Harry Potter 2
REVIEWED 11/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

After having to endure a Summer stuck in a Surrey, UK suburb with his loathesome Aunt and Uncle Dursley, young teen orphan Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is eager to return to the bewitching castle grounds of Hogwart's School. See, Harry's a 21st Century protegé wizard from a long line of wizards. Possessed by this timeless alchemy of weird incantations and folkloric creatures come to life. So, despite being padlocked in his bedroom, and against the efforts of a mischievous self-hating elf, he packs up his magic wand, his luggage and his messenger owl and heads back to that wondrously gloomy world of witchcraft with the help of his slightly oafish chum Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint). Smack in to an horrific mystery stemming from the dark origins of this proud scholarly institution that threatens to destroy it and all those who are not of pure spellcasting blood.

Odd things start happening. Harry alone hears the evil ramblings of a monstrous voice coming from within the walls. One by one, a few of his classmates are found petrified as if turned into living statues. A deathly warning is scrawled in blood by an unknown nemesis for all to see. And, a friendly match of Gwyddich (kind of an airborne basketball game played on flying broomsticks) between the two student houses turns into a perillous race against a killer pigskin bent on destruction. Everyone seems to suspect that Harry is behind all of this pernicious mayhem. Leaving him, Ron, and their über-grrl friend Hermione (pronounced 'her-MY-on-ee', sparklingly portrayed by Emma Watson) no real choice but to uncover the truth about the elusive and shadowy Chamber of Secrets and foil this unseen enemy before it's too late. Things go from bad to worse, when both the kindly ancient Headmaster Dumbledore (Richard Harris) and the friendly bear-like Groundskeeper Hagrid the Giant (Robbie Coltrane) are unceremoniously cast out of Hogwart's by dubious forces.

Now, before you get annoyed at me for possibly giving away most of this visually fantastic movie, let me reassure you that what I've cited is merely the tip of the enchanted iceberg. You're thrown head-first into an overwhelmingly lush realm of hilarious strangeness and wide-ranging subplots throughout here. Having never read any of J.K. Rowling's wildly popular children's books, I couldn't say whether or not this eye-popping Tolkienesque flick succeeds at transcribing her words to film. It does seem rather violent at times for small toddlers. The anti-racism message at the core of this story, and the somewhat labyrinthine last quarter, might be a little too intense for it's target audience of older kids, as well. And, the theatrical emoting and cheesy lines dished out by most of the adult actors, including Kenneth Branagh (as the pompous charlatan Gilderoy Lockhart) and Jason Issacs (as the devillishly conniving Lucius Malfoy), might be far too gushy for a contemporary teenaged crowd.

However, young-at-heart grown-ups looking for a spectacularly CGI-rich fantasy to get lost in for a while will likely find this boisterously exciting and occasionally scary escapist adventure well worth the price of admission.

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The Hours
REVIEWED 02/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Book editor Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) is feeling very sad these days. Just as pregnant Florida homemaker Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) was feeling very sad back in the 1950's. Coincidentally, monumentally successful novelist and maverick essayist of her day Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) was feeling very sad around the time she was writing her book, 'Mrs. Dalloway', in mid-1920's England. This movie is about three women who have nothing in common with each other, except that we're shown they're all experiencing deep malaise. Similar to Clarissa Dalloway in Woolf's handwritten manuscript, Streep's character starts her day of upscale party plans buying flowers for her newly award-winning Gay writer friend and ex-lover Richard (Ed Harris). Much to the chagrin of her live-in Lesbian partner, his acerbic attitude towards most things exacerbated by him slowly dying of AIDS in his chilly Manhattan apartment across town eventually being reveilled as the source of Clarissa's uneasy despair. A despair shared by Moore's character, struggling to force herself to bake the perfect birthday cake for her simple, adoring War veteran hubby in-between losing herself in passages from Woolf's 'Dalloway', increasingly worried about her chirpy socialite friend who has to go to the hospital for a 'female problem' that day. Frankly, all of it is too much for her to bear. Much like Kidman's character, who was renowned for dramatically ebbing and neaping in and out of self-destructive depression throughout most of her illustriously tortured creative life. These are broken people. Gals largely stuck in their lives through the obligations of their times. An interestingly mature prospect for a motion picture, one would imagine.

Well, this is the most depressingly depressive depression-riddled snoozefest I've seen this year. I spent a large portion of this Pulitzer Prized tome-based screening both literally and figuratively in the dark, wondering what the heck was going on with these three annoyingly unexpressive and completely unenthusiastic bi-polar cases. Maybe it's because I'm not a huge fan of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941, born Adeline Virginia Stephen; Her drowned corpse found two weeks after a string of suicide attempts finally met with success in the River Ouse near her Sussex home). Perhaps it's because I'm not familiar enough with her critically acclaimed 1925 day-in-the-life book, 'Mrs. Dalloway', about the meanderingly minded socialite wife of a British member of Parliament who plans and then hosts a party which ends when a World War One veteran impales himself on her house's spiky iron fence, as this movie seems to expect from it's audience. It might just have been that I was fresh out of psychic pills, and hadn't realized that this picture's trio of otherwise talented celebrity co-stars would be reviving the fine art of Mime for the lion's share of their performances here. This scene showing one of them thoughtfully tapping her fingernail against her front teeth - conveying her lines to us via Morse code, I guess. That one standing in silence at a door that's slightly ajar, staring into space with a glazed expression - encouraging us to search for a flood of invisible words squirting from the top of her head, maybe. The other one struck by continual bouts of speechlessness, as she spasms from frenetically storming through each scene to cementing herself like a vegetative blob into a chair under a haze of cigarette smoke - perhaps consciously signaling messages of intelligence to us from her sun-drenched surroundings, but I couldn't say what with any certainty. Stanislavski must be brimming with pride at the right hand of God, knowing that the process of Method Acting that he'd developed and taught in acting studios for years has taken a back seat to Oscar-contending scripts written by Marcel Marceau.

Sure, there are smatterings of dialogue throughout. Much of it either esoteric or mundane. Some of it presented in the sort of pseudo-intellectually shy angst one would expect to see spouted by rehearsing teenaged novices fighting with unfinished patchwork scripts down at the local theatre club, though. Juvenile and clumsily experimental. Dumping all of it's credible eggs in the final act, after boring us into a coma with a load of internalized emotion dressed up in beautiful wardrobe, period scenery, and prosthetics - long after we've lost all interest and the recognizably good bits at the end don't really matter anymore. This should have been a great film about the frailties and disastrous affects of undiagnosed psychosis. Even if a doctor or a psychiatrist (Woolf's and her husband Leonard's prolific home-based printshop did publish the complete works of Sigmund Freud, after-all) had been introduced in some capacity as a tour guide for us to refer to, 'The Hours' would have been a more accessible flick. What it ends up being is little more than a stupefied bastard animal child that the family doesn't much talk about, but lets out of it's cage once a year to check for signs of life. Ho-hum.

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Head of State
REVIEWED 04/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

On January 3, 1624, William Tucker was born in Jamestown, Virginia. He was the first son of Anthony and Isabella, two native Africans brought to the Colonies on a Dutch ship and sold as slaves to a retired English sea captain five years earlier, to work on his tobacco plantation. William's arrival is as historically significant as his parents', since his was the first recorded birth and baptism of a Black child in America. This was two hundred and thirty-nine years before President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in every Confederate State - including Virginia - during the American Civil War. Three hundred and sixty-six years, before L. Douglas Wilder was elected the first Black Governor in the United States. In Richmond, Virginia, in 1990. Geographically, more or less a mere hundred miles South-Southwest of Washington, DC and the most powerful seat of office in that country.

A bizarre mid-air collision (over Virginia) that kills the opposition's shoe-in contender against fictitious US President Gaines, sends this never-named political party scrambling for a replacement during the last half of his 2004 Presidential campaign. Problem is, Gaines died in the other crashed jet, and has been replaced by make believe Vice President of eight years, Brian Lewis. Lewis is also a war veteran and, maybe more importantly, actor Sharon Stone's cousin. With all that, and his catch phrase, "God Bless America, and nobody else", his win is a given. Unless, the rival frontrunners can find a new Man of the People to challenge his claim. Namely, someone naive enough to volunteer for the nomination and try swinging the numbers mere weeks before Election Day. Enter Mays Gilliam (Chris Rock), the erroneously named Alderman (they're called Members in the District of Columbia) of the Capitol's fabricated Ninth District (there are only eight, I checked). Fired from his job, broke, his car repossessed, and dumped by his bride-to-be, this rebellious local hero is somehow tapped by the powers that be as the guy to not only beat Lewis, but become the first Black President of the United States of America. However, when Mays decides to play by his own rules and speak from the heart, going so far as to pick his Chicago bail bondsman brother 'Hammer' (Bernie Mac) as his running mate, there doesn't seem to be any chance that he'll be taken seriously by the voters. Which could be exactly what conniving party whip, Senator Bill Arnot (James Rebhorn), and Gilliam's increasingly frustrated Chief Advisor, Debra Lassiter (Lynn Whitfield), are banking on.

Believe it or not, this is actually a pretty good popcorn flick. Sure, a load of hokey acting and a host of puzzling contrivances weigh down Rock's first directorial effort, but if you turn your brain off and just go in expecting a few good laughs, this fairly well-paced comedy for adults who don't mind raunchy dialogue does deliver. If you were a fan of the 'Beverly Hills Cop' franchise like I was (Rock got his first big screen break in the second one, after being discovered by Eddie Murphy), then you'll probably enjoy the same bouts of raucous hilarity highlighting 'Head of State'.

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The Hunted
REVIEWED 04/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

"There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror." That's an actual quote from General William Tecumseh Sherman, made in August 1880. From his summary burning of Atlanta, Georgia during the American Civil War to as recently as the 1999 atrocities in Kosovo - where an estimated 10,500 Albanian men, women and children were slaughtered by Yugoslav security forces within a three-month period - Sherman, who was both revered and reviled for wielding his power like the Sword of God against the South, had it right. War is Hell. For civilians caught in the crossfire, and for personnel in the arena of battle. The haunted '1000 yard stare' of even the most hardened of soldiers is a common reality, and a well-known symptom of what used to be called 'shell shock' but is now known as 'battle stress'.

In this fourth original screenplay of the same name (Christopher Lambert starred in the last one, in a 1995 flick The Motion Picture Association of America rated 'R' for 'strong bloody ninja violence and some sexuality'), we're given two rather enigmatic men grappling with battle stress. Aaron Hallam (Benicio Del Toro) is a mentally shattered Special Forces assassin still emotionally fresh from the scorched and bloodied front lines of that war in Kosovo, and L.T Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones), the reclusive wilderness tracker who once trained young US recruits - including Hallam - in the brutally deadly Filipino martial art of Kali-Arnis knife fighting, who is brought to the forests of Oregon when his former protégé starts stalking elk hunters with his nasty snub-nosed slicer. See, Aaron (nicknamed 'Raven' - as a supposed cinematic nod to America's 1st Infantry Division, nicknamed 'Task Force Raven', which was actually part of the NATO-led 'Operation Joint Guardian' during and after that same Yugoslavian conflict) has seemingly lost his mind, and yearns for a gory release from his nightmarish torture at the hands of his adept yet untested master. Bonham does deftly track and, with the help of feisty Portland-based FBI operative Abby Durrell (Connie Nielsen), temporarily captures his crazy-eyed student. However, when the military step in and release their prized sociopath, the hunt is on again.

