Archive for May 2006
Fanboys were quaking in their musty old
socks when they heard: Director Bryan Singer, fearing the epically
ailing Superman Returns needed him more, decided to go from X to ex
and bailed on X-Men: The Last Stand, after helming the first two
popular installments of Marvel’s mutant-centered series. After Layer
Cake’s Matthew Vaughn sniffed around preproduction for a bit, he
bolted, too, and Brett Ratner finally committed to the project. Sure,
Ratner made box-office magic with his Rush Hour duo – but those
movies involved the kind of comics that certain audiences take a
whole lot less seriously.
Turns out the snarling message-board
posts were misdirected: The Last Stand is not ruined by Ratner. It’s
the damn writers everyone should have been worried about.
Singer, you see, didn’t walk alone.
Though Zak Penn, who had been given a “story” credit on X2 –
easily the best of the trilogy – stuck around, Singer brought two
of 2’s other writers, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, along for the
leap. Instead, Penn’s paired with Simon Kinberg here – whose former
projects include xXx: State of the Union and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. As
for Penn, he scripted Elektra and the even more painful Fantastic
Four between the X’s. And people were worried about Ratner?
Miraculously, The Last Stand isn’t a
disaster. And with shocking developments, including deaths,
outnumbering tedious introductions, it arguably squeaks by as more
compelling than the original. The plot centers on what dark-side
mutant leader Magneto (Ian McKellen) has predicted all along: a war
between humans and the genetic aberrations who share the planet –
with a civil battle between the latter developing in the process.
Even though a mutant, the Beast (Kelsey Grammer), serves the country
as a member of the not-too-distant-future’s presidential
administration (known in that capacity as Dr. Hank McCoy), the
government gives a go-ahead to a pharmaceutical company’s
breakthrough. There’s a “cure” for mutants, one that’s permanent and delivered
by a simple vaccination. The source of the remedy is
a mutant himself, a boy (Cameron Bright) who disables the powers of
anyone who nears him. And the company’s head is the father of Angel
(Ben Foster), who had desperately mutilated himself when part of his
growing pains including sprouting a pair of wings.
The announcement, naturally, sets off a
fury of protests and division, and the scripters not-so-subtly use
the storyline to emphasize the current relevancy of the comic book’s
exploration of “otherness.” The president (Josef Sommer) talks
about a group of mutants being “a real threat.” Magneto rants
about having to fight for freedom, and via video threatens the
country that “your cities will not be safe!” The words “mission”
and “by any means necessary” are thrown around, while – I swear
– “homo” is emphasized in each reference to “Homo sapiens.”
And you thought V for Vendetta was heavy-handed in its
socio-political message.
The script has worse failings: The
attitudinal but charismatic Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) – the
highlight of X2 — isn’t as strong a presence here, and the character
is also dampened by a complete lack of humor that can’t help turn
Jackman’s previously entertaining bravado into caricature. (Grammer
helps offset this a bit when, perhaps for the first time ever, his
character gets to kick some ass.)The dialogue as a whole, in fact, is
not only flat but often cliched. For example, who can finish this
father/son exchange: “It’s what we all want!” “No, blank blank
blank blank.” (The answer, of course, is “it’s what you want!”)
Magneto and his adversary, the more
benevolent Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), however, are as
fascinating as ever in their pigheaded leaderships, and Ratner
doesn’t keep most of the mutants on either side from showing off
their very cool powers: the shape-shifting of Mystique (Rebecca
Romijn), the walk-through-walling of Kitty Pryde (played here by
Ellen Page), the fireballs of Pyro (Aaron Stanford). New characters
are introduced – apparently the lesser mutants live in a goth
underground – though only to aid the cause without becoming distractions, such as Callisto (Dania
Ramirez), who comes equipped with mutant-locating GPS and can zoom
around a room like a vampire. Combined with the drama-soaked story,
the effects, in fact, help make The Last Stand’s failings forgivable
– the most impressive being the roar-accompanied slicing and
repositioning of the Golden Gate Bridge, with various Poltergeist-ian
forces courtesy of a Darth Vader-reminiscent traitor a close second.
The finale, naturally, suggests that
The Last Stand isn’t quite. But if box office – and recent
tradition — demand another rejiggered follow-up, it shouldn’t be
Ratner who gets the boot.
