WFIU: Movie Reviews

	50 First Dates February 10, 2004
BEST OF THE YEAR, 2003 February 10, 2004	The Human Stain December 12, 2003
Mystic River October 24, 2003	Lost in Translation October 17, 2003
School of Rock October 10, 2003	Under the Tuscan Sun October 3, 2003
Le Divorce September 12, 2003	Swimming Pool September 5, 2003
Seabiscuit August 1, 2003	Mel Gibson's "The Passion"
Spellbound July 25, 2003	Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl July 18, 2003
T3: Rise of the Machines July 11, 2003	Hulk July 4, 2003
Hollywood Homicide June 27, 2003	Wrong Turn June 20, 2003
Better Luck Tomorrow June 13, 2003	Finding Nemo June 6, 2003
Down with Love May 30, 2003	The Matrix Reloaded May 23, 2003
A Mighty Wind May 16, 2003	Bend it Like Beckham May 9, 2003
Identity May 2, 2003	Anger Management April 25, 2003
Spider April 18, 2003	Spirited Away April 11, 2003
Dreamcatcher April 4, 2003	Chicago March 2003

2002 reviews \| January-June 2001 reviews \| July - December 2001 reviews \| 2000 reviews

50 FIRST DATES MOVIE REVIEW FOR 2/27/04

Well, in recent years, how many movies have their been about memory loss?…Well, if my memory serves me-and it seldom does-there have been many. Why? Well, it's something we all suffer from in varying degrees, memory loss, or failure to access things in our memory increases with age and other conditions, so all of us can identify with it, making it a bottomless source of possibilities for fiction. And this reviewer is attracted to stories about it because I have particular problems with memory loss. I've even spoken about it with my doctor, as I recall, but don't ask me what his response was. Now am I making fun of people with memory loss-not at all, just having fun with it.

The latest film on the subject is 50 FIRST DATES, starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. In this one, Sandler is Henry, a veterinarian at a Sea World-type place in Hawaii, well known among the locals for making a play for the hot singles who come to Hawaii, making sure they have a great time, but always posing as some sort of a spy on a secret mission. This gives him a good reason to dump them just before they go back home from their vacation. Works great, til he meets a local beauty (Drew Barrymoore, of course) in a restaurant, and falls in love. And when they make a date to meet their again, she doesn't know him and tells him to get lost. The folks who work in the restaurant see her every day, and explain to him that she was injured in a wreck and lost her short term memory. So each day, she gets up and relives the same day (shades of Groundhog Day, but let's make it clear that this film is not in the same league as that one) To make it more interesting, writer George Wing has made that particular day her Father's birthday. So each day she makes him a birthday cake and sings him a song, and he and her brother try to keep the fantasy alive by playing a tape of the same football game they were watching that day (the serious part), while her bratty brother makes small bets with her on the outcome of the game (the attempt at humor at her expense part).

Their protection extends, of course, to chasing away any guy who shows an interest in her, lest he take some advantage. Then they run into Henry, who seems like a good guy, interested in helping her overcome this unique handicap by making videos of them together that she can watch each morning to trip her memory.

With a detour or three, we're headed for a happy ending here. I don't remember their being any question about that. But this is an Adam Sandler movie (with Rob Schneider as Ula, his Hawaiian sidekick), so expect some of the juvenile humour he has in all of his films. And a few characters included only for the sake of gratuitous bad taste. But somewhere in here is a touching story about love overcoming the odds, through creativity and understanding. Dan Aykroyd is added as her doctor to give it some class. 50 FIRST DATES, starring Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler is now showing, I'm almost certain, at Showplace West in Bloomington, and reviewing the movies for WFIU, Joe Bourne.

BEST OF THE YEAR, 2003 FOR 2/10/04

Well, 2003 was certainly an odd year for this reviewer---out of commission for awhile and unable to see all of the films that would make the critic's "Best Of" lists. And yet feeling like I chose a few of the good ones to review-some that even turned up as Golden Globe winners and Oscar Nominees.

The biggest omission I should report right up front: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, the winner of 3 Golden Globes and up for no less than eleven Academy Awards. After seeing the first film in this very unusual trilogy, I was able to determine that :
a) It was a phenomenal achievement in movie-making, and;
b) I had seen enough of that particular phenomenon to suit my tastes, though it obviously appeals to many, many people.
Now about the ones I did get to see. "Something's Gotta Give" was masterful, and especially appealing to those of us navigating the same aging process as the 50-something main characters, played by Jack Nicholson and Dianne Keaton. I praised her for showing how this woman "could revert to emotions not experienced by her in many years…sometimes all in one scene, one moment, one single amazing expression." I described her as the one who "made the film come alive," and she does have my vote for the Oscar as Best Actress, though she has stiff competition from two grieving mothers (Samantha Morton in the film "In America," and Naomi Watts in "21 Grams"), from South Africa's Charlize Theron as a Florida serial killer in "Monster," and the youngest nominee…ever…13 year old New Zealander Keisha Castle-Hughes as a defiant Maori girl in "Whale Rider."

For Supporting Actress, Renee Zellweger got the Golden Globe for her "Cold Mountain" role, and she vies for an Oscar with Marcia Gay Harden, supporting actress in the film where Tim Robbins, who plays her husband, also has a shot for the award as supporting actor. As Dave Boyle, he's a damaged man, abused as a child, a character who says little, yet communicates all he needs to by his very presence. The film is Mystic River, nominated for Best Picture, and also garnering Best Director nod for Clint Eastwood and Best Actor for Sean Penn. Penn plays a man who loses his teenage daughter, causing the rage he's always kept just below the boiling point to finally explode. A truly outstanding performance by Penn, in a role that somehow doesn't deserve to go up against Bill Murray's in "Lost in Translation," but that's how this game is played. Murray will prevail, I believe, because of all the laughs he's given us over the last 20 years, while also allowing us to observe his potential as a serious actor growing with each succeeding role. Here, he's a lost soul, a washed up actor in Tokyo to do a liquor commercial, falling into friendship with young Scarlett Johanssen. Another first here, incredibly, the first American woman (Sofia Coppola) ever to be nominated for Best Director. And in her debut effort. Oh, and she wrote the screenplay, too. Go Sofia!

Seems like forever since we saw Seabiscuit, but that doesn't diminish it's appeal as the double-underdog classic of the year, with characters based on real people…and a real horse, of course. Seven, count 'em, seven nominations, including Best Picture, adapted screenplay, and several tech nominations. Nothing, however, for Toby Maguire or the other fine actors, of both the 2-legged and 4-legged varieties. No Best Picture nomination, as some expected, for "Cold Mountain," so it must settle for Supporting Actor & Actress (Jude Law and Renee Zellweger), cinematography, editing, score, and two nominations for Original Song.

The good thing is that many of these films are still playing on local commercial screens, with Lost in Translation returning soon to the Ryder Film Series. So we all have a chance to see more of the nominees-or see them a second time--before the Academy Awards on Feb. 29. Reviewing the movies for WFIU, I'm Joe Bourne.

THE HUMAN STAIN MOVIE REVIEW FOR 12/12/03

How can a man, an extremely intelligent man, live his entire life as a lie? And even continue to live that life as a lie when telling the truth is the only thing that might save his reputation and career?

You won't get the answer to those questions in the film THE HUMAN STAIN. Only more questions. And if ever a film enticed me to search out the book on which it's based, to discover more about that life, this will be it.

The life I speak of is that of Coleman Silk, distinguished professor of literature at a small New England College. He's played by Anthony Hopkins, pretty much guaranteeing us a fine performance. And, as usual, he delivers. The film is set in contemporary times, with flashbacks to Silk's own college days.

As a professor, he is conducting class one day, five weeks into the semester, when he calls on a student from his class list who is absent. Noting to those present that this student-and another-have never shown up for class, he refers to them as "spooks." Spooks in the sense of ghosts, since he has never seen them in his class, never even met them. But this reference, call it casual, call it careless, lands him in very hot water, since these particular students turn out to be African Americans. Apart from whatever his intention was, the use of this derogatory term is deemed inexcusable, and he is dismissed from the college. After 35 years of service, it's a dismissal that so angers him and his wife, Ernestine, that she eventually dies from a heart attack. He is now a single man, shunned by his social group, and finding himself drawn into a relationship with a much younger woman, Faunia Farely (Nicole Kidman). It's a fascinating role for Kidman, a woman who wants no relationship, no commitment, only sex. She promises no sympathy for his problems, only physical diversion. And soon we discover that her past of an abusive husband and lost family have led her to the dead-end life she is living.
And we have the opportunity, through flashbacks, to discover the makings of Coleman Silk, a handsome young college student, son of working class parents who valued an education enough to assure him of one. And of the lie that eventually separates him from their loving embrace.

So many stories here, so many secrets that are only revealed at the end of Coleman's life, that his good friend and author Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise) is determined to document them in a novel. This film is based on a Philip Roth novel that has been called "unadaptable to film," but Nicholas Meyer has given us a riveting screenplay, coupled with the directorial expertise of Robert Benton, to produce a film with many an unexpected turn. A film about the pressures to succeed in American society, and what one man is willing to sacrifice in order to achieve that success.

The Human Stain, with Academy Award level performances from Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, and a strong cast of unknowns, including Wentworth Miller as the young Coleman, is now showing at the Showplace East in Bloomington, and reviewing the movies for WFIU, I'm Joe Bourne.

