Author: Bo List

It took me about 40 minutes to realize that, mercifully, Disney’s Treasure Planet is not a musical. I was so caught up in the characters and style of this adaptation (a few months ago, when I first saw the trailer, I rolled my eyes: “Treasure PLANET?” I muttered to myself. “Disney must be scraping the bottom of the story barrel”) that it took me that long to figure out that the success-mold of the studio’s better animated films was broken slightly. Near the 40-minute mark, there is a coming-of-age montage set to Goo Goo Doll Johnny Rzeznik’s original “I’m Still Here” that is both clever and revealing, and it took me a moment to notice that the protagonist, Jim Hawkins, was not singing it. This was especially impressive because this attractive film succeeds at creating characters that are not only lovable but respectable and without the usual sentimental trappings of cartoon-y fare.

Very similar to the Robert Louis Stevenson original Treasure Island (‘cept for the aliens and such, that is), this Planet has a young Jim Hawkins longing for adventure not on the open sea but in the heart of space. The year is I dunno some futuristic time where spaceships are great wooden galleons with a mix of rocket boosters and solar sails more Jules Verne than Jetsons. Jim, speaking of breaking molds, is different from the other boys. He’s a bit of a loner and a rebel and likes nothing more than racing his jet-craft through dangerous, off-limits industrial landscapes until the police-bots cart him home with a stern warning to his patient mother that next time it’s juve-y hall for him. Ma Hawkins runs the Benbow Inn, full of all sorts of lovable alien types, including the doddering, dog-like scientist Dr. Delbert Doppler. When Jim is given a secret map to Treasure Planet, Doppler concludes rather necessarily that what Jim really needs is a life-threatening adventure in space to build his character, and when thieving rogues burn down the inn searching for the map, there is no choice: Jim must find Treasure Planet!

The most enduring appeal of Treasure Island is not in the swashbuckling escapades of the fortune-seeking Jim but in the complicated relationship between him and Long John Silver, here a cyborg with a mechanical robot arm and leg. As a child, I recall Silver as my first exposure to a literary character who had elements of both good and bad in him. There is a fatherly affection with which Silver regards young Jim, even as he competes for the map and later the gold, once Treasure Planet is within reach.

Treasure Planet is a truly enjoyable film succeeding as a faithful but liberating adaptation and as a visual marvel. The detailed and sprawling starscapes are particularly beautiful, and the anachronistic 19th-century-meets-Futurama stable of ships, robots, and locales are exactingly conceived within the same technological palette. A 2001: A Space Odyssey moment occurs when Jim looks up to a sliver of a moon and a close-up reveals that it is not a moon at all but an elaborate, bustling crescent-shaped space station. This is neat-o. There are, however, some instances where the mostly hand-drawn characters look kind of flat against the dazzling, more 3-D backgrounds, but this works more often than not with the rest of the film’s past-meets-future juxtaposition, which looks charmingly like the backgrounds from Toy Story populated with characters from the enjoyable but shoddy Disney film Robin Hood. But Treasure Planet‘s real accomplishment is in having not one but two cutesy sidekicks a shape-shifting Mr. Bubble reject called Morph and the daffily old C3PO-ish B.E.N and they don’t ruin the film à la Jar Jar Binks in the newest Star Wars. Neither are annoying or take away from the film, even though B.E.N. is voiced by Martin Short a time-bomb of cloyingness used in just the right amounts here.

My transparent stab at getting a quote into the corporate marketing of the film: “Fanciful but intelligent, Treasure Planet strikes it rich with parents and kids alike.” It’s true.

When Kevin Kline, as Western Civilization professor William Hundert, mutters in a voice-over late in The Emperor’s Club‘s second half, “This is a story with no surprises,” all I could think was “Hell, if I had known that in the beginning, I might not have stayed!”

Deep breath. Okay. Kline plays Hundert, a respected and upright instructor at the prestigious St. Benedict’s boys’ prep school, who teaches about ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. We know that beneath his square exterior he is cool because he has his students wear togas when studying Julius Caesar. Enter Sedgewick Bell (Emile Hirsch), son of a good ol’ boy West Virginia senator. Bell is a handful undisciplined, uninterested, and sloppy who quickly wins over the attention of his classmates, including the standard ragtag gaggle of school-film stereotypes: brain Deepak (also doubling as the foreign one), nerd Martin, and goof Louis. They even row a boat to the girls’ school on the other side of the lake! Hundert manages to keep the boys in check and has faith in Bell’s potential and so searches for the right way to reach this spoiled boy, accustomed to getting what he wants and not having to work for anything. Hanging over the heads of the students is the upcoming Mr. Julius Caesar contest a prestigious Greco-Roman trivia competition whose laurels all students covet. One of the film’s only good scenes features Hundert alone in his office grading papers. Bell, by now, has begun to apply himself and is ranked fourth in the class. Only the top three will go on to the contest. But Hundert knows that this might be just the push Bell needs to make something of himself. Hundert stares at Bell’s essay, graded A-. Patiently rendered, this scene shows all we need to see of Hundert’s swaying priority as he reluctantly reaches over with his red pen and makes the grade an A+. Bell is now in the top three, pushing out Martin, whose father won the title as a boy and expects the same of his son.

The big day arrives, and (watch out major “suspenseful” plot points revealed here) Hundert notices that during the contest Bell is cheating. Caught in a pickle, Hundert finds a discreet way of forcing Bell to lose to Deepak. When Hundert asks why Bell needed to cheat when he could have won on merit, Bell answers, “Why not?” The rest of Bell’s stay at St. Benedict’s is like his beginning: disappointing.

Flash-forward 25 years. Bell is now a politically minded CEO and Hundert a recent retiree. Bell wants to make a contribution to the school on the condition that Hundert will moderate a rematch of the Caesar contest. Has he changed his ways? Have some of Hundert’s lessons in character and government sunk in? Stay tuned to find out. Or don’t.

William Hundert is a cheap distillation of cinema’s best inspirational teachers. Kline is in typically fine form here, but he is utterly wasted on obvious, inferior material and deprived of an Oscar Moment that might explain to his students (or us) why it’s important to know the classics or how they enrich our lives. Similar, better films afford their star this courtesy. Instead, this script is a parade of mind-numbing, formulaic clichés that could easily be constructed by a recipe like this: Mix 1 cup Mr. Holland’s Opus with 2 cups Dead Poets Society with two tablespoons To Sir, With Love. Sprinkle generously with Goodbye, Mr. Chips and overbake for a merciless 109 minutes. Smother with cheese and let stand. Serve cold.

This is a recipe that many will enjoy. The Emperor’s Club is extremely easy to swallow, as it is completely without complication or ambiguity. Right is obviously very right and wrong is wrong. Studying + applying yourself = good. Shirking responsibility + looking at nudie magazines = bad. Written by the scribe most famous for penning star vehicles for Corey Haim, Macaulay Culkin, and Pauly Shore (License To Drive, Richie Rich, and Jury Duty, respectively), these are the issues at work in this clumsy and pandering film.

