Author: Bo List

Being both uptight and white, I had great expectations for comic catharsis from this latest Yup vs. Bap fish-out-of-water “romp.”

Bringing Down the House stars the sublimely mismatched Steve Martin and Queen Latifah, from whom I had grand hopes of outrageous humor

and even some unconventional sexual chemistry. I had thought the bar to be set a little higher than the average cinematic situation

comedy. Not so. It does for black/white buddy movies (I classify this as a buddy film, since there is no romance between Martin and Latifah)

what the awful The Banger Sisters did for chick flicks: It insults its audience while still pandering to the lowest common denominator.

I would like to start by submitting that much of this limp film is pure 1980s. Its bizarre musical score belongs in an elevator or

as suicide-hotline hold music and not in a major motion picture. The songs are a very retro-sounding hip-hop — such that my equally

vanilla friend Amy remarked during a montage that maybe the movie was trying to be “old school.” And sadly, the racial humor (that’s all there

is in Bringing Down the House) is outdated as well — untouched leftovers from some Eddie Murphy vehicle perhaps. All involved

deserve better, save Ms. Latifah, who actually executive-produced the damn thing.

Martin is lawyer Peter Sanderson, recently estranged from wife Kate (beautiful and wasted Jean Smart) and distant father to

two very typical movie moppets — one who can’t read and one who will end up stranded at a scary teen party. Lonely Peter “meets” a

very upscale-sounding lady in a chat room and arranges a champagne rendezvous at his place. The catch? It’s Queen Latifah. Funny,

she doesn’t look like that pretty, white lawyer-y gal in the picture she sent. Ah, she must be that voluptuous black convict being arrested in

the background of the picture. Sneaky. Anyway, recently liberated from prison, she is here to blackmail Peter into re-opening her case,

insisting that she was framed for the armed robbery of a bank. “Hilarity” ensues when she refuses to get out of his life and causes all sorts

of problems with the ex and with a billionaire client whom Peter’s firm is courting. This billionaire is played by Joan Plowright.

I interrupt this review in its tracks for a moment to lament that the estimable Ms. Plowright is even in this film. She is

Laurence Olivier’s widow and a grande dame of the British stage and screen. There is some comedy over the fact that she is

so Anglo and snooty, but mostly it is just sad to see her staying afloat in inferior material like this. There is a jaw-droppingly bad scene where she drops in

for dinner at the Sanderson home and reminisces about her black servants, while Latifah’s Charlene poses as the family nanny and

cook. Plowright horrifyingly sings an entire verse of a slave spiritual, while Martin’s stomach makes bathroom noises after he is given

laxative-loaded food intended for Plowright. She will later end up cavorting on top of a bar after she is kidnapped (along with her ugly

German bulldog, William Shakespeare, who even wears the fringey ruffle around his neck) and given marijuana by some generous and

amused homeboyz.

Most of this movie is not funny. The staggering comic potential of putting Steve

Martin and Queen Latifah together is wasted on two counts: A) The movie only knows how to play the race card — black and white, soul and rhythm vs. the Man; B) They are not

romantically paired. Steve Martin and Queen Latifah having sex? Now THAT’s comedy. But

Bringing Down the House doesn’t go there. Instead, we have

the safe and uninteresting rekindling of Peter’s struggling marriage and Latifah’s considerable corn-fed sex appeal pawned off onto Eugene

Levy, whose own comic talents are wasted on lines like, “Oh, swing it, you cocoa goddess.” This is like most lines in the film: winking nods to race as

a gentle but hilarious social divider, serving simultaneously to enforce unflattering stereotypes

even as they make fun of them. Ha ha.

The premise of The Hours was a little intimidating to me before I saw the film: Three women are linked through three time periods to Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway. I was concerned that my blazing ignorance of Ms. Woolf’s work, and this one in particular, would hinder my enjoyment of the film and my ability to understand it. Not so. Yes, Mrs. Dalloway is at the heart of this film and at the root of the three stories presented, but everything you need to know is in the film. This is it, basically: Mrs. Dalloway decides one morning — the morning of a party she is throwing — that she will buy the flowers herself. Though she projects the appearance of togetherness and cheer, she is a lonely, empty woman inside. Oh, and someone dies at the end. That’s it.

