NEW RELEASES
ELF It could stand to be a little more naughty and a little less nice, but Elf isn’t a pre-fabricated piece of synthetic Christmas cheer like The Santa Clause or Gov. Schwarzenegger’s disastrous Jingle All the Way. While remaining mindful of the season-friendly PG rating, director Jon Favreau and scripter David Berenbaum have managed to add a few splashes of Tabasco sauce to the expected puddles of syrup, elevating this fable about a baby who’s adopted by Santa Claus and his elves. Raised as an elf at the North Pole, Buddy (Will Ferrell) only learns that he’s actually a human once he reaches the age of 30; feeling dejected, he heads to New York to find his real dad (James Caan) and in the process manages to spread some much-needed cheer onto the mean streets of the city. Overcoming a sluggish beginning, both the picture and Ferrell’s broad performance become easier to take once this gets rolling, with some inventive touches (love those Etch-A-Sketch renditions!) and wicked laughs helping matters along. Also aiding immeasurably is a game supporting cast: Ed Asner as Santa, Bob Newhart as Papa Elf, the luminous Zooey Deschanel (All the Real Girls) as Buddy’s love interest, and The Station Agent‘s Peter Dinklage as a children’s book author. 
1/2
LILYA 4-EVER Say this for writer-director Lukas Moodysson: The man hops genres with an ease comparable to that of John Sayles. Show Me Love (1998) was an enchanting tale about two high school girls falling in love, while Together (Tillsammans) (2000) employed off-kilter humor to examine a 70s hippie commune in which, for starters, a kid named Tet (after the 1968 Offensive, of course) and his friend took turns playing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in a game of torture. This time, Moodysson’s mood turns totally dark, producing what has to rank as one of the most depressing movies I’ve ever squirmed through. The result is absorbing without being particularly illuminating, centering on a cute 16-year-girl (Oksana Akinshina) struggling to survive in the former Soviet Union. After her mother abandons her to move to the US with her new boyfriend, the cold, broke and hungry Lilya is forced to turn to prostitution to survive. She meets a clean-cut guy who seems willing to take her away from her harsh environment, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist — or even a crackhead — to figure out where this particular plot strand is leading. An end credit states that the film is dedicated to the countless children forced into the global sex trade, but Moodysson’s unavoidable message — that some people are simply better off dead rather than even attempting to exist on this planet — may not sit well with all viewers. (Lilya 4-Ever is being presented as part of this month’s Charlotte Film Society series; call 704-414-2355 for complete details.) 1/2
MAMBO ITALIANO Like the lucky 10th caller to a radio station contest hotline, I suppose I should congratulate myself on being the 1,000th reviewer to refer to this film as My Big Fat Gay Italian Wedding. It’s not that plagiarism is the order of the day among the critical community, or even that this sprang to life in the wake of My Big Fat Greek Wedding‘s still-hard-to-believe box office haul (based on a play, this began shooting before Wedding fever broke out). But in both conception and execution, this trades heavily on the same sort of cultural caricatures and sit-com situations as its predecessor. Wedding was successful thanks to Nia Vardalos’ lovely lead performance and a script that gently tweaked stereotypes even as its characters wallowed in them; Mambo, by comparison, plays everything so absurdly broad that it’s impossible to take even its relevant issues seriously. The story focuses on an Italian-Canadian family and what happens when Mom (Ginette Reno) and Dad (hammy Paul Sorvino, doing enough acting for 10 people) discover that their son (Luke Kirby) is gay and has settled down with a former schoolmate (Peter Miller). The script is timid when dealing with the young men’s relationship yet charges like a bull when it’s time for those wacky Italianos to start-a with the “meat-a-balls” and “whack-a you upside the head” routines. After watching the expected shtick play out repeatedly over 90 minutes, only one thought takes hold: Where are the GoodFellas when we really need them? 1/2
TUPAC: RESURRECTION After just a few minutes into the film, it’s clear to even those with no interest in astrology that Tupac Shakur was a Gemini, a fact that the late rapper himself confirms in interview footage shown midway through this incisive documentary. On one hand, here was a kid who took dance during his school years, who listed Don McLean, Lorraine Hansbury and William Shakespeare as influences, and who displayed enormous sensitivity in the film Poetic Justice. Yet he was also a social misfit who often submerged his finer qualities to foster a harsher persona, who exhibited streaks of misogyny on more than one occasion, and who lived a violent lifestyle even as he spoke about achieving goals through peaceful means. Clearly, Tupac never quite fit the stereotypical image of the gangbanging thug, and the strength of this movie is that it never flinches in showing us why he made the choices he felt he had to make — even though they ended up costing him his life. Director Lauren Lazin was fortunate to have ample material with which to work — everything from home movies to private journals — and although Tupac’s mother, former Black Panther Afeni Shakur, serves as an executive producer, this is no sanitized whitewash: While the notorious war between the East Coast and West Coast rappers isn’t explored in much depth (see Nick Broomfield’s Biggie & Tupac for a more focused study), other prickly points in Tupac’s career are admirably placed front and center.
