NEW RELEASES
VANITY FAIR A condensation — and softening — of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel, this adaptation finds director Mira Nair (helmer of the wonderful Monsoon Wedding) filtering the tale through her own sensibilities. That translates into plot nods toward her native India that weren’t in the source material, a visual scheme that’s far more colorful than what one usually encounters in British period pieces of this nature, and an approach that sentimentalizes many of the characters. Yet her liberties don’t cripple the piece — more often, they provide a welcome sheen to a movie that often threatens to buckle under the weight of so many characters and plot strands. Reese Witherspoon stars as the poor but plucky Becky Sharp, the 19th century social climber determined to carve out a better life for herself. Using her quick wit and feminine wiles, she inspires lust in men and scorn in women; eventually, she marries a dashing gambler (James Purefoy), but her real troubles are only just beginning. Although the episodic nature of the screenplay sometimes gets in the way of narrative propulsion (the final half-hour especially dawdles), the lively characters — and the hypocrisies they inadvertently champion — always remain watchable. Witherspoon makes a perky protagonist, though her character needs a nastier edge to be truly believable. 
1/2
CURRENT RELEASES
THE BOURNE SUPREMACY Taken together, both Bourne films feel like consecutive episodes of a mildly entertaining television drama that can’t touch Alias in its attempts at trickery and, more importantly, character development. Here, Matt Damon’s ex-CIA assassin Jason Bourne is even more tight-lipped than before; without girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente, former co-star reduced to cameo player) to bounce off, he’s a rather one-dimensional figure, going through the motions as he tries to find out who’s framing him for murder. The good stuff mostly comes during the first half; as the film progresses, the mystery slackens rather than deepens, and the movie culminates with a sloppily edited car chase that goes on for so long that I had to be reminded: Was Matt Damon playing Jason Bourne or Sheriff Buford T. Justice? 1/2
CATWOMAN Only time will tell if this dud will become a camp classic on the order of Myra Breckinridge or Plan 9 From Outer Space, but for now, it will have to content itself with being the best bad movie of the summer. Halle Berry struggles gamely as a mousy murder victim who’s resurrected as Catwoman, a leather-clad, whip-wielding dominatrix who looks like the star attraction on an S&M website. The early sequences are deadly dull, but once Berry suits up, the movie enters MST3K territory and never looks back. Ultimately, it’s impossible to ascertain what’s most laughable: the chintzy effects, the leaden dialogue, or villainess Sharon Stone’s attempts to out-vamp Faye Dunaway’s similar turn in Supergirl. In any event, cat lovers will be horrified by this film — does PETA handle defamation suits?
COLLATERAL The notion of matinee idol Tom Cruise playing a hardened assassin may sound like a gimmick, but his performance in director Michael Mann’s drama is a fine one, nicely seasoned with just the right touch of piquantness. Sporting salt-and-pepper hair that suits him well, Cruise stars as Vincent, a contract killer who forces a cab driver named Max (solid Jamie Foxx) to ferry him around nocturnal Los Angeles so he can carry out his hits. Scripter Stuart Beattie creates some interesting give-and-take dynamics between Vincent and Max, yet he and Mann (Heat) seem to be equally interested in the peripheral elements, a decision which gives the film added resonance.
GARDEN STATE With his first endeavor as writer-director-star, actor Zach Braff (TV’s Scrubs) does more than knock it out of the park — this one reaches all the way to the county line. Braff plays Andrew “Large” Largeman, a struggling LA actor who returns to his New Jersey hometown to attend his mother’s funeral. While in town, Large hooks up with his old high school acquaintances, yet his most significant relationship turns out to be with someone new to his circle: Sam (Natalie Portman), a vibrant life force who’s the perfect remedy for an emotionally bottled-up guy trying to make some sense out of his muddied existence. Braff drastically switches gears from providing laughs to imparting poignant life lessons; it’s a gamble that pays off, resulting in a film that gives our emotions a vigorous workout. The performances are uniformly fine, with Portman nothing short of sensational. 1/2
HERO A 2002 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, this Chinese epic should satisfy anyone who couldn’t get enough of the visual splendors exhibited in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern) has assembled an all-star cast for this opulent tale centering on a warrior (Jet Li), who claims to have single-handedly vanquished the legendary assassins Broken Sword (Tony Leung), Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) and Sky (Donnie Yen). Yet is the hero telling the truth, or are there some Rashomon dynamics at play here? The performers punch across the importance of the story’s themes of solidarity and self-sacrifice, and the different color schemes employed throughout are breathtaking — it’s unlikely that many other movies this year will match this one’s ravishing visuals.
