The Business of Fancydancing, The New Guy, Pauline & Paulette, Unfaithful, World Traveler
* 8 Fists of Fu!
WigglyWorld's Open Screenings features theme-based nights of Super-8 films. This latest installment looks at kung fu and martial arts flicks made locally.
* Cesar
Marcel Pagnol's 1936 film will be screened as part of the Feast of France. It's the final part of the trilogy that includes Marius and Fanny.
Comedic Shorts From Buster Keaton
EMP presents the silent master's films. Buster Keaton, for my money, is always more interesting to watch than Chaplin.
Deep Throat
Linda Lovelace (or rather the woman who played her) died recently, memorialized in a New York Times obit that talked only about Deep Throat. I guess there are worse things to be remembered for--the Die Hard movies for example.
Deuces Wild
Stephen Dorff, Brad Renfro, and Fairuza Balk star in this tale of two brothers trying to protect their Brooklyn neighborhood from a gang in the summer of 1958.
* Dogme is Dead! (Long Live Dogme)
Dogme 95, the collective of film directors who adhere to the strict guidelines established in its manifesto The Vow of Chastity, can be maddeningly pretentious and startlingly brilliant, sometimes in the course of one film or even one scene. 911 and Northwest Film Forum are presenting this look at Dogme, viewing clips of The Celebration, The Idiots, and Dancer in the Dark. They will screen local dogme projects by Mark Brunke, Sung Kim, Kelly Payne, and others. The event is hosted by Matt McCarty and Jamie Hook.
* Dogtown and Z-Boys
A testament to the resilience of youth in the face of urban entropy, Dogtown and Z-Boys tells the story of a group of unlikely heroes who brought skateboarding from its moribund state of flatland lameness, employing a low slung, powerful surf style that mimicked state-of-the-art waveriding. School playgrounds, hills, and empty pools became media for a new art that would ultimately send shockwaves to kids around the world. A documentary with cool, edgy editing and a rollicking soundtrack, the film traces these progenitors of modern youth culture, from the origins of "Dogtown" to the aftermath of an epiphany unwittingly granted upon youths the world over by a group of kids who just wanted to have fun. Narrated by Sean Penn. (KRIS ADAMS)
* Enigma
Despite its compelling story--Enigma was a Nazi encryption machine that enabled the Germans to creat unbreakable codes during WWII; unbreakable, that is, until every math and science nerd in Great Britain got to working on it--and attractive cast (Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Jeremy Northam, Saffron Burrows), Enigma fails to generate much of the heroic suspense it aims at. This is mainly on account of two things: (1) the conventionality of the romantic subplot, and (2) the near-impossibility of knowing what the hell is going on at any given moment on account of the inherently intellectual business the lead characters are engaged in. For WWII code-cracking buffs, however, the movie is highly recommended. (SEAN NELSON)
* Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Amy Heckerling's 1982 flick (20 years ago? Holy shit!), written by Cameron Crowe, is beyond question the greatest film of its kind, more than making up for the sorry tailspins both Crowe and Heckerling entered after making it. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sean Penn, Phoebe Cates, and Judge Reinhold star; and look closely for a young Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, and Nicolas Cage. (SEAN NELSON)
Free Dogme
An hour-long documentary that looks at Dogme 95 through an interview with Lars von Trier speaking about other Dogme directors such as Lone Scherfig and Jean-Marc Barr.
* Hollywood Ending
Reviewed this issue. Woody Allen returns with a movie that is really funny, like laugh until your stomach hurts funny. Hooray!
The Humiliated
Jesper Jargil's documentary about Lars von Trier's making of The Idiots. Jargil was the cinematographer on that production and kept the digital video camera running, creating an intimate look at the director's controversial techniques.
The Independent
Reviewed this issue. Jerry Stiller plays a sleazy director in this thin mockumentary.
Nine Queens
Set in Buenos Aires, this mystery involves two low level con men involved in a scheme to forge and sell nine rare stamps. When will Hollywood stop churning out these big dumb action pictures? I mean what do they think we are, sheep?
Quo Vadis
Polish director Jerry Kawalerowicz brings the latest film version of Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel to the screen. Filmed on location in Rome, it tells the story of Christians struggling against Romans to survive and not renounce their faith.
