Reviews

Pedro Almodovar's "Talk to Her" is especially impressive in its ability to wring realistic drama and emotional truth out of a premise, or series of premises, that are bizarre to say the least. In that regard it's reminiscent of a Charlie Kaufman film, though in fairness, Almodovar has been around much longer than Kaufman. But as with "Being John Malkovich," I sat through most of "Talk to Her" with that wonderful feeling of not having a clue what would happen next. Each plot twist--and there are many--is stranger than the last, yet they are all absolutely true to the characters and story. As the old adage goes, a good ending should be both surprising and inevitable. Almodovar applies this principle not only to the ending of "Talk to Her," but to the entire film. It's a genuine joy to watch and will likely stay with you for a very long time.

2000 was not exactly a highlight year for American movies, and perhaps for that reason "You Can Count On Me" stands out even more. Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, a first-time director but veteran screenwriter and playwright, the film is vibrant proof of the importance of three-dimensional characters and down-to-earth acting.

At the center of the film is Sammy, a beleaguered but determined single mother trying her best with Rudy, her eight-year-old son. Her ne'er-do-well younger brother, Terry, re-enters her life after a long period of absence, and from there the story takes off. It's hard to imagine a better portrayal of the frequently ambivalent relationships between siblings, or of the constant struggle faced by parents in raising a child. To be sure, these themes have been handled ad infinitum by other films; however, even the best examples of family dramas typically suffer from some amount of anvil-dropping, forced humor, and too-clever plotlines. "You Can Count On Me," on the other hand, is the cinematic equivalent of an intelligent conversation between friends: subtle, knowing, never condescending. No character is quite the way you expect him or her to be, but each is entirely believable and compelling.

Like "American Beauty," the story asks you to look beyond appearances and examine every side of life. At first glance, Sammy appears to be the very model of a single mother, working hard to support her son without depriving him of attention, but as the film progresses we begin to view his upbringing as overly sheltered, even stifling. Conversely, Terry seems in the beginning to be just the father figure Rudy needs; however, the same problems that have led him to run to Sammy may well cause him to run again.

Finally, given that "You Can Count On Me" is adapted from a play, it's a pleasant surprise how well Lonergan utilizes setting and scenery. Not having seen the play, it's impossible for me to imagine this story without the grass, trees, and country roads of rural upstate New York. The small but vibrant town of Scottsville is the perfect locale for the small yet complicated story of "You Can Count On Me."

Make no mistake, "Road to Perdition" is great entertainment. There is hardly a dull moment, and the acting and stylistic elements are top-notch. However, I get the feeling that director Sam Mendes intended this to be more than just entertainment, and on that level I'd have to say that he and writer David Self didn't quite pull it off. The film doesn't present any interesting questions of morality or philosophy, nor does it deliver any particular message. As Roger Ebert rightly notes, the characters in "Road to Perdition" don't make choices; they simply carry out actions that are long preordained. As with "American Beauty," Mendes' debut film, the ending is presented as more or less inevitable, and once again it is given away in the opening narration. (Note to Mr. Mendes: Enough with the voiceover bookends already! They don't illuminate anything, and they sound like they were written by a screenwriter with a gun to his head. You can keep the ethereal lingering opening/closing shots if you want, but the narration must go.) All that said, the film is certainly nothing resembling a waste of two hours. It's got a compelling story with fantastic moments of suspense, tragedy, and even humor; it looks and sounds spectacular; and Tom Hanks as a cold-blooded killer is a thrill to watch. Perhaps Mendes didn't intend the film to be anything more than this, but the voiceovers tell me different.

In "Artificial Intelligence," Steven Spielberg teases us with the beginnings of possibly the greatest science-fiction story ever told but is unable to follow his (and Stanley Kubrick's) vision to its logical conclusion. The final half-hour, cheesy-sentimental enough to make one nostalgic for "Hook," completely undermines the bold questions and ideas set forth in the early stages of the story.

A lot of print reviews have referred to "AI" as "frustrating," and I'm right there with them. It was sometimes invigorating to see Spielberg shed his typical cinematic inhibitions in "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan," but at the same time it seemed fairly obvious that the director was only willing to "play dirty" in the context of true-to-life stories about crimes against humanity. That theory is absolutely proven wrong in "AI," which presents us with easily some of the most disturbing imagery in all Spielberg's repetoir (including the aforementioned two films). It's a genuine thrill to see Spielberg revel in such dark and twisted material, which often evokes the best of Bradbury in its mixture of weirdness and plausibility.

