Category: Film/TV

There is no explaining old friends,” a pal of mine once observed about the nature of friendship and what keeps people close after time. “We are brought together by being alike and kept together by being different.” I thought of this several times while watching Fred Schepisi’s Last Orders, a meditation on how friendships begin and why they last.

Based on the Graham Swift novel (which won England’s Booker Prize, the equivalent of the Pulitzer), Last Orders begins with three lifelong friends coming together to mourn the death of the integral fourth, Jack (Michael Caine). Jack’s “last orders” were to have his ashes scattered in the sea from a pier in Margate — a community Jack had fancied himself retiring to with his wife Amy (Helen Mirren). The three friends — undertaker Vic, grocer Lenny, and professional gambler Ray (Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings, and Bob Hoskins, respectively) — embark with Jack’s slightly estranged car-dealing son Vince (Ray Winstone) from London to Margate and make several stops between to eat, drink, remember, fight, and drink some more. Amy chooses instead to spend this Thursday, as she always does, visiting her and Jack’s mentally retarded daughter June. Amy has a few secrets to work through on her own, and, by the end of the film, she must come to terms with them and say goodbye more than once.

Jack, as we progressively discover, was not a great man by any means. In fact, as he is remembered, we see more and more just how flawed and human he was. Likewise, his friends are as real as they come. Lenny is the portrait of a quarrelsome uncle-who-drinks, Ray the best friend with secrets and regrets to iron out, and Vic the conciliatory glue that calmly and quietly keeps everybody together and in line. These buddies have seen it all: World War II (where they all met), affairs, hardship, and, the bane of any friendship, the lending of money. But every day with this bunch seems to end at the pub, with a toast and a hug.

Filmed in glorious flashback-o-vision, Last Orders takes a very patient, nonlinear journey through the extraordinary moments in the lives of truly ordinary people. About half the film is snippets and swatches of different points in the past, very carefully revealing the tensions and fissures in the various friendships and the seemingly immovable wedges that exist between some of them. While some of the looks into the past could have been more dramatic or consequential, the patience of the narrative makes up for the lack of fireworks — particularly in the group’s reverent moment in front of the Chatham War Memorial or in the heartbreaking and infuriating moment when Jack passes on.

Last Orders is the kind of movie filmmakers love but Hollywood hates: It is smart and sensitive and doesn’t have to blow anyone up to make its points about survival and courage. Nor does it resort to slapstick to elicit warm, genuine laughs. The performances are just as low-key and appropriate. It is a treat to watch these old pros at work. Caine achieves all of the right complications for Jack, by turns charming and brash, sensible and short-sighted. And while he exists only in flashback, it is easy to see why he remains such an important figure to his survivors. Hoskins as Ray is the most troubled character, yet we can never dislike him even as we watch as he falls into bad decisions. Courtenay and Hemmings provide with great class and charm, alternately, balance and bombast to the foursome — necessary for any great gang of friends. The marvelous Helen Mirren’s Amy is perhaps the most complicated survivor, who makes important decisions with such quiet apprehension you might not notice how broken her heart is.

Last Orders may easily slip in and out of theaters with little notice. It is a quiet, unassuming, intelligent film that features real, truthful characters and dialogue. And, like the friends who gather and the occasion that gathers them, Last Orders celebrates all the dimensions of being human — frailty, pride, quarrels, and all. — Bo List

Alfred Hitchcock must have assumed that experimental theories work best in experimental films. How else can you explain Rope? The inimitable director’s 1948 flop about a pair of homosexual lovers who commit a murder simply to see if they can get away with it was shot in one take. With the use of a mounted camera, Hitchcock set out to make a film without any cuts (though there are approximately three camera-angle changes throughout). Based loosely on the Leopold and Loeb case, Rope is an impressive, if ultimately unsuccessful, film. A cat and mouse game between the murderers and their revered college professor (who acts the detective), Rope reinforces the notion that cinema was meant to be a fractured medium and that movie killers are usually more interesting when propelled by motives as opposed to theories.

Like Rope, Murder By Numbers is fueled by the murderous deed of two young killers who commit their crime for the thrill of it. Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt play two spoiled high-schoolers who decide to attempt the perfect crime for no real reason other than it’s something to do. The jock and the geek, Gosling’s narcissistic and megalomaniacal psychopath pairs with Pitt’s soft-spoken genius. Following their twisted game from the start, Murder By Numbers isn’t a whodunit but, rather, a “how done it.” As Sandra Bullock’s bitchy and guarded tough-guy detective detects, the teens recount their expertly planned dirty work and attempt to escape capture.

From Bullock’s transparent “I’m an angry woman because I’ve been hurt in the past” character, everything in Murder By Numbers isn’t quite as subtle or interesting as it needs to be. The teenage killers are linked by a strange but unexplored homoerotic bond, and the theory for the murder itself is dismissive and trite (a vague one, repeated throughout, involving bravery and Darwinism). Murder By Numbers lays out its wares respectably but is finally unable to do anything with them.

Without the aid of a mystery, Murder By Numbers focuses on the science of the boys’ crime. The killer teens take care to ensure none of their hair gets on the body. They make sure a hair or two from the schlub they frame for the murder (a pot-dealing janitor from their school played by Chris Penn) does get on the body. They time their alibis perfectly. So on and so forth. These steps, while mildly intriguing, don’t amount to criminal genius or the meat of a two-hour film. Timed like an episode of Law & Order, Murder By Numbers is an adequately orchestrated story executed without much originality and even less heart. — Rachel Deahl

Frailty, the mostly impressive directorial debut from cult-favorite actor Bill Paxton (A Simple Plan, One False Move, and forever remembered as the asshole older brother Chet in the otherwise forgettable Weird Science), cuts against the grain of most modern, multiplex horror films, relying more on atmosphere than on gore and being more grave than groovy, more Sixth Sense than Scream. In other words, it’s a horror film geared toward literate adults. In this manner, it also has a lot in common with Guillermo del Toro’s recent Spanish import, The Devil’s Backbone, which also found the locus of horror in the mundane acts of men and undercut its supernatural sheen with a pointed political and historical subtext.

The film begins, after an opening credit scroll of background-providing newspaper clippings, with an X-Files-like title insertion introducing an FBI office in Dallas. A young man calling himself Fenton Meiks (Matthew McConaughey) has driven a stolen ambulance late at night to the mostly deserted office building, insisting that he speak to the agent (Powers Boothe) in charge of investigating a serial murder case known as the “God’s hand” killings. Meiks tells the skeptical agent that he knows who the killer is and begins to relay his story, with most of the film told as a flashback. This creepy framing device gives the Southern gothic horror film an appropriate “campfire ghost story” ambience.

Fenton’s childhood at first seems perfectly normal. He and younger brother Adam (Jeremy Sumpter) live in an old caretaker’s house behind the town rose garden with their aw-shucks mechanic dad (Paxton). The kids’ mother died giving birth to Adam, and now the three live together in what Paxton shows as a hypernormal world. When dad comes home from work, 12-year-old Fenton (played by Matt O’Leary in one of the most convincing child performances in recent memory) already has dinner on the table, and the family atmosphere is warm, loving, and relaxed.

But the family’s world is shaken when dad wakes the boys in the middle of the night and tells them, very matter-of-factly, that he has been visited by an angel and that the family’s mission in life from here on out is to “destroy demons,” these demons masquerading as regular people, with a list of names provided to dad by the angels. The children are then swept into a series of abductions and murders of, as a horrified Fenton knows, innocent people, though his younger brother, more devout and eager to please his father, embraces the task.