"MYSTIC RIVER" FOR 10/24/03

The Movie "Mystic River" is the kind of film that quiets an entire audience, and they walk away quietly, saying nothing. And it's one of the most powerful statements yet from director Clint Eastwood.

The film is about three boys, Jimmy, Sean, and Dave, who grew up in the rough section of Boston, playing stick hockey in the streets. One day, a car comes along, and two men take Dave away, apparently to the police station, for the simple act of scratching his name in the fresh cement of a sidewalk. What happens that day alters their friendship forever.

As adults, their paths will cross again. Sean Penn is the adult Jimmy Marcus, an ex-con gone straight, now the proprietor of the corner grocery in the same neighborhood. Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), grew up a few streets away, in a somewhat better neighborhood, and is now a homicide detective in Boston. Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins), still haunted by that ride he took many years ago, tries to keep his head, and his marriage together.

One night, Dave comes home very late from the neighborhood bar, covered in blood. His wife (Marcia Gay Harden) cleans his wounds and hears his confused story of his confrontation with a mugger. But that same night, Katie, the 19-year-old daughter of Jimmy, turns up missing. Assigned to the case, of course, is boyhood friend Sean, along with his partner, played by Laurence Fishburne.

All of us has gone through a childhood, rich, poor, or somewhere in between, where we had friends, and dreamed of what our future might be. So for me, and for many of us, this film makes a direct connection with our childhoods. And then with the adults we have become. Are we, physically, in the same place where we started? Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it may not be what we had dreamed of. And how far have we come mentally? Emotionally? Financially? Do we want to go back and deal with what we might have left undone, unresolved, in our youth? And what might we change along the way, given the chance? This film reminds us that we might go back, but changing those things is not an option.

There are some tragic figures here: Sean, whose wife has left for some unexplained reason. Dave, whose mental state leaves him with many unanswered questions, and leaves his wife with some serious doubts about his activities on the night in question. And Jimmy, haunted by his time in prison, grieving the loss of his daughter, and unable to control his temper. Always keeping his rage just below the boiling point.

I might have asked for a happier resolution to their problems, but could not have expected a more strongly stated depiction of an intersection of three troubled lives. Eastwood does himself proud once more. Brian Helgeland contributes a gripping screenplay based on the novel by Dennis Lehane. "Mystic River," starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, and Tim Robbins is now showing at the showplace East in Bloomington, and reviewing the movies for WFIU, I'm Joe Bourne.

"LOST IN TRANSLATION" FOR 10/17/03

The movie "Lost in translation" stars Bill Murray, Scarlet Johansson, and the city of Tokyo. Written & directed by Sofia Coppola, the movie places Bill Murray (as American movie star Bob Harris) in a ritzy Japanese hotel as he shoots an ad for Suntory, the Japanese Jack Daniels. This may be Murray's best role ever, precisely because it allows him to be both funny and serious in a way his goofier movies, as much as I love them, never did. And I've mentioned Tokyo as a character because it appears to capture, especially at night, all of the worst, most garish, characteristics of any large American city. And it does them all one better. The neon lights are endless and stretch for 30 stories and more above the street, blotting out the night, and virtually screaming that life never slows down here for something as trivial as sleep.

Perhaps that's why Murray has such trouble sleeping. So he drops by the hotel's bar so often. It overlooks the bright city, and features music by an American group with a slightly over the hill American vocalist, trying hard to make the businessmen and tourists feel like they are getting a…slightly stale… slice of home.

It's there he meets the young Charlotte (Scarlet Johansson), the American wife of an American photographer. He's in Japan for a shoot and is off working most of the time. Murray is in his fifties, and shows it clearly on his face. She's in her twenties, attractive though not glamorous, and it's an innocent friendship between two people tossed together in a foreign land. Much of the humor here is subtle, as she tries to understand what a man of his age, married 25 years, is going through at this stage in life. And he reassures her that life for her will get better. "The more you know who you are and what you want," he says, " the less it upsets you."

Much of Murray's stay in Japan is an effort to understand the director of his commercial shoot, the lady who unexpectedly visits him in his room as a gift from a Japanese executive, the waiters, doctors, and "the Japanese Johnny Carson," with whom he attempts to communicate. The communication is never quite complete, but he tries to accept that fact philosophically. Coppolla inserts some fun references here to his earlier roles in Caddy Shack, Groundhog Day, and I was looking for something from What About Bob, but I may have to go back a second time for that. I wouldn't mind. This is an aging Bill Murray, struggling a little with life, but coming out OK…one I can identify with. It's a pleasant movie about the importance and the delight of unexpected friendship.

Lost in Translation, starring Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson, with Giovanni Ribisi, is now showing at the Showplace East in Bloomington, and reviewing the movies for WFIU, I'm Joe Bourne.

"SCHOOL OF ROCK" FOR 10/10/03

Conclusions to be drawn from the new movie "School of Rock," starring Jack Black:

* Black's character, Dewey Finn, is not so bright.
" Kids thrive on individual attention.
" It takes little smarts to give kids that attention. Even Dewey can do it.
" Teachers, and administrators, can get a little too wrapped up in what passes for teaching…but isn't.
" Parents want what they perceive to be best for their children.
" Parents can be proven wrong.
" Rock & Roll, at least for some people, is the greatest thing on earth.
" Kids, given the chance, can accomplish amazing things.

Whether these are things you already know or not, "School of Rock" makes for an enjoyable lesson. Dewey Finn, a broker-than-broke rock guitarist and singer (of sorts), uses his roomy's name to get a job as a substitute teacher in a rather exclusive elementary school. Now these are bright kids-5th graders-- who do want to learn, so when sending them all out for one continual recess begins to get boring, Dewey realizes that many of them happen to be talented musicians. But that few of them are allowed to even speak the name of Rock and Roll. Soon, he's hauling all his equipment into the classroom and getting them up to speed on the legends of Jimi Hendrix, Clapton, Led Zep, the Doors, and more, under the guise of a new class project called "Rock Band." For those who don't play, each is given a specific duty-perhaps the most important being the crew who devise some sound proofing for the classroom-for rather obvious reasons.

Rock history, rock appreciation and theory, are all courses to challenge their minds-but the teacher also makes it clear that rock is about passion, joy, and power. The most revealing scenes are the brief one-on-ones with teacher and student. Lawrence thinks he can't play cause he's not cool enough. Dewey assures him that that is the very thing that will make him cool, and accepted by other kids. Tamika, a little bashful, and not interested in her non-musical assignment, asks for a chance to sing. So, with all the others out of earshot, she rips off a blazing "Chain Chain Chain that puts Aretha to shame. Ah…she's got the job.

And an overheard comment by a parent to his son leads to a class discussion of breaking the rules, rebellion, and expressing your anger openly and honestly. While showing them film clips of rock drummers, Dewey even manages to slip in shots of Buddy Rich and Art Blakey. That's gotta be for advanced study. Here's a fun film with some stereotypes, yes, including the perfect uptight principal in Joan Cusack, but director Richard Linklater , and his cast, bring a believable humanity to each one.

School of Rock, starring Jack Black and Joan Cusack, is now showing at the Showplace West in Bloomington, and reviewing the movies for WFIU, I'm Joe Bourne.

BACK TO TOP

MOVIE REVIEW "UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN" FOR 10/3/03

Starting your life all over again, when it seems to have come to an abrupt end. That's the story of the film "Under The Tuscan Sun,' starring Diane Lane. It's based on the 1996 best-selling novel of the same name by Frances Mayes. Diane's character is named Frances, as well-she's an author and a literature teacher whose marriage is not working out as well as she had thought. When the divorce is finalized, her best friends surprise her by presenting her with a ticket to Tuscany. She resists, then accepts, and the delight of her arrival in that part of Italy is all ours, when we get to view the Tuscan landscape and sky suddenly spread across that huge screen in the theatre. It's better than any travelogue I've ever seen, and more breathtaking than anything in our part of the world.

She falls in love with it so much, she buys a broken down Tuscan villa, learning a thing or two about the unique operations of the real estate market in that part of the world. Before a lire has changed hands, she's presented with the key. The realtor, reading the surprise on her face, responds: "…well, it's not a Vespa. What are you gonna do-
steal it?"

There are moments, many moments, when she thinks she's made a mistake, but the people she meets there prove to be the deciding factor in staying. Especially Katherine (Lindsay Duncan), an aging, though still glamorous actress who shares her memories of working with Fellini in his great films. Il Maestro always told her to "live splendidly and never lose your childish enthusiasm for life."

Senor Martini (Vincent Riotta), her Realtor, also becomes a close friend and confidant, telling her she bought a house for a life she doesn't have. But she wants a wedding there, and children-a whole family. She should watch what she wishes for.

She certainly meets some romantic prospects along the way, including drop-dead handsome Marcello (played by Raoul Bova, a new face to me, though he's starred in several recent award winning films in Italy). Will she find love and establish the new life for which she searches? Not telling, but you may want to find out yourself , while watching a thoroughly entertaining movie. Audrey Wells gets a big hand for directing, producing, and doing the screen story and screenplay from Frances Mayes' book. A superb accomplishment. Additional kudos to Sandra Oh as Frances' close friend Patti, and to both authors for treating gays in this film no differently than anyone else. It's taken awhile for Hollywoood to get there. Under the Tuscan Sun is now showing at the showplace East in Bloomingotn, and reviewing the movies for WFIU, I'm Joe Bourne.