In The Hours, we meet three women. First is Virginia herself (Nicole Kidman), and our introduction comes in the form of her 1941 suicide at age 59. A feminist Ophelia, she places a stone in her dress pocket, walks into a nearby stream, and lets it carry her away. Her brief, mortal stroll is voiced-over by her suicide letter, which explains to her husband that this act of desperation is to spare him the madness she feels is returning. The rest of her story takes place in 1923 as Mrs. Dalloway is working its way out of her.

Flashing forward to 1951, we see Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), depressed housewife of WWII veteran Dan (John C. Reilly) and mother of a young son. It’s Dan’s birthday, and Laura, in the middle of reading Mrs. Dalloway, decides that she will feel better today and bake a cake.

Cut to 2001, and publisher Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) is preparing a reception for author and friend (and long-ago lover) Richard (Ed Harris). Richard has just won a prestigious poetry award but is too ill from AIDS and related dementia to want to go to the party.

Each of these women is depressed. Each awakes and acquires flowers. Each has something special going on that day — a party of sorts. Each of these women kisses another woman. They all face suicide, and they all face the choice between death and the imprisonment of life. They each make a choice. The variations on these choices, while sometimes disorienting, are exactingly faithful to each other. Sometimes they reveal themselves suddenly, consecutively. Other times they surface gradually, inconspicuously. Like Philip Glass’ subtle, driving score, they build gracefully from a whisper into a cry and by film’s end find themselves whispering again.

The Hours is a miracle of a movie. Literate, involving, active — it is that rare film about women and their unique experiences that neither excludes nor condemns the role of men in their lives. The men of The Hours, Woolf’s stoic and supportive husband (Stephen Dillane), Brown’s husband and son, poet Richard and his former lover Louis (Jeff Daniels) — the sexual politics of the film are sometimes scattered but fascinating — are innocent bystanders who, while making decisions to maintain or find their own happiness, neither victimize nor devalue these unhappy women. Their depressions are unto themselves, and their lives entrap them in ways that their respective others cannot assist or understand.

All of the performances in this film are excellent and uniquely extraordinary. Kidman, unrecognizable behind a prosthetic nose, does more refined work here than I have ever seen from her. Her Woolf is depressed but never pitiful and always strong whatever the hardship. Moore, playing a very different ’50s housewife from her Far From Heaven turn, gets it just right. In the midst of true depression, something as simple as baking a cake becomes an overwhelming, impossible task. Moore’s battle with the cake is heartbreakingly sorrowful when she fails, yet somehow sadder when she gets it right. Streep, meanwhile, shows us again why she is Streep — equally profound unraveling before the party and, in a devastating scene at the end, as she just listens to a voice from the past that puts things into perspective.

Sad, but never far from hope, The Hours is one of the finest films of recent memory.

Spike Lee’s 25th Hour begins with several nighttime cityscapes of Manhattan. As the film’s haunting, almost tribal musical score swells, we see ghostly blue lights emanating and converging from or to the city in a series of variously obscured configurations and angles. This serves as an eerie, sobering prologue of both hope and doom as the camera gradually secures itself to a recognizable perspective on its subject: the place where the World Trade Center used to be and the two memorial light beams that, for a time, reached heavenward as a tribute to the fallen of September 11th.

When we first see Monty Brogan (Fight Club‘s Edward Norton), he’s interrupting a drug run to save a wounded, abused dog found on the side of the road. Monty decides to take him to an emergency vet and keep him — despite the pooch’s frightened, toothy protests. This moment with the dog, juxtaposed with the opening skyline footage, prepares us for, essentially, two films in one about New York: a film in which the city is rebuilt and one in which an inhabitant confronts his own destruction.

Next scene: Daytime now and Monty quietly, decisively walks his new dog through some of his old neighborhood haunts. Something is changed about Monty; he is reflective now, deliberate. Monty’s been caught and is on his way to jail — tomorrow, that is. For now, he has one last day of freedom before beginning a seven-year prison term for drug dealing. And he’s going to spend it the way he wants. This includes a few necessary stops and activities. Among them: a last dinner with Dad (Brian Cox, the original Hannibal Lecter from Manhunter), a going-away party thrown by his gratefully unimplicated distributor, Nikolai, and attended by his two uneasy best friends, Wall Street shark Frank (Barry Pepper) and frumpy high school teacher Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and a few last moments with his beautiful girlfriend, Naturelle (Rosario Dawson).

