Abandon
REVIEWED 10/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

What a clever little psychological thriller. When flawed detective Wade Handler is assigned to investigate the mysterious disappearance of wealthy Harvard dramatics wunderkind Embry Larkan (Charlie Hunnam), the student's enchantingly lovely and overachieving ex-girlfriend begins experiencing strange visions of his malevolent return. Handler thinks he's dead. We're not so sure.

Katie Holmes pulls in an excellent performance as the articulately brainy yet outwardly fragile young woman who was unceremoniously dumped by her youthfully egotistical lover two years earlier. She's rebuilt her life, by throwing herself into her final year of University studies and managing to impress a major corporation eager to hire her on after graduation. However, as she becomes increasingly involved in the investigation of her doomed past with Embry, and sparks begin to fly between her and the rogueishly charming Detective, everything she's worked hard at overcoming starts to unravel. Causing her to vividly remember her broken childhood home. Her estranged father driving away, abandoning her in scenes of stark white snow. Embry's tumuluously consuming passion that filled her grey heart with fire and joy, followed by his cold sharp rejection and the gaping emotional injury she's suffered ever since. Now, catching glimpses of him on campus and hearing him outside her dormroom door. Her character is a survivor, though. Argueably, one of the worst kind.

Probably the best aspect of this minimalistically spooky movie is that the tight script brilliantly leads the audience through the story on it's own terms. Flip flopping from being a convincing mystery, to a chilling stalker flick, whenever it wants. You have no choice but to play by it's rules. Believing what the film wants you to believe, while it purposefully keeps you on edge and second-guessing the outcome, until it's good and ready to drop the plot twist on your head like a ton of bricks. Sure, there's not much in the way of actual detective work that goes on throughout. All the same, I found this one to be an enjoyably surprising frightfest worth checking out.

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About Schmidt
REVIEWED 01/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Facing the rather bleak end to both his thirty-two years as an insurance actuary for Woodmen of the World and his forty-two year marriage to his lovingly overbearing wife Helen, sixty-six year-old Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) has come to a harsh realization: He's wasted his entire life. So, after a vain attempt to convince his daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) to postpone - if not cancel - her planned marriage to a dopey Denver waterbed saleman named Randall (Dermot Mulroney), Warren hops in his new thirty-five foot Winnebego in the middle of the night and heads out on the road. To Denver. Via Holdrege, where his childhood home is now a tire shop. By way of Kansas University, where the current residents of his old alma mater don't know what to make of him. Through pretty well every small town tourist trap and novelty store that piques his meandering interest, as he sends long letters chronicling his bland adventures to a young boy in Tanzania, who Warren has recently become a foster parent to.

I'm going to stop there. Not because I'm worried I'll ruin this movie for you. That's most of it already. And, the rest is just about as similarly entertaining. Like watching paint dry, and then age, crack and peel from the wall, subsequently turning to dust over time. In slow motion. Really, the only minor repreave from this coma-inducing picture is Roberta Hertzel (Kathy Bates), whose sympathy-grating flakiness as Randall's boisterous nutcase mother forces you to expect something interesting to happen. Until you realize nothing is going to happen - other than you seeing glimpses of her nude. Like I said, nothing happens. A big ol' flabby nothing, actually. Not even the cameo by a now bloated and unrecognizable Howard Hesseman (remember WKRP's Johnny Fever?) is enough to wake this celluloid corpse.

I'm still trying to figure out what all the fuss was about over this flick. It's as though everyone over the age of forty who's seen it loves it. Even most of the predominantly older audience I sat through this incredibly depressing snoozefest with poured from the theatre afterwards grinning from ear to ear, as though they'd just seen the best big screen offering since, well, anything. Where had these people been all this time? Had somebody out front spiked their Snapple? Was this their first time out since 'Crocodile Dundee' was released? I checked the skies for any sign of the mothership that may've dropped them off before show time. Nothing. I checked again, in case I was the one from another planet. Nope. So, I can only conclude that these gleefully satisfied Schmidties must have related to Nicholson's character in some way. Like him, they've wasted their lives. And, to them, wasting an hour and a half in a darkened room watching somebody else waste their's during this hugely disappointing stinker gave them a gratifying sense of relief. Probably before collectively joining hands and skipping into the path of an on-coming bus. Holy cripes people, this is a bad film.

