Indifferent attempt to produce a quirky film about characters struggling to deal with the catastrophe of a daughter/fiance's death. The parents, Hoffman and Sarandon (Ben and Jojo Floss)_ "adopt" their dead daughter's fiance, who doesn't have the heart to tell them that she had broken off the engagement and was on her way to tell them the night she was killed. Just doesn't really go anywhere.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN, SUSAN SARANDON, JAKE GYLLENHAAL, ALEKSIA LANDEAU
Uniquely terrifying and unusual horror film about a strange video tape that falls into the hands of some teenagers out for a weekend of fun at a cottage. After playing it and watching it's strange disjointed images, a phone call informs the viewers that hey are going to die in one week. And apparently they do die. Naomi Watts plays Rachel Keller, the aunt of one of the victims, and a journalist, who hears the story, watches the video anyway, and then investigates. She uncovers a creepy story about a rancher and his wife and daughter. Well-acted, and well filmed. Genuinely creepy.
NAOMI WATTS, NOAH CLAY, DAVID DORFMAN, BRIAN COX, JANE ALEXANDER, LINDSAY FROST, DAVEIGH CHASE
"The Grey Zone" covers an obscure and dark corner of World War II: the use of Jewish slaves to help administer and run the extermination camps. This is the first movie I know of that explores that wasteland of moral ambiguity, where cooperation in the extermination of your own race buys you a few weeks, months, perhaps, and your refusal to cooperate makes no difference at all. The set was designed from the actual blueprints for Auschwitz. The Jews do, in this story, finally stage a rebellion (based on a true story). It is, of course, ineffective, but it does give them the dignity of having resisted, which might, after all, have been as important as anything else given their circumstances.
DAVID ARQUETTE, VELIZAR BINEY, DAVID CHANDLER, MICHAEL STUHLBARG, STEVE BUSCEMI, HARVEY KEITEL, MIRA SORVINO
By the director of "Shawshank Redemption" and "Green Mile", and made of the same manipulative images and contrived plot. Carrey actually isn't too bad-- but making him the victim of McCarthy communist witch-hunts didn't take a lot of creative talent, and the idea of restoring an old movie theatre in a small American town-- that never existed in reality-- is hokey. Add to that the fact that the film is over long and tiresome.
JIM CARREY, LAURIE HOLDEN, MARTIN LANDAU, BOB BALABAN, GERRY BLACK, HAL HOLBROOK, DAVID OGDEN STIERS, JAMES WHITMORE
Of course the special effects are amazing. But there is really not much else to mull over once the corpses have left the screen. In fact, "restraint" is not exactly Peter Jackson's middle name. The Two Towers is big and brassy and monumental in scope and tedious emotionally and not even all that suspenseful since you can only look upon the troubled faces of our heroes for so long before you start to think that they too know that they have to win this battle because there is a part III to come. The Golem is the most interesting thing in this film, at least partly because he looks like Colin Powell after a bleach bath. But the utter unimportance of female characters is a drag on the plot. It is so evident that this kind of fantasy should have a romantic subplot to it.
BRUCE ALLPRESS, ELIJAH WOOD, SEAN ASTIN, CATE BLANCHETT
Based on a true story about a man who impersonated a surgeon, a pilot, and lawyer, while defrauding hotels and banks out of thousands of dollars. DiCaprio still can't act and Tom Hanks still can't act but Speilberg is unusually restrained and the usual heavy-handed sentimentalized ending doesn't intrude as it does in most Speilberg films. Engrossing story, but not particularly graceful in execution.
TOM HANKS, LEONARDO DICRAPIO
Inferior remake of the Tarkovsky film, Solaris, based on a story by Stanislav Lem, the esteemed science-fiction writer. A psychologist is summoned to a space station (clumsily handled in this version) to examine some strange happenings. The explanations come slowly, inferring that this is an amazing mystery that is just too complex and overwhelming for words. This creates an expectation that this version doesn't always live up to. Are the persons drawn from memory who inhabit the space station real or alien or just products of the imagination? The weakest part of Soderbergh's version, ironically, is the dialogue, which is invariably stiff and clumsy, and reminds me often of Spielberg's weakness for portentous fore-shadowing.