I hope I’m not spoiling the plot by reporting that this is not a thriller. 25th Hour is instead a patient, thoughtful meditation on the ephemeral opportunity within limited time. What would you do with your last 25 hours of freedom before spending 61,320 of them in the hell of incarceration? The mind boggles at the infinity of things you can’t do in jail, and 25 hours would offer scarce time to even brush the highlights. What does Monty do? He quietly, tidily wraps things up, prepares his family and friends for his departure, and comes to terms with the person responsible for putting him away: himself. In fact, the most fascinating scene is a dialogue between Monty and a mirror in which he condemns just about every possible minority as complicit in his situation. The result is at once funny and unnerving.

25th Hour is strongest when it focuses on Monty and how he deals with his impending detention. We are spared the trial and most of the nasty legal business, which, frankly, would detract from the strength of the film’s meditative flow. But there’s an awful lot of flow. Running two hours and 14 minutes, 25 hours seems like an eternity. Lengthy subplots are introduced, developed, and discarded with no particular narrative value derived from them. One subplot follows Jacob’s crush on one of his students — Oscar winner Anna Paquin — who ends up at the same nightclub and compromises essential teacher/student boundaries. Also, Monty has doubts about whether it was Naturelle who turned him in. A tighter film would make this more important; here, it comes and goes and doesn’t seem to bother Monty too much until the truth is revealed.

It’s hard to appreciate the depth of the film’s insights amid all the grandstanding, apocalyptic WTC imagery, and parallels drawn between Monty’s deserved sentence and the triumphant New York spirit. They don’t gel. Also, it is difficult to tell whether drug-dealing is being romanticized or disparaged. The lifestyle is made very attractive, and getting caught seems to be the biggest mistake — not the dealing. No matter. Good performances all around keep things interesting, if not as compellingly as unsubtle director Lee would have it. n

Chicago has been kicking around Hollywood for 60 years. Two previous film versions exist, and the story finally was

musicalized in a 1975 Broadway show directed by Bob Fosse and composed by Kander and Ebb, the songwriting team behind

Cabaret. Efforts to film the musical

Chicago have waxed and waned for years, with innumerable stars attached at various times: Rosie

O’Donnell, Goldie Hawn, Madonna, John Travolta, Kevin Spacey. Based on the 1942 play

Roxie Hart, Chicago captures a not-so-unique

period in history when Americans were obsessed with scandal and instant celebrity (see

The Anna Nicole Show, American Idol).

Keeping up with famous murderers was a national pastime.

Particularly intriguing among 1920s homicidal fascinations were the husband-killers.

Chicago introduces us to several of them — most prominently, Roxie herself (Renee Zellweger) who, in the ’20s, gunned down her lover when his promises of

helping her become a star turned out to be lies told to get her in the sack. A mousy beauty, Roxie is immediately out of place in

prison among harsher, angrier women. But it’s not long before she figures out the system and learns to stay afloat as the media

favorite. You see, there’s an attorney in Chicago who’s never lost a case: Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), and as long as he can make

headlines, he’s your best friend. When a new flavor-of-the-month comes along, so goes Billy’s attention. Roxie goes to substantial lengths

to make sure she’s Billy’s #1 star. Meanwhile, last

month’s flavor is Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), whose husband made

the fatal mistake of playing with the wrong half of Velma’s sister act. (So too went the sister.) Velma’s not used to being outshone

and does whatever she can to top Roxie’s celebrity. Velma’s glam-vamp posturings are no match for Roxie’s newly created Girl

Next Door routine. So, with a little help from the prison matron, Mama (Queen Latifah!), Velma concocts a plan to undo Roxie’s

defense and put herself back on top.

