Thursday, December 02, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film shorts

After the Sunset

1 star (PG-13, 90 min.) Director Brett Ratner obviously wants us to think of his film as a modern-day To Catch a Thief. But this tale of a jewel robber who may or may not have retired is hindered by Pierce Brosnan's robotic manner, Salma Hayek's inflatable-doll acting style, and a story that rehashes movie capers past without a fresh vision to resurrect them. Woody Harrelson livens things up as an FBI agent trying to prove himself by capturing the bad guy.--ADV

Alexander

2 stars (R, 175 min.) Oliver Stone's film, which takes us from the boyhood of this legendary king (Colin Farrell) with the conniving Mom Olympias (Angelina Jolie) and the battering King Philip (Val Kilmer) to Alexander's death, is addled by pomposity in everything from the opening titles to the evocation of the characters' speech; confusing battle scenes where it's hard to tell who's on what side; a rushed, incomplete and glossed-over retelling of history and mythology; a shoddy narrative structure with poor use of flashbacks; and insufferable acting. Yet it's undeniably watchable.--MP

Alfie

2 1/2 stars (R, 98 min.) Charles Shyer's remake of the 1966 film, which starred Michael Caine as a swinging South London chauffeur who learns that picking off birds in the back seat is the not the secret to happiness, has the wrong tone and the wrong lead actor. Caine's character had a lot of fun before loneliness slowly crept up. Law has a few trysts and right away talks about how wrong it all is. Law's a fine actor, but he's too pretty and earnest to bring to the role the cynicism it needs (we know too early that Alfie's going to reform). The film is a sermon about the evils of noncommitment, and it's probably best that men keep their booty calls from seeing it. Things could get ugly.--ADV

Birth

4 stars (R, 100 min.) Director Jonathan Glazer's brave sophomore effort following Sexy Beast is less about reincarnation than the tenacity of grief. Ten years after becoming a widow, Anna (Nichole Kidman) meets a boy (Danny Huston) who claims to be her dead spouse. As Anna moves from suspicion through hope to conviction, Glazer constructs scenes of haunting pain. A stately, ominous work, best surrendered to than actively engaged. With Lauren Bacall and Anne Heche.--JC

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

0 stars (R, 108 min.) Are women really as shallow as director Beeban Kidron's sequel would have us believe? This time out our insecure, overweight British journalist heroine (Renee Zellweger) is worried that her elegant live-in lawyer boyfriend (Colin Firth) doesn't really, really love her. She gets in all kinds of "I Love Lucy"-like trouble, including a stint in a Thai jail where she teaches the other prisoners a choreographed Madonna tune. The big question of the movie is, will boyfriend pop the big question? At one point you think yes, but it winds up the guy just wants to know if Bridget will go on a skiing trip. ADV

Cellular

2 1/2 stars (R, 92 min.) Jessica (Kim Basinger) is kidnapped and locked in a room in an unknown location. She gets hold of a semi-functioning phone and makes random contact with a young slacker on a cell (Chris Evans). Can she keep him on the line long enough to convince him to help her? Can he figure out how to help a woman whose location can't be traced? And even if he can help her, will the good guys get there before the bad guys waste her? If you are on the edge of your seat already, then you may find director David R. Ellis' one-gimmick film a pleasant waste of time. Otherwise, definitely, stay away.--ADV

Christmas with the Kranks

1 star (PG, 98 min.) When their daughter heads off to Peru for Peace Corps duty, Luther and Nora Krank (Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis) decide to celebrate Christmas by going on a cruise and forgo the social and economic pressures that come with the holidays. But when the daughter surprises them with the announcement that she'll be home Dec. 24, the film's enticing satire ceases as everyone reverts back to jingle bells mode. The physical yucks feel lifted from other holiday films. Allen comes off constipated; Curtis is without an iota of distinctive identity.--MP

Enduring Love

4 stars (R, 100 min.) Shot and edited with startling originality, a hot-air balloon accident in an Oxford field leaves one man dead and several others psychologically scarred. When one witness (Rhys Ifans) shows up at the home of another witness, a philosophy professor named Joe (Daniel Craig), the prof is forced to struggle to find rationality in irrational events. Director Roger Mitchell builds the tension slowly and elegantly. Craig is mesmerizing.--JC

Everest

4 stars (NR, 44 min.) Co-director David Breashears' harrowing, 1998 Imax documentary chronicles the disastrous 1996 climbing season, when eight climbers perished in a freak storm on the world's highest peak. Featuring Jamling Tenzing Norgay, Ed Viesturs. Beck Weathers. Narrated by Liam Neeson.--AA

Faster

3 stars (NR, 103 min.) Mark Neale's documentary (narrated by Ewan McGregor) about the Motorcycle Grand Prix five-continent world championships during the 2001 and 2002 seasons isn't structured for maximum dramatic effect. Lots of people will be bored. But it throws you into the world of high-speed motorcross racing so thoroughly that it achieves its kick on its own terms. We get to know about a half-dozen competitors and come to understand why they're so willing to risk their life for a chance to feel fast.--ADV

