New Releases
DOWN IN THE VALLEY Writer-director David Jacobson’s Down in the Valley seeks to pay homage to the Westerns of John Ford and Howard Hawks, and various scenes also bring to mind Taxi Driver and Midnight Cowboy. We’re talking classic cinema here, folks, yet for all of Jacobson’s ambitions, his movie doesn’t really deserve to be mentioned in the same newspaper as those pictures, let alone the same sentence. That’s a shame, because for a good while, this moody drama clicks on most cylinders — less for its Western trappings than for its look at an ill-fated romance. Raleigh native Evan Rachel Wood, best known for playing a rebellious LA teen at odds with her single mom in Thirteen, here plays a rebellious LA teen similarly at odds with her single dad. While protective of her younger brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin), Tobe appears to have nothing but contempt for her father Wade (David Morse). She meets and falls in love with Harlan Carruthers (Edward Norton), a much-older man whose cowboy duds and “aw, shucks” mannerisms make him an odd figure in the hustle-and-bustle concrete landscape of Los Angeles. Tobe and Lonnie think he’s the genuine article, while Wade smells a phony — audience members, on the other hand, can’t initially peg him one way or another, thanks to Norton’s finely nuanced performance. A shocking incident midway through the movie promises to elevate the story to another level, but instead, the film unravels at breakneck speed, degenerating into a mishmash of scarcely credible shootouts and leaden symbolism. It’s possible that we’re in the early stages of the latest cinematic fad — the revisionist Western — but with its crippling second half, this one ultimately turns out to be a brokeback movie. **
Current Releases
AKEELAH AND THE BEE The pattern holds that every decade’s midway stretch gives us an underdog worth supporting. In the 1970s, it was Rocky, in the 1980s, it was the Karate Kid, and in the 1990s, it was Babe. And now here comes 11-year-old Akeelah to carry the torch for the little people. Akeelah and the Bee, which in addition to its underdog roots also manages to come across as a mesh between the documentary Spellbound and Boyz N the Hood refitted with a happy ending, centers on Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer), a south LA girl who, with the help of her mentor (Laurence Fishburne), works her way through the national spelling bee circuit. What sets the film apart is the manner in which it details how Akeelah’s triumphs end up lifting the entire community: Her success is their success, and it’s truly inspiring to watch neighbors from all walks of life throw their support behind her. There’s no need to hide that lump in your throat or tear in your eye — this movie earns its sentiment. ***
ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL The latest from the Ghost World team of director Terry Zwigoff and writer Daniel Clowes starts out as a great movie that devolves into a pretty good one, as a stinging expose of campus life gives way to the more rigid narrative demands of a police procedural. The film follows college freshman Jerome Platz (Max Minghella) as he discovers that it’s difficult to become a great artist when his teachers turn out to be hypocrites and his fellow students produce amateurish works that are instantly hailed as cutting-edge. Burdened with so much disillusionment, it’s no wonder he’s barely aware that a serial killer is trolling the campus grounds. This works best when it taps into the uncertainties of an adolescent existence suddenly liberated from the confines of home and family, or when it deconstructs the notion of what truly constitutes being a success in one’s chosen field. It’s at its weakest when it clumsily tries to tie together its points by employing a sensationalistic device that detracts from its astute observations. ***
THE DA VINCI CODE Forget the comparisons to Dan Brown’s monumental bestseller: On its own cinematic terms, Ron Howard’s adaptation is a moderately entertaining ride, sort of like the Nicolas Cage hit National Treasure only done with more style and more food for thought. Yet however this might have all played out on the page, up on the screen it simply comes off as one more familiar Hollywood thriller that’s heavily dependant on predictable directions taken by the storyline and character revelations that are painfully obvious to astute audience members. Tom Hanks stars in the central role of Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist who, while being chased for a murder he did not commit, attempts to solve an ancient mystery that, if revealed, could potentially spell the end of Christianity as we know it. Amelie’s Audrey Tautou (as Langdon’s sidekick), Paul Bettany (as a homicidal monk) and French national treasure Jean Reno (as a persistent cop) lend Hanks support, though it’s animated Ian McKellen, as a British scholar, who earns MVP honors. **1/2
JUST MY LUCK The fantasy-tinged plotline posits that Ashley Albright (Lindsay Lohan) is the luckiest woman in the world while the bumbling, stumbling Jake (Chris Paine) is her exact opposite, a guy so plagued by rotten luck that he’s constantly being placed in compromising or injurious positions. But after these two strangers meet and kiss at a masquerade ball, Ashley suddenly finds herself the unluckiest woman in the world while Jake — well, you can figure out the rest. That the key to Ashley’s happiness (at least until the unconvincing third act denouement) is directly related to her wealth and status seems lost even to screenwriters I. Marlene King and Amy B. Harris, who apparently thought they were penning a romantic comedy when they were actually writing an ode to materialism. Worse, the pair can’t even adhere to the guidelines they themselves established. When Ashley drops a contact lens into a cat’s soiled litter box and then scoops it out and puts it in her eye without even rinsing it, this isn’t an example of Ashley experiencing bad luck; this is an example of Ashley being a moron. *1/2