Well, this could've been a good movie. The blade-to-blade combat scenes, which have apparently never been seen before in a Hollywood film, are violently mesmerizing at best. Sadly, director Billy Friedkin makes solid attempts to illustrate the Mime-like internal struggle of these two men. The main problem is, most of what you see on the screen gets boring fast. The vastly dialogue vacant script fails to fully build Del Toro's character as much of anything other than a rogue killing machine with a few loose screws. Was Kosovo Hallam's first taste of mortal combat? If so, his quickly falling apart would make more sense - considering he's trained by someone who knows how to make murderers, but has never taken another man's life. However, the audience is left wondering, while this picture moves on to Bonham's slightly silly ability to tend a wounded wild animal in the deep woods of British Columbia without being torn to shreds and read blades of grass for signs of his prey. Frankly, since you're left to rely on these actors' likeability factors, the reasons for caring what happens to the characters on the screen become lost. So, you're just left watching a lot of running and hiding, punctuated by rounds of blood-squirting slashing and two straight guys grunting and grabbing at each other a little more than one might feel comfortable with. I wouldn't recommend it as anything other than a primer for aspiring knife-makers, or for diehard fans of these two usually better-utilized male leads.

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Hollywood Homicide
REVIEWED 06/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Life's tough for Detective Joe Gavilan (Harrison Ford). Burdened with three ex-wives, two kids and a huge hillside mansion that's floundering his smalltime real estate business, this worn out veteran officer can barely make ends meet while slogging through bloodstained and bullet riddled crime scenes for the LAPD. On top of that, his hunky young part-time Yoga instructor partner K.C. Calden (Josh Hartnett) announces that he wants to quit the force to pursue an acting career. It's his bliss. Great. Things go from bad to worse while this mildly quirky odd couple investigate the violent onstage mass murder of Sartain Records' burgeoning new Hip Hop quartet, 'H2O Klick', when Internal Affairs starts sniffing through Gavilan's muddled finances and puts him on 24/7 surveillance for suspected mingling of assets and tax evasion. However, Joe's still got a few slightly unorthodox tricks up his sleeve as he tracks down the killers' boss, tries to close a deal on a sweet luxury property, and puts the smooth moves on a gorgeous radio psychic - who just so happens to be the ex-girlfriend of the IA team leader who's out to nail him.

This is almost a great movie. The problem is, the screenwriter couldn't seem to decide if this picture was supposed to be a police comedy for an older audience or a buddy flick for the younger crowd. So, what happens is either of these two obvious slants feel somewhat watered down throughout. Sure, this is a welcome departure from Ford's usually intense action adventures that are normally lightly sprinkled with humour. And, Hartnett appears to have had a blast portraying the flaky heartthrob second banana. Their dialogue is fairly punchy, and it's a pretty good story. The Gladys Knight and Smokey Robinson cameos, and the Motown nods are fun, too. It's just not wholly fleshed out enough where it counts, because the end result is played down the middle, without letting you get too caught up with these guys (if the cop stuff is supposed to be peripheral to the buddy angle) or too involved with the process of their Murphy's Law-entangled investigation and personal careers (if that was supposed to be the main focus). Watching the screen, I didn't suspect this was the actors' fault, but I did find myself casually comparing this one to DeNiro/Murphy's 'Showtime' (2002) and wishing for more out of these characters. It's not bad, but I wouldn't recommend you do more than rent it for the few pleasant laughs, since it potentially could've been a lot better.

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The Hulk
REVIEWED 06/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Unknowingly mirroring the mid-1960's classified military work of his father in genetic regenerative research, Berkeley University BioTech Microbiologist Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) is dowsed in a cloud of mistakenly dispersed experimental nanomeds while trying to rescue his lab assistant during a freak electrical malfunction that locks them both in their on-campus radiation chamber. A recent trial using these organically healing microbes mortally failed to protect a toad from exploding under prolonged exposure to Gamma rays. So, when Bruce heroically shields his co-worker from its full force blast, even the good doctor's beautiful ex-girlfriend and brainy collaborator Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) can't understand why he isn't a smudge on the floor, walls, and ceiling tiles. Nobody seems to understand what happened - except perhaps a shadowy new janitor appearing from Banner's tortured childhood, who's been skulking around late at night and mysteriously stealing hair samples back to his own fortress-like homemade laboratory, in the hopes of completing the insane self-induced metamorphosis this broken scientist began over thirty years ago. The plot thickens, when Betty's four star general father has Bruce quarantined in the bowels of the same secluded New Mexico desert base where he last saw his birth parents alive, and a ruthless ex-soldier turned corporate thug stops at nothing to extract the Hulk's indestructible DNA to synthesize and sell to the highest bidder.

To be fair, I'll tell you right now that this isn't the same Marvel Comics story that has gone through a few changes - including skin-colour - since it first sprung from the prolific literature-inspired minds of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in 1962. It's not even a close cousin of the belovedly cheesy Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno smash TV series that roared from 1978 to 1981, and spawned three subsequent television movies that ended with the death of The Hulk (he falls from a plane) in 1990. There are definitely heavy nods to its 'Frankenstein' and 'Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde' roots throughout, plus a couple of notable winks for fans of this surprisingly slow-paced action flick's prior incarnations, but pretty well everything else makes Director Ang Lee's 'The Hulk' a big green monster unto itself. Which is almost a shame, because this version seems to want to do too much to recreate what has arguably been a cultural icon of anger mismanagement for almost two generations. Sure, apart from Nick Nolte's horribly embarrassing over-acting, most of the live performances are reasonably good here. Industrial Light & Magic's CGI work (for which Ang himself reportedly did the motion capture posing for) is easily the most incredibly life-like I've seen to date. Problem is, you're forced to sit through half a movie's worth of character development before you finally get to see what you paid to see. Unfortunately, making this one unnecessarily boring during the calm bits and wildly hokey when Banner blows his cool. I'd suggest renting it, to fast forward to the few entertaining scenes of the Hulk running amok or being eerily introspective, and then go read Shelley or Stevenson to fill in the blanks. 'Nuff said.

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Human Stain
REVIEWED 11/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Thirty-five years after Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins) became Dean of Classic Literature at
Massachusetts' now-prestigious Athena College, and about twelve months after his devoted wife died in the midst of that high-minded institution's faculty hounding him out of his job over an over-blown racial slur, Silk meets the last love of his life. Faunia Farely (Nicole Kidman), a lithe loner half his age working three menial jobs and sleeping above a barn in a sparse plasterboard-walled room, seems at first to have been cut from a different cloth than this once-respected professor. That is, until it becomes clear that both their lives have been self-marginalized, haunted by their own pasts. See, Faunia can't get it out of her head that it's her fault she lost both her small children to an accidental fire, and survived it herself. She can't bring herself to trust anyone, because of her own cruel childhood and life as a teenaged runaway. And, she is constantly reminded of her failings, because she is ruthlessly stalked by her psychotic White Trash ex-husband, Lester Farley (Ed Harris). Lester knows what's going on. And, he's "gonna git her and that old Jew boyfriend of hers". However, Coleman has terrible secrets of his own that go far beyond his amateur boxing days as a young scholar in 1940's New York. Alone, he has lived a lie that has estranged him from his roots, as well as his loving mother and siblings since the death of his father, simply because he refused to let society judge him solely on his true bloodline. This new love so late in life might free him from his lonely destruction, or it could end in sudden disaster for them both, as Lester's broken mind turns to murder.

This is almost an incredibly great movie. Hopkins and Kidman are absolutely fantastic here, pouring out every last drop of energy in their performances as two emotionally ragged yet painfully proud characters given a second chance at happiness. You're definitely shown a full range that pulls the cast and audience through the meatgrinder more than once throughout, with Kidman truly at the peak of her talent. Astounding stuff. Unfortunately, where this picture falls flat is in the clunky plotting and editing of Nicholas Meyer's screenplay, for contemporary ticket-buyers. There's something missing, that's difficult to put my finger on without sounding as though this is a clumsily cobbled together offering. It's not, from an acting and dialogue standpoint. We're just not given enough information on what Coleman's life would have been like during the tinderbox era of the mid-1900's for his decision to be such a terrible choice, nor are we particularly shown the internal turmoil it's caused him over the decades. As it stands, this film would have been a hugely controversial blockbuster even ten or twenty years ago, when the underlying main subject of bygone reactionary racism and related self-loathing seen here would have still been fresh in the minds of a generation of movie-goers. So, when we do find out his secret - which I'm not going to tell you - the irony of what happened to end his job is there, but anyone who's not a Boomer is left wondering what the big deal was - other than it explaining his fury over Faunia being judged by his friend Nathan Zuckerman (played extremely well by Gary Sinise) and the over-all ignorance of Lester. Sure, it's got a downer ending and there's been a lot of chatter about the nude scenes, but they're actually all done quite tastefully and are relevant to the specific aspects of this mature story. Check this one out for the wonderfully intelligent and captivating portrayals, without getting too caught up in the importance of Silk's secret to our general reality these days, and it's likely you'll be pleasantly blown away. Incredibly good.

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House of Sand and Fog
REVIEWED 01/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

It took her father thirty years to pay for Kathy Nicolo's (Jennifer Connelly) childhood two-storey beachside San Francisco home. However, it only took this reclusive brunette still depressed over her recent failed relationship eight months to lose it, seeing as the county has repossessed her Bisgrove Street address due to non-payment of $500 in business taxes - forcing her to quickly move all of her belongings into a storage garage while the house goes up for sale and she's left living out of a motel room, trying to get this mistake straightened out through legal assistance. Kathy has a strong case, never having owned a business, but there's one major problem. Former Colonel Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley) has already bought her lost property at auction for a ridiculously low price, and has moved in with his Iranian wife and teenaged son. Behrani doesn't care about Nicolo's plight, and begins renovation work to transform his new abode into that of the comfortable seaside estate they once enjoyed, before fleeing their war torn homeland for the States. This childish American can camp in her car outside his driveway all she wants, as far as he's concerned. It makes no difference to him. That's around the time when Deputy Sheriff Lester Burton (Ron Eldard) starts taking an interest in Kathy. Conspicuously bumping into her, chatting over beers at a nearby pier, telling her about his crumbling nine-year marriage. Lester hates what Massoud is doing, and decides to have a somewhat heavy-handed talk with this immigrant that's keeping his attractive friend-turned-lover on the fringes of society. Of course, when it's discovered that Behrani plans to resell the house for five times what he'd paid, and Kathy turns to drunken suicidal rage, Burton sees no alternative but to hold that family hostage at gunpoint until they agree to leave on his terms...