A morally questionable strategy
employed to better a society is also at the heart of The Proposition,
an Australian take on the Western directed by John Hillcoat and
written by basement-dwelling singer-songwriter Nick Cave. More
spaghetti than classic, the film’s good guys and bad guys are highly
ambiguous. And there is a sunset at the end here, but many characters
are too – how do I put this – dead to ride off into it.
The Proposition, set in the 1880s
Australian outback, begins with a montage of gruesome photos and then
the capture of two of the men involved in the appalling crime
depicted in the stills. Irish brothers Charlie (Guy Pearce) and Mikey
Burns (Richard Wilson) sit with the English head of local law
enforcement, Capt. Morris Stanley (Ray Winstone). Intimidating in
both body and attitude, Stanley offers Charlie a cruel deal: He and
Mikey, an easily frightened simpleton, will be spared if Charlie
finds and kills their brother Arthur (Danny Huston, son of John), who
Stanley believes is the ringleader. If Charlie doesn’t complete the
task before Christmas, Mikey will hang. Charlie has nine days.
The Proposition is visually impressive
– the dry, fly-ridden landscape is often whitewashed to suggest the
wilting heat of the sun, and scenes involving Stanley’s elegant wife,
Martha (Emily Watson), often suggest Victorian portraits brought to
life. The couple’s flower-dotted home stands in stark juxtaposition
to the harsh desert surrounding it, just as their loving relationship
contrasts the violence of the lawless area, whether in Stanley’s
duties or the conflicts between the native Aborigines and white
settlers. Hillcoat portrays both in increasingly grisly detail.
Cave’s story is most interesting when
it focuses on Stanley, whose apparent brutality at the beginning of
the film is gradually shown to not be the true mark of the man. “I
will civilize this land,” Stanley tells Charlie, and though he
tries to shield Martha from the particulars of this situation, when
she eventually finds out we also discover the thinking that lies
beneath his seemingly contemptible scheme. As Stanley, Winstone is an
intriguing mix of Tony Soprano and Master and Commander’s Jack Aubrey
– an often quiet yet always commanding and magnetic presence, fully
able to unleash the beast only as need demands and stubborn in his
against-the-grain calls.
Pearce’s Charlie, gaunt, sweaty, and so
ravaged as to outwardly belie his inner burden, is less riveting
despite his tortured situation. As Charlie travels alone – whether
to find Arthur or simply contemplate his choices, it’s difficult to
tell – Cave melodramatically adds a whispered voiceover of poetry
as he stares off into the sky. The Burns gang may be killers and
rapists, you see, but they still quote verse, admire the beauty of
their surroundings, and break out into elegiac Irish ballads while
’round the campfire. The songwriter also composed the score, which
naturally leans toward sounds so melancholic as to be eye-rolling.
Because of Cave’s penchant for the overblown, The Proposition wavers
between the gripping and the ponderous – a state as maddening as
the decisions facing its characters.
copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com
And you thought product placement was
annoying: Now tween movies, apparently, are the new Myspace. Lindsay
Lohan competes with Brit pop band McFly for attention in her latest
farce, Just My Luck. But depending on your tolerance of marketing –
as well as the sometimes-Skeletor, sometimes-curvy tabloid darling –
it’s not necessarily a bad thing. The relatively cute if one-note
storyline about a successful/lucky publicist, Ashley (a good-enough
if weird-looking Lohan), who unknowingly swaps her good fortune when
she kisses a fumbling/hexed loser, Jake (generic Chris Hardin), gets
tiresome fast: Pre-kiss, the relentless parade of relative happy and
pitiable things that befall these characters hammers the point home
to a maddening degree; post-kiss, unsurprisingly, isn’t much
different.
But Jake’s heretofore failed management of the four-piece
McFly occasionally brings Just My Luck to life. For one, label honcho
Damon Phillips (Faizon Love) gets the only mildly funny dialogue in
I. Marlene King and Amy B. Harris’ script (based on a story by King
and, incredibly, three others). And though the band members’
perfectly mussed hipster hair is rather annoying, McFly’s two
“Beatles meet blink-182” songs that are featured here are
innocuously radio-friendly and bright. (Admittedly, however, the
movie’s best line is when a sound guy is asked if he’s seen the
band’s drummer and responds, “I don’t know, they all look the same
to me.”) Co-starring is Ashley’s chic wardrobe and the fabulous
excesses typical of big-time NYC promotion parties as well as those
showered on the moment’s new hot group, including the giant,
fantabulous, only-in-fiction apartment that seems to be requisite in
all youngster-focused New York stories.
