The Merchant of Venice

No room here to tell you the plot if you don’t already know, so read the play. Remarkably, this is the first time this Shakespearean comedy has been filmed since talkies were invented, and its uncomfortable anti-Semitism is the obvious reason. But it’s also the play containing the classic “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” line, so go figure. The problem is that the Shylock character (Al Pacino) was an evil buffoon in the 1590s original, but here (and now) he’s played, necessarily, as a sympathetic, tragic figure, with feelings and wounds, who is ultimately ruined and deserted. Thus we have scenes of lighthearted love and merriment juxtaposed with those of a human being (acting, it must be said, as most of us would in similar circumstances) being totally crushed, and the result is jarring. All that said, this is a wondrous, fine-looking (filmed in Venice) adaptation by Michael Radford (Il Postino, Dancing at the Blue Iguana), in which Pacino absolutely outshines the rest of the cast. Given the state of religious intolerance in the world today, this “comedy” remains deeply relevant. (138 min)

Cinemas 8 96 119

The Brothers Grimm

Since Terry Gilliam, a poet of decay, is one of my favorite directors, I wanted to like this more than I did. It looks great, and it’s endlessly creative, but it’s scattershot. There’s no real plot to hang all this inventiveness on, and it gets a little (maniacally) tedious. The story, such as it is, presents the Grimm Brothers (Heath Ledger and Matt Damon, having a bad hair movie and sporting the worst British accent in recent memory) as sort of 18th-century, con-artist ghostbusters who are hired (forced, actually) to deal with some real, and really evil magic. It’s all just, well, silly. (118 min)


Cinemas 29 55 62 82 71 95 99 107 109 110 111 112 113 114 116 117 118

If I Should Fall From Grace: The Shane MacGowan Story

The most amazing thing about this poet, who, with The Pogues, breathed new life into contemporary Irish music, is that he’s still alive, given that he’s clearly trying to kill himself on a daily basis with booze, tobacco and drugs. Sarah Share’s uneven but interesting documentary captures the essence of the singer/songwriter and his life (no mean feat), though subtitles wouldn’t have been a bad idea, given his constant state of extreme drunkenness and having no front teeth. And he has the world’s strangest laugh. Not for everyone, but a must for music fans. (91 min)

Cinema 32

The Pacifier

This puerile rip-off of Kindergarten Cop, a one-joke movie that wasn’t all that funny either, is directed by Adam Shankman, who’s reportedly being sought by police for inflicting upon us The Wedding Planner and A Walk to Remember. The surprise-free plot’s too tedious to go into here, but basically it has Navy SEAL Vin Diesel babysitting four kids. They resist; they fight; they bond. Vin might have pulled off this attempt at genre-switching had there been a trace of taste, continuity, decent writing, rhythm or credibility to back him up. For thumb-suckers only; parents it’ll give a headache. (95 min)


Cinemas 1 27 40 71 82 96 102 112 120


Saw II

Saw had two guys chained to a public toilet with only one unthinkable, coyote-trap way out. Se7en meets Cube. Though unconvincing and fairly yucky, it had the virtue of minimalism. This psycho-slasher sequel lacks even that, with several bewildered victims waking up in a locked room slowly filling with sarin gas (!). Their captor, a character named “Jigsaw” with an apparent flair for set decoration, is the kind of serial killer that exists only in the minds of 2nd-rate serial killer flick screenwriters. They fight, they kill, they throw up a lot. Manufactured suspense, unforgivable violence. (100 min)


Cinemas 6 60 99 102 113 114 118

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride

This merrily morbid, pleasingly perverse cadaver comedy, a Halloween valentine from that wonderfully whimsical wacko Tim Burton, has to do with a nervous groom-to-be practicing his vows in a graveyard and mistakenly placing a wedding ring on the desiccated hand (looked like a twig sticking out of the ground) of a murdered bride, visiting the underworld, pining for his real (i.e., living) bride and finally putting things right. It’s done in stop-action animation, a refreshingly non-digital technique, and is absolutely awesome. Burton has rarely been in better form, and his tricks are a real treat. The living world appears cold and drab; whereas the underworld is more brightly colored and, well, lively. It’s not a horror story. The bride is not a villain, just dead (loved the maggot). There’s lots of sly humor, and all but the smallest kids will dig it. And as in the very best fairy tales, beneath all the intrigue, flash and action, there’s a core of truth. Voice cast includes Johnny Depp, Emily Watson, Helena Bonham-Carter, Richard E. Grant, Albert Finney and Tracey Ullman. (76 min)