This is almost a great movie. Both Connelly and Kingsley pull in excellent performances here that truly are believably sympathetic while at the same time being totally antagonistic towards each other. First-time director Vadim Perelman - apparently a Ryerson Film Studies dropout - allows his and Shawn Lawrence Otto's screenplay, based on the acclaimed 365-page 1999 novel by Andre Dubus III, to captivatingly flesh out these strong roles from their emotional cores with wonderfully frenetic and gritty results. The entire last third of this flick, during the hostage taking, is absolutely breathtaking to watch, because each character is experiencing only part of what's going on and reacts accordingly - with astoundingly realism - as you're sitting on the edge of your theatre seat knowing full well they're making terribly wrong choices. Awesome. Unfortunately, this picture fails with most of its supporting cast. They lack a certain credibility and presence while sharing screen time with Kathy or Massoud, painfully weakening the dynamics you suspect are supposed to be there but never truly materialize, holding things back with a kind of gnawing claustrophobic atrophy. This flaw is apparent between Behrani and wife Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo), but is undeniably noticeable with Eldard, whose boyish looks and soft-centred mannerisms never seem to jibe with the dark turmoil this local cop part he's been cast in seems to be wrestling with. Nicolo ending up in bed with him, and her following him out to a secluded cabin to flounce around half-naked - as titillating story-unimportant peeks merely intended to keep males dragged out to sit through this one awake - just didn't seem to me to be type of thing this far more capable and interesting woman would do. Their types didn't match on-screen. There's also a huge problem with the somewhat contrived melodramatic ending here that, without ruining the movie for you, required a lot more foreshadowing or simple cultural explanation than was afforded to make any clear sense. Check out 'House of Sand and Fog' as a worthwhile rental for the few truly fabulous scenes and some outstanding acting from Connelly and Kingsley, but I have a sneaking suspicion the book was put together better and is far more enjoyable than this rather small page-to-screen offering.

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Hidalgo
REVIEWED 03/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Peering out across the barren Arabian desert, ridiculed and virtually alone, barely able to see past the roasted shifting dunes that mark the first leg of The Ocean of Fire - a three hundred mile endurance race that many a man and beast have lost their lives to throughout its millennial-long existence - American Frank Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen) does what his experience as an infamously successful long-distance Pony Express messenger and vaguely sober trick rider with Buffalo Bill Cody's traveling Wild West Show tells him to: He lets the other hundred horsemen thunder past him on their impressive thoroughbred stallions. Biding his time until he needs his trusted mustang, Hidalgo, to "let 'er buck". See, this all started when emissaries of the aging yet powerful Sheikh Riyadh (Omar Sharif) furiously demanded that Cody stop referring to this little spotted horse as the greatest endurance race winner of all time. Al-Hattel - Riyadh's prized product of equine perfection - clearly deserves the title, being bred from champions and having won the death-defying hundred mile a day Mediterranean trek that easily rivals anything offered within this comparatively fledgling United States of 1890. So, with the pooled help of his fellow performers, Hopkins paid the thousand-dollar entry fee and boarded The City of Paris steam ship to Morocco, ready to prove them wrong. Claiming the title, and the $100,000 in Spanish silver, might come in handy back home. That's what got them into this impossible race, where the Sun plays tricks on your mind and sudden sand storms have killed in mere seconds. What's worse, a simmering rivalry between the Sheikh and his malicious nephew threatens Prince Bin Al Reeh astride Al-Hattel's expected glorious win when checkpoint raiders kidnap Jazira (Zuleikha Robinson), Riyadh's cherished daughter and the one betrothed to the Prince, and Frank is given little choice but to ride Hidalgo into the heart of enemy territory or face a fate worse than death...

Wow. Granted, I'm a sucker for a good horse tale, but director Joe Johnston's experience helming such actioners as 'The Rocketeer' (1991) and 'Jumanji' (1995) - as well as being visual effects art director on the first three Star Wars movies - definitely pays off in bringing John Fusco's fact-based screenplay to life here. Both Hidalgo and Frank Hopkins actually did exist, and were the first outsiders to take that grueling ancient challenge alongside (and much to the chagrin of) a hundred Arab horsemen near the end of the 19th Century, with Hopkins going on to win hundreds of successive endurance races well into his 60's, dying at age 86 in 1958. What Johnson does is give you an 'Indiana Jones'-style adventure, with labyrinthine double cross and pulse-pounding action throughout, as Mortensen - a true renaissance man who seems to have started a trend, purchasing this horse as well as the one he rode in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy - is put through a relentless pace of ducking scimitars, dodging bullets, and evading being buried or baked alive. Beyond that, what gives his role so much interesting back-story is the character's personal history. Him being born of a mixed marriage, never really feeling close to either his European or Aboriginal heritage, and witnessing the atrocity of the Indian War firsthand. A haunted loner who rides far from himself, as his friend Chief Eagle Horn (Floyd 'Red Crow' Westerman) deftly points out to him. Sure, a lot of this flick does play out as if you're an eight year-old dazzled for the first time by an old Douglas Fairbanks classic, but the strong story does have a depth that's well founded by its amazing cast of primary and supporting players. Definitely check this one out for the rip-roaring action and incredible storytelling from beginning to end. Good stuff.

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Hellboy
REVIEWED 04/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

The spoils of Adolph Hitler's world domination-mad obsession with the occult now rest in gloomy glass cases deep beneath the earth, as if waiting to be set free once again. They line the dim walls that loom over young FBI operative John Myers (Rupert Evans) on his first day, after he was transferred from the Marine Corps training base at Quantico to the gated and secluded Waste Management Services facility in Newark, New Jersey. See, this lone Art Deco building is merely a covert front for the small yet potent Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, created in secret by President Roosevelt to combat that Nazi threat back in 1944. Headed since its inception by the eighty-eight year-old Professor Trevor Bruttenholm (John Hurt), whose first assignment at the age of twenty-eight led him across the North Atlantic to the Isle of Skye with a handful of American soldiers during those desperate last days of the Third Reich. To the moonlit deserted ruins of a graveyard-skirted Scottish Abbey, where German scientists of a mystical and arcane order were conducting a technologically enhanced demonic ritual under the malicious hand of none other than Grigori Efimovich Rasputin (Karel Roden). Bruttenholm peered from the nearby shadows, aghast as this believed long-dead, seemingly indestructible evil monk of Russia's doomed Romanov Dynasty readied to unleash Ragnarok - the bringing of Hell unto Earth - from beyond the blinding spherical glow of an opening portal. Even now, the Professor oversees a never-ending battle of good against such relentless blood-thirsty peril, with the irreplaceably brutish aide of what came through on that eerie October night: Hellboy (Ron Perlman). Six foot five, pure brawn from horn-stumped head to reptilian tail, bright red and goateed, and with a huge right hand made of stone. This son of hades has lived most of his life at the Bureau, raised by Bruttenholm as his own to investigate and combat whatever creatures emerge from the darkness to threaten humanity, virtually unaware of his true calling. Rasputin knew. More powerful than ever, Rasputin still knows, and has returned with the Fuhrer's elite assassin and living cadaver Karl Kroenen (Ladislav Beran) to finish his devilish deed begun sixty years ago...

Apparently born from a whimsical doodle drawn during a comic book convention, and then developed into a string of groundbreaking popular graphic novels by creator/writer/artist Mike Mignola published by vanguard Dark Horse Comics beginning in 1994, the 'X-Files'-like eccentric stories of Hellboy have enjoyed a massive cult following for quite a while. What director Guillermo del Toro does here is remain true to the spirit of Mignola's wise-cracking demonic grunt, borrowing heavily from that comic's visually dark and blocky style, while giving fans a rip-roaring two-hour adventure that easily blasts the somewhat similar 'Ghostbusters' (1984) off the spectral anomaly-fightin' map. That's the problem. Sure, this often explosively ghoulish feast for the eyes - tinged with an interesting lovelorn side story featuring actor Selma Blair (as the self-institutionalized plasma flame-throwing Liz Sherman) - is definitely terrific fun. It's also obvious that Perlman had a great time with his wonderfully deadpan and surprisingly human role, despite having to endure it entombed in an intimidating rubber suit complete with full head mask. In fact, most of the cast led by Hurt do a pretty good job throughout. Including Roden and Beran, and Doug Jones (as Hellboy's mysteriously psychic, C-3P0-sounding amphibian counterpart Abe Sapien - voiced by David Hyde Pierce). The giant monsters resembling something from an H.P. Lovecraft liner note were slightly goofy but passable. Where this awesome-looking movie stumbles is that the story tends to take for granted that every ticket holder is already completely hooked in to the characters beforehand. There's nobody asking the questions that someone would ask when, for instance, standing face to face with a cigar-chomping big red devil for the first time in their life. Myers is the outsider, but doesn't act like one when we need him to be. It's as though there's a chunk missing somewhere, for a paying audience looking for a reason to care yet unfamiliar with the books. Turning this leading role into little more than a gimmicky Schwarzenegger stand-in grimacing one-liner gags and swinging around a handgun the size of a cannon at times, until the story finally remembers to fill in more of the blanks sometime during the last half hour. 'Hellboy' is absolutely delightful CGI-packed entertainment from beginning to end, but do yourself a favour and sit back with your brain switched off for the most part.

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Home on the Range
REVIEWED 04/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

An ominously large shadow of gloom is being cast across the Old West. And, it's not by Blue Ribbon-winner and three-time Golden Udder champion Maggie the heifer (voiced by Roseanne Barr), whose owner's small frontier ranch has already been auctioned off after the bank foreclosed on the property. Nope. She's been sold to Pearl, the kindly woman who runs the small 'Patch of Heaven' dairy farm full of happily pampered creatures both great and small, such as prim bessie Mrs. Calloway (Judi Dench) and ever-jovial Grace the cow (Jennifer Tilly). See, there's a ruthless band of rustlers on the loose, led by the notoriously nasty Alameda Slim (Randy Quaid), stealing away herds of prime Texan cattle - like the hundred or so that used to graze outside Maggie's former cozy old barn - under the darkness of night. This buffalo-riding beef thief is already wanted by the long arm of the law, but has holed up far from capture in his secret cave with co-conspirators The Willie Gang. Waiting to strike again by the pale full moon. It's as though these devious criminals want every peace-abiding rancher to go out of business, one square acre of land at a time. To be bought out for a song by an equally shady character named 'Y.Odel'. So, when financial troubles suddenly threaten Pearl's serene quarter-acre, Maggie, Pearl and Mrs. Calloway head in to town in the hopes of postponing the bank's three day deadline while they figure out how to win the money and save their last remaining home. They plead with Buck (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and Rusty (G.W. Bailey), Sam the Sheriff's trusty horse and dog, for help. That plan quickly backfires. They're just animals after-all, and the girls soon find themselves on the hunt for Alameda Slim as range-weary bounty hunters. However, Buck sees the opportunity of a lifetime come true when gun for hire Rico (Charles Dennis) rides him out into the open plain to bring Slim in for the hefty reward alone...

