Current Releases
APOCALYPTO Mel Gibson may or may not be a sorry excuse for a person, but as has been the case since the first brutish caveman painted a beautiful mural on the cavern wall, it's as important as ever to separate the individual from his artistry. And for the first half of Apocalypto, it looks as if he has succeeded in creating something special. Gibson takes us back in time to the waning period of the Mayan civilization: The story drops us off in a small village in which the peaceful inhabitants are soon attacked by warriors who rape the women, abandon the children, and drag the men back to their city to be served up as either slaves or human sacrifices. Up until now, Apocalypto has proven to be a compelling yarn marked by charismatic performers (most notably lead Rudy Youngblood, as a tribesman fighting to make it back to his family), splendid production values and Gibson's fluid direction. But anyone who's seen Gibson's previous directorial efforts, Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ, knows that nothing titillates the filmmaker as much as pain and destruction, and Apocalypto soon turns into an orgy of unrelenting bloodlust wrapped around a straightforward chase picture. Sadistic to a fault, Gibson has become cinema's reigning gore-to guy. **
BLOOD DIAMOND The message of this public service announcement masquerading as a movie is that consumers should take care not to buy "conflict diamonds," baubles obtained by mercenaries using slave labor, then smuggled out of war torn countries. Since the film (set in Sierra Leone) establishes early on that these "conflict diamonds" are mixed in with legitimate diamonds at an early stage in the marketing process, it's never made clear how exactly consumers are supposed to avoid said jewels (buy roses instead?). At any rate, the movie's lofty intentions are hamstrung by having to coexist uneasily with stock characters. Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio in a strong performance) is a devil-may-care opportunist who discovers he has a heart of gold as large as the diamond he's seeking. Solomon Vandy (magnetic Djimon Hounsou, once again typecast) is a fisherman brutalized and forced into mining the diamond fields. And Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly, working overtime to add spark to a thin character) is an American journalist who sounds like an Information Please almanac every time she opens her mouth. Director Edward Zwick and his team are presumably sincere in wanting to shed some light on a tragic real-world situation, but the clumsy Blood Diamond simply can't cut it. **
BOBBY If the late Robert Altman had been dropped on his head as a toddler, Bobby is the sort of movie he might have ended up making. Writer-director Emilio Estevez has clearly adopted Altman's MO for this ambitious effort that's only tangentially about Robert F. Kennedy -- we get the all-star cast, the overlapping dialogue, the furtive glances at the ever-changing American landscape -- but despite a few scattered scenes worth preserving, the overall picture is shallow, tedious and ultimately insignificant. Set in Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel in the hours leading up to Kennedy's assassination, Bobby is inspired by the sort of multistory TV shows Estevez grew up with (Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, etc.). So while Democratic staffers are busy prepping for Kennedy's visit, soggy melodramas involving employees and guests are being played out in the site's corridors and rooms (Anthony Hopkins, William H. Macy and Laurence Fishburne are among the wasted thespians). Bobby is as much about Robert Kennedy as Oliver Stone's World Trade Center was about 9/11 -- it uses a national tragedy as a springboard for a more generic Hollywood product. **
CASINO ROYALE In most respects, Casino Royale ranks among the best Bond films produced over the past 44 years, just a shade below the likes of Goldfinger, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The Spy Who Loved Me and the criminally underrated For Your Eyes Only. Basically, it wipes away the previous 20 installments by going back to when James Bond was first promoted to the level of a double-oh agent with a license to kill. As intensely played by Daniel Craig, this James Bond isn't a suave playboy quick with the quip and bathed in an air of immortality but rather a sometimes rough-hewn bruiser who makes mistakes, usually keeps his sense of humor in check, and, because he's just starting out, possesses more flashes of empathy than we're used to seeing in our cold-as-ice hero. With memorable characters and exciting action scenes, Casino Royale is so successful in its determination to jump-start the series by any means necessary that it tampers with winning formulas left and right. When a bartender asks Bond if he prefers his martini shaken or stirred, the surly agent snaps back, "Do I look like I give a damn?" Blasphemy? Perhaps. But also bloody invigorating. ***1/2
DECK THE HALLS Christmas may bring out the best in most people, but what is it about the holiday that brings out the worst in Hollywood filmmakers? Joining the likes of Christmas With the Kranks and Jingle All the Way is Deck the Halls, yet another holiday hack job that champions cynicism and mean-spiritedness before tacking on a phony redemptive ending meant to fool us into believing that we actually sat through something of value. This seems to have been conceived on the back of a snot-soaked tissue by a none-too-bright second grader: Its gags are all on the order of having obnoxious car salesman Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito) climbing buck-naked into a sleeping bag with frostbitten neighbor Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick) in an effort to warm him up (after all, nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a smattering of gay panic, right?), or the two men leering and hooting at teenage girls who turn out to be their own daughters (after all, nothing says "Merry Christmas" like allusions to incest, right?). As if it mattered, the imbecilic plot concerns Steve's disgust at Buddy's desire to put enough Christmas lights on his house so it can be seen from outer space. Holy Mother, the nonsense that gets the green light in today's Hollywood! *
