June 10-16, 2004

movie shorts

New Movie Shorts

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK

Everybody knows Riddick (Vin Diesel): His name is repeated so many times, in so many tones of voice (though the William Shatner "Kaaaaahhhn!" register eventually wins out) that you suspect he must be some fabulous new product about to hit the market. When Pitch Black hit the screens, with Diesel as an escaped convict saving a ragtag band from intergalactic bats, the bulky, bullet-head star was still an unknown quantity. No more: This time his legend is written in the stars as the one fated to bring down the leader of a group of planet-destroying nasties called the Necromongers (which, if I remember my high school Latin, means "monger of death"). Led by Colm Feore, who dresses like a cross between Lancelot and Tutankhamen, the 'mongers are a sort of heavily armed doomsday cult who want to bring everyone into a next world where there are no religious or racial differences (which, considering that Diesel's company is called One Race Productions, ought to make them the heroes, though their gnarly haircuts suggest otherwise). As in Pitch Black, writer-director David Twohy gets points for imagining a multiracial future that looks more like North Africa than Southern California, but Riddick doesn't have its underwatched prequel's genre smartness: One look at scheming bad girl Thandie Newton in her skin-tight snakeskin dress and you know that subversion's not on the menu. --Sam Adams (Bridge; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

CONTROL ROOM

Preposterously denounced by Film Comment as "virtually a recruiting film for al-Jazeera," Jehane Noujaim's behind-the-scenes look at the Arab world's most popular news channel is too troubling to ignore. From the Army information officer who inadvertently equates Al-Jazeera with Fox News to the Arab producer who spouts anti-U.S. rhetoric but allows he'd want his kids to go to school in the States, Control Room poses more questions than it answers — something that can't be said for either the network it profiles or its American counterparts. --S.A. (Bala; Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

GARFIELD: THE MOVIE

Last time I checked, circa 1984, Jim Davis' Garfield the comic strip cat was plowing the lazy-obnoxious-fatso furrow with as much energy as he could muster after four tins of lasagna, and America too was eating it up. Can it be that we still are? Nowadays our cartoon antiheroes — Homer Simpson, Eric Cartman, Tony Soprano — are still every bit as venal, self-absorbed, prone to violence and big-boned, but they also, like, do stuff. Garfield never did anything but eat and sleep and annoy, but that shit prints money, so it's doubtful if any of the good people at Fox looked under the dollar signs to see if there was something to hang a movie on. There isn't. Garfield is swollen and happy for a while, until the veterinarian (Jennifer Love Hewitt, cute but insipid) enjoins G.'s nebbish owner Jon (Breckin Meyer, insipid) to adopt a dog named Odie. Then Odie gets stolen, because he can do tricks. Then Garfield feels bad that he was jealous and mean to Odie, so he lumbers his double-wide furry orange CGI ass into save-the-day mode. Director Pete Hewitt doesn't so much direct as wrangle all the animals and humans into always looking at approximately where the hairy pumpkin will be added in post; Bill Murray, as the voice of said pumpkin, reminds us that even the greats get snookered into the occasional Larger Than Life. — Ryan Godfrey (UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

MY MOTHER LIKES WOMEN

The only reason to see this sub-sub-Almodõvar comedy is Leonor Watling, acting in full-on farce mode. Written and directed by Inés París and Daniela Fejerman, My Mother gets no more creative than its title (unfortunately not a mistranslation): A trio of sisters, all hitting age-appropriate crises, is thrown further into disarray by their mum's announcement that she's in love with a younger woman. There's much running about and waving of hands, but everyone ends up exactly where you'd expect, which just underlines the truism that the subversive farce of yesterday is the commercial pap of today. --S.A. (Ritz Five)

SAVED!

When Mary (Jena Malone) learns her boyfriend (Chad Faust) thinks he's gay, the earnestly born-again high schooler tries to save him; their only sexual encounter results in her pregnancy, a fact she hides from her mother (Mary-Louise Parker) and her classmates for most of her senior year. ("Lucky for me," Mary says, "Pregnancy was about as common as the flesh-eating virus: No one knew what it was.") When the boyfriend is sent to moral rehab, she falls for the pastor's skateboarder son (Patrick Fugit). The gimmick in Brian Dannelly's teen romance is its Christian framework, represented most vigorously by Mandy Moore as the main mean girl, challenged by Mary and a cool misfits crew (Macaulay Culkin as Moore's smart and snarky brother, Eva Amurri as his vivaciously punky Jewish girlfriend). While the narrative and moral are predictable (Christians are nice people, insecure when they seem prickly or intolerant; charity is good), the performers are game, even lively. This goes double for the hardworking Moore, demonstrating once again her energy and good timing, and the disarming Amurri. --Cindy Fuchs (Bala; Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

THE SEAGULL'S LAUGHTER

Iceland, 1953. Freya (Margrét Vilhjálmsdõttir) arrives in a remote fishing village, returning from America with a trunk full of the latest fashions but minus her recently deceased husband. This statuesque beauty is an enigma to her household of female relatives but immediately attracts the interest of the only two eligible men in the village. Her suitors, an engineer and a policeman, form the axis of the film's trite exploration of class divisions, but writer/director çgúst Gudmundsson's primary focus is on sexual rather than social warfare. The story is told through the eyes of 11-year-old Agga, the youngest member of Freya's household, and it's the bemused performance of young Ugla Egilsdõttir that carries The Seagull's Laughter over its clumsy attempts at black comedy. Simultaneously fascinated and repelled by Freya, Agga accuses her of being a murderous femme fatale one moment and acting as her personal cupid the next. The adults' absurd courtship rituals confound her, but as Agga progresses from pigtails and sailor dresses to lipstick and curls, she changes from eye-rolling observer to concerned partisan in this never-ending battle. — Shaun Brady (Ritz at the Bourse)

THE STEPFORD WIVES

When super-successful, obsessively professional TV network head Nicole Kidman proposes a reality show where poor Mike White's wife is enticed to leave him for a troop of XXX actors, she's gone too far. White shoots his wife and Kidman is punished — fired by the network ("We have shareholders," moans the designer-suited boss who gives her the ax, like this is a moral ground all of a sudden) and moved to Stepford, Conn., by mousy husband Matthew Broderick. Here she's befriended by Jewish author Bette Midler and fabulous gay man Roger Bart, and discovers that the local "wives" (including Faith Hill) wear sundresses or fluffy negligees and bake kitchens full of cupcakes, while their husbands are "drooling nerds." When Bart and Midler succumb to Stepfordness, it's up to Kidman to solve the mystery — and indeed, cook up a happy ending that essentially undoes everything the movie appears to have set up. Following rumors of disagreements on the set and last-minute reshoots, Frank Oz's incoherent remake looks like it's been edited with a lawnmower. Despite the effort to revamp with the gay couple, the film's parody is stale, its stereotypes unfunny (the men especially, reduced to cigar-smoking Neanderthals), and Glenn Close tries too hard. --C.F. (Bridge; Ritz 16; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

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