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reviews in brief
CABIN FEVER R.94 minutes.South Wind 12
Cabin Fever is brutally aware of how comfortable viewers have become to horror films, and like the best works of David Cronenberg (The Fly, Naked Lunch), it takes you to places you don't want to go. Be prepared for some harrowing stuff.
After some nasty business involving a stomach that stretches apart like cheese on pizza, a circle of friends gather at a cabin for a week of aimless debauchery. The director, Eli Roth, possesses a crafty sense of what audiences freely associate with horror in the woods, which he uses to one-up our expectations. There's no axe-wielding maniac on the loose in Cabin Fever. The killer is inside the kids, who contract a viral disease that, in keeping with Roth's Old Testament perception of comeuppance, wipes them out like the plague.
More cold-blooded than its bio-terror big brother, 28 Days Later, Cabin Fever feels like a bucket of anti-freeze hurled onto a genre that had all but gone up in flames.
—Stephen Shupe
Grade: B+
CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS NR.107 minutes, Liberty Hall
We are taught from early on that it is best to look at all sides of a story before we form an opinion. Capturing the Friedmans is a film that presents the facts without swaying the audience to either side. It is a masterpiece of contradictions and unresolved truths about what happens to this seemingly typical family.
Arnold Friedman was Great Neck, Long Island's most respected teacher. Everything changed when police raided his house and found child pornography. This led to charges that Arnold had been molesting boys in a computer class in his basement for years. Through home movies we see Elaine Friedman being berated by her three sons for having doubts, and we see the heartbreaking events of the night before the trial. Director Andrew Jarecki sifts through the evidence and doesn't try to make up the audience members' minds.
Capturing the Friedmans is a documentary about the demise of a family. It
hauntingly asks at what costs will they try to stand together and when do they realize that enough is enough.
—Lindsey Ramsey
Grade: A-
THE FIGHTING TEMPTATIONS PG-13, 123 minutes. South Wind 12
A curious feeling of incompleteness runs through this new comedy starring Cuba Gooding, Jr., which opens locally tomorrow. On one level a fresh update of the Broadway smash The Music Man, in which a con artist swindles a backwater town out of its money, The Fighting Temptations fails to connect mostly because of Gooding's erratic lead performance. He goes from endearing to heartless so many times we finally throw up our hands, convinced that the film will never find its center. It never does, even though the script successfully conveys The Music Man's message of empathy as the sacrifice of material gain, while three musical numbers zap the movie to life and give you a spirited lift.
At two hours plus, The Fighting Temptations never takes the time to make you care, settling for mawkishness over humanity. The performance that finally beats the goodwill out of the audience comes courtesy of Beyonce Knowles, who's supposed to be playing a dirt-poor mother but shows up as her diva self instead.
—Stephen Shupe
Grade: D
G. 101 minutes, SUA
FINDING NEMO
Emotionally rich from its earliest scenes, the latest brightly colored confection from Pixar Animation Studios follows a fish named Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) as he searches for a lost son named Nemo (Alexander Gould). Marlin's adventures are populated with some of the most vivid caricatures in recent animation, including a cadre of sharks who hold their own "Fish-eaters Anonymous" meetings and a far-out, surfs-up turtle who's swimming across the English Channel. Marlin also hooks up with Dory, a faithful but forgetful companion, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres in a blissfully comic performance that
deserves some kind of year-end recognition.
It's important to note that Pixar's films often function on a deeper, more philosophic level that's too sophisticated for the Pokemon crowd. One hint for Nemo might be that the name of its title character means "nothing" in Latin. Whether you choose to pick it apart or take it at face value, the film is exuberantly entertaining, second only to Toy Story in the Pixar pantheon.
—Stephen Shupe
Grade: A-
MATCHSTICK MEN
PG-13, 116 minutes, South Wind 12
Matchstick Men is a chance for director Ridley Scott to just sit back, roll camera and let his actors go to town.
Nicholas Cage stars as Roy, an obsessive-compulsive con artist, who along with his partner Frank (Sam Rockwell) is trying to pull off a larger than life con. When Roy's daughter (Alison Lohman) shows up, his neurosis goes on overload His daughter wants to learn the business and Roy is torn between his desire to set a good example and his joy in teaching his daughter tricks of the trade.
Nicholas Cage is in rare form, delivering a performance that might just bring him his third Oscar nod. Lohman and Rockwell are perfectly cast and both add to the film's brilliant but somewhat confusing twist ending. Matchstick Men is one of those films that follows Ocean's Eleven as a movie that is just plain fun. It is also touching and funny, keeping the audience glued to their seat, unable to look away from the excitement taking place on screen.
—Lindsey Ramsey Grade: B+
ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO
R. 102 minutes, South Wind 12
In the third installment of the El Mariachi Trilogy, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, director Robert Rodriguez (Desperado) uses sleek action sequences and a wonderful performance by Johnny Depp (Blow) to create a memorable and intriguing modern day western.
Depp plays corrupt CIA agent Sands.
who finds himself in the middle of a military coup by Drug Lord Barillo (Willem Dafoe, Platoon) and his assistant General Marquez. To prevent the coup Sands hires El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas, Desperado), a legendary hit man. Mariachi takes him up on the offer because of a vendetta he holds with Marquez.
Unfortunately there are too many characters with too little to do and the plot's unnecessary twists only seem to confuse audience members.
Depp delivers a performance that shadows his fellow cast members. His seedy interpretation of Sands makes the audience laugh while cringing.
Despite the twisted plot the movie looks great. Rodriguez stuns the audience with his visual style, using inventive sets and complex action sequences.
While this final chapter doesn't quite live up to its predecessors (El Mariachi and Desperado) it is superior to the average action movie, and Rodriguez and Depp fans will want to catch this in the theater.
—Cal Creek
Grade: B
UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN PG-13. 110 minutes. South Wind 12
Diane Lane can only be described in one word, stunning. Anyone who saw her break Richard Gere's heart in Unfaithful knows that. In Under the Tuscan Sun, we get to see a different Lane, one that has had her heart broken and is trying to pick up the pieces.
Francais (Lane) has just survived a rocky divorce and needs a vacation. Her friends send her on a tour of Tuscany and on a whim she buys a charming but decrepit villa. The film follows her adventures remodeling the house, making friends and trying to find a new life. The film adheres to the Field of Dreams mantra, "if you build it they will come," and that is what Francais is trying to do: build the house so that her new life will begin.
Directed by Audrey Wells, the film is a warm and funny portrait of a woman trying to get back on her feet. It is a fun fall film that allows the audience to just sit back and enjoy the view and the touching story that takes place within it.
—Lindsey Ramsey
Grade: B
16 jayplay
thursday, september 18, 2003