Auto Focus begins in 1965 with the dawn of the “classic” TV sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. Meet family man Bob Crane: the picture of likability and easy charm and — as Colonel Robert Hogan — the star of the show. At an early press junket, a reporter asks Crane a few questions about the new show, concluding with something like “So if you liked World War II, you’ll love Hogan’s Heroes?” The reporter gets up to leave abruptly, and when Crane asks what’s wrong, the reporter, offended, answers, “I’m a Jew.” After this, the film never returns to the issue. See, Auto Focus is a film that wormishly exposes the secret sexual underbelly of an otherwise bland and innocuous television personality, but I think the real scandal is how any well-paid executive at a major television network (CBS) could think that a sitcom about wacky misadventures in a Nazi POW camp is a good idea. Why doesn’t somebody make a movie about that? It seems like the worst TV idea ever — with all due respect to My Mother the Car, Cop Rock, and The Geena Davis Show — and yet Hogan’s Heroes ran fairly successfully until 1971. Alas.

Auto Focus, however, isn’t about Hogan’s Heroes or Bob Crane’s career (good thing). It is a movie about a man’s descent and the friendship that precipitates the downward spiral of our — ahem — hero. Crane’s Mephistopheles is new buddy John Carpenter (played by Willem Dafoe and not to be confused with the horror director of the same name). A tech wizard, John knows all the latest in stereos and cameras. Crane, a photography buff, as it were, takes quickly to Carpenter, who seems to make a business of knowing just enough celebrities to keep ahead with his job at Sony and where all the hot strip clubs are. Before long, Crane is playing drums for strip shows by night, rehearsing and filming Hogan’s by day, and neglecting his family in between.

Meanwhile, Carpenter has introduced Crane to the joys of home movies, sexual conquests, and combinations of the two. A swinger is born, and the consequences catch up fast. Wife Anne (stately Rita Wilson) finds his collection of photos of him with other women and asks, “How many women are there?” The question is mostly irrelevant, really, and Crane probably couldn’t begin to guess anyway. Hogan’s Heroes is soon canceled, and Crane must make do with his limited talents and a growing reputation as an indiscreet Hollywood pervert (agent Lenny, played with excellent moral reserve by Ron Leibman, admonishes him on the set for showing his dirty photo album to — gasp! — Donna Reed!). His last big break, ironically the Disney family comedy Superdad, flops and by the time he’s touring the dinner-theater circuit and appearing on a has-been-celebrity cooking show, he is already emotionally bankrupt. All the while, his constant companion is John Carpenter, whose unflagging dedication is matched only by his unwavering libido.

There is an intended emotional hollowness to Auto Focus that somehow plays more disturbingly than other sexual-nightmare parables like Fatal Attraction or anything with Richard Gere. Crane’s unending conquests are so detached and passionless that one almost longs for the eroticism of a simple kiss. The film’s only true passion is in the relationship between Crane and Carpenter, alternating between macho camaraderie and homoerotic longing — by Carpenter. While reviewing footage of one evening’s festivities, Crane, panicked, catches a glimpse of Carpenter’s hand on his backside. “It’s an orgy!” Carpenter defends. Dafoe — intense as always — is sad and pitiable as the best friend who, unaware, wants just a little more.

Greg Kinnear, a deceptively complicated leading man with a superficial edge, is ideally cast as the compromised Crane: valueless, empty. His winning smile and vast charm are perfectly suited to the growing desperation of a man needing badly to be liked and wanted. Director Paul Schrader (American Gigolo, Affliction) traces his corruption with gritty elegance, gradually trading bright cheerful colors for dirtier tones and jerkier angles with each passing scene. Auto Focus, aptly titled to suggest Crane’s automated exploits and ambiguous moral focus, succeeds with understated brilliance in revealing the darker side of mediocre celebrity and unglamorous sex.

He’s baaaaaaaack! Wait. This is a prequel. He’s heeeeeere! Hannibal Lecter, that is: the Julia Child of serial killers made famous in the Thomas Harris novels and particularly by the Oscar-winning performance of Anthony Hopkins in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. Hopkins’ Lecter is now a household synonym for creepiness, and his associations with fava beans and Chianti are now rather permanently affixed to those delicacies. Viewers will come to the theater with two major questions on their minds: Is Red Dragon better than last year’s Grand Guignol horror-fest Hannibal? Yes, it is. How about The Silence of the Lambs? Not quite. Silence (one of few scary movies to nab the Best Picture Oscar) was a masterpiece of slowly unraveling tension and discreetly horrific brutality. Hannibal, better than most people give it credit for, was still an unworthy sequel, overexposing its star, who, in Silence, achieved icon status with only a handful of scenes most of them behind thick Plexiglas. Red Dragon, thankfully, comes closer to the spirit of Silence, the first film. Er, second film. You see, first there was 1986’s Manhunter, based on the same story as Red Dragon, but with Brian Cox as the good doctor. Why the remake? Hopkins, of course.

We begin in the 1980s, at a Baltimore symphony concert. A flautist is mangling a delicate section of music, and we see Lecter wincing. We cut, then, to a magnificent dinner thrown by Lecter for the symphony board. In between compliments to the cook, they exchange snooty gossip about a missing musician. Good riddance, they suggest between bites (!), since he was so terrible. After the meal, Lecter is paid a visit by Will Graham (Edward Norton), an FBI agent with an uncommon ability to think like the very killers he hunts. The latest round of slayings is proving impossible to solve, and he has enlisted Lecter’s help in putting the clues together. Graham’s latest discovery: The killer is eating the victims! Who could it be? Within moments of Graham’s revelation, he has a knife in him quickly on his way to being the next course. But fast thinking frees him from Lecter’s clutches, and both men are critically wounded.

Years later, Graham is fixing boats in Florida. No more FBI for him. He has a wife (Mary-Louise Parker) and child and not a care in the world until former boss Jack Crawford stops by to tempt him back into one last case. There’s a killer out there who has targeted two families, brutally slaughtering them then placing fragments of mirrors in their eyes. What could this mean? Only Graham can crack this one, but he’s going to need some help: Lecter.

The formula here is mercifully closer to the Silence success: young, nervous FBI agent must stop one serial killer and relies on another to put the mystifying clues together. In Red Dragon, we get to take another long walk down the dungeon corridor to Lecter’s cell, get to chuckle at the flamboyantly uppity warden Dr. Chilton (the returning Anthony Heald), and go through the same cat-and-mouse games that Lecter will eventually orchestrate with one Clarice Starling in Silence. Like Starling, Graham looks at the clues but doesn’t see them. We do, however. Unlike Silence, we know much about the killer up front. He is sad loner Francis Dolarhyde sole resident of an abandoned nursing home and played by Ralph Fiennes. Between killings, he finds himself inadvertently courting a blind co-worker (Emily Watson), whose romantic advances play some havoc with his need to kill. This buys Graham some extra time in putting the pieces together, but the clock starts ticking faster when Graham’s own family becomes involved. You know the drill.

Fans of the franchise will like this third installment. While Silence relied chiefly on psychological suspense and Hannibal on beautifully composed gore, Red Dragon opts for a little more action. Suspenseful, yes, but revealing the particulars of Dolarhyde’s identity (including a Norman Bates-y grandmother obsession) lets a little air out of the tires. Fine performances from an almost campy Hopkins, Norton, and the terrifyingly over-the-top Fiennes, however, make this otherwise paint-by-numbers mystery worthy of the remake.

