July 21-27, 2005

movie shorts

New Movie Shorts

Bad News Bears

BAD NEWS BEARS
Remaking the fondly remembered Walter Matthau movie, Billy Bob Thornton's follow-up to Friday Night Lights is at once quaint and retarded. Nostalgic for a time when little kids uttering obscenities was considered hilarious mischief, Richard Linklater's movie is pretty ho-hum. (Except for the editing: Scene to scene, the movie is spectacularly incoherent). A washed-up, couple-innings-long-ago pro baseballer, Thornton grumps, drinks, smokes, has sex with a player's mom (Marcia Gaye Harden) and trots out a midget for no apparent reason (except, it seems, that Bad Santa writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa are fond of their running joke). His team is an assortment of ethnicities, abilities and first languages; their star pitcher is Thornton's ex's daughter, their best hitter is a long-haired, just-out-of-juvie skater boi with a crush on her. And yet, for all their "bad news," they're charming compared to their chief rivals, coached by bully Greg Kinnear. Discombobulated and dull, the film never finds a story to tell. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

CATERINA IN THE BIG CITY
Paolo Virzi's coming-of-age tale focuses more on political than sexual awakening, but young Caterina (Alice Teghil) does not come to the city alone. Her embittered father (an operatically frenzied Sergio Castellitto) provides a parallel study of metropolitan disillusionment, albeit with a far more cynical reaction. Caterina arrives in Rome from her "hillbilly" hometown in Tuscany to find a classroom divided along political lines. Her friendship, or more appropriately allegiance, becomes the object of a tug-of-war between the hippie-ish, Nick Cave-listening left and the vulgarly rich, elitist right. Papa Giancarlo, meanwhile, uses his daughter for entrée to her friends' high-powered parents in order to realize his own lofty ambitions. Caterina's disappointment in the artifice of both groups coincides with her father's increasingly caustic condemnations of a system he so obviously yearns to join. Both come to the realization that there is little difference between the warring sides, but while Caterina is able to turn her back on the posturing and find contentment, Giancarlo's solution is both redemptive and utterly hopeless. Virzi's charming comedy masks an angry blow at Berlusconi's Italy, where celebrity ideologues chat amiably after haranguing one another on TV, wealth and fame forming bonds that class differences cannot hope to overcome. --Shaun Brady (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

THE DEVIL'S REJECTS
As the bottleneck blues rattled under the titles of Rob Zombie's sequel to House of 1000 Corpses, I found myself waiting for the trademark thrash of Zombie's guitar to take over. But Zombie set his story in 1974, and damned if he doesn't stick to the time period, fetishizing vintage Joe Walsh and James Gang songs, and, more to the point, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Last House on the Left. The difference now is that Zombie doesn't play favorites: Maybe we're not exactly supposed to side with the serial-killing Firefly family (Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, Sheri Moon and Leslie Easterbrook, in for Karen Black), but we're not exactly rooting for its victims, either, or the cop (Raising Arizona's William Forsythe) whose pursuit of them shades into torture and madness. Neither genuinely frightening nor gory camp, Rejects falls between two stools. You can sit through it without getting sick, but that might not be a compliment. --Sam Adams (UA Cheltenham; UA Riverview)

HUSTLE AND FLOW
The seductiveness of an easy hook has never been more obvious than with Craig Brewer's hip-hop star-is-born flick, which has garnered unaccountable hype since its Sundance premiere despite being utterly without conviction, originality or credibility. As DJay, a Memphis pimp and dealer with an eye on bigger things, Terrence Howard brings the movie its only noteworthy moments, investing the part with a conviction it hardly deserves. (Almost 20 years after Morgan Freeman broke out in Street Smart, have we not arrived at the point where African-American actors can get notice for playing something other than pimps?) Apart from its retro opening titles, the most revealing part of the movie is the MTV Films logo. In its depiction of a street hustler's attempt to get into the game, Hustle plays into fantasies of thug authenticity, effectively letting its viewers imagine they were there when Jigga was still dribbling and Biggie was still pimping. (They even give producer Anthony Anderson a white sidekick so the mall kids don't feel left out.) Nice that while empowering its men, Hustle still finds time to degrade its women: Anderson's wife is portrayed as a bitch for nothing more than expecting her husband to put in some face time, and finally shows her acceptance by cooking everyone dinner. Retro is one thing, but some things are better left in the past. --S.A. (Bridge; UA Cheltenham; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

The Island

THE ISLAND
When Michael Bay shows up in ads to declare the smarts behind his latest blow-shit-up extravaganza, you know you're in trouble. This SF-action blitz features lots of explosions, a car-crash set piece and some good ideas lifted from good movies, including engineered humans (Blade Runner), harvested organs (Coma) and a dopily placated, white-jumpsuited population with numbers for names (THX-1138). The primary dopers here are Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson), minimally educated (reading Dick & Jane), mightily athletic, happily awaiting their chance to travel to "the island," reportedly a last refuge from an unseen post-apocalyptic scaryscape. The come to find out all this is a lie, and so the pair flees, pursued by former Special Forces mercenary Laurent (Djimon Hounsou), who has a particular understanding of breeding people for money. The other visible black man is a football star (Michael Clarke Duncan), or rather, his clone, whose vigorous resistance to harvesting surgery reveals the truth to Lincoln. Most of the film, however, is given over to the pretty white clones' multifaceted education, in running, spending money, driving and soft-focus kissing. --S.A. (AMC Orleans; Bridge; Narberth; UA Riverview)

MYSTERIOUS SKIN
Given that "audacious" is usually the nicest thing one can say about Gregg Araki's work, it's surprising his adaptation of Scott Heim's novel about the repercussions of child molestation is so blandly straightforward. All the director's trademarks are here, for better or worse: clumsy editing and verbiage that tumbles awkwardly off the tongue, the occasional vivid burst of color or escape into magic realism. But all seem newly tailored for a bored flirtation with the mainstream. The cast ranges from exceptional (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, treading much the same ground as in Manic) to cartoonish, with the children faring best. Araki's camera can never be accused of flinching before uncomfortable material, but neither can it be praised for looking beyond the obvious. --S.B. (Ritz Five)