DÉJÀ VU The latest from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott is movie porn for the electronic media set, a techno-thriller deeply in love with its own hardware. It's also a disappointment, a high-gloss action film that grows increasingly silly as it introduces each new wrinkle in its spiraling plot. Although the decision to stage a massive disaster (the bombing of a ferry) in the heart of Katrina Country will strike many as an unfortunate lapse in judgment, it's the early scenes that prove to be the most compelling, as ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) uses his wits to stockpile various clues that will lead him in the right direction. The film is so accomplished as a straightforward thriller, in fact, that it feels obtrusive when it starts focusing on satellite spyware and even time travel. By the time Carlin climbs into a time machine, you realize that a Marty McFly cameo might be the only way to salvage this dreary plunge into preposterousness. No such luck. **
HAPPY FEET For at least half of its running time, Happy Feet is the usual crapola animated feature, this one about a penguin (voiced by Elijah Wood) whose tap-dancing prowess freaks out his fellow flightless fowl. Like many mediocre toon flicks, it features saccharine characters, soulless CGI imagery, lazy stereotypes that border on racism, and way too much Robin Williams (playing not one, not two, but three characters). But a strange and wonderful thing happens deep into the film. It dispenses with the fun and games and becomes a sober reflection on the harm that humans are causing to the environment and to our ice-capped friends in particular. The movie morphs into one of the coolest Twilight Zone episodes never made, and for a brief, glorious second, I thought it was going to end at the most opportune moment, delivering its themes with all the force of a sledgehammer on an egg shell. But no. The film recovers from its momentary brilliance and soon is back on its preordained path to a happy ending -- albeit one that still keeps its relevant message intact. The end result is decent fare, but it passed on the opportunity to be so much more. **1/2
THE HOLIDAY The best bet for spreading cheer across multiplexes this holiday season, The Holiday is a finely polished piece of romantic cinema, with a generosity of spirit so all-encompassing that it's easy to forgive its occasional excesses. Amanda (Cameron Diaz) and Iris (Kate Winslet) are both unlucky in love and seeking to get away from the heartbreak of their daily lives. Therefore, after hooking up through a "home exchange" website, Amanda heads to Iris' quaint English cottage while Iris ends up at Amanda's luxurious Hollywood mansion. Initially, men are the farthest commodities from both women's minds, but Amanda soon gets intimate with Iris' brother (Jude Law) while Iris becomes acquainted with a film composer (Jack Black). Writer-director Nancy Meyers clearly writes from a privileged perch: Her characters tend to be perversely rich, impeccably groomed and fabulously good-looking. Yet because she has the ability to imbue these high-and-mighty figures with flaws and doubts and in the process make them recognizably human, it's always easy to warm up to her players. The Holiday is overlong by at least 15 minutes, but the appealing cast makes it easy to lose track of time. ***
THE NATIVITY STORY After Mel Gibson's garish snuff film, The Passion of the Christ, the time's been right for a tasteful and respectful Biblical tale that inspires awe and amazement instead of rage and revulsion. Unfortunately, this new film errs in the direction of too much propriety. Director Catherine Hardwicke, whose Thirteen was a wild and wicked look at out-of-control LA teens, seems fearful of adding any semblance of passion to this interpretation, resulting in an dull drama that inspires yawns more than anything else. (Viewers in the mood for some celluloid religion this holiday season would do best to just stay home and rent the exceptional 1977 TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth instead.) Keisha Castle-Hughes, whose work in the lyrical Whale Rider earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination a few years ago, is curiously flat as Mary; the three wise men, meanwhile, are asked to generate so many nyuks during the film that they end up coming across as the Three Stooges. And as the Jew-baiting, would-be Christ killer Herod, Ciaran Hinds is suitably dour, though the question remains: Wasn't Mel Gibson available for this role? **
SHUT UP & SING A stirring tribute to what it really means to be an American, Shut Up & Sing tells the story of three women whose struggles with hypocrisy, misogyny and idiocy allowed them to emerge as inspirational icons. The three women in question are, of course, the members of the Dixie Chicks, the wildly successful country music act whose popularity took a tumble back in 2003 when, during a London show, lead singer Natalie Maines stated that she was ashamed President Bush was from her home state of Texas. This innocuous statement was delivered on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq (back during that surreal period when most Americans thought that slaughtering thousands of Iraqi men, women and children was a terrific idea), and the film charts the group's journey from country outcasts to mainstream darlings. That Bush has been proven so deadly wrong about the Iraq situation, and that the American people are finally waking up to the evils of this administration -- this all seems beside the point as far as Shut Up & Sing is concerned. Even without the support of the changing winds, it's clear that Maines believes in freedom of speech, believes in her convictions, and believes in this great nation of ours. And those, my friends, are the signs of a true American patriot. ***1/2
OPENS WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20:
ROCKY BALBOA: Sylvester Stallone, Burt Young.
OPENS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22:
THE GOOD SHEPHERD: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie.
THE HISTORY BOYS: Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour.
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams.
WE ARE MARSHALL: Matthew McConaughney, David Strathairn.
OPENS MONDAY, DECEMBER 25:
BLACK CHRISTMAS: Michelle Trachtenberg, Lacey Chabert.
DREAMGIRLS: Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles.