Robert De Niro slows it down a little in the ultraconventional cop thriller City By the Sea. He plays Vincent LaMarca, a veteran Manhattan officer with two skeletons in his closet: one in the form of a father, the other a son.

When Vincent was a child, his father was executed for the kidnapping and accidental death of a rich family’s baby. Vincent was taken in by the arresting officer on that case and raised with a strict sense of honor, eventually joining the NYPD himself. Vincent, close to retirement, enjoys a predictable, unchallenging life, the rewards of a distinguished career on the force, and a safely noncommital relationship with his downstairs neighbor (Frances McDormand). Vincent’s routine gets shaken up when a dead drug dealer with a Long Beach, Long Island, driver’s license washes up on the banks of his turf. Vincent has painful memories of Long Beach, once a bustling tourist haven and now a decaying, beachfront ghost town. There, he has an ex-wife (Patti LuPone) and a young adult son (James Franco) he left years ago, and he hasn’t looked back — until today. It turns out that his son Joey, now a desperate junkie, is connected with the death, and Vincent must balance his duty to the force and his guilt as an abandoning father to see that justice is done.

If this all sounds familiar, there are two reasons. City By the Sea is based on a true story that was first highlighted in a 1997 Esquire article by Mike McAlary. Also, the plot is not unlike several you may have seen brought to life as TV movies. There is certainly nothing surprising here, except maybe De Niro’s understated performance. It is an exercise in restraint. There are many upsetting turns in Vincent’s life: the murder charge against his son, confronting his ex-wife again, unexpected relations, and another murder. He almost never loses his cool. Perhaps it is from years of repressing the pain of losing his father to the electric chair, the shame of living under the shadow of a murderer, and the guilt of leaving his family. De Niro navigates this emotional turf skillfully, with an almost bland detachment, until the climactic confrontation, when the stakes are at their highest and he can’t push it all away anymore.

It’s a sad day in Hollywood when grade-A actresses like Frances McDormand have to accept roles as girlfriends in paint-by-numbers police dramas (see also the wonderful Anjelica Huston in this season’s Blood Work — or, rather, don’t see it). McDormand makes the most of it and brings some honest gravity to Vincent’s need to do right by his son, but you can’t help but feel like she should be doing something worthier of her time. Delightful, though, is seeing Patti LuPone in a major film. Underrated as a screen presence, she brings some much-needed, responsible fire as Vincent’s long-suffering ex-wife.

Most interesting in City By the Sea is the young James Franco, who won an Emmy playing James Dean in a TV biopic. He’s very compelling as the good boy gone wrong, and his youthful defiance and rage at his abandonment are skillfully contrasted with De Niro’s measured and tenuous authority. Franco, incidentally, looks a lot like James Dean, and director Michael Caton-Jones goes a little overboard in making his Joey smolderingly sullen and hopeless. In fact, the film kind of reads like a Young Method Actor In Training showcase, with De Niro as the wizened guru and Franco as the attentive pupil. There’s angst aplenty. There are several shots of Joey ambling woefully down the Long Beach boardwalk accompanied by slow, mournful, bluesy jazz music and longing for love or drugs. Audience members can amuse themselves by paying close attention when the musical score switches gears from Vincent scenes (traditional movie background — violins, etc.) to Joey scenes (gritty hip hop or the mournful jazz). Once they have the pattern straight — and it is very noticeable — observe the moment when the pattern is disrupted and the jazz follows Vincent on his own sullen trip down the boardwalk. It’s fun! But it shows exactly how conventional this well-produced, well-acted film turns out to be. — Bo List

My roommate, Chris Arnold, is directing Neil LaBute’s The Shape Of Things at the University of Memphis this fall. So, in preparation for writing this review for LaBute’s film Possession, I asked for his well-researched take on what makes LaBute tick. His written response:

“Neil LaBute honestly examines the ugly truth of male/female relationships. Part of the excitement of a relationship is finding a way to compromise the inevitable battle of the sexes, but LaBute ignores this compromise. In Possession, LaBute shows this issue is timeless with the two relationships he explores.”

Thanks, Chris. Anyway, Possession is a story about two courtships — one inspiring the other. Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) is an earthy American visiting England on fellowship to study the Victorian poetry of the late, great Randolph Henry Ash, whose work is being celebrated upon its centenary. Ash was noted for having only one great love — his wife — but in a routine visit to the library, Roland discovers an original Ash love letter, addressed only to “Madam,” that would suggest there was another object of his affection. Prime suspect: Christabel LaMotte, freethinking prefeminist and — gasp! — lesbian. Roland takes his theory to the icy, skeptical LaMotte expert (and descendant) Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow). Bailey would like nothing more than to quash Michell’s recklessly American ideas but soon embroils herself in unraveling the mystery as they discover more old letters and retrace the hypothetical steps of the lovers from a century ago. They have competition: Ruthless colleagues and an on-again/off-again suitor of Maud’s would love nothing more than to confirm this discovery, and it’s a race against time — present and past — to find all of the right clues to authenticate the find. Along the way, amidst all of that sexy poetry and repressed British sensuality, Roland and Maud find themselves attracted to each other, and their scholarly adventures heighten the excitement of their hesitant courtship — and vice versa.

I didn’t like this movie very much on the whole. I was utterly absorbed when traveling back in time and seeing Ash and LaMotte (Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle) engaged in their delicate seductions but checked my watch incessantly during the bland and awkward mating dance of the two present-day academics. Maybe this is the point: that while we 21st centurions pat ourselves on the back for progress and civilization, we haven’t learned a damn thing about matters of the heart. Nor have we excelled at expressing ourselves through language. Roland’s and Maud’s inarticulate musings and confessions pale next to the elegance and sheer beauty of the exchanges between Ash and LaMotte.

Eckhart stretches plausibility as a researcher of poetry. He comes off like a cowboy — out of place and in over his head. And while his boyish, toothy charm contrasts nicely with The Gwyneth (utterly believable as the snitty ice queen), he never quite makes the grade as a person passionate about poetry. He seems so entirely focused on disarming Maud’s aloofness that we never quite see a man in love with words, as the situation suggests.

The real show, again, is Ash and LaMotte. Northam hauntingly underplays Ash as a man of very gently expressed passions. No Byron, he. This is a necessary key to believing that a man famous for loving only his wife could develop a passion for another woman. His performance has a masculine softness, encouraging our belief that he can charm LaMotte, famous for loving only women. In turn, Ehle’s LaMotte has a wry smile that would make Mona Lisa blush.