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Adaptation.
REVIEWED 01/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Yeesh. What a mishmash. Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage) is the self-loathing, socially inept forty year-old screenwriter of Spike Jonez's 1999 Indie hit 'Being John Malkovitch', who's been hired to cobble together the film adaptation of quirky yet emotionally numb New Yorker magazine columnist and burgeoning novelist Susan Orlean's (Meryl Streep) latest book, 'The Orchid Thief'. Kaufman and Orlean are real people. So is John Laroche, a dubiously altruistic Floridian horticulturalist, incourageably self-aggrandizing charlatan, and main protagonist of Susan's actual, critically-scrutinized 282-page reportage published in 2001. However, while struggling over his profound fascination with her and her words, and fighting a major case of writer's block and fickle puppy love, our screen version of Kaufman (who wrote this script) also has to contend with his gleefully dopey twin brother, Douglas (Nicholas Cage), who's suddenly decided to veer his meandering life towards emulating his marginally successful brother Charlie by writing his own Hollywood screenplay.

So, what the heck is this weirdly contrived feature about? Well, it seems to want you to believe it's about such lofty aspirations as unfulfilled passions and human frailty. Annoyingly neurotic Boomers trying desperately to reconnect with whatever affirmations on life they'd originally meant to realize, without really knowing how to get back to that garden. Kind of a 'finding yourself' spin, for a middle-aged generation that forgot to do that back in the 1970's. However, sitting through this bizarrely slapped together cliche-riddled pastiche of fact monstrously heaped upon by strange fiction (Douglas never existed in real life, and the fairly lurid Orlean/Laroche post-manuscipt dabblings never actually happened), about the only recognizable reason for this brain-cramping turkey's existance is as yet another vehicle for Cage's trademark attraction to oddball big screen experimentation, as well as Streep's need to expose herself (in more ways than one would want) to playing fast and loose with reality. Frankly, I felt as though I was enduring something that was lazily thrown together under a marijuana haze by underground comic book vanguard Robert Crumb. Except, it's not as good - nor nearly as funny - and is burdened with a torturously lame last half that completely falls apart.

Sure, Chris Cooper's performance as 'white trash gypsy king' Laroche is extremely captivating, unabashedly supported by this script's topsy turvy logic and breakneck attention deficit disorder. That's his character, which he runs with at full tilt. The juxtaposing of these so-called intellectuals orbiting his stupid gravitational pull, while Charlie's personably idiot savante-like twin is drawn to the more stable teachings of a furiously crusty guru lecturer does strike an ironic chord. Sadly, most of these mental gimps are far too unevenly written and presented to be bothered with. Suffering from huge meaningless gobs of useless self-analysis and nonsensical pacing, this extremely disappointing movie is definitely little more than an over-hyped ripe stinker that even the craziest mid-life crisis Prozac gobbler should be ashamed of.

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Analyse That
REVIEWED 12/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

It's been two years, but lovably neurotic psychologist Dr. Paul Sobol (Billy Crystal) is pulled back into a stereotypically shadey world of otherwise goofy wiseguys when behind bars New York Mob boss Paul Vitti (Robert De Niro) survives a couple of assassination attempts on his life and apparently loses his marbles during a prison riot. Sobol, fresh from his father's funeral, finds Vitti singing showtunes from 'West Side Story' inside a padded cell. Giving us a Sing Sing sing-song scene that pretty well opitomizes this sequel's slightly forced silly irreverence.

Of course, he's released under the good doctor's care. To the chagrin of the good doctor's wife (Laura, played by Lisa Kudrow), who now has to deal with a notorious gangster living in their guest room, under the watchful eye of both the FBI and two rival crime families: the Rigazzi's and the LoPresti's. It seems everyone is nervous about Vitti being on the outside, eventhough he still doesn't seem too interested in seriously having anything to do with his former underworld life. Ironically, ending up as an unimpressed technical advisor for a 'Sopranos'-like television series, after humourously failing at a string of legitimate jobs.