GEORGE CLOONEY
Jennifer Aniston is surprisingly strong in this unconvetional film about a girl in a small town who realizes that her life, as currently constructed, means nothing to her.
JENNIFER ANISTON, MIKE WHITE, JAKE GYLLENHAAL, DEBORAH RUSH, JOHN CARROLL LYNCH
Amazing, hilarious documentary about Americans and their obsessions with guns.
Michelle and Elizabeth are the two grown-up daughters of Jane Marks. Annie is an adopted black girl who has also joined the family. Jane decides to get liposuction, which leads to one of many crises that seem to flow naturally from one incident to another in this story. Well-acted, well-filmed, and honest and occasionally raw. There is an amazing scene in which Emily Mortimer playfully asks her lover to tell her if there are any imperfections in her body. He reluctantly starts, then grows in enthusiasm, as if pleased to have risen to the challenge. But the look on Mortimer's face is stunning-- but very subtle. A flat, trifling, but devastating wave of disappointment and hurt crosses her eyes. It's actually heart-breaking. Really about what is beautiful and desirable but mostly from the point of view of women disappointed in themselves.
CATHERINE KEENER, BRENDA BLETHYN, EMILY MORTIMER, RAVEN GOODWIN, JAKE GYLLENHAAL
Exciting battle sequences can't hid the fact this is a rather pompous, self-serious and self-aggrandizing depiction of one of the first major battles of the Viet Nam War, between a new Helicopter cavalry and the PAVN (People's Army of North Viet Nam). The book is written by the commander in charge of the regiment, portrayed by Mel Gibson. Hell, who wouldn't want to be played by Mel Gibson in a retelling of the crucial event in one's life's story? Some details were made up or fudged (like the last charge up the hill in which the American over-run the PAVN command post) but the over-arching message of this film, which Hal Moore himself says is "hate the war, love the soldier" is so paradoxical that the move collapses on it's own absurdity. These guys are out to kill each other. Without them, and without their complicit desire to server whoever tells them where to go and what to do, the war cannot exist. The fact that many participants in this battle returned to Viet Nam in 1993 to shake hands and pose for pictures with their former enemies makes the battles seem even more bizarre and morally offensive.)
MEL GIBSON, MADELEINE STOWE, GREG KINNEAR, SAM ELLIOT, CHRIS KLEIN, DON DUONG
Original suspenseful drama about an adulterous couple dealing with a potentially violent husband, a private detective with his own agenda, and uncertainty about themselves, in Texas. Ray and Abby are having the affair. Julian Marty is her rich husband, and he has a private detective, Loren Visser, following the couple and taking photographs of them. When Abby leaves Julian, Ray, who works for Julian, drops by to see if he has been fired. When is isn't, he quits, but asks for his last two-weeks of pay. This sets off the chain of events, errors, misjudgements that lead to disaster for all of them. Like "Fargo", "Blood Simple" is about how even bad intentions are subject to random acts of forgetfulness, misjudgement, or accident, and don't work out the way we think. What is unique about Coen's films, is that this fateful randomness becomes the crucial element of the plot. Ray, for example, believes that Abby murdered Julian, though she didn't, and Abby later thinks her husband is stalking her when it's actually Visser. Both Ray and Abby know fragments of the truth but because they each assume that each other knows the whole storey, they never communicate their fragments to each other. The film is stylish. Long, lingering pans, and ravishingly slow-moving but tension-wrought scenes.
FRANCES MCDORMAND, JOHN GETZ, DAN HEDAYA, H. EMMET WALSH, SAMM-ART WILLIAMS
Unsuccessful story about a film developer who lives his life vicariously through the photos of one of his customers, and then decides to interfere when he discovers that the husband is having an affair.
ROBIN WILLIAMS
Very intriguing low-budget film about a disturbed teenager who has visions of a giant rabbit. The rabbit, Frank, tells him that the world is going to end in 28 days.
