Movies : July 2002

30 July 2002

Austin Powers in Goldmember

In recognition of his exemplary service to Queen and country (and thus largely ignoring his cover story of being a fashion photographer), Austin Powers (Mike Myers) is knighted, but the ceremony is spoiled by the absence of his father, Nigel Powers (Michael Caine). The most likely suspect, now that Dr. Evil (Mike Myers) has been recently captured again after hatching yet another plot in the face of the continuing efforts by Number Two (Robert Wagner) to interest him in legitimate ways to make oodles of money, is Johann van der Smut (Mike Myers). Also known as Goldmember, van der Smut is inordinately in love with gold. Basil Exposition (Michael York) sets Austin up with another vehicularly based time machine, and Powers returns to 1975 where, at Studio 69 (I detected absolutely no jokes based on Myers’ role in 54), he meets up with Foxxy Cleopatra (Beyoncé Knowles), but Smut (with Nigel in tow) eludes them. Returning to 2002, Dr. Evil and Mini-Me (Verne Troyer) have escaped from prison (after performing a rap I utterly failed to recognize) and are plotting the flooding of the world from a submarine. Will Austin and Foxxy save the world? What is the secret of the automobile explosion that landed the future Dr. Evil into the hands of Belgians? Is there any joke from a previous movie in the series too low that it cannot be extended or repeated? Ups: the smooth-faced, taut-bodied Knowles is a sweet relief after the skinny Heather Graham; Myers and Caine engaging in English-English (rhyming Cockney slang) conversation with subtitles that eventually exhaust themselves trying to keep up; a string of cameos of very, very famous performers at the beginning (be sure to stay for the end credits where a certain pop performer erodes her wholesome image). Downs: the incessant focus on bodily secretions including the Scot Fat Bastard (Mike Myers yet again) inhaling his own emissions; the numbing repetition of jokes and situations from the previous two movies which is so apparent that characters must comment upon it; the reduction in the scope of the roles of Wagner and Caine because Myers is playing four roles. I laughed, but it’s not going to be a DVD I’ll be waiting for.

94 minutes.

28 July 2002

Swimming

Summer in Myrtle Beach. Without a distributor or rating, and bearing a copyright date from 2 years ago, this film sneaks into a few theaters. Frankie (Lauren Ambrose) is a little adrift. Her parents have retired and moved to Arizona, leaving Frankie and her slightly older (married with children) brother in charge of the family home and oceanside restaurant. Frankie’s best friend since the second grade, Nicola (Jennifer Dundas Lowe), does piercing in the storefront next to the restaurant. As the season begins, brother hires Josee (Joelle Carter) as a waitress, she’s hopeless at the job but pretty enough that neither the cook nor the brother minds. Josee might be feeling a teensy bit bored with her current relationship with a lifeguard. As she nudges into the space Nicola has longed claimed as her own, and Frankie finds herself amused by a new transient, tie-dyed T-shirt selling Heath (Jamie Harrold), emotional relationships will bend and sway. Ups: small emotionally charged moments (the phone call seeking a date, choosing just the right color of panties for a first date); Josee’s attraction for Frankie which cannot be explained by prettiness, excitement, or any erotic appeal. Downs: Frankie’s ambiguous age; drug use between Heath and Frankie. I liked it.

97 minutes.

27 July 2002

Tadpole

Oscar Grubman (Aaron Stanford) has decided that girls his age lack life experience enough for him, and returning home to Manhattan for Thanksgiving in his sophomore year at an upstate private high school, engrossed in reading Candide, he is indifferent to the attention from classmate Miranda. This may be the weekend, nay, the very Thursday night, when he reveals his love. Oops, that would be for stepmother, Eve (Sigourney Weaver). Oblivious to what is happening in his own household, Stanley (John Ritter), Oscar’s father and history professor at Columbia University, derails the plan slightly when he sends Oscar on the errand to walk Daphne (Alicia Van Couvering), the daughter of a colleague, home. One cab hailed, a few drinks in a bar, and one mugging later, Oscar is in no condition to return home. Which is when he is spotted by Eve’s best friend, the chiropractor Diane (Bebe Neuwirth). She is wearing Eve’s scarf, borrowed just this evening, and she has a table set up in the living room. Complications ensue. <—> Set in a slightly less rich milieu than Metropolitan (Eve also works, in a cardiological reasearch laboratory at the university) and hampered by its digital video origins only in views of landscapes in motion, the scenario builds assuredly to a very funny dinner with parents, their only son, and (gulp) his lover. Sympathetic to its characters and reveling in Diane’s toying with Oscar’s anxieties, the movie has a light touch and a hopeful ending. Watch out for that Miranda, though, she looks like a schemer.

