No animals were harmed in the making of this movie. Everybody else was on their own.
The most fun you can have on video.
There's Just Something About Her...
Warning: The guys who did 'Dumb & Dumber' and 'Kingpin' bring you a love story.
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Ted was a geek in high school, who was going to go to the prom with one of the most popular girls in school, Mary. The prom date never happened, because Ted had a very unusual accident. Thirteen years later he realizes he is still in love with Mary, so he hires a private investigator to track her down. That investigator discovers he too may be in love with Mary, so he gives Ted some false information to keep him away from her. But soon Ted finds himself back into Mary's life, as we watch one funny scene after another.
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What a blessed relief is laughter. It flies in the face of manners, values, political correctness and decorum. It exposes us for what we are, the only animal with a sense of humor. ``There's Something About Mary'' is an unalloyed exercise in bad taste, and contains five or six explosively funny sequences. OK, five explosive, one moderate.I love it when a movie takes control, sweeps away my doubts and objections, and compels me to laugh. I'm having a physical reaction, not an intellectual one. There's such freedom in laughing so loudly. I feel cleansed.``There's Something About Mary'' is the latest work by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, brothers whose earlier credits include ``Dumb & Dumber'' and ``Kingpin.'' Good taste is not their strong suit. ``Dumb & Dumber'' includes a scene where a blind boy realizes his parakeet's head is held on with Scotch tape. ``Kingpin'' includes a scene where a bowler's artificial hand gets stuck in the ball and rolls down the alley, flop flop flop.Now here is a movie about a woman who is beautiful, sunny, good and pure, and inspires a remarkable array of creeps to fall in love with her. There's ... just something about her. Mary is played by Cameron Diaz as a high school knockout who amazes the geeky Ted (Ben Stiller) by asking him to the prom, even though he has pounds of braces on his teeth. (``I have a thing about braces,'' she muses, long after.) Ted turns up proudly for the date, only to set off the first of the movie's uproariously funny sequences when he asks to use the toilet and then somehow catches in his zipper that part of the male anatomy one least wants to think about in connection with zippers. (``Is it the frank or the beans?'' asks Mary's solicitous stepfather.) In a lesser film, that would be that: The directors would expect us to laugh at his misfortune, and the plot would roll on. Not the Farrelly Brothers. When they get something going, they keep on building, daring themselves to top each outrage. I won't reveal how the scene develops, apart from noting the perfect timing involved with the unexpected closeup.Thirteen years pass. Ted is still in love with Mary. He hires a sleazy investigator named Healy (Matt Dillon) to track her down. Healy, wearing one of those mustaches that shout ``distrust me!,'' finds her in Miami, discovers she is an unbelievable babe who is still single and decides to grab her for himself. He tells Ted that she weighs 250 pounds, has four children by three fathers and has just shipped out for Japan as a mail-order bride.Healy's trick is to eavesdrop on Mary's conversations, so he'll know just what she wants to hear. Among the things most important to her is her retarded brother Warren (W. Earl Brown), who doesn't like to have his ears touched. Healy poses as the person of her dreams (an architect with a condo in Nepal, who loves to work with retarded people), but he raises the suspicions of another of her suitors, Tucker (Lee Evans), who is an architect who uses crutches. Maybe.Further plot description would be pointless. The plot exists, like all screwball plots, simply to steer us from one gag to the next. In the TV ads, you may already have seen the moment when the dog of Mary's deeply tanned neighbor needs to have its heart restarted. That's because the dog has been tranquilized. There also is a scene where the dog is on speed, and his human target does things with walls and furniture not seen since Donald O'Connor's ``Make 'Em Laugh'' sequence in ``Singin' in the Rain.'' Then there are the peculiar and intimate preparations Ted goes through in anticipation of his first date with Mary. I have paused here at the keyboard for many minutes, trying to decide how to describe them (a) in a family newspaper, and (b) without spoiling the fun. I cannot. I will simply observe in admiration that after the scene explodes in disbelieving, prolonged laughter, the Farrellys find a way to blindside us with a completely unanticipated consequence that sets us off all over again.Among the other characters in the movie are Chris Elliott, as Dom, a friend of Ted's, who has a nervous skin condition (``Do you know what it feels like to have a whitehead on your eyeball?''), and Magda (Lin Shaye), the neighbor, whose tan makes her look like she's been put through the same process that produces Slim Jims. Magda is funny in a bizarre over the top way, but Dom is more creepy than funny, or is it just that we're afraid we'll catch his skin rash? Stanley Kauffmann, the great film critic of The New Republic, was on Charlie Rose's show the other night, sharing the discoveries of 40 years as a film critic. What he has noticed over the years, he said, is that we are getting more good dramatic films than in the old days--but fewer good entertainments. It is easier to excel at drama than at comedy. I have no idea if Kauffmann will like "There's Something About Mary," but his point applies for me: After months and months of comedies that did not make me laugh, here at last is one that did.Download here
There's Something About Mary (Comedy,Romance)
Music and Lyrics (Comedy,Music,Romance)
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Cheery Alex Fletcher lives comfortably in Manhattan off the residuals from his 80's pop success and reprising his hits at school reunions, theme parks, and state fairs. But those gigs are declining, so he jumps at the chance to write a song and record it with reigning teen idol Cora Corman. Trouble is, he's good at melodies but needs a lyricist and has less than a week to finish. Enter Sophie Fisher, subbing for a friend who waters Alex's plants; she's a pretty good poet, quick witted, and could do it, if she'd agree. But there's some sort of shadow over her head that Alex may not be able to charm his way past. And what if they do get a song written, what then?
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It's impossible not to feel affection for "At Long Last Love," Peter Bogdanovich's much-maligned evocation of the classical 1930s musical. It's a light, silly, impeccably stylish entertainment, and if the performers don't come up to the comparisons they evoke with the genius of Astaire and Rogers, that's not entirely their fault; the studio tradition that developed and nurtured the great musical stars no longer exists, and a movie like this has to be made from scratch.Well, not altogether from scratch: The music and lyrics are all by Cole Porter, a special enthusiasm of Bogdanovich and his star, Cybill Shepherd, who recorded an album of Porter last year. There are 16 Porter classics, and in an age when original songs composed for the movies tend to seek the level of "Love Theme from the Towering Inferno," maybe it's a good idea to go back to the golden age of popular American composition and cherish once again "It's De-Lovely," "Well, Did You Evah?," "Just One of Those Things" and the title song (which, legend has it, Porter acually began writing while waiting for the doctors to arrive at the scene of the accident that crippled him for life).Bogdanovich has found a story and setting that sound the right tone in company with the songs. His screenplay involves a sophisticated (and yet sometimes childishly innocent) dalliance among four members of the idle rich or would-be rich (everyone's idle). There's Burt Reynolds as a playboy millionaire, Miss Shepherd as a beautiful heiress, Madeline Kahn as a Broadway star and Dullio Del Prete as a seductive Italian gambler. They sip champagne almost without respite, dance the night away, run through a series of wrecked limousines and touring cars, trade partners and try never, ever, to be bored: It's like 'Private Live' rewritten by Thorne Smith.The story, of course, is totally inconsequential, as it should be, and Bogdanovich is good at keeping it floating some few inches above the ground; he's not giving us a tribute to the great musicals like "Swing Time" and "Top Hat," he's trying to make another one. He doesn't succeed, primarily because his performers aren't really suited to musical comedy, but he doesn't fail to the extent some of the reviews would have you believe.Cybill Shepherd is a wonder to behold, but she isn't a gifted singer and no regimen of voice lessons is going to make her one. She didn't do a very good job on her Cole Porter album, and she's no better here, although at least we're permitted to see her as she sings, and that provides a certain compensation. Before Bogdanovich, a devoted student of movie classics, makes further attempts to present Miss Shepherd as a singer, he'd do well to rerun "Citizen Kane," particularly the scene of Susan Alexander's disastrous opera debut.Burt Reynolds, on the other hand, isn't really expected to sing and dance well; the fun is in watching him try to have fun in a low-key way without making a fool of himself, and he generally succeeds. His Clark Gable-style moustache and his over all bearing remind us of Gable grinning foolishly during absurd production numbers and having a ball. Miss Kahn is tart and has a nice edge, Del Prete is a satisfactory Latin lover and there's a very funny, understated supporting performance by John Hillerman as Rodney the butler.The movie's no masterpiece, but I can't account for the viciousness of some of the critical attacks against it. It's almost as if Bogdanovich is being accused of the sin of pride for daring to make a musical in the classical Hollywood style. "At Long Last Love" isn't "Swing Time," but then it isn't "Funny Lady" either, thank God. Bogdanovich has too much taste, too sure a feel for the right tone, to go seriously wrong. And if he doesn't go spectacularly right, at least he provides small pleasures and great music.Download here
Coyote Ugly (Comedy,Drama,Music,Romance)
This party never ends.
