T' THE PLAIN DEALER FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 2001 FILM CLIPS Capsule, reviews and summaries by Plain Dealer Film Critic Joanna Connors (JC), Plain Dealer Reporters Clint O'Connor (CO), John Petkovic (JP), Julie E. Washington (JW), Friday! Editor Chuck Yarborough (CY), Associated Press (AP), New York Times (NYT); Newhouse News Service (NH). All The Pretty Horses Despite director Billy Bob Thornton's best intentions to pay homage to Cormac McCarthy's novel, and some beautiful scenery, this film is flawed from the get-go. It lacks cohesion, passion and drama. Worse, the supposedly central love story between stars Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz (pretty people indeed) is flat and lifeless.
Ostensibly, the story follows two buddies who head from Texas to Mexico in the late 1940s to break wild horses on a giant ranch, and end up in plenty of trouble. Henry Thomas, Lucas Black and Ruben Blades also star. Rated PG-13; contains some knife and gun violence, sexual situations and language. 118 minutes. (CO) Cast Away In Robert Zemeckis' remarkable adventure movie, Tom Hanks plays a man who goes down with a plane in the South Pacific, miraculously survives, and washes up on a deserted island.
He stays there for four years, alone, a man cut loose from all human society. At its most basic, the movie is about the nuts and bolts of simple survival: We learn, along with Hanks' character, how to make fire, crack a COCOnut, spear fish, weave rope, build a raft, pull a tooth, keep life going. But more than that, the movie is about utter, soul-destroying loneliness and despair. That makes it a real oddity for a mainstream Hollywood movie with an A-list star and director a combination that usually offers audiences either. car chases and explosions, or reassuring, neatly packaged sentiments and happy endings.
"Cast Away" has neither. Zemeckis and Hanks have used their box-office power to try something different call it the first-ever existentialist Hollywood movie, Sartre with popcorn and for having the moxie to do that they should be applauded. That the movie is both involving and intelligent and, finally, deeply moving, makes it even more of an accomplishment. Rated PG-13 for plane crash and some disturbing images. 143 minutes.
(JC) Charlie's Angels Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu star in this giddy, infectious, girls-just-wanna-have-fun romp, a knowing adaptation of the cheesy '70s jiggle show directed by music-video maker McG. While the movie is not a camp parody or spoof a la "Austin Powers," it definitely winks slyly at the audience as the three girl detectives don low-cut scuba gear and racing silks to capture a computer -industry bad guy. The plot doesn't matter, though. What matters, in order of importance: the stunts (slo-mo martial arts, a kind of lighthearted version of "The the costumes (slinky, low-cut, retro), the hair (not Farrah, but close), the funny boy-toys (Tom Green, Matt LeBlanc, Luke Wilson, and Bill Murray), and the settings (massage parlor, disco, racetrack, Bondstyle co*cktail party). Rated PG-13 for sexual innuendo and language.
92 minutes. (JC) Chocolat As the title promises, Lasse ONE: OF Tm On YEAR. www.family-man.com A UNIVERSAL RELEASE Family Man go to HE WI A ME RUB Neil Rosen, NY1 SOULFUL AND Mark S. Allen, UPN-TV WONDERFULLY Jan Wahl, NBC-TV: "WARM, FUNNY AND DEEPLY POIGNANT!" Paul Clinton, CNN RADIO NETWORKS I LOVED THIS MOVIE! SEE THE FAMILY MAY! It just might change your life! This is the role Cage was born for!" Holly McClure, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER "SUPREMELY ENJOYABLE!" David Sheehan, CBS "TOTALLY UNPREDICTABLE! One of Nicolas Cage's best performances!" Jim Ferguson; FOX NICOLAS CAGE TEA LEONI THE FAMILY MAN UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND BEACON PICTURES A RICHE HOWARD SATURN A BRAT RAINER NO NICOLAS CAGE TEA LION. THE MAN A DON CHEADLE DAMAR LORAN GARS OMIS HATES: ANTHEM BARN SO AN MAN BEST HE ONE MARK HELPRICH LA A DANIE SP NOT NE HE ARAMAN BERNSTEM HOMAS A BASS NO DAVIS LANTHA TRACE THAN DICING TE MARG ABRAHAM EVE HOWARD TOW ALMO RICHE TONES OAND DAVID RAINER: PG-13 PARENTO STRONGLY CAUTIONED ED Sorry Ba we boy Cody an 03 A AOL Keyword: Some Language For rating reasons, NOW PLAYING AT THESE SELECT THEATRES! 0057 ERIE PLATA GENERAL CINEMA 177-FILM 65M 8 1-490 RIDGE RIDGE GENERAL RD PARK 777 CINEMA SQUARE MI3 GENERAL CINEMA RICA CINEMAS REGAL CINEMAS WESTWOOD TOWN CTR.