78 minutes.

13 July 2002

Minority Report

John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is the chief of the pre-crime unit of a Washington, D.C. police force that by the year 2054 has lost its Metropolitan moniker. Relying on a trio of thoroughly sedated humans with precognition and the wooden balls their brain waves carve with the names of the victim and perpetrator of murders-to-be, John and his team have managed to reduce the murder rate in the District to almost nothing. His mentor, and the founder of the pre-crime unit, Lamar Burgess (Max Van Sydow) wants to take the unit nationwide. But John has issues: he partakes of the trendiest drug, he’s separated from his wife Lara (Kathryn Morris), and he’s never gotten over the unsolved abduction of his son Sean. When the Justice Department sends Danny Witver (Colin Farrell) nosing around in preparation for the national vote on expanding the pre-crime program, and the latest balls to fall out of the machine bear John’s name as the perpetrator of a murder, the chase is on. <—> Among the details of life later this century included is that industry will return to the District, in the form of a Lexus assembly plant (with Kawasaki robot arms, no less). Curious that the product of the factory can be driven away without hindrance, while the mag-lev vehicles prominent earlier in the story (and only then, for their contribution to that part of the chase) are very definitely under the control of police authority. The pieces fit together a little too neatly, with John’s ability to hold his breath underwater established pretty close to when he’ll need it. Still, there’s plenty of gadgets to puzzle over and throwaway gags (literally with the animated cereal box) to appreciate. And Tom keeps his shirt on.

146 minutes.

12 July 2002

Late Marriage

Zaza (Lior Loui Ashkenazi), the oldest son of Georgians now living in Tel Aviv, is pretty well set. He’s got mother Lili’s (Lili Kosashvili) credit card, his own apartment, a Lancia, and a dog. He’s finishing his doctorate in a non-renumerative subject at a clearly unhurried pace. What unnerves the extended family no end is that Zaza, at 31, has not married a young virgin and started the production of grandsons. We join the family on what must be the hundredth outing to introduce Zaza to a suitable young woman. Seventeen year old Ilana is definitely hot—father Yasha (Moni Moshonov) wants her for himself if stupid Zaza won’t close the deal. What the parents don’t know (or have blinded themselves to—he promised to give her up!) is that Zaza is continuing his affair with Judith (Ronit Elkabetz). She’s divorced (used goods!), a parent (another man’s child!), older (stealing our young son!), and Other (the press kit may identify her as Moroccan). The extended family, used to interventions when romance goes the wrong way, as Zaza’s parents well remember, invades Judith’s small apartment (Zaza and Judith have an extended session of sex on the fold out couch while the daughter sleeps in the bedroom) and threatens the pair (at sword’s edge). Zaza, wuss that he is, complies with his parents’ desires, and stages one last drunken outburst at his wedding reception, embarassing his bride (who, herself, is on her way to the militant bulk of his mother). <—> Wow. I don’t think director Dover Kosashvili (whose mother Lili is cast as Lili) missed one aspect of the struggle between parents and their offspring as to the suitability of a mate. Technically, the film is unable to convey that an interval of time has passed (although the plot requires that some time has passed, say, between Judith’s protestations that her daughter Madonna cannot see Zaza and the parents’ surveillance which finds Madonna and Zaza playing), but emotionally, the situations and reactions feel achingly authentic.

Approximately 105 minutes.

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