Tonight, they're calling the shots.
Wanna dance? The hottest party of the year.
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Sexy, romantic comedy about a girl in her early 20s named Violet Sanford going to NYC to pursue a dream of becoming a songwriter. Violet gets a "day" job as a bar maid at a nightclub called Coyote Ugly. Coyote Ugly is the city's newest hot spot were the employees are a team of sexy, resourceful women that provoke the clientele and press with their mischief.
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"Coyote Ugly" is a cliff-hanger in which Piper Perabo ventures into a Jerry Bruckheimer production and escapes more or less untouched.The film stars Perabo as one of a group of heedless wenches who dance on a bar and pour straight shots down the throats of the seething multitude. In a movie of this sort, it is inevitable that the song "I Will Survive" will sooner or later be performed by drunken pals. Next week's opening, "The Replacements," makes us wait an hour to hear it. "Coyote Ugly" takes no chances and puts it under the opening titles. Do you get the feeling these movies are assembled from off-the-shelf parts? There is a story beloved in movie lore about the time Howard Hawks asked John Wayne to appear in "El Dorado." Wayne had already starred in Hawks' "Rio Bravo" and "Rio Lobo," which were essentially the same picture. So was "El Dorado." "Shall I send over the script?" asked Hawks. "Why bother?" asked the Duke. "I've already been in it twice." Does Jerry Bruckheimer have the same nagging feeling of deja vu as he compares each new screenplay to those that have gone before? I wonder if he suspects his movie may not be original, as he contemplates a story about a girl from New Jersey who dreams of being a songwriter, moves to Manhattan, meets a guy, gets a job and has a heart-rending reconciliation with her dad, all in a movie that ends (yes, it really does) with the final line, "What do you do when you realize all your dreams have come true?" Bruckheimer and his director bring superb technical credits to this wheezy old story, and they add wall-to-wall music to make it sound like fun. But you can pump up the volume only so far before it becomes noise. I don't ask for startling originality in a movie like "Coyote Ugly." I don't object to the scene in which the heroine and her guy neck in a convertible and regard the lights on a Manhattan bridge. I am not even surprised that the hero drives a classic car (no characters in Bruckheimer movies drive cars less than 25 years old unless they are parents or gangsters). I don't even mind the obligatory line, "It's payback time!" All I ask is that I be surprised a couple of times. Give me something I can't see coming and make it more unexpected than a beloved character getting hit by a car instead of having a heart attack.In the movie, Perabo, who has big-time star power, plays Violet, a working-class girl from South Amboy, N.J., who packs up and moves to a cheap apartment in Chinatown (where she meets not a single Chinese person) and gets a job in Coyote Ugly, a bar that would be the result if you took the bar in "Cocktail" and performed reckless experiments on its DNA.It's the kind of bar you would fight to get out of--and you'd have to. Customers are jammed so tightly together, the fire marshal can barely wedge his way into the room. They are offered no mixed drinks, no wine, just "Jim, Jack, Johnny Red, Johnny Black and Jose--all my favorite friends," according to Lil (Maria Bello), the sexy blond who owns the club. "You can have it any way you want it, as long as it's in a shot glass." Violet auditions for her job, which consists of dancing on top of the bar, pouring drinks, dumping ice on customers who get into fights and spraying the others every so often with the soda gun. These are skilled dancers. They can do Broadway routines on a slippery bar top, while drunks grab at their ankles. Every once in a while, just for variety, they pour booze on the bar and set it on fire.Many of the movie's shots are high-angle, looking down at the customers, their mouths upturned and gulping like gasping fish. Illuminated by garish neon, they bear an uncanny resemblance to Hieronymus Bosch's paintings of the damned roasting in hell.After a shaky start, Violet becomes a hit at the bar; meanwhile, she tries to place tapes of her songs around town. She has stage fright, you see, and can't sing her own songs because she's afraid to sing in front of an audience, although she will obviously do almost anything else.She meets Kevin (Adam Garcia), an awfully nice Australian short-order cook who encourages her, and even bribes a guy to give her an audition by trading his precious Spider-Man comic. They would no doubt have steamy sex, except that Bruckheimer, a student of straws in the wind, knows this is the summer when PG-13, not his old favorite R, is the coveted rating. (His "Gone in 60 Seconds" was also PG-13, which may explain why Angelina Jolie was missing from most of the film.) "Coyote Ugly" finally leads up to the questions: (1) Does she find the courage to sing? (2) Do they stay together after their Idiot Plot Misunderstanding? and (3) Do all of her dreams come true? There is a reason to see the movie, and that reason is Piper Perabo, who I first noticed in "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle," writing that she was "so fetching she sort of stops the clock." She has one of those friendly Julia Roberts smiles, good comic timing, ease and confidence on the screen, and a career ahead of her in movies better than this one. Lots better.Download here
Friends with Money (Comedy,Drama,Romance)
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A drama about three married women, their husbands, and their lone single friend.
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"Friends With Money" resembles "Crash," except that all the characters are white, and the reason they keep running into each other is because the women have been friends since the dawn of time. Three of them are rich and married. The fourth is, and I quote, "single, a pothead and a maid." That's Olivia (Jennifer Aniston), who used to teach at a fancy school in Santa Monica, "but quit when the kids started giving her quarters."
The other friends are Jane (Frances McDormand), who screams at people who try to cut in line ahead of her; Christine (Catherine Keener), who writes screenplays with her husband, and Franny (Joan Cusack), whose biggest concern is that her husband spends too much money on their child's shoes. Jane's husband is Aaron (Simon McBurney). "He's so gay," says Olivia. Christine's husband is David (Jason Isaacs). They fight over what the characters should say in the screenplay they're writing, and then they simply fight: She tells him his breath stinks, and he tells her she's getting a lard butt. Not a demonstration of mutual support. Franny's husband is Matt (Greg Germann), whose problem, as far as this film is concerned, is that he has no problems.
The characters meet in various combinations and gossip about those not present, and all three couples spend a lot of time on the topic of Olivia, who they agree needs a husband, although their own marriages don't argue persuasively for wedded bliss. Olivia finally gets fixed up with a physical trainer named Mike (Scott Caan), who in some ways is the most intriguing character in the movie, and certainly the biggest louse. Consider how he asks to go along with her when she cleans houses, and what he asks her afterward, and the present he gives her, and the "friend from junior high school" he sees in a restaurant.