And then the story stops. Doesn't end, doesn't fade out; just stops. The movie goes on for another half-hour, but the story is over. There are scenes and characters that have nothing whatsoever to do with the prior two hours of the film, and then there is an ending that is at best a misguided attempt at closure and at worst a shameless pandering to studio execs and families with young children (who really shouldn't be at this movie in the first place).

And, oh yeah, the acting. Well, what do you think? It's a Spielberg film. The performances are incredible across the board, from established stars like William Hurt and Jude Law to newer faces like Frances O'Connor, Sam Robards, and Jake Thomas (an excellent child actor well worth keeping an eye on). And Haley Joel Osment, not surprisingly, is outstanding. Even if we can never really understand what his robotic character feels, we can easily see that he has as much potential to be torn up inside as a human being does.

The direction, acting, effects, and photography all represent Spielberg at the very top of his game. The problem, therefore, lies in the writing, where the film never delivers on what it promises in terms of either plot or emotion. It's putting it mildly to say that Spielberg has easy access to the most talented screenwriters in the world, and yet for some reason he decided to write the script himself. I can almost understand his rationale for doing so. Here is a story so large in scope, yet so intensely personal and human, that Spielberg probably couldn't stand the idea of trying to explain his specific vision to other writers, shepherding them through rewrite after rewrite. Alas, the director just isn't a strong enough writer to pull off this script on his own. He probably did a better job than most writers would have done, but this project really needed the absolute best of the best. This was the wrong time for Spielberg to indulge his fantasies of being a true 'auteur'.

I recommend seeing "AI," but only if you are willing to walk out of the theater as soon as Ben Kingsley finishes narrating the underwater scene. (You'll know it when you see it.) Do this and you'll end up with a great cinematic experience. Otherwise, be prepared for a world of disappointment.

'A Thousand Acres' is one of the best books I've ever read and one of the worst movies I've ever seen, so obviously something was lost in the adaptation. On-set reports claimed that the director was trying to change the story radically while stars Lange and Pfeiffer attempted to keep it closer to the book. The director seems to have won out.

It's really a shame, because you couldn't ask for a better cast to bring 'Acres' to life. Jason Robards is dead-on as Larry, the psychologically damaged patriarch, and Lange, Pfeiffer, and Leigh have great chemistry as the three sisters. But good actors need good lines, and the screenplay doesn't give them any. The approach taken by the writer and director toward adapting Jane Smiley's brilliant, Pulitzer-prize winning novel seems to have been to simply stick all the dramatic, important scenes together and leave out the nuances and character development that made the story so special.

In fairness, 'Acres' couldn't have been easy to adapt; it has more than enough scope to make a movie trilogy or an entire series of television. Perhaps it was a mistake, then, to try to keep the beginning, middle and end essentially the same as the book. This approach shows us all the effects and none of the causes. Especially confusing is the scant 105 minute running time, which is only slightly longer than your average Adam Sandler movie. If the director and studio had been willing to make this a 3-hour film, it might have had a chance. As it stands, the movie plays like a highlight reel of the book, and that's not enough to involve the viewer emotionally.

'A Thousand Acres' is a fantastic story, though the movie would try hard to convince you otherwise. Pick up the book and see for yourself.

"Buffy" has a lot going against it. It airs on a poorly regarded network, it's adapted from a subpar movie, and it's always pegged with the status of "teen show." Because of this, a lot of people are unwilling to watch it. That's really too bad, because it's one of the very best shows on television, ever. I can't think of any other show that has so seamlessly combined elements of comedy, drama, horror, romance, sci-fi, action/adventure, and suspense. Most TV shows fall into one or at most two or three of these genres. "Buffy" uses every single one of them without watering down any of them. The comedy is absolutely hilarious; the horror is genuinely frightening; the action is astounding; the drama is real and often heartbreaking. Ultimately, though, it's the characters that make it work. Buffy and her friends are real, three-dimensional human beings, not the caricatures one sees on sitcoms or the melodramatic stereotypes that dramas tend to rely on. They make mistakes, they screw things up, they don't always say or do what they should. They're not too different from you or me, except that they happen to be saddled with the task of occasionally protecting the world from evil. Bottom line, this is a spectacular show that is not taken anywhere near seriously enough by the average viewer. That needs to change. Watch it and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I don't think I've read a single review of this film that hasn't mentioned Pulp Fiction, so I won't break tradition. In the five years since that film redefined the rules of cinema, we've seen a ton of movies borrow PF's casual-comical attitude towards violence, integration of pop culture with mob culture, and in-your-face characterizations, yet precious few have adopted what was possibly Pulp Fiction's greatest innovation, its tangential storytelling technique. "Go" takes an almost self-conscious stab at this paradigm, prefacing each segment with a title and often using the same shot in multiple episodes. In some ways it succeeds, and in some ways it doesn't. This style of storytelling definitely makes the film more fun, but it's not especially well suited to the story. Unlike Pulp Fiction, I never got the feeling that this story *needed* to be told *this way*. Many of the links between episodes are contrived--the "bizarre twist of fate" device is used perhaps one too many times. The shifting point of view does allow us to contemplate a lot of what-ifs, but not with anywhere near the force of "Run Lola Run."

