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July 17-23, 2003 movie shorts Continuing Shorts
Restless, irksome, strange: There’s not much downtime in Danny Boyle’s new film. From its first moments, when a crew of activists breaks into a London lab to save test animals, the camera is in motion, the cuts convulsive, the shadows ragged. Twenty-eight days later bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up in a hospital room and staggers down the hallway to find the place deserted. As Jim eventually discovers -- from a pair of survivors, Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley) -- Britain has been decimated by the rage virus, passed on from chimps by bodily fluids. Once stricken, the victim has only a few seconds before he or she turns into the most spastic of zombies, filmed and edited to resemble some speed freakish nightmare. 28 days later... , directed by Boyle, written by Alex Garland and produced by Andrew Macdonald (the same team who made The Beach) enjoys a maniacal mash-up sensibility which extends to plot, lurching from moment to moment and mood to mood. --C.F. (AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.,UA Riverview) 2FAST 2FURIOUS Who knew? Tyrese has got jokes. Aside from the much-anticipated speed-demony cars, he’s easily the most entertaining object in John Singleton’s sequel to Ron Cohen’s 2001 film. The only first-timer returning is nominal star Paul Walker, as stiff and dreary as he was before, but Tyrese (who also did terrific work with Singleton in Baby Boy) brings funk, irony and, of course, his remarkable musculature, enough that you won’t be caring much that Vin "One Race" Diesel priced himself out of this venture. The minimal story has ex-LA cop Walker now racing for money in Miami; busted, he convinces his homeboy Tyrese to go undercover with him, as "drivers" for diabolical dealer Cole Hauser. Yeah, yeah -- the point is the ridiculous car races and tricks: flying over open bridges, highway racing that outstrips The Matrix Reloaded for ingenuity, ferocious speeding down straightaways and careening around corners. Ludacris (who gets points just for being on Bill O’Reilly’s hate-list) plays a mechanic, Devon Aoki a girl driver with a pink car, and Eva Mendes a cop undercover and in bed with Hauser. Less earnest than the first film, and more fun. --Cindy Fuchs (UA Riverview)
Talented young footballer Jess (Parminder Nagra) loves David Beckham. But her parents, first generation immigrants to the London suburbs, want her to focus on a proper marriage to a nice Indian boy, much like her sister (Archie Panjabi). Gurinder Chadha’s charming, energetic movie charts Jess’ efforts to hide the fact that she’s signed on with a girls’ auxiliary team, befriended teammate Keira Knightley (a Mia Hamm fan), and developed a crush on their sensitive Irish coach (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Unlike most teen romances, this film takes the girls’ perspectives and complicated feelings seriously, detailing their daily negotiations of culture differences (race, nation, gender, class, and generation). And while it includes some standard contrivances, it uses them to reveal the ways that assumptions shape experiences, particularly, girls’ experiences. Various conflicts come to a head in a colorful finale that crosscuts between a final football match and a traditional Indian wedding. Cultures continue to clash, but in ways that are increasingly responsive to one another. --C.F. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16) BRUCE ALMIGHTY Jim Carrey needs a vacation from himself. In this latest movie with director Tom Shadyac (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Liar Liar), he’s Bruce, a self-centered Buffalo TV reporter with a perfect girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston), a knack for "human interest" stories and a slumping career. Ignoring the girl, he blames his professional misery on God’s oversight, feeling particularly tired of having to be the funny guy on the broadcast. The last time Carrey grappled with this problem, he made the treacly The Majestic. This time, he combines rubberman antics, schmaltzy revelations, and lots of self-love in a plot that’s one idea stretched past breaking: God (Morgan Freeman) grants Bruce godly powers, leading to a pile-on of cute tunes ("The Power," "If I Ruled the World," "God Gave Me Everything"), bad behavior and a silly moral lesson in the end. Steve Carell makes the most of his indignities as Bruce’s rival at work, but as his boss, Philip Baker Hall just looks adrift. Aniston looks like she’s in another movie entirely, which may be a cagey survival strategy. It’s hard