MARY MCDONNELL
Lee Holloway has some problems. She is emotionally unstable, self-destructive, and timid. She takes a job as a secretary to E. Edward Gray, an arrogant lawyer with his own problems. When he spanks her after she botches the spelling on a letter, their relationships comes to life. She discovers that she likes being spanked, and she likes him. He plays the game, but is apparently unsure of whether he is really interested in her, or just interested in being sadistic, and feeling the grim satisfaction of taking out his frustrations on a ready victim. Not as tacky or sensationalistic as it sounds, Lee's emotional development is carefully nurtured along by the plot, and her final triumph is a defiant assertion of personal emotional fulfillment against political correctness.
JAMES SPADER, MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL, LESLEY ANN WARREN, STEPHEN MCHATTIE, OZ PERKINS, AMY LOCANE
Made for about $5 million, My Big Fat Greek Wedding became a huge hit due to unparalleled word of mouth. Movie-goers simply loved the movie. And it's not hard to see why. The star and writer, Nia Vardalos, draws on personal experience to depict the colourful clash of her Greek enthnic traditions with a likable American (Nia is from Winnipeg, but the movie's locale is Chicago) named Ian Miller. Fotoula (Nia) is a 30ish daughter of a restaurant owner Gus (Michael Constantine) who expects his daughters to marry nice Greek boys. But Ian is a likeable and he's game and he agrees to convert to Greek Orthodoxy and hold the wedding in the church. There is a pleasant authentic feel to the movie, the kind of honest that comes partly from lack of sophistication, but largely due to the director accepting the material with affection and respect, and bringing it to the screen with pizazz and enthusiasm. Nothing is over the top here, and no one is caricatured. If the characters and motifs are not unfamiliar and certainly not strikingly original (everyone is perfectly colourful and amusing), they are certainly handled with affection and dexterity. The movie works, it's enjoyable, it is unpretentious and amusing.
NIA VARDALOS, JOHN CORBETT, MICHAEL CONSTANTINE, LAINIE KAZAN, ANDREA MARTIN, JOEY FANTONE
Honest but sometimes pedestrian account of the 1961 race between Maris and Mantel to break Ruth's homerun record, focussing on Maris' struggles with the media coverage which tended to favour golden boy Mantle over the outsider from the midwest, Maris. Maris and Mantle were actually good friends during the year but Mantle was a drunk and womanizer who pulled himself together for one extraordinary year, while Maris was a dour midwesterner who didn't like the media and didn't seem to enjoy the game. The coverage at the time was outlandish. Well acted but not noteworthy for artistic reasons.
Striking film about a woman from Canada who tries to find her sister in Afghanistan before she commits suicide because of the hopelessness of her life under the Taliban. Fresh and unusual and compelling, particularly for the scenes of Islamic traditions and practises that are rarely seen on Western television.
Maximillian Cohen is a beautiful mind-- a mathematical genius who is trying to figure out some way of predicting the moves of the stock market. But he is also socially dysfunctional and suffers from brutal headaches and, possibly, epileptic seizures. He lives in a tiny apartment surrounded by computer aparatus and works on his problem. The movies explores aspects of the actual mathematical idea but not in convincing depth. Enter an ambitious fund-manager who wants the secret, and a Rabbi who believes the amazing solution also reveals the secret of God-- may even be God himself. Audacious and austere, and sometimes compelling, Pi ultimately fails because it doesn't really have a substantial plot to it apart from what takes place in Maximillian's head, and it doesn't always succeed in making his head interesting to us. Interesting-- the opposite of "Beautiful Mind", which glamourized and homogenized the same general idea. Sean Gullette, who wrote the story, plays Maximillian.
SEAN GULLETTE, MARK MARGOLIS, BEN SHENKMAN, STEPHEN PEARLMAN
Strong Woody Allenesque comedy/drama about the vicissitudes of love and romance in New York, focussing on a group of interconnected people seeking, finding, and losing partners. Has an improvisational feel to it and definitely owes a lot to Allen films, especially Manhattan. But fresh and interesting and well-acted.
