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Film Clips
Reviews by Ian Caruth, James DiGiovanna, Linsay Hernon and Jennifer Nichols
102 DALMATIANS. Disney unleashes Cruella DeVil again in this sequel to the 1996 live-action remake of the 1961 animated classic. Glenn Close stars as an obsessed Dalmatian dognapper in London who has become the ultimate dog lover after undergoing years of Dr. Pavlov's sadistic brainwashing. However, with every chime of the mighty Big Ben, the changed woman regresses back to her old villainous ways. So with the help of a maniacal fashion guru (Gerard Depardieu), she ravenously searches the town for 102 spotted pups in a dog-eat-dog world. This movie includes all the basic elements of a kids' flick, like the cuddly creatures and Close's outlandish persona, yet someone still needs to throw it a bone and give this film some imagination. --Hernon
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES. Matt Damon and Henry Thomas saddle up and ride through the majestic desert in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's most popular novel. To celebrate the end of World War II, the two brazen buckaroos cross the Rio Grande to find work with steeds and stallions on a Mexican ranch. Their rodeo days quickly end, however, when the two fall into a Mexican prison, where they are reunited with an uncaring delinquent they met during their travels. Debts, deceit and death develop at an excruciatingly slow pace set by director Billy Bob Thornton, who nevertheless somehow manages to provide a mildly mysteriously atmosphere. --Hernon
BILLY ELLIOT. Another Oscar contender is born in this truly delightful British drama about a driven 11-year-old boy who defies his father and the social norms by becoming a refined ballet dancer instead of a boxing rogue. In a charismatic acting debut, Jamie Bell stars as the little Gene Kelly who livens up the screen with every enthusiastic bend and bound. In addition to Bell's prodigal performance, first-time writer Lee Hall presents an emotional story that intertwines a politically charged revolution with family values and gender reversals to create an unforgettable film. --Hernon
CAST AWAY. Tom Hanks delivers Oscar-worthy work in Robert Zemeckis' latest; the editing and script, unfortunately, do not. Hanks stars as Chuck Noland, a regimented and relentless FedEx supervisor who survives a plane crash and washes onto a deserted island in the South Pacific. There he spends the next four years surviving on a crab and coconut diet, creating modern-day cave paintings, and sharing his candid thoughts with his only companion: Wilson, a volleyball. The film has a hokey book-ended format, many of the vital scenes are either abbreviated or altogether absent, and the script occasionally proves juvenile. However, it is Hanks' captivating presence and his grippingly realistic portrayal that keep this film afloat. --Hernon
CHOCOLAT. Lasse Hallström directs this simple fable of the chocolate-peddling gypsy Vianne (Juliette Binoche), who spends her life liberalizing the lives of conservative villagers in the French countryside. Daughter in tow, she sets up chocolate shops and single-handedly unlocks the hidden desires of the religious townsfolk with the magic of the cocoa seed. Once her cautious, god-fearing neighbors get a taste of her homemade chocolate confections, the people begin to come alive and abandon their assumption that Vianne is the devil incarnate. Remembering that this is told in the confines of a fairy tale, the tints of magical realism and the fight against mediocrity are charming, if not mouth-wateringly sweet. Lena Olin, Alfred Molina, Judi Dench and Johnny Depp provide caricatures of fear and love that play out as nicely as the indulgent delights cooked up in the Mayan kitchen. Chocolat is most likely the best holiday feel-good feature to be released from Tinseltown this season. --Nichols
DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. Ron Howard brings Dr. Seuss' classic tale to life. Jim Carrey dresses like a pregnant green Chewbacca with crooked teeth and yellow eyes to star as the infamous Grinch who wastes his days on top of Mount Crumpit eating rotten produce and condemning any holiday cheer. All inhabitants of Whoville, with their donkey noses and rabbit teeth, despise the party pooper, with the exception of little Cindy Lou Who, an optimistic girl helping everyone discover the true meaning of Christmas. The elaborate detail of the whimsical and colorful sets, the playful vocabulary ("snorkleblasts," "flooflounders") and Carrey's exquisite delivery of genius comedic shtick create a magical realm full of wit and energy. However, the storyline itself is mundane and slow-paced and does not live up to the vibrant Dr. Seuss spirit. --Hernon
