New Releases
BEWITCHED As far as ill-advised Nicole Kidman vehicles that plunder past artifacts of pop culture are concerned, the nicest thing one can say about Bewitched is that it’s an improvement over The Stepford Wives. That’s primarily because of Kidman herself, who manages to harness her maddeningly inconsistent role with such success that the result is an offbeat and original characterization. Otherwise, the same elements that made Stepford such a disaster are again in full force: zero chemistry with a leading man who was a last-minute replacement (just as Matthew Broderick stepped in for John Cusack on Stepford, Will Ferrell likewise takes Jim Carrey’s sloppy seconds); a script with no sense of direction once it gets past its setup; and accomplished vets eventually abandoned and presumably left to wither on the cutting room floor. Directed and co-written by Nora Ephron (with her sister Delia), Bewitched isn’t a faithful adaptation of the popular 60s TV series; instead, it’s the Ephrons’ attempt to outsmart Charlie Kaufman by constructing a scenario in which fading actor Jack Wyatt (Ferrell) attempts to rejuvenate his career by playing the Dick York/Dick Sargent part of the cuckolded husband in an update of Bewitched. So his own star won’t get eclipsed, he hires an unknown named Isabel (Kidman) to essay the Elizabeth Montgomery role, little realizing that he’s cast a real witch to play a fictional one. Initially clever, the movie takes one wrong turn after another beginning around the halfway mark, frittering away its comic potential by focusing on an unlikely romance between Isabel and Jack. Ferrell’s manic performance eventually grows tiresome, while Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine are wasted in malnourished roles.
HERBIE: FULLY LOADED The notion of a supercharged Volkswagen beetle seems quaint in this age of monolithic, gas-guzzling SUVs – indeed, the first Herbie picture, The Love Bug, hit theaters back in 1969 – yet given the sort of cacophonous kiddie dreck that routinely fills auditoriums today, this blast of old-fashioned sentiment isn’t half-bad. Lindsey Lohan, whose tight outfits continually threaten to put the kibosh on the film’s G rating, stars as Maggie Peyton, a third-generation member of a NASCAR family whose lineage includes her deceased grandfather, her retired pop (Michael Keaton) and her clumsy brother (Breckin Meyer). Forbidden by her dad from ever taking part in races, Maggie goes against his wishes once she discovers that the rusty VW she rescues from a junkyard is magically endowed. Herbie and Maggie manage to beat obnoxious NASCAR champ Trip Murphy (Matt Dillon) in a street race, but once the car and driver find themselves revving up for a NASCAR competition, the stakes are raised considerably. Let’s leave the Freudian implications to those with more time on their hands (horny Herbie is constantly squirting fluids on people, attempting to mount other cars, and making passes at a female VW barely out of adolescence) and maintain that this is suitable fare for families with small children. The wavering quality of the special effects – more special in some scenes than others – will pass unnoticed by the little ones, while parents will enjoy revisiting their youth via the mix of rock oldies on the soundtrack. Still, couldn’t music supervisor Howard Paar have used a smidgen of imagination by not prominently featuring Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild”?
1/2
LAND OF THE DEAD George Romero has always been as much a social commentator as a horror filmmaker, which is why his zombie flicks have remained as popular with the critics as with the cultists. The final minutes of his groundbreaking 1968 effort Night of the Living Dead contain one of the most penetrating moments of racism ever put on film, while the 1978 epic Dawn of the Dead, in which the mindless creatures shuffle through a shopping mall, is perhaps the final word on American consumerism and conformity. Even 1985’s scattershot Day of the Dead, in which a captured zombie exhibits more humanity than the sadistic military grunts, makes some salient points. Two decades later, Romero has decided to add a fourth chapter to his long established trilogy; it’s good, gory fun, even if its satiric jabs at societal mores come across as more heavy-handed than in the past. The first Dead movie to feature a white male as its hero – past entries all employed women and blacks, and, tellingly, the lead zombie here is black – this one details the efforts of a conscientious mercenary (Simon Baker) to head out of the zombie-infested metropolitan areas and search for a safe haven up north. Instead, he find himself trapped between various warring factions, including a ruthless CEO (Dennis Hopper) who offers safety to the wealthy while allowing the unwashed masses to fend for themselves, a fellow mercenary (John Leguizamo) who will sacrifice anyone to advance his own agenda, and hordes of zombies who are starting to take baby steps up the evolutionary ladder. Romero’s wit remains intact – one scene lends new meaning to the term “finger food,” while another features a headless zombie who still has some bite left in him – but the film’s allusions to modern-day America (Hopper’s raging capitalist even states, “We do not negotiate with terrorists!”) seem more obvious this time around. Recommended, but with reservations.