Rancho Notorious
This western directed by Fritz Lang is based on the story "Gunfight Whitman" by Silvia Richards. It was the last western Lang filmed, continuing the theme of men overwhelmed by bloodlust for revenge--like his noir classic The Big Heat.
Reunion
Leif Tilden's film about a high-school reunion applies Dogme's constraints and look to a hackneyed device and comes up with some genuinely moving and squirm-worthy scenes.
* The Rose Tattoo
This 1955 film is an adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play. It focuses on the upheaval in an Italian-American neighborhood in Louisiana where a truck driver is killed by police for smuggling. Burt Lancaster delivers a great performance matched and exceeded by Anna Magnani's Oscar-winning powerhouse display. Ah, Anna Magnani!
Security Colorado
More Dogme, this time about a woman who undergoes the complex transition from long-distance to live-in romance.
Spider-Man
Previewed this issue. The big action flick has landed with a buffed-up but still sleepy-eyed Toby Maguire and flame-haired Kirsten Dunst. It might be good, but it can't be amazing.
Stolen Summer
This film, which won some prize that entitles its maker to get to know Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, presents a story of guilt and delusion among urban Catholics and Jews in 1970s Chicago. It's the kind of film in which many lessons are learned about the power of the human spirit. Oh, I'm sorry, I think I just vomited on your shoes.
* Behind the Sun
Broiling in the Brazilian badlands, a diminishing family carries out a generations-old blood feud to its logical extreme: extinction. The Breves are landowners bound to the sugarcane monoculture, with work as relentless and ceaseless as the sun beating down on the blanched earth. Their economic lifeblood, raw sugar, dwindles in value with the advent of steam-powered machinery and the abolition of slavery, just as their family members diminish because of a tit-for-tat killing feud with their neighbors and enemies, the Ferreiras. No lush tropical Brazil g-strings and raw sexuality here: Gaunt women dressed for mourning bitterly uphold vengeance as unyoked oxen circle the sugarcane crusher. Blood-stained shirts, hung as reminders of dead men, yellow in the sun. This fable of violence plays itself out as the brutal landscape burns, branding its scrawled epic into the older, harsher sun and dust of land-more powerful, vast, and cruel than any human story, more ordained and encompassing than archetype. (RACHEL KESSLER)
Big Trouble
Based on "humorist" Dave Barry's novel, Big Trouble tells the story of how a mysterious suitcase brings together and changes the lives of a motley-ass group of people played by a motley-ass ensemble cast that features Tim Allen, Janeane Garofalo, Rene Russo, Stanley Tucci, and many many more.
Blade II: Bloodhunt
This sequel to the 1998 original stars Wesley Snipes as human/vampire warrior Blade, based on the Marvel Comics character. It's not the particulars or the plot that matters of course. It's the great action sequences, and Snipes looking sexy and threatening. (NATE LIPPENS)
Borstal Boy
A northern Irish boy (played by the unmistakable Yank Shawn Hatosy) gets sent to the borstal (the UK equivalent of juvie) for conspiring to bring an IRA bomb into WWII-torn London. Once inside, he dons short pants, falls for a sailor boy, and embarks on a Wildean journey of personal awakening. This adaptation of Brendan Behan's watershed memoir, while nationalistically devout (up the Republic!) and morally liberal, has a little too much dew in its eyes to do full justice to the late poet/playwright. (Sean Nelson)
* The Cat's Meow
Peter Bogdanovich, director of The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon takes aim at Hollywood and its talent mill in the 1920s. Like Gosford Park, Robert Altman's excellent who-cares-who-dunnit, The Cat's Meow is less about murder than it is about the social scrimmage and class pecking order of its players. In that sense, this gossipy story of events aboard the yacht of William Randolph Hearst, is a success. (NATE LIPPENS)
Changing Lanes
Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Affleck are involved in a fender-bender rendering Jackson immobile. Affleck speeds off, unknowingly leaving behind an extremely important document; a bitter Jackson misses an important custody hearing, and a grand old feud is born. So Affleck, from atop New York's twin-towers-less skyline, attacks Jackson's financial credibility, while down on the streets below Jackson prepares an old-fashioned smackdown. Who wins? You won't care. It has to be noted that there's a declining marginal utility to disaster in the movies; way too many things just happen to go wrong in this film, and it wears upon its feasibility. (KUDZAI MUDEDE)
Clockstoppers
A teenager accidentally activates a machine that enables him to make time stand still. So did the director when he picked up a camera.