Word has it that 'Home on the Range' is the last full-length Disney movie featuring traditional hand-drawn animation, quietly ending that American studio's legacy begun by Walter Elias 'Uncle Walt' Disney (1901-1966) himself with the Oscar-winning and timelessly popular 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' (1937), with this simple yet surprisingly fresh hour and fifteen minute family flick. From the singing and dancing and slightly anthropomorphic animal designs harkening back to 'The Jungle Book' (1967), to the vibrantly whimsical pivotal scene heavily reminiscent of that pink elephant number from 'Fantasia' (1940), you can tell co-writer/director Will Finn wanted this one to pay special homage to that rich past while giving a paying audience a thoroughly enjoyable contemporary tale. Roseanne is hilarious here, chewing out decidedly flippant one-liners throughout, as her personably cantankerous bovine lead clashes with Dench's character as the outsider, deals with loss and revenge, and learns the meaning of friendship. It's a great show for kids, as well as for kids at heart looking to tap into some truly worthwhile feel good entertainment. And, apart from yet another Hollywood antagonist having red hair, my only real beef with this otherwise delightful lyrical romp co-written by John Sanford and scored by musical wunderkind Alan Menken is the premise behind Alameda Slim's diabolical machinations. They're never really explained, except as some vague allusion to vengeful greed. He's simply a bad-tempered outlaw scorned by society, with a rather weird, Pied Piper-like way of stealing cattle, and that's supposed to be enough. It's not, but I couldn't help but like the entire package anyways. With this bright offering's soundtrack rounded out by talents k.d. lang, Bonnie Raitt, and Tim McGraw, you're also sure to be humming at least one good tune while leaving the theatre with a smile on your face. This one runs a little short for a full-price ticket, but check it out as a fun rental for the impressive animation, the fun cameo voices, and the great morality play full of PG-rated laughs. Good stuff.

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Harry Potter 3
REVIEWED 06/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Much like the last sequel based on pauper turned richer than Queen Elizabeth children's novelist J.K. Rowling's hugely popular series of books, this impressively mature installment taken from her third, four hundred and thirty-five page best-selling 1999 fantasy returns long-orphaned now thirteen year-old Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) to his good friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Wilson), and the enchanted ancient Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, after enduring another summer stuck with his somewhat dull malevolent Aunt and Uncle. Director Alfonso Cuarón takes over the helm this time out, fashioning a much darker intriguing world of magic than previously seen in these films, as these three precocious dorm mates are handed yet another shadowy mystery to solve - this time, before recently escaped Azkaban Prison lifer Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) breaches a horrifying gauntlet of ghoulish Dementors guarding rain-swept Hogwarts and fulfills his feared deadly vendetta against Harry.

Good-hearted giant Rubeus Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) and menacing Dark Arts Professor Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) also make plot-important comebacks, with the introduction of Snape's newly arrived counterpart Professor R.J. Lupin (David Thewlis), rather flaky Divination instructor Professor Trelawny (Emma Thompson), and Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge (Robert Hardy) - as well as renowned Brit actor Michael Gambon filling the robe of lovably wise Headmaster Albus Dumbledore established by the late Richard Harris (1930-2002) - to round out this wonderfully capable main cast. Steven Kloves' screenplay marvelously pushes Potter's ongoing story further by grounding it in the familiar territory of casting curious spells and playing Quidditch matches enjoyed previously, while acknowledging that these kids are no-longer wide-eyed novices but bright inquisitive teenagers heavily indoctrinated by two years of arcane education as they enter their third. Radcliffe, Grint and Wilson are allowed to act like real people dealing with these often fantastic, extremely impressive digitally enhanced experiences. They continue to carry this saga with astoundingly fresh results, despite the last reel feeling slightly borrowed from 'Back to the Future' (1985). However, how come the infirmary for the sick and injured is housed in the school's clock tower? Weird.

Definitely check it out on the big screen, and be prepared to face the urge of wanting to see 'The Sorcerer's Stone' (2001) and 'The Chamber of Secrets' (2002) all over again. Awesome.

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Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
REVIEWED 08/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

It's been a rough Friday for our weed-lovin' New Jersey heroes. SAT top-scorer Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) has just thrown away his Medical School interview by admitting he's only there to appease his Dad. And, Brewster-Keegan's investment banking Junior Analyst Harold Lee (John Cho) has just been dumped with a load of end-of-day high priority paperwork by his unsympathetic party-seeking supervisor. However, that's not going to stop them from enjoying their weekend plans of sparking up some prime hemp in front of the TV. That is, until they're both hit with a major case of the munchies, and a convincingly sumptuous commercial sends Patel and Lee on a road trip adventure to New Brunswick for those famed flavour-bursting mini hamburgers at White Castle.

Well, this crassly ridiculous, sex-tinged pothead romp shot in and around Toronto does take its obvious hazy cues from 'Up in Smoke' (1978) and the subsequently goofy flicks by Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, updated and packaged for a contemporary young audience. Ironically, White Castle doesn't exist in Canada. So, in what's probably one of the most hilarious aspects of this feature, the crew actually had to truck in a building for those location scenes. Sure, the steady stream of cameo appearances by Jamie Kennedy, Ryan Reynolds, Anthony Anderson, Neil Patrick Harris (as himself, maybe) and others are fun to watch, as these two stars energetically flip between searching for 'the ultimate burger', replacing what's left of their contraband stash, and getting sidetracked by the faint promise of getting laid. However, 'Dude, Where's My Car?' (2000) director Danny Leiner's handling of first time screenwriters and bit players Jon Hurwitz's and Hayden Schlossberg's script tends to spend way too much time focusing on idiotic racial slurs and lazily stupid stereotypes while Leiner maintains a curiously tight short leash on this eighty-eight minute picture's potentially outrageous comedy throughout. They could have gone further with the laughs, frankly. Sure, there's a lot of bizarre stuff here that's truly funny, and some of the quick dialogue is memorably clever, but the momentum runs out of steam at several key points where I found myself expecting these guys to go even further over the top. For instance, comparisons to 'Harold and Kumar' with the recently released sex farce 'Eurotrip' (2004) are unavoidable and yet the latter is a far superior mind-bending screening rife with the kind of thoroughly side-splitting screwball mayhem that this new offering rarely reaches. Let's hope the on-screen suggestion of a sequel is more than just talk, and that it pushes the envelope further towards a far more satisfying ride than this admittedly enjoyable but fairly unfinished offering.

Definitely rent it as a second or third choice if you're up for a decidedly adult-intended R-rated marijuana-spurred adventure, but it's sporatically funny at best, pretty lame in parts and not as good as it could have been.

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A Home at the End of the World
REVIEWED 08/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham's 1990 novel, this initially slow-paced gem screen written by Cunningham ('The Hours' (2002)) and directed by Michael Mayer traces the fairly depressive and life-altering events that have shaped the childhood and teenaged years of suburban Clevelander Bobby Morrow (played as an adult by Colin Farrell). From witnessing the horrible death of his beloved mentoring older brother Carlton (Ryan Donowho) in 1967, to him having to deal with his traumatized father's emotional abandonment - deepened by the unexpected passing of his mother - by adopting his high school friend Jonathan Glover's (marvelously portrayed in adulthood by Dallas Roberts) parents in 1974, Bobby's development seems irreparably interrupted as his neediness for love and some semblance of stability grows. However, he's still an able-bodied and personable bloke, without too many obvious hang-ups. However, when the now elderly Glovers decide to move to Nevada and leave him on his own at his job at the local bakery, Morrow quickly becomes disoriented and sets out to reconnect with Jonathan in New York City during the early 1980's.

Surprisingly, this fairly small film from Warner Independent Pictures tells a decidedly fresh story about the fragility of relationships for an entire generation of post-Boomers. It's not just about seeing Farrell's much-publicized nude scenes, or his character's somewhat free spirited bisexuality being tastefully explored on screen, folks. Robin Wright Penn does a wonderful job as Clare, Jonathan's room mate and Bobby's eventual love interest, and there's an incredibly empowering moment between Morrow and Mrs. Glover (Sissy Spacek) after she walks in on the boys' mutually curious sexual dabbling that's so impressively crafted, that a paying audience can't help but feel as though a monumental cliché in Gay Cinema has finally been made redundant by her truly memorable alternative response. Lovely. At no time is this guy really portrayed as being a victim, despite having legitimate reasons to easily tilt in that direction. Full marks also go to Erik Smith - Bobby at age 9 - and more so to Andrew Chalmers, whose role as Bobby as an internally lost adolescent pretty well carries most of the first half of this extraordinary hour and half movie with astounding ease and natural charm.

Sure, there are a couple of relevantly graphic scenes of homosexuality that might possibly lead straight moviegoers to suddenly contemplate the number of ceiling tiles in the darkened theatre (five hundred and eighty-seven and a half, give or take), but this entire flick truly is a breath of fresh air over-all and definitely well worth checking out for its enormously masterful characters and heartwarming soulfulness. 'A Home at the End of the World' truly is an impressive, maturely presented benchmark.

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Hero
REVIEWED 08/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Not to be confused with the host of other movies featuring the same title released over the decades, famed Chinese director Yimou Zhang casts five-time Wushu demonstration martial arts championship winner Li Lian 'Jet Li' Jie ('Lethal Weapon 4' (1998), 'Cradle 2 the Grave' (2003)) as the Nameless Hero, a self-made assassin bent on a lifelong blood oath to avenge the summary genocide of his family and the people of Qin by the reigning king's massive military might. Now, having returned to his homeland and coming face to face with his sworn regal enemy in this magnificent walled palace, these two warriors discuss how the Nameless Hero managed to cleverly insinuate himself within ten paces of the king - in a kind of verbal chess match of multi-layered deception and enlightenment - as the initial story is told and systematically unraveled to reveal the truth regarding how three other equally adept killers, Long Sky (Donnie Yen), Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) and Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), masterfully played their parts towards the ultimate realization of this dangerous suicide mission at hand.

Admittedly, the hype sucked me in on this one. I actually believed going in that this completely subtitled Oscar-nominated snooze fest was going to play itself out as a brilliantly rip-roaring actioner from beginning to end. It's not. Sure, a huge portion of cinematographer Christopher Doyle's heavily CGI enhanced camerawork generously captures some of the most visually stunning moments seen on the big screen so far this year. And, Siu-Tung Ching's wonderfully artful choreography featured throughout the half dozen actual fight scenes are truly amazing. However, because the majority of this reportedly $30 million budgeted story - apparently the most expensive of its kind - primarily takes place through a series of fairly confusing and continually altering flash backs cited by Li while boldly sitting cross legged a few feet from his final foe, the entire movie plays out more like a furiously cobbled together montage of Zhang's favourite high octane-charged swordplay moments vaguely held together by these less than captivating chatty segues. As it stands, it feels as though it was told backwards most of the time. No wonder the master of non-linear storytelling, writer/director Quentin Tarantino, was encouraged to jump on board as its headlining presenter to (I guess) fill more seats. Sitting through this hundred and eleven minute disaster, it was tough to avoid making trite comparisons to any number of similarly edited films, and quietly wondering which cast member died before production was completed. None, actually. Leaving me to wonder afterwards just what Miramax - who initially bought the rights to 'Ying xiong' (this flick's original title, first released in China in 2002) - might have done to it, if they had been given time to figure out how to best present it with a far more cohesive plotline for a North American paying audience. As it stands, 'Hero' definitely features a wealth of gorgeously worthwhile segments that really make it an extravaganza for the eyeballs, but the entire movie is such a disjointed mess that it's really only worth spending time with as a rental. One where you're able to easily fast forward through the futile bits vaguely resembling an actual story, and simply let the astounding action sequences dazzle and delight you as pure entertainment.

Sadly, this one was a huge disappointment over all.

