the demons that drove Pekar’s life. In Zwigoff’s film, we were made to understand how, surrounded by a family mired in unmitigated madness, Crumb’s life was literally saved by his ability to channel his inner turmoil through his art; here, Pekar more often than not comes across simply as a one-note grouch. It can be argued that for all his import on the comics scene, Harvey Pekar was no Crumb; it’s even easier to say that for all its many attributes, American Splendor is no Crumb.
FREDDY VS. JASON Employing a slide rule, an abacus, a roll of ticker tape, and a copy of Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide, I’ve ascertained that I’ve sat through all seven Nightmare on Elm Street films but only the first six of the 10 Friday the 13th entries — which means I may not be the most qualified person to offer an opinion on Freddy vs. Jason, which manages to combine the two franchises in a manner that’s sure to make mutual devotees of the Police Academy and Rambo series green with envy. After all, who knows what important plot points, what subtle snatches of symbolism, what resonant themes sailed over my head in this latest flick, simply because I wasn’t schooled in Parts 7-10 of the Jason Voorhees saga? OK, I’m kidding, but it probably goes without saying that the film will best be appreciated by gore hounds who’ve enjoyed all 17 of the previous pictures from the two series — or at least are familiar enough to debate the relative merits that make, say, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan a better bet than A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. By virtue of its plot, which brings Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) and Jason (Ken Kirzinger) together, this is automatically a cut above most of the previous sequels, though there’s still plenty of time for routine kid-gutting before the climactic showdown. This final battle will probably satisfy fans of the franchises, though anybody who thinks the outcome will rule out any possibilities of yet another sequel has probably been living in their mom’s basement for too long. 1/2
LE DIVORCE The Howards End/The Remains of the Day team of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant and scripter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala attempt to recapture their former glory with this adaptation of Diane Johnson’s 1997 bestseller, yet what they whip up isn’t a spry look at the clashing of two cultures as much as a clumsy series of missteps — a movie that never finds the right tone to punch across what could have been a perceptive and poignant tale. Kate Hudson stars as Isabel Walker, an American lass who ventures to Paris to stay with her pregnant sister Roxy (Naomi Watts). But upon her arrival, she learns that Roxy has been deserted by her French husband (Melvil Poupaud), a cad who has taken up with an apparently deranged Russian woman who seems to be constantly channeling one or more of the Marx Brothers. Rather than support her sister, Isabel spends most of her time boffing one of her in-laws, a rabid right-winger (Thierry Lhermitte) so intent on dating younger women that you half-expect him to belt out “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” Other characters and subplots wander in, but very little resonates. Watts works hard to create a character from among the wafts of vague characterizations that flood the film, while Stephen Fry has a couple of nicely droll moments as a Christie’s art expert. But for the most part, the high-caliber cast (which also includes Glenn Close and Leslie Caron) finds itself adrift in a weightless confection that won’t exactly add further strain to Yankee-Franco tensions but won’t help build a bridge of understanding, either.
THE MAGDALENE SISTERS Perhaps not since Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has the screen offered such a searing portrait of evil flourishing under the guise of matronly concern. Yet here’s Sister Bridget, a nun so reprehensible that had she been a real person, one can only imagine God hanging His head in shame and weeping. In a way, though, Sister Bridget was a real person. The Magdalene Sisters is writer-director Peter Mullan’s unflinching account of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, church-sanctioned establishments in which young women accused of “sex sins” (even flirting with boys was cause for incarceration) were sent to spend time (many of them for the remainder of their lives) working as slaves under the auspices of money-grubbing nuns who enjoyed humiliating their prisoners at every turn. The movie’s based on the testimony of scores of former Magdalene inmates, and while its characters are fictionalized, they’re all based in whole or in part on actual people involved in this decades-spanning crime against humanity. The movie often resembles a prison flick in its narrative structure (with the nuns effectively doubling for Nazis), yet what sticks with you the most, past its surface dramatics and superlative performances, is its clarion call to action, its outrage at the immoral activities that are allowed to run unchecked — and are often even encouraged by governing bodies — throughout what we keep telling ourselves is a civilized western world order. 1/2
THE MEDALLION To paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, this movie is what the French would probably call “a royale with cheese” — a would-be summer hit that’s so tacky and cheap-looking, it makes one pine for the comparatively polished look of Abbott and Costello Go to Mars. This feels like a remake of last fall’s flop The Tuxedo, in which an aging Jackie Chan allowed the special effects and stunt crews to handle most of the action while he struggled through a feeble fantasy plot opposite a bland leading lady. Here, he’s matched with Claire Forlani (a mere sliver better than Tuxedo‘s Jennifer Love Hewitt) as they play cops trying to stop the villain du jour (Julian Sands) from getting his hands on a bauble that offers immortality, superhuman strength and, one hopes, a zero percent interest rate until January 2004. So bad that it’s actually painless to watch in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 frame of mind, The Medallion lumbers forward like a blind alcoholic, throwing in buckets of head-scratching non sequiturs and employing special effects so threadbare that it’s hard to believe they’re appearing in a major studio production in the 21st century. Lee Evans, the wonderful physical comedian from Funny Bones and There’s Something About Mary, is more grating than amusing as Chan’s bungling partner (blame the script, credited to an astounding five writers!), while Chan, largely stripped of his raison d’etre, executes a few deft moves but otherwise gets swallowed up by the silliness of it all. 1/2
THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS This adaptation of Jane Smiley’s novella The Age of Grief isn’t a documentary by any stretch of the imagination, yet try telling that to the married couples who will see this film and feel that they’re experiencing cinema verite in its rawest form. Working from Craig Lucas’ knowing screenplay, director Alan Rudolph has produced one of the finest works of his alarmingly erratic career, shucking aside the pretense and pomposity of his recent output to offer an honest study of a marriage on the rocks. Campbell Scott and Hope Davis play David and Dana Hurst, partners both in matrimony and at the office where they share a practice as dentists. Catching Dana in another man’s embrace, David immediately suspects she’s having an affair, refusing to confront her about it but instead allowing fantasy scenarios to run unchecked through his mind. All the while, both adults must also continue to deal with the daily demands of their three young daughters, a situation that becomes especially taxing once everyone in the household starts coming down with the flu. Davis (About Schmidt) projects a palpable sense of conflicted emotion as a woman who feels she needs to step away from her comfortable niche to obtain an accurate sense of herself, yet it’s the beautifully nuanced performance by Scott (Roger Dodger), as a husband and father who fully believes in the sanctity of marriage and will do whatever he can to hold onto that ideal, that anchors this touching, trenchant film. 1/2
This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2003.