There are a lot of funny bits here. Unfortunately, this cuss-bloated R-rated comedy tends to run out of steam two-thirds of the way through. It's not as hilarious as 'Analyse This' was, taking a decidedly raunchier edge that does get in the way of it's more light entertaining moments between De Niro and Crystal. They seem almost weary about returning to their roles. As though the spark that bound this odd couple the first time around is far less interesting to them now than these grown up actors getting to the crux of their characters' meaty emotional wounds. Possibly for another, more cathartic movie, but not this popcorn flick of emotive caricatures. Making this cinematic effort feel vaccuously cartoonish and disappointingly contrived by the time it's 'big heist' plot twist finale is dragged out.

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Antwone Fisher
REVIEWED 01/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Based on the autobiographical book co-written with Mim Eichler Rivas entitled 'Finding Fish', this fairly unflinching chronicle of relentless child abuse and undeniably enviable personal character left me gob-smacked scene after scene. Tight and accessible, and then deep and brooding, Antwone Quenton Fisher (Derek Luke) achingly peels himself apart like an onion for Dr. Jerome Davenport (Denzel Washington), his Naval Commander-prescribed three-session psychiactric assessor, after this young battleship Ensign hot-headedly slugs a co-crewman over a minor slight. See, Seaman Fisher has a tiny anger management problem that he initially denies. Despite his extremely traumatic childhood experiences under the torturously cruel thumb of his adoptive family, for years after being abandonned to a Cleveland orphanage by his emprisonned widowed birth mother. And, despite this obviously intelligent and articulate would-be artist and poet carrying this terribly self-destructive burden so close to his chest that the demons are getting in the way of him living a normal life of friendship and love. Without fear.

This is Washington's directoral debut and, quite frankly, he's turned out an incredibly impressive contemporary drama here. The cast is thoroughly amazing. It's carefully crafted script feeds you this compelling story in well-managed chunks, as we and Davenport get to know this compassionate yet troubled soul. Even the two peripheral stories of the good doctor's somewhat frigid marriage, and Fisher's own shyly blossoming relationship with love interest Cheryl Smolley (Joy Bryant), are both treated with a superbly measured touch that nurtures the entire film. These characters are made real for the audience. We're given more than enough reason to care about them and what they have to say. And, what they have to say is like a breath of fresh air of hope, piercing through us from a dark jagged abyss.

I'm going to rave now. I highly recommend this immensely courageous and inspired movie. Nevermind the truckload of awards it's won - I'm still reeling over 'Chicago's tempestuous Golden Globe wins. See 'Antwone Fisher' simply because it's a darn good piece of cinema, and probably as close to an all-encompassingly real portrayal of emotional survival as you'll see from Year 2002's crop of Oscar-deserving contenders. Awesome.

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Ararat
REVIEWED 12/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

During the second half of the Eleventh Century, the much-feared Ottoman Empire conquered the ancient and Biblically significant lands of Araratia. 'Ararat', writer and director Atom Egoyan's latest movie, isn't about that. In 1862, after generations of Araratian-born Armenians had endured relentless religious persecution under the long-ruling Ottoman's Turkish progeny, the fortified city of Van and it's surrounding territories were temporarily liberated in a bloody uprising. This subduely passionate Canadian film isn't about that either. Nor is it really about the Muslimic Turkish government's still-officially denied systematic annihilation of it's deeply Christian Armenian population in 1915-16. Sure, the central catalyst for this fairly tangled drama is the making of a somewhat propagandist and vengefully cathartic picture about that generally forgotten yet thoroughly documented slaughter. However, each of the intersecting stories presented here are really about selective memory and the search for truth. Most of them, in some way linked to that horribly barbaric massacre of over a million men, women, and children.