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Hotel Rwanda
REVIEWED 01/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Two years after a fragile 1992 ceasefire forced an end to the latest Rwandan civil war faced by its Hutu-empowered military government and the Uganda-based exiled Tutsi-dominated Rwandese Patriotic Front that invaded this country at the start of the Nineties, rumblings of another murderous uprising are becoming louder. This time, from anti-Tutsi minority Interahamwe militia supporters pushing to cleanse Rwanda of its 'cockroaches'. Pitting neighbour against neighbour, and splitting intermixed families along ancient tribal creeds. Sending a chill of mortal fear throughout this weary, economically poor population, as calls to arms ring out with growing intensity from every radio tuned to the otherwise popular Radio Télévision Libre de Mille Collines. Tegal's Hotel des Mille Collines' concierge and personably wily deal maker Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle; 'Swordfish' (2001), 'Ocean's Twelve' (2004)) hears them. Choosing to trust that President Juvénal Habyarimana and the UN contingent of Peacekeepers under Canadian Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte; 'Another 48 Hrs.' (1990), 'The Good Thief' (2002)) will settle this unrest before anything happens, despite the concerns of his driver Dube (Desmond Dube; 'The Long Run' (2000)) - a Tutsi - and by turning a blind eye to clear evidence to the contrary. Unswayed, Paul promptly goes about his daily responsibilities. However, when the army's increasingly brutal handling of suspected conspirators in the wake of Habyarimana's assassination sparks widespread racial genocide by the Interahamwe, Rusesabagina suddenly finds himself unwittingly chosen as the only Hutu that scores of fleeing Tutsi civilians can trust with their lives. This luxurious, Belgian-owned four-star oasis for foreign tourists becomes a haven for his Tutsi wife Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo; 'Ace Ventura 2' (1995), 'Dirty Pretty Things' (2002)) and children - and several refugees pouring in daily to eventually total well over twelve hundred - tenuously guarded by Oliver's outnumbered and politically shackled infantry. Paul's only real bargaining chip to rescue as many people as possible is his long-time association with the army's corrupt General Augustin Bizimungo (Fana Mokoena; 'Dangerous Ground' (1997)), but even that dangerous connection is strained beyond limits after all of the tourists are sent home, Belgium recalls its troops, and the militia begins targeting the Peacekeepers.

Reviewing this fact-based film - apparently partially inspired by writer Philip Gourevitch's acclaimed 1998 book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda - is a tough call, primarily because the Rwandan Genocide that resulted in the massacre of a reported 937,000 men, women and children, and displacing hundreds of thousands over the course of one hundred days in the summer of 1994 - as well as the obviously shameful, relatively unmoved response by the international community at the time - are still fresh a decade later and tend to bias one's judgment. Nothing can easily repair the residual effects of everything connected to that specific real life atrocity, frankly. That's one thing. 'Hotel Rwanda', as a self-professed real story - as opposed to a documentary similar to 'The Last Just Man' (2002) - set during that atrocity, is another. Moviegoers have seen and applauded wartime resistance pictures from Hollywood for years, so this one from Ireland-born co-writer/director Terry George really shouldn't be judged any differently. And, as it stands, Cheadle pulls in an astoundingly powerful, breakthrough performance while single handedly carrying the lion's share of this three-time Golden Globe nominee throughout. His character - now a business owner in Brussels, in real life - truly doesn't see himself as a hero, but simply as someone who's trying to do the right thing for his family during treacherously desperate times that are spiraling towards anarchy. Sometimes by manipulating his various antagonists' greed, other times by keeping one step ahead of them. Incredible. First timer Keir Pearson's and veteran writer George's ('In the Name of the Father' (1993), 'Hart's War' (2002)) screenplay is a riveting exposé of basic human nature incited by generations of racial hatred unleashed upon innocents, with this one man caught in the centre. Ironically, shades of 'Schindler's List' (1993) are clearly evident here. One wonders if Rusesabagina saw it then. However, it's in the factual details where this hundred and twenty-one minute offering tends to slightly lose credibility. As with actual news coverage by The West, not much of the feudal history of this African nation - a German colony from 1895 'til the end of WWII, declaring independence from Belgium in 1962 - is put into clear perspective for a paying audience. It's also fairly confusing trying to decipher who's with the Rwandan army or merely a crazed rebel out for Tutsi blood. Then, of course, there's the contentious issue of Nolte's character, apparently based on (but, according to George, more a kinda sorta made up composite... of one guy, I guess) the real UN Peacekeepers' leader at the time, Canada's currently retired Lieutenant-General turned award-winning author and humanitarian Roméo Dallaire. Casting a recovering coke head and renowned booze hound in this role is highly questionable, since Nolte's scandalous reality does unfairly taint Dallaire's experiences and own recovery from that post's trauma. As I'd indicated, it's a tough call reviewing by separating hard fact from movie truths with this one.

Definitely check it out as an extremely worthwhile feat of tremendous acting on Cheadle's and Okonedo's part, but you're probably better off taking 'Hotel Rwanda' on it's own terms, leaving memories of the actual events at the theatre door.

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Hide and Seek
REVIEWED 02/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

The horror of his longtime wife Alison's (Amy Irving; 'Carrie' (1976), 'Traffic' (2000)) gruesome razor blade suicide still tortures New York Psychologist David Callaway (Robert De Niro; 'Casino' (1995), 'City by the Sea' (2002)), to the point where every turn that he makes in their rambling upscale apartment is filled with a flood of unmanageable memories of their lives together. It's too painful. He just can't cope, still haunted by the suspicion that he should have seen it coming. That he could have done something to prevent her taking her own life, eerily surrounded by glowing candles on that chilled autumn evening. Her pale corpse found - by him - soaking in their porcelain bath tub filled with diluted blood escaping from her lifeless wrists. Traumatizing. Terrible. For David, but even moreso for his young daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning; 'I Am Sam' (2001), 'Man on Fire' (2004)). Her beloved mother's death has changed this little girl. It's stolen away her bright smiles and her childish giggles, brutally replacing them with a harsh, relentless stoicism frozen behind her cold blue eyes. The Callaways have to move. Despite the concerns of Callaway's friend and colleague Katherine (Famke Janssen; 'GoldenEye' (1995), 'X-Men 2' (2003)), they have to try to put this trauma behind them towards healing and starting over. The old lakeside house surrounded by a forest of sparsely grey, leafless trees is only an hour away from the city, in the small town of Woodland, but it's a start. However, Emily begins exhibiting strange behaviour soon after they settle in. Abandoning her bedroom shelf of fragile baby dolls for her new, apparently imaginary friend Charlie. Growing more distant from her worried father, and oddly disapproving of the young woman (Elisabeth Shue; 'The Saint' (1997), 'Hollow Man' (2000)) that David coincidentally meets and invites to bring the little girl in her care to play with Emily. David doesn't understand what's going on. Even as he learns more about the tragedy that's befallen his new neighbours who obviously admire his daughter a little too much, the thought that he might be losing Emily to this unseen pernicious playmate she's adopted is more than he can stand. She's started lying to him. Drawing crude crayon messages on the bathroom wall, and then blaming Charlie. How could she do this to him? How could she be so cruel? It's not his fault...

Admittedly, I half expected this fairly overlong psychological thriller to be a continuation of De Niro's somewhat lack luster recent horror work in 'Godsend' (2004). Sure, actor turned director John Polson ('Swimfan' (2002)) does serve up a meticulously successful aura of brooding suspense throughout this hundred-minute offering. The atmosphere of looming danger almost becomes a tangible character itself, in the same measure seen in 'The Shining' (1980) and 'The Changeling' (1979). However, that's also where 'Hide and Seek' fails as a thoroughly captivating spine tingler. There's no real pay off, after sitting in the dark through the majority of this heavy cinematic version of watching paint dry, bored out of your skull while waiting for something remotely scary to finally, eventually, hopefully jump out at you. It doesn't. Even when this celluloid sleeping pill turns into a slight homage to Jack Nicholson's famous axe-swinging moment in 'The Shining', it doesn't. The entire feature becomes all about the mystery of who Emily's friend Charlie is, without really giving you any reason to care who Charlie is until some kind of expected blade-gouging bloodbath gets things rolling, instead of about Ari Schlossberg's screenplay conjuring up any real sense of madness or tension over whatever impending mortal doom Charlie lazily metes out upon his small number of victims. Everything is in place for this turkey to otherwise explode with bright red slasher fury across the screen, but it curiously chickens out at every moment that the killing queue arises. Resulting in scene after labourious scene of De Niro's fist-like face clenched in scowling confusion at Fanning, as though he's trying to figure out why the heck he agreed to take this badly written role. Frankly, Fanning really only pulls in a half decent performance here because of the clever cinematography and lighting effects - the only worthwhile aspects of this picture - pointed at her. All she does is look scared a lot, or whimper and cry, or simply chew out a few monotone lines that could have been phoned in. The remaining cast are little more than human finger puppets, lending nothing of any value for a paying audience. The blood lust develops far more virulently amongst the audience duped by the ads, than on the big screen, folks. Unless you're a fan of horror movies that have a lot of creepy atmosphere but aren't particularly horrific or satisfying, steer clear of this terribly boring stinker.

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Hitch
REVIEWED 02/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Manhattan-based, professional lonely hearts "marketing consultant" Alex 'Hitch' Hitchens (Will Smith; 'Enemy of the State' (1998), 'I, Robot' (2004)) has it all figured out. He's a self-made and highly successful artist of the heart, painting his rosy canvas one deliberate opportunity at a time. "You can't use what you don't have. If you're extroverted, be extroverted...'You'," he explains, "is a fluid concept right now." Hitch is a venerable doctor of love, quietly coaching men on the finer points of winning the often illusive attention of women for years, definitely making a science out of the business of dating. Even his newest, most challenging client - O'Brien, Thompson & Kincaid's fairly oafish junior tax consultant Albert Brennaman (comedian Kevin James) - offers no serious obstacles for Alex's smooth techniques towards helping Albert into the high stakes medal round of exclusivity with the woman of his puppy-eyed dreams. Tall, blonde and very rich New York socialite Allegra Cole (Amber Valletta; 'What Lies Beneath' (2000), 'Raising Helen' (2004)) seems like an unattainable match for the incurably shy and bumbling Al, but, with a few minor adjustments and careful pointers drummed into him by Hitchens, he surprisingly finds himself face to face with a coyly interested Allegra as she hands him her private phone number with a smile. Everything falls into place, with another happy customer in the arms of his chosen soul mate. However, when Alex tries using his infallibly guaranteed matchmaking system for himself, on outwardly jaded New York Standard newspaper gossip columnist Sara Melas (Eva Mendes; 'Urban Legends: Final Cut' (2000), 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico' (2003)), he soon realizes that it's sometimes a lot easier to teach somebody else how to truly win a woman's heart without getting hurt than to do it himself. He's found his equal, and all of the cool lines and suave moves are quickly undermined by Hitch's own unresolved romantic scars still pinching at him from those old college days, when he was still an awkward pariah callously destroyed by unrequited love. Just as Brennaman seems transformed from an ugly duckling into a desirable swan in the arms of his girlfriend Cole, Hitchens is reduced to struggling composure through a series of unintentionally disastrous dates with Melas. Worse still, that hard hitting journalist is scooped by every other paper in town over the mystery man seen publicly enjoying the company of a very newsworthy Allegra Cole, and quickly follows the suspicious trail of a shadowy figure called "The Date Doctor" who's been training men in the finer art of picking up women...