Richard Gere’s Billy Flynn, explaining what the jury and media and public really want, sings “Give ’em that razzle

dazzle.” Director Rob Marshall follows through on Billy’s advice and razzles and dazzles the hell out of this movie. Marshall, known

primarily as a choreographer and as the director of the TV

Annie a few years ago, delivers a powerful punch in the

sequins-and-feathers fabulousness department. The singing and dancing are great, and the quick and choppy editing of each sequence is

razor-sharp. (Some may hate this, and I suspect that it masks the more skilled hoofers standing in for the more complicated dance moves —

but pish! The results are dynamic and rousing.) The film’s only drawback is that, in dividing into book scenes and fantasy

musical numbers, the talky time just can’t sustain the energy and attention of the flashy songs and dance. Ah well — the musical

numbers are never far off.

Zeta-Jones, in particular, is fantastic. Her

opening number, “All That Jazz,” sets a high bar of pace and style for the rest

of the film, and her “Act of Desperation” (a plea for Roxie’s cooperation that displays her old act’s moves, sans sister) shows

that Zeta-Jones, a professional dancer before turning actress-cum-Mrs. Michael Douglas, truly has the right stuff.

Zellweger, more actor than dancer, is particularly good at suspending disbelief in high-concept dramadies

(Nurse Betty leaps to mind). She balances Roxie’s vulnerability and manipulation with great skill (in fact, she holds the movie together) and pulls off the

jazzier demands of the role just fine, albeit in Zeta-Jones’ formidable shadow but that’s okay — her star power is based on her scandal, not

her soprano. Additionally, there are extremely sound supporting performances from Gere (who has a strong, if not pretty,

musical-theater voice), Latifah (who steals the show with her bawdy “What Mama Wants”), and John C. Reilly as Roxie’s doltish husband.

Anyone expecting the depth of

Cabaret will be disappointed in

Chicago‘s relatively thin story and its broadly drawn

characters. However, even as Chicago mocks those in the spotlight who have arrived there by style over substance, it delivers that

style 100 percent.

Stop me if you have heard this plot before: Poor working-class girl dreams of a better life for herself, magically (and a touch deceptively) becomes beautiful and attractive to a rich mover-and-shaker, and then must flee lest she be found out as the real (poor) woman she is — but not without proving herself first. The story is that of Cinderella, remade countless times into countless romantic comedies that, in the last two decades, have included Working Girl and Pretty Woman.

Someday, moviegoers will grow weary of this formula. Shouldn’t romance and achievement be more evenly distributed among the boys and girls of our impressionable youth, not to mention their adult counterparts? I long for the day when movie formulas include impoverished, scrappy young men (more sincere than Jerry Lewis’ 1960 Cinderfella?) going through ridiculous, labyrinthine trials to secure the attentions of successful, wealthy, powerful, eligible women. “Wow,” he would say, “If only I could escape the dirt and grime of my crowded urban tenement and unpromising, dead-end job in the mailroom and get that pretty, corporate lady to take notice of me. Maybe I should disguise myself as a Wall Street executive and ” And, to the tune from Snow White: “Someday my princess will come “

Until that day, we are stuck with mindless retreads like the latest incarnation — Maid in Manhattan. Structurally, Maid is a bit more faithful to the fairy tale and thankfully lacks Melanie Griffith as the heroine and features housekeeping as the mercifully less-syphilitic profession than Ms. Julia Roberts’ vocation in Pretty Woman. Jennifer Lopez takes over daydreaming duty as Marisa Ventura, maid in a hoity-toity Manhattan hotel. She dreams of more than changing sheets and replacing toiletries, however. She wants to be a manager. Meanwhile, hotel guest Christopher Marshall (Ralph Fiennes) is a New York assemblyman on the verge of announcing a senatorial campaign. Handsome and high-profile, he is the Prince Charming of our tale, and an unlikely mix-up has him meeting Marisa in the hotel’s “Park Suite” while she’s trying on another guest’s fancy outfit. He thinks she is another guest — not the maid, certainly — and the rest of the film has Marisa dodging her bosses and trying not to get caught being courted by someone whose sheets she should be changing (not mussing!). Meanwhile, Marshall has a campaign to run, and paparazzi everywhere are dying to know who this Mystery Lady is. Natasha Richardson is thrown in as Caroline, the guest who really is staying in the “Park Suite” and who accidentally interprets Marshall’s romantic overtures as intended for her.