Raffi (David Alpay) is a broodishly naive young Toronto-born Armenian whose natural father was killed while attempting to murder a Turkish ambassador. Having grown up in relative comfort, with only the stories of his subverted heritage to go on, this manchild has never really understood why his father was willing to martyr himself. When his Quebecois step-father commits suicide, Celia (Marie-Josée Croze), Raffi's flakey and overbaring step-sister takes on the malicious cause of destroying his grieving mother (Ani, played by Arsinée Khanjian). Blaming her for his death. Using sex to manipulate Raffi against her. Aggressively causing scenes at every gathering, including those where Ani is giving lectures on her new biography about Armenian-born abstract expressionist painter Arshile Gorky (1895-1948) in her capacity as curator for the Art Gallery of Ontario. It's at one of these lectures where Ani is approached by famed film director Edward Saroyan (Charles Aznavour) and his screenwriter about helping them add Gorky as a main character to their movie about the 1915 Armenian Genocide. The Van native's tragic childhood now being slightly rewritten in a series of dramatized flashbacks, as he's shown working in a his New York studio, completing his decidedly realistic 'The Artist and His Mother' (1920) that was based on a faded photograph taken before the Turkish army moved in. It's this oil on canvas that partially inspires Raffi to make a pilgrimage to the rugged terrain flanking Mount Ararat, returning to Canada with footage that he tells authorities will lend authenticity to Saroyan's picture. The aged Customs Officer (Christopher Plummer) isn't convinced. Detaining him on suspicions that the cannisters of unprocessed film actually contain smuggled heroin. Methodically weeding out several truths, as he struggles internally with his own personal crisis.

Well, if you got all of that, I should also tell you that I've pretty well explained the crux of this feature backwards. It actually starts with Saroyan at the airport, quickly moving on to Raffi's detention, as Egoyan's script furiously recoils back and forth between present and past events that, at times, annoyingly fade from portrayed reality to cinematic license. It feels like an historically accurate telling of the Armenian plight, but never really examines the feudal histrionics of that region. It cites Gorky as a damaged man who lost everything, failing to mention him reuniting with his estranged father in America or his success. I discovered these facts myself, afterwards. There's no doubt of the atrocities cited here. The seething emotion that hardly reaches the big screen is justified. But, the story is so selective in it's telling; So tightly knotted up in it's characters' self-righteous biases; So caught up in it's own enigmatically artful cleverness, that we're not really given the opportunity to follow anything other than feelings and reactions from these unsympathetic folk who are set against this overtly politicised backdrop (which Egoyan then publically whined about, pulling 'Ararat' from Cannes' competition earlier this year). The entire subplots of Saroyan's production and Celia's incestuous perniciousness could have easily been left on the cutting room floor, without ever being missed by anyone but those actors and their agents. The parts of the Egoyan-like screenwriter and Ani - whose looks closely resemble Egoyan's wife's - are far too bloated and intrusive. They, and the attention defective editing, merely weaken and complicate this potentially important movie that vehemently tries to cram way too much peripheral agony and pathos into two hours. Perhaps everyone involved was too close to the subject matter to be objective. I needed a nap after sitting through it.

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Anger Management
REVIEWED 04/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

To paraphrase the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC), "To be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right reason, and in the right way, is not easy". Of course, he also believed the enslavement of Celts and Persians was justified - much to the same Phrenological-like degree that, up until recently, led popular belief to erroneously trace the genetics of stereotyped-as-short-fused redheads back to a 20,000 year-old crossbreeding of Modern Man's ancestors with so-called hot-headed Neanderthals. However, Aristotle was right about anger. Several world myths are filled with angry gods flipping out, causing catastrophes, and turning people into animals or constellations (such as Ursa-Major). Japanese lore cites a mischievous spirit, Iki-Ryo, who represents this strong human emotion. Fact is, the word 'anger' is translated from the extinct Ancient Hebrew for 'nose', within the context of flared nostrils. It's been around for as long as we have been, in all manner of shapes and sizes. For Centuries, the Chinese have been practicing an holistic technique for balancing and recirculating the body's chaotic internal energy (Yin/Yang), but it took American psychologist Arthur Yanov's similar 1967 therapy of 'Primal Screaming' to bring the concept of purging deeply held childhood pain (apparently a common cause of extreme anger) to combat depression and neurosis in adults here in the Western Hemisphere.

