NEW RELEASES
THE HUMAN STAIN Hollywood screwed up its 1972 adaptation of Portnoy’s Complaint so miserably that it’s no wonder most of Philip Roth’s other works haven’t been turned into motion pictures.The Human Stain is the first big-screen adaptation since Portnoy, and it’s been given the grade-A treatment, with Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer) directing, Nicholas Meyer (The Seven-Per-Cent Solution) scripting, and a quartet of accomplished actors headlining. But rather than buckle under the weight of all that Oscar bait, this turns out to be an affecting picture in its own right, almost subdued in the manner in which it tackles its myriad issues of race, loss, identity, and the lengths to which one man will reinvent himself to succeed in America. Set during that period when the country was focused on the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, the movie traces the downward spiral of college professor Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins) after an innocent classroom comment is misinterpreted as a racial slur in a time of rampant political correctness. Suddenly without a career or a family, Coleman passes the days alternating between dwelling on secrets buried in his past and engaging in a tentative relationship with a complex woman (Nicole Kidman) who paints herself as the ultimate in trailer park trash. Ed Harris’ intensity as Kidman’s crazed ex-husband is unsettling, and Gary Sinise makes his narrator a comfortably reassuring companion. Yet it’s the two leads who dominate: Hopkins hasn’t been this interesting in years, while Kidman’s amazing portrayal is merely the latest in her current winning streak. 
SHATTERED GLASS Based on the real-life scandal involving writer Stephen Glass, who fabricated 27 of the 41 stories he penned for The New Republic in the 1990s, it would be logical to assume that this film would rake the fourth estate over the coals, illustrating how it had continued to shift from a source of reliable information into a circus act of celebrity reporters riding unicycles of distortion and deceit. Yet the surprise of Shattered Glass is that it’s ultimately a celebration of journalistic integrity, emulating All the President’s Men in the manner in which it presents most of its characters as moral crusaders who will do whatever it takes to uncover the truth. Hayden Christensen, whose solid work here confirms the suspicion that his Anakin Skywalker was weakened not so much by his own thespian abilities but by George Lucas’ clunky dialogue, stars as Glass, whose empathic nature and self-effacing personality make him a favorite around the New Republic office. Yet when his latest story, a popular piece about a computer hacker, begins to raise red flags among the members of an online publication, TNR editor Charles Lane (Peter Sarsgaard) is forced to look into the matter and accept wherever it leads him. Writer-director Billy Ray (working from Buzz Bissinger’s Vanity Piece article) makes the movie as much about Lane as Glass, a sound decision that allows audiences to admire one man’s commitment to integrity even as it disapproves of his colleague’s immoral actions. 1/2
THE SINGING DETECTIVE Dennis Potter’s same-named BBC miniseries from 1986 has long been considered one of the greatest works ever created for television, and by reconstructing the material into feature-length form before his death in 1994, the British writer obviously hoped that a big-screen version would be greeted with similar acclaim. Fat chance. Finally seeing the light of day after a decade-long gestation period, Potter’s script finds itself at the center of a calamity that’s misguided right from the opening frames. Robert Downey Jr. stars as Dan Dark (not to be confused with Donnie Darko), a pulp fiction writer who suffers from a debilitating skin condition that fuels not only his deeply entrenched cynicism but also feverish daydreams in which he imagines himself as a musically inclined shamus. Making a movie that’s both bizarre and boring would normally seem unlikely. But The Singing Detective manages this unenviable feat, as director Keith Gordon attempts to goose the material with poorly choreographed musical numbers and ham-fisted technical tricks — which only point out the bankruptcy of the gumshoe angle and the increasingly tedious behavior of its central character. Downey and Mel Gibson (in a radical departure as a balding, fidgety psychiatrist) perform well under the circumstances, but the rest of this wayward production sustains one long, flat note. 1/2
CURRENT RELEASES
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
ELF While it could stand being a little more naughty and a little less nice, 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 manage to add a few splashes of Tabasco sauce to the expected puddles of syrup, thereby elevating this fable about a human (Will Ferrell) who, after being raised as an elf at the North Pole, heads to New York. Overcoming a sluggish beginning, both the picture and Ferrell’s broad turn become easier to take once this gets rolling, with some inventive touches (love those Etch-A-Sketch renditions!) and a game cast helping matters along. 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.