CURRENT RELEASES
BEYOND BORDERS It’s been a while since we’ve had an all-consuming romantic epic set against an international backdrop, and while Beyond Borders doesn’t come within 100 kilometers of attaining the power of, say, Reds, it’s a solid, second-tier effort. Angelina Jolie plays a pampered rich girl whose dormant humanitarian spirit gets a rude awakening once a compassionate doctor (magnetic Clive Owen) involved with relief efforts forces her to open her eyes to international atrocities. The story’s globe-hopping seems almost too calculated — our heroes journey from Ethiopia to Cambodia to Chechnya, threatening to turn this into a Berlitz Travel Guide to the World’s Trouble Spots — but the movie’s refusal to compromise is admirable.
BROTHER BEAR Oh, brother, what a bore… Brother Bear has been plugged as the last gasp of the traditional animated film, but I’d hate to think the future of anything depended on something this mediocre. This soggy tale finds Disney raiding its own tombs for material, cobbling together pieces of The Lion King, Pocahontas and other hits to create a yawn-inducing yarn about a warrior who’s transformed into a bear. The human characters are dull, the requisite bear cub is cloying, the comic relief (doltish moose voiced by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) is annoying, and the songs by Phil Collins — how do I delicately put this? — suck. 1/2
IN THE CUT Meg Ryan delivers an appropriately dour turn in this psychosexual drama about a lonely New Yorker who falls for a roughneck detective (Mark Ruffalo) cryptic enough to make her suspect he might also be the serial killer who’s been hacking up women. On the most commercial level of a murder-mystery, this is a complete washout, jammed with gaping plotholes and a laughably obvious culprit. As a stylized study of the uneasy symmetry between the ache of sexual longing and the risk of violent retribution, the film occasionally threatens to spring to life, yet all potential is repeatedly forced to take a backseat not only to those tired thriller elements but also to director Jane Campion’s misplaced sense of artful abstraction.
LEVITY After serving his entire adult life in prison, a repentant killer (Billy Bob Thornton) is given an early release and decides to make amends for his past sins; his journey brings him into contact with a no-nonsense preacher (Morgan Freeman), a spoiled party girl (Kirsten Dunst) and the sister (Holly Hunter) of the boy he killed two decades earlier. This meandering movie rises and falls depending on each individual storyline: Thornton’s scenes with Hunter are easily the strongest; his sequences with Dunst are interesting but rarely believable; and his moments with Freeman too often bring the film to a thudding halt. 1/2
LOVE ACTUALLY Many movie romances make us willingly suspend our disbelief, but this colossal disappointment asks viewers to go to such extremes to disengage from reality that we’re actually open to seeing just about anything unimaginable take place in this film, even the sight of a T-rex attacking Gastonia, Darth Vader cutting loose at a disco, or Jennifer Lopez delivering an interesting performance. A great cast (Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, etc.) has been assembled for this multi-story piece in which various folks find love in London in the weeks leading up to Christmas, but there are absolutely no surprises (aside from the escalating preposterousness) in any of the choppy vignettes, almost all of which fizzle out with unlikely wrap-ups.