Crush
An aging, unlucky-in-love school headmistress in an English village (improbably played by horsey cracker Andie MacDowell) finds comfort in the cackling company of her two similarly desperate girlfriends. Until their weekly bitchfest is complicated by the arrival of her true love in the age-inappropriate form of a 25-year-old hottie. Okay, this is a perfectly acceptable set-up for nice little comedy. So why the shocking lurch into Stella Got Her Groove Back and Then It Got Hit by a Truck more than 3/4 of the way through the movie? Whoa! What is this crap? No Weddings and the Funeral of the Lovable Male Lead? Pick a lane and stay in it, people, you're giving me a headache. (TAMARA PARIS)
Death to Smoochy
Driven by adults' universal aversion to pervy, purple, children's TV characters, Danny DeVito's dark comedy is adequately raunchy, but ultimately forgettable. There's nothing really wrong with the dour turns by DeVito, Ed Norton, and Robin Williams (who relishes every expletive and throws himself into violent outburst with decent results), but the script simply isn't deviant or developed enough to hold up, and the idiotic pseudo-conflict tacked on the end is simultaneously forced and boring. Besides, co-star Catherine Keener is far too sharp and sexy to be wasting her time in such underbaked satires. (HANNAH LEVIN)
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
A wacked-out queer film set in Sodom Flats, Texas about a conspiracy to make the entire planet gay.
E.T. (20th Anniversary)
Childhood is never quite as magical when you revisit it. Case in point: the 20th anniversary re-release of E.T. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* Frailty
Bill Paxton hears God's voice, and it tells him to cut people up with an ax! His two boys reluctantly go along with the plan until, inevitably, man hands on misery to man and the young'uns go batshit loony, too. This is a small, curious movie, one that takes you on a ride whose destination is inevitable, but no less pleasing/chilling for its predictability. (SEAN NELSON)
* Gosford Park
Set in 1932, Gosford Park is a meta-mystery, meaning the setting, figures, and tropes of a murder mystery form the frame for the real concern (or concerns): class and gender rivalries; the rise of mass entertainment; and the dark history of the industrial revolution and British imperialism. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
High Crimes
This bad film is directed by the great Carl Franklin, who directed Devil in A Blue Dress. The movie (which stars Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd) is not horrible, just too professional and conventional. Set in an army court, it lacks sweeping shots of spectacular army helicopters, and, in the court scenes, it fails to sustain and exploit that efficient military speak ("These are the rules of engagement, sir!"). The result is a bland version of Denzel Washington's superb Courage Under Fire, which had lots of helicopters and military speak. (CHARLES MUDEDE)
* Human Nature
The latest absurdist/nihilist comedy from the savagely funny pen of Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich), starring Tim Robbins, Patricia Arquette, and the great Rhys Ifans. Directed by music video avatar Michel Gondry. The film is funny, even though its targets consist largely of obsolete archetypes; nonetheless, these targets (the conflict between desire and manners, of nature and city, of purity and corruption), are somehow just familiar enough to register. And that's all Kaufman needs to make mincemeat out of the semi-sacred cows. (SEAN NELSON)
Ice Age
The recent boom in computer animation bodes well for the next generation, as their childhoods will hopefully not be squandered on lame-ass 2-D Disney musicals. Pleasant and funny, this movie is littered with enough sophisticated jokes to entertain the adults, but is really nothing more than a fast-paced, shimmering toy for kids. Which is just the way it should be. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
* In the Bedroom
This languorous, beautifully acted film about erotic and familial entanglements in a small Maine fishing town one summer builds up to three moments of utter emotional brutality so severe that the long moments in between them thrum like high tension wires. (SEAN NELSON)
Iris
The brilliant British writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch (Judi Dench, Kate Winslet), a woman who lives most decidedly in the world of ideas, succumbs to the dementia of Alzheimer's, "sailing into darkness" as she so rightly puts it. (EMILY HALL)
* Italian for Beginners
The characters of Italian for Beginners begin in a state of despair. This being a romantic comedy, their lives begin to intersect through a series of coincidences-coincidences that could feel contrived, but due to the rough integrity of the script, performances, and direction (shaped in part by the monastic rigors of the Dogme 95 ethic), they feel like the organic waywardness of life. (BRET FETZER)
Jason X
The indestructible horror staple Jason goes sci-fi as he's cryogenically frozen and thaws out in 2455.