Current Releases
BATMAN BEGINS One of the finest superhero films ever made, Batman Begins marks the beginning of a beautiful friendship – between the creative forces who have resurrected a popular franchise and the fans who felt betrayed when that same franchise went belly up in the late 90s. Never afraid to peer into the darkest recesses of the mind, director Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia) has created a brooding picture that has as much in common with his previous works as it does with the storied saga of the Caped Crusader. To dismiss this as escapist fare would be to ignore the myriad adult themes that bulk up the picture, issues ranging from the duality of man to the politics of fear. Christian Bale leads a sterling cast that also includes Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Liam Neeson; their committed performances help make this that rare summer movie in which thought often speaks louder than either action or words.
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CINDERELLA MAN No filmmaker in his right mind would want his boxing picture to be released a scant few months after Million Dollar Baby, but Cinderella Man is so structurally and tonally different from Clint Eastwood’s masterwork that it might as well be about jai alai. Almost every summer has one tony Oscar-bait production geared toward older audiences, and Cinderella Man, which relates the real-life story of pugilist James J. Braddock, adequately fills that designation. Russell Crowe’s touching portrayal is instrumental in recruiting the audience’s sympathies from the get-go, and director Ron Howard and his A Beautiful Mind writer Akiva Goldsman take care to spend as much time detailing the ravages of the Depression as they do Braddock’s exploits in the ring. This film may not break new ground, but in its ability to provide old-fashioned entertainment, the gloves come flying off.
HIGH TENSION In this dismal French import badly dubbed into English, a filthy guy (Philippe Nahon) in mechanic’s garb murders a married couple and their little boy before setting about raping the daughter (Maiwenn). But unbeknownst to the killer, the girl has a pal (Cecile De France) who tries to figure out a way to rescue her friend from the clutches of this madman. There are slivers of genuine style to be found in writer-director Alexandre Aja’s approach – here’s a man who, for better or worse, is trying to deliver a no-holds-barred exercise in grueling horror, and he has the technical savvy to back him up. But any semblance of psychological complexity remains a no-show until an absurd final twist: The film isn’t scary, suspenseful, thought-provoking or – heck – even remotely entertaining, and the murderer goes through the motions as mechanically as the slashers in the Friday the 13th and Halloween franchises.
THE HONEYMOONERS The classic 1950s TV sitcom gets refitted for a 21st century big-screen excursion, but unfortunately, it’s the audience who gets it right in the kisser. The plot centers on the efforts of irascible Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer) and his dim-witted friend Ed Norton (Mike Epps) to raise enough money to put a down payment on a duplex coveted by their wives (Gabrielle Union and Regina Hall). To make that dream a reality, Ralph invests their savings in dubious schemes involving an abandoned train car and an abandoned mutt. One character makes a crack about The WB, which in all honesty is where this feeble film belongs. Forget Jackie Gleason’s “To the moon, Alice” catchphrase – “To the video bargain bin” is more like it.
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HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE American animated features, even the best of them, are invariably bound by tradition and convention, but the movies of Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki remain free from the shackles of conformity. His films are a sight for soaring eyes, ocular treats for moviegoers constantly on the prowl for new experiences and new sensations. His latest release is nowhere in the same league as his masterpiece, the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, but the visuals more than carry the film. This tale of a teenage girl who turns to a handsome wizard to help her break a spell incorporates Miyazaki’s recurring themes of courage, sacrifice and environmental awareness, yet the results are too scattershot to make any lasting impression. Still, glitches in storytelling and stunt casting (Billy Crystal is jarring as the voice of a wisecracking fire demon) cannot overshadow the wondrous sights that Miyazaki doles out for our approval.