Paxton’s direction here is sure-handed and occasionally inspired. This lean, arty thriller abjures unnecessary gore (though this doesn’t stop some scenes from being extremely unpleasant) and features some quiet, exquisite scenes, especially when Adam is forced to give Fenton some water through a hole in the backyard shed/dungeon, where he has been locked until he finds religion. Another coup for Paxton is his own performance. Lesser films would have presented this character as a monster or a hammy Bible-thumper, approximating Robert Mitchum’s psychotic preacher in The Night of the Hunter. But Paxton presents the character as a loving, normal father who sincerely believes that he’s doing God’s work and is patient and understanding (to a degree) of his children’s difficulty in coping with their difficult tasks.

So, for a while at least, Paxton has crafted a gripping, accomplished film about how otherwise good and decent people can do utterly horrible things and about how dangerous derangements can be handed down from generation to generation. He’s also brave enough to tie this critique explicitly to religious fundamentalism — until, that is, an unexpected twist (you can see the first twist coming; it’s the second twist that messes everything up) throws the film’s tone and “message” into disarray, taking the bite out of whatever commentary the film might otherwise express about fundamentalism or people forcing extreme beliefs onto others.

Written by Brent Hanley, Frailty is clearly the product of the new school of over-busy screenplay gimmickry, in which tricking and surprising the audience are more important than narrative or thematic coherence. Some of these films have worked (I’d vote Memento and The Sixth Sense), but most of the time they seemed too pleased by their own cleverness and would have worked more effectively if played straight (Vanilla Sky, Wild Things, Fight Club, even The Usual Suspects). The oh-so-clever twist of Frailty throws the film into the latter group, but there’s enough good leading up to it to make the film worth seeing and to make one anxious to see if Paxton can improve on this initial offering. — Chris Herrington

There’s a scene in The Sweet-est Thing in which heroine Christina (Cameron Diaz) and her best friend Courtney (Christina Applegate), after a series of Lucy-and-Ethel-like mishaps (albeit soft-porn Lucy-and-Ethel-like mishaps), purchase two gaudy outfits to attend a wedding. One of the outfits is tight and bright pink, the other tight and bright blue. The women feel conspicuous, though neither seems to have a clue that their original outfits, one pink and tight and cut up the back, the other turquoise and showing a square mile of cleavage, were just as attention-grabbing. And that, friends, is the single shred of honest irony in the whole movie.

So maybe that pronouncement isn’t all-the-way fair. Christina crashes that wedding to find a guy she has just met and fallen in love with. That guy, unbeknownst to her, is the groom. And what about the title? There’s not a thing sweet about this romantic comedy. It’s more like nachos, the ones with the 100 percent man-made cheese. And though the Farrelly Brothers have nothing to fear, The Sweetest Thing is crude and so crass as to be an art form. It is, unapologetically, what it is. And if it’s nachos you want, get the nachos.

For director Roger Kumble and screenwriter Nancy M. Pimental, naughty must be listed on their résumés. Kumble directed the cult hit Cruel Intentions, a teen version of Dangerous Liaisons, while Pimental wrote for brazenly bratty cartoon South Park. The jokes about fake boobs, laundry-day panties, and other unmentionables bounce in at a steady pace, while the focus of Kumble and Pimental’s most lascivious attention is third friend Jane (Selma Blair). Jane is put through an obstacle course that involves a semen-stained dress and her priest, a boink with a man in a plush, purple elephant suit, and, most unfortunately, an emergency with genital jewelry.

Somewhere in The Sweetest Thing is the plot in which Christina goes for the man and lets go of the defenses she’s set up to never, ever be serious about anything. But, really, this movie is about being beautiful and young and having fun. Back to that scene where Christina and Courtney are trying on the clothes. Time for a movie montage! they declare, and so, for a couple of minutes, they mock the staple of movie time-filler, a two-minute-or-so song and dance. Christina and Courtney parade around in different outfits. At one point, Courtney reenacts the scene in which Julia Roberts gets her hand clapped by a jewelry box in Pretty Woman. Courtney as Julia laughs hysterically and maniacally. And you know something? When Roberts sets off into one of her trademark laughs, she does seem kind of crazy. — Susan Ellis

In the press kit for her latest film, Monsoon Wedding, director Mira Nair writes that she wanted the film to be like a Bollywood movie (Bollywood is slang for the prolific commercial filmmaking industry in Bombay) but done on her own terms. I can’t really judge the accuracy of that claim, since my own experience with Bollywood has been limited to the opening credits of Ghost World and glancing at the television while eating at India Palace. But when Nair continues to write that “if the film captures the masti — the intoxicating zest for life — of my people then I will have done my work,” I feel that she surely must have succeeded, because Monsoon Wedding is that rarest of beasts in contemporary movies: an accessible crowd-pleaser that doesn’t pander to the audience and has no unpleasant aftertaste.

Set in present-day Delhi, Monsoon Wedding is sort of a modern, Indian remake of Vincente Minnelli’s Father of the Bride. The film covers a four-day wedding gathering at the home of the upper-middle-class Verma family, whose daughter Aditi (Vasundhara Das) has agreed to an arranged marriage to Hemant (Parvin Dabas), a computer programmer from Houston. This familiar and conventional plot is established from the outset. The first image we see is that of father Lalit (Naseeruddin Shah, in the Spencer Tracy role) consumed with worry and arguing with the wedding planner on his cell phone, while wife Pimmi (Lillete Dubey) and other female relatives are busy preparing the house for the arrival of the groom and his family.

But Monsoon Wedding takes this outline and does wonderful things with it. With its engaging mix of genre elements (comedy, romance, melodrama, musical), affectionately realistic view of family life, and naturalistic use of musical scenes, it probably has more in common with a different — and far better — Minnelli film, Meet Me in St. Louis. Like that great American musical, Monsoon Wedding‘s music — a spontaneous, post-engagement-party family sing-along; a joyous, female-bonding ceremonial song as henna is applied to the bride’s hands and arms; a wedding-party lipsync and dance performance to modern Indian disco — emerges naturally from the action. (The wedding party itself –in the middle of the monsoon –is like a giddy version of a Kurosawa battle scene, family members with umbrellas plunging into the rain in flanks.)

Monsoon Wedding also reveals, rather quickly, that its truest concern isn’t necessarily for the wedding at the film’s core (though Aditi and Hemant get their due in a wary yet hopeful examination of arranged marriage) or Lalit’s stress at putting on such an extravaganza but for the gathering itself, for the frenzied influx of relatives and friends who fill the frame and whose stories and personalities emerge so clearly. In this way, the film also evokes Robert Altman for its use of a large ensemble cast. Indeed, many of the film’s most memorable subplots concern characters outside the film’s narrative epicenter — the subtle, tortured courtship of family maid Alice (Tilotama Shome) and wedding planner Dube (Vijay Raaz); the horny, frustrated courtship of cousin Ayesha (Neha Dubey) and the home-from-Australia Rahul (Randeep Hooda); the precariously evolving story of “spinster” cousin Ria (Shefali Shetty).

And the film’s visual style is in perfect sync with its emotional and narrative concerns. Shot, as the closing credits attest, on the quick — 40 locations in 30 days –and using a handheld camera, the film is so intimate and rushed (in the best possible way) that it pulls you in from the opening moments and pulls you along breathlessly. Nair’s constantly moving camera dives into the middle of these gatherings, darting around, eavesdropping. As in similar Altman films, the camera will also pull back during these parties to present a frame full of activity and a soundtrack full of overlapping dialogue, giving the audience an exhausting freedom of what to see and what to listen to. (The dialogue, incidentally, is a mix, apparently common to the middle class in India, of Hindi, Punjabi, and English, often spoken within the same sentence. The conversation in this film is as flavorful as the visuals.) The way the film plunges the viewer into the vortex of this clan without a map, leaving the viewer (much like many of the characters on-screen, probably) to figure out who’s who and how people relate, is a dizzying rush. (I’ve seen the film twice and I’m still a little uncertain about some relationships, but that hasn’t detracted from my enjoyment at all — I liked it even more on the second viewing.)