STANLEY TUCCI, EDWARD BURNS, PENNY BALFOUR, MICHAEL LEYDON-CAMPBELL, HEATHER GRAHAM, DENNIS FARINA
Powerful film about a Serb and Bosnian trapped together in "no man's land", a trench between two enemy positions. Also present, the Bosnian's compadre, who, thought to be dead, has been booby-trapped by the Serbs. Enter the media, the U.N., and various other supporting players and we have a fairly obvious but compelling metaphor for internecine conflict.
Very little is known about the legendary serial killer of prostitutes, Jack the Ripper. We know that he operated in the London area in 1888 from August to November, that the probably had some surgical skill or knowledge of anatomy, and that he was a savage killer. Almost everything else we know is sheer speculation. Johnny Depp plays Inspector Frederick Abberline, an opium addict with psychic abilities who, with his chubby sidekick Peter Godley (Robbie Coltrane), investigates the crime. One of the problems with the film emerges immediately: Depp, with is American method approach, simpers and mutters his way along, while Coltrane bursts onto the screen in full three-dimensional glory. When the two are together, Depp fades into the set. Heather Graham plays Mary Kelly, in real life, the fifth and final victim of the ripper, who, of course, falls in love with Inspector Abberline, and might be a trifle glamorous for the role. This is odd, because the other prostitutes and street characters have an unusual degree of authentic shabbiness to them. Detective Abberline consults a doctor, Sir William Gull (Ian Holm), who happens to be physician to the Royal Family. Gull introduces the idea that the murders are a conspiracy of the rich and privileged upon the poor and desperate, and Abberline becomes aware of the fact that his superiors don't want him to apprehend the killer. There's a bit of a sensation in the conclusion that is not totally implausible-- the utter paucity of information about the Ripper makes any theory partly credible. It's an odd hodgepodge of a movie, partly art film, partly thriller, partly historical drama. The streets of Prague served as the wonderfully convincing Victorian dives of London.
JOHNNY DEPP, HEATHER GRAHAM, IAN HOLM, IAN RICHARDSON, ROBBIE COLTRANE, LESLEY SHARPE, KATRIN CARTRIDGE
Extremely unusual film-- an art film musical with dancing workers and downtrodden-- with Bjork as Selma Jezkova, a single mother with a really hard life. She is cheated of her savings for her son's eye operation by a neighboring cop (her own eyesight is deteriorating) and ends up going to extreme lengths to recover the money. If only the movie hadn't strayed quite so far into melodrama, it might have been a gem, a rather intriguing combination of forms. But by the time you get through the two hours of over-wrought tragedy and self-flaggelation, it becomes a bit too much. Bjork is fine-- audacious-- and the cinematrography is more than interesting. But "over the top" might be the applicable phrase here.
BJORK, CATHERINE DENEUVE, DAVID MORSE, PETER STORMARE, JOEL GREY, CARA SEYMOUR
Hollywood does Hollywood. Really nothing special about this megaproject, aside from the obvious, which is that it continues to amaze that Hollywood will spend so much money on special effects and so little effort or money on script and dialogue. They did the right thing, I suppose, by bringing Stan Lee in to do the script, but perhaps the film only makes it obvious that Spiderman is, after all, a comicbook. That said, it's reasonably tight and visually arresting, for a spectacle. Kirsten Dunst looks lucious but doesn't have a lot of room to maneovre here, and Willem Dafoe gives the unfortunate impression of someone who knows he won't be as good as Jack Nicholson's Joker, but has to try anyway.
TOBEY MAGUIRE, WILLIM DAFOE, KIRSTEN DUNST, JAMES FRANCO, J.K. SIMMONS, ROSEMARY HARRIS, CLIFF ROBERTSON
There's a flash or two of life in this movie, and the odd inspired scene (like the tango at the Hotel at the beach, between Erik and Alex), but it is not smart enough to be an art film, or dumb enough to be a Hollywood action thriller. Soldier of Orange straddles the line between two uneasily, with spectacularly unspectacular battle scenes, but the odd interesting subplot. Inspired by Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema's account of his activities in the Dutch Resistance during the Nazi occupation. It's as if Verhoeven wanted to produce the Dutch version of "From Here to Eternity", and sometimes his clumsiness is mistaken for art. The performances are generally good, the action moves along in fits and starts. Some scenes-- like where the petrol seeps from a can through beach sand about twenty-five feet towards Erik so a carelessly tossed match can start a fire and explosion-- are inexplicably implausible. There some interesting sub-texts of homoeroticism and some rather cheerfully cheesy sex scenes. The British secretary, who stomps on a soldier's ass while making her way through a muddy training area-- introduces some much-needed spirit into the proceedings. At least Verhoeven has the grace to leave the warts in. He freely depicts collaborators and traitors and the indifferent in honest preportions, and he makes it clear that anti-semitism pervaded all classes of citizens before the War. Interesting but flawed.