LaBute, director and adapter (after A.S. Byatt’s prize-winning novel) also seems more interested in the past. The period cinematography is more attentive and flattering, and the relationship between the two poets seems spontaneously calculated down to the glance. This is a different kind of film for LaBute, known for his harsh and intense looks at the contemporary gender war. His work on Possession is a bit more like his direction of Nurse Betty which sought as much to bend the differences between reality and fantasy as this film does to bend past and present and the passions that transcend them altogether. — BL

The winner of the French equivalent of the Oscar for best actress, best screenplay, and best sound, Read My Lips is a postfeminist take on a classic noir outline: A mild-mannered young woman meets a rugged ex-con and leaves her humdrum middle-class existence for a life of crime. But

Seymour “Sy” Parrish (Robin Williams) in One Hour Photo is the kind of guy you typically don’t notice. If he weren’t so friendly, you might easily consign him to the blur of fast-food workers, librarians, traffic cops, and grocery cashiers who make up the collage of daily routine and who never solicit attention unless something remarkable happens.

There is little remarkable about Sy: He works as a photo-lab technician at the local SavMart and, after a day of meticulous photo processing, goes home to a solitary apartment. If he has a life outside of the barren world of the SavMart, we don’t see it. Enter the Yorkin family: Will (Michael Vartan, a less expensive Tom Cruise type), Nina (Connie Nielsen of Gladiator), and 9-year-old Jake (Dylan Smith). They are the picture-perfect family, cut right out of a catalog for stylish contemporary living. The parents are attractive and hip, and the soccer-playing son is honestly and noncloyingly adorable. “Yorkin” literally breaks down to “your kin,” and Sy, who processes their weekly rolls of film, has grown inordinately fond of them, fantasizing that they are indeed his kin. He knows their address by heart, knows when birthdays are approaching, and by having constant access to the weekly record of their happinesses, knows just about everything they do.

Eventually, Sy grows more and more comfortable in his role as invisible stalker, finding tiny ways of being nearer to them: reading a book he notices Nina buying, hanging out at the soccer field during Jake’s practice. “Sometimes, I feel like Uncle Sy,” he says to Nina of watching the family grow over the years. To Nina, this is an offhand compliment to the attractiveness of the family. To Sy, this is a nervous plea for inclusion and a staking of his intended territory. One day, however, Sy notices something in a roll of someone else’s film that poses a threat to the obliviously happy Yorkins. Sy works feverishly to devise a means by which to keep them together and punish those who would mar his image of the perfect family.

Robin Williams, with the right director and flattering material, is one of our very best actors. Usually, this involves a combination of resources that work to restrain him. Evidence: Dead Poets Society, Awakenings, and Good Will Hunting. Occasionally, he has done great work with directors who can channel all of that energy into a beautiful marriage of outrageous humor and heartrending pathos: Good Morning Vietnam, The Fisher King. After taking some missteps these last few years with overly sentimental life-affirming tear-jerkers (witness Bicentennial Man, Jakob the Liar, Patch Adams), he is branching out lately with some unexplored dark territory, as in this summer’s thriller, Insomnia.

Williams really is quite impressive here. There is a mesmerizing scene when Nina is tucking young Jake into bed and he remarks that he is sad for that friendly guy who works at the photo lab. Nina, touched by his empathy, holds him and encourages him to think good thoughts to send to Sy. The film cuts to Sy, alone in his coldly lit apartment, drinking a glass of water very slowly. The moment between Nina and Jake is so very magical that you expect those good thoughts to put a smile on Sy’s face across town. Or to inspire Sy’s stalking. Or something. What we see is Williams at his quiet best, just meticulously drinking the water. This is of enormous credit to writer/director Mark Romanek, who seems to know just what to do with Williams and his expansive range from stillness to mania. Romanek’s work is confident and deliberate throughout — rich with the cold, sterile imagery of Sy’s lonely life juxtaposed against the romantic, colorful affluence of the Yorkins and their belongings. And with the minor exception of an obvious framing device that tries to explain too much, Romanek manages to set all the right creepy tones in a mere 90 minutes. As I exited the theater, all I could think to say was “That’s a lot of heebie-jeebies to squeeze into an hour and a half.” — Bo List

Just a glance at the title of Nicole Holofcener’s sophomore film Lovely and Amazing brings images of a sappy love story to mind. Skimming over the synopsis in the press kit reveals all the ingredients for a corny chick flick. But much to my surprise, Lovely and Amazing is actually a conglomeration of scenes from the lives of three women that delve into the complexities of human relationships.

Lovely and Amazing peeks into the lives of one family as they struggle through daily battles with love, weight, careers, and acceptance. The mother (Brenda Blethyn), a weight-obsessed divorcée, spends the majority of the film recovering from liposuction surgery. Meanwhile, her three daughters go on about their very different lives. The oldest, Michelle (Catherine Keener), a thirtysomething artist in a loveless marriage, desperately takes on a job at a one-hour photo lab and eventually finds herself sleeping with her manager, a high school senior played by Donnie Darko‘s Jake Gyllenhaal. Emily (Emily Mortimer), the middle child, is an actress with appearance issues and a strange habit of picking up stray dogs. And Annie (Raven Goodwin), the youngest, is an adopted 8-year-old African American who spends most of the film wishing she were white like the rest of her family.

It is the scenes that display fairly insignificant moments that paint the best picture of these relationships. For example, in one scene, Michelle says “fuck you” to Annie, and Annie returns the sentiment. Although she’s only 8, it’s okay to cuss her sister because they’re just that: sisters. Scenes like this give an idea how weird it must be to have such a large gap in age yet still carry out a sister-to-sister relationship. Other scenes deal with much bigger issues but somehow come across as less important.

Lovely and Amazing addresses themes such as the female obsession with appearance: All of these women are intelligent and well aware that looks aren’t everything, yet they continue to obsess over weight, as many women do. And the film manages to show the beauty in making the most of the family that you’re stuck with.

Although the family is a little unrealistically dysfunctional, it makes for good cinema. And the slice-of-life scenes are put together in such a way that the film is, well, lovely and amazing. — Bianca Phillips

A sprawling, ambling look at a community balanced between historical burden and the promise of “progress,” Sunshine State finds writer-director John Sayles back in the mode of his greatest film, 1996’s Lone Star. Like Lone Star, this leisurely, whip-smart, two-and-half hour epic about another quintessential American place has enough story in it to fill half-a-dozen typical Hollywood films.

Sunshine State is set on Plantation Island, Florida, a seaside combination of two adjacent communities, the mostly white Delrona Beach, littered with decaying but locally owned motels, restaurants, and bars, and Lincoln Beach, a predominantly black community that was a thriving middle-class enclave in the Jim Crow days but that has fallen on hard times in the post Civil Rights era.

Early in the film, a chance meeting occurs between the film’s two most prominent characters, dopplegangers from each side of the island, who go their separate ways without meeting again, as the film spirals out through each of their paths.

One character is Marly (The Sopranos‘ Edie Falco), who once played a mermaid in a “popular roadside attraction” but now manages the Sea-Vue Motel and Restaurant, a business founded by her retired, partially blind, Archie Bunkeresque father Furman (Ralph Waite) and her community-theater director mother Delia (Jane Alexander). Marly has been keeping an eye on “vultures” from a corporation trying to buy up property on the island to develop a “beach resort community” of gated neighborhoods and strip malls called Plantation Estates, with the Sea-Vue as their primary acquisitions target. Meanwhile, Marly is also ending a relationship with a local golf pro who is leaving to try his hand at the PGA tour and strikes up a romance with Jack (Timothy Hutton), a mild-mannered landscape architect sent by the corporation to look at the property.

