THURSDAY,APRIL3,2003
MOVIES AROUND TOWN
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN =13
The following reviews and summaries were written by Jayplay film critic Stephen Shupe unless otherwise noted.
LIBERTY HALL
Adaptation Grade: A-(Opens Friday)
Contributed art
In Dreamcatcher, four telepathic friends enter the woods for a hunting trip.
Charlie Kaufman's Mad Hatter idea to write himself into his own screenplay pays off in spades in Spike Jonze's latest comedic stunner. Nicholas Cage gives a blistering performance as the screenwriter hired to adapt Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, a decidedly non-cinematic book about flowers. Meryl Streep plays Orlean in some of the best sequences in the film, which feature an Oscar-winning Chris Cooper as a greasy horticulturist who journeys through the swamp lands to lift endangered orchids. Charlie's descent from artistic integrity to derivative hell is one of the movies' most memorable unraveling acts in years, and Adaptation's restless originality all but guarantees it cult status.
City of God (not reviewed) （Opens Friday）
In Cidade de Deus (the City of God), kids with guns rule with an iron fist to keep the drugs flowing through Rio de Janeiro in the early 1980s. A kaleidoscopic view of the city is seen through the eyes of Busca-Pe, an intelligent youth with a gift for photography and staying out of trouble as bodies drop all around him. This violent epic from director Fernando Meirelles is already being hailed as one of the best films of the year.
The Quiet American Grade: Atypical Seattle teen with girl issues who's secretly a CIA super-agent. I loved this movie the first time when it was called Spy Kids and directed by Robert Rodriguez, who makes movies with eye-popping visuals and plenty of conceptual wit. Apart from a few laughs and some snappy casting, Agent Cody Banks is dull to look at with a silly robot plot that's way too complicated for kids to follow. There's enough bikini-wear on display here that it prompted one tyke at my screening to call out, "Oh, my gosh!" When I was his age we were treated to such family-friendly classics as Home Alone and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Thomas Fowler (Oscar nominee Michael Caine), a British journalist chasing the dragon and other interests in 1952 Saigon, meets Alden Pyle (should-have-been-nominated Brendan Fraser), an American charmer who falls in love with Fowler's Vietnamese girlfriend. When Fowler investigates a violent political faction, one that's fighting both the communists and the rebels, he finds Pyle waiting for him around every corner. Phillip Noyce's incredibly suspenseful rendering of Graham Greene's novel is the most politically inflammatory American movie in years, one that should provide plenty of fuel to the fire for today's anti-war movement.
SOUTH WIND 12
Agent Cody Banks
Grade: C
— KRT Campus
Malcom in the Middle's Frankie Muniz makes the leap to the big screen with this unexceptional kid adventure. Muniz plays a
Bringing Down the House Grade: B
There may be controversy about whether Bringing Down the House, with Steve Martin as the Stuffy White Guy and Queen Latifah as the Loudmouthed Black Chick, reinforces racist stereotypes. But few can deny that the silver-haired prig and the brassy babe are a unique comic alloy.
Chicago
Everybody sings and dances just swell in this Academy Award-winning take on the Bob Fosse Broadway hit, but after Chicago is over you may wonder what all the fuss was about. Director Rob Marshall's carbon-copy theatricality ensures you'll have a good time, but for less style over substance, see Bjork in the daring Dancer in the Dark.
Grade: B-
Dreamcatcher Grade: B-
Four telepathic friends enter the snowy New England woods for a weekend hunting expedition, only to be hunted themselves by little green men. At the heart of this Stephen King story is one of the more
intriguing ideas about alien invasions ever, where interplanetary monsters draw upon dreams and hide behind the friendlyneighbors imaginings of such movies as Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In King's book, this concept was overwhelmed by a seemingly endless race against time, and Dreamcatcher's director, Lawrence Kasdan, possesses no other ambition than to film it faithfully. Some of the acting — especially by Damian Lewis as a shape-shifting alien with a James Bond accent — is fun. But the demands of big budget sci-fi — creatures and special effects — quickly take over the picture.
The Hunted (not reviewed) (Ends today)
William Friedkin directed two classics back in the '70s (The French Connection and The Exorcist) and then faded fast. He has another shot at a comeback with this thriller about an AWOL assassin (Benicio Del Toro) who murders four deer hunters in the Oregon wilderness. Tommy Lee Jones plays the Special Forces trainer hired to track down the killer.
Old School Grade: B+
A mile-a-minute tummy-tickler, Old School follows the travails of three 30ish friends unwilling to leave behind the glory of their collegiate yesteryear. A movie that spoofs the greek experience has the artistic license to be rowdy, bawdy and completely lacking in moral fiber. The director, Todd Phillips, plays by those rules while also giving the film an exquisite sixth sense for the kitsch 1980s nostalgia most yuppies just can't escape. And as a newlywed streaking his way to a quick divorce, Ferrell goes Farley in a comedy that's savvy enough to give him free rein.
Phone Booth (not reviewed) Opens Friday)
Hitchcock once had this crazy idea to set an entire movie inside a phone booth, and someone has finally filmed it in this cat-and-mouse thriller from director Joel Schumacher. Colin Ferrell stars as Stu Shepard, a low-rent media consultant who finds himself at the business end of a sniper rifle and unable to hang up the phone. Though he hits (see Flawless and Tigerland) far less than he misses (don't even think about seeing Bad Company and Batman and Robin), Schumacher has cast his new film with two of today's most beautiful actresses, Radha Mitchell and Katie Holmes.
Tears of the Sun Grade: C-
A Nigerian war film about genocide and American intervention, Tears of the Sun plays like Black Hawk Down minus the wall-to-wall slam-bang action of that previous film, leaving only the sketched-in human relationships to fill up a two-hour running time. Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) strives for a more contemplative war film a la The Thin Red Line, but the script has so much ground to cover that familiar faces like Isaiah Washington and Donnie Wahlberg barely register. Only the cinematographer, Mauro Fiore, seems to realize this is a movie designed to engage an audience, and he enthralls with striking tropical landscapes. Bruce Willis leads this solemn enterprise, a movie that undercuts his back-to-back M. Night Shyamalan triumphs, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable.
According to Miramax topper Harvey Weinstein, his studio paid Gwyneth Paltrow $10 million to star in the flight-attendant romantic comedy View From the Top. And it appears that Miramax spent all of $10 for everything else.
View From the Top Grade:D+
— KRT Campus
What a Girl Wants (not reviewed)
(Opens Friday)
Except for that disturbing individual who said Cindy Brady was eye-candy in last Friday's Free For All, none of us really care what a girl wants, but here's the synopsis anyway: Daphne (Amanda Bynes) feels incomplete about her perfect teenybopper life and flies to London to reunite with her father, who turns out to be a highprofile politician named Lord Henry
Dashwood, Chew on that, Lord Wads