RUTGER HAUER, JEROEN KRABBE, SUSAN PENHALIGON, EDWARD FOX, LEX VAN DELDEN, DEREK DELINT, HUIB ROOYMANS, DOLF DEVRIES
On May 7, 2000, a tourist from Georgia was murdered during a purse-snatching at a Florida motel. Brendon Butler was arrested 90 minutes later and became the only suspect in the case. He spent five months in jail while his court-appointed defence lawyer built a case challenging the prosecution's conclusions. The attorney, Patrick McGuinness (along with Ann Finnell), succeeds in completely dismantling the prosecution's case. The jury takes a mere 45 minutes to find Brendon Butler not guilty, but, in an extraordinary turn, McGuinness actually uncovers information about he real killer. What is extraordinary about this film is the content-- the actual events recorded. You watch the husband of the victim testify in court, and realize that his testimony is inaccurate, at best, and maliciously false at worst. You see police officers lying through their teeth on the stand. You see clear evidence of prosecutorial malfeasance-- and the astonishing revelation of the real culprit (who doesn't look anything like Brendon). It's not really a great film, and probably didn't deserve the Oscar it received, but it is a compelling, moving document about institutional injustice in America.
Over-rated film about a retiring, shy barber, whose wife has an affair with her boss and is implicated when he is found stabbed to death at his desk. Billy Bob Thorton plays Ed Crane, the man who wasn't there, whose life takes a baffling turn for the worse when begins to address his anonymity by making some decisions in his life-- like investing in a new concept-- dry-cleaning. Where it goes to from there is murky. I'm not sure I understood the point of his vacuous anonymity, since he doesn't really assert anything about himself, except in dry existential musings. Just didn't stick with me very much.
BILLY BOB THORNTON, FRANCES MCDORMAND, MICHAEL BADALUCCO, JAMES GANDOLFINI, KATHERINE BOROWITZ, SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Produced by Canada's first Inuit film company, Atanarjuat (which means 'fast runner') is about a small nomadic Inuit community in Canada's far north, a thousand years ago. The small band of families subsists on hunting seal and walrus in a very unhospitable land. The film concerns two brothers, Atanarjuat, the fast runner, and Amaqjuaq, the strong one. The two are the best hunters in the community, provoking the jealosy of Oki, son of Sauri, the leader. When Atanarjuat wins Atuat away from her husband to be, Oki, discord and violence break out and Atanarjuat is forced to flee for his life, in an unforgettable sequence, naked across the frozen ice. This film lingers on it's moments-- a hunter returning with his dogs, settling them down, the families eating meat around a fire, or maintaining seal-oil lamps. Utterly un-hollywood, in it's patient exploration of the community's attitudes and customs, and how the conflict between Antanarjuat and Oki plays out. No glamour here-- looks like some of the actors could use some serious dental work-- just the roughhewn beauty of the rugged north, and the eloquent faces of the native actors. A long movie, but well worth it.
Strong but violent drama about attempts to recruit a retired henchman for a big job. Ben Kingsley is outstanding as gangster Don Logan. Comedy? A little violent for that classification. Very tightly worked up confrontation between a man, Gal, (Ray Winstone) who is content in retirement, in love with his wife and his Spanish villa, and a driven, violent gangster, Don Logan, who won't take a no for an answer. No big statement, no shock ending, but enough small surprises and delicate performances to keep it humming.