Meanwhile, the marriage of Jane and Aaron is melting down because of her anger. She's a famous dress designer who has decided not to wash her hair, which becomes so greasy her husband turns away from her in bed, although maybe he really is gay. Or probably not, and neither is his new friend, also named Aaron, although they do enjoy trying on sweaters together. Meanwhile, Christine and David are putting a second story on their house, which will give them a view, and we all know that if you're fighting, the best thing to do is remodel.
"Friends With Money" was written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, whose two previous features were wonderful studies of women and their relationships: "Walking and Talking" (1996) and "Lovely and Amazing" (2001). Both of them also starred Catherine Keener, who is expert at creating the kind of Holofcener character who speaks the truth with wit, especially when it is not required. Cusack can do that, too, although she is underused here.
The movie lacks the warmth and edge of the two previous features. It seems to be more of an idea than a story. Yes, it's about how Olivia's friends all have money, and at one point Jane suggests they simply give her some to bring her up to their level. As it happens, characters do exactly that in novels I've read recently by Stendhal and Trollope, but in modern Los Angeles, it is unheard of. If you have millions and your friend is a maid, obviously what you do is tell her how much you envy her. Working for a living is a charming concept when kept at a reasonable distance.
The parts of the movie that really live are the ones involving Olivia and the two men in her life. First, Mike, the fitness instructor, and then Marty (Bob Stephenson), a slob who lives alone, is very shy, and hires her to clean his house. When the rich friends go to a $1,000-a-plate benefit, they invite Olivia along, and she brings Marty, and when she goes to pick him up, she suggests that maybe he should think about wearing a tie. This he is happy to do. At the dinner, he smooths down the tie with pride and satisfaction. Watch the way Aniston regards him while he does this. She is so happy for him. At last she is the friend with money. Not cash money, it's true, but a good line of credit in the bank of love.Download here
Two for the Road (Comedy,Drama,Romance)
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The ten-year marriage of Mark and Joanna Wallace is on the rocks. In flashback they recall their first meeting, memorable moments in their courtship and early wedded life, their travels through Europe, their broken vow never to have children, and their increasing tensions that led to both of them having extra-marital affairs.
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Mona Lisa Smile (Comedy,Drama,Romance)
In einer Welt, die ihnen vorschrieb, wie man lebt, lehrte sie sie, wie man denkt. (In a world that told them how to live, she taught them how to think.)
They had everything. She showed them more.
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Set in 1953, Katherine Watson (Roberts) is a free-spirited graduate of UCLA who accepts a teaching post at Wellesley College, a women-only school where the students are torn between the repressive mores of the time and their longing for intellectual freedom.
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I find it hard to believe that Wellesley College was as reactionary in the autumn of 1953 as "Mona Lisa Smile" says it is -- but then I wasn't there. Neither were the screenwriters, who reportedly based their screenplay on Hillary Clinton's experience at Wellesley in the early 1960s. The film shows a school which teaches, above all, that a woman's duty is to stand by her man, and if Clinton learned that, she also learned a good deal more. No doubt she had a teacher as inspiring as Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts), who trades in the bohemian freedom of Berkeley for a crack at Wellesley's future corporate wives.This is the kind of school which actually offers classes in deportment, grooming and table setting, and the teacher of those classes, Nancy Abbey (Marcia Gay Harden) takes them so seriously that we begin to understand the system that produced Cathy Whitaker, Julianne Moore's showpiece wife in last year's "Far From Heaven." Watson finds her students scornful of her California background (every students makes it a point to be able to identify every slide of every painting in her first lecture), but she counterattacks with a blast of modern art, and there is a scene where she takes them to watch the uncrating of a new work by Jackson Pollock.Of course the board of trustees is suspicious of Katherine Watson, modern art and everything else that is potentially "subversive," and resistance among the undergraduates is led by Betty (Kirsten Dunst), whose mother is a trustee, whose plans include marrying an upward-bound but morally shifty Harvard man, and whose editorials in the school paper suggest Watson is leading her girls in the direction of communism and, worse, promiscuity. (A school nurse who gives advice on contraception has to leave her job.)We are pretty sure what the story parabola of "Mona Lisa Smile" will be (the inspiring teacher will overcome adversity to enlighten and guide), but the movie is more observant and thoughtful than we expect. It doesn't just grind out the formula, but seems more like the record of an actual school year than about the needs of the plot. In the delicate dance of audience identification, we get to be both the teacher and her students -- to imagine ourselves as a free spirit in a closed system, and as a student whose life is forever changed by her.But, you're wondering, how can I identify with a 30ish teacher and her 20ish female students? Don't you find yourself identifying with just about anybody on the screen, if the movie is really working? Katherine Watson is smart and brave and stands by her beliefs, and so of course she reminds us of ourselves.Julia Roberts is above all an actress with a winning way; we like her, feel protective toward her, want her to prevail. In "Mona Lisa Smile," she is the conduit for the plot, which flows through her character. The major supporting roles are played by luminaries of the first post-Julia generation, including not only Dunst, but Julia Stiles as Joan Brandwyn, a girl smart enough to be accepted by Yale Law but perhaps not smart enough to choose it over marriage; Maggie Gyllenhaal as Giselle Levy, who is sexually advanced and has even, it is said, slept with the studly young Italian professor, and Ginnifer Goodwin as Constance Baker, who is too concerned about her looks."A few years from now," the Wellesley students are solemnly informed, "your sole responsibility will be taking care of your husband and children." This is not a priority Watson can agree with. She tells the competent but conservative school president (Marian Seldes), "I thought I was headed to a place that would turn out tomorrow's leaders -- not their wives." Unlike the typical heroes of movies about inspiring teachers, however, she doesn't think the answer lies in exuberance, freedom and letting it all hang out, but in actually studying and doing the work, and she despairs when competent students throw away their futures (as she sees it) for marriage to men who have already started to cheat before their wedding days.Watson herself has a fairly lively love life, with a boyfriend in California (John Slattery) and now a warmth for the abovementioned studly Italian teacher (Dominic West), although it is probably not true, as a student rumor has it, that she had to come east because of a torrid affair with William Holden. The movie is not really about her romances at all, but about her function as a teacher and her determination to install feminism on the campus before that noun was widely in use. The movie, directed by Mike Newell, may be a little too aware of its sexual politics and might have been more absorbing if Katherine and her students were fighting their way together out of the chains of gender slavery. But the characters involve us, we sympathize with their dreams and despair of their matrimonial tunnel vision, and at the end we are relieved that we listened to Miss Watson and became the wonderful people who we are today.Download here
Four Weddings and a Funeral (Comedy,Drama,Romance)
Five good reasons to stay single
He's quite engaging. She's otherwise engaged.
love is on the air, run for cover
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The film follows the fortunes of Charles and his friends as they wonder if they will every find true love and marry. Charles thinks he's found "Miss Right" in Carrie, an American. This British subtle comedy revolves around Charlie, his friends and the four weddings and one funeral which they attend.