But if any one story strand emerges from this swirl of activity, it’s probably the courtship of Dube and Alice. Dube is the film’s most compelling character. With his bony frame, jutting Adam’s apple, and jittery duplicity, he at first seems like garish comic relief — an Indian cross between Chris Rock and Jimmie Walker, with maybe a little bit of Gilligan thrown in — but our view of him deepens enormously over the course of the film. And the film saves its most rapturous moments, its most emotional grace notes, for his budding relationship with the shy, beautiful Alice. There’s our first, radiant glimpse of Alice: Synced to the introduction of a vintage Indian pop song (which has the visceral pull of the greatest American soul records), the camera slows down and seems to accidentally catch her cleaning up glasses on the patio as she picks up a marigold and puts it in her hair, passing by an oblivious Dube as other marigold petals from the wedding fixture above fall down on him. There’s the deep sadness of Dube’s twilight trip home, our only lengthy glance at how the other half in Delhi lives, as he is confronted by a nagging mother, splashes dirty water on his face, and sits on his balcony, consumed with loneliness. And there’s the final, delicate admission of love between the two.

Best known for the award-winning Salaam Bombay! (which makes a great companion to Monsoon Wedding) and the American Mississippi Masala (with Denzel Washington), Nair has really outdone herself here. From the ecstatic opening credits (a brilliant burst of color and music) to the final, if perhaps unlikely, wedding-party shot of Lalit and Alice embracing and dancing, Monsoon Wedding is a joy to watch.

According to Lisa Bobal, spokesperson for the Memphis Film Forum (MFF), this year’s Memphis International Film Festival is going to be bigger and better than ever. So let’s look at the numbers: It’s the forum’s third year to host the four-day festival, which this year will showcase nearly 40 films that were chosen from the largest number of entries the forum has received yet.

Another important figure: one, as in one venue. In the past, the forum has shown its entries at venues far and wide, from the Ridgeway theater to the Memphis College of Art. This year, all films will be screened at Malco’s Studio on the Square, and the French Quarter Suites will serve as the official host hotel for the directors, writers, actors, and producers who are making their way to Memphis. The idea is to inject the festival with a communal atmosphere typical of larger festivals such as Sundance. “Everyone will be walking around and talking to one another,” says Bobal, clearly excited by the possibilities.

One of the more prestigious films featured will be Promises, a documentary on Israeli and Palestinian children, which was nominated for an Oscar this year.

The festival will include free seminars at Playhouse on the Square, covering such aspects of filmmaking as pitching your films to studios and dealing with legal issues.

Below is a look at some of the films showing at the 2001 Memphis International Film Festival, which will run from Thursday, April 4th, to Sunday, April 7th. Four-day priority passes can be purchased at Nomadic Notions in Overton Square for $60. Passes include admission to all shows and a Saturday night party at Palm Court. Individual show tickets are $5 per ticket. Party tickets are $10. For a complete schedule and other information, go to MMF’s Web site at www.memphisfilmforum.org. n

— Lesha Hurliman

Last Ball

Peter Callahan, U.S.

2001, 96 minutes

Showing 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 4th, followed by Q&A with filmmakers and cast; also showing midnight Saturday, April 6th

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Matthew Martin, U.S.

2001, 14 minutes

Showing noon Saturday, April 6th

Mergers and Acquisitions

Mitchell Bard, U.S.

2001, 90 minutes

Showing noon Sunday, April 7th

Have you noticed the recent glut of war films in wide release? You can consider angst to be the war of the Memphis International Film Festival. The three films above share that trait in their heroes. They are mopey and bewildered by the way their lives have turned out. They’re a bit pissed and their brains are sore with disappointment. And each discovers that he did the digging of his own particular hole.

Last Ball, the best of the three and the MIFF’s opening film, follows Jim, a soulful-looking young man who is rotting away in a small town across the river from New York. As told in flashbacks, Jim works his way through an affair with a married woman, finally realizing that to have something meaningful he must do something meaningful first. A very sincere, well-acted, sometimes funny film.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. has a sympathy-straining lead character. He’s a dwarf who refuses to ask for any help ever. This is a film that’s bigger than its 14 minutes: Where did this man come from? How did he and his wife meet? What will happen next?

The somewhat stiff Mergers and Acquisitions has to have an almost-unlikable protagonist and dares to admit it. Trade-magazine writer Del, like Jim of Last Ball, is spinning his wheels. When he does decide to get a move-on, he picks a path with a gigantic ethical pothole. — Susan Ellis

Mrs. William Dixon

Elizabeth Edwards, U.S.

2001, 8 minutes

Showing 2 p.m. Friday, April 5th

Okay, there’s nothing more fun than watching a woman pretend she lives in a snow globe instead of her stark, expensive, tragically clean home with a cold, unaffectionate husband and teenage son to match. Written and directed by Elizabeth Edwards, this film is about a very lonely housewife who, for whatever reason, has lost all self-esteem and spends her long days obsessing about the lack of attention she is receiving from her family. The snow globe, which was once an escape fantasy, becomes a drowning nightmare which ultimately leaves her hopelessly banging away at the walls of the globe, trying to get the attention of an oblivious husband and son. Something’s got to give, and it’s not going to be pretty. — Lesha Hurliman

Blonde

Elizabeth Bache, U.S.

2001, 11 minutes

Showing 4 p.m. Friday, April 5th

In this contemporary retelling of the Cinderella story, Anne is an endearing, though much-maligned, brunette. She feels invisible in a world where looks are everything and the only look that counts is blond. Enter her fairy godmother, in the form of Martin, an old friend who just happens to be the editor of the Cosmo-esque Look magazine. After Martin boldly proclaims “Blond Is Dead” on Look‘s cover, every blonde in America is racing out to dye her hair. There’s not a towhead in sight. With the help of a wig, Anne may finally have a chance to become the belle of the ball and live happily ever after. Blonde is a fresh take on an old fairy tale and a charming look at wish fulfillment and the joys of getting even. — Mary Tarsi

American Coffee

Andy Gose, U.S.

2001, 17 minutes

Showing 4 p.m. Friday, April 5th

This campy satire turns the cliché of a heartless corporation into a comic-book fight of good vs. evil. Wendy Brighton is the heir to a mom-and-pop coffee shop. However, when worldwide coffee chain B.L. Zeebucks buys out her folks, Wendy must go undercover to rescue her best friend, Marcy, who has been kidnapped by the company C.E.O., Lew Seeferman. Problem is, Lew also happens to be the devil. American Coffee vacillates between silly and clever, particularly in the final showdown between Wendy and Lew’s evil gang, which includes the likes of Fidel Castro and Ronald McDonald. Despite the rather predictable ending, the film is amusing and sometimes more, leaving audiences to wonder if they are indeed selling their souls one cup of five-dollar coffee at a time. — MT

There’s a Man In the Habit Of Hitting Me On the Head With an Umbrella

Jon Worley, U.S.

2001, 4 minutes

Showing 4 p.m. Friday, April 5th

If ever a film delivered exactly what its title promised, it’s There’s a Man In the Habit Of Hitting Me On the Head With an Umbrella. It’s a story about a nameless everyman who, for three years, is hit on the head with an umbrella by a stranger. It seems to be an existential tale. At least that’s what the voice-over narration seems to imply, repeatedly stating that even getting hit over the head with an umbrella can become a meaningful way to live after one becomes accustomed to it. However, the off-screen commentary does little but state the obvious and feels about as subtle as, well, getting hit over the head with an umbrella. — MT

Dischord

Mark Wilkinson, U.S.