BACK TO TOP

"LE DIVORCE" FOR 9/12/03

Here's a film that explores the marital and extramarital customs of French men, the French women who apparently understand and accept those customs and the American women who…well have divided opinions regarding them. It's called LE DIVORCE and stars Naomi Watts as Roxanne Le Persand, the American wife of a French painter Charles-Henri Le Persand. Just as Roxy's sister Isabel (Kate Hudson) comes from the States for a visit, she finds that Charles Henri is moving out. And the question for Roxy, the Mother of a small child, expecting another soon is, what's the next step in her life? It's really not that simple, because she is still involved with the larger Le Persand family, whose matriarch, played by the great Leslie Caron still expects them for Sunday dinner each week at her estate in the country. And apparently expects the men in her family to be involved in an occasional dalliance.
And her own brother, a political figure of some note, is soon engaging in such a dalliance with young Isabel. After an apparently innocent luncheon date, he poses the question directly, in fact, "are you ready to be my mistress?" She accepts, and is given an gift that becomes a significant prop in the movie…an expensive red Hermes purse…known as a "Kelly" because of it's association with Grace Kelly. Isabel has just landed a job with author Olivia Pace (Glenn Close) to help arrange her papers for publication. Olivia once received a Kelly from the same man.
So here we are, as American viewers, enjoying our lesson about the behavior of French men. Well, some French men. The ones who can afford it? I don't know, we aren't told the exceptions to the rule, only that American women are not taught to understand it. And that the divorce laws are tilted toward the advantage of the man. And that division of property is among them. And that the concern of the family that should be giving Roxanne some emotional support, begins to be consumed instead by a family heirloom painting of St. Ursala, that may or may not have been done by the French artist La Tour. It was loaned to Roxy, hanging in her and her husband's apartment, so was it their property, and the most expensive piece of property that they owned?
Lots of soilid acting to support this tale of conflicting moralities and legalitites. Bebe Neuwirth as an agent of the Getty Museum, well-known British actor Stephen Fry representing the famed British auction house, each competing with the Louvre for ownership of the painting. Stockard Channing and Sam Watterston as the parents of the two sisters, come to Paris for a visit-and to straighten out questions about the painting. And Matthew Modine as an American slightly off his rocker because he's losing his wife to the errant Charles-Henri Le Persand. That's the guy who started this mess by leaving Roxy. This is a smartly done film by Merchant and Ivory, with direction by James Ivory.
Le Divorce is now showing at the Showplace East in Bloomington and reviewing the movies for WFIU, I'm Joe Bourne.

BACK TO TOP

MOVIE REVIEW "SWIMMING POOL" FOR 9/5/03

What a thrill to go to a movie and not see anything that I expected. Restricted by what was available this time of the year, I chose something called SWIMMING POOL, a film I head heard nothing about. Frankly, it sounded like it had to be an empty-headed American summer pool-party flick. It was anything but. "Swimming Pool" was done in France, and shot mostly in English, with an occasional subtitle as needed.
It's all about an American mystery writer Sara Morton (Charlotte Rampling), who's done a successful series of detective novels for a London publishing house. She's an attractive middle-aged woman, conservative in dress and manner, who seems to live out her fantasies in her books. But she's getting a bit tired of the grind, and her publisher John, with whom she apparently has more than a working relationship, offers her his villa in France for a getaway, promising to join her there later.
She responds well to the place, the outdoor cafes and the people in the nearby village, and is inspired to start writing again. Francois Ozon, who wrote and directed the film, is taking his time, letting us all soak in the good feeling of the French countryside-and yes, I did wish I was there, too. But it can't last-an intruder arrives unexpectedly at the cottage. It's Julie, the publisher's young daughter. Sara is livid. Her private space has been violated. Neither woman was aware of the other and it's a struggle to get along. Julie, an attractive girl in her early twenties, favors swimming nude in the pool, and bringing home her paramours in the evening for a not-so-quiet romp in bed --activities that are clearly beyond the immediate experience, or approval, of Sara Morton. Though the atmosphere has completely changed, Sara does her best to concentrate on her writing. So what might develop here, you say?
Well, the movie proved to be both more and less than my imaginings. And that's partly because it's a story written about a writer of stories. Is what we see, really what we see? Or does it reside merely in the mind of the writer?
Ozon does a deft job of leading us by the nose here, through a film that is not packed with action, has no bright flashes or explosions, and no cursing or violence. It's a bit of a throwback to art house films of a few years ago. The pacing is slow, perhaps too slow for some viewers. There is the presence of nudity and some sexually charged scenes. And there are plot twists that provide us with a surprising and yet satisfying ending. It's meant for an adult audience as few films are today. And this reviewer was delighted to see it, if only by accident. "Swimming Pool" stars Ludivine Sagnier as Julie, Charlotte Rampling as Sara, along with Charles Dance and Marc Fayolle. It's now showing in Bloomington at the Showplace East Cinemas.
This and other reviews can be viewed on our website at wfiu.indiana.edu, and reviewing the movies for WFIU, I'm Joe Bourne.

MOVIE REVIEW "SEABISCUIT" FOR FRIDAY, 8/1/03

Nobody got shot, nothing exploded, there was no sexual activity, and just a limited amount of violence. And I was glad to see a film that didn't feature those things for a change. Just some well-drawn characters, and the excitement of cheering on the underdog to victory. Repeatedly. The underdog this time was a horse, the legendary racehorse Seabiscuit.

Seabiscuit was a real horse, a longshot if there ever was one-a little too small to cut an imposing figure, and unmanageable to boot, he impressed neither the horse experts, nor the racing fans, until he met up with a trio of other longshots: Charles Howard who bought him, Tom Smith, who trained him, and Red Pollard, who rode him to victory. Mr. Howard (Jeff Bridges) was a millionaire auto executive who lost it all in the crash of '29, but is convinced that this horse could be a winner. He sees it in the horse's eyes. Tom Smith (played by Chris Cooper) was a fascinating loner, a former cowboy who had a special affinity for horses and a special ability to communicate with them. In rescuing a crippled horse from being euthanized, he says "You don't throw a life away just 'cause he's banged up a bit."

And then, there's Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire), abandoned as a youth by a family that could no longer afford to raise him, he's knocked about for years as a jockey and sometime boxer. He seems unable to get along peaceably with his peers, and trainer Smith sees a similarity with him and the unruly horse named Seabiscuit.

In order to understand this horse, and these people, it's necessary to have some understanding of the times in which they live, so the film has been framed with documentary footage, and narrated by the familiar voice of T.V. historian David McCullough. The problem, of course, is finding enough time to fit in all of the life stories, and the documentary, and still have time for us to get to know this horse a little bit. Hey, it is his story!!

Red Pollard, as it happens, is just the right jockey for Seabiscuit, and they complete the winning team. Then, things move along at a pretty rapid pace, and before you know it, Seabiscuit is the hero of the people-at least the people of the West and Mid-west. Time now for him to challenge that great horse of the east, War Admiral, and to be taken seriously by the unbelievers of Pimlico race track. But more tragedy lays ahead, and lots more learning by the handlers of this truly amazing steed.

The movie was a little less than expected for me, but still satisfying in most respects, and one that will appeal to people of many ages as a heartwarming story of three men and a horse who work together to achieve more than they ever dreamed of, and at a time in history when dashed dreams seemed to be the order of the day. Seabiscuit is now showing at the Showplace West in Bloomington, and reviewing the movies for WFIU, I'm Joe Bourne.

BACK TO TOP

MEL GIBSON'S "THE PASSION" VIEWED IN DC

Keith A Fournier is a constitutional lawyer and a graduate of the John Paul II Institute of the Lateran University, Franciscan University and the University of Pittsburgh. He holds degrees in Philosophy, theology and law. He has been a champion of religious liberty and appeared as CO-counsel in major cases at the United States Supreme Court. He is the author of seven books and, along with his law practice, serves as the president of both the "Your Catholic Voice Foundation" and "Common Good."

I really did not know what to expect. I was thrilled to have been invited to a private viewing of Mel Gibson's film "The Passion," but I had also read all the cautious articles and spin. I grew up in a Jewish town and owe much of my own faith journey to the influence. I have a life long, deeply held aversion to anything that might even indirectly encourage any form of anti-Semitic thought, language or actions.

I arrived at the private viewing for "The Passion", held in Washington DC and greeted some familiar faces. The environment was typically Washingtonian, with people greeting you with a smile but seeming to look beyond you, having an agenda beyond the words. The film was very briefly introduced, without fanfare, and then the room darkened. From the gripping opening scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, to the very human and tender portrayal of the earthly ministry of Jesus, through the betrayal, the arrest, the scourging, the way of the cross, the encounter with the thieves, the surrender on the Cross, until the final scene in the empty tomb, this was not simply a movie; it was an encounter, unlike anything I have ever experienced.

In addition to being a masterpiece of film-making and an artistic triumph, "The Passion" evoked more deep reflection, sorrow and emotional reaction within me than anything since my wedding, my ordination or the birth of my children. Frankly, I will never be the same. When the film concluded, this "invitation only" gathering of "movers and shakers" in Washington, DC were shaking indeed, but this time from sobbing. I am not sure there was a dry eye in the place. The crowd that had been glad-handing before the film was now eerily silent. No one could speak because words were woefully inadequate. We had experienced a kind of art that is a rarity in life, the kind that makes heaven touch earth.