Rights to the property are being secured through an under-the-table deal with a crooked county commissioner with a gambling problem and a suicidal streak, and the commissioner is married to Chamber of Commerce booster Francine (Mary Steenburgen), who is organizing Delrona Beach’s Annual Buccaneer Days, a “historical celebration” for a community with a historical legacy that consists primarily of “mass murder, rape, and slavery” (“Just Disneyfy it a little and they’ll come,” another civic booster assures her).

Meanwhile, over in Lincoln Beach, the film’s other linchpin character, Desiree (Angela Basset) has returned home from Boston with her affable anesthesiologist husband Reggie (James McDaniel) to visit her estranged mother Eunice (Mary Alice). After getting pregnant at 15, Desiree (who was once Marly’s mother’s prize student) was shipped out of town to stay with relatives by her mother and late father, who were concerned about what the scandal might do to their precarious middle-class standing. Upon her return, Desiree finds that her mother has adopted a young nephew who is in legal trouble. The nephew develops a bond with Reggie, who befriends elderly community leader Dr. Lloyd (Bill Cobbs), who is organizing a protest of the same encroaching development with which Marly is dealing. And both Reggie and Dr. Lloyd are impressed when former Florida State football star Flash Phillips (Tom Wright) returns to the community, though he brings with him secret or forgotten entanglements that relate both to the Plantation Estates development and Desiree’s past.

Got all that?

As with Lone Star, Sayles takes on more social and political issues in one film than many directors do in a career. Watching Sunshine State, one thinks of not only how rare it is these days to see a serious consideration of real-life community issues up on the screen, but of how rarely the cinema lets us see people of different races or segments of a community dealing with these issues in the same film (even if not, as is also common in real life, in the same screen space).

The richness and responsibility of Sayles’ consideration of so many vital contemporary issues — the complexity of race in a post-civil-rights era, the balance of ecology and development, the struggle over power in local politics, the way attitudes and priorities change with each generation, etc. — is so rare that it might seem tempting to embrace his good intentions at the expense of acknowledging his obvious limitations as a filmmaker. At least that’s a popular take on Sayles’ work. But the truth is that, at his best (and Sunshine State is close), Sayles’ follow-through dwarfs his deficiencies. Sayles frequent interest in focusing on communities rather than individuals is a manifestation of his lefty politics, but Sunshine State brings this community to life, its fine ensemble cast overcoming Sayles’ modest visual style and only occasionally pedantic dialogue.

With the South Texas of Lone Star, the historical discourses were apparent, but in prefab Florida they’re more hidden. But Sayles gives the same energizing and deeply satisfying portrait of a community of long-simmering tensions, in this case of a space where natives mix with new arrivals, snowbirds, retirees, and carpetbaggers, and where so much of the future seems up for grabs.

Sunshine State lacks the intensity of focus that made Lone Star so powerful: That film built to an inevitable conclusion, where Sunshine State exhausts itself in a less resolved way. And some subplots, particularly that of the county commissioner and his wife, don’t have the follow-through and payoff that you’d hope. But the way Sayles explores his matrix of community faultlines while giving way to even more intriguing personal issues is very absorbing. By the end, you’re likely to leave the theater with these characters and this community’s issues buzzing around in your head as if they made up your own neighborhood. And in an era where the movies are supposed to provide “escape,” how great it is to see a film that makes you feel more alive and more connected to the world around you. — Chris Herrington

I hope I’m in Clint Eastwood’s shape when I’m 72. Still craggily handsome, still athletic, Eastwood always manages to kick ass, solve crime, and get the girl — usually half his age. He did it all in grand style in In the Line Of Fire and does it again here in Blood Work.

Also, at 72, I hope to have as keen an insight into my abilities, mortality, and the nature of the aging process. If you have noticed the last several movies Clint has appeared in/directed, you will observe a rather unconventional and refreshing glimpse into the career of a Hollywood icon, who is totally self-aware and unafraid of the aging process. He embraces the idea of the hero riding into the sunset — of life — and his best recent efforts have been character studies of men nearing their twilight years, dusting off their guns for one last great hurrah. He won the Best Director Oscar for the elegant Unforgiven, which serves as an excellent example of a legend completing his legendary duties before embarking on a career of his own choosing — making movies that he wants to make and consequently breaking the Eastwood mold. Being an “Eastwood movie” once meant being a spaghetti Western. Then came Dirty Harry. Now, he’s making movies about men getting older but not doing so without a fight.

Blood Work, unfortunately, isn’t as good as some of his other recent efforts that meditate similarly on masculinity and aging, like Absolute Power or A Perfect World. No, this one is more like Space Cowboys, which seemed sloppy and paint-by-numbers compared with the attention to detail of Unforgiven or Midnight In the Garden Of Good and Evil.

Eastwood plays Terry McCaleb, a retired F.B.I. detective recovering from a recent heart transplant. Two years ago, McCaleb suffered a heart attack while in pursuit of a serial killer and has only now been given a heart that matches his rare blood type. Enter Graciella Rivers (Wanda De Jesus), a mysterious stranger who wants to bring McCaleb out of retirement for One Last Case to find her sister’s murderer. To any other detective, the case is an open-and-shut liquor-store robbery that never got solved. To McCaleb, the victim is the reason he is alive: It was her heart that he received. However, McCaleb still has to take it easy. He’s only two months out of his transplant, and he’s not 100 percent yet. There is an unusual scene between him and his cardiologist (Anjelica Huston — what’s she doing here?) in which she quits being his doctor because he won’t take better care of himself, blaming Graciella for wearing him down. Later, during the scene when Graciella gingerly seduces McCaleb, my friend Lisa whispered to me, “Is she trying to kill him?” This inspired a more interesting plot twist than the movie takes: that Graciella is the murderer, and she is trying to kill McCaleb slowly by overexerting him. First, by solving the crime. Then, by having sex with him. Next, tennis? Jogging? Jazzercise? This never happens in the film, unfortunately, and we are dragged instead into a rather conventional episode of one of the Law & Order spinoffs. Jeff Daniels is along for the ride as a goofy neighbor, and funnyman Paul Rodriguez plays a pointless angry cop who has some unnamed hostility toward McCaleb and, for no good reason, obstructs the investigation.

Eastwood, at his best, excels at making great use of location — from his first effort in 1971, Play Misty For Me (a much better movie and VERY scary), to Midnight In the Garden Of Good and Evil. This movie, shot throughout California, lacks basic cinematography. There are scenes in which characters stand in front of what you know is pretty scenery or interestingly flavored locale, but the camera won’t pan out so you can see it. And from a purely technical standpoint, the interior shots look cheap — recycled from some ’70s TV crime drama. Very little about Blood Work looks like it should be a film instead of a television movie, and while it is an interesting twist on the Eastwood persona to display him at this particular level of physical vulnerability, there is not enough related intrigue to justify the lame plot and shoddy production values. — Bo List

XXX opens with a scene reminiscent of certain famous spy films: a handsome, tuxedoed sophisticate dodging ethnic goons and penetrating the ominous fortress of a calculating European megavillain. Much to his chagrin, he has stumbled not into an elegant dinner party but into a pulse-pounding nightclub mosh pit. Fatally overdressed, this anonymous gentleman spy is quickly shot down by his pursuers (and subsequently passed over the hands of the punks, club-style), and the world is again thrown into whatever peril the villain had going before the clumsy arrival of the defeated undercover operative. The message to XXX‘s audience: Bond is dead. Yes, James Bond. This is not your father’s action thriller.