Of course, somewhere in Just
My Luck is are lessons about selflessness in love and, though
illogical because of its main premise, the whole
pull-your-sorry-ass-up-by-your-bootstraps thing. But the movie’s much
more enjoyable when you brainlessly focus on McFly’s sunniness and
the lure of all the drool-worthy pretty things – and since getting
her arms back somehow resulted in Lohan’s complexion turning a
bizarre sorta orange, those don’t always include the star.
copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com
Quick, which do you care about more:
Shelley Winters or intense action? That’s likely to be the deciding
factor in how you respond to Poseidon, Wolfgang Petersen’s redo of
1972’s The Poseidon Adventure. In the latter, Winters plays a rotund
old woman who’s sure she won’t survive the wreckage of the title
ship and thus makes frequent ready-to-die remarks to her devoted husband. You ache for both of them. You pity the never-married,
middle-aged man, played meekly by Red Buttons, who’s given up on
finding a companion. You admire a God-questioning preacher, a
tough-as-nails Gene Hackman, for his gumption. And Ernest Borgnine,
well, he makes you want to punch his obnoxious cop character in the face
– or at least wax the hell out of those freak eyebrows.
In Poseidon, you get Josh Lucas and
Emmy Rossum. And it’s not very long before theirs and other equally
flimsy – yet still terribly acted – characters get tossed about
like so many recent Hollywood remakes.
Screenwriter Mark Protosevich – whose
only previous scripting experience is 2000’s often laughable The Cell
– didn’t change a whole lot from Adventure’s story, which itself
was based on Paul Gallico’s 1969 novel. It’s New Year’s Eve, and the
ship’s passengers are celebrating in their finery, sipping champagne
and dancing to the saucy stylings of Gloria (the Black Eyed Peas’
Fergie) and her band. Not long after midnight, one of the crew –
with cartoonishly giant binoculars and a “No. Nooooooo!” –
spots trouble, to say the least: a jaw-dropping “rogue wave” that
crashes through the cruiser’s windows and flips the thing bottom-up.
Some of those who survived the immediate impact decide to stay on the
floor, which of course is really the ceiling. A small group of others
decide to try to work their way upward, toward air and possible
rescue – pro gambler and self-appointed leader Dylan (Lucas);
former firefighter/New York mayor Robert, his daughter, Jennifer, and
Jennifer’s boyfriend, Christian (Kurt Russell, Rossum, and Mike
Vogel); Maggie and her young son, Conor (Jacinda Barrett and Jimmy
Bennett); kitchen employee Valentin (Freddy Rodriguez); recently
dumped and suicidal gay man Richard (Richard Dreyfuss); and
who-the-hell-knows-who-they-are Elena (Mia Maestro) and Lucky Larry
(Kevin Dillon).
The skimp on characterization allowed
Petersen, king of waterly disasters and claustrophobic tension (Das
Boot, The Perfect Storm), to stretch out the mayhem while trimming
the original’s 117 minutes to a mostly swift-moving 99. The director
lingers on the wave’s initial, fiery wallop, showing victims thrust
out into the ocean and the gruesome corpses who remained inside (and
a shot of a tilting indoor pool and its swimmers is an interesting
addition). The ship’s slow inversion is portrayed from the outside,
too, amping up the dark-water horror and a sense of the ocean’s
power to more than merely that nightmarish wall of sea. The effects
are brutal, and coupled with a few cracks toward Robert that recall
Rudy Giuliani, vaguely 9/11ish.
For some time, the proactive group’s
first conflict-filled attempts to find safety are dull and
eye-rolling, thanks not only to the fact that we couldn’t care less
about these people, but also to Protosevich’s stiff dialogue,
including lines such as “That’s a pressure valve. It’ll only open
under tremendous pressure!” But then Petersen fully pulls out his
ace in the hole: running his characters ragged in impossibly tight
spaces, dodging their unrelenting, gushing pursuer as well as
fireballs worthy of an explosion-happy, on-the-ground action flick
– at one point, the entire screen goes orange and red. And as the
survivors thin, their deaths aren’t pretty. Ever really see what
happens to a person when he begins to drown?
