NOW PLAYING
Anything Else
R, 108 minutes, South Wind 12
reviews in brief.
Poor Jason Biggs. He'll be forever remembered in an uncompromising position with a pie. In Anything Else, he tries to make us forget about the pie and realize what a talented young actor he is, and it almost works.
Biggs plays Jerry Falk, a New York comedy writer riddled with problems. His crazed girlfriend, Amanda (Christina Ricci), is having sexual anxiety, his manger, Harvey (Danny DeVito), is continually ripping him off and his newfound mentor, Dobel (Woody Allen, who also wrote and directed the film), isn't helping by buying him firearms and suggesting they move to California.
Anything Else is a quirky comedy filled with smart dialogue and young love. However, the film runs a little long, and as a glorious return to Woody Allen form, it does seem a little tired. Haven't we seen this all before? Guy and girl meet, they fall in love and then their neuroses rips them apart. Overall, Anything Else is a sweet, little, neurotic comedy that will hopefully be the bringer of better Woody Allen films to come.
Lindsey Ramsey
Grade: C+
Cold Creek Manor
R. 118 minutes. South Wind 12
There is nothing worse than a bad thriller. The genre is one where clichés are usually acceptable and unbelievable plot lines are encouraged. But when a thriller goes too far, the audience leaves the theater feeling dimwitted and disappointed. That is the problem with director Mike Figgs' Cold Creek Manor.
Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone star as Cooper and Leah Tilson, a New York City couple with two kids who decide to flee city life and buy a beautiful yet frightening house out in the country. Everything's peachy until the creepy former owner, Dale Massie (Stephen Dorff), shows up and begs for a chance to work on the house he once owned. Naturally, Dale has a past, which includes a missing family. When Cooper realizes how weird Dale is and asks him to leave, things start getting — surprise, surprise — scary.
Cold Creek Manor is fraught with cliché after cliché leading up to the climatic moment when Dale chases the
Tilson's up to the roof, of course. The film desperately attempts to be a What Lies Beneath kind of spook fest, but it just ends up being a waste of time.
Lindsey Ramsey
Grade: D+
Northfork
PG-13, 94 minutes, Liberty Hall
In Northfork, mountains smudge up against the sky, a pony walks on stilts across the plain and snowflakes fall from a ceiling. It's all very poetic, but don't expect to be able to read much into it. This film is like a lock with no key.
The plot concerns a ghost town in Montana that is about to be flooded to make way for a hydroelectric project. The evacuation committee, a sextet of men whose identical suits billow gorgeously in shades of gray provided by cinematographer David Mullen, is charged with clearing the countryside of the town's last few stragglers.
Filmmakers Mark and Michael Polish (Twin Falls Idaho) are fascinated by abstract, bizarre imagery reminiscent of David Lynch's Eraserhead (angels, industrialism) and Mulholland Drive (cowboys, surrealism). But where Lynch's work is playful and dreamlike, Northfork is excruciatingly dull, the brainchild of freak wannabes trying way too hard to be weird. Technically brilliant but ultimately insufferable.
—Stephen Shupe
Grade: C
The Pianist
R. 150 minutes, Woodruff Auditorium. Kansas Union
Director Roman Polanski returned to Oscar contention with his 2002 holocaust epic, The Pianist.
In this haunting World War II story, Adrien Brody plays Wladyslaw Szpilman, a brilliant, Jewish, Polish pianist who must go into hiding to escape Nazi persecution.
Soldiers, starvation and the loss of his family test Szpilman's sanity and humanity. Perhaps the greatest test of all is the lack of music in Szpilman's life during his years of isolation. Szpliman is so driven to play music he even sits at piano he finds, silently fingering the keys, never making a noise for fear of being found by the Nazi patrols.
— Cal Creek
Grade: A
Fans of Polanski, Brody and cinema in general should not miss this one while it's at the Kansas Union, but be prepared to leave depressed as this true story reminds audiences of one of the greatest atrocities in history.
Brody's breath-taking performance won him several accolades and an Oscar. His harrowed face delivers a powerful punch when combined with Polanski's flawless directing. A beautiful soundtrack underlines the misery Polanski's cameras capture.
PG-13, 90 minutes. South Wind 12
The Rundown
In The Rundown, Christopher Walken carries the weight of The Rock (The Scorpion King) on his shoulders.
The Rock plays Beck, a bounty hunter who wants to settle up with his boss so he can run a restaurant. His boss agrees to clear all debts if Beck can retrieve his treasure hunting son, Travis (Seann William Scott), from the Brazilian jungles.
Beck tracks Travis to a mining town run by Hatcher (Walken), a slave-driver. Beck wants to take Travis. Hatcher wants Travis to retrieve treasure from the jungle. Several fights predictably ensue.
Most of the movie consists of Beck pushing Travis while Travis makes quips. The dialogue might have been funny had Travis had a better straight man as a foil to his antics.
As an action movie, The Rundown delivers the typical adventure fare: booby-trapped lairs and massive jungle shootouts.
Walken saves the film. His cold manner is not only ruthless but hilarious (Walken's explanation of the tooth-fairy to a group of hired thugs is comic gold). Walken owns every scene, making it a good one to catch on video.
Cal Creek Grade: C
Secondhand Lions
PG, III minutes. South Wind 12
20 jayplay
The following is an excerpt taken from Stephen's brain as he left the theater after seeing Secondhand Lions:
4
"The audience must have loved it.
Everyone clapped at the end." "Part of me wanted to clap, too. I enjoyed the wittily whimsical performances by Michael Caine and Robert Duvall. Is that a cliché, 'wittily whimsical'?" "Yes, but what about the film's clichés? If I see one more 1950s mother fall for an abusive boyfriend before begging her precocious son for forgiveness..." "Ah, yes, the precocious son. Haley Joel Osment was terrific in that role. A little squeaky-voiced, perhaps. "A little squeaky voiced?" I haven't heard croaking like that since Harry Potter 2." "I thought the movie was heartwarming." "I would have too, five years ago. But now I'm a damn critic, so I have to deduct points for potentially offensive depictions of Arabs, overly broad characterizations and a threadbare storyline better suited to a short, 30-minute film." "It isn't easy being a critic, is it?" "No. I miss the innocence."
—Stephen Shupe
Grade: C+
Director Len Wiseman, making his debut, strings together a plethora of action sequences that are more disorienting than exciting. Most of the fights feature stylish vampires shooting guns at shirtless Lychans in a Matrix-esque style. While the effects behind these scenes are impressive it would have been fun to see more fights featuring hand to hand combat between the monsters, rather than overdone, slow-motion shoot-outs.
The story centers on Selene (Kate Beckinsale, Pearl Harbor) a vampire who hunts Lychans in an attempt to win the war for her kind. Selene eventually falls for a strange, young human, Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman, Dark Blue), in whom the Lychans have a deep interest. The war intensifies once Michael's significance is revealed, further pitting the hordes of monsters against each other.
Underworld
R, 121 minutes. South Wind 12
The movie stumbles over itself in the first 20 minutes, confusing the audience rather than intriguing them. But after the characters and plot are defined the movie becomes fun and imaginative, leading to an exciting climax.
In Underworld, sophisticated vampires battle brutish werewolves (Lychans) in the modern world as part of a centuries-old war.
—Cal Creek Grade: C+
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thursday, September 25. 2003