One scene in the film has now been forever etched in my mind. A brutalized, wounded Jesus was soon to fall again under the weight of the cross. His mother had made her way along the Via Della Rosa. As she ran to him, she flashed back to a memory of Jesus as a child, falling in the dirt road outside of their home. Just as she reached to protect him from the fall, she was now reaching to touch his wounded adult face. Jesus looked at her with intensely probing and passionately loving eyes (and at all of us through the screen) and said "Behold I make all things new." These are words taken from the last Book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelations. Suddenly, the purpose of the pain was so clear and the wounds, that earlier in the film had been so difficult to see in His face, His back, indeed all over His body, became intensely beautiful. They had been borne voluntarily for love.

At the end of the film, after we had all had a chance to recover, a question and answer period ensued. The unanimous praise for the film, from a rather diverse crowd, was as astounding as the compliments were effusive. The questions included the one question that seems to follow this film, even though it has not yet even been released. "Why is this film considered by some to be "anti-Semitic?" Frankly, having now experienced (you do not "view" this film) "the Passion" it is a question that is impossible to answer. A law professor whom I admire sat in front of me. He raised his hand and responded "After watching this film, I do not understand how anyone can insinuate that it even

remotely presents that the Jews killed Jesus. It doesn't." He continued "It made me realize that my sins killed Jesus" I agree. There is not a scintilla of anti-Semitism to be found anywhere in this powerful film. If there were, I would be among the first to decry it. It faithfully tells the Gospel story in a dramatically beautiful, sensitive and profoundly engaging way.

Those who are alleging otherwise have either not seen the film or have another agenda behind their protestations. This is not a "Christian" film, in the sense that it will appeal only to those who identify themselves as followers of Jesus Christ. It is a deeply human, beautiful story that will deeply touch all men and women. It is a profound work of art. Yes, its producer is a Catholic Christian and thankfully has remained faithful to the Gospel text; if that is no longer acceptable behavior, then we are all in trouble. History demands that we remain faithful to the story and Christians have a right to tell it. After all, we believe that it is the greatest story ever told and that its message is for all men and women. The greatest right is the right to hear the truth.

We would all be well advised to remember that the Gospel narratives to which "The Passion" is so faithful were written by Jewish men who followed a Jewish Rabbi whose life and teaching have forever changed the history of the world. The problem is not the message but those who have distorted it and used it for hate rather than love. The solution is not to censor the message, but rather to promote the kind of gift of love that is Mel Gibson's filmmaking masterpiece, "The Passion."

It should be seen by as many people as possible. I intend to do everything I can to make sure that is the case. I am passionate about "The Passion." You will be as well. Don't miss it!

BACK TO TOP

Spellbound
reviewed 7/24 for 7/25 and 7/29

Spellbound is the highly acclaimed new documentary about eight talented middle-schoolers who are preparing to compete in the 1999 National Spelling Bee. The film begins by introducing us to each of the gifted young contestants. We glimpse the various study methods each child deploys to cram for the contest, and we are permitted a peek into their families.
We meet a wealthy Indian boy whose father has spent thousands of dollars contracting a battery of language tutors to prep his son in French, Greek, and German word-stems. We also meet a black girl from the D.C. projects who attends public school, memorizes vocab with a Scrabble board, and describes her life as a movie in which the heroine must constantly struggle against adversity. Regardless of economic class, all of the children interviewed see themselves as outcasts and social pariahs. They're liable to decline invitations to the mall in order to spend an extra five or six hours trolling the dictionary for words like "logorrhea" and "hellebore." The National Spelling Bee is portrayed as a great leveller, a place where smart children from radically different backgrounds are united in competition.
Although there is a lot of fascinating material here, I am wary of Spellbound's borderline smugness during these opening segments. A great deal is made of the intellectual discrepancy between the eight children and their parents and communities. A misspelled sign at Hooters, congratulating one of the prodigiously talented spellers when she wins a regional spelling contest, is certainly droll. But I felt uneasy, even embarrassed, watching the desperately impoverished mother of another of the contestants failing to correctly pronounce the word "pessimistic." Spellbound's seeming desire to make spectacle of the intellectual foibles of folks less brainy than its eight young champions gives the film's utopian message a vaguely sour aftertaste--and allows the first half to play almost like one of Christopher Guest's withering mockumentaries instead of the more introspective, quirky, Errol Morris-type film I think Spellbound wants to be.
However, the second half of Spellbound is, so to speak, spellbinding. Here we are given the National Bee itself, a grueling competition where the utterance of merely one wrong letter can produce one seriously devestated child. The National makes amazingly riveting cinema, and the film's director, Jeffrey Blitz, puts the camera exactly where it should be: on the children's anxiety-riddled faces. Believe it or not, watching 10 year old, ritalin-ready Harry suffer through the five letters of "banns," as in "wedding banns," is far more suspenseful than any of the car chases, sword fights, or gun battles currently smothering our cinema screens.

You can find this review, along with other reviews of past and current film, theater, and opera, on our website, at wfiu.indiana.edu. In the meantime, this is Jonathan Haynes, reviewing movies for WFIU.

BACK TO TOP

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
reviewed 7/17 for 7/18 and 7/2

At the heart of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a pair of great, odd-ball performances from Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush. The scene-chewing actors, who feature as the titular ne'er-do-wells, steal the picture right out from under its Disneyworld ambitions. Loaded stem to stern with sword fights, whizzing cannon balls, and skeletons marching into battle, Pirates of the Caribbean was probably meant to be merely another effects-driven adventure film, in keeping with the summer season and the movie's origins as a popular Walt Disney theme park attraction. But Depp and Rush steer the film on a much wackier trajectory.
The story, as you can probably guess, if you've ever seen a pirate movie, involves an ancient nautical curse, a treasure chest stocked with gold doubloons, a beautiful, kidnapped maiden, and an orphaned boy with pirate blood coarsing through his veins. Orlando Bloom plays the part of the orphan. I have a feeling that Bloom was originally meant to be the center of the piece (the genre would almost require it) but he is completely upstaged by Captain Jack Sparrow, the rum-soaked rascal assayed by Depp. Depp brings so many bizarro flourishes to the part of the devious Captain that he transforms the romantic action into farce. With a walk that makes ballet of a permanently drunken swagger, a wispy British accent, and florid hand-gestures that suggest Laurence Olivier's Hamlet on Quaaludes, Jack Sparrow feels like a totally original comic creation. He is well-met by his nemesis, Captain Barbosa, played by Rush, in an equally hammy performance. The actors bring the movie great vitality and humor. It becomes rather easy to forgive the movie's other, less appealing indulgences: it is overlong by at least a half-hour, the orphan character is dreadfully underwritten, and there is far too much digitally-enhanced swashbuckling.
The genre of the pirate film has very few contemporary landmarks--mostly disasters like Cutthroat Island and Roman Polanski's Pirates. To find a real pirate classic, you might have to go all the way back to the earliest days of narrative cinema, the age of Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.. In more recent times, feats of derring-do, hidden treasures, and dialogue woven from blarney like "shiver me timbers" have usually signified the kind of colossally expensive whimsy that brings big studios crashing to their knees. Pirates of the Caribbean, already a late-summer smash, looks set to change this--or at least spawn a healthy franchise. So long as the performers keep command of the ship, I look forward to the next adventure of Captain Jack Sparrow.

BACK TO TOP

T3: The Rise of the Machines
reviewed 7/10 for 7/11 and 7/15

The third installment in The Terminator saga, called T3: The Rise of the Machines, is unpretentious, low-brow fun. After a season of bloated, manic-depressive spectacles like Hulk and Matrix Reloaded, T3's more modestly scaled adventure feels refreshing. From Arnold Schwarzenneger's tongue-in-cheek performance as the Terminator, to the movie's Old School special effects, T3 radiates audience good-will and B-movie charm.
T3's story picks up a few years after the massively popular second film left off. Although our fated nuclear holocaust was supposedly averted in T2, an apocalyptic battle between men and machines still rages in our near future. As before, a deadly cyborg is dispatched by the machines to assassinate the future rebel leader, John Connor, in our present day. The murderous robot is here played by the willowy blond actress Kristanna Loken. With shiny leather-clad limbs that mutate into deadly weapons, Loken's a demonic amalgam of a Victoria's Secret model and a swiss army knife. Schwartzenneger once again plays the Terminator sent by the human legions to protect the young Connor. The movie stages an elaborate chase scene. Two, equally unstoppable and insanely lethal robots pulverize LA county while cowering humanity, here incarnated by young actors Nick Stahl and Claire Danes, screams and runs.
T3's box office competitors this summer are mostly such a dreary, cynical lot. It is tempting to give T3 high marks for its negative attributes: it is not obscenely ambitious, it is not overly reliant on CGI, and it does not bludgeon the spectator with over-the-top action scenes (although it has a few). Unfortunately, T3 is also a major aesthetic step down from its predecessors in The Terminator series. Terminators 1 and 2 were landmarks of the sci-fi/action genre. They were relentless and exhilirating. James Cameron, their perfectionist creator, gave them a sleak, gleaming style and an atmosphere of constantly escalating danger. Cameron was not involved in T3 and his absence is felt.
Although director Jonathan Mostow manages to keep T3's action brisk, the razor-sharp pacing and the gun-metal blue sheen of the first films are missing. In their place, Mostow has put jocular self-parody. Schwartzenneger's Terminator had genuine menace in the first installments. In this one, he's almost debonair, discharging bad guys and cute quips with the sly self-awareness of a cybernetic Cary Grant. Perhaps it's the movie culture that has changed and not the performance; by comparison with the incohoate groans of The Hulk, the Terminator's monotone "I'll be back" plays like Noel Coward.