DRACULA 2000. Vampires have always been the most latently sexual of mythic and horrible monsters, so a vampire entry in the newly revived teensploitation sex 'n' horror genre was probably inevitable. Dracula 2000 is that bloodless entry, an unnecessary millennial recontextualization of--or is it a sequel to?--Bram Stoker's basic story. A sure contender for both the worst title and worst soundtrack of the year, Dracula 2000 opens with a crew of naïve young thieves stealing a sealed coffin from Carfax Antiques, a metaphor for the feckless plundering of various old vampire stories that director Patrick Lussier perpetrates through the rest of the film. The film plays up the sexual aspect of the vampires, portraying them as well-dressed young hotties more interested in having freaky sex than feeding their bloodthirst. But close-ups of claret lips and concupiscent curls can only carry a film so far, and while the visual effects and sexualized feeding scenes may titillate, the film ultimately lacks bite. The myths are true; Dracula sucks. --Caruth
DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR. Perhaps once in a millennium a film comes along that dares to delve into the deepest recesses of the human psyche, a film that is unafraid to look at the kind of horror that Jean Paul Sartre called "nausea," a film that follows two stupid guys as they look for their car. Such a film is Dude, Where's My Car, which asks, further, the following question: Dude, where is my car? Indeed, haven't we all asked ourselves, as we stare into the abyss, and as the abyss stares back at us, beckoning, threatening, engulfing, performing the actions of nothingness, haven't we, then, asked ourselves, our deepest selves, where is my car? And haven't we then attempted to retrace our path, to follow backwards the very steps that led us to be that which we are, that is to say, to be a person, a person looking for his or her car? And haven't we all been as cute as Dude, Where's My Car star Ashton Kutcher, assuming we are male, or as cute as one of the many bimbos who cavort through Dude, Where's My Car, assuming we are female? And haven't we, just as the stupid guys who are featured in this film, found ourselves engulfed in an intergalactic war with large-breasted women who wear tight jumpsuits, and who are listed in the credits only as Jumpsuit Chick #s 1-5? And what about Fabio? Does he not make guest appearances in our lives? No? Are we sure? Yes? We are sure this is not the case? I see. Well, then, never mind. --DiGiovanna
THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE. The punch and pizzazz of a typical Disney animated feature are missing, but Groove is still the best kids' flick to hit theaters this holiday season. An anorexic-looking bitter crone, voiced by the legendary Eartha Kitt, wants to overthrow a self-centered emperor (David Spade), but her murderous plan backfires when the royal egomaniac is turned into a scrawny llama instead. John Goodman voices the oafish peasant with a conscience who guides the four-legged hairball through a trite series of misadventures back to the palace so the emperor can reclaim his crown and his human body. The rambling dialogue and overall blandness give this film two left feet, but the light comedic feel puts a mild spring into its step. --Hernon
FAMILY MAN. Has anyone noticed that Nicolas Cage has gotten a sort of stoned-out, glazed look to him of late? I think it happened right after he decided that making small, but well-made, films was beneath him, and that he wanted to be a Big Star. I can only hope that Family Man will turn out to be the enormous bomb that it deserves to be, and Nic will head back to what he used to do best, i.e. act. Unfortunately, first he'll have to suffer through this perverse and unnecessary remake of It's A Wonderful Life. Here's the zany twist: instead of being a small-town guy who had dreams of big-city success, he's a big-city guy who doesn't realize that deep in his heart he has dreams of small-town family life. Of course, an angel (Don Cheadle, who's also working way beneath himself here) comes along and shows him what his life would have been like if he had just married his high school sweetheart (Tea Leone, who is working right at her level). Since this is already being marketed as a "Christmas Classic" (read: rehashed, focus-grouped piece of mindless dog-doo) I wonder if anyone can guess if Cage's character will prefer the family values world of the suburbs to his million-dollar apartment and endless string of gorgeous bimbos. Wouldn't it be cool if in the end he decided he preferred cheap sex and expensive clothes to a loving wife and hyper-cute kids? Sadly, that's the kind of Christmas present that the movie-going public is not likely to receive. --DiGiovanna