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Four Weddings and a Funeral," delightful and sly, is a comedy about people who seem to live out their lives in public, attending weddings. No doubt they have everyday lives as well, but the film doesn't supply them. Even in the case of the central character, a likable, shy, perennial best man named Charles (Hugh Grant), we're never told what he does for a living. Of course the film is British, and in Britain it is considered bad form to ask anyone what they do, so perhaps the film simply doesn't know.The movie is about an extended group of friends. Some of them probably met at school, and others have married into their various families, and they all know each other, more or less.Occasionally a new face pops up: Carrie, for example, the sparkling American girl who is a guest at the first wedding, turns up again at the second, and is scheduled to be married at the third.Carrie, played by Andie MacDowell, is one of those women who is not quite as confident as she seems. She's smart and beautiful, but she is engaged to marry an older man named Hamish (Corin Redgrave) who is so thick, confident and overbearing that you figure no one would marry him who didn't need to. Sure, she says she loves him. But she is clearly falling for Charles, and he for her.Their flirtation begins at the first ceremony, and their romance is consummated during the celebration following the second.She does most of the aggressing, because Charles is too reticent to ever come right out and say what he really feels - not even if the happiness of a lifetime depends on it.While Charles and Carrie fall in love, the movie introduces us in a haphazard way to a lot of the other members ofthe crowd. It's like being at a wedding. We glimpse people across a room, we meet them, we forget their names, we are reminded, and then we make a connection and figure outwho they're with - or not with, as the case may be. Among the regulars at all of the weddings, we grow especially fond of Gareth (Simon Callow), who eats too much and drinks too much, whose vest is too tight and manner too jolly, but who is, we can see, true blue. Eventually we catch on that he is gay, although in this as in most other personal matters the movie is subtle enough that we have to read social clues, just as we would at a wedding.Other regulars at the ceremonies include Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas), who used to date Charles and now would plainly like to start dating him again. Charles is doubly afflicted: He cannot tell a woman he likes her, and he also cannot tell her he dislikes her. He ends up back in Fiona's arms through a combination of loneliness, absent-mindedess and alcohol, and is engaged to her basically because he lacks the strength to make up his mind."Four Weddings and a Funeral" has been directed by Mike Newell, with the same kind of light-hearted enchantment that made his "Enchanted April" (1991) and last year's "Into the West" so seductive. Here, with his large cast, he moves nimbly through the crowd, making introductions with his camera. Luckily many of the scenes are set in large houses with room for the characters to creep away and engage in private drama.Hugh Grant, the star of the film, has been in a lot of movies, but this may be the one that makes him finally familiar to American audiences. He has a self-deprecating manner, a kind of endearing awkwardness, that makes you understand why a woman might like him - and why he might drive her mad while tap-dancing around his real feelings. MacDowell is much more open and direct ("more American," the movie must feel), and so it's intriguing to realize that while she is in love with a man she can say anything to, she's engaged to a man she basically has to lie to all the time.Like Kenneth Branagh's "Peter's Friends," this film forms a community that eventually envelops us. Also like that film, it's about how a homosexual character becomes a focus for much of what is best among the other characters, who are mostly straight; the gay man in both films is a center of good feeling, and helps create a sense of family. By the end of the movie, you find yourself reacting to the weddings, and the funeral, almost as you do at real events involving people you didn't know very well, but liked, and wanted to know better.Download here
Shipping News, The (Drama,Romance)
You'll never guess what you'll find inside...
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An inksetter in New York, Quoyle returns to his family's longtime home, a small fishing town in Newfoundland, with his young daughter, after a traumatizing experience with her mother, Petal, who sold her to an illegal adoption agency. Though Quoyle has had little success thus far in life, his shipping news column in the newspaper "The Gammy Bird" finds an audience, and his experiences in the town change his life. Then he meets the widow Wavey...
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Next Best Thing, The (Comedy,Drama,Romance)
He was smart, handsome and single. When her biological clock was running out, he was... the next best thing.
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A comedy-drama about best friends - one a straight woman, Abbie (Madonna), the other a gay man, Robert (Rupert Everett) - who decide to have a child together. Five years later, Abbie falls in love with a straight man and wants to move away with her and Robert's little boy Sam, and a nasty custody battle ensues.
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Cocktail (Comedy,Drama,Romance)
When he pours, he reigns.
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After leaving the Army, Brian Flanagan (Tom Cruise) tries to get a marketing job in New York. But without a college degree, this was not possible. He then decides to start studying for a business degree at the local City College and gets a part time job as a bartender. He realizes that its not that easy, but when his new boss Douglas Coughlin (Brian Brown) teaches him the secrets of the bar trade and they become the most famous bartenders in town. Both Brian & Doug Coughlin want their own top class cocktail bars someday and Brian's Cocktail Bar is to be called 'Cocktails & Dreams', and in order to get the necessary money to open it, Brian travels to Jamaica to work as a bartender at a resort Tiki Bar, and the pay is good. There he meets Jordan Mooney (Elisabeth Shue), a young and pretty, up and coming American artist on vacation with her girlfriend from New York, staying at the Island resort. Jordan and Brian spend some quality time together and fall in love. But when Brian takes a dare from his old buddy, Doug Coughlin to sleep with an older woman, who is also staying at the resort. Jordan, herself the daughter of wealthy parents back in New York, leaves the Island overnight, after seeing Brian and the older woman together after closing... Will Jordan ever forgive Brian and will they get back together???
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"Casablanca" was only 25 years old when I started as a movie critic, but I thought of it as an old movie. "The Godfather," which is behind most of the inspiration for "Shark Tale," is 32 years old, and "Jaws," its other inspiration, is 29 years old. Time slips into the future, and movies still fresh in our hearts are considered by younger audiences to be ancient classics.
Since the target audience for "Shark Tale" is presumably kids and younger teenagers, how many of them have seen the R-rated "Godfather" and will get all the inside jokes? Not a few, I suppose, and some of its characters and dialogue have passed into common knowledge. But it's strange that a kid-oriented film would be based on parody of a 1972 gangster movie for adults. Strange, too, that the movie's values also seem to come from "The Godfather," a study in situational ethics that preferred good gangsters with old-fashioned values (the Corleone family) to bad gangsters who sold drugs. Sure, it would be better for your kids to grow up to be more like Don Vito than Scarface, but what a choice.
The movie is the latest production of DreamWorks Animation, co-directed by Vicky Jenson ("Shrek"), Bibo Bergeron ("The Road to El Dorado") and Rob Letterman. It takes place on an underwater reef where sharks are the local gangsters, and run things from their headquarters on the hulk of the Titanic. Coral formations, undersea debris and vegetation combine to create an aquatic Times Square, and, as in "Shrek 2," real retailers have their Toon equivalents.
The movie doesn't follow the plot of "The Godfather" so much as recycle its characters, and the "Jaws" inspiration gets an early smile when the famous theme music, scary for people, is as inspiring to sharks as the national anthem. The story's hero is Oscar (voice by Will Smith), who works down at the Whale Wash. It's a mob front, run by Sykes (voice by Martin Scorsese), a puffer fish who has extraordinary eyebrows, for a fish. Oscar is deep in debt to Sykes, who assigns a couple of Rastafarian enforcers (Ziggy Marley and Doug E. Doug) to take him on a trip and teach him a lesson he'll never forget.
The mob is ruled by Don Lino (voice by Robert De Niro, channeling Marlon Brando), who is a ruthless but, by his own standards, a fair shark. His two sons are Frankie (Michael Imperioli), who has grown up to be a shark any dad can be proud of, and Lenny (Jack Black), who has disgraced the family by becoming a vegetarian. Lenny could found a reef chapter of PETA (Predators for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) on the basis of his activist intervention one night at dinner, when he sets a shrimp cocktail free.
Don Lino is fed up with Lenny, and orders Frankie to take the lad on a swimabout and teach him the life lessons of sharkhood. As luck would have it, they cross paths with Oscar and the enforcers, and when a ship's falling anchor kills Frankie, Oscar gets the credit. Since the reef lives in terror of the sharks, this makes him a local hero, and creates romantic suspense: Will he remain faithful to his long-time girlfriend Angie (Renee Zellweger), or be seduced by the charms of the local finne fatale, Lola (Angelina Jolie)? Reporting on all of this is the local anchorwoman, Katie Current, played by Katie Couric.
