New Releases
BORN INTO BROTHELS First, let’s give a round of applause to Wendy Fishman, Director of Film/Video at The Light Factory. Back in June 2004, after Born Into Brothels earned recognition at Durham’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Fishman managed to land the picture for a special Charlotte screening – an impressive feat considering the movie wasn’t even released for a regular run in New York and Los Angeles until this past December. And now let’s hear it for the Manor Theatre, which is opening it this Friday, less than a month after it copped the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Between the title and the topic – children who are the offspring of hookers living and working in Calcutta’s red light district – it’d be reasonable to expect a documentary that takes audience depression to a whole new level. Yet this powerful work from co-directors Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman isn’t merely a rapid downward spiral of a film; instead, it details Briski’s remarkable attempts to help these kids (especially the girls, who will inevitably follow their mothers and grandmothers into prostitution) out of their dire surroundings by teaching them photography and attempting to place them in respectable boarding schools. It’s a given that not all these children (most of them personable, talented and wise beyond their years) will be able to escape their lot in life – a heartrending coda reveals which ones were unable to make the break – yet there are numerous scenes of inspiration and uplift, and the efforts of Briski and her non-profit outfit Kids With Cameras (www.kids-with-cameras.org) continue to this day. 
1/2
THE RING TWO In this age of rapid technological advances, you would think that the videocassette at the center of the 2002 sleeper hit The Ring – the one that guaranteed high mortality rates for those foolish enough to watch it – would have been replaced in this sequel by a DVD of death. Instead, in the same manner that the video is ejected from the player toward the start of The Ring Two, so too is this premise jettisoned completely from this sorry follow-up’s storyline, leaving the film nowhere to go but down. The original Ring (itself a remake of the popular Japanese flick Ringu) established that the only way the demonic child Samara could work her evil on the world was through the playing of the aforementioned videotape. In this sequel, reporter Rachel Keller (returning star Naomi Watts) destroys the object at the outset, so scripter Ehren Kruger decided that he might as well make up new rules as he scribbled along, thus rendering this sequel not only illogical but inconsequential as well. Rachel and her young son Aidan (David Dorfman, the worst child actor this side of The Cat In the Hat‘s Spencer Breslin) have moved from Seattle to a quiet Oregon town, but Samara’s spirit won’t leave them alone, as she seems intent on taking over Aidan’s body. Dorfman is such a monotonous performer that the addition of some Exorcist-inspired pea-green vomit might at least have helped us determine exactly when he’s being possessed. Then again, such a gesture of goodwill would be little more than a Band-Aid applied to a hemorrhaging film whose greatest sin is that it’s unremittingly dull. 1/2
Current Releases
BE COOL Yet one more lazy sequel to a great film, Be Cool is a major disappointment that fails to capture the essence of what made Get Shorty such a terrific film experience. The movie never provides a compelling argument for its own existence: Because it spends far more time salivating over musical numbers featuring pop star Christina Milian than on watching shylock-turned-movie-producer Chili Palmer (John Travolta) test the shark-infested waters of the music business, it’s clear that priorities are out of whack. The degree to which characters, plot developments and even snatches of dialogue mimic those from the first film is irritating, and while there are some big laughs, they’re isolated moments of mirth cast adrift in an ocean of indifference.
CONSTANTINE Based on the DC Comics/Vertigo series Hellblazer, this disappointment casts Keanu Reeves as John Constantine, a man with the ability to recognize the angels and demons that walk the earth in human form. Yet as he goes about his business of wiping out as many of the demonic “half-breeds” as possible (in an attempt to “buy” his way into Heaven), he realizes that there’s a seismic shift occurring in the underworld, and the only way he can get to the bottom of the mystery is to join forces with a police detective (Rachel Weisz) investigating the apparent suicide of her psychic twin sister. Because it’s an exhaustive exercise to keep abreast of the story’s seemingly haphazard developments, Constantine ends up resembling nothing so much as a punctured tire with a slow leak, letting all the air seep out until what’s finally left is flat and fairly ineffectual.
DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN Watching this adaptation of Tyler Perry’s stage play is akin to channel surfing between showings of Soul Food and Nutty Professor II: The Klumps – with an occasional flip over to The Jeffersons for good measure. A huge hit with Afro-American audiences, Perry’s play, about a pampered wife (Kimberly Elise) who starts over after being dumped by her odious husband (Steve Harris), has been adapted (by the author himself) into a movie that’s overflowing with positive Christian ideals as well as an honest assessment of the intrinsic desire for seeking retribution versus the spiritual need for giving absolution. In this respect, the movie’s emotionally satisfying (if a bit simplistic), yet Perry dilutes its potency by casting himself in the sitcom roles of a profane, gun-wielding grandmother and her brother, a flatulent elder constantly leering at women when he’s not busy smoking dope. 1/2
HITCH A warm and witty comedy that unfortunately runs itself into the ground, Hitch benefits immeasurably from the presence of Will Smith, who may or may not be a great actor but who is most assuredly a great movie star. There’s something to be said for effortless magnetism, and in that respect, Smith has more in common with the sophisticated comedians of the past than the coarse jokesters of today. He’s at turns sly, suave and sexy as Alex “Hitch” Hitchens, who earns a living by advising other men how to land the woman of their dreams. Yet even as he tries to pair up a clumsy accountant (Kevin James) with a supermodel (Amber Valletta), he unexpectedly finds his own attention drawn to a gossip columnist (Eva Mendes). Viewers who go with the flow will gladly put reality on pause in order to enjoy this movie’s modest pleasures – it’s just a shame the picture reverts to rigid formula in its final half-hour. 1/2
HOSTAGE Bruce Willis delivers a committed performance as Jeff Talley, an LAPD hostage negotiator whose botching of a tense standoff leaves him with innocent blood on his hands and prods him into moving to a sleepy community where the crime rate hovers around zero. But once three ruffians attempting to steal a car end up killing a police officer and subsequently taking a family hostage, Talley finds himself back in the sort of situation he would like to avoid. For a good while, director Florent Siri and scripter Doug Richardson do their pulpy material proud, with a real attention to both exposition and execution. But as the storyline gets more crowded (another gang of villains ends up holding Talley’s own family hostage), the film falls apart through outlandish developments and ludicrous resolutions to the various plot strands. 1/2
THE JACKET The psychological thriller The Jacket shouldn’t be confused with the Jackie Chan dud The Tuxedo, though when it comes to sartorial splendor, it’s hard to imagine moviegoers wanting to get fitted for either film. This new picture is eerily reminiscent of last year’s The Butterfly Effect, the clumsy time travel yarn that asked audiences to empathize with a character played by Ashton Kutcher. This one makes the task easier by casting amiable Oscar winner Adrien Brody as an amnesiac Gulf War vet whose stint at an insane asylum finds him serving as experimental fodder for a mad scientist (Kris Kristofferson). That the movie never attempts to even offer an explanation of its weird science exemplifies the haphazardness that dominates the movie. Jennifer Jason Leigh is on hand as a conscientious doctor, but even she can’t save a cinematic dog that narratively ends up chasing its own tail.
ONG-BAK: THE THAI WARRIOR The studio behind Ong-Bak reasons that because the 1970s gave us Bruce Lee, the 1980s introduced us to Jackie Chan and the 1990s heralded the arrival of Jet Li, then why shouldn’t Thailand’s Tony Jaa be earmarked as the great martial arts star of the 2000s? Yet even with the decade half over, I say we hold out a while longer: Jaa doesn’t possess the authority of Lee, the charisma of Chan or the intensity of Li, though he does project plenty of the same sleepy-eyed blandness as flash-in-the-pan Jean-Claude Van Damme. Ong-Bak resembles nothing so much as one of those action cheapies regularly churned out by outfits like Cannon back in the 80s, the ones in which goofy performances and lazy plotlines competed with passable fight sequences for the lion’s share of the running time.
ROBOTS If ever a movie warranted the Second Coming of silent cinema, it’s this animated effort from the same studio (20th Century Fox) and director (Chris Wedge) that brought us the middling Ice Age. Visually, the film is yet another triumph for computer programmers, as their blood, sweat and mouse pads have enabled them to create a wondrous landscape that’s a joy to behold. But whenever any of the metallic characters that populate this world open their mouths, the movie reveals its complete lack of innovation at the screenwriting level. Despite an all-star vocal cast, there’s no defining personality to most of the characterizations (Mel Brooks is a notable exception as a kindly inventor), while Robin Williams (as a manic misfit) immediately wears out his welcome by performing his usual tired shtick. Sad to say, this neutered comedian has become as mechanical as the robot he portrays.
THE SEA INSIDE Winner of both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, The Sea Inside is respectable but undistinguished, and, despite its lofty airs, no match for director Alejandro Amenabar’s trio of thrillers (The Others, Open Your Eyes and Thesis). Javier Bardem is cast as Ramon Sampredo, a writer who, after having spent close to three decades as a quadriplegic, has decided that he wants to end his life. Based on a true story, the film suffers from using its protagonist as merely a mouthpiece through which to channel noble platitudes about freedom of choice and occasionally testy tirades aimed at the church. That’s all well and good, but it’s only through sheer force of personality that Bardem manages to add any human dimension to this movie martyr. 1/2
OPENS THURSDAY:
MISS CONGENIALITY 2: ARMED AND FABULOUS: Sandra Bullock, Regina King.
OPENS FRIDAY:
BORN INTO BROTHELS: Documentary.
GUESS WHO: Bernie Mac, Ashton Kutcher.
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2005.