BEN KINGSLEY, RAY WINSTONE, IAN MCSHANE, AMANDA REDMAN, CAVAN KENDALL, JULIANNE WHITE, JAMES FOX
The usual outstanding Altman style, utterly compelling because it is so devoid of Hollywood artifice and predictability. Set in an English manor in the early 20th century, dramatizes the decline of class and corruption of privilege. Uniformly wonderful acting performances and Altman's incomparable style. What's it about? Ostensibly a murder, but really about class and privilege.
MAGGIE SMITH, MICHAEL GAMBON, KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS, CAMILLA RUTHERFORD, CHARLES DANCE, TOM HOLLANDER, BOB BALABAN, ALAN BATES, HELEN MIRREN, DEREK JACOBI, EMILY WATSON, STEPHEN FRY, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Bitty Smitty
A movie this slow-moving and reverentially meditative raises expectations from me. Instead of action and adventure, one expects penetrating psychological insights. I'm not sure it's there. In the Bedroom takes it's time breaking down the responses of a physician and his music teacher wife when their young son is murdered by his girlfriends jealous ex-spouse. Perhaps the tip-off came when the director chose to fade a few short scenes to black-- the father mowing the lawn, the mother resuming her teaching. Why fade to black? It struck immediately as a cop-out, a failure of nerve. It struck immediately as the kind of affectation that a young directory would use to make something obvious that isn't obvious from the material itself. Matt and Ruth Fowler are about as average as can be. They have no political axe to grind, though the movie panders, in some indirect, obscure way, to stereo-type of crime-- the well-connected defendent who pulls bail and appears headed for a unfairly light sentence. There the movie departs from it's rigorous adherence to conventionality, and, paradoxically, becomes less interesting. In the end, there is ambiguity, and a shocking realization, and a niggling question about vicarious satisfaction. What is left hanging are the old and good reasons why vigilantism is so frowned upon in our society. A comparable film that comes to mind: Olivier, Olivier. But Olivier, Olivier worked. The parent's grief was played out to it's full, naked conventionality. You understood something, in the end, about family and love and loss, that was almost shocking in its intensity. In the Bedroom seems to confuse stasis with inactivity; the parents don't move, at first, but neither do their emotions or their relationship. When Matt suddenly explodes at his wife, and she at him, you wonder what they're upset about. I mean, a lot of viewers will fill in the blanks with their own projections of who *they* feel at that moment, but that's not what is up there on the screen. On the screen, it's just posture and expression, without a lot of inner connections. Well-acted, generally, though the camera sometimes lingers on a face as if expecting more, and you do expect more. There's no writing to speak of-- some of the scenes seem improvised, and there's no real story-- just postures and expressions. Vastly over-rated.
SISSY SPACEK, TOM WILKINSON, MARISA TOMEI, WILLIAM MAPOTHER, WILLIAM WISE, CELIA WESTON, KAREN ALLEN
Strange very literate and well-meaning drama about a man (Preston) who loses his job and has to cope with various family issues-- a wimpy son, a lonely daughter, a controlling wife-- while trying to put his life back together. Unusually topical-- anti-semitism even makes an appearance-- and suffers from a profusion of hack-psychology (he's unhappy because his wife doesn't have sex with him often enough; she doesn't like sex because of a repressed upbringing). The film tickles at times-- well-written, generally, and superbly acted-- but also falls prey to didacticism and the usual happy ending. Eve Arden makes a striking appearance as the wife's sister, with her own problems.
DOROTHY MCGUIRE, ROBERT PRESTON, EVE ARDEN, ANGELA LANSBURY, SHIRLEY KNIGHT, LEE KINSOLVING, FRANK OVERTON, ROBERT EYER, PENNY PARKER
Gene Hackman plays Royal O'Reilly Tenenbaum, a bad father, and an "asshole", who suddenly decides he wants his family back together. Why? Because he's dying, maybe, of stomach cancer (which doesn't stop him from scarfing down three cheeseburgers a day). So he weasel's his way back into his wife's house (they aren't divorced yet) and brings about a family reunion, of three children and an important family friend-- four of the most dysfunctional people imaginable. Ben Stiller is Chas, a prodigious money manager whose youthful investments were pilfered by Royal. Gwyneth Paltrow is Margot, a writer who smokes (her family hasn't noticed) and is married to Bill Murray (Raleigh St. Clair), and may have an incestuous desire for her brother Richie (Luke Wilson), a star tennis player who broke down in the middle of his biggest match. Eli, who has a thing for Margot, is the family friend, a writer of pulp westerns. "Madcap" doesn't do the movie justice. The story rushes like a roller coaster through one crisis to another, never letting up until it reaches it's hysterical conclusion. Never do you detect the cast and crew stopping to admire themselves-- it rolls on to the next confrontation, disaster, or revelation. Terrific film. Reminds me of Altman and Mike Leigh, though it is more frantic and bizarre than either of them.