So eventually you’re less irked that
the B-status pretties are as blank as ever, and that more established
actors such as Dreyfuss — and dare I say Russell – might as well
be nobodies. You’ll hold your breath along with the group and feel
their anguish as the strangers – to us and to each other – bond
during the perpetual turmoil. And even for those seeking the
original’s depth, this all may be adequate compensation for not
having to see up Winters’ dress.
copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com
Though
action is obviously the raison d’etre of Mission: Impossible III,
this time out it was pretty important that the acting be solid, too.
And it is: Philip Seymour Hoffman, albeit always excellent, recalls
neither a tubby loser nor a lisping effete. Keri Russell, no longer
Felicity, is a believable secret agent. And, more remarkably, Tom
Cruise (perhaps you’ve heard of him — nearly every single day in the
past year) for not one minute reminds you of his recent
Kool-Aid-drinking lunacy. Now there’s a mission that’s…oh, never
mind.
Alias
and Lost creator J.J. Abrams directs and co-writes (along with Alex
Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, collaborators on both TV series) this
third franchise installment, making his feature debut. Taking the
reins from II’s action ace, John Woo, Abrams gets off to a dubious
start, with a scene that’s attention-grabbing — first line: “We
put an explosive charge in your head” — and tense. Inside
Man-style, MI:III begins with a scene that will be repeated at the
end: IMF Agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his fiancee, Julia (Michelle
Monaghan), are tied to chairs, at the mercy of international (of
course) bad guy Owen Davian (Hoffman). Hunt pleas, Julia whimpers,
Davian barks – and Abrams’ camera shakes like hell, regardless if
he’s swooping the focus between two characters or training a shot on
one. Even music-video-turned-movie-directors have steadier cams.
It’s
a style Abrams will use again, but sparingly and in more logical
scenes, such as inside a helicopter. Otherwise, the movie’s as brisk
and breathtaking as a summer blockbuster should be. And just as II
was more complex than the first, the writers haven given III even
more tentacles. Gadgets such as mini ultrasound machines and the
aforementioned brain bomb are used as Hunt and his team – computer
whiz Luther Strickell (the returning Ving Rhames), transportation
expert Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and background operative Zhen
(Maggie Q) – are called upon to find one bazillion-dollar “rabbit’s
foot,” an object whose aim is specifically unknown but generally
evil. This takes Hunt globe-trotting to places such as the Vatican
and Shanghai. And though his superheroing in each location is
challenging, the bigger problem Hunt faces is persuading his
girlfriend to stick around while never telling her what he really
does for a living.
This
personal plotline leads to some Revenge of the Sith-quality dialogue,
with Julia cooing “Tell me that it’s real!” — it being their
relationship – when she confronts him about his frequent trips and
then ridiculously accepting with a smile his repeated response of
“Just trust me.” Fortunately – and ironically – the writers
get more believable outside of the love story, even when casually
bandying about terms such as “vascular ID.” There’s even some
humor thrown in, mostly in the form of Shaun of the Dead’s Simon
Pegg, who has a bit part as a fellow IMFer who guides Hunt via GPS,
all while nattering anxiously about how they’re both going to end up
in jail.
But
what everyone came for is the creative but this-close-to-blowing-it
action, and in that regard MI:III satisfies. A very cool highlight is
the portrayal of how the team makes the doppelganger masks used in
the previous movie, which employs photos and a kind of high-tech, 3-D
pantograph. Hunt also goes Spider-Man, climbing walls and swinging
between not-so-close skyscrapers on his chase for the mysterious
grail. Incredibly, Cruise doesn’t look like he’s aged a day since
his first appearance as Hunt a decade ago, and is just as believable
as the pretty-but-brainy go-to superspy. But the brilliant move here
is casting Hoffman as the silky villain, whose bass voice goes from
smoothly pronouncing that killing so-or-so was “fun” to
tightening when he’s trapped in a corner and doling out the threats.