Finding Neverland

2 1/2 stars (PG, 106 min.) Director Marc Forster's lusciously produced bio of James W. Barrie (Johnny Depp) allows us to understand the personal connection between the Victorian playwright/novelist and his writing of Peter Pan. But the film is infuriatingly ambiguous. You never understand what drives this Barrie to hang around four preadolescent boys all day (to the point of destroying his marriage), or what exactly the nature is of his relationship with the boys' mother (Kate Winslet). It's okay for a Victorian to suppress issues, but when a filmmaker does it, it's unforgivable. Julie Chrisite plays a stuffy, proper prig, and, considering her fame as a 1960s social rebel, it's a delicious Hollywood in-joke.--ADV

The Forgotten

2 1/2 stars (PG-13, 90 min.) This is one of those psychological thrillers that keeps you on the edge of your seat--until it starts to make sense. The more you understand what's really going on, the less you like it. Julianne Moore plays a woman whose 8-year-old son may or may not have been killed in a plane crash 14 months ago. In fact, she may not have ever had a son at all. Is she delusional due to her miscarriage eight years ago? Or is her husband trying to make her think she's crazy? Or is there some diabolical group who wants her to think her son never existed? The answers, unfortunately, are far less interesting than the questions.--ADV

Friday Night Lights

4 1/2 stars (PG-13, 117 min.) Director Peter Berg draws us remorselessly into the dying town of Odessa, Texas, circa 1988, and a community obsessed with its high school football team's tumultuous path to the state championship. It's one of those rare sports movies that places the seductive cruelties of the game front and center. There are some standard sports movie clichés, but the wood here is much more interesting than the trees. With Billy Bob Thornton and Lucas Black.--JC

The Grudge

3 1/2 stars (PG-13; 96 min.) Takashi Shimizu's fifth in a series about a curse emanating from the scene of a violent murder delivers more creep per minute than your average haunted house thriller. Sarah Michelle Gellar plays an exchange student who discovers a bedridden old woman in a messy house with bodies in the attic, a little boy imprisoned in a closet, an amorphous black shape and more scary noises than an episode of "American Idol." You may never go to bed again.--JC

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.

The Incredibles

5 stars (PG, 115 min.) A dynamic and immensely entertaining computer-animated adventure comedy from Pixar, as inspired as it is inspiring. The Parrs are a quintet living like any other household, except that each of them was born with powers they're supposed to keep suppressed. They don't. Pixar has outdone itself with visuals, excitement and human characterizations. With the voices of Craig. T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson and Jason Lee.--MP

Kinsey

4 stars. R, 118 min.) Bravely tackling the man who exploded the myth of vaginal orgasm, director Bill Condon sympathetic and perceptive film about zoologist turned sex researcher Alfred Kinsey seems to liberate Liam Neeson, who crackles from the spires of his ferocious crew-cut to the soles of his Hush Puppies. The film opens with Kinsey at Indiana University, where he is appalled by the sexual ignorance of his students. He begins teaching a groundbreaking course on marriage which leads to a huge impact on a society schooled in moral barbarism. Laura Linney, drabbed down and scrubbed of makeup as his patient wife, is marvelous. --JC

Ladder 49

1 1/2 stars (PG-13; 112 min.) Baltimore. Modern day. Firefighter Jack Morrison (Joaquin Phoenix) lies trapped in a burning building and thinks back on his past. Lucky for him, he apparently lived a life full of happy clichés. Lewis Collick's script subscribes so heavily to typical pre-adolescent boys' fantasy image of maleness, that never once does it slip and create a three-dimensional hero. Director Jay Russell provides some first-rate action sequences, and Phoenix fills the void of his role well. But the film is an insult. It suggests firemen are as shallow and simple-minded and lacking in variety as cardboard caricatures.--ADV

The Machinist

4 stars (R, 102 min.) An enigmatic noir constructed around a startling physical transformation, Brad Anderson's psychological thriller crawls beneath your skin and never leaves. A disembodied voice asks a man (Christopher Bale) who's dragging a carpet-wrapped shape to the water on a dark, damp dockside, "Who are you?" and the question begins to taunt him. The film is a stumble through the man's cracking mind. With Jennifer Jason Leigh.--JC

NASCAR: The Imax Experience

2 1/2 stars (PG, 48 min.) Simon Wincer's flagrant promo flick is expensive entertainment that requires tiresome 3D glasses to watch. But it delivers some of the visceral, ear-shattering excitement of race day. Narrated by Kiefer Sutherland.--AA

National Treasure

3 stars (PG, 100 min.) Nicolas Cage plays an eccentric treasure hunter who can't convince the FBI that someone is about to steal the Declaration of Independence. So he steals it first. Winds up he was right. So now both the good guys and bad guys are after our star. There's not much suspense or chase or romance or good acting. (Remember when Cage used to be a real artist?) But the story's locations take us to historical halls, passageways, ventilation shafts and catacombs that played a major role in our nation's birth. It's a fun education trip disguised as a caper movie.--ADV

Ocean Wonderland 3D

Not reviewed (NR, 44 min.) Filmed in the Bahamas and Australia, this Imax doc features rays, sharks, dolphins and other marine life in 3D.