The problem with this story is that the movie pays too much attention to it, as if we really cared. Most successful animation has a basic level where even small children can easily identify. Little Nemo wanted to escape from the fish tank and return to his father in the ocean. Every kid understood that. But how much will they care in "Shark Tale" that Oscar wants to clear his debt with the loan sharks and become rich and famous? Will they follow the romantic struggle involving the Zellweger and Jolie characters?
The movie lacks a port of entry for young viewers -- a character they can identify with. All of the major characters are adults with adult problems like debt, romance, and running (or swimming away from) the mob. In dealing with their concerns, the characters do way too much talking, maybe because the filmmakers were so thrilled to have great voice-over talent.In earlier days the voice-over dubbers for cartoons were anonymous, unless they were named Mel Blanc. Now they "star" in the movie, so that the posters for "Shark Tale" list De Niro, Smith, Zellweger and Jolie in big type at the top, as if we were really going to see them in the movie. To be sure, the fish look a little like their voice talents; I wonder if salaries go up when the voices for animation agree to have their faces and mannerisms borrowed.
There are a lot of funny moments in "Shark Tale," free-standing gags, clever lines, neat twists, but the movie never comes together into a convincing enterprise. It's so in love with its origins in gangster movies, and has so much fun with the voices of its famous actors, that it never really defines and sells the characters in a way the audience cares about. There's a point when you wish the filmmakers would drop the in-jokes and the subtle Hollywood references and just get on with it. The movie is likely to appeal to movie buffs more than to typical family audiences.Download here
Wedding Singer, The (Comedy,Music,Romance)
He's gonna party like it's 1985.
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Robby is stood up at the altar by Linda, who decides that the prospect of marrying a guy who sings at wedding receptions doesn't equal the attraction she felt when he was lead singer in a rock band. Robby finds consolation in his friendship with Julia, a waitress at the wedding receptions and bar mitzvahs where he performs. Julia asks Robby to help her plan her upcoming wedding to Glenn, who isn't interested in the details of the ceremony. Robby learns that Glenn also isn't totally interested in Julia and is marrying her because she "deserves it" after sticking with him for years and because he knows she's not marrying him for his money, since she dated him back before he started pulling down the big bucks.
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Well-to-do older white characters are often seen poorly dancing and poorly singing gangsta rap or modern R&B, always for laughs. See "Head of State," "Scary Movie 2," "Malibu's Most Wanted," "Bulworth," "Austin Powers 3," "The Wedding Singer," "The Super," etc.PATRICK KEYS, HOUSTONDownload here
Gigli (Comedy,Crime,Romance)
Murder. Blackmail. Temptation. Redemption. It's been a busy week.
The movie everyone is talking about. The couple everyone wants to be (Australian DVD cover)
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Gigli, a lowly and inept hitman, is assigned a job by the mob to kidnap a mentally retarded brother of a California district attorney. Gigli abducts the brother from his mental hospital and holds him hostage in his apartment. Ricki, a "lesbian assassin", is sent to oversee Gigli's job and make sure he doesn't screw it up. Comedic high jinks ensue as the two go on the lam and start to fall in love.
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Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are in love and plan to get married, as you already know unless you are sealed off from all media, in which case you are not reading this review, so put it down. Because they are a famous couple, starring in a movie romance, we expect something conventional and predictable and that is not what we get from "Gigli." The movie tries to do something different, thoughtful, and a little daring with their relationship, and although it doesn't quite work, maybe the movie is worth seeing for some scenes that are really very good.Consider the matching monologues. They've gotten into an argument over the necessity of the penis, which she, as a lesbian, feels is an inferior device for delivering sexual pleasure. He delivers an extended lecture on the use, necessity and perfect design of the appendage. It is a rather amazing speech, the sort of thing some moviegoers are probably going to want to memorize. Then she responds. She is backlit, dressed in skintight workout clothes, doing yoga, and she continues to stretch and extend and bend and pose as she responds with her speech in praise of the vagina. When she is finished, Reader, the vagina has won, hands down. It is so rare to find dialogue of such originality and wit, so well written, that even though we know the exchange basically involves actors showing off, they do it so well, we let them.Affleck plays Larry Gigli, rhymes with "Geely," and one wonders, learning that they rejected several earlier titles for the movie, which ones could have been worse than this. He's an errand boy for a tough-talking Los Angeles mobster named Louis (Lenny Venito). Louis wants to do a favor for a New York mob boss, and orders Gigli to kidnap the mentally retarded brother of a federal prosecutor. Gigli does, walking out of a care facility with Brian (Justin Bartha), who has Rain Man's syndrome. He takes him home, there is a knock on the door, and he meets Ricki (Lopez), who is also a mob enforcer. Louis is taking no chances and has assigned both of them to guard the boy.This is the set-up for an obvious plot that the movie, written by director Martin Brest, wisely avoids. Instead of falling in love and psychically adopting Brian, or (alternate cliche) fighting all the time, Gigli and Ricki get to like each other very, very much, even though she makes it perfectly clear that she is a lesbian. So resolute is the movie in its idea of her character that she doesn't even cave in and have a conversion experience, which is what we're expecting, but remains a lesbian--as indeed, as a good lesbian, she should.Their conversations take on a rather desperate quality, since Gigli feels lust and love, and she feels strong affection. What transpires between them, and whether they ever put their theories about genitalia through a field test, I will not reveal. Meanwhile, Brian behaves like a well-rehearsed Movie Retarded Person, does or doesn't do whatever the script requires, and conveniently disappears into his room when he is not needed.Lopez and Affleck are sweet and appealing in their performances; the buzz said they didn't have chemistry, but the buzz was wrong. What they don't have is conviction. There is no way these two are killers for the mob. They don't have the disposition for it. And consider this: If you had kidnapped the highly recognizable Rain Man brother of a top federal prosecutor, would you drive him all over Los Angeles in a convertible with the top down, and take him to restaurants and malls? So the crime plot is completely unconvincing. It does, however, open the door for the movie's collection of inspired supporting performances. Christopher Walken, as a cop who knows Gigli, walks into his apartment and does five minutes of Walkenizing and the audience eats up every second. Lainie Kazan, as Gigli's mother, sizes up Ricky instantly, likes her, learns she is a lesbian, chucks her under the chin and says, "But you've been with guys, right?" Then she talks about her own Highly Experimental youth, while solidifying her position as the ethnic mother of choice in modern American movies. And then toward the end, Starkman, the mob boss from New York, arrives, and is played in a cameo by Al Pacino--who makes the journey from extravagant dopiness to chilling intimidation faster and better than anyone else I can think of.So the movie doesn't work. The ending especially doesn't work, and what's worse, it doesn't work for a long time, because it fails to work for minute after minute, and includes dialogue which is almost entirely unnecessary. But there is good stuff here. Affleck and Lopez create lovely characters, even if they're not the ones they're allegedly playing, and the supporting performances and a lot of the dialogue is wonderful. It's just that there's too much time between the good scenes. Too much repetitive dialogue. Too many soulful looks. Behavior we can't believe. I wonder what would happen if you sweated 15 minutes out of this movie. Maybe it would work. The materials are there.Download here
Saving Silverman (Comedy,Crime,Romance)
From the director of "Big Daddy".
They swore nothing could come between them. Then she came along.
They swore nothing would come between them. Then evil walked in the door
They've sworn to save Silverman.
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Two dim-witted former high school buddys and Neil Diamond fanactics, Wayne and J.D., plot to keep their friend Darren from marrying the wrong woman, a domineering and spiteful psychologist named Judith by kidnapping her and trying to set Darren up with his old high school girlfriend Sandy who plans to become a nun.