Maid in Manhattan, alas, has none of the ambitions of Working Girl (ironically, they share a screenwriter in Kevin Wade), where heroine Tess dreamed way outside the box and believably risked it all. Nor is there the charm of Pretty Woman. But wait. Admire the true-to-design Pretty Woman parallels: gruff, lovable, and bald hotel employee who sees through her ruse and helps her along (then Hector Elizondo, here Bob Hoskins); gruff, unlovable, and bald Prince Charming stooge (then Jason Alexander, here Stanley Tucci); and tough-talking Italian confidante who inspires her to dream (then Laura San Giacomo, here Marissa Matrone). There is even a musical dressing-up montage (of course). It’s just not the same.

Fans of romantic “comedies” will like this okay. Jennifer Lopez is pretty and spunky and all of the things Meg Ryan used to be and less annoyingly so than Meg. She’s very cute with the goofy-grinned Fiennes, whose initially wavering American accent is shielded by fellow Brits Richardson and Hoskins, who effectively throw us off the scent. Hoskins, incidentally, turns in the film’s best performance as the hotel’s stately butler, while Richardson is deliriously over-the-top as the snobby Caroline. But, unfortunately for all of this talented cast, there’s just no writing to support them. No jokes for which to apply comic timing. No drama (just some whining) for which we can really care about them. And, am I crazy or does the couple’s last embrace occur in front of a mural of New York City being attacked on September 11th? What’s that about?

Stay home tonight instead. Rent a better movie. Cuddle. Tell jokes. Save your money.

Fans of the Star Trek industry — yes, it is an industry: with five television series, 10 films, and zillions in merchandise — will be familiar with the old saw “Even-numbered Star Trek movies are better than odd-numbered ones.” And this is true. Now, it’s time for number 10. Ladies and gentlemen (drum roll, please), we have a tie!

Some background on me and where I come from: There are two kinds of Star Trek fans. The first, more harmless variety is called a “Trekkie.” Trekkies will have some videos on their shelf and a fan magazine or two tucked away and will catch as many episodes of whatever series is currently in production as is humanly and socially responsible and possible. The only time you may see a Trekkie in a Starfleet uniform will be at Halloween. Then, there are Trekkers — die-hard fans. They’re hard-core. They go to conventions. They wear the uniforms and Star Trek ties to non-Star Trek occasions. They can order a pizza or hail a cab in pitch-perfect Klingon with a straight face. I am more of a Trekkie. I never went to a convention, though I did meet Mr. Sulu at a video-store opening and got an autographed picture. (It’s framed, along with my cocktail napkin from the real Cheers). I provide my context here, because it is as a Trekkie that I am here to report that the franchise is just about out of steam. I hate that! I love Star Trek (though I lost touch after The Next Generation left the air, I confess). As a young, nerdy teenager, it was Star Trek that first introduced me to concepts of justice and diplomacy and social responsibility and racism and everything I didn’t know existed outside of my then-myopic, uneducated universe. It opened doors. Doors aren’t opening anymore. But they are creaking a bit.

The plot, kept brief to showcase the plagiarism of the essence of The Wrath of Khan: The captain is getting older and pondering mortality and the future. After a festive occasion, the Enterprise is called to confront a menacing foe from the captain’s past — who knows the captain almost as well as he knows himself. After a familiar face from the crew is turned against the ship, there is a showdown in which Enterprise and assailant are both immobilized and only the ultimate sacrifice will save the ship — and possibly Earth — from a Doomsday device.

If you followed The Next Generation series, you will know that plots were borrowed heavily from the 1967-1969 original. This was fine. Technology had sped so fast in the interim 20 years that minor tweaking was all that was needed to spruce up old story lines. There were new issues, new ethics. Not so anymore. Nemesis doesn’t seem very interested in exploring complicated issues. There is no inspiring liberal agenda like glasnost or “Save the Whales” or scientific responsibility. Nor is there the action that supports fandom of truly cool science fiction like The Matrix or Aliens franchises. The special effects are fine, but nothing new at all, and when the ship is attacked, the camera still shakes and everyone falls down just like they did 30-odd years ago. Also, in the 80 years since the setting of the original series, the Federation still hasn’t figured out how a cloaking device works. And I report no new developments in phaser or photon torpedo technology. I demand progress!

