Thursday, July 17, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film shorts

Alex & Emma

1 1/2 stars (PG-13, 100 min.) Rob Reiner has already made two excellent romantic comedies (When Harry Met Sally, The Sure Thing). This one, with writer Luke Wilson hiring stenographer Kate Hudson to type a book, fails on all counts.--JC

Bruce Almighty

3 stars (PG-13, 101 min.) Indulgent deity Morgan Freeman endows TV reporter Jim Carrey with his powers. Jennifer Aniston's comedic talents are wasted, but Tom Shadyac's comedy is sweet and poignant.--TM

Capturing the Friedmans

4 1/2 stars (NR, 107 min.) Layered, lurid and profoundly unsettling, Andrew Jarecki's film details one of the most shocking and disquieting sex-abuse scandals ever documented. In 1987, police descended on the home of Arnold and Elaine Friedman and their three sons, David, Seth and Jesse in Great Neck, Long Island. David kept a video diary, ruthlessly filming the disintegration of his family. With each new revelation, the truth becomes more elusive and by the time you emerge, dazed and blinking, the Friedmans will have captured you.--JC

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

1/2 star (PG-13, 105 min.) "This is such bullshit!" mutters Bernie Mac in McG's sequel to his 2000 TV spinoff. Cringeworthy double entendres, antediluvian depiction of women: It's amazing Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz don't find this impossibly offensive. With John Cleese, Demi Moore, Justin Theroux.--AA

Finding Nemo

3 stars (G, 104 min.) Andrew Stanton's digitally animated feature is a visual comic delight about single father Albert Brooks' struggle to let his child (Alexander Gould) take risks. With Willem Dafoe, Ellen DeGeneres, Barry Humphries, Geoffrey Rush. Plus John Lasseter's charming 1989 short Knick Knack.--TM

Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets

2 stars (NR, 40 min.) Kieth Merrill's 1984 Imax movie mixes spectacular footage with a brief history lesson about early explorers John Wesley Powell and Garcia de Cardenas.--AA

Haunted Castle

Not reviewed (PG, 38 min.) Aspiring rock star Jasper Steverlinck visits dead mom's spooky English mansion and learns that rock 'n' roll really is the devil's music, in this 2001 3-D Imax horror flick from Belgian director Ben Stassen.--AA

Holes

3 1/2 stars (PG, 117 min.) Shia LeBeouf digs holes at a Texas juvenile detention camp run by Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voight. Andrew Davis brings Louis Sachar's teen novel to the screen with its sardonic humor miraculously intact. With Patricia Arquette, Eartha Kitt.--AA

Hollywood Homicide

2 1/2 stars (PG-13, 111 min.) Harrison Ford is sexier than he's been in ages as an LAPD cop investigating murders with fumbling partner Josh Hartnett. Ron Shelton's buddy comedy is formulaic but occasionally hilarious.--TM

The Hulk

3 stars (PG-13, 138 min.) When scientist Bruce Banner (Eric Bana), emotionally repressed because of the "sins" of father Nick Nolte, is exposed to gamma radiation, the rage within becomes the beast without. With imaginative tweaking, Ang Lee harkens back to the Marvel comic, with characters artfully presented as compelling mixtures of love, hate, fear, regret, ambition and madness. Co-starring Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott.--TM

Into the Deep

1 1/2 stars (NR, all ages, 35 min.) Howard Hall's 1994 3-D Imax flick explores California kelp forests, with sea lions, rays, jellyfish and opalescent squid. Narrated by Kate Nelligan.--AA

The Italian Job

1 1/2 stars (PG-13, 110 min.) Mark Wahlberg, Edward Norton, Donald Sutherland and Charlize Theron star in F. Gary Gray's disappointing remake of the 1969 caper. Sexy as sump oil, with an underwhelming climactic car chase.--AA

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

2 1/2 stars (PG-13, 112 min.) At 72, Sean Connery makes a godawful fool of himself as Allan Quatermain, who saves the world with fellow, fictional anti-heroes the Invisible Man (Tony Curran), Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), Mina Harker (Peta Wilson), Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend, Dr. Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) and Tom Sawyer (Shane West.) Stephen Norrington's glib, formulaic action flick fails to explore the intriguing subversiveness of comic-book legend Alan Moore's concept.--JC

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde

1 1/2 stars (PG-13, 94 min.) Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) heads to Washington to fight for animal rights. Pinker, perkier and decidedly more gay than its 2001 predecessor, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's sequel is an exhausted idea dressed up with tired stereotypes. If Witherspoon's wise, she'll abandon Elle right here. With Sally Field, Bob Newhart, Luke Wilson.--JC