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"Saving Silverman" is so bad in so many different ways that perhaps you should see it, as an example of the lowest slopes of the bell-shaped curve. This is the kind of movie that gives even its defenders fits of desperation.Consider my friend James Berardinelli, the best of the Web-based critics. No doubt 10 days of oxygen deprivation at the Sundance Film Festival helped inspire his three-star review, in which he reports optimistically, " `Saving Silverman' has its share of pratfalls and slapstick moments, but there's almost no flatulence." Here's a critical rule of thumb: You know you're in trouble when you're reduced to praising a movie for its absence of fart jokes, and have to add "almost." The movie is a male-bonding comedy in which three friends since grade school, now allegedly in their early 20s but looking in two cases suspiciously weathered for anyone under a hard-living 32, are threatened by a romance. Darren Silverman (Jason Biggs), Wayne Le Fessier (Steve Zahn) and J.D. McNugent (Jack Black) grew up together sharing a passion for the works of Neil Diamond; their sidewalk band, the Diamonds, performs his songs and then passes the hat.The band is broken up, alas, when Darren is captured by Judith Snodgrass-Fessbeggler (Amanda Peet), a blond man-eater who immediately bans his friends and starts transforming him into a broken and tamed possession. "He's my puppet and I'm his puppet master!" she declares, proving that she is unfamiliar with the word mistress, which does not come as a surprise. In a movie so desperately in need of laughs, it's a mystery why the filmmakers didn't drag Ms. Snodgrass-Fessbeggler's parents onstage long enough to explain their decision to go with the hyphenated last name.Wayne and J.D. concoct a desperate scheme to save Darren from marriage. They kidnap Judith, convince Darren she is dead and arrange for him to meet his first love, Sandy Perkus (Amanda Detmer), who is studying to be a nun. She hasn't yet taken her vows, especially the one of chastity, and is a major babe in her form-fitting novice's habit.I was going to write that the funniest character in the movie is the boys' former high school coach (R. Lee Ermey, a former Marine drill sergeant). It would be more accurate to say the same character would be funny in another movie, but is stopped cold by this one, even though the screenplay tries (for instance, when the boys ask Coach what to do with the kidnapped Judith, he replies, "kill her").The lads don't idolize Neil Diamond merely in theory, but in the flesh, as well. Yes, Diamond himself appears in the film, kids himself, and sings a couple of songs. As a career decision, this ranks somewhere between being a good sport and professional suicide. Perhaps he should have reflected that director Dennis Dugan has directed two Adam Sandler movies (both better than this)."Saving Silverman" is Jason Biggs' fourth appearance in a row in a dumb sex comedy (in descending order of quality, they are "American Pie," "Boys and Girls" and "Loser"). It is time for him to strike out in a new direction; the announcement that he will appear in "American Pie II" does not promise that.Steve Zahn and Jack Black are, in the right movies, splendid comedy actors; Zahn was wonderful in "Happy, Texas," and Jack Black stole his scenes in "High Fidelity" and "Jesus' Son." Here they have approximately the charm of Wilson, the soccer ball. Amanda Peet and Amanda Detmer do no harm, although Peet is too nice to play a woman this mean. Lee Ermey is on a planet of his own. As for Neil Diamond, "Saving Silverman" is his first appearance in a fiction film since "The Jazz Singer" (1980), and one can only marvel that he waited 20 years to appear in a second film, and found one even worse than his first one.Download here
40 Days and 40 Nights (Comedy,Drama,Romance)
It's Easy to Say But Harder To Do!
One man is about to do the unthinkable. No sex. Whatsoever. For... 40 Days and 40 Nights
One man is going to find out what it's like...
This March, sex takes a holiday
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Nicole broke up with Matt months ago and is now engaged to someone else. He's very good-looking and has no trouble finding other lovers, but that doesn't help because he's still obsessed with wanting her back. Then he gets the inspiration that swearing off sex for Lent (all forms of sexual activity, even kissing or masturbation) will give him the perspective he needs. So of course a few days later he meets a woman and they fall in love. Now Matt sees his vow as a personal matter, and won't even tell her about it, but his friends think otherwise, and now the complications begin...
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M att is weary of sex. Weary of himself as a sex partner. Weary of the way he behaves around women, weary of the way women make him behave, and weary of his treacherous ex-girl. So weary that he swears off sex for Lent in "40 Days and 40 Nights." On the scale of single guy sacrifice, this is harder than not drinking but easier than asking directions.Matt (Josh Hartnett) is a nice guy who is disgusted by his predatory sexual nature--at the way his libido goes on autopilot when he sees an attractive woman. The breakup with Nicole (Vinessa Shaw) is the final straw. She loved him, dumped him, still excites him, and no wonder; as Bagel Man, who makes morning deliveries to the office, observes, "She's so hot you need one of those cardboard eclipse things just to look at her." Matt gets some support from his brother John (Adam Trese), who is studying to be a priest and offers advice which is more practical than theologically sound, but nobody else in Matt's life believes he can go 40 days without sex. Certainly not a co-worker (Monet Mazur), who gives him her phone number on a Xerox of her butt.Then Matt meets Laundromat Girl. She is sweet, pretty, smart and something clicks. He tries to keep his distance and end the conversation before his dreaded instincts click in, but a week later he's back in the Laundromat and so is she. Her name is Erica (Shannyn Sossamon), and soon they are engaged in a courtship that proceeds, from her point of view, rather strangely. On their first real date, when the moment comes for their first kiss, they grow closer and quieter and then he gives her a high-five. What's up with this guy? "40 Days and 40 Nights" was directed by Michael Lehmann, who has a sympathy for his characters that elevates the story above the level of a sexual sitcom. He uses humor as an instrument to examine human nature, just as he did in the wonderful, underrated "The Truth About Cats and Dogs." Amazing, what a gulf there is between movies about characters governed by their genitals, and this movie about a character trying to govern his genitals.The world seems to conspire against him. The movie's single funniest scene involves dinner with his parents, where his father, who has just had a hip replacement, is delighted to show him a checklist of sexual positions still workable even while he is still wearing the cast. The second funniest scene involves a roommate who bursts into Matt's flat with an ultra violet lamp to check for telltale secretions on the sheets.Then Matt discovers to his horror that his coworkers have not only got up an office pool on how long he can go without sex, but have put the pool on a Web site. Matt looks at the site in disbelief: "You're selling banner ads?" When Erica sees the site, there's hell to pay.Hartnett shows here a breezy command of his charming, likable character. It is a reminder of his talent and versatility. After an actor stars in a movie that's widely disparaged, as Hartnett did with "Pearl Harbor," there is an unfair tendency to blame the film on him. The same thing happened to Kevin Costner after "The Postman." Actors we liked fall out of favor, as if they didn't work just as hard, and hope as much, for their flops as for their hits. Walking into this movie, I heard "Pearl Harbor" jokes ("40 days that will live in infamy"), but during the screening the screenplay kicked in and the next stage of Hartnett's career was officially declared open."40 Days and 40 Nights" does observe the plot conventions of a standard comedy, requiring Erica to persist in unreasonably obtuse behavior far beyond its logical time-span, but the details are fresh and writer Rob Perez's dialogue about sex has more complexity and nuance than we expect.And a romantic scene involving flower blossoms is unreasonably erotic. The ending, alas, goes astray, for reasons I cannot reveal, except to suggest that Nicole's entire participation is offensive and unnecessary, and that there was a sweeter and funnier way to resolve everything.Note: Not even under the end titles does the movie use the Muddy Waters classic "40 Days and 40 Nights." In an age when every song title seems to be recycled into a movie, what were they thinking of? Now in bookstores: The Great Movies by Roger Ebert (Broadway Books, $27.50), essays on 100 classic films, with photographs chosen by Mary Corliss of the Museum of Modern Art.Download here
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Action,Comedy,Romance,Thriller)
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John and Jane Smith are a couple who have been married for 6 years and things appear to be normal. But it appears that things are changing—they are seeing a marriage counselor. And what neither of them know is that they are professional assassins. However, they are both assigned by their employers to kill the same person. When they each try to take out the target, they get in each other's way and blow the job. Now they are told to go after the person who made them miss the target. And when they learn about each other, they try to take each other out.