BACK TO TOP

HULK
reviewed 7/3 for 7/4 and 7/5

One half of Ang Lee's Hulk, based on the Marvel Comics character, is a symbolism-laden tragedy about "sins of the father" and masculine rage. The other half is an outrageously corny B-monster movie. It's a difficult project to get a fix on. It's tough not to be a little disappointed when you realize that the ominous opening is just set-up for a 15 foot green muscle monster to run amock on the streets of San Francisco. At the same time, I'm not entirely sure if tragic density is something we really need in a movie about the Hulk, whose status as a symbol of macho wrath is surely obvious enough with the movie's heavy-handed treatment.
Bruce Banner, played here by Eric Banna, is a young, mild-mannered scientist who is doing some dangerous research with radiation and gene splicing. He's following in the footsteps of his demented father, the military scientist David Banner, portrayed by Nick Nolte. Nolte's performance weirdly echoes his great turn in Paul Schrader's film, Affliction, which is another movie full of anguished fathers and sons. Years before, the elder Banner had conducted some mutation experiments on himself. Unbeknownst to his son, he's genetically passed on the seeds of this work. Now Bruce's flesh discloses mysterious traces of green whenever he gets mad. Inevitably, one of Bruce's experiments goes awry and he is hit with a blast of gamma rays. This causes the monster in his blood to fully awaken: his limbs blow up to the size of tree trunks, his skin glows bright green, and he goes on the rampage. Now, The Hulk itself is an entirely animated creation--and a very unconvincing one. Is this cartoonish creature really meant to be the rage that dwells in the heart of Man? Lou Ferigno drenched in green paint was more cathartic. This is the stuff of countless mad scientist melodramas, to be sure, but Ang Lee invests every gesture and line of dialogue with unwarranted gravity. Thus, he drains the cliché-riddled story of its pulpy fun. When the Hulk finally appears, after a full hour of Oedipal angst, the moment is laughable, not thrilling, as it should be.
Setting aside the movie's unwelcome grandiosity, there are some things to admire in Hulk. Bana barely registers as Bruce, but the performers are otherwise quite good. Nick Nolte, Jennifer Connelly, and especially Sam Elliot, give the drama great texture. Furthermore, despite the lousy special effect at its center, the movie has some nice graphic touches. Using split screens and other optical tricks, Lee and his production designers have managed to give the opening scenes the look and feel of Marvel Comic Book panels. Still, Hulk never quite shakes its schizoid feel. It's like something cooked up in a mad scientist's lab, an unholy fusion of Henrik Ibsen and Godzilla 1985.
You can find this review, along with other reviews of past and current film, theater, and opera, on our website, at wfiu.indiana.edu. In the meantime, this is Jonathan Haynes, reviewing movies for WFIU.

BACK TO TOP

Hollywood Homicide
reviewed 6/18 for 6/27
by Jonathan Haynes

The title is far from the only lackluster thing about Hollywood Homicide, but its generic blandness is a pretty good clue to what you're in for with this uninspired action-comedy from writer-director Ron Shelton. Its a standard issue buddy-cop movie starring Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett as a pair of misfit, mis-matched homicide investigators, who are called in to investigate when four hip-hop artists are assassinated in a Hollywood nightclub. Ford plays a salty veteran detective who works as a realtor on the side to afford his three alimony payments. Evenings, he goes home and hunkers down with a whiskey and his old Motown records (as all salty veteran cops do). Hartnett is his wet-behind-the ears partner, who scores some off-duty cash teaching yoga classes to rich and beautiful young women. Hartnett's on the force because his Dad was a cop, murdered in the line of duty, and when he gets the opportunity to avenge the old man he'll lose the badge for a career on the theatrical stage. The fact that these guys have jobs on the side is a mildly amusing update on the cop movie formula and, for about the first half hour, the movie has an affable, slightly off-kilter tone, in spite of its lackadaisical, derivative premise. Ron Shelton previously helmed the terrific sports flicks Bull Durham and Tin Cup and he has a great ear for the way men talk to eachother in competitive situations, whether in the dug-out, on the golf course, or in the squad car. Although the quadruple assassination plot fails to grip, and the film shows no particular knowledge of or affinity for its hip-hop milieu, I was willing to forgive these deficiencies so long as Homicide's primary focus remained on macho banter, hard-ball real-estate negotiations, and dirty jokes. However, any good faith Shelton builds up with his quirky characters and occasionally snappy dialogue is obliterated by a fatiguing car chase near the finale. Terminally unfunny and completely devoid of thrills, this boring sequence is an unwelcome throw-back to Hollywood movies of the mid-eighties, when seemingly every movie had to end with a chase scene exactly like this one. Then as now, the comic car chase is a sign of creative fatigue. While Ford and Hartnett are flinging their automobiles around downtown LA amid exploding fire hydrants, gun blasts, and screaming crowds at the Grauman's Chinese Theater, the tiny spark of energy and wit the picture had just barely sustained up 'til then was completely extinguished. Gone, too, any hope that the movie's murder mystery might mature. The movie leaves us with an acute and rather depressing feeling of been-there-done-that: Hollywood Homicide is as stale as a box of donuts left on the squadroom table for about twenty years.

BACK TO TOP

The Wrong Turn
reviewed 6/19 for 6/20
by Jonathan Haynes

The Wrong Turn is a dreary new horror film starring Eliza Dushku, the young actress who played Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Directed by Rob Schmidt, the film is set in a godforsaken West Virginia backwoods where a group of unlucky college students are attacked by mutant Mountain Men. It's a lousy movie in almost every respect: the performances are wooden, the script is hackneyed, and the lens-work is uninspired. Wrong Turn fails even to generate a palpable sense of location. The woods feel fake. This is an unforgivable sin for a movie that has the gall to quote John Boorman's 1972 outdoors masterpiece, Deliverance. Most importantly, it's not even remotely scary or suspenseful; you'd have have to have lived in a tin shack in the mountains all your life to not to predict which of these kids was going to survive their night of terror and carnage. The students all have this Seventeen magazine gloss, like they've just come from the spa or the tanning salon. The Mountain Men have rotten teeth, patchy skulls, and harelips--the mark of inbreeding, we are told. The students drive classic convertibles and sleak, shiny new SUVS. The Mountain Men drive a beat-up, rusty pick-up with a tow hook. Given how the film-makers have stacked the deck, culturally, economically, and even genetically, against these woebegotten denizens of Appalachia, the Michael Moore in me was rooting for the homicidal Mountain Men. However, even though I don't like The Wrong Turn, I found the fact that it was trying to be a real horror film--in the nihilistic, brutal, 1970s horror way--quite admirable. Like The House of 1000 Corpses, the Rob Zombie opus that is also currently in theaters, Wrong Turn gets its main inspiration from drive-in classics like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. It is strangely satisfying to note that in a summer of glistening CGI creations like The Matrix and 2 Fast 2 Furious, film-makers like Schmidt and Zombie are paying homage to these grisly, low budget splatter-fests, movies from the dark ages of Bell Bottoms and Have a Nice Day. Still, if you're a fan of such movies, skip The Wrong Turn--House of 1000 Corpses is much better.
You can find this review, along with other reviews of past and current films, theater, and opera, on our website, at wfiu.indiana.edu. In the meantime, this is Jonathan Haynes, reviewing movies for WFIU.

BACK TO TOP

Better Luck Tomorrow
reviewed 6/12 for 6/13
by Jonathan Haynes

Better Luck Tomorrow, a new thriller distributed by MTV and directed by Justin Lin, has a fascinating subject, good performances, and a lot of energy. In spite of the evident abundance of talent behind and in front of the camera, I found the movie rather pretentious and cold. Lin's film, which got a lot of attention at Sundance for its predominantly Asian-American cast, is set among a group of stressed-out, Orange County high-school seniors who are feverishly padding their college applications with extra-curricular activities and part-time jobs. Benjamin, the amoral over-achiever who narrates the drama, begins by writing cheat sheets for his less academically-minded fellow students, then moves on to selling drugs, and then to fencing stolen goods. Violence gives him caché among the other (mostly white) kids at school; semi-automatic weapons and cocaine offer a jolt of adrenaline no Biology pop quiz or Academic Decathlon can match. But when things go too far and someone is killed, Ben begins to wonder if he should he inform the police. Will murder affect his ability to get into an Ivy League college?
Better Luck Tomorrow liberally borrows character nuances and camera moves from a number of contemporary gangster melodramas, both American and Chinese. It's title salutes the classic HK crime film, A Better Tomorrow, and one of the principles even sports a black trench-coat like Chow Yun Fat wore in that film; its mix of speeded-up and slow motion photography during its crime scenes are often reminiscent of the work of Martin Scorsese. There is a chilling sequence, after one of their earliest crimes, when Ben recognizes himself and his buddies in the threatening faces of some African American, Uzi-toting gangsters in a passing car. As a stand-alone scene, it's quite provocative--but the complicated racial and class dynamics behind such disturbing images were all but lost for me in the over-extended, hyperactive Better Luck Tomorrow. The moment, powerful as it is, became merely another flourish in a movie of flourishes. Better Luck's self-satisfied movie quoting points to a thematic cul de sac: does it mean to satirize the competitiveness of college admission practices, à la Risky Business? Or is it commenting on how even the most academically successful kids are marked by race and forced into a criminal marginality vis à vis white culture, à la Menace II Society?