From the onset, you should know that if this movie looks like it will appeal to you, it probably will. XXX, the Anti-Bond, makes good on all the promises implied by its advertisements. Director Rob Cohen places no demands, intellectual or emotional, on his audience and, in gearing its marketing toward practitioners and aficionados of extreme sports, avoids accidentally reeling in viewers expecting something more refined.

There is a plot — a thin shoestring upon which to hang a series of explosions. Xander Cage (even his name is perfect for a To-The-Extreme action stud, played by the similarly labeled Vin Diesel) is an underground hero in the extreme-sports world, nabbed by the government after he broadcasts an impressive, mildly political car theft/wreck. N.S.A. agent Augustos Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson, adding a little class) likes Cage’s baaaaaad attitude and expendable personality and puts him through a series of dangerous To-The-Extreme ordeals to see if he’s got what it takes. These tests place him, ultimately, in the middle of a Colombian drug raid, where Cage spends most of his time suspended in the air between implausible lengthy motorcycle jumps. Eventually, Cage successfully runs Gibbons’ gauntlet, displaying all the required attributes necessary for a reckless, stunt-filled suicide mission: daring, courage, cool. You see, our archvillain Yorgi (Marton Csokas) is insulated by a thick layer of fast cars and women and nearly always by a crowd of attractive/mindless ravers and thumping dance music. Thus it will take a man of Cage’s casual antiestablishmentarian savvy to charm this evil party-master busily dividing his time between joylessly overseeing his retro-’90s dance club and his world-domination club Anarchy 99!

Anarchy 99 seems to be a plot to anarchize the planet so Yorgi can monopolize the nightclub scene and sex trade, but I’m not sure, because XXX is too hip and happening for motivated villainy. Besides, isn’t it enough to destroy the free world so that everyone will sleep all day and party all night to outdated music in gloomy, angry Euro-trash hotspots? Anyway, there is the obligatory femme fatale aboard this operation, Yelena (Asia Argento), whose dedication to Yorgi’s cause provides more than meets the eye and whose icy charms Cage is determined to thaw.

As I mentioned, if this looks like your kind of movie, it probably is. Diesel won’t be winning any awards for this role (MTV Movie Awards notwithstanding) but makes a fine, athletic antihero. Plus, as a fellow shaven-headed gentleman, I fully support his newfound status as 21st-century sex symbol. If, however, XXX doesn’t look good to you, you will probably hate it. The music is loud, the explosions are big, and the attitude — as we are constantly reminded — is bad. And you know those action-hero one-liners that get said after things blow up or get shot down? There are some here that would shame Arnold Schwarzenegger.

After eluding a self-caused avalanche on a snowboard (granted, this is a very cool avalanche and subsequent escape), Cage emerges from the snow muttering, “Nothing like fresh powder.” Hardcore! My least favorite line in the movie occurs when Cage has taken over the rather impressionable Prague SWAT team and, in chastising their by-the-book methods, bellows, “Stop thinking Prague police and start thinking Playstation.” Try that one a few times at home. My favorite line occurs near the beginning, after a training scenario that Cage defeats, seeing through the facade: “No offense, but their performances were terrible!”

Amen, Brother Cage. — BL

If Mike Myers stops here and ends the Austin Powers “saga” as a trilogy, he can avoid the fate of another franchise that should have left well enough alone: Beverly Hills Cop, which, by its third go-around in 1994, had fizzled. It seemed that nothing could stop Eddie Murphy through most of the ’80s. But, in 1989, he hit a snag — Harlem Nights — and then spent much of the ’90s trying to be relevant again, desperately reinventing himself along the way. My advice to Mike Myers: Quit while you’re ahead and reinvent yourself now while everyone wants to see what’s next.

Austin Powers In Goldmember has a plot somewhere: Austin has nabbed Dr. Evil (both roles are played by Myers, if for some reason you are reading this without knowing anything about the Austin Powers movies), but he must travel back to 1975 to retrieve his kidnapped father, Nigel (Michael Caine), from the clutches of the crazed Dutch super-villain appropriately named Goldmember. (His genitalia were destroyed in a smelting accident and replaced with a set made of pure gold! Evil laugh: bwahahahahahaha!) There is more plot, involving destroying the world, but it’s not very significant, since it is just a clothesline on which to hang one potty joke after another and give Austin opportunities to say “Yeah, baby! Behaaave!” and flex his “mojo.” This time around, however, Austin is teamed with Foxxy Cleopatra (Beyoncé Knowles of Destiny’s Child), an old flame he finds back in the disco-drenched days of 1975. Together, they groove their way back to the future to Dr. Evil’s newest lair to stop the world’s destruction and save Nigel, Britain’s most respected spy. The new lair, incidentally, is an amusing submarine shaped like Dr. Evil, complete with pinky finger upturned to the side of its mouth. (Guess where the missiles are launched from!) Also along the way is a subplot related to the mysterious origins of both Austin and Dr. Evil, complete with flashbacks to Austin’s early academy days, where he and Evil were roommates (hence the same age, I guess). By the end, each of the major characters undergoes an unpredictable change (one of which involves the return of Mini-Me, played by Verne Troyer), and the estranged Nigel and Austin are reconciled.

This movie is such a disappointment. Now, granted, I think that Austin Powers himself is one of the most annoying movie characters this side of JarJar Binks, so I am biased. Still, I have enjoyed these movies based not on Austin and his mojo but on the parodied spy world he lives in and on the supporting players, particularly Dr. Evil. In the first Austin Powers film, Dr. Evil was a rather clever amalgamation of the James Bond villains — bald, jumpsuited, scarred, cat-petting, weird. His forays into silliness were a means by which to laugh at the juxtaposition: Dr. Evil as relic from the past, as concerned and out-of-touch father, as inept villain. Now, Dr. Evil is only a parody of himself — a collection of ticks and quirks that come not from the Bond films but as repetitions of themselves. The treatment of the character is now infuriatingly self-aware and smugly self-amused, and the comedy comes not from inspired satire but from making fun of itself. Why the character Goldmember fails (again, Myers) is long and complicated, but, in short, he is not funny, only weird, and the target of the parody is unclear.

The addition of the classy good sport Michael Caine could have been a saving grace, but he is UTTERLY wasted here. He disappears midway through the film only to return in the last act to tie loose ends into unsatisfying knots. Maybe the writers thought that merely casting Caine was funny enough. It isn’t. He has no truly great lines, and his considerable comic talents are wasted by his all-too-brief appearances in the film.