Hoffman’s greatest moment, however, is when his Davian has Hunt in
that chair and yells a perfectly bloodcurdling, “DO YOU THINK I’M
PLAYING?” No, sir – it’s clear that you and all the MI:III
contributors have taken their jobs quite seriously.
copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com
personal plotline leads to some Revenge of the Sith-quality dialogue,
with Julia cooing “Tell me that it’s real!” — it being their
relationship – when she confronts him about his frequent trips and
then ridiculously accepting with a smile his repeated response of
“Just trust me.” Fortunately – and ironically – the writers
get more believable outside of the love story, even when casually
bandying about terms such as “vascular ID.” There’s even some
humor thrown in, mostly in the form of Shaun of the Dead’s Simon
Pegg, who has a bit part as a fellow IMFer who guides Hunt via GPS,
all while nattering anxiously about how they’re both going to end up
in jail.
what everyone came for is the creative but this-close-to-blowing-it
action, and in that regard MI:III satisfies. A very cool highlight is
the portrayal of how the team makes the doppelganger masks used in
the previous movie, which employs photos and a kind of high-tech, 3-D
pantograph. Hunt also goes Spider-Man, climbing walls and swinging
between not-so-close skyscrapers on his chase for the mysterious
grail. Incredibly, Cruise doesn’t look like he’s aged a day since
his first appearance as Hunt a decade ago, and is just as believable
as the pretty-but-brainy go-to superspy. But the brilliant move here
is casting Hoffman as the silky villain, whose bass voice goes from
smoothly pronouncing that killing so-or-so was “fun” to
tightening when he’s trapped in a corner and doling out the threats.
Hoffman’s greatest moment, however, is when his Davian has Hunt in
that chair and yells a perfectly bloodcurdling, “DO YOU THINK I’M
PLAYING?” No, sir – it’s clear that you and all the MI:III
contributors have taken their jobs quite seriously.
Inarguably,
every family suffers its own degree of fuckup-ery. And, yeah,
suitcases aren’t the only kind of baggage that is dragged in when a
flock returns home. But for chrissake, are there really people out
there who routinely have the disastrous holiday dinners that every
seasonally themed movie would have us believe? Unless you have a high
tolerance for wackiness, first-time writer-director Salvador Litvak’s
When Do We Eat? doesn’t even begin auspiciously: It’s Passover, and
Mom (Lesley Ann Warren) kick-starts the family phone tree because she
needs a couple boxes of matzoh. This is Litvak and also-green
co-writer Nina Davidovich’s lazy way of introducing the family, and
what a group it is – there’s the druggie son (Ben Feldman), angry
dad (Michael Lerner), sex-therapist daughter (Shiri Appleby), lesbian
daughter from dad’s prior marriage (Meredith Scott Lynn), and lesbian
daughter’s African-American girlfriend (Cynda Williams), who wears a
yalmulke tilted toward her
forehead like a sassy hat. At home is an autistic teenage son (Adam
Lamberg) and a kvetching grandpa (played by an unrecognizably
withered Jack Klugman).
But wait, there’s more: a formerly successful
son who’s now a strict Hasidic Jew (Max Greenfield), the
celebrity-publicist, cell-phone-glued cousin (Mili Avital) with whom
the aforementioned holy man fools around (while Hava Nagila plays),
and – I swear – a crazed-looking, eye-patch-wearing bald guy
(Mark Ivanir) who set up the tent for the Seder and is invited to
stay.
The plot, really, is little more than all of these irritating
people yelling at each other around the table, until the E-holding
son drops a tab into his father’s antacid because, well, he’s a jerk,
and the patriarch is also determined to hold “the world’s fastest
Seder.” Dad starts tripping, with the table flying in the sky and
images moving around the Haggadah,
while the rest of the family, sigh, still argues. There is, to be
fair, a genuinely touching moment when Grandpa gets serious and
mentions the wife and children he lost during the Holocaust as well
as a decent joke or two, such as when the elder Jew rebuffs his son
after his tragic story with “I don’t need a drug hug!” But then
Litvak and Davidovich throw a couple of twists in the end that
officially stamp When Do We Eat? a torturous comedy not remotely
based in reality. World’s Fastest Seder? You wish.
copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com
Old versus new; red versus blue: It
seems, actually, that writer-director Richard Squires prefers his
debut, Crazy Like a Fox, be viewed as a story of good versus evil.
But Squires should have realized that evil doesn’t come across as
quite so menacing when it’s presented as cartoon.
