In her 1995 debut as writer-director, French actress Josiane Balasko (Too Beautiful for You, Grosse Fatigue) tries her hand at more political incorrectness. This very middle-class bisexual comedycalled Gazon Maudit in French and substantially censored by its American distributor, apparently under the assumption that we’re even more middle-class than the Frenchconcerns a frustrated housewife and mother (Pedro Almodovar regular Victoria Abril) who decides to get even with her philandering husband (Alain Chabat) by getting involved with another woman (Balasko), a stranger who happens by when her van breaks down. I loved Abril in this movie and liked Balasko, but though there was loud laughter all around me, I was only fitfully amused. In French with subtitles. 107 min. (JR) Read more
Playwright-actor-producer Tyler Perrya star of the so-called chitlin’ circuit, with eight shows currently credited to himadapts one of his hits for the big screen, directed by Darren R. Grant. The title heroine (Kimberly Elise)who’s angry, not crazyis dumped by her rich attorney husband (Steve Harris) for a white bimbo after 18 years of marriage; eventually she gets even and finds both true love (Shemar Moore) and her soul’s salvation. Perry plays her battle-ax grandmother Madea (featured in several Perry shows) as well as Madea’s lecherous brother and his upstanding son, and Cicely Tyson plays her mother. The stylistic discontinuities and pile-driver excesses can be off-putting for an outsider like me, but for fans this may well be part of the appeal. PG-13, 116 min. (JR) Read more
This gothic jigsaw puzzle, directed by John Maybury (Love Is the Devil) from a script by many hands, promises to be another Jacob’s Ladder but doesn’t deliver. Maybury’s art-world talents don’t include storytelling, and his visceral bursts of fast editing and extreme close-ups don’t yield any full-blown characters, narrative, or political vision (though I could swear I heard Noam Chomsky’s voice briefly coming from a TV). Leapfrogging between 1992 and 2007 and between fantasy and reality, the plot concerns an American GI (Adrien Brody) who nearly dies from a head wound during the first gulf war, gets framed for the murder of a cop back in his native Vermont, and winds up in a hospital for the criminally insane, where an evil shrink (Kris Kristofferson) performs hideous experiments on him. With Keira Knightley, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kelly Lynch, and music by Brian Eno. The executive producers include George Clooney and Steven Soderberghmaybe they can explain what’s going on. R, 104 min. (JR) Read more
A rarely screened early sound (1929) musical comedy adapted from the stage and featuring six-foot Charlotte Greenwood in the title role. (A silent version had been released nine years earlier.) An energetic, highly physical performer, Greenwood appeared later in such 50s musicals as Dangerous When Wet and Oklahoma. With Grant Withers, Patsy Ruth Miller, and Bert Roach. 64 min. (JR) Read more
In a small Florida town, the lonely ten-year-old daughter (AnnaSophia Robb) of a Baptist preacher (Jeff Daniels) adopts an unruly stray dog, which leads her to make friends with a few eccentric and equally lonely adultsa pet store clerk (rock star Dave Matthews), a librarian (Eva Marie Saint), and a reclusive alcoholic (Cicely Tyson). Wayne Wang (Smoke, The Joy Luck Club) directed this 2005 adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s book with a nice feeling for local color. Limiting the potential overripeness of the material (which periodically suggests Carson McCullers) with tact and sincerity, he generally makes the most of his resourceful cast; only the dog overacts. PG, 106 min. (JR) Read more
In a kind of neocolonial concession to the character typology of the Star Wars movies, this attractively animated dystopian SF from South Korean director-cowriter Moon Sang Kim, set in the year 2142, concentrates mainly on Western characters, with Asians relegated to the slots of wizened elders and comic relief. Also borrowing liberally from Metropolis (Escher-like futurist cityscapes) and the Mad Max trilogy (heavy-metal action), this is generally better with settings than with people, at least in the English version put together by Korean-born Sunmin Park. But that’s partly because effects of space and scale are among the triumphs of the high-definition multilayered animation employed. 87 min. (JR) Read more
The name above the title of this slick, fluffy romantic comedy is Will Smith, playing a Manhattan date doctor who advises shy guys on how to score. But with all due respect to Smith, the moviea performance piece with an unbelievable bare-bones plotbelongs to Kevin James (star of the TV show The King of Queens) as Hitch’s main client, a klutzy accountant who’s hopelessly in love with his wealthy socialite boss (Amber Valletta). This is a mannerist mugfest for all concerned, including Eva Mendes as a gossip columnist, but like the movie as a whole, James manages to be so light on his lumbering feet that it’s only natural for the film to culminate with his goofy dancing. Andy Tennant directed the script by Kevin Bisch. PG-13, 116 min. (JR) Read more