to tell. --C.F. (Ritz 16) CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE Even if you enjoyed the first movie, the words "A film by McG" might take you aback, and with what turns out to be good reason. Sifting through the wreckage that is Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, a reasonably adept coroner might conclude that there’s a world of difference between giving a music-video hack with a flair for cheesecake and dirtbike races a pre-written script to direct and putting said hack in charge before the script’s even been written. It’s pretty clear, in fact, that Full Throttle’s script was never written, lurching as it does from one thunderous set piece to the next without so much as a "meanwhile…" to bridge the gaps. The crashingly obvious wall-to-wall music ("Surfer Girl" and "Misirlou" for a beach scene) is so loud it often obscures the dialogue, which might be counted a blessing. Given the desperate attempts to convince the public that the movie’s stars are friends in real life, you’d think the film might spend a little more time letting them interact: it never again reaches the dizzying heights of an early moment when the three -- Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu, as if you needed to be told -- spontaneously start dancing to MC Hammer’s "U Can’t Touch This." Basically, the whole movie plays like the fake montage at the beginning of scenes from past "episodes," only there’s no way to catch up on what you missed. --Sam Adams (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)
Our little Pixar is all grown up. Written and directed by Andrew Stanton, who’s had a hand in every Pixar feature since Toy Story, Nemo introduces Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) and Coral (Elizabeth Perkins), a happy young couple of orange-and-white-striped clownfish, eagerly awaiting the hatching of dozens of eggs. Attempting to defend his brood from a vicious predator, Marlin is knocked unconscious, and when he awakes, the eggs, and Coral, are gone. All that remains is Nemo (Alexander Gould), whose egg somehow detached from the cluster. He’s tiny, with one underdeveloped fin that makes swimming an erratic adventure. But to Marlin, Nemo’s the one rebuke to the feeling that he failed his paternal duties, and consequently overprotected as all get-out. Lo and behold, further trauma ensues, as Nemo, showing off in front of his new classmates, swims out into open water and is scooped up by a scuba diver. The rest, of course, is adventure: Marlin swims the ocean, desperately searching for his lost spawn, while Nemo plots escape from a dentist’s aquarium. Nemo finds camaraderie in the tank -- with, among others, Gill (Willem Dafoe), a veteran of several escape attempts -- while Marlin hooks up with Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), an absent-minded fish who can’t remember anything other than her own name: The bond that develops between her and Marlin is a sweet, contentious one. Humans make an appearance in most of Pixar’s films, sometimes as disembodied appendages; they focus our attention on the unrecognizability of humans so we don’t notice how we’re covertly being coaxed to identify with toys, bugs, monsters and fish. Pixar’s creatures have humanity that most flesh-and-blood movies can’t touch. --S.A. (AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview) HULK Remember how when Barton Fink was assigned to write a wrestling movie, he wrote about a man wrestling with his soul? If he’d taken a crack at Marvel Comics’ not-so-jolly-green giant, this would’ve been the result. Ang Lee and constant collaborator James Schamus have concocted a psychobabble-drenched tale where the Hulk (or, sorry, Hulk) is merely an outward manifestation of Bruce Banner’s memories of childhood trauma; if the X-Men are really teenagers in disguise, dealing with their changing bodies and social ostracism, then the Hulk is, literally, a big baby. That Nick Nolte stars as Bruce’s long-post pappy seems appropriate, given that he starred in one of the most literal minded daddy-didn’t-love-me movies of all time, Affliction. (That with his flyaway hair and scraggly beard he seemed to have transformed himself into James Coburn’s character in that movie is merely a plus.) As Bruce, Aussie Eric Bana has the thankless task of finding dozens of different ways to seethe, while Jennifer Connelly, in the Fay Wray role, gets a bunch of weepy, overwrought scenes, but is essentially The Girl, Oscar or no Oscar. Lee tarts up the movie with a variety of CGI wipes, partial dissolves, split screens and so forth, obviously trying to draw inspiration from his nine-panel source, but he’s so far from tapping