Last year, a paying audience was treated to 'Breakin' All the Rules', a clever and surprisingly under rated flick in which Jamie Foxx's character used iron clad business techniques for firing employees towards helping men dump their unwanted girlfriends. This year, you're given the Ying to that one's Yang with 'Hitch', where a similarly clear cut system is cobbled together for unskilled men to actually have a girlfriend in the first place. I suspect that a lot of guys might consider going to this one to pick up some pointers, or perhaps, because they'll likely be in the minority of ticket holders lining up for this chick flick. However, director Andy Tennant ('Anna and the King' (1999), 'Sweet Home Alabama' (2002)) does attempt to throw a fairly captivating enough light hearted spin on the somewhat fluffy story arc of perpetual singles fumbling for happy relationships and eventual marital bliss here. First timer Kevin Bisch's screenplay crackles with plenty of thoughtful dialogue throughout, easily nudged into becoming a potentially enjoyable romantic comedy by Smith's and Mendes' naturally inviting screen presence and wonderful timing. This isn't another remake of the original 'Alfie' (1966), but does seem inspired by it at times. In fact, pretty well everything about this hundred and fifteen-minute feature is impressively well crafted and thoroughly enjoyable as a worthwhile popcorn romance. Everything, except the editing choices by Tennant and film editors Troy Takaki and Tracey Wadmore-Smith. As it stands, 'Hitch' ends up being half a dozen capably good scenes relentlessly swarmed by a series of vapid small laugh skits, when these characters and their brilliantly suggested foibles could have easily been fleshed out with much fuller dramatic and comedic moments that wouldn't feel as patchworked if more care had been taken. Which is a shame, really. Sure, what you get is entertaining enough, and does feature a few memorably funny scenes not already plucked and repackaged for the ads. If you're looking for something that you don't really need to pay much attention to on the big screen, you'll get your money's worth. Frankly, this main cast has individually shown their obvious acting talent to a far wider degree in other offerings, making 'Hitch' feel more like a cinematic charity case, where they're basically fulfilling a favour until something better comes along. Check it out as a fun, fairly familiar cloud of cinematic candy floss if there's nothing else worth renting, but you'll likely find your eyes wandering before the closing credits.

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Hostage
REVIEWED 03/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

It's been a long grey year of getting his life back. Of ex-veteran LAPD S.W.A.T. team professional and former Prime Hostage Negotiator Jeff Talley (Bruce Willis; 'The Fifth Element' (1997), 'Hart's War' (2002)) slowly desensitizing himself, day by day, to the haunting fearful stare of that little boy's dying eyes. Now, while hiding behind the safety of procedural paperwork as sleepy small town Chief of Bristo Camino's Police Department, he's suddenly faced with almost the exact same potentially deadly situation when a trio of car thieves break into a secluded high security mansion and take the residents hostage. One of Talley's officers has already been shot and killed, quickly escalating the situation. A far better manned County Sheriff's department has assumed command, and the media coverage soon grips the news headlines. Walter Smith (Kevin Pollak; 'Grumpier Old Men' (1995), 'The Whole Ten Yards' (2004)), an unassuming underworld accountant, his teenaged daughter Jennifer (Michelle Horn; 'Return to the Secret Garden' (2000)) and his young son Tommy (Jimmy Bennett; 'Daddy Day Care' (2003), 'Pooh's Heffalump Movie' (2005)) are locked inside their fortified home with their armed and panicked assailants Dennis (Jonathan Tucker; 'Sleepers' (1996), 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' (2003)) and Kevin Kelly (Marshall Allman; 'Little Black Book' (2004)), and the trigger happy psychopath Mars Krupcheck (Ben Foster; 'Big Trouble' (2002), 'The Punisher' (2004)), but Jeff's work seems done here. That is, until the shadowy band of highly organized criminals Walter works for recruit Talley - by brutally kidnapping his family at gun point - as their only hope in retrieving sensitive information also trapped inside the Smith manor. At this point, Jeff controls whether his wife and daughter live or die, relying on adrenaline frayed wits and desperate phone calls from Tommy to save this impossibly dire stand off from spiraling out of control.

Based on veteran television writer and prolific novelist Robert Crais' 2001 pot boiler, director Florent Emilio Siri's ('Une minute de silence' (1998), 'Nid de guêpes' (2002)) slightly familiar, tightly paced crime drama is an absolute crowd pleaser. From the stylish, CGI opening credits to the violently explosive ending, 'Hostage' is an astounding nail biter that cleverly presents a host of story twists, carefully veering from allowing these somewhat stereotypical Hollywood characters to become a bunch of human finger puppets being pushed around the set for its star to burst in saving with much gnashing of teeth and guns a-blazin'. Sure, this flick is undisputably yet another in a line of Willis' anti-hero cop movies, and he does tend to over react in a couple of key scenes. However, unlike in the 'Die Hard' (1988) franchise, his and the supporting roles are wonderfully fleshed out as individually intelligent and furiously self-sustaining people here that a paying audience can easily relate to throughout this hundred and thirteen-minute emotional roller coaster ride. Foster's portrayal is eerily astounding, as likely the first memorable break through performance of the year. It's the tangible balance of uncertainty regarding what each of these players will do at any given time that truly lifts Doug Richardson's screenplay above and beyond what you think you're going to see play out. Awesome. There was actually one moment, during a particularly frightening scene, where this picture shocked me enough that I dropped my pen while writing notes in the dark. Definitely check it out on the big screen as a thoroughly entertaining, if not extremely intense and violent offering that's well worth the price of admission.

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
REVIEWED 05/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

"O Frettled Gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me..." Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman; 'Love Actually' (2003), 'Shaun of the Dead' (2004)) needed a cup of tea. Preferably hot. Preferably sipped in the comfort of the tidy kitchen of his small, white picket fenced house in the sunny, breezy English countryside of Cottington. On Earth. "As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee..." Hot tea. Arthur's kitchen. Cottington, England. Earth. All of these things made perfect sense to him, as the swollen mouth of the fuzzy green, hugely malformed face of the Vogon Construction Fleet Captain puckered and bloated in unison with the gibberish-sounding gibberish coming out of it. "Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes..." Vogon Poetry. "And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles..." That's what Dent's good friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def; 'The Italian Job' (2003), 'The Woodsman' (2004)) - who apparently wasn't an out of work actor from Gilford like he'd said, but a field writer for the best selling book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and was in fact an alien from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse - had called it. The third worst poetry in the known Universe, the somewhat helpful, pocket book-sized computerized guide had elaborated. "Lest I rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurgle-cruncheon / See if I don't." None of it made any reasonable sense to Arthur's brain. Neither did he and Ford being bound to cold, upright slabs inside the Vogon ship, listening to this terrible extra-terrestrial blather mere minutes after a city crew had bulldozed his small house, his tidy kitchen, and any foreseeable hope of him enjoying anything remotely resembling a cup of tea, to make way for a bypass; minutes before the Vogons had destroyed the Earth to make way for a hyperspace expressway. Before the poetry bits, and a few more minutes before they were both unceremoniously dropped into the vacuum of outer space for hitching a ride without the proper, Vogon-certified official permit. Arthur, holding his breath, weightless, and still in his natty terry bathrobe and pajamas and slippers, definitely needed some tea. However, space is vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big, says the book. With Earth now gone, the likelihood of having a nice cuppa had become highly improbable, because the galaxy was now considerably more tea-less. Likely making circumstances somewhat more probable that they would end up as unexpected passengers on the Heart of Gold - an orb-shaped, improbability-driven spacecraft commandeered by the recently elected and slightly more recently self-kidnapped, rock star-like President of the Universe, Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell; 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' (2002), 'Matchstick Men' (2003)), who's search and rescue is also being overseen by the Vogons - as it erratically skips and splays through time and space while piloted by Dent's former Earthbound girlfriend Tricia 'Trillian' MacMillan (Zooey Deschanel; 'Almost Famous' (2000), 'Elf' (2003)) towards the elusive ancient world of Magrathea, and the amazingly amazing Ultimate Question to the known Ultimate Answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything - which is, of course, forty-two.

Reportedly, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy started out as former 'Doctor Who' (1963-2005) and 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' (1969-1974) Brit writer Douglas Noel Adams' (1952-2001) six-part BBC radio Sci-Fi comedy serial in 1978, before being published in 1979 as the first in his world famous "trilogy of five books", and then hitting the UK small screen as an apparent compendium of four of them in 1981. Director Garth Jennings' big screen version - rewritten as a shopped around screenplay over the course of two decades by Adams - primarily sticks with the main characters and pared down versions of the majority of recognizable material introduced to readers in the first novel. With that being said, this surprisingly flat movie feels overtly campy and dated over-all. Sure, the CGI effects and prosthetic creatures are all absolute visual delights, but the humour feels forced and the acting horribly overacted as though for a Pantomime stage. Picking out the not-so subtle glimpses of Adams, and seeing Simon Jones ('Twelve Monkeys' (1995), 'The Meaning of Life' (1983)) - who first portrayed Arthur Dent on radio and TV - make a cameo appearance here, do enrich this screening with trivial wonders, but those in-joke asides hardly add to the story's accessibility for a new generation of paying moviegoers untouched by the overwhelming hype surrounding this franchise in the Eighties. It's also fun sitting through the familiar eccentric dialogue, but this is a new and updated effort that isn't particularly new anymore, nor altogether better than or as freshly quirky as the thoroughly involving original television series burdened by shoestring effects was. Reviewing the big screen 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' is like unfairly comparing a noticeably less than captivating screen adaptation of a much loved preceding book, but this hundred and ten-minute picture is obviously meant for fans who will likely feel compelled to rewatch the old shows and reread the books before buying a ticket. Frankly, you're better off avoiding doing any revisiting of the earlier sources, if you want to enjoy this one without experiencing continual bouts of exasperated disappointment. If you're completely new to it, you'll still likely find yourself blown away by the special effects while wondering why the screenplay tries to resemble corny twenty year-old British skit humour tinged by classic 'Star Trek' episodes. Apart from looking a hundred times better yet seeming embarrassingly unnecessary, the other good aspect of this flick is that it doesn't meander while elaborating more fully upon the Vogons and the part of Zaphod's political rival Humma Kavula (played by John Malkovitch). That's still not enough to make it anything other than a curious remake, though. You're better off simply reading the far more imaginative, wonderfully bizarre books.

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House of Wax
REVIEWED 05/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Heading out on an open road, weekend excursion through the deep South towards an anticipated football game, six young Florida locals quickly find themselves on a detour of sheer panic and tortured death when they make camp near the secluded tree-lined ghost town of Ambrose - home to Trudy Sinclair's Madame Tussaud's-like, World Famous House of Wax. Good natured Wade (Jared Padalecki) has really only tagged along because he's interested in buxom brunette Carly Jones (Elisha Cuthbert), despite her brooding brother Nick's (Chad Michael Murray) relentlessly scornful jibes. This is really Blake's (Robert Ri'chard) idea, having eagerly dragged them, his lithe girlfriend Paige (Paris Hilton), and Nick's socially stunted sidekick Dalton (Jon Abrahams) along for this adventurous road trip that quickly goes wrong. First, the fan belt breaks on Wade's car, sending him and Carly into town on the advice of a creepy road kill dump worker (Damon Herriman) who lets them off at the town's overgrown entrance. And then, when deciding to drive ahead in order to buy tickets before the opening kick off results in Blake's car being stuck in traffic, the remaining four are forced to return to those deathly woods for a second night. However, it's been hours since anyone has seen or heard from Wade or Carly, who have managed to find help from Ambrose's only friendly face: Gas station and garage owner Bo Sinclair (Brian Van Holt), who invites them up to the house. Nick and Dalton go to find them, but the evening has already cast its long, blood-craved shadow across these unsuspecting tourists. Something wicked that will not be denied its lust for flesh lurks in the dark, impatiently watching and waiting for them to join the ghoulish menagerie that occupies the House of Wax...