The only real source of reliable laughter in this latest outing comes from Mini-Me. Unlike the talking pug in Men In Black II, Mini-Me is a minor character whose screen time is upped and all the better for it. He is given more to do here, and the best laughs tend to come when he is onscreen. Unfunny, however, is the introduction of Fred Savage (from TV’s The Wonder Years) as the Mole. Poor Savage relies on only one joke to justify his several minutes onscreen, and it isn’t a funny joke. Another waste is the beautiful Knowles, whose one-joke presence as a blaxploitation diva/fox never rises to the promise of her talent and never gets proper mileage out of the considerably absurd genre she represents. The joke is done once we’ve seen her and heard her name.

Unscrupulous movie-spoiling friends may want to ruin the secrets of this movie — and they all have to do with jaw-droppingly hilarious cameos — almost all of which are spent in the first 10 minutes. (If the writers knew what was good for them, they would have saved the best for last rather than let the movie grow progressively less funny as it went along.) If you must see this movie, do it fast so you can see this segment unspoiled. Everyone else, rent the 1979 Roger Moore/James Bond space film Moonraker. It’s funnier.

Remember The Monster At the End of This Book? It’s the Sesame Street tale starring Grover, who informs us early on that at the end of the book, a monster will appear. As the book proceeds, Grover becomes progressively more panicked about seeing this monster. On the last page, he realizes that the monster at the end of the book is himself — lovable Grover — and that there was nothing to fear but (ahem) fear itself. The trouble with Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is that the monster at the end of the movie is more like Grover than Godzilla.

The first scene shows four young girls in the ’30s creeping out late one night to perform a sacred ritual of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood — the bond that will keep them together as lifelong friends. Fast-forward “many moons.” We meet Sidda (Sandra Bullock) being interviewed by Time magazine in the Broadway theater where her newest play is in rehearsal. The interview emphasizes Sidda’s troubled Louisiana childhood and the colorful mother who troubled it. Next we meet mother Vivi (Ellen Burstyn), queen of the Ya-Yas, drinking coffee and reading Time. She reads the offending passages and is immediately upset, throwing her full coffee cup at the wall, narrowly missing husband Shep (James Garner, showing us with his nonreaction that this is just another day with Vivi). After a brief long-distance showdown of the wills between Vivi and Sidda, the Ya-Yas — now zesty, aged drama queens — fly to New York and kidnap Sidda (literally – they drug her) so that they can show her why Vivi is the way she is. What follows is a series of flashbacks showing the ups and downs of the Ya-Yas through World War II, children, death, and Gone With the Wind, meant to encourage Sidda to understand and forgive her mother.

The monster at the end is the series of incidents that led to Sidda’s childhood being such a wreck. Everyone talks about the Secret, and we spend a long movie getting to it. Perhaps I am spoiled by better Southern gothic like The Prince of Tides and Fried Green Tomatoes, which both provided suspense and charming quirkiness in appropriate, palatable amounts. Now, those films had secrets! Sex, murder, adultery, lesbians, and barbecue — all in grand Southern-fried style, played delicately through funny and serious moments alike. By the time Sisterhood wraps up, it is difficult to understand what Sidda is whining about. We are led to expect something truly horrible — even with the light, fun tone of most of the film. We don’t get it, and everyone in the film treats the Secret like some “divine” mystery. It isn’t. And Sidda, as a young girl, is present during all of the events that end up undoing her mother, so I guess we are to assume that this otherwise perceptive playwright has suffered some amnesia that prohibits her from remembering things we watch her see.

At the heart of the movie is Bullock, whose acting range is best suited to light dramas or light comedies. The twists and turns of the narrative derail her, and while she tries hard (she always does, God bless her), she never quite keeps up with the shifting gears of this film. The rest of the cast is great, high-caliber performers all. The Ya-Yas are a hoot: Shirley Knight, Fionnula Flanagan, and Maggie Smith, who by herself is a hoot. She has some of the best lines in the film, interrupted occasionally by her gasps for oxygen from the tank she wheels behind her. Magnificent, though, are Burstyn and Ashley Judd, who plays the young Vivi in her best performance to date. The movie shines when these two are onscreen and flails when they aren’t.

So the monster at the end of the book looks more like Grover than a velociraptor. That will be fine for the many fans of the popular book and for anyone who likes their laughs Southern-style.

The first time I saw Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest was several years ago at a tiny liberal arts college in a small town. The experience of the actors was, for the most part, very limited, and the production values left much to the imagination. Additionally, the two ambiguous actors playing Algernon and Jack were far more interested in each other than they were in generating convincing onstage chemistry with their female romantic leads. There was no good reason for this production to work, but it did. In fact, it sang. The script is just so perfect and the lines so genuinely funny that, truly, anyone can say them and generate some amount of laughter and respect. So it is all the more disappointing that the latest film version, with some of the brighter talents and wits of contemporary filmmaking, is just not very funny. As I sat in the theater, I longed for that college production, Algernon deadpanning all his wittiest lines to the audience and addressing his scene partners only when flippantly directing a barb at their expense. I missed how it was obvious that the cakes served in Jack’s countryside manor were Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls sliced into quarters.

The plot is simple — I suspect so that Wilde could hang as much fancy upon it as humanly possible without bogging it down in detail. Algernon (Rupert Everett) and Jack (Colin Firth) are friends in London at the turn of the last century. During the play, we learn that they both lead a life of tiny white lies: Jack lives roguishly as Earnest in the city and as the more respectable Jack in the country. “Earnest” is an invented older brother — the perfect nonexistent patsy for avoiding expensive restaurant bills and the like. Algernon has an invented friend too, Bunbury, an invalid who lives in constant discomfort and who conveniently “needs” Algernon’s attentions whenever an unattractive social commitment presses — particularly when Algernon’s aunt, Lady Bracknell (Judi Dench), is involved.

Jack is in love with Bracknell’s daughter Gwendolyn (Frances O’Connor) but is considered an unsuitable suitor, as he has no parentage to speak of. As an infant, he was found in a handbag in a Victoria Station cloakroom (“To lose one’s parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as misfortune,” Lady Bracknell snaps at the expectant Jack. “To lose both looks like carelessness.”), and he is advised to produce some relations quickly if he is to find a place on Bracknell’s list of potential husbands for Gwendolyn. Jack retreats to the country to look for any trace of lineage and to attend to his ward, the beautiful and intelligent young Cecily (Reese Witherspoon). Algernon, taken by Jack’s stories of his blossoming ward, travels to Jack’s estate under the guise of “Earnest,” thereby producing for the countryfolk the long-lost “brother” they had never met but have despised from Jack’s tales of his excesses. Algernon wastes no time in courting young Cecily, and soon Gwendolyn herself sneaks to the manor only to find two Earnests — and yet no Earnests. The rest of the play is dedicated to sorting out the mess.

The cast is great, though only Everett (the perfect Wilde-ian hero) and O’Connor have the requisite amount of fun with their parts. Dench, unfortunately, is directed with such a heavy hand that many of her funniest moments are played for sympathy rather than the ridiculous social frivolity she dispenses. Firth plays a stiff, unlikable cad not unlike his turn in Bridget Jones’s Diary, and while Jack is certainly the straight man of this story, it would have been nice to see him loosen up a little. He’s not helped by director Oliver Parker, who spends so much time trying to “open” the play up with lush vistas, chase scenes, and a truly gratuitous hot-air balloon that he ignores what makes this play so hilarious: wit and fun.