Cinemas 5 30 47 63 90 96 102 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

Domino

Frenetic, maybe-true-maybe-not and ultimately pointless biopic about Laurence Harvey’s rebellious daughter Domino, who chose to walk on the wild side and became a bounty hunter. The film has only a tenuous relationship with reality and is difficult to absorb either as a character study or a conventional action flick. Any entertainment value is obliterated by director Tony Scott’s headache-inducing, overcaffeinated stylistic flourishes and his determination not to be hindered by biological truth. Keira Knightley not so much acts in the title role as strikes a variety of bad-ass poses. (125 min)

Cinemas 2 10 26 56 60 70 90 95 96 102 109 110 111 112 113 115 116 117 118 119 120

The Door in the Floor

Based on the first third of John Irving’s A Widow for One Year, which went on to span four decades, this is the tale of two fairly unlikable, mean-to-each-other characters (Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger) whose marriage is on the rocks, as seen through the eyes of a young man (Jon Foster) they’ve hired for the summer and who becomes the catalyst to bring an end to this warped dynamic. Despite some nice, wry humor and moments of sharp intelligence, this depressing spellbinder is not for everyone. But it’s a wonderful chance to watch Bridges and Basinger do what they do best. (111 min)

Cinema 100

House of Wax

Ick. Group of students so dumb you want them to get killed happens upon this nice, quiet little village somewhere in Chainsaw County that features a wax museum in which, unbeknownst to these future dead kids, all the wax figures are formerly living people. This slasher is totally forgettable, but if you like this kind of thing, you’ll have fun. Cool ending in which the house, which is literally made of wax, burns down. It’s almost worth the price of admission to see alleged actress Paris Hilton get a stake through the forehead. Almost. And I liked the tag line: “Pray. Slay. Display.” But it’s icky. (113 min)

Cinemas 1 43 60 90 96 102 109 111 112 114 116 118 119 120

Hukkle

This hypnotic, ominously bucolic little film from director Gyorgy Palfi at first seems like nothing more than an original look at the fabric of daily life in a rural Hungarian village. There’s practically no dialogue, but some nicely droll humor. Close-ups, stop-frame photography and the superb sound challenge you to look at things in a different way. It’s clear that this one is going to move at its own, unhurried pace, but it’s never dull, and there’s always something unexpected. Like that dead body you just thought you saw. Be patient and watch this little gem closely, and you will be rewarded. (75 min)

Cinema 36

Land of Plenty

Wim Wenders’ odd, post-9/11 look at America focuses on two people: Paul (an excellent John Diehl) is a paranoid former Green Beret who has taken it upon himself to protect America, and is constantly on the lookout for the next big attack. His idealistic niece Lana (a much matured Michelle Williams, from Dawson’s Creek) has been overseas most of her life and is now helping out at a homeless shelter. The two come together with separate motives in the movie’s final third, which amounts to a road trip culminating in a cloying visit to Ground Zero. Mildly interesting but relatively pointless. (123 min)

Cinema 49

Yes

Intellectual/ socialist / feminist writer/director Sally Potter is a high-risk filmmaker who has often flirted with pretension (Orlando, The Tango Lesson) but has never been dull, and with this daring, emotionally direct and completely original film on the themes of class, love and religion, she’s earned new respect from me. Joan Allen plays the Irish-born, US-raised, neglected wife of a philandering British politician (Sam Neill) who finds solace and even happiness in a torrid affair with a Lebanese surgeon (Simon Abkarian) reduced to working in England as a chef. But sex can mask their obvious inequalities only so far, and there’s a riveting, pivotal scene about halfway through where buried tensions erupt. The potential pretension arises with the fact that the whole thing is written in iambic pentameter (think Shakespeare), which could have been a disaster were it not so brilliantly done. There’s a vibrant but subtle intensity throughout that’s heightened by the device. It’s really quite an accomplishment. Things are lightened up by Shirley Henderson as a housekeeper, who pops up now and then with the odd monologue straight into the camera. (100 min)