COBBLESTONE SQUARE 20 MAYFIELD HEIGHTS 10 O. LOT MI SHIPS (72. 449- CINEMAS MAsS (INI MARK MESTLAKE PROMENADE, I WILLOUCHBY COMMONS 1 MACEDONIA Rd. 571-7661 NETS EUCUO THE DOA AT Ad THE MAR HACK DIAMOND CENTER RANDALL PARK MALL RICHMOND TOWN SOLARE NY 2 AT Hallstrom's romantic comedy is a sweet little confection, the movie equivalent of a bon-bon. If it lacks the deep, rich complexity of the really good stuff (such as Hallstrom's masterpieces, last year's superb "Cider House Rules" and the earlier "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" and "My Life as a it does offer lighter, fluffier pleasures.
Styled as a magical-realist fairy tale, it tells the story of a bewitching wanderer, Vianne (Juliette Binoche), who literally blows in on the wind to a small, provincial French town in 1960, where she promptly opens a chocolate shop and shakes up the repressed townspeople, who have been cowed into meek submission by the mayor (Alfred Molina), a stiff religious moralist. Like Babette, whose feast freed the repressed appetites of her pious Danish employers in "Babette's Feast," Vianne tempts the villagers to taste the forbidden fruits of sensual pleasures. Rated PG-13 for mild sexual situations. 118 minutes. (JC) Dr.
Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas Jim Carrey, clad in so much rubber and green fur only his lips and tongue are visible, does a remarkable job of bringing Dr. Seuss' Scrooge-like character to life. He's the center of a somewhat hyper, overdesigned production by Ron Howard, which expands on the Seuss story about the true meaning of Christmas. With Taylor Momsen, Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Baranski, Bill Irwin, Molly Shannon and Clint Howard as Whos. Rated PG.
102 minutes. (JC) Dude, Where's My Car A pair of nitwits (Ashton Kutcher and Sean William Scott) get very drunk one night. Come morning, they cannot find their car, which holds gifts to appease their unhappy girlfriends. Danny Leiner directed the comedy. Rated PG-13.
90 minutes. (NYT) Dungeons and Dragons Tedious and inept fantasy based on the role-playing game that was hot during the 1970s. the plot is muddled and repetitive; the dragons are the best thing about the movie but they don't get enough screen time. Rated PG-13 for fantasy action violence. 105 minutes.
(JW) The Emperor's New Groove In this fast and funny animated Disney feature, Kuzco (voice of David Spade), an arrogant, spoiled emperor, gets his comeuppance when the evil Yzma (Eartha Kitt) turns him into a llama. Much mayhem ensues. The voice talents of John Goodman, Patrick Warburton and Wendie Malick are also on hand. Even adults will get some chuckles. Rated G.
75 minutes. (CO) Family Man In this occasionally funny but formulaic comedy, Nicolas Cage plays: a George Bailey for our cynical times. Unlike George, who did the right thing and stayed in Bedford Falls, Jack Campbell took the selfish path, leaving behind his true-blue college girlfriend, Kate (Tea Leoni), for Wall Street. Cash (Don Cheadle), a mysterious street punk he meets on Christmas Eve, pulls a Clarence-the-Angel and shows him what might have been, sending Jack to a parallel life where he married Kate, had two children and settled in New Jersey. The movie has its amusem*nts, but right under its polished veneer it's the kind of Hollywood table where the rich and successful are automatically bad, and the struggling, middle-class family people are all good.
