Movies : August 2003

06 August 2003

Freaky Friday (2003)

I deny that watching the Disney Channel had anything to do with my desire to see this movie, especially on its opening day. That’s right, I deny that. Still, this remake (I barely remember a version with Gaby Hoffman, and don’t think I ever watched the Jodie Foster version) of mother and daughter switch bodies for a day and see what the other’s life is like has a good cast (Lindsay Lohan as daughter Anna, Jamie Lee Curtis as mother Tess) and a decent pace, marred only by the sad spectacle of Rosalind Chao and Lucille Soong playing broad caricatures of pushy entrepreneur and meddling mother (characters bizarrely identified as Asian ).

93 minutes.

03 August 2003

Pirates of the Caribbean The Curse of the Black Pearl

Long enough that pretty much everything gets doubled up—the fights, the swordplay, the number of full moons—this Jerry Bruckheimer production with music blatantly from the Hans Zimmer school and based on a Disney theme park ride which I was spared as a child nevertheless offers fun and adventure without too many postmodern winks. Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow gives co-star Keira Knightley (as Governor’s daughter Elizabeth Swann) a run for application weight of eye shadow and mascara while seeking to reclaim his place as captain of the legendary Black Pearl. The cursed crew of said vessel, under the command of mutinous first mate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and having a bit of trouble retaining human form under said frequent full moons, track down the last medallion of Aztec gold they need to lift the curse in Elizabeth’s possession—and take both just for good measure. Meanwhile, blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), from whom piracy-besotted Elizabeth took the medallion years earlier, loves above his station and agrees to spring Sparrow from the last cell that the Pearl’s bombardment has not yet destroyed. Whose side is Jack on, anyway? How did he escape from the prison exile after the mutiny? Why is Elizabeth’s complexion so free of blemishes? There are family lines to unravel, secrets to reveal, and Zoe Saldana trying to make an impression in a line-up of pirate clichés (parrot included), before all is said and done.

142 minutes.

02 August 2003

Dirty Pretty Things

Heathrow, and Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is hawking a cab ride into town. He’s Nigerian and in London under mysterious circumstances and when his shift driving the taxi is done he heads over to the Baltic Hotel to run the front desk through the night until the five o’clock arrival of the maids. When a call from the fifth floor about a blocked toilet leads him to find a human heart, this is disturbing, but not nearly so much as the indifference of the hotel’s day receptionist Juan (Sergi López) to the body part. Dirty things happen in hotels, it is explained to him, it is our job to make things pretty again. Between jobs, Okwe takes a couch in the walk-up flat of the young Turkish Muslim Senay (Audrey Tautou) who works as a maid at the Baltic in violation of her refugee status. His medical knowledge leads Okwe to treat the clap that co-workers at the taxi firm have caught with pills stolen from the hospital where his chess-playing mortician’s assistant Guo Yi (Benedict Wong) works and to assist the family of a victim of what Okwe has learned is a long-running operation to trade the organs of the desperate for a passport and a little cash to pursue a dream elsewhere. Senay, for example, has her sights on New York where the trees have little lights in them at Christmas time. With the miserable situation set up, and but one real reversal at its disposal, the screenplay ends up quickly with the malefactors punished and the good-hearted another chance at a better life—with the one English person in this London filled with immigrants (including the Croatian-born Zlatko Buric as the doorman Ivan, but Sophie Okonedo as the prostitute Juliette turns out to be UK-born herself, as is Ejiofor) turning out to be the wealthy exploiter at the top. López knows from oily from his performance in With a Friend Like Harry… and his comeuppance is guaranteed. Tautou, in her first English-speaking role (López and Buric also had to be coaxed into uttering dialogue in comprehensible English), must suffer the indignities routine to a Miramax film but lends facial asymmetry and a largely uninterrupted serious demeanor to her performance as the immigration agent-hounded, sexually exploited virgin. Ejiofor, his character chewing surreptitiously purchased leaves to keep awake, shoulders the role of the hero with unexpected knowledge, background, and resources with aplomb.

98 minutes.

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