the pulpy lifeblood of comic books you can only howl in frustration. (That he’s convinced a genetically modified poodle makes a scary antagonist is about all you need to say.) The movie Hulk most obviously wants to be is King Kong, but Hulk’s CGI beast doesn’t have the grandeur of his far-cheaper predecessor, and the movie’s so mired in hypnotherapy recriminations it just feels like a prolonged niggle. Hulk trash. --S.A. (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview) THE ITALIAN JOB Stella (Charlize Theron, earnest as ever) is the only girl in The Italian Job. Being as it’s a remake of a 1969 Michael Caine heist picture, you’d think that her input would be minimal. But Stella brings surprising edge to her by-the-numbers part (originally male), not to mention crucial elements to the plot -- namely, safecracking skills, a thirst for vengeance and a Mini Cooper. Still, she’s up against it in this too-many-guys-vying-for-supporting-pizzazz picture. Her veteran safecracker father, John (Donald Sutherland), calls her on his cell from Venice. It turns out that dad’s skipped parole and is about to embark on one last job, after which he promises to go straight. John’s crew -- all predictable types -- includes his son-like favorite student, master planner Charlie (Mark Wahlberg); driver/womanizer Handsome Rob (Jason Statham); computer nerd Lyle (Seth Green); explosives expert Left Ear (Mos Def); and inside man Steve (Ed Norton). Though they get away with the gold, one of their number -- Steve, whose grumpiness is evident from frame one -- double-crosses the bunch, steals the gold and shoots John dead in the process. The others are, of course, soon fixated on vengeance. Steve’s snarky meanness comes to a strangely distant climax when the film eventually comes to its end -- a car "chase" in L.A. featuring a trio of tricked-out Mini Coopers careening along sidewalks and up and down subway stairs. (In the 1969 version, the Mini Coopers, then equally cute and stylish, raced through the streets of Torino.) Steve, meanwhile, watches from an appropriately menacing black helicopter, such that Norton’s performance is rendered in the most tedious sort of reaction shots: "Hmmm, what are you up to, Charlie?"--C.F. (Ritz 16; UA Riverview) THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN For a movie so seemingly interested in the bedevilments of imperialism, the be-logoed LXG is exasperatingly oblivious to its own love of heroic Victorian whiteness. Based on Alan Moore’s comic book series, the film features an undeniably energetic Sean Connery as Allan Quatermain, but Stephen Norrington’s film, scripted by comic book writer James Robinson, is muddled and blustery. Quatermain is enlisted to save 1899 Europe from world war, instigated by a villain named the Fantom ("How operatic," notes AQ), and teamed with other fictional heroes: Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah); Mina Harker (Peta Wilson), a vampire who has no trouble with mirrors or daylight; the Invisible Man (Tony Curran); Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend); Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde (Jason Flemyng), who looks even less real than Hulk; and, added to the comic’s roster, apparently for U.S. consumption, Tom Sawyer (Shane West). Seductions and betrayals ensue, along with unimpressive CGI, too many crowd shots, and some befuddling action sequences (where it becomes hard to tell who’s who or why you would care). Still, the worst offenses concern a tiresome father-son relationship and a very Magical Negro, in Africa no less. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; Ritz 16; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview) LEGALLY BLONDE 2: RED, WHITE & BLONDE More than awful, Legally Blonde 2 is a big fat nothing; it doesn’t exist enough to be called bad. It doesn’t seem right to yearn for the sticky gloss of the first film, but at least it fit the story. Director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld (Kissing Jessica Stein) films the proceedings like an out-of-focus sitcom, in a drab palette you just know Elle Woods would never approve. Just as the first movie’s Elle seemed like a smudged Xerox of Election’s Tracy Flick, so the sequel finds Reese Witherspoon fighting the law of diminishing returns. Here, Elle’s a Senator’s aide who campaigns for doggie rights, but the clip of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington she watches for inspiration just shows up LB2’s cynical facetiousness: Paying lip service to democratic ideals, it doesn’t have a sliver of the tough-minded honesty Frank Capra got away with six decades ago. Apart from a few well-executed reaction shots by Mary Lynn Rajskub, Legally Blonde 2 is pure flab -- why bother getting Sally Field and Bob Newhart if you’re not going to give them any decent lines? At least Terminator 3 knows how dumb it is. --S.A. (AMC Orleans; Bridge; Roxy, UA 69th St.; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)