There's something infuriating about being lectured to by a bunch of L.A. studio executives, who pause between bites at the Ivy to tell us that we the middle-Americans who worry about our mortgages and spend our evenings at our kids' school band concerts really, really have it better than they do in their Malibu beach houses. Rated PG-13 for language and sexual situations. 124 minutes. (JC) Miss Congeniality Sandra Bullock is the FBI agent and Fashion Don't turned into a beauty pageant contestant in this frothy, funny comedy.
A strong slate of co-stars Candice Bergen as an ex-beauty queen, Michael Caine as a pageant consultant and Benjamin Bratt just looking gorgeous keeps the energy high. Rated PG-13 for sexual references and a violent scene. 110 minutes. (JW) 102 Dalmatians Who let the dogs out? Disney. And they need to put them back.
This sequel to the 1996 live-action version of "101 Dalmatians" is a drab dog walk. Glenn Close returns as the zany Cruella De Vil, and she's fine, but the other characters, including the furrier Le Pelt (Gerard Depardieu) are given nothing to do beyond useless pratfalls. The Dalmatians are cute, but they are more special effects than characters. Yet another case of bad screenplay equals dull movie. Also stars Alice Evans, loan Gruffudd and the voice of Eric Idle as a Macaw.
Rated G. 95 minutes. (CO) Proof of Life Taylor Hackford's uneven but fascinating thriller takes us into the hidden world of and (for kidnapping and ransom), where former CIA agents and military operatives negotiate for the lives of corporate executives who have been kidnapped in foreign countries. Engineer Peter Bowman (David Morse) is kidnapped by cocaine traffickers in the fictional South American country of Tecala (the film was shot in Ecuador). Enter Terry Thorne (Russell Crowe), a and expert sent in by the company's insurers, who negotiates for Peter even as he falls for his client's wife (Meg Ryan).
The movie unlike the tabloids lately doesn't spend much time on the romance between Ryan and Crowe. That's good, since Ryan, full of her usual and "adorable" posing, is the weakest link in the movie. She's certainly no match for Crowe, whose quiet charisma is growing, movie to movie, almost as fast as his beefy torso. He's positioned to be the Bogart of the 21st century. Rated for violence and language.
135 minutes. (JC) Quills You might expect a film about the Marquis de Sade to be shocking and offensive, but it turns out that the most shocking thing about this fictionalized account of the French writer's last days is how very, very funny it is. For the first hour, in fact, it makes a strong case for being the best comedy of the year. After seducing you with its wicked wit, however, in its second half the film devolves into a gorefest so extreme it almost obliterates the delights of the first part. But then, that's sadism for you: pleasure mixed with pain.
Geoffrey Rush chews the scenery and thoroughly enjoys himself as the gleefully scandalous Marquis, and Michael Caine makes a great villain. With Kate Winslet and Jaoquin Phoenix. Directed by Philip Kaufman, written by Douglas Wright. Rated for gruesome violence, language, nudity and sex. 120 minutes.
(JC) Requiem for a Dream Director Darren GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATIONS BEST ACTRESS LAURA LINNEY I BEST SCREENPLAY KENNETH. LONERGAN -Richard Schickel, TIME MAGAZINE "THE BEST AMERICAN MOVIE THIS YEAR!" YOU CAN COUNT ON ME a kenneth lonergan film CAL ANOINT P- www. EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT, NOW PLAYING! CLEVELAND CINEMAS- 9:30 Sat 4 Sun 57 Today al 4:45,7:06 CEDAR CEDAR DACE POS LEE 12:00,2:15,4:45 www.clevelandcinemas.com 7:05,9:35 Aronofsky's powerfully bleak film about addiction features Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayans as a quartet of drug addicts on a long descent to hell, one ring at a time. Aronofky wrote the script with Hubert Selby, from Selby's novel, which offers the observation that drugs are just part of the insidious and corrosive addictions of American culture which also include TV, sugar, caffeine and money. The film is both deeply, deeply depressing and, oddly, exhilarating, because Aronofsky is a spectacular visual stylist with an aggressive, extreme style.