L’ENFANT (THE CHILD) The child is Jimmy, born just a few days ago. The child is also Sonia (Deborah Francois), Jimmy’s 18-year-old mother and a woman who finds herself balanced between her own innocent exuberance and a growing sense of maternal instinct. But mainly, the child is Bruno (Jeremie Renier), Jimmy’s 20-year-old father and an individual who, after selling his own baby on the black market, learns the hard way that even the most immature among us will have to eventually accept responsibility. Writer-directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have cemented their reputation as Cannes’ golden boys: Like their 1999 feature Rosetta, L’Enfant took the film festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or. Clearly, the siblings have their fans, yet for me, L’Enfant marks the first time that they seem interested in projecting more than just art-school indifference. Here, their detached style actually enhances the humanist nature of the tale, allowing us to feel both pity and revulsion for its protagonist on the way to an ending that doles out hope with guarded measure. ***
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III This fast-paced sequel is a huge improvement over its immediate predecessor and just barely manages to top the first film for sheer excitement. Instead of going for an established director like Brian De Palma (Mission I) and John Woo (Mission II), Paramount and producer-star Tom Cruise elected to take a chance on TV’s J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost), who pumps new life into the M:I template. “This Time, It’s Personal” might as well have been the movie’s tagline, as IMF (Impossible Missions Force) agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) finds himself trying to save his wife (Michelle Monaghan) and protégée (Keri Russell) from a murderous weapons dealer (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Mission: Impossible was established as a vanity franchise for Cruise, yet Hoffman’s work (his character would have made a formidable Bond villain) marks this as the first time that the attention gets shifted away from the marquee attraction. ***
OVER THE HEDGE Here’s yet another charmless animated feature made by profiteers whose historical reference point seems to begin and end with Shrek. In other words, don’t look for what was once quaintly referred to as “Disney magic,” that timeless, ethereal quality that used to be par for the course in toon flicks like Dumbo, 101 Dalmatians and Beauty and the Beast. With rare exception, today’s cartoon characters aren’t allowed to be romantic or introspective or lovably quixotic — usually, they’re too busy hyperventilating or passing gas or trying to find ways to screw over their fellow toons. This is more of the same, as an opportunistic raccoon (Bruce Willis), in hock to a grouchy grizzly (Nick Nolte), cons a group of peaceful forest denizens into helping him invade suburbia and steal the humans’ junk food. There’s a witty sequence in which the raccoon explains how people “live to eat” rather than “eat to live,” and a Stanley Kowalski gag make me chuckle out loud. Otherwise, this DreamWorks production feels like a flat-footed attempt to rip off the Pixar template. *1/2
POSEIDON This remake of the 1972 disaster favorite The Poseidon Adventure — in which several survivors try to make their way to the surface after an enormous wave flips their luxury cruise ship over — isn’t awful so much as it’s impersonal: Foregoing the blood, sweat and characters that made the original come to life, this one’s all about running cardboard people through the CGI paces. Electing to scrap the characters from Paul Gallico’s book and Ronald Neame’s earlier film, director Wolfgang Petersen and scripter Mark Protosevich instead serve up all-new players. Petersen describes them as “original, contemporary characters,” which I guess is some sort of doublespeak meaning one-dimensional dullards rendered uncomplicated for today’s audiences. The sets and effects are also lazily realized, although Petersen, who knows about filming in cramped quarters (Das Boot, Air Force One), does get to display his directorial chops in the more claustrophobic segments, mustering what little suspense the film has to offer. Alas, it’s not nearly enough to save this soggy endeavor. *1/2
RV One would have to travel deep into the 1990s to locate a comedic Robin Williams performance that was more than simply incessant shtick. Thankfully, RV finds Williams again merging his patented humor with a recognizably human character — it’s just a shame that the vehicle that carries this engaging performance doesn’t offer a smoother ride. The tug-of-war between career and home is too omniscient to ever be ignored by filmmakers looking for an easy angle, and for a while, RV, in which a workaholic takes his family on vacation in the title monstrosity, looks as if it’s going to be an effective take on the matter. Instead, the movie reveals an obsession with labored slapstick and potty humor, meaning we get tiresome scenes in which Williams’ character falls down hills or finds himself covered head-to-toe in fecal matter. By the end, the crudity is so excessive, it makes National Lampoon’s Vacation look as sophisticated as The Accidental Tourist by comparison. **
OPENS FRIDAY, JUNE 2:
THE BREAK-UP: Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston.
DOWN IN THE VALLEY: Edward Norton, Evan Rachel Wood.
OPENS TUESDAY, JUNE 6:
THE OMEN: Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles.
This article appears in May 31 – Jun 6, 2006.