“My fathah was a great readah,”
landowner Nat Banks (Roger Rees) intones in the film’s opening
voiceover, then telling of how he and his siblings used to act out
the dramas their dad loved among cherry trees, “a backdrop of
indescribable beauty.” As Squires’ camera pans over a verdant and
bucolic estate, Banks goes on about his “noble family” and the
eight generations that occupied the Virginia farm named Greenwood.
Cut to the present, when Nat’s wife, Amy (Mary McDonnell), is
insisting that they sell the now money-sucking property, and soon the
tone weirdly turns from purple to, well, crazee – at least for a
bit, before it 180s back again.
Crazy Like a Fox’s schizophrenic and
often exaggerated presentation is the biggest problem in Squires’
otherwise empathetic story. Amy puts their home up for sale, and soon
a ridiculous couple from Washington, D.C., show up to look down
their noses at it. Will Sherman (Paul Fitzgerald), a lawyer, openly
tells an already-petulant Nat that the house – a Monticello-ian
beauty – easily needs $1 million of work to be “savable,” while
Will’s wife, Ellie (Christina Rouner), a real-estate broker, scoffs
at everything she sees and snaps, “I could have *died*!” when she
slips in some pig slop. Nat, clearly a stubborn throwback sort, isn’t
exactly polite to them, either. But despite their “big city”
attitudes, Will and Ellie not only meet the Banks’ $2 million asking
price, they immediately throw in $40,000 for the furniture with the
caveat that Nat allow the closing to go smoothly. Will also promises
Nat – the deal sealed with a handshake – that the couple won’t
tear down the house.
Squires’ message that history and a
man’s word – Will immediately proposes redevelopment and a road
leading to a nearby highway – is no longer sacred in modern society
is an admirable one, and viewers who perhaps have recently watched a
neighborhood staple be turned into condos or a parking lot will
especially empathize. But the movie is a lot less likable when Nat
becomes, as his wife puts it, “a nutcase in a uniform,” dressing
up like a Confederate general and remaining on the property, choosing
to live in a cave instead of his family’s new home.
Rees’ performance is partly to blame.
His version of “crazy” includes screaming “Monticello!” and
then bouncing off the walls like a drunk as Nat goes to get his
uniform after Amy deliberately breaks an artifact to metaphorically
slap him into their new reality. Neither Squires’ script nor
direction help: It’s difficult to keep sympathizing with Nat when he,
accompanied by jaunty, isn’t-this-fun music, goes completely batshit
– he accuses a couple of boys wandering the forest of being spies –
and it’s a bit unbelievable when Amy calmly accepts her husband’s new
digs for a while, even eventually visiting along with their two
children and snuggling up to him in the cave. Worst of all is
Squires’ portrayal of the Shermans and their friends, which has them
all acting like snotty high-schoolers, openly laughing at their
“dadgum” neighbors, for example, or acting outraged when a server
at a local bar tells them the place doesn’t carry champagne and is
out of bourbon: “What the hell is going on here?” Will huffs to
the waitress. His jerkitude, at least, is made more palatable when it
turns out the bar’s owner simply refuses to serve them.
Just about when you’re ready to go
bonkers yourself after Will and Ellie’s hundredth use of the word
“hick” — not to mention unnatural exchanges such as, “So did
we just get exterminated?” “I think we did – strangely, though,
I don’t feel dead” — Crazy Like a Fox settles into, well, not
exactly reality, but a version of it that’s pleasant enough.
Ultimately, the central issue that Squires conveys via the Banks’
home is just enough to trump the movie’s hyperbole. As a judge tells
the Shermans, the property may have been on the market, but “its
heritage wasn’t for sale.”
La Mujer de mi Hermano (The Wife of My
Brother) doesn’t really care about anything besides chic modernity
and handsomeness. Sure, first-time screenwriter Jaime Bayly bandies
about topics such as incest, adultery, family rifts, and lifestyle
choices in this adaption of his own novel. But why burden your three
main characters with deeper examinations of such ugly matters when
everything else in the movie is so pretty?