2001, 104 minutes

Showing midnight Friday, April 5th

As a first-time feature written, directed, edited, and produced by Mark Wilkinson for under $200,000, Dischord is quite a technical feat. The film is so nicely shot, directed, and edited, and the acting is so professional, it’s easy to see why the film has won so many prizes at film festivals in the Northeast.

Shot along the beaches of Cape Cod, this film about famous “alternative rock” violinist Gypsy and her new-age composer/ husband Lucian, whose seaside retreat is complicated by the arrival of Lucian’s disturbed brother Jimmy, mixes a strong feel for locale with a psychological detective-story plot line in the manner of the recent Jack Nicholson thriller The Pledge. Jimmy is played here by Thomas Jay Ryan, best known for his title turn in the Hal Hartley film Henry Fool. Ryan’s shtick is similar to that in Henry Fool, straddling the line between annoying and compelling, but he gives the film a strong presence regardless.

Wilkinson has done an outstanding job for a first-timer, on at least three of his four duties: The screenplay, which has its silly moments, is the only element lacking. Dischord is about as accomplished and watchable as you could hope for in a film that bills itself as the exposition of an “unlikely bond between a tormented murderer and a pure artist [emphasis mine]” that “strains the delicate balance of nature into dischord.”

— Chris Herrington

Jon’s Point, L.A.

Jack Beck/Nicolas Scherzinger, U.S.

2001, 3 minutes

Showing midnight Friday, April 5th, and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 7th

From high above Los Angeles, this experimental film’s camera focuses in on the city’s tiny, night-time lights and stretches the blue, green, and red specks into lines and circles, separating them and mixing them so it looks like a heart monitor gone mad. And the sound. The sound is less music than the manipulation of an electronic hum.

The film’s drone combined with its cinematic spasms promises a headache, but given that the piece is only three minutes long, it ends up being pretty cool. And the point of Jon’s Point, L.A.? It’s supposed to be something of a metaphor for the Hollywood lifestyle, but, again, it’s only three minutes long. — SE

Normal To Oily

Michael Schmidt, U.S.

2002, 47 minutes

Showing midnight Friday, April 5th

Locally produced and partially funded by the Memphis Film Forum, this formally daring video feature was written, produced, and directed by University of Memphis graphic design professor Michael Schmidt and U of M photography instructor David Horan. It concerns the plight of a young man dealing with the loss of a grandmother (played by Memphis actress Lucille Ewing, who died in October) and is probably more successful in form than content. More a meditation than a narrative, Normal To Oily mixes media with aesthetic confidence, combining video footage, still photography, painting, and graphic design with often compelling results. The film also boasts many well-framed shots and some accomplished editing, even if the home-camcorder-style video footage is essentially unattractive. Where the film falters is on content — too much of which is either borderline pretentious (a child reading Camus into the camera) or, more likely, so personal as to be obscure. —CH

Horses On Mars

Eric Anderson, U.S.

2000, 7 minutes

Showing midnight Friday, April 5th, and 10 a.m. Sunday, April 7th

This film is based on the idea proposed by Lord William Kelvin in 1871 — that through meteor and asteroid impacts, life may be ejected from the surface of planets into space, eventually landing on other planets, spreading life throughout our solar system or even the universe. So this is the story of a microbe named Val, who is very cute, just hanging out on a beach sunning when some bastard asteroid comes hurtling down, sending him flying through space all alone. It’s strange, yes, but you’ll be almost in tears as this little guy whizzes around the sun on his little piece of dust talking to himself. This film is fun to watch. The animation is wonderful, the character is well-developed, and the moral is that it will take a lot of personal sacrifice from microbes to get horses on Mars. Everyone should try to see this film. — LH

Jack Cardiff: The Colour Merchant and Painting With Light

Craig McCall, U.K.

1998 and 2000, 37 minutes total

Showing 10 a.m. Saturday, April 6th

These two mini-documentaries are culled from work on a soon-to-be-completed documentary feature on British cinematographer Jack Cardiff, one of film’s most highly regarded technicians. Outside of Gregg Toland (who shot Citizen Kane and shares a closing credit on the film with director Orson Welles), Cardiff may be the most well-known cinematographer in the medium’s history and last year became the first in his profession to receive an honorary Oscar.

Cardiff’s work is synonymous with the mid-century use of the Technicolor process and is most well-known for the extraordinary visuals in his collaborations with the great British filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, including Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.

The Colour Merchant concerns Cardiff’s development from a technician who came up in the black-and-white era to a lead photographer using color. It also explores, with some depth, Cardiff’s work on his first Powell/Pressburger assignment, A Matter of Life and Death.

Far better (and, not coincidentally, longer) is Painting With Light, which gets into the details of Cardiff’s work on Black Narcissus, perhaps his greatest achievement. For viewers who have never seen the film, the breathtakingly beautiful clips shown here are likely to be something of a shock. Painting With Light boasts some wonderfully instructive interview segments, mostly with national treasure Martin Scorsese. It also does a fascinating job of explicating the painterly influences behind Cardiff’s work, juxtaposing stills from Black Narcissus with Vermeer paintings and taking a stroll through an art museum with Cardiff himself talking about the influence of Rembrandt’s portraits.

Though these aren’t finished works, The Colour Merchant and Painting With Light are essential for Powell/Pressburger fans and will also be quite fascinating for film buffs in general, making useful companion pieces with the excellent cinematography documentary Visions of Light. — CH

Dance Hall

Lori Wernig, U.S.

2001, 15 minutes

Showing noon Saturday, April 6

First of all, dance hall: a place where women stand around pulling at their silk stockings and doing the fox trot with lonely military dudes. Maybe not quite as sleazy or as desperate as you hoped it would be, this black-and-white film-noir short still has a lot to offer viewers. Set during World War II, it features a dime-a-dance girl who falls for one of her “customers” and ultimately gets mixed up in his scandalous attempt to give classified information to the Japanese. Most striking about this film is its dark interior spaces, an ominous “presence” the second this film starts rolling. This feeling translates into a kind of “lurking” sensation, where whatever the hell it is could be behind a coat, under a dress, in some secret back room, or even behind a gesture or a glance. A very spooky mystery piece complete with lots of pretty people in great clothes, two hard-edged detectives, and treason. — LH

Ed

Justin Chinn, U.S.

2000, 13 minutes

Showing noon Saturday, April 6th

Made as his thesis film at USC, Ed should have not only earned filmmaker Justin Chinn his degree but also a nice pinch to the cheek — this comedy is just that dang adorable.

Ed is a germ geek — both fascinated with and teeth-chattering scared of the microscopic mischiefmakers — who passes out end-of-the-world leaflets and gives end-of-the-world lectures at the library. Then he meets Nina, a stylish pixie who can out-gloom the master. It’s not giving away too much to reveal that Ed soon discovers that swapping spit with a human breeding ground is very much worth the risk. — SE

you don’t know what i got

Linda Duvoisin, U.S.

2001, 85 minutes

Showing 2 p.m. Saturday, April 6th

Too often, documentaries, gimmicky from overediting, leave audiences with nothing but shallow stereotypes in place of real people in real situations. But Tennessee native Linda Duvoisin, in her documentary you don’t know what i got, remains faithful to the true spirit of the genre, allowing five American women to surface with all their human contradictions intact.

In the film, these vastly different women speak candidly about their lives as lovers, mothers, and artists (among other things) in a sometimes hostile and gender-biased environment. Though the tampon-wielding singer/songwriter Ani Difranco is among those lives examined in the lens, I assure you it’s not one of those films. While gender usually causes most films in the realm of the “femininist” to collapse under the weight of agenda, this film is refreshingly earnest, subtly developing depth with Duvoisin’s compass of poignant questions as guide.