Cinema 52

Bukowski: Born Into This

This superb documentary on poet and novelist Charles Bukowski by John Dullaghan is as close as we’re likely to get to an accurate picture of a writer’s life. Through interviews (including Bono, Tom Waits, Harry Dean Stanton, Sean Penn, Taylor Hackford, and not least his wife Linda), archival footage of beery poetry readings, and talks with the man himself, we learn about the pain (thrice weekly beatings by his father) and the humiliation (an acne-scarred teen spying on his senior prom) that formed his lean, brutally unsentimental literary style. Much is contributed by publisher John Martin, who created Black Sparrow Press for the sole purpose of persuading Bukowski to write full-time. He was until his death in 1994 a prolific poet, starting with Notes of a Dirty Old Man, and author of largely autobiographical novels (Women, Hollywood and Barfly, in the movie version of which he thought star Mickey Rourke was “a showoff”). This is a thorough, admiring-but-fair, and completely fascinating look at a true original. (130 min)

Cinema 21

Stealth

This technologically preposterous, geographically challenged, overlong bit of war porn marries Top Gun with 2001: A Space Odyssey and adds a dash of Knight Rider to come up with a movie so stupid that even its apparent target audience of little boys will be laughing at its pure illogicality (they’ll still buy the toys). Three good-looking pilots (Josh Lucas, who makes a better villain, Jamie Foxx, who loses a lot of the points he scored in Ray, and Jessica “bikini” Biel) get a new “wingman,” a pilotless AI superjet that then gets hit by lightning, pulls a HAL 9000 and turns against them. Bomb! (121 min)

Cinemas 3 11 26 45 61 70 90 95 96 99 102 107 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

¡Popular!

Well, don’t expect another Buena Vista Social Club. This documentary by Jennifer Paz plays more like a feature-length performance video (with a few nice sideways glances), focusing on the Cuban band Charanga Habanera, which consists of several excellent musicians and three or four very popular cute-guy vocalists who bounce around a lot in front of all-girl audiences. Oh, the music’s fine, it’s Cuban after all, but probably a lot more difficult to sell without the repeated pelvic thrusts that punctuate it. It’s more like a Cuban version of the Backstreet Boys, or SMAP, except with talent. In Spanish. (70 min)

Cinema 28

Sin city

Robert Rodriguez’s career-best, twisted masterpiece is not an adaptation of a Frank Miller graphic novel; it is a Frank Miller graphic novel. It’s sick, slick, sexy and nearly monochromatic, with shocking, highly effective splashes of color and a pulpy voiceover. But be forewarned that it’s also possibly the most violent movie I’ve ever seen (though the violence is highly stylized, and there’s an undercurrent of morality). I won’t go into the plot, because it’s not really about narrative. It consists of three episodes, each anchored by a male lead (Bruce Willis, Clive Owen and a risen-from-the-ashes Mickey Rourke) in a circular story structure. This visually inventive, fast-paced and engaging effort is something to experience, not merely to watch, with some unforgettable imagery and a dollop of macabre humor. Also a dynamic Rosario Dawson, a white-hot Jessica Alba, a menacing Benicio Del Toro, Michael Clark Duncan, Carla Gugino, Michael Madsen and Elijah Wood, who chillingly and forever shakes off that Frodo image. This is an absolute must-see. (124 min)

Cinemas 1 29 31 55 62 71 82 90 95 96 109 110 111 112 115 116 117 118 119 120

Baadasssss!

In 1971 Melvin Van Peebles risked his fortune, his health, his sanity and even his family to make Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (“Rated X by an all-white jury”), which perhaps more than any other single factor ended Hollywood’s neglect of black people. Melvin wrote, shot, starred in, funded (with the help of Bill Cosby), and edited it and hired an unknown band called Earth Wind and Fire to do the music. Thirty-three years later, his son Mario (New Jack City, Posse), who appeared in the film, salutes his father’s achievement with this fascinating, warts-and-all, backstage dramatization. (108 min)

Cinema 24

A Letter to True

As filmmaker, renowned fashion photographer Bruce Weber makes a great fashion photographer. This meandering bit of cornball navel-gazing uses (admittedly nicely shot) home movies and vintage films to examine such diverse obsessions as dogs, a moronic Texas family, 9/11 (as it affects dogs), a guy who looks like Elizabeth Taylor, dogs, Elizabeth Taylor, Dirk Bogarde, surfing, war, dogs, war photography, and whatever else is bothering this solipsistic limousine liberal who thinks his farts is art. All couched in a recited “letter” to his noble dog, True. Just shoot me. Nice music, tho. (78 min)

Cinema 20

Must Love Dogs

It’s difficult to make a bland movie starring actors as affable as Diane Lane and John Cusack, but this greeting card of a movie takes a pretty good shot at it. Two recently divorced forty-somethings are faced with the old “getting back into dating” thing. Diane’s meddling sister posts her on a singles website that, after turning up some supposedly funny (mostly not) hopefuls, results in Cusack, doing a shadow of his High Fidelity character (but still good). Usual recycled romantic comedy elements (misunderstandings, etc). Neither has a dog, unless they count this movie on their resumes. (98 min.)

