Movies : July 2001

27 July 2001

Planet of the Apes (2001)

Captain Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) is part of a United States Air Force that is too chicken to do space exploration with humans, so it has tinkered genetically with a few great apes so that they can pilot tiny spaceships into danger. When one of the chimpanzees that Davidson is particularly fond of disappears in an electromagnetic storm our protagonist breaks the rules and follows the ape pilot into the storm. Crashing into a handy planet, he quickly discovers that the human inhabitants are being herded by apes at the behest of an orangutan slave trader. Of course, his first impulse is to escape. When Davidson discovers the big secret of the planet after an absurdly short walk, his troubles are just beginning. Did I like it? It’s difficult to credit all the logical and genetic howlers. Suffice it to say that there is a reason everyone speaks English (indeed, the humans do speak in this one). Yes, the makeup is a big improvement over 1968 but who is to say whether it is makeup or animation? Decades of observation in the wild allow the inclusion of a few extra behaviors, and the characters are certainly more arboreal. But great apes afraid of water, and not one can come up with a boat? And where did the genes for blonde hair (Estella Warren) among the human population come from?

119 minutes.

21 July 2001

Sexy Beast

Uh-oh, I should have attended an open-captioned screening for this one! A British criminal has retired to the Spanish coast with his wife and is very happy with his wife and his pool. When word comes that a former associate is on the way to recruit him for a no risk job, no one is happy. Did I like it? I was just supporting the AMC Hoffman Center in choosing something off-beat. Half of the dialogue is impenetrable, the London accents are so thick. I would tend to agree that Ben Kingsley’s Don Logan, the enforcer who won’t take no for an answer, is the only reason to see this. It certainly can’t be for the flesh broiling under the Spanish sun displayed by Ray Winstone.

88 minutes.

20 July 2001

America’s Sweethearts

Hmm. To go or not? On the one hand, I am strongly negative to John Cusack and weakly negative to Billy Crystal. On the other hand, I am weakly positive to Julia Roberts (I skipped The Mexican after all) and, after the disappointment of Traffic, to Catherine Zeta-Jones. One weekend’s disaster of a press junket for a lousy science-fiction film no one has seen yet—the director (Christopher Walken) is holding the negative hostage—requires the reluctant publicity director Lee Thomas (Crystal) to bring the separated couple Eddie Thomas and Gwen Harrison (Cusack and Zeta-Jones) together while personal assistant Kiki (Roberts) struggles with her resentment of her sister Gwen and her attraction to Eddie. Did I like it? I certainly didn’t change my opinion of anyone in the cast. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve actually seen assembled scenes: the cut between Crystal saying I know someone to Roberts striding out of the door and down the hall is in the film. (They do, however, use a different gag between Crystal and the intimately friendly dog.) It is funny, but not so much that it improves on the scenes in Notting Hill about a press junket for a lousy science-fiction film. The implicit approval of the lust for (and of) a married man and the obsession with male endowment, while they may accurately reflect preoccupations in Hollywood, take away from its appeal. For some reason, it bothered me that I could not figure which was the younger and which the older sister in the relationship between screen diva Gwen and doormat Kiki.

103 minutes.

11 July 2001

Final Fantasy The Spirits Within

Aboard a space station orbiting Earth in the year 2065, the young woman Aki (Ming-Na Wen) dreams of a desolate planet. Thirty four years ago, a large meteorite crashed into the Earth and unleashed an assault of incorporeal creatures known as phantoms (which kill by ripping the spirit out whole) from which Earth is barely hanging on. Following the theories of the genial Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland), Aki searches the Earth for eight lifeforms whose spirits each have a wave pattern which will combine to negate the pattern of the alien menace. We join the story as Aki braves Old New York (a Ford Taurus from 60 years previous litters the abandoned street) looking for the seventh spirit. Uh-oh. Someone better tell these Hawaiians that Old New York is the southern tip of Manhattan, not Times Square. Did I like it? Yes. The audacity of photorealistic animation of humans can take the film only so far, but by then the threat to our protagonist and Earth has been clearly established. There follows action (er, sci-fi violence ) that fans of Aliens and Starship Troopers will appreciate. And it is kind of funny to hear Steve Buscemi’s voice coming out of a handsome face.

105 minutes.

06 July 2001

Legally Blonde

Malibu Barbie Doll goes to Harvard Law School. Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon), having been dumped by her old-money boyfriend Warner Huntington III (Matthew Davis), schemes to win him back by following him to class as an enrolled student. Her 4.0 grade average with a major in fashion merchandising and bikini-filled video essay manage to get her into the freshman class. (Apparently, cramming for the LSAT works.) But she never rented The Paper Chase (I’m guessing the author of the book did) and she struggles with the coursework and the challenge of a fiancée (Selma Blair) already in place. When sorority sister Brooke (Ali Larter) is up on murder charges, she has a chance to assist a professor with the defense preparations and find her place in the world irrespective of her love life. Did I like it? Yes. This film goes a long way on Witherspoon’s sunny performance (with much the same determination her character had in Election) before the kitchen logic catches up to it. What was the boyfriend doing at a no-name California college in the first place? Why is the prosecution witness being sworn in again when tesifying for the defense? How can a screenplay invoke the word diversity when the most divergence exhibited is a lesbian who doesn’t know the etymology of the word semester ?

95 minutes.

04 July 2001

Scary Movie 2

Let’s pretend that I went to see this because of the trailer for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. (Look for it August 24th!) Did I like it? No. At least the previous one could trade on the energy of the scripts for Scream. But The Haunting? Shudder.

82 minutes.

03 July 2001

Crazy/Beautiful

For a stoner, she sure knows her way around a variety of cameras. We first meet Nicole Oakley (Kirsten Dunst) as she spears trash along the beach as part of her sentence of community service. From the boardwalk she is spotted by Carlos Nuсez (Jay Hernandez) who claims to recognize her from Pacific High School. This seems unlikely to Nicole, since she is the bored, disaffected daughter with a rich stepmother that hates her. She doesn’t even like to go to school, and she’s certainly never been to a football game. Carlos, from a single parent family which lives much to the east of downtown in Los Angeles, is so eager to get good grades and enter the United States Naval Academy and be a pilot that he endures the long bus ride to the better high school on the coast. As sex turns to love, the parents disapprove. It’s every parent’s nightmare, right? The son with youth and promise threatened by destruction at the hands of the needy, broken woman? Did I like it? As a drama which is rated PG-13, we cannot see Nicole drink, take drugs, or have random sex. We have to take their word that the character is drunk or wasted. The mystery of a film in which the main character insists she’s not always drunk when a bottle has barely touched her lips (there’s no vomiting, either) takes away from the realism. Dunst is offered a few scenes in which to emote, but the love will triumph ending is disappointing. Run away, Carlos!

97 minutes.

Entries subject to editing at any time. Last edited on: 12-Sep-2004