Movies : November 2001

25 November 2001

K–PAX

Isn’t it time for Jeff Bridges to wear his hair shorter? Maybe he thinks, if it worked for his father…. Anyway, Bridges plays Dr. Mark Powell working at the Psychiatric Center of Manhattan. Yeah, it says Manhattan on the sign out front, but if the ambulance taking Prot (Kevin Spacey) from Grand Central had to cross a bridge to get there, I say they’re on whatever that island in the East River is called now. Prot has been passed on from Bellevue because he matter-of-factly asserts that he is from the planet K–PAX. Powell begins the interviews and when Prot stumps Mark’s astrophysicist brother-in-law with an uncanny knowledge of orbital mechanics and claims he will leave on July twenty-seventh, the second wife-neglecting doctor works extra hard to unravel the mystery of Prot’s arrival and impending departure. Did I like it? I felt time really dragging during the hypnosis scenes. For all the build-up about where Prot comes from, the resolution is depicted as taking just a few search queries at Yahoo! leading to the archives of a New Mexico county newspaper from 1996. Say what?! Netscape Navigator was barely into version 2 that year! Where’d that county get the money to do that? The screenplay has nowhere to go but bloody literalism at the end, but the joke’s on the rest of the audience: a movie’s not over until the rating. Watch the stars.

118 minutes.

24 November 2001

Bandits

How could I have waited so long after release (6 weeks ago) to see a movie with Cate Blanchett? (It becomes more and more clear that the sole reason I disliked Pushing Tin must be John Cusack—so there is no Serendipity in my future. My previous paean regarding Blanchett’s effect.) Cate plays Kate (uh-oh) whose ennui in her marriage is quickly established. When her frustrated dash in a silver Mercedes-Benz through an Oregon metropolis runs over Terry (Billy Bob Thornton), an escaped prison inmate perpetrating a series of bank robberies to finance a retirement in Acapulco, life becomes more complicated for them and Terry’s partner Joe (Bruce Willis). But not so complicated that a little serial bedding, man-to-man fighting, and a trick ending can’t wrap things up with happily-ever-after. Sheesh! What was the motivation of the hitchhiker with the pink boots, anyway? Did I like it? Even Cate Blanchett by the blue light of a refrigerator bulb can’t save this screenplay that writes itself into a corner. Let’s remember that these are escaped prison inmates. They have no fixed abode, yet they have, and seem quite attached to, er, classic vehicles (an early Pontiac GTO for Joe, a Citroën for Terry). These distinctive cars must be registered to somebody. Where were they garaged while they were in prison? And now that they have escaped, why isn’t there a BOLO promulgated for their cars? (Be On the Look Out.) Their reputation as the Sleepover Bandits ? Based entirely on their first post-escape robbery. The media may be capable of various things, but to become a national story based on one occurrence? As for the producer of Criminals at Large, the television series to which the screenplay cuts to from time to time, his sterile house overlooking the skyscrapers of Los Angeles lacks even one tripod. It’s amiable enough, and I extend credit to the hair colorist, hair stylist, and wig maker for Blanchett.

121 minutes.

21 November 2001

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Owls don’t need no stinkin’ postal codes. Sentenced to 10 years of unmitigated humiliation (at the hands of his uncle, aunt, and cousin) by wizards alleged to be friends of his parents, Harry Potter discovers on his eleventh birthday that he is a wizard, too, with an invitation to Hogwarts, a school for instruction in the magical arts. There he meets others like him and does his best, celebrity as he is with his Z-shaped scar on the forehead behind his bangs, to fit in and make progress in his studies. So what does the local constabulary back in Surrey make of young Potter going all missing for a year, like, eh? The cautions of promoting athletic competition in youngsters has not reached this parallel world on the British Isle (nor body padding for contact sports, either, by the looks of it) and the house of Slytherin causes Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his best pals Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson, whose depiction as a LEGO® minifig has caused a few post-adolescent hearts to flutter) some bit of trouble. There’s a conspiracy afoot among the faculty… oh, I shouldn’t have told you that. Did I like it? More than a year ago, earnest parents were telling me to read the books in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, but I ignored them. As it stands, the movie is an enjoyable adventure for boys and girls not yet ready to think about joining the military.

152 minutes.

18 November 2001

Fat Girl [ À ma Souer! ]

Two sisters are on a vacation that no one likes. The father, upset that only idiots are left behind to establish the new company, takes the first opportunity to fly back to Paris. Mother (neither parent gets a name in the final credit scroll) dreads the drive home, and doesn’t connect the dots about how many young men are hanging around the house. Pretty Elena (Roxane Mesquida) is 15 and ready to dally with the first boy she finds at a seaside café but expects love and respect, while Anaпs (Anaпs Reboux), 12 and required to accompany her older sister, finds solace in a banana split and the resolution that her first time will be with a nobody. A late night visit from Fernando (Libero De Rienzo) to their shared bedroom leads to a night of negotiation (culminating in the same type of sex Bridget Jones was giggling about) and an angry mother (Laura Betti) demanding the return of the ring. Did I like it? The latest from Catherine Breillat following Romance, that epic of sexual degradation that ended in the bomb/childbirth crosscutting (at least I was able to see it at the AMC Courthouse 8 instead of one of the disgusting little Loew’s Cineplex venues the city offers), offers us three genres in succession: the sexual initiation, the road trip, the slasher. Ow! Elena gets her comeuppance. It’s quite enough to make one think locking up your daughters is the compassionate route (but An American Rhapsody showed how that didn’t work, either).

