Collateral Dreamworks SKG
Starring Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx & Jada Pinkett Smith
Directed by Michael Mann
Rated: R
Reviewed by Shel Desormeaux
Michael Mann spent much of the 70s and 80s writing for slick, trite cop shows like Starsky & Hutch and Miami Vice. Police partners as protectors of their turf, their city. Two men of the law against the night and the vermin that crawl out into the dark. Then he directed Last of the Mohicans, but I digress.
With Collateral, Michael Mann has directed one of the most fucked up buddy movies on the planet. Max Durocher (Jamie Foxx) is a cab driver who has had his job for so long that he can time a fare anywhere in the city down to a minute. As luck would have it, his type is just the man that a cool-yet-twitchy Vincent (Tom Cruise) needs to chauffeur him about the town as he completes his midnight errands.
Visually, the film’s a stunner. Set in L.A., it’s a perfect atmosphere in which to cultivate the bitchy Vincent’s theory that one single person is of no real significance (which is easy for Tom Cruise to say, but anyway). It’s shiny, with plenty of flashy guns and hot pursuits, because hey, even useless cops have to have something to do.
Tom Cruise is probably perfectly cast, and Foxx does a pretty good job of wandering about most of the movie in a stupor, presumably induced by the contrast between his lackluster former existence and the sudden and consistent appearances made by a gun muzzle near his ear. But the support cast is disappointing. Current It-Guy Mark Ruffalo was almost unrecognizable to me. Jada Pinkett-Smith, while lovely, is just lovely. She’s a more than capable actress, but her abilities are wasted in a movie such as this. It was nice to see suave and understated Javier Bardem (Dance with the Devil, The Dancer Upstairs) cast as the head-nasty responsible for all of this blasting of windows and running around, but again, he was underused.
Bottom line is: Tom should think about playing a gracefully aging asshole again sometime. It’s the first Cruise movie I’ve enjoyed in ages, and I think the movie is enough for him to get out of the divorce-induced slump he’s found himself in. Granted, I’m not a huge fan, and it’s got to be saying something if I liked him best of all here. problem is, I don’t know what.
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The Exorcist: The Beginning Morgan Creek
Starring Stellan Skarsgård and a cast of no ones.
Directed by Renny Harlin
Rated: R
Reviewed by Shel Desormeaux
What worked with the original movie, The Exorcist, was its quiet intensity, the way it started with so much normalcy and clawed its way up into an abomination. Filmgoers had never seen anything like it, and truth be told, they really haven’t seen anything like it since.
Personally, I’ve never seen anything like this one either.
I sorely missed Jason Miller, the late actor/screenwriter who played the tormented Father Karras in the original, and Max Von Sydow as Father Merrin, the old priest who steps out of the shadows and into the darkness of young Regan MacNeil’s nightmare. The supporting cast was superb, the script simple and understated, and the book on which it was based is a classic
As for the prequel, I was weary of this steamy pile ten minutes into it. Directed by Renny Harlin (who brought you Cutthroat Island), it was so disjointed, and shifted so often, that it felt like all of the sequels crammed together, boldly led by the ballsy Stellan Skarsgård, who reminded me a lot of John Wayne and really didn’t do anything to deserve this, I’m sure. I liked the final act better when it was Evil Dead, and that’s all I’ve got to say about this puddle of sick.
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Starring Zach Braff, Ian Holm & Natalie Portman
Written and Directed by Zach Braff
Reviewed by Betsy Conklin
From the moment I first saw the preview for Garden State, it shot to the top of my list of upcoming must-see movies. While all that the preview portrayed was the otherwise simple story of a guy beginning to discover himself with the help of a new-found friend, Sam (Natalie Portman), it did so with a subtle humor that I couldn’t wait to get more of during the film itself. I wasn’t let down.
Zach Braff (who also wrote and directed Garden State) plays Andrew Largeman, a barely successful actor in California who has been taking prescribed lithium most of his life to suppress his supposedly aggressive behavior. The movie opens with a dream sequence, where Andrew is calmly sitting on a crashing airplane while everyone else is in hysterics, and then cuts to a shot of him laying in a bed in his sterile bedroom. Both scenes are suggestive of his lithium-induced detachment from real life and emotion. A phone call he receives from his father (played by Ian Holm) during the bedroom scene sets the premise for the movie when Andrew learns that his mother has died.
His Mother’s death and his return to New Jersey prompt Andrew to temporarily put his medications on hold while he attempts to bring his emotions back into check. Once he returns to his hometown, we follow Andrew through a number of entertaining mini-subplots where Braff’s subtle humor really shines through. From shots of Andrew standing in front of wallpaper wearing a shirt made from the same leafy material to a scene in a doctor’s office where there are so many awards on the wall that there is an overflow of one to the ceiling, Braff uses humorous little nuances to keep the storyline fresh and unique. These little breaths of humor also help lighten the somewhat serious mood of the plot, which, in the end, we realize is Andrew’s quest to explore the “infinite abyss” of death and life.
Braff shows us these brief glimpses of death throughout the film – Andrew’s mother’s funeral, Sam’s hamster’s funeral, footage of a train wreck playing on a background TV, a high school classmate thinking Andrew had committed suicide – and we see Andrew generally experience them seemingly without emotion. The life part of discovering the “infinite abyss” is represented in Sam who is as quirky and vibrant as Andrew is emotionally stifled.
Although a chance meeting brought them together, Andrew’s friendship and eventually romance with Sam is his saving grace. Her character is everything emotionally charged that Andrew has been missing his whole life. Throughout the film, we see his encounters with Sam and friends from Junior High help him to begin his exploration of what it means to feel grief, companionship, and, eventually, love. And, most importantly, the film ends not with Andrew coming to an impossibly quick understanding of himself and his emotions but with the realization that this is the beginning.