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Saving Silverman (Comedy,Crime,Romance)
From the director of "Big Daddy".
They swore nothing could come between them. Then she came along.
They swore nothing would come between them. Then evil walked in the door
They've sworn to save Silverman.
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Two dim-witted former high school buddys and Neil Diamond fanactics, Wayne and J.D., plot to keep their friend Darren from marrying the wrong woman, a domineering and spiteful psychologist named Judith by kidnapping her and trying to set Darren up with his old high school girlfriend Sandy who plans to become a nun.
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"Saving Silverman" is so bad in so many different ways that perhaps you should see it, as an example of the lowest slopes of the bell-shaped curve. This is the kind of movie that gives even its defenders fits of desperation.Consider my friend James Berardinelli, the best of the Web-based critics. No doubt 10 days of oxygen deprivation at the Sundance Film Festival helped inspire his three-star review, in which he reports optimistically, " `Saving Silverman' has its share of pratfalls and slapstick moments, but there's almost no flatulence." Here's a critical rule of thumb: You know you're in trouble when you're reduced to praising a movie for its absence of fart jokes, and have to add "almost." The movie is a male-bonding comedy in which three friends since grade school, now allegedly in their early 20s but looking in two cases suspiciously weathered for anyone under a hard-living 32, are threatened by a romance. Darren Silverman (Jason Biggs), Wayne Le Fessier (Steve Zahn) and J.D. McNugent (Jack Black) grew up together sharing a passion for the works of Neil Diamond; their sidewalk band, the Diamonds, performs his songs and then passes the hat.The band is broken up, alas, when Darren is captured by Judith Snodgrass-Fessbeggler (Amanda Peet), a blond man-eater who immediately bans his friends and starts transforming him into a broken and tamed possession. "He's my puppet and I'm his puppet master!" she declares, proving that she is unfamiliar with the word mistress, which does not come as a surprise. In a movie so desperately in need of laughs, it's a mystery why the filmmakers didn't drag Ms. Snodgrass-Fessbeggler's parents onstage long enough to explain their decision to go with the hyphenated last name.Wayne and J.D. concoct a desperate scheme to save Darren from marriage. They kidnap Judith, convince Darren she is dead and arrange for him to meet his first love, Sandy Perkus (Amanda Detmer), who is studying to be a nun. She hasn't yet taken her vows, especially the one of chastity, and is a major babe in her form-fitting novice's habit.I was going to write that the funniest character in the movie is the boys' former high school coach (R. Lee Ermey, a former Marine drill sergeant). It would be more accurate to say the same character would be funny in another movie, but is stopped cold by this one, even though the screenplay tries (for instance, when the boys ask Coach what to do with the kidnapped Judith, he replies, "kill her").The lads don't idolize Neil Diamond merely in theory, but in the flesh, as well. Yes, Diamond himself appears in the film, kids himself, and sings a couple of songs. As a career decision, this ranks somewhere between being a good sport and professional suicide. Perhaps he should have reflected that director Dennis Dugan has directed two Adam Sandler movies (both better than this)."Saving Silverman" is Jason Biggs' fourth appearance in a row in a dumb sex comedy (in descending order of quality, they are "American Pie," "Boys and Girls" and "Loser"). It is time for him to strike out in a new direction; the announcement that he will appear in "American Pie II" does not promise that.Steve Zahn and Jack Black are, in the right movies, splendid comedy actors; Zahn was wonderful in "Happy, Texas," and Jack Black stole his scenes in "High Fidelity" and "Jesus' Son." Here they have approximately the charm of Wilson, the soccer ball. Amanda Peet and Amanda Detmer do no harm, although Peet is too nice to play a woman this mean. Lee Ermey is on a planet of his own. As for Neil Diamond, "Saving Silverman" is his first appearance in a fiction film since "The Jazz Singer" (1980), and one can only marvel that he waited 20 years to appear in a second film, and found one even worse than his first one.Download here
Two for the Road (Comedy,Drama,Romance)
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The ten-year marriage of Mark and Joanna Wallace is on the rocks. In flashback they recall their first meeting, memorable moments in their courtship and early wedded life, their travels through Europe, their broken vow never to have children, and their increasing tensions that led to both of them having extra-marital affairs.
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This is a complete directory of all Ebert's annual best movie lists since he began working as film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967. Click on any of the individual years at the tops of the lists to read his full essay about that year's films.
Gene Hackman, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway flee a bank robbery in "Bonnie and Clyde."
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Knight's Tale, A (Action,Adventure,Comedy,Romance)
He didn't make the rules. He was born to break them.
He Will Rock You
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Inspired by "The Canterbury Tales," as well as the story of Ulrich von Lichtenstein, this is the story of William, a young squire with a gift for jousting. After his master dies suddenly, the squire hits the road with his cohorts Roland and Wat. On the journey, they stumble across an unknown writer, Chaucer. William, lacking a proper pedigree, convinces Chaucer to forge genealogy documents that will pass him off as a knight. With his newly-minted history in hand, the young man sets out to prove himself a worthy knight at the country's jousting competition, and finds romance along the way.
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For the Moment (Drama,Romance,War)
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`Singles" tells the story of a loosely knit band of friends and neighbors who live in an apartment building in Seattle, and dream of love. They are all in their 20s, and reasonably attractive, and not particularly desperate, but they share a plight every one can identify with: The difficulty of finding a match between someone you like, and someone who likes you. It always seems work out that if one half of the equation is right, the other is wrong.One couple in the movie (Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick) seem to be more or less right for one another, but they play a dangerous game of one-upmanship, based on pride. Which one will telephone the other? How long should the other wait before calling back? They're thinking about each other so incessantly, they almost lose touch, because there is always a point at which a non-returned call stops being intriguing and becomes a rejection.Another would-be couple (Bridget Fonda and Matt Dillon) seems completely wrong. He is a drummer in a rock band, and cultivates a deliberately laid-back indifference to women in general and Fonda in particular. She of course assumes the fault is all her own. Visiting his apartment, she finds pinups of busty women. Is that what he likes? She visits a plastic surgeon, and in the movie's funniest scene fights a duel with him over the image of her hypothetical new body on his computer screen."Singles" was written and directed by Cameron Crowe, who has explored this territory before. He wrote the screenplay for "Fast Times at Ridgmont High," not my favorite movie, and then wrote and directed "Say Anything" (1989), which was one of the wisest and most touching movies about teenagers I have seen. Now, moving on to the twentysomethings, he has adopted a casual sketch style, where scenes are separated by blackouts and the point of each episode is to show some facet of human nature, usually one that makes us squirm.The movie will challenge some audiences simply because it is not a 1-2-3 progression of character and plot. There is no problem at the beginning and no solution at the end; the film is about a life process that is, by its very nature, inconclusive - the search for happiness. Crowe's insights into the material include one particular perception: In your 20s, you tend to spend more time putting yourself on the map than worrying about anyone else's happiness. Look at the earnestness with which the Scott character promotes his idea for a Seattle rapid-transit system. Does he believe in trains? Only to a degree. What he really believes in are HIS trains.The Bridget Fonda character, on the other hand, doesn't value herself highly enough. You can see that when she considers plastic surgery to please a guy who doesn't even like her in the first place.She wants to be an architect, but for the moment is working as a waitress. A wise man once said: "What you do instead of your real work . . . is your real work." Some of Crowe's sketches are pokes at easy targets, including those videotape dating services in which people advertise for partners. Sheila Kelley plays a young woman who is consciously shopping for an eligible man; she knows where they can be found, just as a hunter knows which watering holes attract the lions. There's a funny sequence where she goes to a videographer ("Batman" director Tim Burton) who will direct her in the kind of video that would probably attract only the kind of man she should stay far away from."Singles" is not a great cutting-edge movie, and parts of it may be too whimsical and disorganized for audiences raised on cause-and-effect plots. But I found myself smiling a lot during the movie, sometimes with amusement, sometimes with recognition. It's easy to like these characters, and care about them.Download here
Natural Born Killers (Action,Crime,Romance,Thriller)
In the media circus of life, they were the main attraction.