Not rated; includes violence, profanity, drug use and sexually explicit material. 102 minutes. (JC) Unbreakable A year after the smashing success of "The Sixth Sense," Bruce Willis returns to writer-director M. Night Shyamalan for another haunting supernatural thriller. He gives essentially the same hushed, melancholy performance, and' there's another twist ending, but that's not to say the new movie is anywhere near as thrilling as "Sixth Sense." Willis plays a Philadelphia security guard who is the only survivor of a terrible train wreck.
He doesn't have a scratch; in fact, he's never been hurt or ill in his life. Why? Elijah Price (Samuel Jackson), a comic book collector, thinks Willis may be a real-life superhero, and starts trying to persuade him. For all the artfulness and clear intelligence at work in the movie, It never comes together to cast the spell of dread and foreboding that, ShyamaIan intended. It drags on too long, with too much filler material, to go beyond the level of very clever game. Rated PG-13, for viotence.
107 minutes. (JC) Vertical Limit Martin Campbell's mountain-climbing picture, set in the upper reaches of the formidable Himalayan peak, K2, is at its best when its characters are dangling from ropes suspended above yawning crevasses, their lives dependent upon a single, unstable ice pick jammed into a slowly splintering ledge of ice. It's at its worst when those characters pull themselves to safety and start talking. A combination of great action. sequences and creaky melodrama, it's about a brother (Chris O'Donnell) who organizes a rescue party to save his sister (Robin Turney) and two other climbers who are trapped in an ice cave near the summit of K2.
Murders, betrayals and blood vendettas are added to the mix with all the finesse of a blunt instrument. After awhile, you get the feeling that if the producers could have airlifted a car onto the mountain, the screenwriters would have worked in a chase. Rated PG-13 for language and mild violence. 126 minutes. (JC) Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000 Taking up where Bram Stoker's legend leaves off, Patrick Lussier's thriller features a Dracula who leaves stuffy old Europe because he wants to take over present-day America.
With Gerard Butler, Jonny Lee Miller, Justine Waddell, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Esposito and Omar Eps. Rated for being crammed with gore. 99 minutes. (NYT) What Women Want A likable romantic comedy that succeeds almost entirely on Mel Gibson's jokey charm. He plays a Chicago advertising man who is from a planet much further from Venus than Mars the kind of guy who calls women broads and ogles their body parts.
When a nearelectrocution in the bathroom leaves him with the ability to hear women's thoughts, he at first tries to take advantage of the situation, but gradually becomes a better person. Gibson positively revels in the chance to drop the action-star stunts and explore his inner comic, gamely tugging on pantyhose, executing pratfalls and even dancing, quite winningly. Alas, as his romantic partner, Helen Hunt is about as charming and charismatic as a Supreme Court justice. She pulls the same little squints and tight smiles she has deployed in every movie of the past four years, looking at once bored with the whole thing and uncomfortable in her skin. Needless to say, the sparks do not exactly fly between her and Gibson, though Gibson practically breaks a sweat making the effort.
Rated PG-13 for language and one sexual situation. 126 minutes. (JC) You Can Count on Me screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan made his film directing debut with this lovely drama about the love and frustration between a sister and brother, who lost their parents when they were children. The sister (Laura Linney) grew up to be stiff and responsible, the brother (Mark Ruffalo) became a drifter and screw-up. When the brother comes home to borrow money (again), the two try to find a common ground, and almost find it in the sister's vulnerable young son.
Rated language and sexual content. 111 minutes. (JC) RIGA CINEMAS REGAL CINEMAS REGAL CINEMAS MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS SEVERANCE TOWN CENTER A ISOLON COMMONS 03 44 LAGLEY NO. M1-9047 NO 1 (IN MARK CLEVELAND I MAS CLIVELAND CINEMAS VALLEY VIEW TOWER CITY SHAKER SQUARE NOR CANAL NO. TOWER CITY (TR.
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