BACK TO TOP

Finding Nemo
reviewed 6-5 for 6-6
Jonathan Haynes

Finding Nemo is the raucously entertaining new movie from Pixar Animation and Disney, the creative minds responsible for the equally imaginative Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story. It pulled over seventy million dollars at the box office on its opening weekend, which means a large percentage of the population has almost certainly given up eating fish. Bad news for fisherman is good news for movie-goers: it is hard to imagine that a more exciting or funny film will be released this summer--maybe this year--than this tale of a neurotic clown fish who pursues his son across an ocean of coral reefs, sea turtles, torpedoed submarines, and sharks gone veggie. Nemo's richness and warmth make its dour summer movie competitors, like the grim Matrix Reloaded, look positively anemic. At a time when most adventure films seem willfully to cultivate a somber, post-industrial look and feel, Nemo is an explosion of bright, joyful color and ebullient storytelling.
Finding Nemo begins in an exquisitely rendered coral reef, where Marlin, voiced by the great comedian Albert Brooks (seen--or rather heard--to better advantage here than in the languid In-Laws, also in theaters), has brought his wife and their four hundred eggs to live. The reef is kind of an upscale housing development for fish and other aquatic creatures, and Marlin is the perfect suburban dad, despite his orange and white stripes and fins. Before the opening title appears, a shocking tragedy leaves Marlin bereft of his wife and all but one of the eggs--the child he will call "Nemo." (It is notable that darkness and violence enter the picture so early, with the death of Nemo's mother. As the film is more or less marketed for young children, parents of especially sensitive youngsters should be cautioned that Nemo, in large part a big-hearted comedy, is punctuated with potentially distressful scenes and images.) Marlin, a loving, devoted father to Nemo, is also full of pain and loss, which is manifest in his desperate over protectiveness of Nemo. Afraid for Nemo's gimpy fin, and terrified of the dark, treacherous waters over the wall of the reef, he won't even let the boy go unaccompanied to nursery school. When Nemo is caught by a deep-sea diver and taken to a new, scary home in a dentist's aquarium, Marlin must struggle to overcome his own fear of danger to rescue his son.
What follows is a wonderful, comic epic, full of suspense and humor, as Marlin swims the channel to rescue Nemo, encountering all manner of delightful ocean life and adventures on the way. Nearly every scene is cleverly written and brilliantly executed, with a breathless editing style. The voice work is uniformly superb. In addition to Brooks, Nemo features a terrific performance by Ellen DeGeneres, as Dora, a daffy blue-colored fish with short term memory loss, and another by the unmistakable Willem Defoe, who plays a grizzled, laconic veteran of the fish-tank where plucky Nemo awaits his rescue. Like its predecessors in the Pixar canon, Finding Nemo is destined to become a classic among animated films.
I have only a slight qualm about Finding Nemo. Although its father and son theme makes the movie an especially apt Father's Day offering, I am concerned about the ongoing tendency in American animated blockbusters to avoid the subject of mothers--whether by killing them off or simply ignoring them--in order to concentrate on the plight of real or surrogate Dads. With any luck, the wildly popular Pixar films will one day add a mother figure to their dazzling retinue of intrepid monsters, heroic toys, and tropical fish.

BACK TO TOP

Down With Love
reviewed 5/29 for 5/30
Jonathan Haynes

The sunny, "new consumer" optimism of mainstream JFK-era pop culture is getting a good-natured drubbing in cinema multiplexes this summer. First, there was A Mighty Wind, Christopher Guest's sublime parody of the folk boom; now it's Down With Love, an affectionate send-up of Doris Day comedies. The musical groups targeted by A Mighty Wind gave us an aseptic, smiley-faced version of the socially engaged balladry coming from smoky Greenwich Village cafés. Similarly, the Rock Hudson-Doris Day picture, with its freeze-dried sexual patter and vacuum-sealed romantic plot, was not only inoculated against the real world of nuclear terror, the Civil Rights movement, and feminism, but also against the imminent decay of the Production Code. Down With Love is set in 1962, the year of The Birds, Jules et Jim, and Knife in the Water, watershed films that were boldly challenging the boundaries of movie sex and sadism. But Down With Love takes its interior design cues from froth like That Touch of Mink, where the battle of the sexes could be fought and won over martinis and Dean Martin records, and where Ban the Bomb protestors and beatniks only show up for a lame sight gag or two before evaporating into the ultra-square art deco atmosphere.
In fact, Down With Love is not about 1962 at all. It's about the Doris Day version of 1962. Like last year's Far From Heaven, which so imbibed the feel of Douglas Sirk melodramas that even the leaves on the trees in Julianne Moore's lawn seemed to quiver with thwarted sexual desire, Down With Love filters 1962 through the sensibility of Hollywood cinema. Even the hip character names are coded movie references. Renée Zelleweger plays Barbara Novak, a young Doris Day qua Marilyn Monroe from Maine who has written a best-selling feminist manifesto entitled Down With Love. Her book counsels women to abandon the lure of romance and its hidden burden of household chores and boorish husbands for chocolate bars and "sex à la carte"--in other words, she urges them to live free, like their lascivious boyfriends do, and her message catches fire. Novak's lady-killer nemesis is Catcher Block, assayed by Ewan McGregor as a swank synthesis of Rock Hudson and James Bond. When not shagging a never-ending series of stewardesses, or lounging about in his fully automated bachelor pad, Block works as an investigative reporter for a proto-GQ men's magazine called "Know," as in "For Men in the Know." His latest scoop, which is sure to snare him yet another Pulitzer, is to make Barbara Novak violate her credo of sex without attachment or obligations by falling in love with him.
The plot is a perfect amalgam of a Doris Day comedy, and the jazzy decors, performances, and costumes are in sync with the retro-movie conception. Unfortunately, Down With Love seems unsure whether it wants to be outright parody or sly homage. It dips too easily and too frequently into Austin Powers-style lowbrow sex humor--some of which, like the dirty-minded riff on Pillow Talk's split screen phone conversations, is admittedly quite funny. However, unlike Far From Heaven, which managed to be the most cutting-edge film of 2002 by studiously replicating one from 1958, Down With Love at its best only elicits a vague feeling of nostalgia for a type of film that probably seemed quaint and outmoded even when it was fresh out of the box.
As a final note, if you are in the mood for some genuine sex and intrigue from the age of Red Scares and the Mercury Space Program, be sure to swing by the Buskirk-Chumley theater, where a gala James Bond weekend kicks off on Friday evening. Eight 007 films will be shown, including the first four, which boasted the inimitable Sean Connery as Bond. The movies, most of which are fine, strutting entertainment, will be interspersed with roundtable discussions of the James Bond phenomenon, and the theater will even offer a very à propos formal dress reception on Saturday night. For ticket information and times, contact the Buskirk Chumley box office.

BACK TO TOP

The Matrix Reloaded
reviewed 5/22 for 5/23

The Matrix Reloaded has already generated so many words, in magazines, newspapers, and, especially, on the internet, that it is difficult to know what is left to say about it. It is easily the most hyped movie of the year. In the four years since the original Matrix was released, the series has accumulated Star Wars-level cultural capital. The Matrix has even managed to transform Keanu Reeves, the addled star of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, into a cyberpunk icon, replete with priestly vestments, kung-fu, a girlfriend shrinkwrapped in black leather, and sexy Mafioso shades. Matrix film-style, especially its innovative "Bullet Time" photography, has become ubiquitous, infiltrating all manner of media, from Mountain Dew commercials to the art-house smash Amélie. The original's release on DVD is widely viewed as the moment when digital vanquished VHS as the format of choice for home viewing, so the economic influence of The Matrix franchise is probably immeasurable. According to Joel Silver, the series' giddy producer, public awareness of the sequel a month before it was released was at an unprecedented 30%; in other words, Reloaded was bought and sold well before it even came out, making it a virtual blockbuster, sprung from the real-life Warner Bros Matrix.
All of this means that the movie itself, in terms of its storytelling, performances, etc., is maybe beside the point. Frankly, it is impossible to really see The Matrix Reloaded, even while you're watching it. There wasn't a second of its running time when I didn't feel as though I was less a viewer with individual tastes than simply an anonymous part of the total Matrix phenomenon, jacked into the state of the art, where traditional aesthetic quibbles must be suspended indefinitely. Clearly, the Wachowski Brothers have given the script substantial roots in classic sci-fi literature and film, from Dune to Blade Runner to William Gibson. But this is movie making now, where every frame morphs into a video game and a thousand pages of cybertext as it whizzes by. The Wachowskis may have written and directed it, but The Matrix Reloaded actually belongs to the avid fans who are, right at this moment, hammering out footnotes and exegesis in chat forums on the web. Some are trying to sort out plot details, like how did the ominous Agent Smith know Neo was going to be in that park at that time, and why can't Neo stop the Sentinels when he's not in The Matrix, and what does it really mean that Neo is an "anomaly," and so on.
The answers to these questions are left in limbo, as The Matrix Reloaded ends with a real cliffhanger, prepping us for the forthcoming Matrix Revolutions, the third and final installment of the series, due in December. A last chapter may be dubious consolation for those of us so dazed by Reloaded's portentous stew of Baudrillard-For-Beginners speechifying and mind-boggling FX that we lost the plot completely. For us, at least, there is the pleasure of a sly, seductive scene starring Monica Belluci as some sort of cyber-age femme fatale, and an exhilarating last act car-chase, the best of its explosive kind since Raiders of the Lost Ark.