With memorable performances by Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, and Peter Sarsgaard and one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard, including Coldplay, The Shins, Nick Drake, Simon & Garfunkel, Frou Frou and more, the film is a fantastic package of dramatic talent, music, and an entertaining story infused with a subtle humor that every screenwriter, director, and actor could only hope to bring to the screen
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Suspect Zero Paramount
Starring Ben Kingsley, Carrie-Anne Moss & Aaron Eckhart
Directed by E. Elias Merhige
Rated: R
Reviewed by Kirk Buchner
Take the imagery of Se7en, character homages of The Silence of the Lambs, and the supernatural of The Sixth Sense and you get Suspect Zero, the latest psychological thriller on the market. Sadly, these attributes do not equal a fresh and innovative film but rather a movie we feel we have seen before.
The plot revolves around former FBI agent Benjamin O’Ryan (Ben Kingsley) who was trained to use his mind for profiling serial killers. This plot point, revealed as a surprise half way through the film, offers no suspense, as the film’s trailer reveals the only real plot twist in the film. Kingsley plays the role convincingly and again makes an excellent antagonist, a familiar role since his Academy Award-nominated turn as a ruthless British gangster in Sexy Beast.
His “opponent”, for lack of a better term, is Tom Mackelway: a demoted FBI agent reassigned to Albuquerque, New Mexico after blowing procedure on a high profile serial killer case. Mackelway is played well by Aaron Eckhart, who manages to hold his own against the talented Kingsley. Both are ambiguous figures with whom we neither empathize nor feel disdain for; they are shades of grey as different as they are similar. This might be the only place where director E. Elias Merhige shines. The characters are not bland for lack of effort. The effort is placed to refrain from showing true depth. Even the token love interest, Carrie Ann Moss, is subdued, deliberately neutered, and thus prevented from showing any real spark. Even the weather plays a factor, as torrential rain competes with desert sun throughout the movie. Does it really rain so much in the American Southwest?
Overall this was an adequate film, but in quoting the great Yankees catcher, “it was déjà vu all over again”.
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Vanity Fair Focus Features
Starring Reese Witherspoon & Gabriel Byrne
Directed by Mira Nair
Rated: PG-13
Reviewed by Shel Desormeaux
It all started so well.
In the first thirty minutes of Vanity Fair, most of the characters are introduced and established amid charming dinner tableaus and determined carriage rides. The charming and feisty Becky Sharp (Witherspoon) and her best friend, Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), leave their academy to embark on other things. Amelia has fallen for an arrogant soldier, and spends most of the film chasing him and mooning about. Becky, however, feels she is meant for grander things, beginning an eager, focused climb to the highest rung of society’s ladder. Not without, of course, many heartbreaking costs.
Director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) has a stacked deck of a cast, thankfully. There isn’t a single incapable or lost actor of the lot. Romola Garai is perfect as the sweet and loyal best friend and the hopeless romantic. Reese Witherspoon plays Becky with a flawless English accent and too many around-the-corner titters. That sharp chin of hers lends her character defiance and a bit of poise, but she plays her too innocently and too well meaning. Having never read the novel, I can’t say whether or not Thackeray had intended her to be calculating, but I expect not.
A classic novel, a steady director, a solid cast, and a decent script. And yet, after that first half hour, the sparkle was gone. Witherspoon is charming in whatever she’s in, but she’s also cute and ages too well. As peoples’ lives fall apart in a myriad of ways, Becky looks bewildered in her baubles and Nair attempts to let her shine, but it’s too much. Miss Sharp is supposed to be a heroine, but for what deed? Her character isn’t strong enough for heroics, and the other characters are kept from holding her up.
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We Don't Live Here Anymore Warner Independent Picutres
Starring Mark Ruffalo, Laura Dern, Peter Krause & Naomi Watts
Directed by John Curran
Rated: R
Reviewed by Adam D. Miller
Adultery is one of the most heinous sins. But much more than a sin, it is something that can obliterate any sense of family and friendship that those involved in its spell may have once valued. We Don’t Live Here Anymore is the story of two couples, Jack and Terry Linden (Ruffalo and Dern) and Hank and Edith Evans (Krause and Watts), and how their marriages and friendships are affected by the extramarital affair Jack and Edith have found themselves involved in.
Dramatic and brooding, the acting in We Don’t Live Here Anymore is superb, with each actor pushing the limits of emotion, particularly sorrow and anger. Each main character in the film cries very convincingly at least once, except for Krause (fascinating, considering how convincing the tears of Nate, his character on Six Feet Under, are). The hysteria of Laura Dern as Terry, while over-the-top at times, works well with the brand of character she plays, which is the scattered and boozing mother who is disillusioned by the collapse of her marriage. Jack failingly attempts to remain a good husband and father, despite devoting more and more of himself to his affair with Edith. Ruffalo and Watts make convincing adulterers, evoking both the panic and wicked desire of conducting inappropriate love. Krause manages to fall into the cracks, receiving the least in the way of dialogue and focus (not to mention character development, something that is sure to disappoint fans of Six Feet Under, who were excited to see him in a film role).
The direction and cinematography in We Don’t Live Here Anymore is captivating, if not indulgent. The train and traffic light motifs that occur regularly are distracting and add nothing to the film. However, Curran displays the passing of time in an effective way. As the film progresses, we watch the seasons change, as things grow more distant between the characters onscreen. The result is a character study with characters and subject matter that many of us can understand, with our emotional response largely depending on just how much we truly identify with their situations.
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