Kissing Jessica Stein
Three things are readily apparent within the first 10 minutes of Kissing Jessica Stein: Though the film ostensibly is about two straight women who decide to go lesbo and fall in love, Jessica Stein will end up with the guy she currently despises. Also, despite both women taking a freshman crack at the girl-girl thing, one is clearly more invested in the concept than the other. Finally, the too-close camera shots, the emphasis on fast, witty banter, and the overacting will be a niggling annoyance throughout the film. (KATHLEEN WILSON)
* The Last Waltz
Martin Scorsese captures the final show of one of the most contradictory rock bands of the '70s. Scorsese shrewdly catches the players' tiny interactions onstage to highlight their supreme confidence; in the backstage interviews, they're self-conscious and posing (especially Robbie Robertson), an artifice which inadvertently sets the stage for the film's real revelation. Because of what we know about The Band, The Last Waltz is haunted by the spectre of Dylan. The power of his arrival is stunning. The band members become visibly perturbed; as he leads them through the transition from "Forever Young" into "Baby Let Me Follow You Down," you see their fear that the whole thing may fall apart. But they follow him down, and the performance achieves glory. There's no mistaking the genius in this scenario, and no mistaking the real star of the picture: the talent of the band that recognizes it. (SEAN NELSON)
Life, or Something Like It
Big-lipped brunette Angelina Jolie stars as a big-lipped blonde. The movie may not be so hot, but the star is. (AMY JENNIGES)
Lucky Break
Another quirky British comedy in which a team of misfits overcome adversity and somehow find their better selves--in this case, a group of prisoners putting on a musical as part of a scheme to escape. But if I had to choose between formulaic British comedies and formulaic American comedies, I'd choose the Brits every time; they're better written, they're better acted, and though the quirks may be rote, at least they're about genuine human problems and not the idiocy that Hollywood trumps up. Everyone in Lucky Break is entirely charming, particularly Christopher Plummer as a prison warden with literary aspirations (BRET FETZER)
Monsoon Wedding
At first, it seems like Mira Nair is just doing family drama. The film is stylish, brisk, witty, and beautifully filmed. But within the patchwork of marriage melodrama, Monsoon Wedding presents a subversive argument about the insidiousness of progress and its fluid relationship with tradition. (SEAN NELSON)
Monster's Ball
Monstrous Balls is more like it. Hank is a racist prison guard (Billy Bob Thornton, perfect), son of a retired racist prison guard (Peter Boyle, who doesn't even try an accent), and father of a young, non-racist prison guard (Heath Ledger, who tries his hardest) in a Georgia State Penitentiary death row. Hank falls into a desperate affair with Leticia (Halle Berry, semi-plausible), a black woman, after both of their sons die. (SEAN NELSON)
Murder By Numbers
Movie by numbers. Director Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune) works very hard to give psychological nuance to yet another retread of the Leopold and Loeb case; in this case, it's two high-school students, a "cool" kid and a geeky "smart" kid, who kill a woman to demonstrate their existential freedom and moral superiority. Sandra Bullock tries to toughen her image by playing a messed-up homicide cop; the cop part isn't convincing, but the messed-up part is surprisingly layered and engaging. All to no avail; there's hardly a moment's suspense in the whole formulaic thing. (BRET FETZER)
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
This romantic comedy is based on the one-woman show of Second City alumna Nia Vardalos, who also directs. It tells the story of 30-year-old Toula, who searches for love and self-realization.