LAYER CAKE Until now, Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn had made his mark as the producer of Guy Ritchie’s crime pics Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Yet here he goes and beats Ritchie at his own game by relying less on the crutch of flashy yet empty theatrics to punch across his film’s entertainment value. Daniel Craig plays a dapper, low-key member of the London underworld, a cocaine distributor who plans to retire from this sordid business. But before he can make his great escape, he’s handed two dubious assignments that may end up costing him his life. Craig, a frontrunner to take over the James Bond franchise, is coolly efficient in the central role. I still think the actor’s too slight and pasty to portray 007 – given the number of oceanside assignments, shouldn’t Bond always sport a beautiful bronze tan? – but for other upcoming projects, this newfound charisma indicates that Daniel Craig has officially been handed a licence to thrill.
THE LONGEST YARD Faithfulness to director Robert Aldrich’s hard-hitting 1974 film, in which a former football star leads a ragtag group of convicts in a match against the sadistic guards, isn’t the problem: Major plot points are kept intact, snatches of dialogue find themselves lifted wholesale, and characters’ fates remain the same. But when this version does deviate from its source material, the results are disastrous – and kill any chance the film has in maintaining its modest pleasures. The leading character (Burt Reynolds in the R-rated original, Adam Sandler in this PG-13 piffle) has been softened considerably, while the rampaging homophobia is astonishing (and annoying). Insult comedy can be uproarious in the right hands, but here it’s merely witless, the cinematic equivalent of the school bully giving a weaker classmate a wedgie and then declaring himself the epitome of fine-honed drollery.
LORDS OF DOGTOWN The excellent 2002 documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, which chronicles the rise of the Venice, CA, teens who almost single-handedly revived skateboarding as a national phenomenon during the 1970s, has now been given the fictionalized Hollywood treatment, yet the resultant film fails to capture anything beyond random surface pleasures. Initially, the choice of Catherine Hardwicke as director seemed inspired, but the ample party scenes that drove her gritty film Thirteen seem extraneous here and take the focus away from the real story. Lords of Dogtown is well acted (especially by Heath Ledger as the group’s stoner-mentor), and Hardwicke ably recreates a specific time and place. Yet the movie rarely conveys the import of what these lower-income kids accomplished: As depicted here, their cultural revolution seems no more noteworthy than a day spent at the mall.
MADAGASCAR Unlike the banal Robots and Shark Tale, this animated delight strikes an appropriate balance: It’s hip without being obnoxious, and it’s sentimental without being cloying. Through a wild chain of events, four animal pals from a New York zoo – lion (Ben Stiller), zebra (Chris Rock), hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and giraffe (David Schwimmer) – find themselves stranded on the title island. Despite the ingratiating leads (Rock, for one, has never been better), despite the eye-popping animation, and despite the presence of other scene-stealers (check out the lemurs), the main reason to see this is to catch the penguins, four no-nonsense types who plan to dig their way to Antarctica but instead end up hijacking a ship. First Opus, then Sparky, now these guys – the lion may be comfortably ensconced as king of the jungle, but when it comes to the thick brier of popular culture, it’s the penguin who reigns supreme.
1/2
MAD HOT BALLROOM Reminiscent of the superior Spellbound, this documentary centers on several groups of kids who, as students enrolled in the NYC public school system’s ballroom dancing classes, hope to find themselves competing in the annual tournament. This is yet one more nonfiction film that ably extols the transformative power of the arts and its ability to allow individuals to discover the best within themselves. But the movie also goes beyond that: It captures the palpable love that teachers can feel for their students, and, most intriguingly, it hangs out with these 10- and 11-year-olds as they chat in that open, unaffected manner as only kids can. It’s a pleasure spending down time with these lovely boys and girls (most from the lower rungs of the economic ladder), which is why it’s disappointing when the movie shifts away from their individuality to focus on the mechanics of the tournament.
MONSTER-IN-LAW After a 15-year hiatus, Jane Fonda returns to the big screen, and young uns who’ve only heard about her standing as one of the finest actresses of the 1970s will automatically assume that their parents have been pulling their legs all these years. Fonda is an embarrassment in this torturous comedy, betrayed both by director Robert Luketic’s mishandling and by her own rusty instincts. Blank-faced Jennifer Lopez stars as Charlie, a jill-of-all-trades (caterer, dog walker, receptionist) who finds the perfect man in Dr. Kevin Fields (Alias‘ Michael Vartan). All goes well until she meets his mother, a former TV personality who also turns out to be psychotic. This only escapes a one-star rating because of the acerbic wit of Wanda Sykes (cast as Fonda’s wisecracking assistant); otherwise, the laughs are as scarce as Coke machines in the Kalahari.
