THURSDAY,OCTOBER24,2002
FILM
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 7
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'Abandon'leaves audience empty
FILM
Finally, a movie about the big question: Why do college girls fall for rich, shallow jerks like the one featured in Stephen Gaghan's Abandon?
Taking the prestige of his Traffic Oscarwin and flushing it down the nearest toilet, Gaghan abruptly puts an end to Katie Holmes' quality-driven streak, but the writer-director at least addresses an important issue. Maybe his next film will explore other collegiate mysteries that plague the student body, such as finding the person who invented those evil ID scanners, and why amateur comedians use their talents to destroy amateur movie critics in the Free for All.
Stephen Shupe
sshue@kansan.com
In Abandon, a group of finance students are poised to sell out to the corporate machine. The most studious is Catherine (Holmes), a morose type who spends her nights under the glow of library fluorescent lights. Catherine's boyfriend, Embry (Charlie Hunnam), disappeared two years ago and has now returned. Embry's reemergence as a stalker creep won't be explained until the film's final 30 seconds, so up until then we assume he's there to inform his graduating girlfriend it's well past the time to move out of the dorms.
In extended flashbacks, the film presents the aforementioned question: What makes a girl as smart as Catherine go gaga over a guy as skin-deep as Embry? Beyond
Embry's good looks and presumably large penis, the answer is unclear. Embry needs only to toss her books out of a window to get Catherine all hot and bothered.
In the flashbacks, we see Embry was a music teacher, who pumped up his students by chanting, "I'm at the infantile center of the goddamn universe!" He was also a theater director, and appeared in a Super 8 film in which he opened a performance by turning to the audience and saying, "Screw you people." Whether these sequences explain Catherine's seduction, I'm still not sure.
Gaghan's scatter shot approach to narrative results in a mystery movie without any mystery — the way The Usual Suspects might have looked had Keyser Soze stepped from the shadows in the first scene. The movie is not inepthly filmed by Requiem for a Dream's cinematographer Matthew Libatique, but it hinges entirely on its Fight Club-inspired finale, which is equal parts funny and weird.
'ABANDON'★1/2(OUT OF FOUR)
Starring Katie Holmes, Charlie Hunnam and Benjamin Bratt
Rated PG-13 for drug and alcohol content, sexuality, some violence and language Playing at South Wind 12, 3433 Iowa St.
In addition to Holmes and Hunnam, Benjamin Bratt gives a smug, smirking performance as Det. Wade Handler, the alcoholic crumb bum assigned to find Embry. Wade attends an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with the youngest group of substance abusers in screen history, and he ends up taking Embry's place at Catherine's side.
This is one of those movies where no one mentions the decade-long age difference between the lead couple, not even Catherine's best friends (Zooey Deschanel and Gabrielle Union). What is it with Hollywood and May-December romances?
And here's a note to moviegoers: Obey the movie's title and hightail it out of the theater. For those interested in the sexuality of the stars, all the underwear and bedroom scenes happen before the 30-minute mark, the standard time limit for ticket refunds. Get the refund and go see The Rules of Attraction, a much more inventive take on young American psychos attending a university near you.
Horror movie with a familiar 'Ring'
The Ring, the American remake of one of the biggest hits in Japan, makes some biting points in its neatly done package.
FILM
Rachel Keller, played by Naomi Watts, is a newspaper reporter in Seattle unsettled by the sudden, concurrent deaths of her niece and a few of her friends. Her son, Aidan, played by David Dorfman, was close to the niece. He tells his mother that the niece knew she was going to die after she watched a tape. Rachel wonders what was on that tape.
James Owen
jowen@kansan.com
She goes to the mountain resort where the kids hang out and finds an inconspicuous tape in the resort's lobby. She watches a video that seems like a film student's remake of the Soundgarden video "Black Hole Sun." Immediately after she ejects the tape, she gets a phone call. The voice at the other end says that she will die in seven days. What was initially portrayed as a harmless urban legend now becomes a race to find out the origins of the tape and
why such a tragic and unfortunate end comes to all who watch it.
Helping her in her pursuit is Noah, a guy who knows a great deal about video. Noah, played by Martin Henderson, helps her pinpoint the origins of the video's images. The week-long journey leads Rachel all the way to a sleepy coastal town with a violent history. The mystery ends up being more representative of the downfall of our family structure than just a mere plot device designed to give the audience a cheap thrill.
The only problem of The Ring is that it imitates other films in its genre. Director Gore Verbinski (Mouse Hunt, The Mexican) gives the film a great look, but the Seattle he portrays looks like the dreary, dripping urban landscape from the film Seven. Everything is done in somber tones, and every scene is immersed in fog or driving rain. This contributes to the overall sense of despair and hopelessness of the characters because it is so familiar to the genre.
Despite the director aping popular films, The Ring makes itself distinct in execution and style. The imagery of the film is dark and menacing. The images in the video eventually lead to clues that take Rachel through her journey.
The Ring is about how sin is passed on from parents to their children, becoming their cross to bear. It's no mistake that many of the victims in this film are young. Sin is something that never ends. It is a perpetual force - like the shape of a ring.
FILM
Peter Black
pblack@kansan.com
Film takes on gun violence in America
In his newest film, Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore takes up arms against the NRA and explores the United States' problem with gun control and firearm-related murders.
Like he did in his previous movies. Moore sets out to try to find some answers to why the United States has the largest firearm problem in the world.
In Bowling for Columbine, Moore first concludes that everyone is willing to blame someone else and tries to distinguish the real culprit from the scapegoats. Among the targeted scapegoats are militias, the media, American history, heavy metal, and Charlton Heston and the NRA. Moore's interviews with members of the Michigan militia turn into Daily Show-esque profiles, and he talks with Marilyn Manson who seems to be the wisest person in the entire film. These interviews raise interesting perspectives on the issue of gun control but seem to be guided by Moore, who casts a heavy-handed shadow over the entire film. The film also loses focus from time to time, going off on tangents pertaining to racism. Perhaps Moore bit off a little more than he could chew this time, which is hard to believe as he only seems to get bigger.
He does this by blending documentary reporting with his natural charisma and humor to create a finished product with the wit of a Christopher Guest mockumentary and the recoil of a 60 Minutes report.
Not just bigger in terms of girth but also in popularity and his presence in the movie. Even though Moore raises many good points, such as American culture's glorification of violence in entertainment and news, Bowling for Columbine feels subjective. The film is hard to completely buy into, making it more of a conversation piece than a bullet.