Gore Verbinski’s surprisingly sharp movie-based-on-a-theme-park-ride features high-seas thrills, gorgeous visual designs, a feisty, well-born maiden (Keira Knightley), a working-class hero (Orlando Bloom as a noble blacksmith, channeling Errol Flynn via stylish facial hair) and a dastardly villain (Geoffrey Rush), complete with a terrifically realized zombie crew (who only reveal their skeletal undeadness in the moonlight, allowing for stunning effects as they swashbuckle in and out of shafts of light). Even amid all this good fun, the highlight is Johnny Depp as the wily, cool-eyed, colorfully-scarved Captain Jack Sparrow. Cleverly self-aware and wholly mesmerizing (even in the back of the frame, he draws attention), Jack schemes to recover his ship, the black-sailed Black Pearl, using all sides against one another, depending on who has him in shackles at any given moment. Ever a charismatic master of detail -- the sly smile, the raised eyebrow, the startled stumble -- Depp is lovely here, by turns sensuous, kinetic and salacious. "You seem familiar," he challenges one adversary, with whom he is about to thrust and parry. "Have I threatened you before?" --C.F. (AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; Narberth; Ritz 16; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)
Emanuele Crialese’s film, as its title suggests, is about breathing, in a spiritual, vivacious sense. Inspired by an Italian folktale, Crialese’s film is at once vibrant and delicate, a study of a family unraveling and a fearfully traditional culture. Rendered through the experience of young Pasquale (Francesco Casisa), the film’s evident focus -- an all-too-familiar tale of the tantalizing madwoman -- is both diffused and complicated. The family is nominally headed by Pietro (Vincenzo Amato), a fisherman in tune with the traditions of the Mediterranean island Lampedusa. He goes out in the morning and returns at night, darkened and weary from his hours in the sun. His gorgeous young wife, Grazia (Valeria Golino), works at the fish-packing plant and looks after their three children: Pasquale, the younger Filippo (Filippo Pucillo) and Marinella (Veronica D’Agostino), now old enough to be eyeing a cute traffic officer. For all the routine of their lives, tensions are escalating. Bored, Grazia seeks mini-adventures with her kids, and takes both sons to the beach, where she alarms and thrills them when she undresses to swim. This scene introduces Grazia’s history of grating against local customs and causing her husband embarrassment. As free and exhilarating as she seems to Pasquale, she also brings confusion and chaos (in one scene, she suffers a kind of fit, frothing and fainting as Pietro endeavors to soothe her, the kids looking on in horror). Her excess is simultaneously distressing and inspirational, personal and broadly symbolic. By its end, Respiro offers hope in the form of irresolution, a lesson learned by the son at the expense of the father. Perhaps the next generation can be different, and more importantly, allow for difference. --C.F. (Ritz Five)
Some artists paint landscapes, but for Andy Goldsworthy, the Scottish artist at the center of Thomas Riedelsheimer’s hypnotic documentary, Rivers and Tides, making art about the land is a two-way street. Goldsworthy’s medium of choice, if he can be said to have one, is nature. From Canada to his home in the Scottish countryside and back to the woods of upstate New York, we see Goldsworthy craft sculptures that range from a chain of leaves held together with thorns to a massive blanket of bracken. Though Goldsworthy often photographs his creations -- the only way anyone else would know most of them existed -- they actually seem better captured on film, where time is the most basic unit of measurement. --S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse)