While it didn’t convince me to give up corn dogs, Ron Mann’s celebration of actor Woody Harrelson’s Simple Organic Living tour (a bus-and-bicycle caravan spreading the gospel of holistic living along the Pacific coast) is a highly entertaining form of ecological agitpropradical but accessible. Mann’s shrewdest ploy is to shift his focus from Harrelson to Steve Clark, his junk-food-addicted production assistant, whose comic encounters with strangers along the way look staged but purportedly weren’t. Great music and animation plus a pivotal cameo by Ken Kesey helped make this an audience favorite at the 2003 Toronto film festival. 100 min. (JR) Read more
A wise, aging Italian peasant (Pierrino Mascarino) who knows barely any English comes to America for the first time to visit his grown nephew (Joe Mantegna), bringing light and life into the man’s humdrum suburban family and restoring their best impulses. I know how mawkish this sounds, but writer-director Robert Shallcross believes in it so passionately that he came close to convincing me too. I even enjoyed the rock number that Uncle Nino plays on the fiddle with his nephew’s garage band. With Anne Archer, Trevor Morgan, and Gina Mantegna. G, 93 min. (JR) Read more
While it didn’t convince me to give up corn dogs, Ron Mann’s celebration of actor Woody Harrelson’s Simple Organic Living tour (a bus-and-bicycle caravan spreading the gospel of holistic living along the Pacific coast) is a highly entertaining form of ecological agitprop–radical but accessible. Mann’s shrewdest ploy is to shift his focus from Harrelson to Steve Clark, his junk-food-addicted production assistant, whose comic encounters with strangers along the way look staged but purportedly weren’t. Great music and animation plus a pivotal cameo by Ken Kesey helped make this an audience favorite at the 2003 Toronto film festival. 100 min. Facets Cinematheque. Read more
Tim Burton directs Michael Keaton in the title role (1989). Production designer Anton Furst takes a good stab at making Gotham City seem corroded and oppressive, but all the best scenic and story ideas here come from other films (Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, Dunenot to mention Louis Feuillade’s serials and Fritz Lang’s Mabuse films). The film is watchable enough, and Jack Nicholson has a field day as the sinister Joker. But Keaton and Kim Basinger (as reporter Vicki Vale) register as washouts, and both the narrative line and the action sequences tend to be cumbersome. Still, the conceptual side of the movietwo rather sick two-sided antagonists having it out in a black and sordid contextlingers. PG-13, 126 min. (JR) Read more
A more unabashed art movie than any of Takeshi Kitano’s other films, this exquisitely composed 2002 feature (made between Brother and The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi) begins with a traditional form of Japanese puppet theater called Bunraku before it segues into three overlapping, highly stylized, but otherwise unrelated contemporary tales. In each the protagonist (a businessman, an aging yakuza, and a female pop singer disfigured in a traffic accident, as Kitano was several years ago) tries to compensate for having chosen work over love and winds up with a mate who has sacrificed everything for it. The overall mood is stately and melancholy, the selective use of color is ravishing, and some of the natural views are breathtaking. In Japanese with subtitles. 113 min. (JR) Read more
This painfully unfunny mockumentary, scripted by Dallas hopefuls Eric Jewell, Jeff Hays, and Dean Lewis, suggests that Christopher Guest has a lot to answer for. An unskilled comedian (Lewis) teaches a course in stand-up to even more unskilled locals, while an unskilled filmmaker (Jewell) and his crew document their fumblings; meanwhile another comic (David Wilk), who’s notorious for stealing material, lands his own TV series. Though Guest bases his humor on incompetence, his ensemble players know how to make the characters funny; this crew mainly tries to coast along on its amiable intentions, but it doesn’t wash. Jewell and Hays directed. 86 min. (JR) Read more
A more unabashed art movie than any of Takeshi Kitano’s other films, this exquisitely composed 2002 feature (made between Brother and The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi) begins with a traditional form of Japanese puppet theater called Bunraku before it segues into three overlapping, highly stylized, but otherwise unrelated contemporary tales. In each the protagonist (a businessman, an aging yakuza, and a female pop singer disfigured in a traffic accident, as Kitano was several years ago) tries to compensate for having chosen work over love and winds up with a mate who has sacrificed everything for it. The overall mood is stately and melancholy, the selective use of color is ravishing, and some of the natural views are breathtaking. In Japanese with subtitles. 113 min. Music Box. Read more
