movie lists
Ratings: ★ = Awful
★★ = Worth a look
★★★ = Good
★★★★ = Excellent
American Pie 2
SEAN BEAN, left, plays a criminal mastermind, who kidnaps the daughter of a prominent psychiatrist (Michael Douglas) to persuade him into helping recover information from a patient, in the thriller "Don't Say a Word."
Screenwriter Adam Herz works with bodily discharges and fetishes the way a jazz musician handles melodies and instruments. The storyline for the sequel pretty much follows the first "American Pie," but Herz and director J.B. Rogers ("Say It Isn't So") manage to elicit a surprising amount of guilty chuckles for a retread. This time around the guys (Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Seann William Scott and Eddie Kaye Thomas) are fresh out of their first year of college and are living together in a Lake Michigan beach house. Herz has a pretty good idea of what worked in the first movie, so there is more of Eugene Levy as Jim's well-meaning but intrusive dad, and Alyson Hannigan ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), who stole the last film as a band camp devotee, has a more substantial and affectionate role. It's encour aging that the new film's funniest gag involves a trombone that has no kinky complications. If Herz and his collaborators keep up this type of comedy, they may one day succeed at making flicks that don't rely on violating innocent flutes or pastries. (R) - DL
★★★ Southwind Twelve, 3433 Iowa.
The Closet
French writer-director Francis Veber (the hilarious "The Dinner Game") takes a premise that sounds more suited for a sitcom. Miraculously, he manages to make a smart, engaging comedy about Francois Pignon (Daniel Auteuil, "The Widow of St. Pierre") a dull accountant who pretends to be gay to keep his endangered job at a condom factory. As a result, for both good and ill, the previously ignored fellow becomes the most talked about employee in the office. Veber succeeds with this setup because he doesn't perpetuate stereotypes, but bases his gags on how people perceive Francois. He also has some help from a top-notch French cast, which includes Gérard Depardieu, Jean Rochefort and Michèle Laroque ("Ma vie en Rose"). Veber's movies have frequently been remade into mediocre American flicks like "Pure Luck" and "The Man With One Red Shoe." It's best to put up with the subtitles and see his work done properly. (R) - DL
★★★ Liberty Hall Cinemas, 644 Mass.
The Deep End
Like "Blood Simple" before it, "The Deep End" generates a good deal of suspense as its characters wander into danger because they don't know information that has been made plain to the audience early on. Scottish star Tilda Swinton ("The Beach") stars as a woman who suspects that her teen-age son (Jonathan
Don't Say a Word
Tucker) has murdered an older man he's had an affair with. When she discovers the body, she tries to hide it but winds up at the mercy of a blackmailer (Goran Vsinjic, "ER"). Writer-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel walk precariously close to implausibility, but have created such intriguing characters that a viewer gives little pause when a somewhat forced conclusion rolls around. The visuals in the film are arresting, if overbearing. Sundance Cinematography award winner Giles Nutzgens gets the most out of the Lake Tahoe locations, but his efforts would be for naught if the people occupying the landscape weren't so compelling. (R) - DL
"Don't Say a Word" pleads on bended knee for its audience to abandon common sense in the name of lukewarm thrills. Michael Douglas ("Traffic") stars as an upscale shrink who has been forced to "cure" a young mental patient so that she will reveal a mysterious code. If he doesn't deliver, an English thug (Sean Bean from "Goldeneye") will kill his young daughter. Director Gary Fleder ("Kiss the Girls") has some visual flair (the hospital looks like
something out of Poe), but the material consistently falls on the side of the familiar and the outlandish. For example, as Douglas' wife (Famke Janssen) manages to subdue one of the perps despite the fact that she has an enormous cast on one leg. As a rule of thumb, be wary of movies where Douglas plays opposite a leading lady more than half his age. The kind of effort it takes to create convincing female characters past the age of 40 is absent from this script. (R) - DL
★★1/2 Liberty Hall Cinemas, 644 Mass.
Ghost World
★★ Southwind Twelve, 3433 Iowa.
In his brief 80-page comic series "Ghost World," cartoonist Daniel Clowes manages to make the ennui of two sarcastic teenage girls scathingly funny and often oddly moving. Director Terry Zwigoff ("Crumb") reaches the same emotions and adds some new characters and situations that are entertaining in their own right. Thora Birch ("American Beauty") and Scarlett Johannson ("The Horse Whisperer") play Enid and Rebecca, two recent graduates of high school (or in Enid's case, a near graduate) who find their new environment phony and rather disturbing. Rebecca adapts, but Enid always seems out of place. Zigoff
Screenwriter Wesley Strick (the 1991 "Cape Fear") has come up with a juicy setup in "The Glass House." But the results occasionally make a viewer wish a few rocks were present. When a pair of adolescents (Leelee Sobieski and Trevor Morgan) lose their parents in a car wreck, they are adopted by their mom and dad's best friends Terry and Erin Glass (Stellan Skarsgård and Diane Lane). While the two live in a nice cliff-side abode, she's a doctor who takes too much of her own medicine, and his apparent fortune is based on loan shark debts. All of this is potentially horrific because adults unfairly mistrust teens
and Clowes teamed up on the script and, like Enid, view the world with a unique blend of sarcasm and compassion. It's also refreshing to see eternal oddball Steve Buscemi playing something other than a criminal. By exaggerating the foibles of modern life only slightly, Zwigoff and Clowes have made a satire that has more than ridicule on its mind. In some ways it seems fitting that a comic book adaptation offers a more realistic and entertaining film than most reworkings of novels. (R) - DL
1/2 Liberty Hall Cinemas, 644 Mass.
The Glass House
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2001
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THE MAG/LAWREN