The Media Made Them Superstars.
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Delivery boy Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) falls in love with customer Mallory Wilson (Juliette Lewis). He soon helps her kill her abusive father (Rodney Dangerfield) and enabling mother (Edie McClurg), beginning their macabre journey down Route 666. Their M.O.: every few miles, they attack everyone within their site, invariably leaving only one person alive to tell the tale. The two are made famous by unscrupulous reporter Wayne Gale (Robert Downy jr.), as they run across the countryside, pursued by the equally sadistic Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore). Just before the trial, a ratings-whoring interview by the same reporter who made them famous leads to pandemonium, not just within the prison itself, but nationwide. A satire of the media, public opinion, and the modern attitude toward violence.
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Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" might have played even more like a demented nightmare if it hadn't been for the O.J. Simpson case. Maybe Stone meant his movie as a warning about where we were headed, but because of Simpson it plays as an indictment of the way we are now. We are becoming a society more interested in crime and scandal than in anything else - more than in politics and the arts, certainly, and maybe even more than sports, unless crime is our new national sport.If that's true, then Stone's movie is about the latest all-Americans, Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis), two mass murderers who go on a killing spree across America, making sure everybody knows their names, so they get credit for their crimes. (Terrorists always claim "credit" rather than "blame.") The movie is not simply about their killings, however, but also about the way they electrify the media and exhilarate the public. (One teenager tells the TV cameras, "Mass murder is wrong. But if I were a mass murderer, I'd be Mickey and Mallory!") The boom in courtroom TV has given us long hours to study the faces of famous accused murderers; we have a better view than the jury. Looking into their faces, I sense a curious slackness, an inattention, as if the trial is a mirage, and their thoughts far away. If they're guilty, it's like they're rehearsing their excuses for the crime. If they're innocent, maybe those empty expressions mean the courtroom experience is so alien they can't process it. Not once since he was arraigned have I caught a shot of Simpson looking normal in any way I can understand. His expression always seems to be signifying, "Yes, but . . ." Oliver Stone captures this odd emptiness, this moral inattention, in the faces and behavior of Mickey and Mallory. They're on their own frequency. The casting is crucial: Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis are both capable of being frightening, both able to project amorality and disdain as easily as Jack Lemmon projects ingratiation. There is a scene where a lawman is trying to intimidate Lewis, and he throws his cigarette onto the floor of her cell. She steps on it and rubs it out with her bare foot. Set and match."Natural Born Killers" is not so much about the killers, however, as about the feeding frenzy they inspire. During the period of their rampage, they are the most famous people in America, and the media goes nuts. There are Mickey and Mallory fan clubs and T-shirts; tabloid TV is represented by a bloodthirsty journalist played by Robert Downey Jr., who is so thrilled by their fame he almost wants to embrace them. The people Mickey and Mallory touch in the law industry are elated to be handling the case; it gives them a brush with celebrity, and a tantalizing whiff of the brimstone that fascinates some cops.Stone has never been a director known for understatement or subtlety. He'll do anything to get his effect, and that's one of the things I value about him. He understands that celebrity killers have achieved such a bizarre status in America that it's almost impossible to satirize the situation - to get beyond real life. But he goes for broke, in scenes of carnage like a prison riot, which is telecast live while the "host" gets caught up in the bloodlust.Yet you do not see as much actual violence as you think you do in this movie; it's more the tone, the attitude, and the breakneck pacing that gives you that impression. Stone is not making a geek show, with closeups of blood and guts. Like all good satirists, he knows that too much realism will weaken his effect. He lets you know he's making a comedy. There's an over-the-top exuberance to the intricate crosscut editing, by Hank Corwin and Brian Berdan, and to the hyperactive camera of Robert Richardson. Stylistically, the film is a cinematic bazaar, combining color and black and white, film and video, 35mm and Super 8, sitcom style and animated cartoons, fiction and newsreels. They're throwing stuff at the screen by the gleeful handfuls.And look how this film blindsided the good citizens of the MPAA classification board. The review panel threatened the film with the dreaded NC-17 rating, and after five appeals and some cutting finally granted the R rating. But read their parental warning: "For extreme violence and graphic carnage, for shocking images, and for strong language and sexuality." They've got the fever! I could point to a dozen more violent recent films that have left the MPAA unstirred, but Stone has touched a nerve here, because his film isn't about violence, it's about how we respond to violence, and that truly is shocking.Stone's basic strategy is to find the current buzzwords and buzzideas of crime and violence, and project them through the looking glass into a wonderland of murderous satire. It is a commonplace, for example, that many violent criminals were abused as children. All right, then, Stone will give us abuse: We see Mallory's childhood, shot in the style of a lurid TV sitcom, with Rodney Dangerfield as her drunken, piggish father. As he shouts and threatens violence, as he ridicules Mallory's thoroughly cowed mother, as he grabs his daughter and makes lewd suggestions, we hear a sitcom laugh track that grinds out mechanical hilarity. Everything is funny to the "live studio audience," because Dangerfield's timing is right for the punchlines. Never mind how frightening the words are. Who really listens to sitcoms, anyway? Everything is grist for Stone's mill. Look at Tommy Lee Jones, as Warden McClusky of Batongaville State Prison. He's seen too many prison movies, and he's intoxicated by the experience of being on TV. He rants, he raves, he curses, he runs his prison like a deranged slave plantation. And then here comes Downey, as Wayne Gale, who hosts a clone of "Hard Copy" or "America's Most Wanted." Using a Robin Leach accent that makes the whole thing into showbiz, he's so thrilled to be in the same frame with these famous killers that he hardly cares what happens to him. Watch his reaction in the final bloody showdown, when he believes he is immune because, after all, he has the camera.Seeing this movie once is not enough. The first time is for the visceral experience, the second time is for the meaning. As we coast into a long autumn where the news will be dominated by the O.J.Simpson trial, "Natural Born Killers" is like a slap in the face, waking us up to what's happening.Watching the movie, it occurred to me that I haven't met or talked with anyone who seemed genuinely, personally, angry that Simpson (or anyone else) might have committed those sad murders.Instead, people seem more intrigued and fascinated. The word grateful comes to mind. The case has given us all something to talk about. The barking dog. The blood tests. The ice cream that didn't melt. The matching glove. When the subject comes up at a party, you can almost feel the relief in the room, as everyone joins in: At last, a topic we can all get worked up about! Once we were shocked that the Romans threw Christians to the lions. Now we figure out a way to recycle the format into a TV show. That's what "Natural Born Killers" is all about.Download here
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