The Secret Garden is a cock-and-bull story round kids and superficially, it would perform designed to entice them. Hitherto the allegorical and psychological implications that sire been carried over from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book are clearly for the grown-up truck.
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Margaret O’Brien is an orphan come to live with her uncle (Herbert Marshall). His wife died 10 years earlier and he has turned against the world in bitterness. He has a son (Dean Stockwell) who suffers from a paralysis of the legs and whom he keeps in bed.
Among Marshall’s quirks is a phobia about anyone going into the garden. He keeps it locked until O’Brien finds a key and, with the aid of a neighbor boy (Brian Roper), secretly nurtures the neglected flowers and plants back to beauty.
The production throughout is on a lavish scale. Unfortunately, the performances do not equal it.
“A film that
is vile and John Waters funny (ugh!).”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Gregg Araki (”Totally F***ed Up”/”The Doom Generation”) is the one
man dynamo behind this scatalogical romp to nowhere, who zeroes in on teen
nihilism in his attack on anything resembling taste or good sense or parental
values. It’s the gay director’s third installment in his plunge into the
world of “Teen Apocalypse.” A film that is vile and John Waters funny (ugh!)
in a way that a vulgar film can sometimes be that is so dopey and irreverent
and badly made. It’s bound to annoy the average viewer somewhere along
its hyper kaleidoscopic visual way, where maddening random violence, kinky
sex, and irritating dialogue (filled with Valley expressions like “Whatev”)
go together as well as ham and eggs served in a mosque. But then again,
there’s no average viewer (or for that matter, many viewers at all) for
this almost unwatchable flick–whose target audience is most probably the
teen whose brains have been scrambled by drugs. A film gleefully described
by the filmmaker as a ”Beverly Hills 90210” episode on acid.
So boring and worthless that if I were offered less than a king’s
ransom to see this film again, I would have doubts if I would want to put
myself through such an ordeal again.
Nowhere opens with this heavy quote “L.A. is like nowhere — everybody
who lives here is lost.” Araki finds his way through L.A.’s pop culture
hedonistic teen landscape of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, where every
teen looks as if they could be a model for a Calvin Klein underwear ad.
The filmmaker is obsessed with doomed youths living on the edge of reality
and functioning just as well as any Neanderthal would if armed with a club
and endowed with a peanut for a brain. It’s a film filled with too many
characters (something like 20) who occupy space for a short time and vanish
before we can get past their weird look and know anything about them that
matters. The only character I could make head or tail out of is the existential
hero, the doe-eyed Dark Smith (James Duval), a bisexual romantic who talks
himself into believing he’s doomed and the world is soon about to come
to an end. He’s a probable UCLA film student whose camcorder is seemingly
a permanent part of his shoulder.
The plot is to follow a typical day in the life of Dark. This cutie
pie 18-year-old dude just wants to be loved, as he hangs out with his bisexual
African-American girlfriend Mel (Rachel True) and her purple-haired, lebsian
girlfriend Lucifer (Kathleen Robertson). Dark is spaced out over not having
Mel all to himself. But hunky, golden-locked Montgomery (Nathan Bexton)
has eyes for Dark, even though he claims he’s not gay. Ultimately, the
film turns on Dark’s sincere search for true love which he comes close
to finding in the brainless Montgomery, that is until he is transformed
into an insect-like space alien by his alien abductor’s at the film’s end.
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It all plays out as some kind of tacky fantasy about the teens being
hooked on the popular culture, which is viewed as something set in the
collective consciousness of all teens. What follows on this typical day
for Dark and friends are a series of episodes involving some of the following
situations: fucking, suicide, doing heavy amounts of drugs, some barfing,
alien abductions, being date raped by a member of the Baywatch cast, TV
evangelism, an Armageddon moment, and the usual teen fist fights and angst
over sex. There are just too many such wacky incidents to list or try and
comprehend. Some might have a taste for such West-coast cool and find it
entertaining, but I found it worse than a bad acid trip or playing a game
of kick-the-can.
|
Robert Redford’s “A River Runs Result of It” is a loving persuade of embracing nostalgia suitable a brighter, cleaner, more stand-up America. Set in Montana between 1910 and 1935, it describes a way of life that is grounded in what would promptly be called ritual stock values, with a weighty emphasis on morals, character and love of genre. In its determination to emphasize feature and charitable content as a remainder formulas and facile sensationalism, it’s a movie that’s proudly out of step with Hollywood trends.
One of the movie’s more serious drawbacks is that in his determination to set off in a new direction, Redford has made a film that seems almost anachronistic. In avoiding some of the tawdrier aspects of today’s movies, he’s also failed to deliver some of the pleasures that audiences have come to expect.