BEN STILLER, GWYNETH PALTROW, OWEN WILSON, LUKE WILSON, GENE HACKMAN, ANJELICA HUSTON, DANNY GLOVER, BILL MURRAY, KUMAR PALLANA, ALEC BALDWIN
Emotionally resonant but suspect-- tells the story of brilliant mathemetician John Nash, who had a huge impact on economic and diplomatic theory, and then descended into madness for almost thirty years before receiving the Nobel Prize in Science in 1994. It's a great story, moving, and amazing. The trouble is, the story you see on the screen is not the story of John Nash. It is the story of Hollywood's need to feel good about feeling bad. When one reviewer described this film as "authentic", he meant that he felt just bad enough about Nash's schizophrenia to feel good about himself for feeling bad for him. The trouble is the "schizophrenia" in the movie is to real-life mental illness what Jennifer Connelly is to your real-life wife. In real life, Nash was gay (and that's why he was bounced from the Rand Corporation-- called "Wheeler" in the movie, apparently) and in real life, he fathered a child with another woman and then abandoned both child and mother to a life of poverty, before marrying a student, Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) whom he also, in real life but not in the movie, later divorced. It is true that she came to be his major suppport later in life, and they remarried after the Novel Prize. But Ron Howard's cavalier way of handling these issues demonstrates that this film is not about Nash at all, but about some misconception and delusions that make us all feel good about ourselves. Crowe doesn't get into his role-- he adopts the exterior mannerisms of what a sane person thinks an insane person is. Connelly, however, is a surprise. She is very good, and she is the source of the real emotional impact of the later part of the story. She handles each important transition in their relationship deftly, tastefully, and convincingly.
RUSSEL CROWE, JENNIFER CONNELLY
The usual Altman-- utterly compelling, unusual drama with a stellar cast.
Very lively, playful, and imaginative story about a waif, Amalie, living in Paris, who decides to be a force for good in the world, and begins with those around her. We learn that her mother was a harsh disciplinarian who prevented Amelie from having friends, and her was an unaffectionate but likable doctor (who never hugged his daughter). Amalie kidnaps her father's gnome and sends it on a 'round the world excursion. She nudges a lonely clerk into a relationship with a jealous former lover of a waitress she works with. She takes revenge on a cruel grocer. Most of all, she flashes those beautiful eyes and charms her way through various misadventures. What is it with the strain of "chaos theory" on film in recent European films? From Kieslowsky's "Red" to "Run Lola Run", European directors seem recently enamoured with the idea that the tiniest little variation in events can have enormous consequences. In Amelie, it is when she drops a bottle stopper after hearing that Princess Diana has died. It dislodges a tile which reveals a little box with several keepsakes in it. She decides to track down the owner, which leads her into her other misadventures. As in other recent European films, the style is free-wheeling and inventive. Photographs talk, and we sometimes see what Amelie is thinking. And, as in the same director's earlier "Delicatessen", there is a scene in which a couple's vigorous sex causes ripples throughout a building. Not everything works out. The jealous man remains jealous. But her father embarks on his own journey, and she starts a relationship with a young man who collects rejected photos from photobooths. Very likeable, witty, and wry. Doesn't insult your intelligence or smoothery you in phoney emotions. Crisp and charming.
AUDREY TAUTOU, MATHIEU KASSOVITZ, RUFUS, YOLANDE MOREAU, ARTUS DE PENGUERN, URBAIN CANCELIER, MAURICE BENICHOU, DOMINIQUE PINON, CLAUDE PERRON
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