1/2
MR. AND MRS. SMITH Based on the countless scenes in which Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie strip down to their undergarments, it’s clear there isn’t an ounce of flab on either of those bodies – it’s just too bad the same can’t be said about the film itself. Playing a suburban couple who are actually both skilled assassins, Brad and Angelina gleefully throw themselves into this chaotic action flick in which the sharp dialogue too often gets drowned out by the incessant explosions. The film begins promisingly, with Simon Kinberg contributing a script that’s full of wry observations about the level of secrecy that’s inherent in most marriages, and how the stakes might be raised exponentially when the spousal subterfuge occurs between people who kill for a living. But once the emphasis shifts from the characters to the hardware they employ, it becomes just another noisy spectacle.
1/2
THE PERFECT MAN Hilary Duff, the personable but one-note Disney Channel star, plays Holly Hamilton, a teen who fabricates a Mr. Right to cheer up her lonely single mom (Heather Locklear). But it never occurs to Holly that, duh, her mom might eventually want to meet this seemingly perfect man in the flesh, and that’s when her scheme begins to unravel. Even allowing that this is supposed to be a frothy comedy aimed at younger viewers, the film is so casually cruel in its treatment of its characters (particular Locklear’s, who craves a man like a junkie craves his next fix) that a bad taste lingers in the mouth even after everybody instantly learns their valuable life lessons during the final 10 minutes.
1/2
RIZE Born from the ashes of civil unrest in the wake of the Rodney King beat-down, “clowning” was a new form of artistic expression in which LA’s inner-city blacks found release by emulating the very violence that was perpetually raging around them. “Clowning” eventually gave way to the harsher “krumping” (less makeup, more thrashing), and Rize masterfully shows how these two musical manifestations have since provided young African-Americans – most stranded in the war zones of South Central – a path away from the guns’n’poses of the area’s self-styled gangstas. Beyond its reverence for the creative impulse and its ability to often fashion triumph out of tragedy, the movie also earns its keep simply by focusing on the sorts of ordinary Americans who don’t usually find their way onto the nation’s movie screens. As for the dancing, it’s hot enough to burn the celluloid on which it’s been captured.
1/2
THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS Ann Brashares’ best-selling book (at least among female readers) has been transformed into a luminescent motion picture for anyone interested in an emotional high. As they prepare to go their separate ways for the summer, four high school friends (winningly played by America Ferrera, Alexis Bledel, Blake Lively and Amber Tamblyn) stumble across a pair of jeans that miraculously fits all of them. They quickly decide that the pants will be passed among them throughout the summer, as a way of staying in touch over long distances. Statutory rape, parental abandonment, the death of a child – these are heavy issues for any movie, let alone one aimed at young girls. Yet while Sisterhood occasionally skirts around the full import of these hot-button items, it’s still honest enough to acknowledge the perils of adolescence as well as the pleasures.
STAR WARS: EPISODE III – REVENGE OF THE SITH Better than their overall critical standing would have one believe, the new Star Wars flicks have nevertheless registered as disappointments to those of us for whom the original trilogy felt like a coming-of-age rite of passage. The Phantom Menace was a mixed bag, while Attack of the Clones (by a hair the best of the newbies) only occasionally managed to recapture the spirit and flavor of the original three-pack. This last chapter follows suit, a cinematic seesaw in which the good bits are packed into the second half. The movie gets off to a dreadful start, stuffed with chaotic chases, ill-defined new characters and the rapid elimination of a worthy foe. And then something inspiring occurs: The mythology takes over, and the latter sequences – directly connecting to events first recorded in the original Star Wars film back in 1977 – resonate beyond the screen, fueled as much by our own nostalgic twinges as by George Lucas’ ability to send the series off in style.
1/2
OPENS WEDNESDAY:
WAR OF THE WORLDS: Tom Cruise, Tim Robbins.
OPENS FRIDAY:
REBOUND: Martin Lawrence, Megan Mullally.
This article appears in Jun 29 – Jul 5, 2005.