The Polar Express

2 1/2 stars (G, 100 min.) Junky filmmaking dressed up in fancy duds. The breathtaking visual images come at you nonstop. But they are put at the service of a story that takes major issues of belief and loneliness and (implied) child abuse and turns them into a Hallmark card. The point seems to be that children, like all good Americans, should believe in capitalism. Scores of dramatic motifs are introduced and then go nowhere, while intriguing characters are given nothing to do. With the voices and rotoscoping of Tom Hanks, Tom Hanks, Tom Hanks, Tom Hanks and, in a special appearance as Santa Claus, Tom Hanks.--ADV

Ray

3 1/2 stars (PG-13, 152 min.) Jamie Foxx embodies Ray Charles so completely in look, mannerism and speaking voice that he magnetizes our gaze. Unfortunately, Taylor Hackford's film takes a trite, by-the-numbers approach that ticks off the major plot points of Charles' life with more thoroughness than imagination. Strong supporting performances by Kerry Washington as the long- suffering wife, and Regina King as his lover and back-up singer.--JC

Saw

3 1/2 stars (R, 100 min.) Two men--a nervy twentysomething photographer (played co-writer Leigh Whannel) and an older cancer surgeon (Cary Elwes)--are imprisoned in a dank and filthy bathroom with no memory of how they came to be there. Between them is a corpse, a gun and a tape recorder. There are clues as to how they can escape. A clock is ticking, a psychopath is lurking. How badly does each of them want to live? Co-writer/director James Wan's film is more than a stunt yet less than its hype. Though at times muddled and incoherent, its gripping, grisly plot is one of the most ingenious set-ups the serial-killer genre has yet produced.--JC

Seed of Chucky

3 stars (R, 87 min.) There's virtually no horror here, but If you're in the mood for some nonsense humor, and have what can be assumed to be a viewer's typical low expectations, then series creator and debut director Don Mancini's latest installment about dolls who come murderously to life will likely provide adequate pleasure. B-movie actress Jennifer Tilly does a good-sport turn in spoofing her B-movie-actress image. There are some clever horror film references. And the gore--severed limbs, heads, testicles; you know, the usual stuff--is kept in humorous overabundance.--ADV

Shall We Dance?

2 1/2 stars (PG-13, 90 min.) Richard Gere is a basically happy attorney who takes dance lessons on the sly when he realizes he wants something more in life. The passion of dance--along with the blue-collar friends he makes at the studio--awakens the passion in his life. It's a sweet story sabotaged by routine characters and dumb plot turns. A very gooey everybody's-happy finale has been tacked on to make sure the audience goes out weeping with love. The film is kept afloat by a top-notch supporting cast (excluding the waxen Jennifer Lopez).--ADV

Shark Tale

1 star (PG, 90 min.) In a time when computer animation flicks have raised the standard of family-geared entertainment, Shark Tale is just plain lazy, from its derivative premise and unimaginative aesthetic to its witless gags and one-dimensional characterizations. The film essentially pits Oscar, a fish voiced by Will Smith, against a family of Mafia-like sharks, and this opens the stereotype floodgates within seconds of the film's beginning. Lots of generation-specific references that make the film already feel dated.--MP

Sideways

3 1/2 stars (R, 123 min.) Paul Giamatti, who has something of a lock on crumpled manhood, plays a sad, divorced middle school English teacher who joins his about-to-be married best friend (Thomas Haden Church) on a tour of California wineries. Their bonding agenda turns into a couple of serious hookups with two intelligent women (Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh). The acting is wonderful, the script, virtually seamless, and Alexander Payne's direction, full of insights into how people react to their environments and each other. But everything feels just a bit too carefully crafted and frustratingly obvious.--JC

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie

3 stars (PG, 90 min.) An offspring of the highly successful 1999-2003 TV show "SpongeBob"--think "Pee Wee's Playhouse" meets "Ren & Stimpy" --retains the original's broad appeal by balancing butt jokes for the kids with witty one-liners for the adults. Here, our happy-go-lucky yellow sponge gets into trouble when he goes on an ice cream sundae bender after being overlooked for a promotion by his Krusty Krab burger joint boss. You'll laugh, even if you don't understand the context.--MP

Team America: World Police

4 stars (R, 98 min.) "South Park" masterminds Trey Parker and Matt Stone outrageously skewer anyone participating in the debate over American identity and foreign diplomacy, delivering equal-opportunity hilarity. The plot follows a task force's exploits to prevent terrorist attacks all over the world. The characters are marionettes who battle, sing, grandstand, puke and have sex. The film essentially isolates the overearnest American response 9/11 and makes it seem even more ridiculous.--MP

Reviews by: AA: Anthony Allison; ADV: Anthony Del Valle; JC: Jeannette Catsoulis; MP: Mike Prevatt; RC: Robert Chancey