Film Clips

New Releases
HIDE AND SEEK It’s becoming increasingly rote to review junky, generic
thrillers like Hide and Seek: Critics would do well to simply cut-and-paste
their slams of last year’s Secret Window (this film’s doppelganger) and
leave it at that. But let’s not stop with that Johnny Depp dud: If Hide and
Seek were a math equation, it would read something like Secret Window plus The Shining plus What Lies Beneath plus Cape Fear plus
The Sixth Sense plus May plus The Bad Seed plus Happiness multiplied by a high level of improbability and divided by a lack of any genuine
scares. Robert De Niro, in full paycheck-gorging mode, is miscast as David Callaway,
a New York psychologist who, after his wife (Amy Irving) commits suicide, moves
upstate with their traumatized 9-year-old daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning). Still
struggling to cope with the tragedy, Emily invents an imaginary friend named Charlie,
and a subsequent string of disasters leads David to wonder whether Emily suffers
from a split personality, whether another person is manipulating his daughter,
or whether there’s a supernatural presence in their new home. Hide and Seek contains the usual visual “scares” always found in this sort of nonsense, such
as the cat that suddenly springs out of a closed closet (which begs the question:
How did a cat get in a closed closet in the first place?). Equally daft is the
dialogue credited to first-timer Ari Schlossberg, with the defining moment of
unintentional hilarity arriving when, after it appears that Emily has mutilated
all her dolls and drowned the cat in the bathtub, David gives his reason for not
wanting to take her back to the city: “I’m afraid it might make her condition
worse.” 1/2

THE INCIDENT One of the featured attractions during this week’s Project
Lovelight event (check out See&Do for details), this hard-hitting film from
1967 proves to be the sort of raw drama that, sad to say, never loses its topicality.
So constricted that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t a stage play first (the script
was penned by TV series vet Nicholas E. Baehr), the film stars Tony Musante
and Martin Sheen (in his film debut) as two NYC street thugs who corner several
passengers on a subway car and proceed to brutalize and humiliate them. Someone
like Dirty Harry (or even Billy Jack) would only need 10 seconds, tops, to lay
waste to these punks, but most of the passengers adopt a mind-my-own-business
passivity that not only allows the abuse to continue indefinitely but also encourages
some of the victims to turn on each other. Director Larry Peerce establishes
a mood of jangly tension by allowing several of his actors to play to the rafters
(or, in Musante’s case, to the stratosphere), and during its best moments, the
film’s gritty efficiency brings to mind early Scorsese or Cassavetes. The actors
playing the passengers are an eclectic bunch: A baby-faced Beau Bridges, Thelma
Ritter (winding down a stellar career as Hollywood’s favorite supporting actress),
Ruby Dee, and The Tonight Show‘s Ed McMahon are among the many familiar
faces.

Current Releases
THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON / THE WOODSMAN Nixon, inspired
by actual events of the mid-70s, centers on an ordinary joe (Sean Penn) who’s
a failure both professionally and personally. Tired of being constantly beaten
down by life, he decides to murder Nixon, the man he feels best exemplifies
everything that’s wrong with America. The Woodsman, meanwhile, casts
Kevin Bacon as a former convict trying to adjust to life on the outside after
spending years in prison for molesting young girls. He does his best to stay
clean, but discovers it just might be a losing battle when those around him
aren’t willing to give him a chance to start anew. Nixon focuses on a
man succumbing to sickness while Woodsman centers on someone who’s trying
to escape it – both films dole out the will-he-or-won’t-he? tension in comparable
doses. Both movies:

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 A favorite of critics and cultists alike, John
Carpenter’s 1976 Assault On Precinct 13 was a nifty little “B” flick
about an LA street gang that descends upon a police station with the sole purpose
of wiping out everyone inside. This flashy update is a competent but entirely
generic action opus in which it’s a group of rogue cops who attack the precinct
in order to kill a captured crime lord whose testimony would put them behind
bars. Laurence Fishburne plays the cool-under-fire kingpin, who reluctantly
teams up with an honest officer (Ethan Hawke) to ensure his own survival. Expect
few surprises from yet another needless remake.

THE AVIATOR This sprawling biopic about Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo
DiCaprio), the notorious billionaire-industrialist-producer-flyboy, employs
all the cinematic razzle-dazzle we’ve come to expect from Martin Scorsese, yet
there’s an added layer of excitement as the eternal cineaste finally gets to
step back in time via his meticulous recreations of the sights and sounds of
Old Hollywood (look for Cate Blanchett in a show-stealing turn as Katharine
Hepburn). Still, the behind-the-scenes movie material takes a back seat to other
aspects of Hughes’ life – namely, his adventures in the field of aviation and
his lifelong battle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. At its best, the film
is a stirring tale about a man whose inner drive allowed him to climb ever higher
and higher, grazing the heavens before his inner demons seized the controls
and forced the inevitable, dreary descent. 1/2