Primarily, this is a matter of pacing and sensibility. Redford has made his third feature with the same diligence he showed in directing “Ordinary People” and “The Milagro Beanfield War” — but, as in those previous works, his studied sincerity robs the story of some of its natural vitality. It’s thoughtful and beautiful, but also a little stodgy.
The Maclean family is an old-fashioned, close-knit clan, headed by a stern but benevolent patriarch who is also a Presbyterian minister (Tom Skerritt). The sustaining link between the Rev. Maclean and his two sons, Norman (Craig Sheffer) and Paul (Brad Pitt), is fly-fishing, which the men practice in the clear streams of Montana as if it were a combination of art form and holy sacrament. The two boys idolize their father, and never more so than when the three are standing thigh-deep in the waters of the Blackfoot River. Fly-fishing is the film’s dominating metaphor, representing not only a reverence for nature but also a respect for a dedication to craft that verges on artistry.
“River,” based on the autobiographical novella by Norman Maclean, presents a picture of an America that is unsullied by modern complexities, but it’s not a sanitized vision. The standards that the Rev. Maclean sets for his sons are demandingly high, and for Norman, measuring up to his father’s example of decency is a challenging life’s calling. He’s the good son, and in the early part of the film, he seems featureless and a little dull, as if his only aim were to live up to everyone’s expectations of him.
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By contrast, his younger brother, Paul, has worked free of these burdens. Even as a kid, it’s clear that the allure of the forbidden is too great for him to follow in his father’s footsteps. Paul is good-looking, charismatic and talented (he’s well known around town for his newspaper columns), but there’s a bit of the Devil in him. Paul takes chances that Norman would never consider. In one early scene, Paul taunts his older brother into risking his life by going over a waterfall in a rowboat, setting the pattern for the rest of their lives.
From that incident, we are made aware that the grown-up Paul may not be as lucky as he was as a boy. As Pitt plays him, Paul is something of a mystery. Though he’s constantly in trouble, he’s not a bad sort, but the gambling and drinking seem to spring from an anger deep within — an anger never fully explained. It’s possible he’s rebelling against his controlling father, but there’s no visible tension between them. Nor is there anything beyond the usual sibling bickering between him and Norman, who is obviously his father’s favorite.
Part of the problem may lie in Pitt himself. Though he made a strong impression as the drifter in “Thelma & Louise,” he seems callow and opaque here; his resources as an actor are simply too limited for him to communicate the psychological subtleties of his character.
This deficiency leaves a hole in the picture that Redford can’t cover over. And it causes repercussions throughout the film, particularly in Paul’s relationship with Norman, who seems as puzzled by his brother’s behavior as we are. It’s also perplexing that, despite Paul’s difficulties, the family trio remains unaffected, while the point is made that Paul has grown even more proficient in fly-fishing than his father.
This is not a casual point. In “River,” those who excel in fly-fishing do so through the grace of God. Ultimately, this is a spiritual movie, and if a man is not in spiritual harmony with himself, his God and nature, then, well, he can pretty much count on hamburger for dinner that night.
“River” is a serious and, at times, moving film, and it deserves serious analysis. Yet serious scrutiny only leaves a deeper confusion. Redford did not make the film with the intention of making heroes; in a sense, it’s an elegy for a lost style of living. But the sympathies of the gods appear to be divided here, throwing the moral compass out of whack. While Paul is blessed with the greater artistry (not to mention the bigger fish), it is Norman and his father who are blessed in life. And while this seeming contradiction may be Redford’s commentary (he narrates the film) on the perverse humor of fate, more likely it expresses a split within the filmmaker himself.
Paul’s incandescence may make him the movie’s most compelling character, and even God’s favorite, but Redford seems ultimately to side with the less flamboyant characters. Perhaps we’re to think that living as intensely as Paul does exacts a high price; that the brighter a candle burns, the faster it goes out. But the candles of the other Maclean men hardly burn at all. Paul has a fervent appetite for life, and beside him, Norman and his father seem fearful and pinched. The elder Macleans don’t live as fully or as recklessly as Paul, and, as a result, they can only be spectators to the epiphanies Paul experiences. Yet, it’s the slow and steady Norman who endures, and something in Redford wants to praise that, to celebrate his gravity. And he does. Though we may fall in love with Paul, it’s Norman who’s made the movie.
