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The people in All Or Nothing greet each other with “all right?,” which is funny, because none of them are. The characters in Mike Leigh’s movie are linked by their residence in a bleak block of council flats, as well as a sense of despair which manifests itself either in lethargy or anger. Timothy Spall, with floppy blond hair that makes him look like a sad-eyed badger, falls definitely into the lethargic camp: A cab driver who sleeps through the morning rush, he apologetically scrounges spare change from his wife (Lesley Manville) and daughter, while defending his obese son’s right to lie on the couch and not look for a job. Perhaps Leigh’s most unrelentingly bleak movie since Naked, All or Nothing is tempered by Andrew Dickson’s elegiac score and by Spall’s wrenching peformance, which doesn’t lend grandeur so much as uncover it -- he’s King Lear as an unhappily married cabbie. The final notes of optimism are faint and hard-won, but they sound deeply. --Sam Adams (Ritz Five)

Brian De Palma is doing to himself what he used to do to Hitchcock, which is to say Femme Fatale is to Dressed to Kill as Dressed to Kill is to Vertigo. Somewhere in the generations, the image has gotten blurred, because I’d rather sit through Snake Eyes again than even think about De Palma’s latest, a sleazy, leering metathriller whose thrills are too common to enjoy and too cheap to last. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, whose idea of acting the tough girl is dropping her “g”s, plays a jewel thief who double-crosses her fellow heisters, then hides out for seven years, when, with the help of a nosey papparazo (Antonio Banderas), her past starts to catch up with her. The film begins with a bravura heist sequence set during the Cannes Film Festival -- oh, the self-referentiality of it all! -- but De Palma pushes the audience away at the same time he reels them in. (Ryuichi Sakamoto’s absurdly lush score is a prime offender.) Romijn-Stamos’ role, that of a chameleon who switches accents and personalities like changing her socks, would be a stretch for a real actress, not that De Palma’s even shown any interest in working with them -- this is, after all, a man who used Melanie Griffith more than once. The film loops back on itself and plays endless tricks, but De Palma seems to have lost any feel for connecting with an audience, or even the desire to do so. It’s about as exciting as watching someone else jerk off, unless you like that sort of thing, in which case it’s not. --S.A. (AMC Andorra; Bridge; Ritz 16; Roxy)

I’m starting to think that digital video cameras must come with an instruction manual on how to make your own ensemble drama about self-loathing city dwellers. From Chelsea Walls to Full Frontal to Just A Kiss, Fisher Stevens’ entry in the miserability derby, they all have two things in common: They look like shit, and I’d rather drive nails through my hands than watch them again. Stevens adds a dollop of rancid black comedy to the fetid brew, but he never bothers to convince us that any of his lovelorn, self-obsessed yuppies is worth a pixel of our time. How narcissistic are they? Well, when Peter (an awkward, distracted Patrick Breen, also culpable for the script) decides he needs to tell his estranged girlfriend he still loves her, he pulls out his cell phone despite the fact that he’s on a plane, and when the interference causes the plane to crash, he never pauses to consider the fact that he’s killed everyone in coach (although the film does stop to make a joke about it). Ron Eldard, Kyra Sedgwick, Marisa Tomei and Taye Diggs get roped in along the way, but their characters have no humanity to act; it’s all just one big superior joke. Not enough ones, and far too many zeroes. --S.A.

Ana (excellent America Ferrera) is graduating from Beverly Hills High School. But unlike her privileged classmates, she can’t count on going to college. Though she applies to Columbia, with the help of her teacher (George Lopez), Ana must go to work: her mother Carmen (Lupe Ontiveros) and sister (Ingrid Oliu) need her to work at the sister’s sweatshop. Equally stubborn and impassioned, Carmen and Ana argue vigorously -- about Ana’s curvy body, Carmen’s unlikely pregnancy, Ana’s white boyfriend, and “real women’s” expectations and desires. Written by George LaVoo and Josefina Lopez (based on her play), and winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Dramatic Audience Award winner, Patricia Cardoso’s first feature is alternately soapy and rousing, predictable and resourceful. Everyone in Ana’s family code-switches, speaks English and Spanish, performs one way for the white folks and another way with one another, and while they all want something “more,” they’re also caught up in getting through each day. Carmen can’t imagine alternatives, and so she worries that Ana will move on and that she won’t (as both possibilities reflect on her). Ana, for her part, wants both to show up her mother and support her family; she’s equally afraid of failing and leaving what she knows, especially her beloved grandfather (Soledad St. Hilaire). A refreshing alternative to most high school movie girls, Ana has a sense of who she is and where she comes from. --Cindy Fuchs (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

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February 5, 2004
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