Perhaps the most delightful among the women featured is Jimmie Woodruff, a retired Tennessee housekeeper from mixed parentage who speaks honestly about race and heartache. The other women include architect and philosopher Myrtle Stedman, police officer Julie Brunsell, and poet and activist Linda Finney. By simply pushing “record” on a camera and keeping the editing as it should be (unobtrusive), Duvoisin has created a gently moving and genuine documentary. — LH

In the Land of Milk and Honey

Paul Donahue, U.S.

2000, 60 minutes

Showing 4 p.m. Saturday, April 6th

This hour-long video documentary isn’t the most accomplished piece of filmmaking you’ll ever see –visually and organizationally, it feels slapdash and incomplete, and it takes forever to get into the meat of the story. Still, the material is so provocative and of obvious regional interest it may be worth a look. The film takes place during a 1997 Ku Klux Klan rally in Pulaski, Tennessee, the town where the notorious organization was founded after the Civil War.

In the Land of Milk and Honey focuses on the town itself and the different ways residents process and deal with the town’s dubious heritage and present-day role as a demonstration site for out-of-town Klan groups. One interesting aside occurs when the documentary captures Comedy Central reporters in town to cover a rally. —CH

Quello Che Cerchi

Marco S. Puccioni, Italy

2001, 99 minutes

Showing midnight Saturday, April 6th

Quello Che Cerchi (What You’re Looking For) is the tale of private investigator Impero, who trails a young street urchin named Davide only to realize the boy may be his son. After Davide breaks into a lab and injures a security guard, Impero and Davide take off across Italy, hiding from the police and looking for Davide’s mother, Michele. Davide wants to find his long-lost mother, while Impero is seeking the truth of Davide’s lineage. Michele, unfortunately, has disappeared, so they can never know who Davide’s real father is. However, along their journey, Impero and Davide discover truths about themselves. — MT

Beautiful Day

Anne-Marie Hess, U.S.

2000, 5 minutes

Showing noon Sunday, April 7

“It’s raining,” girl says. “It’s fucking beautiful,” says her lover boy. “I know, I was just kidding,” says angry girl whose boyfriend is too dumb to get the metaphor. These two lovers in sweet despair find a way to agree on the weather. This film is full of long, dark gazes and ambiguously threatening dialogue — a nice attempt at trying to unravel the mystery of relationships. — LH

American independent filmmaker Henry Jaglom, despite being born in London and

brought up in New York, has been described as a West Coast Woody Allen (I’m

guessing the inferior version, with Albert Brooks as the superior). Prior to

viewing his latest, Festival in Cannes, I’d never managed to see a

Jaglom film (whose titles include Always, Eating, and Babyfever),

and now that I have I can’t help but wonder if Steve Martin’s L.A. Story

was meant to be some sort of parody of (and improvement on) Jaglom’s lazy,

whimsical style.

Festival in Cannes opens with a photo montage of stars interacting at the

famed film festival –including Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, Orson Welles, and

Robert Mitchum — and was, in fact, filmed in the midst of the 52nd festival in

1999. This veritÇ style evokes the likes of Medium Cool (shot during the

1968 Chicago riots) and Robert Altman’s political series Tanner ’88 (shot

during the 1988 presidential election) as much as the more obvious Altman

Hollywood polemic The Player. This style, along with Jaglom’s status as

a movie-biz social insider, leads to some rather chummy cameos — William

Shatner and Faye Dunaway as themselves, Peter Bogdanovich as a director named

Milo, and was that Sydney Pollack I saw? –that carry none of the bite Altman’s

verisimilitude brought to The Player.

The film concerns two movie deals on a collision course, one an “indie” film

being pitched by American actress and first-time director Alice Palmer (Greta

Scacchi), the other a Tom Hanks vehicle being cobbled together by arrogant

Hollywood producer Rick Yorkin (Ron Silver). Both deals eventually hinge on the

participation of Millie Marguand (Anouk AimÇe, star of Federico Fellini films

such as 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita), an aging French star who

consults her estranged director husband Viktor (Maximilian Schell, the Austrian

actor who won an Oscar for Judgment at Nuremberg and whose presence here

only adds to the feeling that this film could have been made during the

post-shoot cocktail parties for one of those mid-century international epics).

Most sensible people would think she could do both projects –take the paycheck

with a small role in the Hanks vehicle and follow her artistic impulses with

the vaguely described indie — but this being a film about the movie business,

sensible thought doesn’t prevail. Tax shelters and “windows of opportunity”

complicate the possibility of cooperation.

Unfortunately, whatever observations about the state of the film business or

about the Cannes Festival in particular that Jaglom is trying to communicate

are so light as to be almost non-existent. And eventually these concerns are

winnowed down to three “unexpected” couplings that lead the film down a more

conventional path. About the strongest critique of the festival itself comes

when the camera pans a thoroughfare crowded with huge billboards for dubious

Hollywood product: Pushing Tin, Mystery Men, Never Been Kissed,

Entrapment, etc.

The romance here is agreeably sunny, thanks in large part to the work of Scacchi

and AimÇe, but it is so slight and unexceptional that most viewers will yearn

for more insight into film politics and production — more inside dope or more

interesting ideas. But you won’t get them here. — Chris Herrington

In this sequel, Wesley Snipes returns as the titular half-vampire superhero who

stalks evil with a heavy silver sword and a brutally high kick. A passable

combination of over-the-top gore and martial-arts pyrotechnics, Blade II

trades on the same expected formula of its predecessor. And, like the original Blade,

this feature is initially more watchable than you might think, although the

experience becomes tiring long before the final credits roll.

In this go-round, Snipes is given a new breed of enemy whose ass he must kick.

Through a genetic mutation, a creature has come into being: a mutant vampire

that feeds on both humans and the sharp-toothed bloodsuckers. Described as a

kind of crack-addict vampire, the new breed must feed exponentially more than

regular old vampires. And, more than simply sucking blood, these unfortunate

creatures devour their prey whole in a leech-like manner. And talk about an

appetite. If these fellas don’t feed often enough, they actually begin to gnaw

on themselves. Pasty, bald, clear-skinned predators, the villains look like

skinheads who escaped the set of Night of the Living Dead.

In an unusual turn of events, Blade is approached by the vampire nation so he

can team up with them in order to eradicate the new baddies. The emperor of the

vampires (who is seemingly a second cousin of the emperor from the Star Wars

trilogy, both in appearance and career choice) asks Blade to work with an elite

team of vampires (originally trained to take out Blade) to take down the mutant

breed that is multiplying at an alarming rate. Uneasy about teaming up with his

old enemy, Blade agrees but remains on his guard.

Shot on location in Prague (where the film is set), Blade II maintains a

dingy, eerie look and feel throughout. Wandering through a kind of

post-apocalyptic ghetto, Snipes throws down in a variety of unsightly places —

blood banks that look like crack houses and after-hours clubs that look like

crack houses. And although Blade II boasts more than a fair amount of

well-crafted fight scenes, the mutant vampires Snipes and crew are after can

only be destroyed by sunlight, allowing for more fires than fisticuffs. For

fans of the original and viewers looking for the kind of artistry ignored on WWF

Smackdown, Blade II will probably be two hours well spent. Other

viewers, however, should beware. — Rachel Deahl

In an episode of Cops last year, a police officer encountered a man who had been beaten up by a female friend because he had a voodoo altar. The woman had left the scene and the man had locked himself out of his house, so the police officer helped him get in through a window. Then, with as much cajoling as is humanly possible, the man convinces the officer to come in and see his pet snakes. The cop admits to being very afraid but goes in to see the man’s collection of 20 or so snakes all heaped in one slithering mass on the floor of a closet. Now that’s entertainment.

Then there’s Showtime, a smarter-than-average comedy (emphasis on average) starring Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy, and Rene Russo. Packaged as a spoof on reality programming, Showtime is more of a spoof on buddy/cop films (think the Lethal Weapon series, both Rush Hours) yet is a buddy/cop film (think all three Screams). It cannibalizes itself with a big fat wink.