Julianne Moore (Nine Months, Hot pants Cuts) gives an astonishing deportment as Carol White, a suburban housewife whose affluent territory hurriedly turns against her. SAFE is a bold, darkly jocose, line original drama, depicting Carol’s descent into the horrors of modern-day living. Written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker, Todd Haynes, (Poison, Superstar). ALL RIGHT has been hailed as ’seductive… Scarily confident, beautifully acted. It resolution seize any viewer who dares to turn in to its promise. Feel free to dismiss or scream.’ -Richard Corliss, Time Magazine
TATTOO
(director/writer: Bob Brooks; screenwriter: Joyce Buñuel; cinematographer:
Arthur Ornitz; writer: Thom True; music: Barry de Vorzon; choose: Bruce
Dern (Karl), Maud Adams (Maddy), Leonard Frey (Halsey), Rikke Borge (Sandra),
John Getz (Buddy), Peter Iacangelo (Dubin); Runtime: 103; MPAA Rating:
R; producer: Robert F. Colesberry/Joseph E. Levine /Richard Levine; 20th
Century Fox; 1981)
"All involved
in this calculate non-standard like to be in call for of some Freudian assay."
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Tattoo was scripted by Joyce Bunuel, Luis Bunuel's daughter-in-law.
It's helmed by Bob Brooks, a British-based commercial and TV director.
It follows in the obsessive vein of John Fowles' The Collector, but veers
on the side of kinkiness. The film shoots to be shocking, and turns into
an unbelievable sleazy melodrama of little social worth.
"Tattoo" is the story of a crazed loner tattoo artist, played by
Bruce Dern as Karl Kinski. After visiting Japan and becoming charmed of
their elaborate stylistic tattooing, Karl returns home to practice his
craft in New Jersey. To him, tattoos are spiritual and are called "the
mark." Karl is hired by a local fashion 'zine to paint fake tattoos onto
the bods of some models to push a new swimsuit line. There, Karl becomes
obsessed with married international supermodel Maddy (Maud Adams). He dates
her, but he refuses to have sex with her because she's not into tattoos.
So he stalks her and finally tattoos her for real after kidnapping and
drugging her, and finally he rapes her after he covers her bod with tattoos
and feels that she's now good enough for him. All this nonsense takes place
while he's keeping her in his dad's isolated seaside cabin. In one sicko
scene, he makes the frightened vic masturbate. It goes down a slippery
pathological path of psychology, without adding any insight. All involved
in this project seem to be in need of some Freudian analysis. The rumors
persisted that the sex scene was real and not simulated, though Adams says
that's not so Bruce. No matter, this was a raunchy voyeuristic cultish
film that was hard to forget but in a bad sort of way. Its violent end
brings all the unpleasantness to a fitting conclusion.
REVIEWED ON 12/28/2003 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
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A warm positive message and a strong lead performance helps save 'Akeelah' from its own cliches
Audiences craving a big manipulative embrace this weekend after seeing "United 93" could do worse than seeking out "Akeelah and the Bee." Throughout just about two hours, Doug Atchison's mistiness relentlessly rams cordial fuzzies down your throat and you know what? For all of the cliches and all of the cringe-worthy talk and for every weight where the score forced me to an emotional reply I wasn't really feeling, I bring about it nearly unsuitable to stay out of one’s head at "Akeelah." When a movie's empathy is so certainly in the hand place, it deserves some respect.
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Akeelah (Keke Palmer) has grown up in South Central Los Angeles, where her intellectual gifts are something to suppress, choose than a thing to celebrate. When Crenshaw Middle School holds its in the beginning spelling bee, Akeelah is a reluctant participant until she wins. Suddenly, the Scripps National Spelling Bee seems like a corporeal plausibility, but only if she can learn to work with Dr. Larabee (Laurence Fishbourne), a stern and proud linguist who refuses to let her sin herself or to buying her training as an excuse not to succeed. She also has to sway her stark-working mother (Angela Bassett) that hers is a vision worth having. Competing against kids who are richer and more on the ball, can Akeelah embrace her own possibility?
Although on the surface "Akeelah" weight seem like "Spellbound" meets "Boyz n the Hood," Atchison prefers to approach the means as a ritual underdog sports movie. It's "The Karate Kid" with more cognates and Latin roots. There are stern villains — the robotic Asian kid whose create is willing to push him to the breaking point up because of a win — and innocuous love interests — J.R. Villarreal as Javier, a mate speller from the right side of the tracks — and, of positively, there's Fishbourne in the Mr. Miyagi, playing the kind of stern-but-loving mentor figure he does so hearty.
Atchison refuses to let any of the darkness of the ghetto founder into the temporal. The bullies who mock Akeelah for her brains are cartoonish and the neighborhood gangster is played by Eddie Steeples, Crab Hamper on "My Name Is Earl." How on earth, he doesn't dumb the mundane down. With the reassuring participation of the Scripps people, as Akeelah advances, Atchison takes pleasure in whipping out the exact kind of esoteric words that Non-Standard real do settle most bees. Heaven forbid, people may learn something.