LITTLE BLACK BOOK Brittany Murphy trots out so many adorable tics during the course of this film that she ends up making Meg Ryan in Sleepless In Seattle seem as dour as Anne Ramsey in Throw Momma From the Train. Better to focus on the excellent performances by Holly Hunter and Julianne Nicholson, the primary reasons that this mean-spirited comedy can be tolerated at all. That the film centers around one of those reprehensible trash-talk TV shows of the “My grandmother is a hooker” variety immediately signals the sort of crowd this is targeting — it’s feeble stuff, with Murphy as a TV show producer whose peek at her boyfriend’s Palm leads her to suspect he might be cheating on her. Hunter is stellar as usual, while Nicholson almost humanizes this otherwise nasty tale.
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE Granted, this isn’t a masterpiece like the ’62 edition, which still reigns as one of the finest thrillers ever made. Yet in most other respects, this is that rare remake that paves its own way without exploiting or cheapening its predecessor. No longer a Cold War product, this finds the action updated, with Denzel Washington as an army officer who realizes that a former comrade (Liev Schreiber), now a politician running for his party’s Vice Presidential slot, might be the unwitting pawn of a major corporation (Manchurian Global) that’s trying to seize control of the country. The film’s topicality can’t hurt — this could easily have been called The Halliburton Candidate — yet director Jonathan Demme’s principal goal is to produce a taut, efficient thriller. On that score, he succeeds.
MARIA FULL OF GRACE A different kind of drug movie — one that dives straight into the trenches — this one isn’t about the cops, the kingpins or the clients; instead, it focuses on the mules, the (usually) impoverished folks who agree to smuggle the contraband material across borders, risking arrest or even death along the way. Newcomer Catalina Sandeno Moreno delivers a memorable performance as the 17-year-old Colombian girl who agrees to swallow dozens of heroin pellets and deliver them to a pair of pushers in New York City. Maria Full of Grace is an eye-opening experience that sidesteps any political or moral rhetoric in an effort to paint a grim portrait of an independent woman who’s neither saint nor sinner, but merely a working stiff whose ill-advised decisions never subjugate her humanity. 1/2
OPEN WATER Forget all those vague, attention-grabbing warnings from the White House about Al-Qaeda operatives in our midst: For a true Terror Alert, look no further than the auditorium housing Open Water. Shot in a grainy, you-are-there style reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project, this compact thriller centers on two vacationers (Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis) who find themselves stranded in the ocean after a scuba-diving excursion goes awry. The lack of inevitability — will they be rescued in time, or end up as shark entrees? — makes the picture such an uneasy watch, with writer-director-editor Chris Kentis effectively stripping away all the protections of the modern world until nothing is left except two individuals stranded in the middle of a beautiful yet deadly expanse that neither seeks nor provides favors.
THUNDERBIRDS For those not into trivial pursuit, Thunderbirds was a British TV series from the 60s in which the characters were all played by marionettes. This pointless update replaces the wooden dummies with human actors, though one would scarcely notice the difference. The show focused on billionaire astronaut Jeff Tracy and his sons, constantly saving the world with the help of their nifty spaceships and submarines. Here, Jeff (Bill Paxton) and the boys are largely tossed aside — with the focus shifting to the younger cast members, this qualifies as nothing more than a blatant Spy Kids rip-off. It’s troubling that the villains are all ethnic or ugly, but maybe I’m reading too much into a film that, by every other indication, contains the depth of a petri dish that’s already filled to the rim.
THE VILLAGE There’s a reason Alfred Hitchcock didn’t write the vast majority of his movies: He knew his forte was directing, and he left the scribbling to others. M. Night Shyamalan would do well to learn from The Master. As a director, he has a distinct visual style, and this thriller about a town whose surrounding woods are filled with monsters includes scenes that shimmer with an eerie beauty. But as a writer, he’s becoming a parody of himself: Eager to top the climactic twist of The Sixth Sense, he has masterminded three subsequent movies in which the “gotcha!” endings seem to be the only reason for their existence. This one isn’t really worse than Unbreakable or the silly Signs, but Shyamalan’s carny act already feels like it’s decades old — it’s a shame, because some good ideas are squandered in a muddled piece that ends up duping itself.
ZATOICHI Debuting theatrically the same year as James Bond, Japan’s Zatoichi has enjoyed a healthy shelf life comparable to that of Agent 007: The blind masseur-cum-master-swordsman has been the star of two dozen feature films and over 100 TV episodes. Writer-director-actor Takeshi Kitano elected to bring the character back to the big screen, and the result is a marvelous showstopper of a samurai flick, a genuine crowd-pleaser that earned audience awards at the Toronto and Venice film festivals. Plot-heavy and bursting at the seams with what can only be described as visual non sequiturs, Zatoichi is at heart a musical disguised as an action film, with meticulous attention to choreography and sound synchronization (plus room left over for homages to Kurosawa and slapstick comedy). More than just a treat for the martial arts crowd, this is a boon for movie lovers of all stripes. 1/2
This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2004.