Cinema 44

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

The word “Sisterhood” is of course a warning sign for men, and to me, this chicklet flick was two hours of decorated fingernails on a blackboard. Four morphologically disparate teenage girlfriends discover a pair of used jeans that fits them all and are therefore magic. They agree to FedEx them among themselves during their summer travels, where the genius jeans affect love and life’s lesson-learning. Attitude aside, if you’re a girl in her ’tweens or the mother of one, you could do a lot worse. It’s beautifully filmed, the acting’s good and, despite the divine denims, the situations ring true. (119 min.)

Cinema 100

Bad News Bears

Why? Why a remake of one of history’s most successful underdog stories, maybe even the prototypical sports formula movie? Okay, so Billy Bob Thornton does a passably good job in the Morris Buttermaker role, playing it as a kind of off-season Bad Santa and avoiding acting too much like Walter Matthau. But the movie relies on him overmuch, and the rest is firmly so-so. Greg Kinnear is neither smug nor villainous enough as the winning-is-all opposing coach, the kids are irritating rather than cute, Marcia Gay Harden is wasted, and there’s no Tatum O’Neal. And I hope Richard Linklater, one of my favorite directors, uses the paycheck he’s obviously in this for to make more movies like School of Rock, Before Sunset and Waking Life. So why pay to see a remake when a rented 1976 original would be so much better and more satisfying? I don’t know. Neither does this movie. (113 min)

Cinemas 7 57 102 114 116 117 118 120

Primer

This Sundance-praised, rule-breaking head-scratcher from engineer-turned-filmmaker Shane Carruth (produced, directed, wrote, shot, scored and appears in) is about a pair of engineers who accidentally invent a time machine. They experiment and soon learn that you can get into trouble screwing around with the fourth dimension. “I haven’t eaten since later this afternoon.” The oblique, often opaque and fragmented screenplay is nearly incomprehensible, but it’s not at all dumbed down, and it may (or may not) require a second viewing. All in all, a remarkable achievement for the $7,000 it cost to make. (77min)

Cinema 37

Vacuums

You’ll be shaking your head and muttering, “What were they thinking?” The stage percussion group Stomp, in a monumentally bad group career move, appears as the workers in two rival vacuum cleaner factories who occasionally do percussive battle. (Also known as Stealing Bess and the wonderfully opportunistic Japanese title, Stomp’s Beloved Vacuum Cleaner.) Be warned: Stomp only appears for about five one-minute sequences. The rest is the worst cinematic excrescence I’ve seen in decades, and that’s going some. If Stomp wanted to do a movie, why not a performance flick? I’d pay to see that. (94 min)

Cinema 36

Cinderella Man

If Ron Howard’s depiction of seven years (1928-35) in the life of Depression-era boxer James Braddock ends up there with Raging Bull, Rocky, Fat City and Million Dollar Baby, it’ll be because of the spot-on performances of Russell Crowe, as a good man in a tough business, and Paul Giamatti, as his trainer. Renee Zellweger plays his long-suffering wife with a deft touch, and Craig Bierko offers a somewhat scary, just-over-the-top portrayal of heavyweight champ Max Baer, who had apparently already killed two men in the ring. The fight scenes are as brutal and compelling as anything ever filmed, with each fight ratcheting up the intensity. This convincing and gratifying Oscar-baiter is richly textured and full of period details, but it sags outside the ring, and pretty much follows the underdog-movie formula, though there is one fine dramatic scene where a destitute Braddock goes hat-in-hand to a club frequented by his former high-rolling promoters. Howard’s best effort to date. (144 min)

Cinemas 4 5 23 47 60 70 81 90 95 96 99 102 109 110 111 112 113 115 116 117 118 119 120