Dave Buznik (Adam Sandler) isn't an outwardly angry man. Sure, he was the target of a bully's prank when he was a kid growing up in 1970's Brooklyn. However, apart from that embarrassment still causing him discomfort over public acts of affection with his Poetry teaching girlfriend Linda (Marisa Tomei) twenty-five years later, Dave seems like a fairly ordinary and productive member of society. That is, until a rather innocuous incident aboard his Manhattan to St. Louis business flight bizarrely spirals out of control, and he's facing a $35,000 fine for assault and battery and a mandatory twenty hours of anger management therapy under the radical treatment of Dr. Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson). Outwardly, Rydell is an angry man. Territorial. Demanding. Violent (particularly in a scene that's very reminiscent of Nicholson's own experience, where he recently introduced a car's windshield to his golf club). After being hauled in front of the judge a second time and given the option of a year in the State penitentiary or thirty days of intensive psychological care, Buznik's attempts to avoid joining Rydell's kooky band of 'fury fighters' fail and he ends up on a white-knuckled road trip to emotional salvation (via Boston) with this crazy-eyed doctor at the wheel.

I guess 'Assertiveness Management' wasn't a sexy enough title for what this slightly screwball - somewhat lighter cousin of 'The Game', plot-wise - adult comedy is really about. Nicholson absolutely steals the show here, with his over-the-top portrayal of a bi-polar authoritarian to Sandler's rather spineless yet likable feline fashion designer. You're given a few extremely hilarious jolts to the funny bone, but unfortunately this flick loses most of it's edge by the third reel, lazily enabling a stupidly hokey ending that made my blood pressure rise a couple of notches. Sure, this is obviously a feel-good date movie that maintains the now trademark 'Soundtrack of Adam's Life' we've heard in pretty well all of his pictures. And, it does deliver by handling several different aspects of anger in cleverly humourous ways (John Turturro is a scream, and look for Heather Graham's and Woody Harrelson's few cards short of a full deck cameos). So, if you go for the laughs and can stomach the disappointingly sappy ending, you might get your money's worth.

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Alex & Emma
REVIEWED 07/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

It was a bright mid-1920's Summer day that found American English tutor Adam Shipley (Luke Wilson) on the small, exclusive-to-the-rich island of St. Charles off the Coast of Maine, and lustfully smitten by the very Parisian and cash-strapped heiress to millions Polina Delacroix (Sophie Marceau). He had come to teach her two young children at her bequest; paid from a $500,000 loan by this lithe beauty's rather toadishly opportunistic Industrialist suitor. However, a torrid tryst snuffed by Polina's foregone marriage of convenience isn't the worst of Adam's heartfelt worries. Nor are his own financial problems, or the mysterious way that palatial manor's au pair (Kate Hudson) seems to change her appearance and nationality every few pages into his bumbling love story. What this fictional character should be concerned with is that Alex Sheldon (Luke Wilson), the successful writer of 'Love Means Never Saying You're Sorry', has less than a month to finish this new novel featuring Shipley and clear a foolish gambling-related $100,000 debt with a couple of Cuban loan shark heavies or wake up dead on the street storeys below his dilapidated Boston attic loft apartment. That's where temp agency stenographer Emma Dinsmore (Kate Hudson) comes in. Believing she was hired by the law firm of Polk, Taylor, Pierce & Van Beuren, Emma quickly discovers that Sheldon has actually called her in to take dictation while he races against time, numbing writer's block, and the constant interruptions over creative differences from his feisty new secretary to complete his life-saving manuscript before more than his already 'Cubanized' laptop is totaled. Funny thing is, as Adam's fantasy romance unfolds, life imitates art as love begins to blossom for his creator.

