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KINGDOM COME Heaven help us. Obviously hoping to tap into the same groundswell of emotion that turned 1997's Soul Food into a sleeper hit, this adaptation of the Off-Broadway play Dearly Departed similarly uses a tragic development involving an elderly member of an African-American family to bring the entire clan together for a marathon session of joking, bickering, crying and reconciling. Too bad the end results are nothing alike: Whereas Soul Food was a pure delight -- well written, smoothly directed and wonderfully acted -- Kingdom Come is a hellish spectacle, alternately shrill, boring and heavy-handed. When Bud Slocumbe drops dead at the kitchen table, his wife Raynelle (Whoopi Goldberg) gathers the other family members together for the sake of the funeral; they include her son Ray Bud (LL Cool J) and his level-headed wife Lucille (Vivica A. Fox, also in Soul Food), her other son Junior (Anthony Anderson) and his constantly harping spouse Charisse (Jada Pinkett Smith), and Bud's religious sister Marguerite (Loretta Devine) and her slacker son Royce (Darius McCrary). The remainder of the picture largely consists of scenes of Marguerite yelling at Royce, Charisse yelling at Junior, Ray Bud yelling at everybody, and Raynelle serenely taking it all in (why does Goldberg always seem so annoyingly smug in this type of role?). In the large ensemble cast, Pinkett Smith and Devine, who between them do enough (over)acting for 12 people, fare the worst; emerging at the top of the heap is LL Cool J, whose natural screen charisma makes up for some forced deliveries here and there. 1/2
MEMENTO The first truly memorable movie of 2001, Memento is a stunning cinematic experiment that one-ups even The Usual Suspects in terms of pulling the rug out from under anticipatory audience members. In a way, it's like Pulp Fiction magnified to the nth degree: Whereas that stylistically audacious film presented its various lengthy episodes in a decidedly non-linear order, Memento goes one better by presenting individual scenes out of chronological order. Actually, there is a tidy method to Memento's madness: For the most part, the story is told in reverse order, beginning with the end and working its way back in time to a logical starting point. On paper, that sounds like a daft idea -- if we know the end, won't we know all the facts that lead up to it, thus stripping the piece of any potential surprises? But that's where the film works its mojo: Memento is as crafty as any other well-constructed murder-mystery, because every time we think we know the score, the movie pulls in a new component from the past that forces us to reflect (and re-reflect, and re-re-reflect) on what we thought we already knew. Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential) stars as Leonard Shelby, an insurance investigator whose troubles begin on the night that someone breaks into his house, murders his wife, and gives him such a bump on the head, it wreaks havoc on his ability to form and retain new memories. Thus, even as Leonard tries to track down the killer, he can't remember anything that happens to him for more than a few minutes, a taxing situation that forces him to depend on tattoos and Polaroid snapshots to keep the facts intact. Writer-director Christopher Nolan (adapting a short story by his brother Jonathan Nolan) has fashioned a razor-sharp picture that challenges us with its philosophical musings on the nature of memories even as it thrills us with its deliciously twisty plotline. 1/2
THE TAILOR OF PANAMA On the left, we have David Spade in Joe Dirt, while on the right, there's Tom Green in Freddy Got Fingered. (Having already fulfilled my quota of gross-out comedies for the year by sitting through Say It Isn't So, Saving Silverman and Head Over Heels, I'm in the enviable position of being allowed to stamp this pair Unscreened and move on.) But there in the middle, appearing as fuzzy as a mirage... can it actually be (gasp!) a movie for grown-ups? Yes, that would be The Tailor of Panama, a deeply absorbing drama that serves as a tonic for anyone not averse to a motion picture that doesn't include a single, solitary bodily function gag. Smart, sophisticated and cynical to its very core, director John Boorman's adaptation of John Le Carre's novel casts Pierce Brosnan as Andy Osnard, a British spy whose constant screw-ups over the course of his career have resulted in his banishment to Panama, a country where, according to one character, no good deed goes unpunished. Not that Osnard plans to commit any of those; on the contrary, he immediately bullies Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), a British tailor who's managed to hide his criminal past from everyone (except Osnard, of course), into operating as his local connection for digging up unsavory activities. A born storyteller, Harry feeds Osnard a pair of whoppers involving an underground revolution and the Panama Canal; this in turn leads to developments that quickly get out of hand and end up threatening a pair of former anti-Noriega activists who also happen to be Harry's best friends (Brendan Gleeson and Leonor Varela play these noble characters). Rush and Brosnan are a splendidly matched pair, with Brosnan's casting an especially intelligent move -- his Andy Osnard is like a corrupt James Bond, with loyalty only to himself. If the ending had been a lot sharper (as it stands, the film basically peters out), this would have been one of the year's best; nevertheless, it's still near the head of the current multiplex pack.