Fantastic four

It’s a pity that this most popular of Marvel comic books has been made into such a lousy movie. For one thing, it’s all set-up, detailing in tedious, whiny, soap-opera fashion how upset the stretchy guy, the invisible girl, the fiery guy and that stony thing are about having to shoulder their new superpowers. The dated SFX are so few that you could fit them all into a longish TV ad. Maybe that’s the point. It’s wildly uneven, the script’s inane, there’s no rhythm, the direction’s hackneyed and the acting stinks (except perhaps for Michael Chiklis as The Thing). Fantastic Snore. (106 min)

Cinemas 2 10 26 45 60 90 96 99 102 109 110 111 112 113 115 116 117 118 119 120

Nothing

Waiting for Godot meets The Twilight Zone. Ever wonder what a comedy from oddball Canadian director Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Cypher) would be like? This is the Kafkaesque, inter-dimensional story of a pair of Toronto losers (David Hewlett and Andrew Miller) who discover that they can “hate away” the things that are troubling them. But is this a blessing or a curse? What if they start getting on each other’s nerves? Remember, they can only erase, not create. Outstanding, low-budget set design. And I love the note at the beginning that this is “based on a true story.” (89 min)

Cinema 24

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Well, when it comes to children’s stories, you just can’t go wrong with the playfully dyspeptic Roald Dahl (James and the Giant Peach, Matilda). And you couldn’t wish for a better director of a Roald Dahl story than Tim Burton (Batman, Mars Attacks, Big Fish). Johnny Depp is the reclusive, hilariously quirky and vaguely menacing chocolatier Michael Jackson. Sorry, Willy Wonka. Add to this fractured fairy tale the talented kid Freddie Highmore from Finding Neverland and David Kelly from Waking Ned as his grandpa, and you’ve got a sweet, if slightly creepy, winner. Squirrels, too. True, this cautionary tale was filmed once before, in 1971 as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but rumor is that Dahl hated that watered-down, sweetened-up version. I think he’d like this one. The sets are awesome, with chocolate waterfalls and flying elevators, and the workforce Oompa Loompas (all played by a CG-replicated Deep Roy) contributes some amusing musical numbers (lyrics by Dahl, music by Danny Elfman). This one’s a sugar rush. (115 min)

Cinemas 5 30 47 63 90 96 99 102 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

A Good Woman

Intellectually and emotionally satisfying adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. It’s been transplanted from Victorian London’s salons (written in 1892) to 1930s Amalfi (fine scenery), and the two main characters, the young lady Windermere (Scarlett Johansson) and the gold-digging Mrs. Erlynne (Helen Hunt), now targeting Mr. Windermere, are now Americans. But remaining the same are Wilde’s wry witticisms on love and marriage, on class and human nature (though the film is so low-key, you have to be on the alert for them). Tom Wilkinson sparkles as the humorously cynical Tuppy. (93 min)

Cinema 41

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Don’t panic. Resistance is useless. So long and thanks for all the fish, and don’t forget your tea towel. If the preceding means precisely nothing to you, I suggest you pick up and read Douglas Adams’s five-book “trilogy” before you try on this movie. The Guide began as a radio show, then came the books (this is taken mostly from the first), then a BBC TV series. Fans of HGTTG will not be disappointed, but if it fails to quite measure up, it’s a matter of tone that’s hard to transfer to film, innit? Brilliant casting, especially Martin Freeman (from The Office) as Arthur Dent. Mostly harmless. (109 min)

Cinemas 99 113

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Stupendous, it is. George Lucas finally brings full circle the Shakespearian space opera he launched long, long ago in 1977 (and at the same time makes up for the disappointing Episodes I and II). It provides no answers, for the simple reason that we already know what’s going to happen. What it does, and brilliantly, is provide the details of how Anakin Skywalker loses his way and gains great power only by destroying everything he is trying to save. Granted, Hayden Christensen is not the strongest actor to take on this central role, but he does okay, and it could’ve been a lot worse. Fittingly, the SFX set a new standard for realism and sheer vividness (yes, even better than LOTR). No video-game races, no phony clone multitudes. It’s fast-paced and packs an unexpected emotional punch. Sure, it has some clunky dialogue, but (sorry, George) it wouldn’t be a Star Wars movie without clunky dialogue. Special honors to Ian McDiarmid as Chancellor Palpatine.

Cinemas 2 3 7 10 11 26 45 57 60 61 70 81 90 95 96 99 102 107 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

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