De Niro stars as Mitch Preston, a gruff, longtime LAPD detective. How gruff? After a drug bust gone wrong, Mitch shoots out the lens of a TV camera, garnering bad publicity for the department and the promise of a lawsuit. But Chase Renzi (Russo), producer for the network that owns the shot-out camera, gets a whiff of a hit. She wants gruff, she wants bullets, she wants Mitch in exchange for dropping that pesky lawsuit.

Mitch balks but money talks, so the next order of business is finding Mitch a partner. It’s an easy enough task as Trey Sellars (Murphy) puts himself right under Chase’s nose. Trey is a patrol officer, though he wants to be an actor. That he failed a recent audition to play a cop is no big thing. That Trey inadvertently sabotaged Mitch’s drug bust (which led to the bullet in the camera, which led to the producer being up in his face) is a big thing. Mitch despises Trey, and that is what they call tension, and that is what they call good television.

The point of the program, titled Showtime part of a catchphrase Trey uses to pump himself up before a bust: inhale, exhale, repeat “It’s showtime!” is to keep it real. What’s real is tracking down the maker of a supergun that can not only pierce a bullet-proof vest but also destroy a house. The detective stuff, however, needs to be squeezed in somewhere between shooting the show’s promos and the mandatory confession-booth time.

If you’re looking for skewered conventions, Showtime‘s got them: talk of a “loose cannon,” conflict with the police chief in which a desk gets pounded, the why-I’m-a-cop speech, sliding over a car hood, etc. Plus the TV execs are aptly wired. Chase is there to record Mitch and Trey as they are, but if Mitch’s apartment doesn’t quite pop out on camera, what’s wrong with giving the place a makeover complete with dog? The sugar on top comes in the form of cameos by William Shatner and Johnnie Cochran. Shatner plays himself, using his experience on T.J. Hooker to direct the men in the show’s commercials. He counsels on the importance of the eyebrow arch and the gamely belly-flops on a car hood for the sake of art. Cochran’s part came about when an actor playing one of De Niro’s collars ad-libbed that he was going to hire Johnnie Cochran, and so the filmmakers did. Undoubtedly charismatic, Cochran seems stifled here (and shouldn’t he be in Memphis suing somebody?).

At the beginning of the movie, Mitch is shown scrawling out the tenets of police work. He tells his audience that he has never in his 28 years on the force jumped from one roof to roof or done much of what is seen on television. The joke, of course, is that, like checking items off a list, he proceeds to do most of what he’s denounced. These riffs are all logically funny, but none is a howler. And there’s no arguing with the performances. Both De Niro and Murphy are good, and Russo is particularly crisp. But, ultimately, Showtime is hemmed in by the very devices it mocks.

It’s a pity, really. All this fuss over a gaudy engagement ring a bright-blue mood stone, to be exact, and the object of desire of both a petty thief and the woman who was presented with it just minutes earlier. He demands, she demurs, and so, with the pop of a gun, she falls and lets loose a pool of blood that matches her red hat.

A pity, too, The Time Machine, the latest adaptation of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi novel and a ho-hum-er of a movie if ever there was one.

The action begins in 1899 in New York. Professor Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) is an absent-minded professor covered in chalk dust and enamored of gadgets. Time flies when he’s absorbed in his formulas, but he does allow a lapse when it comes to Emma (Sienna Guillory). He meets her for ice skating, pops the question, then loses her over the ring.

Now there is no more time for lapses. Alexander works on his formulas for two years until he pulls back a curtain to reveal his machine, a brass number that looks sort of like a luggage cart at better hotels. He climbs in, sets the date, and is suddenly back at the ice pond, back in front of Emma. Alexander is careful not to retrace his steps from that awful night, but that doesn’t stop Emma from ending up the same bloody mess. And Alexander accepts this. He can’t change the past, but what is nagging his scientific mind now is why.

So it’s back into the time machine and into the future. The year is 2030, a year he figures the time riddle would have long been solved. He first encounters a buzzing big city with a billboard barking the wonders of living on the moon and then a sarcastic librarian contained within a pane of glass. The librarian offers his help. Alexander asks for reference materials and is given instead a roll of the eyes and an impatient lecture on the impossibility of time travel.

Alexander, unsatisfied, ventures further into the future and further still to the year 802701. Still no answers. But if it was the past he was looking for, this appears to be it no signs of progress here, just a primitive society living in straw abodes that cling like cicada shells to the sides of an enormous canyon. The simplicity and the near-nudity of these people appear idyllic to Alexander, but idyllic it’s not. They are terrorized by the Morlocks, underground dwellers part human, part beast, part stone who hunt them for food and breeding purposes. Alexander knows he can’t do anything about the past, but, he thinks, maybe he can do something about this.

Imagine the boon of The Time Machine for production designer Oliver Scholl and the various costumers who were entrusted with working up and dressing so many different worlds, from turn-of-the-20th-century to post-apocalypse. While none of it is mind-blowingly original, it is a real show of effort (an effort apparently not passed on to the makeup of Uber-Morlock played by Jeremy Irons, who, in white face paint, black lipstick, and a long white wig, looks like an elderly Marilyn Manson). It seems, however, that all these different vistas were budgeted as part of the dramatic thrust, a miscalculation given the always swelling number of movies set in the future.

Directed by Simon Wells, H.G.’s great-grandson, The Time Machine is his first live-action film after countless animated features. It makes sense then that this movie feels so flatly harmless (and even sounds clichéd with its tired, look-at-the-wonder score) and appears to have been aimed narrowly at 12-year-olds, who can get some titillation from the shapely natives while not being scared to death by the Morlocks dragging those same natives squirming and squealing under the sand.

As for Pearce, he doesn’t seem right for such a pristinely square picture. In last year’s absorbing agitator Memento, he played his memory-deficient character confused and bold. There’s not much of a switch for The Time Machine, though his approach is as artificial as the good-chap accent he affects for Alexander.

There’s no topping rapper-turned-actor Ice Cube’s scowl. The straight line of his mouth spanning his face and his eyes half-closed give even the most matter-of-fact moments an air of menace. So in All About the Benjamins, which he stars in and co-wrote with Ronald Lang, when he flashes a smile and when he really gets tough, it feels like a gift, like a little pulse of authenticity. But let’s not get too deep, because All About the Benjamins is all about the surface a workable action film/buddy movie that expands not a single boundary.

Ice Cube stars as Bucum Jackson, a bounty hunter who has about had it with the low pay he gets for collecting lowlifes. His latest gig is to deliver Reggie Wright (Mike Epps), a small-time con man well-known to Bucum. Bucum catches up with Reggie just after his target, with the aide of two elderly women, has lifted a few sundries from a store just nickel-and-dime stuff, nothing Winona Ryder-ish. While still in the store, Reggie completes a legit errand: buying a lottery ticket for his girlfriend.

There Reggie is, holding his bag of stolen goods, when up comes Bucum. There’s a chase, some taunting, and then a whole lot of blood. Seems the pair stumbled onto the tail end of a diamond heist, a heist that went wrong and has both the bad guys and Bucum looking for Reggie, and then Bucum and Reggie looking for the bad guys who happen to (unknowingly) have Reggie’s girlfriend’s lottery ticket.

You can guess where it goes from there the bickering, reconciliation, more bickering, a car chase, flying bullets, a fight on a speedboat, and a couple of harshly violent scenes. Epps, as the comic side of the duo, is a gifted mimic, while Ice Cube is, of course, Ice Cube, one of the grimmest straight men ever.

Iris arrives in Memphis the recipient of three Oscar nominations in acting and none elsewhere. For once in Oscar history, this makes complete sense, because if there was ever such a thing as a mediocre film filled with wonderful acting, Iris is it.

