There’s not much Miami but loads of vice in Michael Mann’s big-screen adaptation of the 80s TV series he created with Anthony Yerkovichin particular the vice of a gifted director letting his talent go to seed. The pacing and proportion of Heat (1995) and the feeling for place and character evident in Collateral (2004) have been tossed aside for a routine plot in which vice cops Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx pose as drug dealers. Mann creates some arresting ‘Scope compositions, but he’s so addicted to close-ups here, especially erotic ones involving Gong Li (hot) and Farrell (not), that he tends to neglect their visual contexts. Apart from a few sleek shots involving boats or helicopters, the action eventually devolves into a standard war-movie shoot-out. With Naomie Harris. R, 135 min. (JR) Read more
A half-dozen women friends meet in the Appalachians to explore a remote cave, hoping their outdoor adventure will rejuvenate one of them after a tragic accident a year earlier, but they’re attacked by blind subterranean beasties. Written and directed by Neil Marshall, this intermittently effective UK horror thriller carefully establishes the psychological relationships among the women, then squanders this calibrated and generally plausible setup with a series of crude, implausible, and scattershot horror effects. The two strains are supposed to merge but mix like oil and water as the narrative grows increasingly incoherent (the fact that so much of it transpires in darkness doesn’t help). Marshall changed the film’s ending after its successful British run, reportedly to dumb it down for the American audience. With Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, MyAnna Buring, and Nora-Jane Noone. R, 99 min. (JR) Read more
The tagline for this tolerable comedy, directed by Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) from a script by Don Payne (The Simpsons), could be Hell hath no fury like a superwoman scorned. Uma Thurman plays a neurotic female version of Clark Kent who has trouble holding her superhero powers in check. A lot of superwimp gags executed by Luke Wilson grow out of this premise, as do some tacky 50s-style special effects. The movie’s too slapdash to keep its characters consistent, but this has its moments. With Anna Faris, Rainn Wilson, Eddie Izzard, and Wanda Sykes. PG-13, 95 min. (JR) Read more
This 100-minute DVD includes seven shorts, from Lynch’s earliest filmsSix Men Getting Sick (1967, 1 min.), The Alphabet (1967), and The Grandmother (1970, 34 min.)through the previously unreleased video The Amputee (1973, shown in two separate versions) and two French commissions, coyly quaint (The Cowboy and the Frenchman) and nightmarishly baroque (a contribution to the 1998 feature Lumiere and Company that runs less than a minute). I still regard Eraserhead (1977), Lynch’s first feature, as the summit of his work to date, and the best of these sketches have a similar if cruder hallucinatory and metaphorical power; the others are stray oddities. All are arguably better without Lynch’s homespun autobiographical introsbuy the boxed version and you can skip them. (JR) Read more
I can’t think of a better portrait of contemporary Paris or the zeitgeist of 2001-’04 than Chris Marker’s wise and whimsical 58-minute 2004 video. Marker, now in his 80s, shot the images on the streets of Paris and in its metro stations: graffiti, posters, demonstrations, musical performances, cats (real and cartoon). The original conveys Marker’s commentary only through pithy intertitles, but the English version screening here has an unfortunate voice-over delivered in a heavy French accent by actor Gerard Rinaldi that tries to explain as well as translate these titles. Still, no one can film people in the street better than Marker or combine images with more grace and finesse. Screening with Alice Arnold’s 30-minute To Be Seen (in Beta SP video), about “the battle between guerrilla art and corporate ads on the walls and sidewalks of New York.” Reviewed this week in Section 1. Gene Siskel Film Center. Read more
Leave it to the nakedly cunning executive producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis to fashion a digitally animated scare show for kids predicated on what may be the most blatant evocation of vagina dentata in movie history: a spiteful, devouring haunted house driven by the angry spirit of a circus fat lady. The three neighborhood kids who venture inside this toothy trap are wittily conceived (as are other characters, like a goth babysitter), but though the overall conception suggests Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle, the frenetic pacing seems as American as an apple pie in your face. Gil Kenan directed; among the voices are those of Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Kathleen Turner. PG, 87 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Gardens 1-6, Lake, Lawndale, Lincoln Village, Norridge, Pickwick, River East 21, 62nd & Western. Read more