Surprisingly entertaining, first-time director Jaume Serra's hundred and five-minute offering is a predominantly uncomplicated slasher flick that tends to follow in the same familiar foot steps as 'My Bloody Valentine' (1981), 'Friday the 13th' (1980), 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' (1974), and pretty well every other horror movie where a group of young stereotypes end up being systematically hunted down by a relentless, shadowy psychopath wielding a blood-stained knife. It's got that same schlock feel to it, except that the sexual aspects have been minimized to mere suggestion and artful illusion. It's certainly not a remake of the 1953 classic starring Vincent Price. Chad Hayes' screenplay really doesn't add anything new to the formula. This one still relies heavily on the decidedly gooey special effects, just like pretty well all of its memorable cinematic predecessors have. However, within that context, 'House of Wax' does manage to dish up the expected goods with impressively morbid delight. Sure, there's been an overwhelming amount of media hype surrounding it, thanks to casting infamous ingenue-du-jour Paris Hilton in a measurably undemanding co-starring role here, but that really doesn't hold much relevance in any other way than as a lazily successful marketing ploy. More moviegoers will likely know about this picture because of that, rather than from them actually having gone to see it as a whole. Which is a shame. This cast of capable actors collectively give a paying audience reasonably good performances over-all, with Cuthbert and Murray easily leading the way. And, the goriness, brief quips of wry humour, and its rollicking CGI created ending are nearly perfect for the most part. That said, Stephen F. Windon's fairly pedantic camera work and, predominantly, Joel Negron's somewhat haphazard editing do leave a lot to be desired throughout. There's a pivotal scene here in particular, where one victim-to-be escapes into the night woods, only to sneak into what at first looks like the area behind a prop wall, when that previously unmentioned yet plot important building could have been incorporated into the story as a notable landmark early on for the sake of its existence making sense. Check it out if you're looking for high gross-out value, minimal actual frights, and an over-all deliciously gruesome time at the big screen.

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The Honeymooners
REVIEWED 06/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Veteran New York Bus Line driver and longtime aspiring get rich quick schemer Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer) needs cash fast. Twenty thousand dollars worth. Sure, it's not his fault that his last windfall business opportunity, attempting to profit from the Mets winning the baseball season, left him and his beleaguered wife of six years Alice (Gabrielle Union; 'Abandon' (2002), 'Breakin' All the Rules' (2004)) with boxes of expensively unsellable merchandise to add to their small Brooklyn apartment's closet warehouse of other failed investments. Ralph is determined to see his ship come in, even if he has to sink the harbour making it happen. He knows that Alice has a her heart set on them putting their life savings towards a down payment on a lovely duplex nestled near the greasy spoon diner where she and co-worker Trixie Norton (Regina Hall; 'The Best Man (1999)', 'Scary Movie 3' (2003)) work, but Kramden knows a sure thing moneymaker when he sees one. He knew it almost as soon as he'd laid eyes on that rusted old Pullman train car buried in a forgotten rail tunnel sixty feet under the streets where his City Sewer maintenance buddy and upstairs neighbour Ed Norton (Mike Epps; 'Bait' (2000), 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse' (2004)) had found it. That auctioned relic would be the touring riding ticket to all of his wildest and richest dreams to give Alice the Moon - just as he'd promised her on the first night they'd met. He also knew a gold mine had fallen into his lap when he'd realized just how fast the dog that Ed had rescued from a construction dumpster could run, convincing the owner of the New Jersery Park Stadium to let them race in at that track's anniversary greyhound derby and hiring unorthodox trainer Eazy Dodge (John Leguizamo) to help build a champ out of their mangy four-legged tramp. However, Alice goes ahead and asks her Ralph-hating mother for the money to top up their bank account, quickly discovering that Ralph's latest plans for financial security have left them two hundred and twenty-six dollars and sixty cents overdrawn. Now, more desperate than ever to win his exasperated better half's love and approval, Kramden gambles everything on that dumpster dog beating the odds and winning the race's lucrative purse before that dream duplex is sold to smug Manhattan property developer William Davis (Eric Stoltz).

It's clear that director John Schultz ('Drive Me Crazy' (1999), 'Like Mike' (2002)) wants you to draw comparisons between this fairly light-hearted, family-friendly contemporary comedy and venerable, Oscar-nominated bygone showman Herbert John 'Jackie' Gleason's (1916-1987) ('The Hustler' (1961), 'Smokey and the Bandit' (1977)) 'Cavalcade of Stars' (1949-1952) television skit turned thirty-nine episode prime time classic sitcom, 'The Honeymooners' (1955-1956). Not on its own merits. However, set aside the title and its characters' names, and there's not much remaining that suggests any real reason why the connection needs to be made at all. Thankfully. Let's face it, Gleason's Kramden was a bombastic, childish noise whose singularly recognizable "Wunna deez days, Alice..." punch line wrongfully perpetuated domestic violence as humour for subsequent generations to tap into and emulate. In that respect, this big screen adaptation feels more like it's loosely based on the well-known and relatively harmless Hanna-Barbera cartoon, 'The Flintstones' (1960-1966), which famously borrowed heavily from Gleason's cast of circa 1950's Brooklyn stereotypes. In other words, you can see Ralph's greed-fuelled plans culminating in a closing, chin-on-chest apology from a mile away. At the same time, Cedric the Entertainer's ('Barbershop' (2002), 'Be Cool' (2005)) Kramden seriously lacks the frenetically silly, over-the-top hilarious energy that frequently erupted between Gleason and Academy Award-winner Art Carney's (1918-2003) Ed Norton in their Golden Age, Emmy-winning TV show, or that of Modern Stone Age pals Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. So, this 2005 version of 'The Honeymooners' ends up playing out as a vaguely humourous, disappointingly pedantic buddy flick showcase for its on-screen players and their movie wives to ham it up. It's a safe, feel good romp where co-writers Barry W. Blaustein's and Danny Jacobson's inside joke and face pulling screenplay never strays into uncharted territory, to the point where the story actually does feel as though a paying audience has sat through it before. Possibly in old black and white reruns from more than a couple of decades ago. Quite frankly, the only memorable bright spots throughout this slothful ninety-minute feature arise whenever the camera turns its attention to John Leguizamo's wonderfully quirky, scene-stealing scam artist caricature. Even though corny one-liners bloat his dialogue, he obviously had a blast and is an absolute riot here. Unfortunately, it's not enough to push the entire picture above becoming little more than a mundane curiosity that moviegoers unfamiliar with the original material might find enjoyably quaint. This one's definitely an unoffensive, undemanding and unproductive use of film stock that works as a fluffy second choice rental, but really should have packed more punch for the price of admission.

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Howl's Moving Castle
REVIEWED 06/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Plain Sophie Hatter has relinquished all hopes of seeing her teenaged life change from the daily task of sewing simple hats in her dearly missed father's small village shop. She's not complaining, though. The glistening lake and rolling hills and wide open skies of the Land of Ingary stretch far beyond her lonely work station's window, but she has no interest in pursuing the sweet adventures of the world as her much prettier and popular younger sister Letty has over the years. Even when their fashionably desirable, long-widowed mother drops by in her new chic chapeau of feathers and flowers brought back from the best designers in Haute Couture, Sophie remains unimpressed by such material dalliances. Why should she bother? Word of impending war is spreading from the King's Royal City. Everyone will soon be fighting, so nobody will want her anyways. That is, until a beguiling man with long blonde hair saves her from two overzealous soldiers blocking her walk through a narrow alleyway, and Sophie finds herself fleeing a mob of oily creatures and then literally walking on air in the arms of this gorgeously handsome stranger, high above the rooftops and the townsfolk watching the military parade below. He must have been none other than Howl the Wizard himself. "Be careful," warns Letty. "Howl eats the hearts of pretty young girls." At eighteen, with her young heart left very much uneaten after meeting the famous and much-feared sorcerer, Sophie clearly isn't good-looking at all. She goes back to work as though nothing had happened. Locking up at night, only to have an unexpected and outrageously rude customer enter anyways. When she awakened and discovered the aging curse that the Witch of the Waste had cast upon her, Sophie realized she had to leave. She looked ninety years old and felt just as bad. Nobody would understand. She had no choice but to journey into the Waste - a barren, jagged landscape beyond the forests and mountains she knew so well - and make the Witch reverse the curse. That's when she met "Turnip head", a surprisingly helpful yet mute scarecrow that wouldn't leave her alone. And then, there was Howl's Castle: A hugely monstrous contraption of mismatched buildings that walked on four legs under the magical command of a talking flame of fire within its messy walls. Calcifer, the fire demon enslaved in a mysterious bond with Howl for years, quietly makes a pact with Sophie that promises to break both of their curses. However, Howl has played into the Witch of the Waste's devilish plans by hiring on Sophie as his cleaning lady, and quickly threatens to undermine all that this family of unwitting heroes hope to gain by working together.

Loosely adapted from Brit fantasy novelist Diana Wynne Jones' acclaimed 1986 book, Oscar-winning writer/director Hayao Miyazaki's ('Princess Mononoke' (1997), 'Spirited Away' (2001)) visually impressive, 2004 animated offering from Japan truly is an absolute wonder throughout. Lush elements of favourite Fairy Tales and famed sagas of bygone swords and sorcery are clearly in abundance here, with Miyazaki's screenplay - apparently translated into English by Cindy Davis Hewitt and Donald H. Hewitt - presenting an immediately charming and thoroughly captivating adventure for a paying audience and young children alike to easily enjoy following along with. The artwork, while made slightly cumbersome by the use of completely different drawing styles for a couple of the characters, is undeniably superb over-all. 'Hauru no ugoku shiro' (its Japanese title) actually does feel a lot like a less complicated sequel-in-spirit of Miyazaki's 'Alice in Wonderland' (the all-star 1933 version, or Disney's famous 1951 classic) like 'Spirited Away', with similarly bizarre creatures rearing their ugly heads while Sophie (voiced here by Emily Mortimer; 'The Ghost and the Darkness' (1996), 'Dear Frankie' (2004)) attempts to rid herself of the Witch of the Waste's (Lauren Bacall; 'Key Largo' (1948), 'Birth' (2004)) curse that's turned this eighteen year-old into a wrinkled bent backed crone (Jean Simmons; 'Guys and Dolls' (1955), 'How to Make an American Quilt' (1995)). Sure, fans of the book will likely be disappointed that much of the page turning romantic entanglements have been pared away in favour of this hundred and nineteen-minute screening's decidedly anti-war overtones, but that glaring example of artistic license actually works extremely well within the context of what transpires on screen. All of the main characters vividly come to life thanks in large part to its cast of voice actors - which also includes Christian Bale ('American Psycho' (2000), 'Batman Begins' (2005)) as Howl the fairly narcissistic wizard, Josh Hutcherson ('The Polar Express' (2004), 'Kicking & Screaming' (2005)) as Howl's young assistant Markl, and Billy Crystal ('City Slickers' (1991), 'Analyze That' (2002)) as the precocious fire demon Calcifer. However, the real stars are this picture's team of animators who skilfully render an immensely captivating world of mystery and magic, where a jumbled architecture believably lumbers along the mountainous countryside of this mesmerizing wonderland on massive bird legs and a strangely silent scarecrow clad in little more than a tattered tuxedo jacket can steal every scene that he's in. Pure brilliance. It's also a pleasure seeing inventive use of the unexplainable - such as the four portals leading from one door into completely different realms with the flick of a switch - without any need for its plot-important whimsiness to be over done or turned into a punch line for contrived humour. How these characters react and interact is playfully humourous enough for 'Howl's Moving Castle' to be a thoroughly enjoyable piece of entertainment from beginning to closing credits. Absolutely check out this wonderfully fresh, PG-rated family friendly fantasy for young adults that kids of all ages can easily enjoy at the theatre or as a much cherished rental. Good stuff.

