28 October 2003

Mildly amusing, without the sexualization that made portions of earlier versions so unpleasant, even for someone who hasn’t seen the originals. Let’s see now, Leslie Nielsen was an adult male when he made Forbidden Planet more than 45 years ago and in his performance as the President (with no reference to the current occupant) his age is apparent in his motions. One line of dialogue, at least, seems to be an homage to Airplane! (1980) which revivified his career. What I call injury humor remains a staple.

84 minutes.

25 October 2003

The critics are so quick to forget—or perhaps the press kit omitted the fact? To label this Katie Holmes’ first starring role is to forget Abandon… or maybe even Teaching Mrs. Tingle? Holmes plays April, the pancake of the family in the charming phrase of her mother, Joy (Patricia Clarkson), living in a tiny walk-up apartment in New York City with bad choices (drug dealin’ boyfriend) behind her and an uncertain future ahead. Still, she has decided this Thanksgiving to invite her whole family for dinner, and they’ve accepted the invitation even though Joy is suffering from what is probably breast cancer and its treatment. Father Jim (Oliver Platt) finds Joy already sitting in the family K-car station wagon in the garage and so they and the rest of the family Beth (Alison Pill) and Tim (John Gallagher Jr.) are off to pick up grandmother and brave the mean streets of Manhattan. Meanwhile, April has discovered that, of all things, her oven does not work (this is but the least of her culinary troubles). Will April be able to find enough time-share hours of neighbors’ ovens to complete the cooking of the turkey? Will Joy chicken out of seeing her daughter for one more time? What is the new boyfriend (Derek Luke) up to, anyway? Ah, it’s hard for me to resist the combination of Holmes and New York.

79 minutes.

19 October 2003

Guerin (Cate Blanchett) was a newspaper writer in Ireland who turned to stories of drug traficking and child addiction and when her attention drew too close to the top was shot to death. There is no subtlety in the film’s depiction of the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the all-around great reporter with the heart of gold.

98 minutes.

17 October 2003

Fin McBride (Peter Dinklage, who played the angry dwarf in the third segment of Living in Oblivion) works in the back of a toy train shop of the kind I last saw in a small town in the mountains of Maryland (but which is set in this movie in Hoboken) until the owner dies and it is discovered that he has been left a small abandoned structure along the rail lines in Newfoundland, New Jersey. With the store closing, Fin does not have much choice and upon walking to the rural hamlet and finding the shack to have no power and no telephone is ready to consider it the perfect home. Ah, but it is so difficult to avoid others in a small town. Cases in point: Joe (Bobby Cannavale) the Cuban American hot dog vendor filling in for his father from a truck parked across the way from Fin’s shack every day and completely unable to stop talking; Olivia (Patricia Clarkson) the separated artist who cannot keep her Jeep Grand Cherokee going in a straight line and endangers Fin twice in the first day; Emily (Michelle Williams) the librarian who immediately takes to Fin; and Cleo (Raven Goodwin) the young girl who likes to play around the abandoned rolling stock on the spur. And so the days go by. Eh, nothing blows up.

99 minutes.

16 October 2003

Miles Massey (George Clooney) is the divorce attorney whose prenuptial agreements are legendary and whose devotion to the truth in the pursuit of his client’s interests is less than complete. Marilyn Rexroth (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is the aggrieved party when her husband (Edward Herrmann) is caught (through the persistence of private investigator Gus Petch, played by Cedric the Entertainer) in adultery but her attorney (Richard Jenkins) is no match for Massey. Deprived of her rightful due, Marilyn begins to plot… With Clooney returning to his most charming performance since Out of Sight and Zeta-Jones in fine form, the weak integration of the sub-plots, the outlandish characterizations of secondary characters, and the use of a self-inflicted gunshot as humor (my audience sure laughed themselves silly in response) tends to recede, and their wary attraction is momentarily appealing.

99 minutes.

10 October 2003

How could Gigli have been any worse than this? The critics are smokin’ the same stuff they were smoking when they reviewed Pulp Fiction way back when. Quite bloody but nonetheless with less energy than, say, The Professional, or even From Dusk Till Dawn, the threadbare plot (a pregnant bride’s wedding is a killing ground ordered by her baby’s father, and emergent from a coma 4 years later she seeks revenge) and weak characterizations (hampered additionally by the artificial halving of the story into two parts) add up to a dull, repetitive exercise. Not so much willowy but rather rangy, and with the skin over her cheeks thinning and tightening, Uma Thurman (as the Bride whose name is bleeped) falls short in delivering the appeal that might sell the excessive violence. But I must admit to a twinge of sympathy for her character when her legs and feet fail her after she emerges from the coma. Just for a moment.