85 minutes.

17 November 2001

Amélie [ Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain ]

Amélie (Audrey Tautou) is about 24 if I’ve done the subtractions correctly— in a little bit of verisimilitude, the film uses an actual clip from a newscast by France 2 to place the action around the time of the death of Princess Diana— and the depiction of the sperm’s progress that would lead to her conception is identified as happening in 1973— sheltered by a father who assumed from his monthly application of a stethoscope that she couldn’t go to school (huh?)— having lost her mother at age 6 (an ostentatiously mounted suicide from a tower on Notre Dame played for laughs crushes poor homeschooling mum)— all breathlessly narrated in voice-over by a man who is not a character— and waitressing at The Two Mills bar in Montmarte, Paris. The chance discovery of a boy’s treasure box inside a wall in her apartment leads Amélie to seek its reunion with the owner— to deflect the stalking intentions of an ex of one of the other waitresses over to the cigarette saleslady— to avenge the humiliation the greengrocer piles upon his one-armed assistant— to abuse her father with a series of photographs showing his stolen gnome in front of world landmarks (including Angkor Wat, last seen in Lara Croft Tomb Raider)— and other acts of prodding and meddling. Did I like it? It seems like every currently important French actress was in Venus Beauty Institute but I don’t remember Tautou. Six years ago, the role would have gone to Irène Jacob. The unlikelihood that the word of a father would have been enough to keep a child out of school is only the smallest part of the wackiness that is practically force-fed into each sequence. But Ghost World already had the innocent-entering-the-sex-toy-shop scene (there’s that same bat cowl!) And my audience, uh-oh, really liked the retaliation wreaked on the grocer.

122 minutes.

14 November 2001

The Man Who Wasn’t There

It was haircut day, so why not a movie about a barber? This particular barber, Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), works second chair in a corner shop in Santa Rosa, California. The year looks to be 1949 if I have pegged the Cadillac driven by the local department store manager, Big Dave (James Gandolfini). Ed mostly keeps quiet (except in narration) and is looking for something different in his life. When a pushy customer manages to intrigue him with the idea of starting a chain of, wait for it, dry cleaning shops and he suspects his wife Doris (Frances McDormand) of having an affair with Big Dave, he sees an opportunity to take that new direction. However, nothing will really work out for Ed. Did I like it? The attempt to sexualize Frances McDormand (the mom from Almost Famous and the cop from Fargo) almost works. Maybe there are only so many ways to shoot two people in the front seat of a car—but the rhythm of the editing of one particular scene with Scarlett Johansson (Ghost World, An American Rhapsody) so reminded me of Lolita that I was sure it was intentional. But the scene degenerates quickly enough because it wouldn’t be a current film without a reference to sexual activities. Throw in a little UFO action (only barely acceptable if the setting is post-1947 and a little anachronistic in presenting the classic abduction story) and some prejudices casually displayed, not even the black and white cinematography and the constant attention to hairlines can save it.

115 minutes.

04 November 2001

Waking Life

One would want to tell the family that just entered the theater that this is not a cartoon—it is animation, and rated R for a reason. (Or multiple reasons in view of the death by self-immolation, two deaths by handgun fire, and a selection of curse words.) As if the animated adaptation of digital video footage is not nausea-inducing as it is, the camera work itself is shaky. On the other hand, I was trying to fall asleep after a half hour. No such luck! A somewhat quiet fellow (Wiley Wiggins) wanders through a burg that could be Chicago, could be New York City (the Brooklyn Bridge is distinctive) mostly listening to people as they expound on various mysteries of life. Is he awake? Is he dreaming? Did I like it? It’s tough to sympathize with a character who does nothing—it’s over an hour (my attempt to nap thwarted) before he really starts talking. That soap-opera planning redhead looks cute enough to try the advice of an earlier encounter regarding the state of lucid dreaming. (Or the character that insists she was watching him at the station.) But no!!! There’s nothing about the visual stylization itself that couldn’t have been effectively conveyed in 20 minutes or less.

100 minutes.

03 November 2001

Monsters, Inc.

Another feature from Pixar Animation Studios, this one preceded by For the Birds about one day on the telephone line when a strange bird chooses to approach the clique already perching there. It turns out that the monsters from the closet that scare little children are just there as part of their job collecting scream energy used to run their metropolis (that is to say, their monstropolis) on the other side of the transdimensional closet door. But times are tough, as children are getting harder and harder to scare, and there is an energy shortage. A bitter rivalry on the production floor between the upstart Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi) and the top scare-getter James Sulley Sullivan (John Goodman) leads to a kid-tastrophe: a child (generally assumed by monsters to be toxic) is loose in the monster world. Sulley’s assistant Michael Wazowski (Billy Crystal) tries to keep his romance with the snake-haired Celia (Jennifer Tilly) going while trying to locate the human child Boo and return her to her bedroom before Randall has an opportunity to do something far worse in secret. Did I like it? For some reason, I was hoping for a more bitter satire of factory work and labor-management relations. And to the extent that Billy Crystal himself is not on screen, there is not much to offend here. It’s just that the early-sixties television-style flat animation of the opening credits portends just a slightly reduced level of effort all around. At least the story makes a smidgeon more sense than Final Fantasy The Spirits Within did.

91 minutes.

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