But is it a good film? Absolutely. There are moments when it's a great film. There are even moments when it betters Pulp Fiction. One is in its depiction of the drug culture. Lance (Eric Stoltz), the dealer in PF, was a simple, reasonably sympathetic character, an average guy who dealt drugs the way most people deal Amway products. He was amusing, but he ultimately shed little light on what it really means to be a drug dealer. Tarantino chose to take the emphasis off of him and instead made the drugs themselves the villains. Witness the fact that in the famous needle scene, Lance is the comic relief.

Todd (Timothy Olyphant), the dealer in "Go", is a far better character (in my opinion, the best one in the film). Doug Liman and writer John August clearly created him with the attitude that it takes a different sort of person to be a successful drug dealer; and in the course of the film, we see many examples of why Todd is not just the guy next door who happens to be selling drugs. He's not the likable everyman that Lance was, but he's not a monster, either. There were moments in the film when I was scared to death of him, and there were moments when I thought he might be fun to hang out with. Hollywood hacks, take note--this is a *character*. In fact, on the basis of Todd alone I'd say that John August deserves a Best Screenplay nomination.

I wish I could say that the rest of the characters in "Go" are as interesting and three-dimensional as Todd, but I can't. A common--and effective--method of cinematic characterization is to have a character do something that shocks the audience, and then proceed to explain why he/she did it. Many characters in "Go" do things to shock us, but we rarely find out why, and this is a problem. Marcus (Taye Diggs) talks about sex for fifteen minutes and then steals a Ferrari. Is he the type of person that would do this? Apparently he is, but the story never slows down for a minute to talk about *why* he is. Ditto Simon (Desmond Askew), who does and says a multitude of outrageous things, none of which help us to figure out who he is or how he got that way.

In spite of its story and character problems, "Go" is still a lot of fun to watch--and not fun in a brainless sort of way, but not fun in a truly intellectual sense, either. For director/DP Doug Liman, "Go" is not a huge deviation from his previous success, "Swingers", but it still has plenty to differentiate itself from that film, and I'm glad that Liman knows to take small steps at this crucial early point in his career. The cast is great--I predict Sarah Polley will have a very interesting body of work ahead of her--and the film has a fun, fresh, rough-edged feel to it that really envelops you in the L.A. culture (and counter-culture). "Go" was made for a mere $6.5 million; it's maddening to consider how many movies at this budget could be made for the cost of "Godzilla," but it's also frustrating to realize how much one more rewrite could have improved it.

"The Spanish Prisoner" comes closer to Hitchcock than anything I've seen in a long, long time. The cast is excellent; I haven't seen Campbell Scott in a movie since he was much younger, but he really turned in a great performance, loaded with nuance and subtlety. Steve Martin is truly outstanding--I think it's fair to say that this is one of his career's best performances. The only clunker is Rebecca Pidgeon; her character is poorly written, and she's not much of an actress. Just between you and me, I think she only got the job because she's sleeping with the director (she's Mamet's wife). Ed O'Neill even shows up halfway through the film with a nice cameo.

I don't want to give away much about the story for those who haven't seen TSP, but it really is amazing. Many of the plot twists actually made me laugh--not because they were ridiculous, but because they were so ingeniously crafted and actually plausible. Since he wrote AND directed the movie, though, David Mamet let himself get away with a few bad lines and one or two hokey plot devices. In the greater context of the movie, however, they're forgivable.