BACK TO TOP

A Mighty Wind
reviewed 5/15 for 5/16

A Mighty Wind is the latest mock documentary from Christopher Guest and his entourage, the crew of gifted actors and comedians also responsible for the almost indescribably funny Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, and This is Spinal Tap. Like those earlier films, which skewered dog shows, civic theater, and heavy metal rock bands, A Mighty Wind immerses us in an esoteric subculture--in this case, the world of washed up folk musicians from the early sixties. Immersion is the key: the laughs in A Mighty Wind come less from its moments of broad comedy than from its aura of hyperreality, the sense that we're getting a look back at a parallel universe where folk duo Mitch and Mickey's kiss on national TV constituted, in the words of one commentator, quoted early in the film, "not only a great moment for folk music, but possibly, a great moment for humans."
As Wind opens, famous folk music impresario Irving Steinbloom has passed away, and his control-freak son, played by Bob Balaban, is trying to organize a folk festival in his honor. He has asked three of his Dad's favorite bands from the sixties to participate in a concert, which will be held at the historic (and entirely fictional) Town Hall in NYC. The first two bands are an easy sign: The New Main Street Singers, a self-described "neuf-tet" in the New Christie Minstrels ensemble vein, have spent the last twenty years in denial of their blatant irrelevancy, performing their over-caffeinated, Wonder Bread folk-stylings under fairground roller coasters. In the meantime, the Folksmen, a semiotic blend of the Kingston Trio and the Limelighters, have never gotten over the fact that their only hit was the innocuous, irresistably tuneful "Eat at Joes," and see the reunion as an opportunity to introduce the world to their more "authentic" folk music--such as their lugubrious elegy for the Spanish Civil War.
The third band Balaban wants for the event is a much more difficult prospect. The legendary Mitch and Mickey, played by Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara, emblematize the music at its purest and most beautiful, but their stormy off-stage passion ultimately resulted in Mitch's long-term commitment to a psychiatric hospital and Mickey's passionless marriage to a urologist. Balaban gets their signatures on the contract--but can he get the brilliant but manic-depressive Mitch to pull himself together enough for a coherent performance? And, most importantly, is the legendary chemistry still active enough in the Mitch and Mickey relationship to guarantee the climactic "kiss at the end of the rainbow"?
Most of the songs in A Mighty Wind were written by Guest, along with his erst-while Spinal Tap collaborators, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean, and they are near-perfect simulations of pop-folk songs of the era. If A Mighty Wind has a flaw, its that there simply isn't enough music. Even during the penultimate Town Hall concert, the movie keeps cutting away to observe backstage antics, while the funniest and most moving material is all happening on stage. "Eat at Joes" in its complete form is a masterpiece of kitsch songwriting; "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" is as lovely as its legend portends. When Winds' hapless sixties relics are singing and strumming their guitars, the film achieces a near impossible blend of withering satire and aching nostalgia. While much of its straight-up parody is strained or predictable, in its uncanny musical moments, A Mighty Wind becomes a visionary movie, a new-millenium Nashville.

BACK TO TOP

Bend It Like Beckham
reviewed 5-7 for 5-9

Bend It Like Beckham is a charming, funky movie in the Billy Elliot mold about a young Hindi woman who lives with her family in London's Southhall District and dreams of playing professional soccer. Above her bed is a picture of David Beckham, the English soccer hero. When not kicking a ball around the park with friends, Jesminder (played by Parminder Nagra) consults the picture, asking advice, confiding secrets. The Beckham photo serves the same purpose for Jess that the portrait of the god on the mantle has for her more traditional parents: it's her shrine.
This movie is about generation gaps, culture clashes, and mothers and daughters. Although there is some football play, the real fun and suspense of the movie comes less from Jesminder's sporting triumphs than from her spirited negotiation of sexual and cultural divides. As her older sister's nuptials approach, her parents expect Jess to relinquish her passion for soccer for the more traditional women's work of arranged marriages, elaborate meal preparations, and unquestioning devotion to elders. Fine enough to play sports with boys when you're a little girl, their reasoning goes, but when you're looking for a husband, you give up the short sleeves and pants of soccer uniforms for the sari and the blush of modesty. So the rebellious Jess hides her football cletes in the shrubs by the front gate and sneaks out to pursue her true calling of bruised knees and penalty kicks. "Anyone can make aloo gobi," she says to a friend. "But no one can bend the ball like Beckham."
Bend It Like Beckham offers few surprises on the level of story. But it is clear-headed enough to observe that life is difficult for adolescent girls regardless of class, caste, or ethnicity, while also being cool enough to celebrate marks of cultural difference. Knee-jerk propriety, regardless whether Indian or English, is mocked, but the director, Gurinder Chadha, pays equally loving attention to the vicissitudes of both Hindi wedding preparations and English breakfast rituals.
I understand that the film, which Chadha also wrote, is semi-autobiographical, and this must partly account for its knowing feel. Beckham is a neighborhood movie, relaxed and refreshing, and it is completely inhabited with terrific performances. It's the perfect film with which to begin your summer; be sure to catch it before The Matrix arrives and small movies go into hibernation.

You can find this review, along with other reviews of past and current movies, theater, and opera, on our website, at wfiu.indiana.edu. In the meantime, this is Jonathan Haynes, reviewing movies for WFIU.

BACK TO TOP

Identity
reviewed 4/30 for 5/2

In last year's Adaptation, the blocked screenwriter charged with making a screenplay of Susan Orlean's "unadaptable" book The Orchid Thief finds himself enslaved to a narrative that grows and grows in complication, accumulating layer after layer of reflexivity, until the only film-story the guy can think of to contain it is the entire history of the world, starting with the Big Bang. I thought about Adaptation while I was watching James Mangold's new film, Identity, which was based on a screenplay by Michel Cooney. Like the impossible scenario Nicholas Cage is struggling with in Adaptation, Identity attains so much complexity in its first part that its ending is doomed either to a 2001-style cosmic implosion or just a big cop-out, a desperate third-act twist. Somehow, Identity manages to choose both options, and winds up a psychedelic cop-out.
Identity stars John Cusack, Ray Liotta, and Amanda Peet as three among ten unfortunate travellers who, driven by an infernal rainstorm, find themselves stranded at an eerie roadside motel in a Nevada desert. The first half-hour, depicting the mechanisms of fate that brings each member of this party to the motel, is brilliant, and sets the stage for a superior horror or mystery story--something like a coked-up version of the old Agatha Christie warhorse, And Then There Were None, fused with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. But after each character has settled into the motel and the dead bodies really start piling up, disappointment descends. The movie becomes a stalk and slash thriller.
Nevertheless, as a fan of the genre, I was gratified by the film's generous infusion of references to lesser known horror movies, and Identity's second act maintains a high-level of suspense and intrigue, with some compelling performances (especially Cusack's) and nerve-jangling scenes. It was only when the climax was reached, and it became painfully apparent that the narrative was not going to stop twisting, that it was going to keep on twisting and twisting until it tied itself into knots, and that then it was going to explode into a thousand equally absurd fragments, that I became frustrated. If the first fifteen minutes of Identity have a diabolical energy, the last fifteen are cruelly deflating, almost comical in their betrayal of what's come before.
Although I will not give away its surprise, it was clear from the chortles around me that much of the nearly packed auditorium agreed with me that the final "twist" was ridiculous. Like many films that have come in the wake of such massive cult hits as Memento and The Usual Suspects, Identity is a puzzle movie. Unlike Memento or The Usual Suspects, when the final piece of Identity's puzzle is finally in place, you're likely to want to throw the whole picture away.
A quick final word: if you enjoyed the horror movie references in Identity, and have an extremely high tolerance for gore, check out Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, a punk-rock pastiche of 1970s drive-in classics like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Motel Hell. Not a great film by any means, but fun for those who are nostalgiac for the good old days of nihilistic, grue-splattered, backwoods horror films.

BACK TO TOP

Anger Management
reviewed 4/23/03 for 4/25/03

Anger Management is a terrible movie but it has somehow managed to secure one of the top positions at the box office for over four weeks. It's exactly the sort of outrageously popular film in which Adam Sandler has specialized, the crude and amateurish comedy that defies critique.
Indeed, the audience with whom I saw Anger Management seemed to be laughing a great deal so my desultory view of the movie is probably a minority. I can also accept the argument that comedy is an area where conventional good taste ought to be suspended. What is disturbing about Anger Management is its laziness and waste. Its blandness is suffocating. Like so many recent comedies, Anger Management is only anarchic on the surface--at bottom, it is deeply conservative, orchestrating the familiar romantic clichés, denying its talented leading actress a worthwhile part, and even spouting a self-righteous homage to Rudy Giuliani and the community spirit of New York City. Anger is the lure, but this movie is all about feeling cozy and affirmed; it's all about yoking comic aggression to the blockbuster money machine.
The movie's wit begins and ends in the ads: Adam Sandler stars as a luckless and depressed man who, because of a childhood trauma, has so stifled his anger that he can't even summon the fortitude to kiss his girlfriend (played by Marisa Tomei) in public. By dint of a series of misunderstandings, this aggressively withdrawn man is court-ordered to attend anger management seminars taught by none other than Jack Nicholson--the Five Easy Pieces guy, The Shining guy, the Batman and The Witches of Eastwick guy--in short, the guy whose very name connotes insolence and aggression bordering on or crossing over into psychotic rage.
It's a very funny casting idea, more clever, for example, than casting Robert DeNiro as the gangster client of psychologist Billy Crystal in Analyze This and That, the pop template into which Anger Management has clearly plugged its Sandler/Nicholson duo. But this gag (the one you can get from the previews, where you don't have to pay eight dollars for it) is the only witty one oferred by Anger Management. The rest is a garbled mess that propels not only its leading actors but also its overqualified supporting cast--including John C. Reilly, John Turturro, Luis Guzman, Heather Graham, and the criminally underused Harry Dean Stanton--into one derivative and sloppily executed joke after another. Everyone finally winds up at one of those ridiculous finales where the shy guy overcomes his performance anxiety to "step up to the plate" and propose to his girlfriend in front of an audience of millions at Yankee Stadium--proving once and for all that what love can't conquer, sports metaphors can.
Domesticating Adam Sandler for the box office is an unfunny project. As the director Paul Thomas Anderson demonstrated in last year's edgy and occasionally brilliant Punch Drunk Love, Sandler's comic energy is built on the actor's tenuous balance between sweetness and violence. Like the equally over-stimulated Nicholas Cage, he's always on the verge of lashing out and destroying everything and everyone around him. Sandler's earliest films, Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison, had a genuine anarchic spirit and wildly destructive humor fed by Sandler's unblanced screen presence. Unfortunately, Sandler's most recent comedies, including this new one, have strait-jacketed the actor into the role of the romantic hero; they're all about managing anger.