HARD DAY'S NIGHT. Hordes of drooling fans may choose to forget it, but at one time the Beatles were seen as just another talentless teenybopper fad to be exploited and forgotten. Happily, the mid-1960s were a good time to be regarded as a fad; today's passing trends don't have talents like Richard Lester around to frame them for posterity. Lester's 1964 film was supposed to be a quickie cash-in to wring more allowance dollars out of the Beatles' adolescent fans, but it stands up admirably even today as an engaging portrait of the band before the pressures of fame and that bitch Yoko had stolen their youthful innocence. Very stupid people may find Hard Day's Night largely derivative of the Spice Girls' Spice World, but with Lester's kinetic camerawork and the Beatles' lively comic performances (John Lennon's manic humor is a particular treat), who could care about the nonexistent plot? It also features plenty of that impossible-to-find Beatles music, ideal for those fans who missed the original LPs, the movies, the Anthology, the light bulb and running shoe commercials, and the career of Oasis. --Caruth
PROOF OF LIFE. Proof of Life features one of the coolest commando rescue capers in recent cinema. Sadly, it occurs after two hours of "that sucks," and is hardly reward enough for having sat through one of the most annoying films of the year. Meg Ryan plays a woman who can't act, and Russell Crowe plays the man who is going to rescue her husband from some terrorist group. Oddly, there's no reason he should want to do this, as he's never met her before in his life, it calls him away from his job and family for four months, and she keeps yelling at him for no apparent reason. Maybe it's all for the single kiss she gives him in the end of the movie, or maybe it's for the hot sex scenes that were excised from the final cut of the film when test audiences found that they made Meg Ryan's character seem unsympathetic. Apparently, test audiences now hold so much power in Hollywood that they can demand a movie be re-cut so as to make it incomprehensible. Not worth the price of admission, unless the price of admission involves Warner Brothers paying you to see this film. --DiGiovanna
SIXTH DAY. This is basically your standard Schwarzenegger film, only with some cloning. Arnold gets very angry when another Arnold shows up at his house and starts boffing his wife and smoking his cigars. Next, lots of stuff blows up and unformed humanoids float around in a big tank waiting to be "imprinted." Then, more stuff blows up, some really cute puppies and kittens get duplicated, and Arnold steals somebody's severed thumb so that he can walk around saying things like "I'm all thumbs today," and "Thumb's up!" and "I'm just trying to thumb a ride!" Then people get suspicious about all the thumb comments, so some more stuff blows up. Then Robert Duvall appears as a scientist, but he keeps looking at what appears to be a very fat check that is made out to "Robert Duvall" and in the "memo" field it says "for selling out big-time." Then there's an explosion, some jokes about cloning, a fireball, an explosion, and a car crash. Then the credits roll, and you can read the names of lots of people who helped make things explode. Basically, if you like Shwarzenegger movies, you'll like Sixth Day, which is sort of a cross between Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop and Arnold's marriage to Maria Shriver, only with lots more cloning. Well, more cloning than there was in Total Recall and Kindergarten Cop. --DiGiovanna
VERTICAL LIMIT. Once, I dreamt I saw a film about mountain climbing in which no great storm appeared, no strong-headed man forced the climbers to continue through the storm, and no brave but irreverent group of wacky misfits and concerned heroes went to rescue the storm-trapped climbers. In this film, no one uttered ridiculous dialogue like "Up there, you're not dying, you're already dead." No one revealed his dark nature while trapped in the snowstorm. No one faced a test of courage that redeemed him for an error in his past. In short, this film of which I dreamt was not a montage of standard scenes and stock characters. This film was original, surprising, oddly real in its emotional content, oddly compelling in its naturalness. Of course, this film was only a dream. --DiGiovanna
YOU CAN COUNT ON ME. You can count on Laura Linney, but not on the mundane script. The talented actress stars as an overbearing single mom with Martha Stewart-like tendencies who wastes her day as a paper-pusher in a meaningless desk job. Soon her scruffy wayward brother visits and plays daddy to his nephew, despite his foul mouth and bad influences. Meanwhile, Linney contemplates marriage with her sidelining boyfriend, and has an affair with her pretentious boss (Matthew Broderick), who is obsessed with post-it notes and computer color schemes. Linney delivers a dynamic performance, which garnered her a recent Golden Globe nomination. However, Kenneth Lonergan's cut-and-dried script offers no drive or intensity amid the inundation of clichés. --Hernon
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