Actually, some viewers may find its
beauty and simplicity satisfying enough. And Ricardo de Montreuil
doesn’t take any chances that you might miss what subtext there is in
his directorial debut, instead dipping certain aspects in symbolism
that’s akin to a brick in the face: Zoe (Babara Mori), a
makeup-free stunner, is married to a wealthy but unafffectionate
businessman of some sort who will only have sex with her on
Saturdays. Zoe and Ignacio (Christian Meier) live in a gorgeous but
chilly Mexico City home of glass and granite (their relationship is
cold!), he tends to wear two pairs of socks at once (his feet are
cold!), and one evening, though Zoe talks Ignacio into taking a swim
with her, he immediately jumps out of the water because he’s freezing
(see how damn cold he is?). Meanwhile, Zoe gets closer to her
brother-in-law, Gonzalo (Manolo Cardona), a committed bachelor and
artist who refuses to live a 9-to-5 life (note his crazy, carefree
hair, and the Ralph Lauren boxers peeking out of his jeans). Ignacio
resents his brother because he helps support him, but there’s more
than money that’s come between the siblings – and, er, it’s not
just Zoe.
La Mujer is told from Zoe’s point of
view, and she’s portrayed as a woman who just wants to be loved –
nearly always innocently gleaming in white pajamas, sheets, and
sunshine, not like that dirty Diane Lane character in Unfaithful. You
don’t blame her for – and this is no surprise – having an affair
with Gonzalo, though Zoe does briefly become infuriating when she
invites him over to dinner when Ignatio’s out of town: In a black
dress that shows not only her curves but just how chilly that house
can be, she turns into a total cocktease, telling Gonzalo that they
mustn’t give in to their attraction, and then inviting him to spend
the night and sleep platonically in her bed (!). Of course, her
resistance is eventually futile, and the cave-in is set to Angelo
Milli’s awful, crescendoing strings.
Despite the sexy roller coaster that
the affair sets off, it’s not long before La Mujer’s 89 minutes start
to feel like the longest soap opera ever. You can predict nearly
every turn — except perhaps for one reasonably buried twist at the
end – and all the drama unfurls with perfunctory “passion.”
Still, cinematographer Andres Sanchez ensures that the
actors aren’t the only sources of loveliness, flooding the film with
light and greenery that’s as dazzling as the characters’ designer
clothes. It may be superficial, but it’s something.
copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com
The
message that writer-director Jessica Bendinger seems to want to convey in
Stick It is simple: Female gymnasts are stoopid, unless they are
loaded with sassback and a pile of band t-shirts that announce their
hardcoreness. When trouble-seeking Haley (Missy Peregrym), apparent
fan of Bad Brains, Motorhead, and Black Flag, is charged with
property damage while she was x-treme biking with the boys, the judge
gives her a choice to attend military school or “VGA.” Haley
chooses military school, but then that crazy judge orders her to go
to VGA instead. Turns out it’s a gymnastics training center she’s
familiar with, though all her former friends hate her for
inexplicably walking out of a big competition some time before.
Haley
sulks her way to the school and – please – kicks down the gym
door when she arrives. You can guess what goes on from here: The
other girls, including lead snob Joanne (Vanessa Lengies), snub her;
her former coach, Burt (Jeff Bridges), gives Haley ‘tude to get rid
of her ‘tude; some daddy issues come up; and – spoiler alert! –
everything’s jolly in the end. Bendinger, who wrote the much better
Bring It On, gives the actresses some cringe-inducing lines here,
including “I’m so sure, I’m practically deodorant” and attempts
at sympathy, in all seriousness, such as “Don’t worry — my head’s
up my butt, too.” Haley’s toughness, if it still must be pointed
out, is so over the top you dislike her even before you find out why
her classmates do. And poor Joanne – she thinks “GED” means
“DUI” and throws out malaprops like “cardiovasectomy,” while
one of the only other prominently featured gymnasts, Wei Wei (Nikki
SooHoo), simply has to look confused — really confused — a lot.
Bendinger, a first-time
director, does pull off some nice visuals – at a competition, she
melds all the girls’ performances on the uneven bars into one
colorful swirl, and as dumb as this is, she has the gymnasts perform
a flurry of flips across a department store in poofy prom dresses.
(The single tear falling from Haley’s eye during a handstand on the
balance beam, though – ugh.) The actresses perform some of the
moves themselves, though a few real gymnasts, including Carly
Patterson and Nastia Liukin, are used to give a reality boost. Stick
It make a couple righteous statements about the arbitrary grading
system in competitions as well as money-grubbing coaches. But though
it strives to celebrate bigger themes such as excellence in
athleticism and the feel-goodness of teamwork, Stick It is ultimately
an exercise in mediocrity.
copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com