You can find this review, along with other reviews of past and current film, theater, and opera, on our website, at wfiu.indiana.edu. In the meantime, this is Jonathan Haynes, reviewing movies for WFIU.

BACK TO TOP

Spider
reviewed on 4/16 for 4/18

The Canadian film-maker David Cronenberg, who is probably best recognized as the author of horrific splatter films from the 1980s like The Fly and Videodrome, claims to have patterned his latest, Spider, after the novels of Samuel Beckett. Beckett wrote mordantly funny, apocalyptic books where hopelessly lost souls chronicle their own physical and moral disintegration.
Although Spider was actually based on a story by the English novelist Patrick McGrath, the film does share Beckett's existential wit, his loneliness, and his cruelty. The gaping wounds with which Cronenberg made his early reputation have here been sublimated, made psychic. There is no explicit gore in Spider, but its very first shot plunges us into the vortex of a gashed and bleeding mind, and we stay there for a harrowing 98 minutes.
Spider tells the story of John Cleg, a severely schizophrenic man who is prematurely released from a hospital where, we presume, he has spent his entire life. Eventually, we learn that Cleg's mother had nicknamed him "Spider" and, within days of his arrival at the halfway house--an isolated, thoroughly depressing place located across the street from an ominous gas-works--Cleg has filled his bedroom with a spider-like web out of pieces of rope and string. He collects these items on his endless walks around the city, walks which draw him inexorably into the web of his childhood and its buried torment.
Cronenberg's last film was the virtual reality thriller eXisTenZ, in which two characters are trapped in a horrifying world that systematically erodes the boundaries between video games and reality. Here, the everyday is just as unstable--and just as much a trap, woven of infantile traumas and schizoid fantasies. As the film progresses, we realize that the barriers between past and present have collapsed, both for Spider and for us. We share Spiders' disorientation and mounting dread as he burrows deeper and deeper into his fractured youth.
Ralph Fiennes, fresh from his gig opposite J.Lo in the sunny romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan, plays Spider, and it is a fearless, distressing performance, built of nervous ticks and bleak, inward looks. Spider's pain is too vast to be articulated: we see him feverishly recording his dreams and memories in a little notebook that he scrupulously hides under a corner of damp carpet in his room--but, when we see the pages of his journal, they are unreadable, rendered in a code known only to Spider. Just so, Fiennes' line readings never surpass a choked murmur. His mumbled portrayal perfectly matches the film's dank, oily look, conjured by Cronenberg and his long-time cinematographer, Peter Suschitzky, in dark shades of industrial despair.
Spider is a minimalist film but it is not a minor one. It is probably too claustrophobic and disturbing to attract a wide audience, and even die-hard fans of David Cronenberg's horror films may be alienated by the subtler terrors on display here. But Spider's creepiness lingers: it is a profoundly bleak and uncompromising movie and it is sure to become a classic of psychological horror.

You can find this review on our website, at wfiu.indiana.edu. There you will also find other reviews of past and current film, theater, and opera. In the meantime, this is Jonathan Haynes, reviewing movies for WFIU.

BACK TO TOP

Spirited Away
Reviewed 4-9 for 4-11

Spirited Away is the miraculous new creation from Miyazaki, the Japanese animator who last gave us Princess Mononoke. Both Spirited Away and Mononoke were distributed in the western world by Walt Disney Studios, who have also--and quite effectively, I think--dubbed the films from Japanese into English. The distribution contract between Miyazaki's Ghibli Studios in Japan and Disney carefully stipulated that the American studio was otherwise not allowed to change one frame of the legendary Miyazakai's work. Whether or not Disney would have otherwise been tempted to "Americanize" the film by making cuts or changes is hard to say. But we are infinitely richer for being able to see Spirited Away in its complete, unadulterated splendor, and Disney's decision to give the film a nation-wide release opens an exciting new space for animated films on mid-American movie screens.
Miyazaki's Spirited Away is notable for being a great kids movie that is also great art. It belongs in a special category of movies designed for children that truly feel inhabited by a child's point of view. Spirited Away's hero is a plucky eight-year-old girl named Sen who tumbles through the looking glass when her parents' car detours into an abandoned amusement park en route to their new home in the suburbs. When Sen's parents are turned to swine, after gorging themselves on a feast meant for gods, Sen must fend for herself among a gathering horde of ghosts and monsters. After dark, you see, the abandoned amusement park serves as a bath-house for the spirit world. Rallying an assortment of creatures, ranging from living balls of soot, to dragons, to shape-shifting goblins, Sen fights to return to the world of human kind and to restore her mother and father to human form.
But no plot description can do justice to the visual wonders Miyazakai brings to the screen. Reportedly, Miyazaki's animation is a complex layering of handpainted foregrounds with computer animated backgrounds. The overall effect is wonderfully rich. Tersely-sketched human faces combine with elaborately painted phantasmagoria to give us a world where the real is constantly toppling into the imaginary. Many scenes are utterly transfixing, the stuff of ultra-vivid dreams. I am thinking in particular of Sen's ghostly train ride through a watery landscape near the end of the film, as well as the hallucinatory spread of dusk over the empty amusement park at the beginning.
Which brings me to my last point. Spirited Away has actually been around for several months. Disney has timed its re-release to coincide with its recent Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and the deluxe 2-disc DVD will be available on the 15th of this month. While I am certain Spirited Away will play well on your home video equipment, and should be seen in any case, I urge you to try and catch it in the theaters before it leaves. It is a twilight movie, a dream movie; it is best seen in darkness and on a big screen.

You can find this review, along with other reviews of past and current films, theater, and opera, on our website, at wfiu.indiana.edu. In the meantime, this is Jonathan Haynes, reviewing movies for WFIU.

BACK TO TOP

Dreamcatcher
Airing Friday, April 4

Writing about the craft of horror in his 1980 memoire, Danse Macabre, Stephen King confessed that he some times ran out of truly frightening ideas. At those times, the master of horror fiction admitted, he would take refuge in the "gross out." If he could not generate shivers, King reasoned, at least he could make people sick. The grunt work of a horror writer occasionally demanded such ugly compromises.
I admit I have not read King's novel Dreamcatcher, on which the new Lawrence Kasdan film is based, but I gather from the movie that he was in one of those "gross-out" zones when he wrote it. The plot is almost impossible to describe (not surprising, I guess, since the book is 800 pages long, while the movie clocks in at a cozy 134 minutes). It's a mélange of extra-sensory perception, alien invasion, nested flashbacks, the middle-age crazies, violently upset stomachs, childhood humiliations, and mystic simpletons who inexplicably morph into gooey space creatures. And somewhere in all this crazy mess is a very confused-looking Morgan Freeman, trying in every sense to hold it together as the leader of an elite military group called in to combat an extra-terrestrial menace. The plot is so dense and intricate and yet so utterly devoid of real meaning that Dreamcatcher only manages to be scary in a Finnegan's Wake sort of way: its sheer ungraspability is threatening. What we carry home from the theater are the "gross outs," the nauseating scenes of bodies turned inside out and the self-replicating flatulence jokes that multiply faster than the outer space worms Morgan Freeman has come to squash.
All this being said, Dreamcatcher is alive in a way that few contemporary horror-sci-fi films are. I would not be surprised at all if it eventually becomes a cult classic, and partly because it is so earnest--nowhere does it betray a sense of irony. The story, messy as it is, moves deliberately to its close, exactly as if it needed telling. Our feckless heroes, beset by alien creatures and treacherous back stories, find some peace and resolution, precisely as though we cared about what happened to them. A friend of mine said it was the best movie of its type he had seen since Howard the Duck--the collossally bad George Lucas product from the mid-eighties that failed so miserably at the box-office it almost ruined the Star Wars maverick. I doubt if Howard the Duck has much of a cult following yet, but it is an abominable movie--and, at least according to the critic for The New Yorker, so is Dreamcatcher. The thing is, in a movie climate where nearly every film can be reduced to a half-inch of advertising text, and the most lavish praise is frequently heaped on the most mediocre movies, a truly abominable film might be one to treasure.

You can read this review on our website at wfiu.indiana.edu. There, you will also find other reviews of past and current films, theater, and music. In the meantime, this is Jonathan Haynes, reviewing movies for WFIU.

On March 23rd, the popular musical Chicago was given the Oscar for Best Picture of 2002.
Amid all the other controve