RADIO Inspired by a true story, this centers on a mentally challenged kid (Cuba Gooding Jr.) in South Carolina and the high school coach (Ed Harris) whose interest in the lad transformed their lives. Films like this one are created solely to pummel our tear ducts, yet Radio left me unmoved. Maybe it was because Mike Tollin directed this with all the flair of an infomercial. Maybe it was because of the shameless script by Mike Rich (Finding Forrester). Maybe it was because Gooding is never allowed to play a three-dimensional character but rather a manifestation of a white man’s cause, human currency to be handed around whenever a character needs his or her consciousness raised. Then again, maybe it was simply because the theater’s air conditioning unit was drying up my contacts something fierce, making tears an impossible acquisition.
RUNAWAY JURY The latest adaptation of a John Grisham bestseller, this one posits that there’s hope for ordinary citizens to take on the powerful gun lobby — and possibly win. It’s a fantastical concept — more far-fetched than anything in Star Wars or The Wizard of Oz — but that doesn’t make it any less savory a dream. And the flames of that dream are stoked to an inferno in this slick drama in which a jury member (John Cusack) has his own reasons for wanting to sway the vote in a civil suit involving a major gun manufacturer. Gene Hackman, who has the distinction of appearing in both the best Grisham adaptation (The Firm) and the worst (The Chamber), is all coiled menace as the consultant who’s never met a jury he can’t manipulate.
SCARY MOVIE 3 Scary Movie 3 features the likes of Charlie Sheen, Pamela Anderson, Simon Cowell and a Michael Jackson clone — certainly some folks’ idea of a good time, but little more than an act of sheer desperation as far as I’m concerned. Then again, this series has always been about low-brow entertainment, but at least the original picture delivered plenty of laughs. Operating like an inferior issue of Mad magazine with all the pages mixed up, this randomly ping-pongs between tepid take-offs of The Ring, Signs, The Matrix Reloaded and 8 Mile. The notion of Leslie Nielsen playing the US President is funny in theory, but this film even blows the comic potential of that situation. 1/2
SPACE STATION With Tom Cruise providing the narration, this 48-minute IMAX feature looks at the construction of the International Space Station that’s taking place approximately 220 miles above our heads. As we watch astronauts from various nations working side by side, it’s nice to know there’s actually somewhere on this earth — OK, above this earth — where America is cooperating with other countries rather than pissing them off. Combine this fuzzy feeling of solidarity with to-die-for shots of the space station framed against an infinite backdrop, and the result is another winner over at Discovery Place’s OMNIMAX Theatre.
SYLVIA Failing to convey the imagination of Frida, the poignancy of Iris, or the profundity of Virginia Woolf’s plight in The Hours, Sylvia brings up the rear when it comes to films about tortured women trying to create art while contending with mental and/or physical anguish. Known in shorthand as the suicidal author of The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath won’t see that description expanded by this dreary effort that’s more interested in documenting a tragic love affair than getting inside this woman’s head. Whether Plath’s art and death were fueled by much beyond romance gone awry seems almost beside the point in this picture, which focuses almost exclusively on the soap opera angle and in effect paints largely unsympathetic portrayals of both Sylvia (Gwyneth Paltrow) and her husband, poet Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig).
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE Loosely based on the exploits of serial killer Ed Gein, both film versions (1974 and 2003) deal with five college-age kids whose ill-advised road trip through a desolate part of Texas puts them in contact with a murderous, cannibalistic clan whose most terrifying member (Leatherface) is a hulking psychopath who wears his victims’ faces as masks. The bottom line? The original picture is a genuine classic of the genre, a punishing, unrelenting nightmare that never allows viewers even a moment of sanity or security. This doltish new version, on the other hand, is nothing more than business as usual, a feeble retelling that guts the integrity of the original and wears its own cynicism like a ragged mask. 1/2
OPENS FRIDAY:
LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION: Bugs Bunny, Brendan Fraser.
MAMBO ITALIANO: Luke Kirby, Paul Sorvino.
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD: Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany.
TUPAC: RESURRECTION: Tupac Shakur, Jada Pinkett Smith.
This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2003.