Unfaithful starts out making all the right decisions. It avoids the clichés of typical sexy thrillers by emphasizing character over moralizing (or demoralizing) and the psychological over the psychopathic.

Richard Gere and Diane Lane are Edward and Connie Sumner — the portrait of blissful American success, with lots of money, a gorgeous New York suburban home, a cute young son, Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan — Dewey from Malcolm in the Middle), and a good marriage. Edward runs a security company, and Connie takes care of Charlie and the house and shops a lot. On a particularly windy shopping day, Connie is literally blown on top of Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez), a younger, sexy French fellow. Connie skins her knee on Paul’s Soho stoop and Paul … well, Paul has Band-Aids in his apartment. Does Connie, bleeding, take a cab home or does she accept Paul’s invitation to his recklessly arty loft apartment for … medicine?

A lesser film would have the affair begin immediately. Paul makes all the right moves and says all the right sexy French things. So the seduction is all the more dangerous as she is lured gradually into adultery. She is married to Richard Gere, after all. Why would she stray? Some men in the audience may be perplexed by the idea of a woman who has everything but still wants more, but, hey, believe it or not, it happens. And for Connie, fantasizing leads to a phone call, which leads to another meeting, which leads to another, which leads to … well, you know.

Edward becomes suspicious, has Connie followed, and, unbeknownst to her, discovers the affair. Gere’s best moment is his visit to Paul’s apartment, where Edward meets the Other Man and tries desperately to understand how Connie could do this to him and her family. There is an uncomfortable familiarity between these two men who share the same woman. As Edward looks around at all the places in the dingy apartment he knows Connie has rolled around in, and all Paul knows to do is offer him a drink. Least he can do, right? This scene sensitively maps out the layers of Edward’s hurt and appalled surprise, and only thereafter do the true, menacing consequences of Connie’s betrayal come to fruition.

What follows is a mostly honest and patient cat-and-mouse game that has Connie slowly figuring out what Edward knows and to what extent he is willing to keep and protect her. Director Adrian Lyne is no stranger to compromised sexual morality and obsession, having helmed 9 1/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction, and Indecent Proposal, giving credibility and style to what could have been, in the hands of a lesser director, soft-core trash. He shows us almost all of the right stuff here in lots of slow, deliberate shots of both spouses searching each other’s faces for answers, assurance, and safety.

Lane is terrific. Neither her abandon nor her disgrace is entire. While adultery never looked as good as it does with her and the exciting Martinez (in his American debut), we always see that she knows there is a family missing her. There is a fascinating scene on a subway when Connie, on her way home after the first indiscretion, stares pensively ahead, alternately laughing and crying as the delights of the encounter are mixed (in stylish flashback) with the pained gravity of her poor judgment. Lane shows us all we need to see — and holds back all that we don’t need to see — without a single word.

Gere is surprisingly effective if somewhat cornered into the thankless role of the scorned Edward. The first half of the film belongs to Connie, the second to Edward, and Gere is quite good at playing normal and wounded. But the script lets him down in a key confrontation with Connie that, by giving Edward too little to say, steals the gathering momentum we’ve had to that point. Gere, a minimalist emotional performer, does best when he has time to work himself up, and he doesn’t get it here. That’s a shame, because it might have helped the audience buy into the film’s inevitable but ambiguous ending.

If Enough had premiered on the Lifetime channel, it would have starred Nancy McKeon or Melissa Gilbert or, I dunno, Annie Potts. The female protagonist would have squared off against an abusive Bruce Boxleitner or Ken Olin (or, conceivably, Billy Campbell, of the late TV series Once and Again, who does actually apear in Enough — good for you, Billy!), and the script would have probably been smarter and tighter than this tepid Hollywood release.

The story is straight out of a troubled-woman made-for-TV movie of the month, and the dialogue is so clichéd and the characters so two-dimensional that all the audience can do is turn off their brains and await (as promised in the movie trailer, so I am spoiling nothing) the inevitable confrontation and its jaw-crunching, ass-whupping rewards.

Jennifer Lopez plays Slim, an attractive blue-collar waitress. Her life changes when a handsome stranger, Mitch (Campbell), appears to protect her honor against a dubious suitor. Before you know it, we’re all seven years older and they are married with a daughter. Things seem perfect for Mitch and Slim until she discovers that Mitch has a mistress and a double life. When she confronts him, he punches her and transforms rather instantly into a hateful lout who says things (more or less) like “I’m a man and you’re a woman and I have all the power. That’s the way it will always be. What I say goes.” Mitch says this kind of stuff a lot in the movie, and it is disappointing that the audience is expected to believe his 180-degree personality change from Prince Charming into abusive monster.

Anyway, Slim’s friends conspire quickly to rescue her from her situation, but Mitch is rich and well-connected. He manages to have her credit cards canceled, her accounts frozen, and thugs with knives appear at her every new doorstep. Nobody can seem to help, and an out-of-character visit to a wizened attorney leads her to the following conclusion: She’s screwed. She didn’t go to the police when she had the chance and now nothing will stop Mitch from finding her and killing her. However, after weeks and months of running and hiding, Slim has had … ENOUGH!

I had never seen a Jennifer Lopez movie before Enough. She’s okay. The script allows her enough concern, protectiveness, and moxie for us to care about her, but there isn’t much character to get to know. Billy Campbell does a commendable job keeping Mitch interesting, but screenwriter Nicholas Kazan (Bicentennial Man) doesn’t allow him to have any dimension. He’s all leering, selfish animal here. Other good actors — Juliette Lewis, Noah Wyle, and Fred Ward — are pretty much wasted in thankless, dead-end roles and deserve to be in better movies. The real gem here is Tessa Allen as the daugher, Gracie. Allen is pleasantly unpolished but genuine and believable, and she’s spared the fate of most child characters — providing agonizing, cutesy-poo comic relief. There is some of that here, but it is kept to an endearing minimum.

Enough is basically a movie about a fight. If you have seen the trailer, you know that all scenes are designed to elicit cheers when that fight finally happens. And for this I will give the film credit: The fight looks terrific. But there is a very cheesy training montage (complete with 1970s Rocky-esque, swanky contender music underscoring — listen for it), and Slim really probably wouldn’t have time to go from frightened housewife/waitress to expert cat burglar/ninja in the few weeks we see her train. But at this point, we don’t care so much about reality as much as we just want to see Mitch get his.

Real abusers apologize, don’t they? They promise never to do it again. They are desperate in seeking forgiveness. That’s what makes it difficult to leave an abusing spouse. That’s what makes it heartbreaking. Enough is more of a thriller or action movie than a drama. A drama might have explored how difficult it is to leave someone you love but can’t be with anymore. Enough has no interest in the complexities of marriage, survival, or the law. My advice? Stay at home and watch Lifetime or Oxygen for the same quality material. Or, if you find your way to the theater, catch the infinitely more rewarding Unfaithful instead, which actually has something interesting to say about infidelity, relationships, and violence.