New Movie Shorts

After a checkered career in Hollywood (Tango & Cash, Runaway Train) Andrei Konchalovsky has shuttled between the U.S. and his native Russia, racking up a number of idiosyncratic-to-say-the-least features. Set in an asylum on the Chenyan border, House of Fools means to be both beautiful and jarring (something after the manner of the Serbian Wounds), but it succeeds more often at the latter. In House of Fools, madness is next to hamminess, as Konchalovsky pushes each actor to the brink, most unfortunately in the case of a woman who believes she’s engaged to be married to Bryan Adams (who, in one of the more unwelcome cameos in cinematic history, makes several appearances). A few moments pass muster, but Konchalovsky is intent on grinding his obvious metaphors to dust (see, the whole world is crazy!) that you’re longing for electroshock before long. --Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse)

An impure title: The original Italian is Lontano in fondo agli occhi, or "Faraway in the deep of the eyes," which has the dual benefit of being poetic and actually relevant to the movie at hand, Giuseppe Rocca’s writing/directing debut. It’s New Year’s in early-’50s Naples, and the eyes (and the film’s POV) belong to a fanciful unnamed bambino (Andrea Refuto) with a complex real and imagined relationship to women: his pregnant mother, the nanny for whom he arranges trysts with the local cad, his favorite ailing nun, his devil-obsessed spinster aunts, the schoolgirl who airmails him folded mashnotes and the holy-spooky ghost/angel/monk girl that lives in his attic, to a name a few. There’s more than a hint of the Felliniesque in painter Rocca’s visually splendid sepia-tinted fable. In fact, if you took the sex and the wit out of Amarcord and threw in a few dozen overt religious allusions (is Jesus Christ floating ominously around town overt enough for you?), you’d be left with the solidly second-rate Glance: lovely, quirky, pretentious as all get-out, not nearly as deep as it is deep-dish. --Ryan Godfrey (Roxy)

(AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

Thai Prince Chatri Chalerm Yukol went to UCLA with Francis Ford Coppola back in the day. So, when he decided to film an epic national legend, he knew whom to ask for help with executive producing, editing and distributing. The film, trimmed to 142 minutes for American consumption, follows 16th-century Siamese Queen Suriyothai (M.L. Piyapas Bhirombhakdi), as she transforms from a shy girl to a courageous, elephant-riding warrior against the invading Burmese. Sweeping and yet oddly chopped up, the film focuses on impassioned palace intrigues and invidious betrayals -- in particular by wicked Srisudachan (Mai Charoenpura) and her feckless lover Tao Sri Sudachan (Siriwimol Charoenpura). Striking images punctuate the endless spectacle, including some mighty Amazonian-style guards, huge battle scenes (reportedly, the shoot employed some 70 horses, 80 elephants, and 2000 extras), and Suriyothai’s own heroic struggles to defend the King, Thien (Sarunyoo Wongkrachang), whom she’s married out of duty, despite her lifelong love for childhood companion Prince Piren (Chatchai Plengpanich). --Cindy Fuchs(Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

Daryl Hannah as hermaphrodite angel. No matter what else you think about the Polish brothers third installment in their "American trilogy" (after Twin Falls Idaho and Jackpot), its strangely sublime concept is enough to make it worth pondering. Set in Montana in the 1950s, the film takes you inside a series of interrelated phenomena, most prominently, a shifting culture (as industry and sober anonymity overtake the beautifully stark landscape) and an ailing orphan’s mind (as despair and madness appear to overtake him). When a nearly abandoned town is scheduled to be flooded by a new hydroelectric dam, a team of "agents" (including Peter Coyote, James Woods and Mark Polish), set forth in black suits and black Fords to convince diehards to leave. At the same time, the parentless boy (Duel Farnes) is intermittently nursed by a minister (Nick Nolte), as he fever-dreams his way into a family, with members including the angelic Hannah, a mute cowboy (Ben Foster), a nerdy sort with wooden hands (Anthony Edwards) and chatty leader, named Cup of Tea (Robin Sachs). Weirdly poetic, surreally fragmented, and most peculiarly serene, the film challenges American myths of national identity, corporate good will, and westward-ho progress. --C.F. (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

Don’t go thinking that just because it’s named for one, Seabiscuit is a story about a horse. Oh no. This is a Story About America. How do I know? For one thing, director Gary Ross keeps pausing the action to make room for ponderous narration and period photographs, and for another, Jeff Bridges’ kind-hearted industrialist makes about a dozen speeches to that effect, spouting bromides like "Just cause a fella’s a little banged up doesn’t mean you give up on him." (However improbable Seabiscuit’s victories, they pale next to the specter of a corporate head who, in the middle of the Depression, orders "no more layoffs.") Seabiscuit has the ring of the kind of Official Art that usually comes down the pike after the ground has frozen, though its cookie-cutter quality doesn’t forestall the usual fine performances from Bridges, Tobey Maguire and Chris Cooper, not to mention to dizzying, delightful turn from William H. Macy as a racetrack announcer. (You wish, somehow, the whole movie could be about him.) Seabiscuit doesn’t have the inventiveness of Ross’ Pleasantville, and its bid for post-Sept. 11 resonance is transparent, if evidently sincere. It’s worthy, if not worthwhile. --S.A.(Bridge; Ritz 16; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

Oh, for the Golden Age of cinema, by which I mean the summer of 1982. Jeff Bridges was inside a video game! Jason was knifing people in three dimensions! For a ten-year-old, how could movie-going get any better? I didn’t stay ten long enough to find out, but if I were ten now, I’m pretty sure the latest Spy Kids installment (video game immersion and 3-D!) would be the greatest movie in the history of everything. Secret agent Juni Cortez doesn’t have any spying to do this time; he’s got to rescue his sister and the free world from the clutches of a ruthless computer game designer (a goofy Sly Stallone), by going virtual. Once he’s in the game and riveted into his Tron suit, we’re instructed to put on our red-blue goggles, and then it’s 80 minutes of headachy, computery jetsam (coming right at us!) as Juni and friends race and battle bits of code and each other. It’s as compellingly fake a 3-D world as anything on your PS2, and looks like it might be fun to take the controls of, but non-Gen Z viewers will be put off by the frustratingly inconstant rules of engamement and the sub-PG level of conflict. Once again, Robert Rodriguez writes, directs, photographs, edits, scores, runs the effects house and sells Twizzlers in the lobby -- in 3-D! -- R.G.(AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham;UA Grant; UA Riverview)

Browse The
July 24, 2003
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New Movie Shorts

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