COACH CARTER This works the usual underdog cliches fairly well as it
tells the true story of Ken Carter (Samuel L. Jackson), a high school basketball
coach in California who manages to turn a team that won only four games during
its previous season into a statewide powerhouse. But at the height of their
success, Carter elects to bench the entire team once he discovers that most
of his players are performing poorly in their classes. Carter’s selfless actions
against a failed education system register even when the movie surrounding him
turns on itself: All pertinent points are made after a full two hours, but the
picture drags on for another 20 minutes simply so viewers can be treated to
a climactic Big Game. Ultimately, Coach Carter‘s sincerity gets trumped
by its savvy at milking the sports formula for all it’s worth. 1/2

ELEKTRA Talk about a house of flying daggers: The multiplex is filled
with them once Marvel’s blade-wielding superheroine springs into action in this
spin-off of 2003’s Daredevil (in which she appeared as the sightless
superhero’s romantic interest). But while this lady in red often kicks it into
high gear, the movie itself rarely moves beyond a stroll. The story finds the
assassin-for-hire (Jennifer Garner) balking when her latest assignment requires
her to kill a single dad (Goran Visnjic) and his teenage daughter (Kirsten Prout,
whose annoying performance does the film no favors). Elektra elects to protect
them instead, which in turn pits her against an evil organization known as The
Hand. Inexplicably, no one ever deadpans, “Talk to The Hand,” but then again,
a sense of humor is noticeably missing throughout. 1/2

HOTEL RWANDA Set in 1994 Rwanda, this powerful film takes place during
the 100-day period when nearly one million of that country’s Tutsis were slaughtered
by the Hutu extremists. Clearly, Hotel Rwanda is about international
indifference and liberal ineffectualness, and the movie reverberates with such
topical force (Sudan, anyone?) that the ink is still drying on its condemnation
of a planet that operates with blinders firmly attached. Yet for all its indignant
ire, the movie is more than anything a humanist saga, and it’s in this area
where it draws its greatest power. Don Cheadle exudes quiet authority as Paul
Rusesabagina, the Hutu hotel manager who risked everything to save over a thousand
Tutsi civilians from falling under the machete. 1/2

HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS Zhang Yimou recently stated that it’s always
been his dream to direct martial arts films. Having now helmed Hero and
House of Flying Daggers, let’s hope he’s gotten it out of his system.
Yimou directed the best foreign-language film of the 1990s – Raise the Red
Lantern – and was also responsible for other titles that explored Chinese
history in all its facets. This overrated new film pales by comparison, exuding
a been-there-done-that vibe on the heels of (among others) Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon and Hero. But if nothing else, Daggers is gorgeous
to behold, and that alone almost carries the picture over the hump: Its rainbow
visions are probably vibrant enough to even register with the color-blind. Daggers is appealing eye candy, but here’s hoping that Yimou goes back to making movies
that can rattle a nation to its core. 1/2

IN GOOD COMPANY In Good Company works as well as it does because
its central character, Dan Foreman, is a paragon of uncompromised ideals, and
because Dennis Quaid plays him so perfectly that we can’t help but line up behind
this guy and cheer him on. Dan symbolizes not the larger-than-life morality
found in superhero or gladiator yarns nor the bogus morality exhibited in pieces
of hypocrisy like Christmas With the Kranks; instead, it’s the everyday
type to which we can all aspire, as decent people trying to make the right choices
concerning family and career. The storyline, which finds ad executive Dan forced
to report to a corporate golden boy (Topher Grace) half his age, rarely strays
far from convention, but it’s hard to dislike a picture that goes out of its
way to champion integrity in America.

MILLION DOLLAR BABY The best picture of 2004 is an instant classic,
much like writer-director-producer-star Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven.
But whereas that revisionist Western deconstructed genre conventions, turning
them inside out to expose the inherent contradictions and compromises, this
movie leaves many of the cliches intact, deriving its power not by upending
them but by burrowing so deeply that it feels like we’re witnessing familiar
sights for the very first time. Eastwood stars as a gym owner who’s urged by
his only friend (Morgan Freeman) to train a young woman (Hilary Swank) determined
to make it as a boxer, yet what starts out as a familiar (if brilliantly told)
story eventually changes course and emerges as a profound and moving filmgoing
experience. There’s very little about this movie that feels extraneous — it’s
tight, taut storytelling, anchored by three astonishing performances and helmed
by a man still able to teach Hollywood’s young punks a thing or two.

A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT The ad material wants us to believe that Engagement,
about a woman (Audrey Tautou) searching for her lover at the end of World War
I, is cut from the same cloth as pictures like The English Patient and
Reds, movies that place grand romances against the backdrop of wars and
social upheaval. But director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s movie is a different kind
of epic, with a light touch and an offbeat attitude that strip the story of
much of its gravitas and instead replace it with a freewheeling flippancy. Engagement isn’t as overtly funny as Jeunet’s previous films (including Amelie),
but its comic quota is still there, resting behind its players’ character quirks
or within the tight choreography of several of the more elaborate set pieces.
The result is a real curio: often delightful, often tragic, yet never as penetrating
as one might expect.