Also this issue:

And So To Bed
Christopher Nolan's Memento follow-up isn’t as memorable.
-Cindy Fuchs

Trouble Every Day
-S.A

repertory film

Thrilling
-S.A

Screen Picks

May 23-29, 2002

movie shorts

Movie Shorts

new

CODE UNKNOWN

Austrian Michael Haneke’s feature makes a curiously late appearance on American screens, just weeks before the arrival of his Cannes Jury Prize-winning The Piano Teacher. The film’s complete French title translates as “Code Unknown: An incomplete account of several journeys,” and so it is; progressing mainly through single shots separated by blackouts, the film follows several characters through the streets of Paris, from Juliette Binoche’s struggling actress to Ona Lu Yenke’s belligerently self-righteous student. The film’s long-take structure -- the most visible cuts are in a scene from the film Binoche is in the process of shooting -- predictably saps some dramatic velocity, but the technique effectively conveys the sense of disconnection and anomie central to Haneke’s portrait of souls adrift in the modern world. (Once or twice, we jump in and out of a scene in the middle of a line, just to increase the sense of dislocation.) Luckily, Haneke’s picked actors you want to watch for long takes; the mere process of walking up and down a street is transformed through their actions and our watching them. --Sam Adams (Ritz Bourse)

ENOUGH

J-Lo rocks combat boots. It is truly a wonderful moment when she laces on her steel-toed kicks as she prepares to beat down her abusive husband (Billy Campbell). Unfortunately, you have to sit through a lot of awkward plotting in Michael Apted’s movie to get to it. First, Jennifer Lopez is a waitress, then she marries this completely creepy millionaire. (He appears to be a contractor, as he wears a hardhat on a site in one scene, but otherwise, no clue where he gets his scads of cash.) A montage of wedding pictures suggests they’re happy (under a feeble cover of “This Guy’s In Love With You”). She has a child, cooks dinner a few times, then finds out -- oh my goodness! -- he’s a wily prick who tells her he’ll have girlfriends and beat her up, and she’ll learn to like it because, he announces, “it’s my rules.” Juliette Lewis looks lost as the best friend, Bill Cobbs has one scene as a lawyer who informs Lopez that because she’s never reported the abuse, she’s “screwed,” and Campbell will likely kill her. The good news is, when she leaves and he tries to kill her, she tracks down her estranged wealthy father (the terrific Fred Ward, on screen for a few minutes only), who provides her with enough money for a new house, martial arts lessons, an extra vehicle, and some high-tech gadgets with which she rigs a big showdown with Campbell like she’s getting ready to meet Freddy Krueger. The bad news is just about everything else, except those boots. -- Cindy Fuchs (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; Ritz 16; UA Cheltenham; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

Oliver Parker (An Ideal Husband) hasn’t aimed for anything like a definitive version of Oscar Wilde’s best-known comedy. He and his prodigiously talented cast treat the playscript like sheet music, which is not to say that they feel free to muck up the proceedings with improv-y business, but that they’re happy to take the opportunity to have as much fun as humanly possible. The result is pleasantly jazzy, as refreshing as a brisk walk and as sharp as a ruby-handled dagger. Rupert Everett (Algy), Colin Firth (Jack), Frances O’Connor (Gwendolen), Judi Dench (Lady Bracknell), Tom Wilkinson (Dr. Chasuble) and Anna Massey (Miss Prism) polish Wilde’s hard little gems with evident glee, and even if Reese Witherspoon’s English accent only barely passes muster (and you have no idea how it pains me to admit that), her comic timing is at least the equal of her limey peers (that’s better). If it doesn’t strive for posterity, this Earnest achieves the height of momentary delights, and that’s probably quite as Oscar would’ve had it. --S.A. (Ritz East; Ritz 16)

SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON

Yet another animated historical revision courtesy of producer Jeffrey Katzenberg: Spirit is a wild mustang of the Old West, captured by a really mean cavalry colonel (voiced by James Cromwell). During his torture by starvation and ropes, Spirit befriends a similarly abused Lakota brave named Little Creek (Daniel Studi). On their escape from the bad white men, Spirit is torn between his longing to go return to mom and the rest of the herd, romance with Little Creek’s mare (named Rain), and affection for the young brave himself. Though the film was obviously conceived and made long before 9/11, Spirit’s battle for his “homeland” turns bizarrely timely, what with the cavalry behaving like terrorists, then an Iron Horse chasing him, literally, down a hill, to explode in a land-wasting fireball. Stranger still is Spirit and LC’s eventual “triumph” over the villains: Everyone knows how short-lived this will be, that the wild horses and Native Americans do not actually “win.” With a leaden score by Hans Zimmer and worse, much worse, freedom-exalting songs by Bryan Adams, the film is very pretty, with clever animation approximating athletic camera tricks, but the tale is so wrong-headed as to seem willfully ignorant. --C.F. (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Baederwood; Narberth; UA Cheltenham; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; UA 69th St.)