Palmer, unreserved to many viewers from her recent turn in "Madea's Genealogy Reunion," provides a enchanting central behaviour. Both her youthful petulance and intelligence are unstudied, a insouciant naturalism that's almost at odds with the film's over-calculated storytelling. She's also masterful to hold her own with both Fishbourne and Bassett, veterans who contain been known to overpower their co-stars.
"Akeelah" repeatedly quotes the Marianne Williamson jingle that begins, "Our deepest distress is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us." I'm a big enough softie that I can forgive a lot of formulaic tripe in the interest of a bulletin that solid.
More photos added from the Vancouver stay of the "Twilight" sequel.
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What you need to distinguish. When you need to know it.
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Cleaning up after celebs … or mopping the perplex with 'em.
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Nightly recaps of all your favorite primetime TV shows.
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Zap2it's own Korbi Ghosh talks to the brightest TV stars. New video daily.
When two hitmen, Charlie Storm (Lee Marvin) and Lee (Clu Gulager), hurt ex champ racing car driver - now a teacher at a school concerning the unmoved by - Johnny North (John Cassavetes), they are intrigued why he doesn’t try to peter out use up or defend himself. They don’t know their client’s accord, but they discover that Johnny had been involved in a million dollar holding up and the fortune has disappeared. They start tracking down the gang in order to determine out why their martyr didn’t run, who hired them - and where is the stinking rich at present. They learn that Johnny had been involved with Sheila Farr (Angie Dickinson), the girlfriend of badman Jack Browning (Ronald Reagan), who masterminded the robbery.
09/15/2009 11:55 PM
There aren’t usually a lot of tattoos in the conference room where multimillion-dollar development deals are made in Kansas City. But that may not be the only change for the Tax Increment Financing Commission if the City Council on Thursday approves Mayor Mark Funkhouser’s latest nominees to the board.
09/16/2009 05:11 AM
Black hospital patients are far less likely to survive cardiac arrest than white patients, research shows. The reason: Many black patients usually go to the hospitals that do the poorest job resuscitating patients.
09/15/2009 11:47 PM
The Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System is considered the first public pension fund in the U.S. to invest heavily in so-called commodity indexes. But should public pension money be invested in such a way that can pump up the price of gas for everyone?
09/15/2009 02:28 PM
There was plenty to see at the fourth annual Wheels and Dreams show on Sunday in Shawnee. The fourth annual car and motorcycle show along Johnson Drive and Nieman Road was hosted by the Shawnee Downtown Business Association.
09/16/2009 05:14 AM
The Kansas City Renaissance Festival — chock full of jousts and pirates, lords and ladies, and ogres and bards — runs through Oct. 18 in Bonner Springs. Check out the photos, and keep a sharp eye out for the king and queen.
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national correspondent is host at 11 a.m. weekdays.
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Kansas City's Green Impact Zone and pecuniary equality.
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Dina Massoud's son Yaseenn El-Demerdash reached for the baklava while his mother prepared for the Ramadan meal, the iftar. Children are not required to fast during Ramadan.
11:26 PM CDT
During Ramadan, Muslims the world over fast from sunup to sundown. Once sundown arrives, Kansas City Muslims break the fast with a dizzying array of culinary traditions from America, the Middle East, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and elsewhere.
09/15/2009 11:44 PM
Two of the Chiefs? most visible projects continued Tuesday, and the team?s long-term plans came into clearer focus. Kansas City added veteran wide receiver Bobby Wade and the organization took another step toward distancing itself from its old ways by releasing linebacker Turk McBride (pictured).
09/14/2009 03:24 PM
When Taylor Swift was on stage making her acceptance speech for winning Best Female Video award, Kanye West came onstage, took the microphone from her to give a shout-out to Beyonce, one of the other nominees.
MOVIES
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Times, locations, passes
09/10/2009 04:59 PM
The ironically titled “World’s Greatest Dad” is one sick movie. That’s a compliment. The latest writing/directing effort from stand-up comic and all-around bizarre character Bobcat Goldthwait is a deadpan black comedy, though one can safely predict that unsuspecting moviegoers who stumble onto it may storm out proclaiming it’s not funny at all.