The film is about the British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, who died in 1999 after developing Alzheimer’s a few years before. The film is based on two memoirs —Elegy for Iris and Iris and Her Friends — written by Murdoch’s husband, the literary critic John Bayley.

It’s difficult to resist comparing Iris to A Beautiful Mind, another recent biopic about a great intellect (economist John Forbes Nash) succumbing to a mind-inhibiting condition — and also one in which inspired acting outshines the film itself. Iris is being advertised with the meaninglessly vague tagline “Her greatest talent was for life,” which is similar to the soundbite prominently featured in the trailer for A Beautiful Mind, which went something like “It’s a fine thing to have a beautiful mind, but it’s far better to have a beautiful heart.”

At the risk of sounding like a bad stand-up comic, what’s the deal with these movies? Is this a strategy to reassure audiences who not only can’t compete with the intellectual talents of a Nash or Murdoch but whom filmmakers fear would be uninterested in or intimidated by a serious investigation of the subjects’ work? Why else this seemingly deliberate strategy of downplaying the life’s work of these two highly accomplished subjects? Both films seem more interested in the conditions themselves than in the people — like TV disease-of-the-week movies that just happen to center on acclaimed protagonists.

But the odd catch here is that the PBS-arty Iris is actually far more flawed in this regard than the Ron Howard-directed Hollywood hokum of A Beautiful Mind, which actually does have a few compelling scenes that map the contours of Nash’s considerable mind. Those who’ve never read Murdoch aren’t likely to learn much about her work from this film. Not a single work of hers is explored in anything more than a passing or vague allusion and very little detail of her literary or intellectual achievements is provided beyond a couple of speeches in which Murdoch offers trenchant but extremely broad comments on the centrality of language to the human experience.

Part of the problem is that Iris doesn’t explore the whole of Murdoch’s life. It instead cross-cuts between two distinct segments — the early Oxford courtship between Murdoch and Bayley (played by Kate Winslet, who must have a contractual clause that compels her to appear nude in every film she makes, and Hugh Bonneville) and the later years when Bayley becomes caretaker of his Alzheimer’s-stricken companion (played by Jim Broadbent and Judi Dench). This strategy has its uses, of course, allowing the film to bypass the predictable narrative arc that so many biopics lapse into. But it also only worsens the film’s short-changing of Murdoch’s career, the gap between the two periods being when almost all of her writing was done.

So what we have is a fairly familiar story about the difficulties of aging and the development of a relationship, and one saved by the tremendous achievements of the film’s four leading actors. Winslet and Dench and Bonneville and Broadbent make us believe they are the same people seen from different vantages. Bonneville’s portrait of a nervous, doddering old man living in a young man’s skin may be a bit of a caricature, but the other three actors — all Oscar nominees and all frequently great (see Broadbent, especially, in Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy) –deliver performances that rise above their otherwise mundane surroundings. — Chris Herrington

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From the booming dot com its hero works at to the image of San Francisco as a playground for women out of Playboy, everything in 40 Days and 40 Nights feels out of place. Billed as a sex comedy without the sex, this Josh Hartnett vehicle from Miramax is hinged on a single joke that wouldn’t keep the laugh track of a half-hour sitcom running.

Hartnett stars as Matt Sullivan, a handsome, sweet Web designer who’s still languishing after being dumped by his beautiful but bitchy ex, Nicole (Vinessa Shaw). Although he’s meeting and bedding plenty of women, he can’t help but feel he’s falling into a black hole. Most notably, he’s haunted by the image of his ceiling cracking above him. So, in an effort to kill his inner demons, Matt seizes on an unusual, slightly crazy plan. Constantly seeking advice from his older brother, John (Adam Trese), who’s a seminarian on his way to becoming a priest, Matt decides to give up sex and all its forms (which extends to touching, kissing, and masturbating) for Lent. Taking a vow to give up the thing most dear to him, Matt hopes to get his mind back in gear and his life back to normal — or so he thinks.

But the best-laid plans When Matt’s horny roommate, Ryan (Paulo Costanzo), hears about his buddy’s scheme, he spreads the word to Matt’s co-workers. Complicating matters even further is Erica (Shannyn Sossamon), a beautiful and spunky girl Matt meets at the laundromat one night. Matt immediately falls for Erica but their coupling is obviously compromised by his vow.

40 Days works off a repeated carrot motif, constantly dangling temptation in the face of its hot-blooded American male. And as the days tick by, the rat becomes more and more unwound. Looking like a junkie needing a fix, Hartnett grows pale, gets bags under his eyes, and begins to twitch as his celibacy stretch lengthens. The low point comes when, in a dream, he sees himself soaring over clouds made out of breasts.

The annoying roommate (and Costanzo is particularly grating as a mean-spirited foil who dresses like Ricky Martin) and the office geeks combine for a disappointing peanut gallery. From the boys who spike his drink with Viagra to the girls who make out in front of him, everyone has a plan to make Matt take the dive on their day.

Like the jokes that constantly miss their mark, 40 Days never answers the seminal question its hero asks: What’s the point of all this? The stupidity and uselessness of Matt’s vow is apparent from the get-go, and while he may need 40 days to figure it out, the audience doesn’t need two hours. — Rachel Deahl

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The Danish film Italian For Beginners is the first project filmed under the Dogme imprimatur to be directed by a woman (Lone Scherfig), and while I’m reluctant to point to the gender of its creator as the sole reason it’s so different from other Dogme films, you have to wonder.

Dogme, for those who don’t know, derives from a manifesto on film style written by the great Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier (he of pre-Dogme films such as Breaking the Waves and The Kingdom) about a half-dozen years ago. Von Trier, with tongue at least partially in cheek, dubbed his manifesto a “vow of chastity” — a method of filmmaking that uses only handheld video, is shot on location, contains no non-diagetic sound (i.e., no sound that doesn’t emerge from an on-screen source), and follows other rules of cinematic purity.

But the catch to this return to basics is that most previous Dogme films — von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark and The Idiots, Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration, Harmony Korine’s Julien Donkey Boy — in their insistence on purging the cinema of artificiality wind up reaching for extreme situations and extreme emotions. By comparison, Italian For Beginners is realistically mundane. It’s a modest romantic comedy whose minor charms have nothing to do with the stylistic or philosophical structure that Dogme provides. Whereas other Danish films to wash up on these shores have been rather chilly, Italian For Beginners is notably warm and humanistic. The only real benefit provided by the Dogme style is an intimate feel that makes the film stand out when compared to slicker American romantic comedies, and that achievement could have easily been duplicated without conforming to the strictures of Dogme.

Italian For Beginners looks in on six youngish adults whose lives intertwine in Copenhagen over the course of a few months, the relationships coalescing around an introductory Italian class. At the center of the film’s story is a young, recently-widowed minister, Andreas (Anders W. Berthelsen), who is filling in for a suspended neighborhood pastor. Andreas lives at a hotel managed by Jorgen (Peter Gantzler), a kind, nervous man who has been celibate for years. Jorgen is a friend of the overbearing Hal-Finn (Lars Kaalund), who manages a sports bar owned by the hotel. Jorgen is also smitten with the restaurant’s lovely Italian cook Giulia (Sara Indrio Jensen). Hal-Finn likewise develops a crush on the neighborhood hairdresser Karen (Ann Eleonora Jorgensen), an autumn-haired beauty struggling with her belligerent, alcoholic mother. Andreas is pulled into the Italian class by Jorgen, where he meets Olympia (Anette Stovelbaek), a clumsy bakery-shop clerk caring for her sick father. And Olympia and Karen end up being connected in ways they don’t initially understand.

