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Coach Carter (★★)
PG-13,137 minutes,
South WInd 12
Samuel L. Jackson has the most commanding and intense presence of any actor of his generation. If there's one thing he's taught audiences it is that you do not mess with this guy. Because of this, he is the perfect actor to play the title character in Coach Carter, a high school basketball coach who demands that his players put more time into their lives off the court than on it. It's hard to not like a movie like this because it has good intentions and its heart is in the right place, but it's not enough to elevate it above any other inspirational sports movie.
Coach Carter was inspired by the life of Ken Carter, a basketball coach at a California high school in the late 1990s. Carter made his players sign a contract saying they would maintain a 2.3 GPA, attend all
of their classes, sit in the front row of those classes and wear ties on
game days. The team consists of the usual band of misfits, disrespectful and rebellious players who don't like the idea of a new coach coming into their gym and ordering them around. It's no surprise that before long Coach Carter has the team turned completely around on the basketball court, improving the team's record from four victories to being undefeated.
feits games until the team meets the goals he has set.
But when Carter learns the team members haven't been performing up to the academic standards he set for them, he locks the gym and forthree-point shots at the buzzer that we've all seen too many times before.
Jackson uses as much screen presence as he can here. I can't imagine anyone else more suited for the part. When he walks onto that court and tells his players to address himself and everyone else as "sirs" you know damn well they're going to do it. But what drags Coach Carter down are the sports movie clichés. There are a few last-second, slow motion,
In Good Company (☆☆☆)
Jon Ralston
PG-13, 109 minutes, South Wind 12
bloated media conglomerate named Globecom. The company
For fans of Fox's period sitcom That '70s Show, the generous charm, deadpan delivery and exquisite comic timing of Topher Grace are no secret. Now the rest of us can share the wealth with Paul Weitz's new film, the endearing comedy-drama In Good Company. Grace is Carter Duryea, a rising young star in a
has just acquired Sports America, the nation's number-one sports magazine, and Carter is chosen to lead the periodical's advertising department. That means taking the job of Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid), a seasoned family man now pushing 52.
Dan's humiliation is doubled when he learns his new boss is only 26. Further complicating his life are a newly pregnant wife (Marg Helgenberger) and a suddenly distant daughter (Scarlett Johansson) who falls hard for Carter.
Weitz seamlessly blends broad comedy and emotional pathos. With this and 2002's About a Boy, he's developed a light-fingered tone with an emphasis on flawed, three-dimensional characters.
David Paymer and Kevin Chapman movingly embody two working stiffs victimized by corporate takeover. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Globecom tycoon
Teddy K, played by a slyly cast Malcolm McDowell, still a tyrant all those years after A Clockwork Orange and Caligula.
Quaid is just as affable here he was in 2002's The Rookie. Johanson, another consistent performer, gives a delicate, understated performance, particularly in the extended sequence where she seduces Carter. And Grace shows off a deeper dramatic side that should serve him well in a long career.
Though ambition isn't its strong suit, In Good Company has the same complex view of the world that made About a Boy so unforgettable. Weitz's vision of a new kind of extended American family will warm your heart.
The Arcade Fire Funeral
Few albums in recent memory name-check Haitian dictators, employ whistling kettles or come with liner notes packaged as a funeral pamphlet. The Arcade Fire manages to do not one, but all of these things on Funeral, its debut album. Additionally, long-forgotten and oft-misunderstood instruments such as xylophone and accordion are invited to mingle among the guitars and pianos. It's this unconventional daring that makes the Arcade Fire so refreshing.
The album's first half acts as a quasi-conceptual suite of four tracks entitled "Neighborhood," and are explorations into the mind and behavior of people in general. On "Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)," frontman Win Butler states none too cryptically, "My eyes are covered by the hands of my unborn kids, but my heart keeps watchin' through the skin of my eyelids," while the aforementioned kettle whistles contentedly.
The album's best track also happens to be its most telling. On "Rebellion (Lies)," each band member enters into the song independently, like role players gathering onstage. Heard individually, it's clear that there are no virtuosos present; each player could be called average or adequate at best. But once they all enter, it's clear that this band's strength is as an ensemble. In that vein, the Arcade Fire is a great band in the truest sense of the word and ironically, Funeral, is just the beginning.
— Dave Ruigh