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'Why We Fight' is an unflinching look at the military industrial complex and the make good of the American Empire. Inspired by Dwight Eisenhower's legendary farewell blast (in which he coined the phrase 'military industrial complex'), the movie surveys the scorched landscape of a half-century's military adventures, asking how — and telling why — a land of, by, and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a system whose survival depends on a assert of constant war. The film moves beyond the headlines of various American military operations to the deeper questions of why — why does America run-in? What are the forces — political, economic and ideological — that imply us to fight against an ever-changing the other side?
Sicko: Documentary. Starring, written and directed by Michael Moore.
(PG-13. 113 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
Michael Moore does something very shrewd in "Sicko," his new documentary
about the health care crisis in America. He doesn't address his film to the 50
million Americans who don't have health care, but to the 250 million who do.
And he makes the case that things need to change not by appealing to sympathy
or to common decency but to self-interest. He tells people who have health
insurance that, even if they think they're safe, they're not — and he shows
them why. "Sicko" will scare people, and it probably should.
Moore makes two arguments in this documentary, one that's entirely
persuasive and another that's at least intriguing. The first is that health
care in America is in a state of escalating crisis — that people are getting
swindled and people are dying. Moore documents a corrupt and scandalous
situation in which doctors and health care gatekeepers get rewarded for denying
coverage and the HMOs rack up profits in the billions — which they then use
to buy off politicians. If what Moore is saying is true, if health care
companies really are making billions by deliberately defrauding customers and
letting them die, then we're witnessing the moral equivalent of war
profiteering, or perhaps war crimes.
Having made the case that our system isn't working, Moore launches his
second argument, that what we need in this country is what France, England and
Canada already have: a single-payer system. He then proceeds to present the
national health systems in these countries as nothing short of idyllic, with
short waits in emergency rooms, house calls (in France), happy doctors and
expert care. It's here that I wish Moore would have striven for more balance,
not because he's obligated to be fair, but because a balanced approach might
have been more informative and persuasive. For example, in his French, English
and Canadian interviews he never asks the one key question: What are you paying
in taxes? Yet there's no mistaking the pride these people have in their system,
not just because of what it does for them but for what it says about them and
their culture.
Indeed, even if Moore is guilty of propagandizing, he shows enough for us
to realize that we've been on the receiving end of propaganda for years without
knowing it — that "socialized medicine" is a nightmare, that doctors are so
poorly paid that there's no incentive to enter the profession, that people
don't get to choose their own doctor and that governments, to save money, let
serious illness go untreated.
Moore does a good job of knocking down those arguments and demonstrates
how, if anything, that state of affairs actually exists more and more under our
system. A woman relives the nightmare of having her daughter turned away for
emergency treatment at a hospital because her plan covered only treatment at
another hospital. The child died on the way. He interviews a young woman denied
treatment for cervical cancer because her plan considered her too young to get
cervical cancer. Promising treatments are denied desperately ill patients on
the basis of being "experimental." One of the patients Moore interviewed has
since died, and another woman, who appears to be in her mid-20s, has seen her
cancer metastasize.
But these are just isolated incidents, aren't they? Apparently not. A
health care company screener breaks down in tears, talking about the system by
which she is forced to refuse care, and a former investigator for an HMO
discusses the ways in which his department looked for excuses not to pay
legitimate claims. "You're not slipping through the cracks," he says. "Someone
made that crack and is sweeping you toward it."
Moore may be an imp, a manipulator and a provocateur, but he keeps his
vaudevillian antics to a minimum, and to the extent they're there, they're
welcome: They provide enough diversion, grim laughter and gallows humor to make
this dispiriting topic bearable. "Sicko" is enraging, alarming and terribly
sad, but Moore takes care that it's never anything less than fascinating, a
series of compulsively watchable stories and incidents, interspersed with
masterfully edited sequences. Some might prefer other Moore films for their
subject matter. But in terms of pure storytelling and filmmaking, this is his
most accomplished work.
In a jaw-dropping prank, Moore takes Sept. 11 rescue workers — denied
coverage for respiratory ailments contracted while pulling bodies from the
rubble — and brings them to Cuba for medical treatment. He captains a small
flotilla of ships to Guantanamo Bay, so that these Americans can get the health
care that the terrorists and alleged terrorists are getting, and when that
doesn't work, he just takes them to a Cuban hospital. It's Moore at his best.
He contrives situations, but then real things happen.
In the process, Moore rescues 9/11 from its heinous use as a stealth
weapon for the teardown of American values and uses it in the interest of
restoring true American values, like "looking out for the other guy," as James
Stewart once said in an old Capra film. No one should consider "Sicko" the last
word on the health care issue, but it just might spark the demand for a
genuine, honest discussion.
– Advisory: Some mildly disturbing hospital footage and adult subject
matter.
E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.
Carrie Jiminez