Christmas Rush

A few of this year’s noteworthy holiday releases.



O Tenenbaum: Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Richie (Luke Wilson) on the roof.

This year’s Christmas season brings an unholy crunch: 13 movies released in the next five days. Below you’ll find reviews of some of the season’s more hotly anticipated releases. Look for How High, Joe Somebody, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and The Majestic in Movie Shorts, and The Affair of the Necklace next week.

In The Bedroom

(recommended)

(opens Dec. 25)

The directing debut of actor Todd Field (Eyes Wide Shut), In the Bedroom is, not surprisingly, full of actor-y goodness, with career-defining turns from both Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson (The Full Monty, not that you’d ever know he’s British here). But Field, who co-wrote the screenplay, adapted from Andre Dubus’ short story "Killings," brings an extraordinary calmness and patience to the tale. He’s doing more than capturing performances; he’s setting an intense, pervasive mood that is as much a character as any of the actors. Set in a small Maine town, much like the one where Field makes his home, Bedroom begins with familial discord — Spacek and Wilkinson’s prodigal son (Nick Stahl) has taken up with an older woman (Marisa Tomei) whose children and vindictive ex-boyfriend (William Mapother) don’t seem like the most promising company for their boy — and shifts to tragic aftermath. In truth, the film runs too long, and a trumped-up conclusion sours the delicate atmosphere Field’s worked so hard to create. But Wilkinson, especially, is stunning as a father consumed by his own impotence and guilt, and Spacek’s bitter, rotting-from-the-inside mother is not far behind. —Sam Adams (Tune in next week for Sam Adams’ interview with Field, Spacek and Wilkinson.)

Kate & Leopold

(opens Dec. 25)

Meg Ryan is a busy but lonely New York advertising whiz. Hugh Jackman is a 19th-century duke, also lonely and also good at sublimating. When Ryan’s ex (Liev Schreiber) concocts a way to leap across time (quite literally, as it involves jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge), he accidentally brings back Jackman (an ancestor, also inclined to invent things, namely, the elevator). The duke quite brilliantly adapts to the new time, and his extraordinary politesse is exactly what Ryan is looking for, even if she doesn’t know it. Schreiber is underused, the "whimsy" of love across the ages is strained, and the finale is foregone (girl needs to get with the gender-role program). Equal doses yearning, nose-scrunching and pratfalling, Kate is what Meg Ryan does well, and Jackman manages the Victorian "repartee" with appropriate insouciance. Director James Mangold has ventured into deeper, more complex versions of these romantic-quest waters before, in Heavy and Cop Land, and so this one looks especially sappy by comparison. Aspiring to ’40s sparring, Kate & Leopold only occasionally delivers, as in Ryan’s declaration that she’s worked hard all her life (unlike the privileged duke): "I need a rest, and if I have to sell a little pond scum to get it, then so be it!" Not precisely Rosalind Russell, but reasonably endearing. —Cindy Fuchs

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

(recommended)

(now playing)

Walking the line between grand and grandiose, Fellowship makes you feel every second of its 2-hour, 58-minute running time — not that that’s necessarily a drawback. Directed by Peter Jackson (Heavenly Creatures, The Frighteners ), the first installment in what will effectively be a 9-hour movie released in three parts suffers a bit from having to carry the weight of enough exposition to shore up the entire trilogy: A 10-minute narrated prologue — which, among other things, has to sum up The Hobbit — only begins the process of introducing the characters and history that will sustain all three films. But fear not: By the third hour, things get really good. Removing some of the airy-fairiness from J.R.R. Tolkien’s books (so long, Tom Bombadil), Jackson and co-screenwriters Frances Walsh and Philippa Boyens bring the characters — hero Frodo (Elijah Wood), wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), mysterious Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and, of course, many others — ever-so-slightly down to earth, muting Tolkein’s faux archaism without losing the otherworldly feel of his fully imagined Middle-earth. To an extent, Fellowship promises more for the trilogy as a whole than it delivers all on its own. But considering the mammoth size of Jackson’s planned canvas and the (heavily digital) world he so evocatively creates, it’s hard not to start counting the days until Christmas 2002. — S.A. (See Sam Adams’ feature.)

No Man’s Land

(opens Friday)

Dr. Strangelove without the style, Bosnian Danis Tanovic’s dark satire heads off in too many directions, and makes little headway in any of them. Set mainly in a narrow strip of ground between the Serbian and Bosnian battle lines, No Man’s Land concentrates on the plight of two soldiers, one from each side, who alternately hold one another at gunpoint while a third lies wounded on a land mine, unable to move lest they all be blown to bits. The premise is ripe, but Tanovic dilutes it hopelessly, fluttering off to U.N. peacekeepers (including Simon Callow’s disinterested commanding officer) and pushy journalists (Katrin Cartlidge), none of whose caricatures are nearly as cutting as Tanovic no doubt intends them to be. If you’ve experienced the incandescent power of Srdjan Dragojevic’s The Wounds (which never got a proper theatrical release, but is available on video), No Man’s Land feels like no more than a watered-down echo, its generic toothlessness undercutting any attention the film might hope to draw. —S.A.

The Royal Tenenbaums

(opens Friday)

Wes Anderson’s follow-up to Rushmore is a stylish but moribund exercise that chokes on the tongue lodged in its cheek. The story of a family of child prodigies — playwright Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), financial whiz Chas (Ben Stiller) and tennis ace Richie (Luke Wilson) — Tenenbaums is like Rushmore with every character as Max Fisher, a freak show with no normal characters to lend perspective. Wounded by the desertion of patriarch Royal (Gene Hackman), the Tenenbaum children have languished in their 20s, but when he returns, claiming (falsely) that he’s dying, the situation only seems to worsen. And if any of the film’s characters began to resemble a human being, we might actually care. As it is, this is Anderson’s Magnolia, a film founded on the same precepts as its successful predator, yet with a wildly divergent tone, so much less involving that it actually makes you question how much you liked the one before. —S.A.

The Shipping News

(opens Dec. 25)

Quoyle is another of Kevin Spacey’s damaged souls, but he’s a nice one. In fact, he’s one of many in The Shipping News, another of Lasse Hallström’s excavations of quirky characters and their dark histories. Such characters tend to look intricate and unpredictable at first, until you remember that this is a formula in itself; consider as well that this is Hallström’s second movie in a row, after The Cider House Rules, featuring a harsh environment, abortion and a naive, thoughtful man-child hero. Quoyle and his daughter Bunny (played by three Gainer sisters, as she ages) are abandoned by his first wife (Cate Blanchett playing trampy). Distraught, they move with his aunt (Judi Dench) to a fishing village in Newfoundland to "discover their roots." The townsfolk are all charmingly eccentric, from crotchety newspaper publisher Scott Glenn and slightly odd journalists Rhys Ifans and Pete Postlethwaite, to melancholy daycare supervisor Julianne Moore and haunted pretty-boy carpenter Jason Behr (looking only vaguely less alien than he does on Roswell ). Quoyle’s blossoming involves coming to terms with a great old house that’s literally tied to a stormy cliff, his fear of drowning and his nasty pirate ancestors, but the movie is more banal than these details might imply. —C.F.