National Lampoon's Van Wilder
And so once again National Lampoon's attempt to reclaim those cinematic "glory days" falls miserably flat. As a comedy, National Lampoon's Van Wilder offers maybe one or two laughs--not the hearty, spazzy laughs, mind you, but slight chuckles, possibly minor snorts. A zany college romp that tries to be Animal House for a new generation, this film lacks both the zaniness and the wit that made the Delta Brothers' movie so entertaining. Stay away. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER)
New Best Friend
Yet another film about eye-rolling, overprivileged students who spend all of their time partying, fucking, being bulimic, and vying for Daddy's love when they should be studying, and the scheming poor girl who breaks into their clique (and may have gotten herself snuffed for it). Everything about New Best Friend is as dumb and boring as that description sounds, but the film does serve as a showcase for Mia Kirshner's (Exotica, Not Another Teen Movie) physical beauty and jaw-dropping sexiness. Whether she's demure, wasted, tripping, or in the throes of overdosing on cocaine while dressed in a black lace bra and tap pants, Kirshner's an undeniably hot woman. (KATHLEEN WILSON)
* No Man's Land
War is--guess what?--hell in this story of the Bosnia-Serbia conflict, circa 1993. Surrounded by UN "peacekeepers," clumsy media vultures, and their warring rival factions, two soldiers cross into the zone between the bullets and clash about the war's origins and costs. (SEAN NELSON)
The Panic Room
The clever and tightly orchestrated twists and turns never rise above thriller formulas driven by utter clichés. (BRET FETZER)
The Rookie
In The Rookie, Dennis Quaid and Disney bring to the screen the real-life story of a baseball player-turned Texas high-school science teacher-turned baseball player. (SONIA RUIZ)
The Scorpion King
Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock, brings his ham-fisted acting and perfectly sculpted eyebrows to the big screen for this adventure flick.
Showtime
Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro star in this unlikely-buddy-cop film that satirizes reality cop shows on TV. Not hardly as bad as you'd think, which is sort of like being pleasantly surprised that your blind date isn't a hunchback. Murphy is still one funny motherfucker, a fact made all the more poignant by the fact that Will Smith has managed to ride what is essentially a poor Murphy impression all the way to credibility. (SEAN NELSON)
* Son of the Bride
It's no coincidence that, in your basic midlife crisis movie, a heart attack brings on epiphany. Of course you would re-examine your life after a failure of the heart. In the worst of the genre, the discovery of the heart (however flawed) is the last missing piece in a life that's come undone, and sanctity usually follows. In Son of the Bride, by Argentine director Juan José Campanella, epiphany is not the end but the beginning. (EMILY HALL)
* Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation
The animation celebration returns for another glorious year of sick fun and whimsical gross-out.
The Sweetest Thing
Cameron Diaz and Christina Applegate, together at last! Also, as my friend Michael is fond of saying: Someone get that Selma Blair a steak! The film is some kind of romantic comedy bullshit from the director of Cruel Intentions.
The Time Machine
Guy Pearce and his cheekbones star in this update of the H.G. Wells sci-fi landmark.
Time Out
Reviewed this issue.A disturbing French film about one man's elaborate deception and double life. (TAMARA PARIS)
The Triumph of Love
Mira Sorvino is cute as a bug playing a princess trying to return the rightful heir to her throne. But the movie doesn't make much of an effort to translate this play (by 18th-century French writer Marivaux) from the stage to the screen; the result is both stiff and flimsy. (BRET FETZER)
* Y Tu Mamá También
As two Mexican teenagers frantically fuck, the boy, Tenoch (Diego Luna), pleads/demands that the girl not screw any Italians on her impending European trip with her best friend. Meanwhile, that best friend is having rushed pre-departure sex with her boyfriend, Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal), who is also Tenoch's best friend. When the girls have left, we settle down to watch these two boys spend an aimless summer. Everything gets thrown sideways when they meet a sexy older woman (that is to say, in her 20s) named Luisa. Y Tu Mamá También is a brilliant, incisive core sampling of life in Mexico. It's both slender and profound; the movie's greatest pleasures are often its smallest ones-even the title comes from a tossed-off bit of banter. Any individual moment could be trivial, silly, pointless, even embarrassing-but the accumulation of moments has a devastating scope. (BRET FETZER)