In Toronto last fall, you could actually hear the rarely experienced phenomenon of "buzz" at work; everywhere you went, people seemed to be talking about Spellbound, to which their audience would inevitably reply, "Spelling bees?" Maybe spelling champions were the kids even the nerds made fun of, but Jeff Blitz’s piercing, engaging documentary finds that the American dream is alive and well, at least as far as the National Spelling Bee is concerned. Following eight children on their way to nationals, Blitz finds a true microcosm of American society, from the well-heeled New Haven family whose daughter all but expects to win to the recent immigrants from India who’ve tutored first one child and then the other in French and Spanish (in addition to Latin at school, of course), all in the hopes of mastering the art of spelling words no one’s ever heard of. ("Cephalalgia" comes up in the first round.) There’s enough drama on these kids’ faces to make for an epic miniseries, but Blitz ably boils it down in 95 minutes, elegantly interweaving stories once the big contest begins. Even at the end, Spellbound doesn’t falter; Blitz’s climax takes the emphasis off victory, pointing the way toward the post-orthographical future. --S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse)
Charlotte Rampling plays Sarah Morton, a sour-faced English crime novelist who retires to her publisher’s villa in the south of France to combat a case of writer’s block. Initially dissatisfied with the house, Sarah begins to find inspiration when Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) materializes, brash, unrestrained and announcing that she’s the illegitimate daughter of Sarah’s publisher. Sarah bristles at the invasion of her privacy, but, though her publisher, Julie’s father, merely laughs when Sarah suggests she might try abandoning her popular mystery series for a more personal novel, Julie’s presence begins to inspire her to do just that, as Sarah starts sneaking peeks at Julie’s diary to come up with plot ideas. Meanwhile, even the blankness that seems to come across Sagnier’s face in close-up just makes her a better surface for Sarah (and, of course, the audience) to project her fantasies onto. --S.A. (Bala; Ritz Five; Ritz 16)
While Jonathan Mostow’s film is mostly respectful of James Cameron’s glory days, it shows a subtle range of tone, from clever to darkly funny to downright apocalyptic. John Brancato and Michael Ferris’ screenplay brings more burning and shredding of the now wholly outdated T-101 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and more penetrations of and by the slippery silver Terminator, here, the T-X (Kristanna Loken). 22-year-old John Conner (Nick Stahl) is a loner junkie of no fixed address, even though he wants to believe that he and his mother, now dead, stopped Skynet’s decimation. The humanist plot involves John’s relationship with his former high-school classmate, Kate (Claire Danes), who’s reluctant to be a next-generation "mother of the future." Once again, T3 explores the tension between destiny and free will (which produces much action), and the T-X is as grim a reaper as you might imagine. --C.F. (AMC Orleans; Bridge; Bryn Mawr; Roxy; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)
Whale Rider begins with tragedy: A woman gives birth to two children, one stillborn. As her husband, Porourangi (Cliff Curtis), watches, she also dies, leaving him bereft and angry. His own father, Koro (Rawiri Paratene), focuses his rage on the surviving child, blaming her for the death of her brother. Porourangi storms off, leaving the baby to the care of his mother, Nanny Flowers (Vicky Haughton). Fortunately, she knows how to handle her husband in ways that even he doesn’t imagine. Whale Rider then jumps ahead 11 years, to when Pai (the astonishing Keisha Castle-Hughes) has grown into an inquisitive and independent-minded girl. Living with her grandparents in a Whangara community on the eastern coast of New Zealand, she’s named for a demi-god ancestor, Paikea, who arrived in New Zealand on the back of a whale. Legend has it that a firstborn son will be the next Whangara chieftain, but Pai will surprise her elders and herself, as she emerges as the next leader. Based on the novel by Maori author Witi Ihimaera and adapted by director Niki Caro, Whale Rider is part saga and part fairy tale, part adventure tale and part coming-of-age story. It’s also a rousing good time, with beautiful beachscapes and stunning whales-a-swimming imagery by cinematographer Leon Narbey and an elegant, simple-seeming narrative structure. --C.F. (Bala; Ritz East; Ritz 16) WINGED MIGRATION Moments in Jacques Perrin’s documentary, which follows migrating birds in flight around the globe, almost defy belief: The camera seems to soar among them, so close you swear you could reach out and grab a feather. A few moments break the spell, though; twice, when the camera is about to capture the food chain in all its merciless, fascinating splendor, Perrin cuts away, which seems more dishonest than tasteful -- edit that stuff out for the Discovery Channel, but leave it in for the theater. --S.A.(Ritz Five) 
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