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The Holy Girl
REVIEWED 06/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

The hotel is a simple oasis that stands at the edge of the narrow, stone street that lazily carves through this heat-stricken Argentine city. The doctors, noisily converging within and dispersed from its small wooden lobby in preparation for a medical conference being held there for the next two weeks, seem to be a friendly enough crowd. If nothing else, their temporary stay adds a certain new life to this beige layer cake of hallways and windows and apartments that sixteen year-old Amalia (María Alche) has long since learned to call home. Seeing them come and go, watching them dine in the hotel's restaurant, hearing these physicians lounge in their white robes and professional smiles at the indoor pool, they've become a pleasant diversion from the boring religious studies that she and her gossipy best friend Josefina (Julieta Zylberberg) endure every day at Catholic school. It's just difficult to take their teacher seriously when it comes to the Divine Word, when they all know their teacher ends up French kissing a much older man, quivering in public at his touch, every time their class is over. The same tongue that sings of glory, licks wet flicks like a snake entwined in the throes of carnal passion. It's hypocritical. Nasty. Sin is serious. Saving souls as a holy organ of the Almighty's true law is what their teacher should be devoting her life to. Not living a lie. Not forcing these girls to make boring photocopies of exemplary piety to read aloud as inspiration towards their vocation. The reality of hearing God's calling and acting upon it is what truly matters, Amalia decides. All that she needs is a sign. Recite her prayers, practice seeing visions with Josefina, and be receptively sensitive to any signal from above. Just like the feeling that washed over her that day, outside at the musical display, when lonely Dr. Jano brushed up against her. He has such sad eyes for an older man. When he's asleep in his darkened room, he stops breathing for a few seconds. His shaving cream still smells fresh on her collar, days after Amalia snuck back into his room to rub his scent into her pure white blouse. The flood of senses that are awakened inside of her body whenever she sees him must be what Amalia has been desiring. Clearly, Dr. Jano is the lost soul that God has chosen for her to save.

Well, I'm still trying to figure out this sporadically great-looking yet excruciatingly elusive and dull, subtitled 2004 Cannes-nominated adult drama from writer/director Lucrecia Martel ('La Ciénaga' (2001)). Because of this film, I'm seriously considering buying a calorie clicker to record the bloated number of times that I find myself sitting in the dark, grinding my teeth in exasperation, wanting to stand up to give my arms full freedom to spin in frustration like mini windmills while I yell, "What the heck is happening? Get on with it!" at the screen. 'La Niña santa' (its original Spanish title) would likely measure a thirty-seven. Regardless of whether or not it's a product of film editor Santiago Ricci's suspiciously unsure skills at actually cutting for pacing and clarity, or perhaps it's a result of Martel's apparent love of Mime, this hundred and four-minute cinematic sleeping pill seems to take great delight in keeping a paying audience out of the loop while boring you to death. Which actually is a shame, considering that this is obviously a hugely capable ensemble cast that's collectively helmed by first timer María Alche (as Amalia, the misguided holy girl), sultry Argentine TV star Mercedes Morán ('Diarios de motocicleta' (2004)) portraying her divorce-scarred single mother Helena, and Carlos Belloso's emotionally awkward Dr. Jano. You can tell there's a lot going on under the surface, but much of it remains unanswered and left to your already cramping imagination. Is Jano unhappily married, pushing him towards flirting with Helena's fragile sensuality? If so, why is he homesick for his wife and kids? Why does he invite them to join him, if he wants to be with this other woman? Is he secretly, sexually attracted to teenaged Amalia as she seems to be for him or is he simply not conscious of personal space or that book by Nabokov? Is this burgeoning Lolita actually attracted to him, or is she merely attempting to save his soul by tempting him with sin? Why, after telling her anal sex-lovin' best friend Josefina (Julieta Zylberberg) that she knows what to do within the context of her choosing this man to perform God's good work upon, does Amalia nervously stalk Jano and then scurry to her bedroom and masturbate? Yeah, it's weird and kinda sick. The relentlessly esoteric fog that cloaks this decidedly mature-oriented coming of age movie's already amateurish presentation betrays each and every performance here, to the point where it feels as though cinematographer Félix Monti mercifully broke out the macro lens two-thirds of the way through in a fit of panicked conscience to salvage this boring mess with a series of incredibly delicate, artfully blurred compositions. They don't really seem to have anything to do with translating whatever parts of the script were apparently typed in invisible ink, but they sure are memorably lovely. And then, there are all of the soul-sucking moments where nothing actually happens. Nada. Awful. I truly wanted to enjoy 'The Holy Girl' as an insightful examination of youthful religious obsession mixed with a sexual awakening gone terribly wrong, but it was unfortunately, disappointingly impossible to do so with this final cut. Lousy.

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Herbie: Fully Loaded
REVIEWED 06/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

After successfully graduating from college, incorrigible tomboy Maggie 'Mags' Peyton (Lindsay Lohan) has returned to her widower father Ray Peyton Sr.'s (Michael Keaton) comfortable suburban California home. It's a short stop over, though. There's hardly enough time to drop by the speedway track to catch her older brother Ray Jr. (Breckin Meyer; 'Kate & Leopold' (2001)) follow in the family tradition by honing his driving skills for the upcoming Nascar rally. Maggie and Charisma (Jill Ritchie) - her bubbly campus roommate of four years - plan to hit the highway for the summer, before a new job with ESPN sends Ms. Peyton packing to New York City. The welcoming, unfettered road into the adult world stretches out in front of her. There's only one thing missing: Maggie needs a car. So, in celebration of her post-secondary scholastic achievement, Ray Sr. proudly takes her to Crazy Dave's Scrap & Salvage to pick out any car that she likes from that overgrown graveyard lot of bent and rusted, woefully pre-used vehicles. There's that sporty black stock car number 86, but Maggie's already promised her slightly overprotective Dad that she'll never go back to touching anything remotely connected to her past days as a street racer. One accident was more than enough to set her straight. No, a safer choice would definitely be that plain silver Nissan parked behind this dilapidated old, red, white and blue striped Volkswagen beetle that honked at her and wasn't there a minute ago. And then, Herbie smiles a big bright, chrome plated bumper smile like only Herbie can. As she later explains to her high school friend and self-made mechanic Kevin (Justin Long; 'Galaxy Quest' (1999), 'Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story' (2004)), "I've learned to embrace the mystery that is Herbie". See, Herbie the VW bug has a mind of his own, and instantly adopted Mags as his new owner from the first moment he laid his dusty round eyes, uh, headlights on her. He loves how she fantasizes about racing into first place as a champion speedster, just like this little car did at Monte Carlo all those years ago. He loves the tricks that she effortlessly pulls on her trusty skateboard, quickly emulating them during an unfair challenge by smugly famous Nascar winner Trip Murphy (Matt Dillon) that Maggie's unwittingly forced into. Trip's humiliating public defeat was really his won fault anyways. Herbie doesn't like to be made fun of. However, Murphy won't let it go, and Maggie's Big Apple plans suddenly take a wild hairpin detour towards competing in a winner takes all, $10,000 competition behind the wheel that could unwittingly send her now super charged number 53 pet back to the scrap heap as a smashed to smitherines target of the local demolition derby if she's not wise to Trip's unscrupulously vindictive machinations...

The history behind this rather fluffy yet surprisingly enjoyable feature seems a little hazy. Not so much regarding the familiar, economically sturdy Type 1 Volkswagen Der Käfer - originally commissioned by Adolf Hitler and designed by Porsche in pre-WWII Germany - that enjoyed massive North American popularity in the Sixties and saw its last, 21,529,464th car roll off its Puebla, Mexico assembly line to be shipped to VW's Wolfsburg museum in 2003. Very little seems readily available about writer Gordon Buford, who wrote the story Car, Boy, Girl in 1961 that reportedly inspired Disney Studios to produce the first Herbie movie, 'The Love Bug' (1968), starring Dean Jones and comedian Buddy Hackett (1924-2003). According to a 1970 Small World magazine article posted on the global devotee love bug fan site (http://www.geocities.com/lovebugfans/ index1.htm), Buford cites that, "Sometimes, though, neither my mother's gentle persuasion nor my father's cussing could coax our automobile out of its quiet, stubborn rebellion. My mother's anxiety (the holding of her breath at the moment of truth when her foot pushed the starter) subtly drew me to the conclusion that cars, like horses, have personalities, that they wield incredible power over us mere humans." Hilarious. However, while Buford - whose story looks as though it was eventually included in the 1969 book Herbie The Love Bug - is credited with creating Disney's now classic, madcap racing comedy's inexplicably self-determined and oftentimes mulish vehicle, this famed pearl white beetle's name was apparently adopted by the studio from one of Hackett's routines at the time. 'Herbie: Fully Loaded' is the original family flick's fourth big screen sequel, wonderfully stringing together archival clips from 'Herbie Rides Again' (1974), 'Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo' (1977) and 'Herbie Goes Bananas' (1980) in its opening credits and cleverly exploits this bug's familiar shenanigans in a contemporary Californian setting. You can tell that co-screenwriters Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar had a blast with this one, saving most of the actual laughs for Herbie while the story vaguely revolves around Lohan ('Freaky Friday' (2003), 'Mean Girls' (2004)) tenuously attempting to keep her promise of no racing to movie Dad Keaton ('Beetle Juice' (1988), 'White Noise' (2005)) while all roads quickly lead to her speeding against rival Dillon ('Drugstore Cowboy' (1989), 'Crash' (2004)). Yes, director Angela Robinson's ('D.E.B.S.' (2004)) hundred and one-minute offering is extremely contrived and relentlessly panders to prepubescents for the most part. Pretty well any cast of reasonably charismatic actors collectively armed with the ability to react to a cutely anthropomorphized automobile honking and shaking and squirting oil at them could have appeared here. However, because so much attention is afforded this movie's lovably precocious four-wheeled namesake, a paying audience isn't given the chance to become bored. Predictability actually works in its favour. Just as Herbie steals every scene and inevitably saves the day, he also miraculously keeps this picture from becoming a complete turkey with little more than a contagiously impish, smiling front bumper that you can't help but find undeniably charming. The special effects puppeteers and CGI wizards truly do end up being the stars. Sure, 'Herbie: Fully Loaded' is hardly the best release of the summer, but it's definitely well worth checking out this delightfully frivolous confection as a fun, entertaining rental for kids, their parents, and car enthusiasts who loved the thirty-seven year-old original.

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