LILYA 4-EVER After the delightful duo of Show Me Love and Together, writer-director Lukas Moodysson’s mood turns dark, producing one of the most depressing movies I’ve ever squirmed through. Absorbing without being particularly illuminating, this centers on a .16-year-old girl (Oksana Akinshina) struggling to survive in the former Soviet Union. After her mother abandons her to move to the US, the cold and hungry Lilya is forced to turn to prostitution to survive. An end credit states that this 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. 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.
MAMBO ITALIANO Or, My Big Fat Gay Italian Wedding. Broad in the extreme, 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
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD Based on Patrick O’Brian’s series of novels, this casts Russell Crowe as Captain Jack Aubrey, a British naval hero assigned to bring down a formidable French vessel during the Napoleonic Wars. For a swashbuckling epic, the film is rather subdued in its approach, with director Peter Weir taking great pains to present an oft-times understated tale that’s about the art of warfare as much as it’s about the battles themselves. Paul Bettany, Crowe’s A Beautiful Mind co-star, portrays the ship’s doctor (and Aubrey’s best friend), and it’s the relationship between their two characters — coupled with Weir’s attention to minute detail — that largely drives the story.
THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS As a joyride of a movie, this final installment delivers the goods. But on a human level, it’s clear that the Wachowskis allowed the series to get away from them. Thus, fascinating characters introduced in Reloaded are almost completely forgotten, while the series mainstays have largely been drained of personality, existing only to stand around mouthing increasingly vague philosophies. Too bad. This is certainly no disgrace — it trumps most series’ third entries (Alien 3, anyone?) and will probably stand up to repeat viewings quite nicely. But for a series that began with audiences gleefully agreeing with Neo’s declaration of “Whoa!,” this one is sure to leave as many moviegoers shrugging, “So?” 1/2
PIECES OF APRIL A hit at Sundance, this pulls off a nice balancing act between humor and heartbreak as it makes its way toward its deeply satisfying finale. Set on that most American of holidays, the movie sits back and watches as estranged April Burns (Katie Holmes) does her best to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner for her family — a family that’s quite reluctant to show up at all. The clan’s car trip provides Patricia Clarkson (The Station Agent) plenty of opportunities to strut her stuff as April’s bitter mom, a woman who’s dying of cancer, while the interludes between April and her assorted neighbors are the ones that best convey the spirit of the holiday being celebrated. With its cathartic ending, Pieces of April clearly earns its tears.
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) who 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.
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
THE SCHOOL OF ROCK Director Richard Linklater’s previous credits include Waking Life and Dazed and Confused, while scripter Mike White’s resume contains The Good Girl and Chuck & Buck. These indie faves won’t ever be mistaken for multiplex blockbusters, yet here the pair have teamed up for this accessible comedy about a failed rock star (Jack Black) who lands a job as a substitute teacher at a posh private school, whereupon he begins teaching his buttoned-down fifth grade charges about the glories of rock & roll. It sounds like the sort of sanitized product that might star Eddie Murphy (Dokken Day Care?), yet what gives the movie any semblance of an edge is Black, whose relentless manic energy perfectly suits the project.
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
TUPAC: RESURRECTION With dance classes on his high school resume and Shakespeare cited as an influence, rap star Tupac Shakur clearly never quite fit the stereotypical image of the gangbanging thug, and the strength of this documentary 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 (home movies, 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 and West Coast rappers isn’t explored in much depth, other prickly points in his career are admirably placed front and center.
OPENS FRIDAY:
THE CAT IN THE HAT: Mike Myers, Alec Baldwin.
GOTHIKA: Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr.
THE HUMAN STAIN: Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman.
PIECES OF APRIL: Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson.
SHATTERED GLASS: Hayden Christensen, Peter Sarsgaard.
THE SINGING DETECTIVE: Robert Downey Jr., Mel Gibson.
THE STATION AGENT: Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson.
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2003.
