dir. Spike Lee
Opens Fri Aug 13.
She Hate Me opens with the image of George W. Bush's face planted on a three-dollar bill, and it looks as though Spike Lee's newest joint is shaping up to be a scathing indictment of political corruption. But then you realize the three-dollar bill isn't printed on paper, but woven into what looks like a shiny silk bed sheet, and that the decadent fabric is rippling to the soft strains of smooth jazz. This image, with its political tomfoolery and intimations of horribly cheesy romance, is actually quite honest about the bizarre plot to come.
The hero, Jack Armstrong (Anthony Mackie), is a fancy executive in a pharmaceutical company that's all set to rack up billions with an ineffectual new AIDS drug called Prexalin. But when the FDA gets whiff of the company's shoddy research, all Enron-style hell breaks loose. The next thing you know, Jack is unemployed and frozen out of his once-puffy bank account.
Then the entire girl-on-girl section of your favorite adult video store comes to the rescue. It turns out that Jack Armstrong's ex-girlfriend knows an army of baby-lusting, high-femme lesbians willing to pay $10,000 for a romp in his bed. There may be nothing more horrifying in the history of computer animation than the sequences in which a troop of big-headed sperm, each adorned by a superimposed image of Armstrong's face, races toward a similarly expressive egg. The rest of the movie makes very little sense, but after the fertilization derby you'll likely feel so queasy that you won't even care. ANNIE WAGNER
Code 46
dir. Michael Winterbottom
Opens Fri Aug 13.
If imitation were all it took to be an auteur filmmaker, Michael Winterbottom would be Jean Renoir. Actually, judging by his latest film, an occasionally hypnotic mélange of sci-fi, end-of-the-world romance, and paranoid thriller, he'd be Alain Resnais. The primary source material for Code 46 is Resnais' short, dazzling Hiroshima, Mon Amour, in which a French woman's affair with a Japanese man stirs up a reverie of memory, longing, and regret. When Winterbottom is successful, he transposes Resnais' surreal eroticism to the half-Orwell, half-Phillip K. Dick world he creates in this new film. When he fails, he strips Hiroshima for parts, stapling its hazy carnality onto a narrative whose underexplained context ultimately robs it of the emotional and political resonance it clearly strives for.
The setting is a Shanghai of the future, and the mismatched lovers are Tim Robbins (a psychic detective) and Samantha Morton (an urban prole who has a nice sideline as a passport forger). Although it is illegal for them to have sex--just as it's illegal for people to travel outside the protection of the city without "papelles," which are difficult to come by (hence, the forgery)--they do, which leads to complications involving pregnancy, abortion, memory erasure, cloning, breeding laws, and illegal travel. In short, Winterbottom and regular screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce employ every recognizable sci-fi trope, thus rendering Code 46, which has a lot going for it, into a confusing hybrid of Minority Report, 12 Monkeys, Blade Runner, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Brave New World, THX 1138, and Walkabout, in addition to Hiroshima, Mon Amour. That's a lot of reference points, but Winterbottom is nothing if not an homage-meister. Code 46 is enigmatic, intriguing, and often a beauty to behold, but unlike the films from which it so readily borrows, it ultimately feels forgettable. SEAN NELSON
Ju-on
dir. Takashi Shimizu
Fri Aug 13 through Thurs Aug 19 at the Varsity.
A healthcare volunteer named Rika is given a case helping a husband and wife take care of their near-comatose grandmother in a house where, years before, a family was brutally slaughtered by the patriarch. Before we see any of this, a title card at the beginning of the film explains that "Ju-on" is the curse of one who dies during a powerful rage, a curse born of the victims of violence. Rika accidentally unleashes this curse when she opens a closet in the house that was taped shut, giving her visions of a little blue ghost-boy with a penchant for howling like a cat. Death spreads like a virus throughout the film, and anyone who enters the house starts seeing dead people before disappearing or dying.
Ju-on is part of a new wave of Japanese horror film that doesn't rely on special effects and CGI for scares. These films more resemble American horror films of the '60s and '70s, where music and sound and editing work together to create a mood that is palpably creepy. I'm sure this is because these Japanese directors--who include Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Takashi Miike--learned their trade in the low-budget world of straight-to-video and TV movies. There they learned that less is more, and sometimes it's scarier not to see the ghost or monster. Ju-on follows the conventions of creepy ghost movies close enough that it's impossible not to be chilled by some of the images and sequences. ANDY SPLETZER
Intimate Strangers
dir. Patrice Leconte
Opens Fri Aug 13.
A beautiful woman (Sandrine Bonnaire) walks into an office and opens her heart to a man she believes is a therapist but is in fact an accountant (Fabrice Luchini). The accountant, a middle-aged man who inherited his line of work from his father, and is presently recovering from a collapsed romance, is immediately attracted to the stranger. The accountant doesn't make much of an effort to disclose his true occupation; he sits back and listens to her go on about how bad her husband is, about needing more from life, about her deepest desires. It is only after several visits that the accountant finally admits that he is not what she thinks he is. At this point, the woman must decide if she will continue her visits or seek help from a real therapist.
Directed by Patrice Leconte, Intimate Strangers has a strong start and a weak finish. The opening is strong because the premise actually works. But once the accountant is exposed, the comedy dies and a drama is born. With the comedy gone for good, all that's left to enjoy are the film's set designs and the cinematography, which works hard to capture the bourgeois elegance of Sandrine Bonnaire's face. CHARLES MUDEDE