In Nemesis, the old foe is actually a younger version of Captain Picard: a clone, created by the Romulans as a weapon to destroy the Federation. He is played by newcomer Tom Hardy and, while a fine, acid-tongued villain, Hardy is almost too damn cute for the part. Doe-eyed and pouty-lipped, he’s an all-too-adorable nemesis against the steely gaze of Patrick Stewart’s Picard. And Picard’s mortality is, well, old news. William Shatner’s 1982 mortality was more interesting because Captain Kirk was an athletic hothead learning how to be wise. While a better actor, Stewart’s Picard was always introspective. The variations are not interesting enough to revisit — again.

Welcome to Libria: your friendly, utopian megalopolis. The flag is a red background with a white circle at the center and a German cross in the middle. (Sound familiar? If that cross were just bent a bit it might look just like a swastika.) The spiritual leader is an omnipresent television face called the Father (you know, like Der Fuhrer? Hitler?). Emotion is outlawed and enforced by the daily self-administration of the stabilizer Prozium. (Sound familiar? Can you think of another contemporary drug that begins with “proz”? Get it?) You see, after World War III, surviving governments decided that emotion, not money, was the root of all evil and that the only way to preserve the human race is to be rid of all feelings — and to be rid of all feelers.

Metaphors and parallels run a bit rampant. This is not your father’s 1984. Equilibrium stakes an immediate claim as a cross between The Matrix (with its fancy, scattered camerawork, blending of martial arts and savage gunplay, and dark, sleek, severe wardrobe) and Gattaca (with some of its retro interior design and aspirations toward “importance” in its futuristic cautioning). Its antihero, played by sometimes coolish actor Christian Bale, is John Preston — a high-ranking “clerick” (read: supercop) whose job it is to seek out renegade “sense-offenders.”

After an impressive killing spree, Preston and company come across a hidden stash, including a book of poetry by Yeats and a certain da Vinci portrait of a lady with a mysterious smile. Books and artwork are forbidden since art, music, and literature can inspire emotional responses. A scanner is aimed at the painting, which verifies its authenticity, and then Preston orders it burned immediately. This verification is unnecessary, since, real or not, it must be destroyed as contraband. This occurs only because everyone in the audience knows this painting and Preston’s showdown with Mona Lisa is the lowest-common-denominator way of showing just how dedicated his cause is toward the eradication of feelings. So dedicated is he that when he discovers that his wavering partner has lifted the Yeats book, not for evidence but for light reading, he has no problem with blowing him away too.

But not everything is utopian in Utopia. Preston misses one of his daily Prozium doses and starts — well, you know. Suddenly he starts noticing things, smelling the roses, as it were. He is moved by a sunrise, by the way a handrail feels on his fingers as he ascends a staircase, and, in one of the film’s best scenes, by the sound of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony played over a phonograph he has discovered in another raid. He stands, overwhelmed, by sights of what is essentially kitsch — memorabilia, an Eiffel Tower snowglobe paperweight, girlie calendars, even a ceramic-rooster butter plate — as Beethoven swells in a crescendo. Preston cries. There is a profound banality to this, since this assortment of knickknacks is stuff we non-Librians take for granted. In Libria, there are freedom fighters willing to die for their preservation. It’s really kind of beautiful but is immediately followed by a maudlin execution of puppies, and so the beauty fades quickly.

Preston’s new partner, opportunist Clerick Brandt (Taye Diggs), suspects but says nothing until Preston’s attempt to understand his new feelings leads him to the leader of the Resistance — possibly ending all hope of freeing the world from emotional dictatorship and depersonalizing uniformity. Thus begins the obligatory Race Against Time.

There is a great deal of naive charm to Equilibrium, though its message is somewhat muddy in our current climate. War is actually okay? It’s cool to kill people, so long as you have feeling behind it? There is a celebration of individuality suggested, but Preston’s transformation is only into a more invested killing machine. And why does Taye Diggs smile all the time if nobody’s supposed to be feeling anything? It’s odd. But Equilibrium at least is trying to say something. Not as cool as The Matrix or as smart as the actually relevant Gattaca, Equilibrium reduces its preposterous (or are they? boo-hahaha!) issues to black-and-white, yes, but at least does so with some intelligence and style.