The basic theme of Italian For Beginners –though “theme” seems a little weighty for a film so modest and naturalistic — is of family members passing and those left behind forming new families by choice. It’s a film about how a group of friends first come together — like a Danish prequel to Return of the Secaucus Seven (or, if you must, The Big Chill). There’s also a notable subtext here of Mediterranean passions infiltrating the chilly north and Giulia’s bubbly response to Jorgen’s reserved affection.

Generous of spirit but short on visual, verbal, or narrative fireworks, Italian For Beginners doesn’t reach the heights that von Trier frequently scales, but it’s a comfortable, likable little film that shows admirable respect and affection for its characters. It may not seem like much while you’re watching it, but afterward the feeling of having spent time with a real community populated by real friends might linger. — Chris Herrington

In Dragonfly, Kevin Costner, as angry widower Joe Darrow, is put through the works. He is mocked for his bald spot by a kid, shunned by a nun, manhandled by security guards, threatened with a gun, trapped in a waterlogged bus, and grabbed by a corpse. The audience, however, is not so moved.

Joe is a doctor whose wife Emily (Susanna Thompson) was also a doctor. She went to Venezuela on a humanitarian mission. Joe, arguing that it was too risky given her pregnancy, did not want her to go. But she went and she died and her body was never found. So Joe is back at the hospital, pissed off at being alone and acting harshly against anyone in his path.

Because of his foul mood, Joe is asked to take some time off from work. He agrees but first he must do the one thing that Emily requested: check in on her patients in the children’s oncology ward. It’s there that Joe encounters a young boy flatlined but seemingly talking to him. When the boy is revived, he shows the doctor a wiggly cross. On to the next patient, another boy dead and brought back, with the same cross. And when Joe returns to his empty house, he is besieged by dragonflies, his wife’s totem. Even Joe’s parrot is trying to tell him something. Is Emily alive?

There’s intrigue, sure, but consider Dragonfly dead on arrival. Its elements — the sick kids, the crosses, the parrot — add up to a rather muffled drama. You can blame Costner, for starters. He’s definitely angry as Joe, but he never seems to absorb what a truly frightening experience he’s stepped into. If he can’t get into it, after all, why should we? Plus, with its surprise-ending twist, a faux-spiritual, corny flourish that is also vaguely insulting to South American natives, Dragonfly comes off as more than disappointing — it’s unnecessary.

Along for the ride is former Memphian Kathy Bates as Joe’s neighbor, good listener, and lawyer. Even she can’t make the case for Dragonfly. — Susan Ellis

A drama about ethics and values, John Q. has neither, but that won’t stop you from blubbering like an idiot as a devoted father commits a most desperate act to save his dying son. Call it a crying shame.

A shame because the actors — Denzel Washington, Robert Duvall, Anne Heche, among others — are better than this. A shame because this film stoops to conquer in delivering its message in an ill-considered display of right versus might. And, while we’re at it, a shame because of bad timing in that this heart-disease film has a cameo from the director Ted Demme, who recently died of a heart attack.

Washington, having just been nominated for an Oscar for his role as the brashly dangerous cop in Training Day, switches gears to be the humble John Q. Archibald. John is strictly working-class and plays by the rules. But obedience doesn’t pay the bills, and John’s on the receiving end of some nasty looks from his wife Denise (Kimberly Elise) after the station wagon gets repossessed. She wants him to quit explaining and get something done for once. Luckily, John can still make his wife smile; all it takes is goofing around with son Michael (Daniel E. Smith), a sweet kid with dimples and the dream of becoming a bodybuilder.

Those smiles evaporate when in the midst of an ideal childhood moment — stealing second during a Little League game — Michael collapses. His heart is enormous and defective and days away from failing completely. His only hope is a transplant, and while John has insurance, he doesn’t have enough to cover this.

So this man, who can’t keep up with the payments on an old station wagon, sits face-to-face with his anti-doppelgänger, hospital administrator Rebbeca Payne (Heche) — note the character’s last name — who tells John and his wife that she’s very sorry but cash up front, please, and, if that doesn’t work out, to make these last days with their son a “happy time.”

John, the rule-follower, fills out all the right forms and sells all his possessions and begs and borrows and pleads with the insurance company to get enough money for a down payment for the surgery. He even goes to the media. But a day late and thousands of dollars short, his son is being released with no new heart and no future. His wife tells him to do something for once, and he does it. He gets a gun and puts it in the ribs of Dr. Turner (James Woods), the hospital’s heart surgeon, a rule-follower too, who has shrugged off the Archibalds’ desperation by saying he doesn’t make the decisions. John marches Dr. Turner into the emergency room and takes hostage a motley crew that consists of a grossly obese security guard, a battered hussy and her abusive boyfriend, a couple on the verge of becoming parents, a sassy black man with nearly severed fingers, a wide-eyed nurse, and a couple of young (i.e., not jaded) doctors.

John Q. does a lot of finger-pointing. It’s the big insurance companies looking at the bottom line rather than the cute kid with dimples and a thing for bodybuilding. It’s the doctors who have the skills but not the will to defy management. It’s the media too, which callously ignore John’s story until it involves a gun. But it is not John, the guy with the gun (David did have a slingshot after all). Nope, John’s a hero. It’s an outrage and a kick to the audience’s reason how deftly John wins over his hostages. He may be the one with the weapon, but the boyfriend who beats his girl and spews racial slurs trumps that. And so the young intern’s tears from fear turn to tears of admiration. And that couple whose unborn child John’s endangering, they’ve got his back too. Even the hostage negotiator, the grizzled Lt. Grimes (Duvall), can appreciate where John is coming from. In John Q., everyone loves the little guy. You will too, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it. — Susan Ellis

Sometimes you can tell how bad a movie will be just by its trailer. Then again, sometimes even a four-minute trailer is more compelling than the feature itself. Such is the case with Crossroads, Britney Spears’ film debut.

If there were a specific category for movies like Crossroads, Blockbuster would call it “94-minute Mistakes” — and Crossroads would share shelf space with Under a Cherry Moon, Dick Tracy, Hard to Hold, Disorderlies, and, of course, Glitter.

With this film Spears is clearly aiming for pop-icon status like Madonna, but she lands somewhere near Cyndi Lauper. (Anyone remember Vibes?) Crossroads‘ makers seem to underline their intentions by opening the movie with Spears singing along to Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” and dancing under a huge Madonna poster. But instead of catching glimpses of the next material girl, viewers are more likely to find themselves desperately seeking an actress.

Spears plays Lucy, the good-girl valedictorian just dying to cut loose before starting college in the fall. In perhaps the film’s saddest (and most convincing) scene, Lucy tells her father, played by Dan Aykroyd, that she never got to be a normal teen, never got to hang out with the other kids or go to parties. For a second, it’s not Lucy we’re watching but Britney herself dying to lose her innocence. (Which she does an hour later to Ben, the male lead, in a very delicate cutaway scene.)

Lucy has lost touch with her childhood best friends — Kit, an über-popular girl even by John Hughes standards, and Mimi, a tantalizing bit of pregnant trailer trash who is, hands down, the movie’s saving grace. Mimi suggests that they get reacquainted on a road trip, though Kit and Lucy are unsure. Eventually they all gleefully hop into a ’73 Buick convertible belonging to Ben, a total hottie none of them know anything about except that he served time in jail, possibly for murder. With all the surprise of an after-school special, the kids weave their way from rural Georgia to Los Angeles for an anticlimactic singing contest. Antics and drama ensue, and though Kit is teased for bringing four suitcases, apparently none contains a bra.

There are a few dewy moments when Spears’ star power shows through — when she cuts her eyes just right and for a brief moment you think she might be able to pull this acting thing off. But the only thing she consistently pulls off are her clothes, and frame by frame the film spirals into cliché after cliché. Rarely has the lightness of being been so unbearable.

— Rebekah Gleaves

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