The saddest thing about Woody Allen’s effort to retool his brand of romantic comedy for the youth market isn’t the absence of laughsit’s the bitterness that cuts through everything, which is hardly sweetened by all the Billie Holiday numbers on the sound track. Jason Biggs is a young writer who falls in love with freewheeling actor-singer Christina Ricci (shades of Annie Hall) and who’s saddled with loser agent Danny DeVito (shades of Broadway Danny Rose). Allen plays Biggs’s sour mentor, who goes walking with him in Central Park (allowing us to get two versions of Woody at once), and Stockard Channing does a turn as Ricci’s mother, who also wants to be a singer. The film’s hatred of Ricci and Channing and its affectionate tolerance of the hero’s mousy hypocrisy and his mentor’s negativity are familiar Allen motifs, but the faint echoes of his best work only make this one seem grimmer. 108 min. (JR) Read more
In a gothic city (i.e., Tim Burton’s Gotham City) where vampires and werewolvesmostly Brits and a few Americanshave been at war for centuries and everyone falls to the ground in slow motion, Kate Beckinsale, an action vampire, strenuously underacts while everyone else, vampires and werewolves alike, strenuously overacts. She’s also the only one permitted to make a fashion statementone that mainly says The Matrix rules, though her black rubber suit suggests Batman again. I spent most of the movie’s endless 121 minutes trying to figure out where and how she could buy such a cute outfit in a city where it’s always night, there are no stores or restaurants, and the subway is used chiefly for shoot-outs. This is the silliest horror movie I’ve seen in years, though some of the special effects are pretty good. Len Wiseman directed Danny McBride’s ponderous, humorless script, and Scott Speedman costars. (JR) Read more
Alas, most of the surprise and the wit to be found here ends with the title. Produced and distributed by Miramax, it’s another quirky thriller like The Usual Suspects (albeit slightly better) that got green lighted because of Tarantino’s successan exercise without much point or originality except stylishness (not to be confused with style). A retired criminal (Andy Garcia) is recruited by his former boss (Christopher Walken) to frighten the new boyfriend of his son’s ex-girlfriend, a plan that goes awry when a borderline nut case (Treat Williams) in Garcia’s team of hoods gets carried away. Directed by first-timer Gary Fleder from a screenplay by Scott Rosenberg; the remainder of the predictable if serviceable cast includes Christopher Lloyd, William Forsythe, Bill Nunn, Jack Warden, Gabrielle Anwar, Fairuza Balk, and, yep, Steve Buscemi. (JR) Read more