The Matrix Reloaded

2 1/2 stars (R, 138 min.) Andy and Larry Wachowski go for breadth over depth in the sequel to their 1999 hit about a world controlled by computers. With Neo, Trinity and Morpheus (Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss and Laurence Fishburne), adolescent sex, fight scenes stretched beyond boredom, and the sense of a film disappearing in its own fakery. [Also playing in cut, cropped Imax version.]--JC

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

1/2 star (PG-13, 143 min.) Avast, ye hearties. Drunken, mascara-covered Cockney Johnny Depp sashays down the gangplank to defeat Geoffrey Rush's undead brigands and help Orlando Bloom woo governor Jonathan Pryce's daughter Keira Knightley. Gore Verbinski's overlong, overblown zombie-pirates farrago, "based on" the Disneyland ride, is nothing but a cynical, calculated marketing ploy.--AA

Rugrats Go Wild

(G, 81 min.) The Rugrats are shipwrecked on a remote island where the "Wild Thornberrys" clan are making a film. The third spinoff from the Nickelodeon series seems less an inspired reflection of kiddie angst and joy than a marketing ploy. With Bruce Willis.--TM

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas

2 stars (PG, 86 min.) Pirate Sinbad (voiced by Brad Pitt) and friends (Dennis Haysbert, Catherine Zeta-Jones), rescue the priceless Book of Peace from evil goddess Michelle Pfeiffer to save Proteus (Joseph Fiennes). With John Logan's corny script, Patrick Gilmore and Tim Johnson's mercifully brief "Arabian Nights" adventure is one of DreamWorks' few animated duds.--MP

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

4 stars (R, 109 min.) For 12 years we waited, knowing Arnold would be back. Sure enough, our favorite cyborg returns to help John Connor (waifish Nick Stahl) defeat the frequently-morphing T-X (Kristanna Loken). Despite the Law of Diminishing Sequels and the absence of creator James Cameron, Jonathan Mostow's explosive sequel, written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, is everything The Matrix Reloaded is not. Mostow retains the T-101's lighter side, a crucial ingredient being the humanizing of an already-robotic Schwarzenegger. With Claire Danes.--JC

2 Fast 2 Furious

1/2 star (PG-13, 107 min.) Disgraced cop Paul Walker redeems himself, and ex-con Tyrese, by helping the feds nail drug kingpin Cole Hauser. John Singleton's sequel to The Fast and the Furious is pure carnography, rife with ridiculous replays of adolescent fantasies of fast cars and fast women.--TM

28 Days Later

3 1/2 stars (R, 108 min.) Fighting a title that sounds like a Sandra Bullock sequel, Danny Boyle's post-apocalyptic killer germ movie has a fresh, frantic energy. After an outbreak of a deadly virus, Cillian Murphy wakes in a London hospital to find a nightmare of emptiness where healthy souls hide from the marauding "infected." With Brendan Gleeson, Naomie Harris.--JC

Whale Rider

4 stars (PG-13, 105 min.) Through a direct, unpretentious narrative and authentic expression of its native elements, writer-director Niki Caro's film of Maori author Witi Ihimaera's beloved novel is a stirring crowd-pleaser, with breathtaking shots of coastal New Zealand. Pai (12-year-old newcomer Keisha Castle-Hughes, who effortlessly embodies both humility and confidence) defies her grandfather, tribal chief Koro (Rawiri Paratene), who believes in the patriarchal traditions of his downtrodden people. When fate steps in, Pai proves she's the tribe's natural leader. With Cliff Curtis, Vicky Haughton.--MP

Winged Migration

[Le Peuple migrateur] (G, 85 min.) Jacques Perrin aims to vault into heaven, with his Oscar-nominated documentary about the migratory patterns of various bird species. But this spy in the house of doves is a staggeringly banal thinker of obvious concepts, whose soporific narration and empty epiphanies mock the regal, unpretentious airs of these thrilling creatures. Co-directed by Jacques Cluzaud and Michel Debats. (French and English dialogue, with subtitles.)--RC

X2: X-Men United

3 stars (PG-13, 135 min.) Xavier and Magneto (Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen) unite to stop Gen. Brian Cox's genocidal plans, in Bryan Singer's fairly smart sequel to the Marvel Comics spinoff. With Halle Berry, Alan Cumming, Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos.--MP

Reviews by: AA: Anthony Allison; JC: Jeannette Catsoulis; MP: Mike Prevatt; RC: Robert Chancey; TM: Tammy McMahan