Y'know, I really did try my best to like this latest romantic comedy by Director/Cameo Actor Rob Reiner. 'When Harry Met Sally' (1989) and 'Sleepless in Seattle' (1993) are two of my all-time favourites from this genre. Both are Reiner's. This one doesn't come close, though. Simply because not enough time was spent fleshing out a strong enough script, and this movie felt inherently miscast with leading actors woefully unable to breathe life into some fairly wooden dialogue throughout. Rife with outlandishly stale humour and burdened by some pretty lame editing that forces the audience to slap back and forth between these parallel worlds, I couldn't help but wonder what the big rush must have been in needing to crank out this half-baked turkey. While sitting through Hudson amateurishly hamming it up onscreen as she chewed out this or that horribly campy accent, I actually felt sorry for whomever it was that had to get this abysmal wreck sped into distribution before (I guess) the bank foreclosed a mortgage or a car got repossessed. Sure, the ending does come through with a grudgingly satisfying tearjerker payoff for the hopeless Kleenex crowd bursting to squirt their eyeballs out over a sappy formulaic ending. However, why anyone would pay to slog through the entirety of this lousy presentation of awful acting just for three minutes of gleeful crying is beyond me. Keep clear of this astounding stinker, and just rent those other far more worthy contemporary classics instead, folks. Yuck.

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Anything Else
REVIEWED 09/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Pretty well every day, the lush green oasis of Central Park pays host to the meeting of two neurotic minds. And, just like the old joke about a broken clock telling the right time at least twice a day, struggling Comedy writers Jerry Falk (Jason Biggs) and David Dobel (Woody Allen) are often wrong, but seem to wander upon pearls of wisdom in their shared and often times bizarre outlooks on life. See, longtime punch line veteran Dobel suffers from delusions of an impending rebirth of Nazism in the world, opportunistically snatching small failures from the jaws of success by continually obsessing over building a survival kit while jabbering an endless stream of fractures consciousness at his twenty-one year old friend and protégé Falk. However, Jerry isn't altogether playing with a full deck either, having to deal with his budding actress/self-loathing sexpot girlfriend Amanda (Christina Ricci), as well as her oppressively free-spirited mother suddenly moving into their already cramped one bedroom Manhattan apartment with them while he struggles to boost his rising career in humour and write a novel about the Godless futility of humanity. "She's driving me crazy," says Falk about his flaky flirty lover. "Of course," David emotively stutters. "That's because she's crazy. The Pentagon should use her hormones as a chemical weapon," he continues, after only briefly meeting the woman once. So, when the chance for these two nebbishes to work as a joke-writing team in Los Angeles presents itself out of the blue, Jerry frees himself from wallowing in his disjointed two-year relationship, dumps his rather parasitic neophyte manager (played by Danny DeVito) and his completely useless therapist, and makes way for a new chapter to finally begin. Problem is, even though David's similar enthusiasm leads him to quit his full-time high school teaching job in readiness for this big break, his simmering anger over slights that he sees as anti-Semitic reaches an unexpected flashpoint, and their upcoming collaboration becomes jeopardized.

Well, this is the thirty-eighth movie directed by the legendary Hollywood writer born in December 1, 1935 as Allan Stewart Konigsberg, who boasts more screenplay Oscar nominations than anyone (thirteen) yet hasn't won an Academy Award since 1986 - for writing 'Hannah and Her Sisters'. This time out, Woody Allen gives us little more than a somewhat lifeless off-Broadway production that tends to meander aimlessly as it attempts to entertain its paying movie audience with (sadly) fairly hackneyed quirky characters that sometimes feel like cast-offs from an unfinished Neil Simon play. This effort seems miscast, relying too heavily on this cast's wanting screen presence to captivate us into caring about their altogether boring and unfunny stories, failing to realize that neither Biggs' teeth-gratingly annoying antics pawning off a far less impressive impersonation of his prolific mentor nor Ricci's curvaceously perky yet blandly stone-faced musings just ain't enough to lift this picture to anything that’s really worth your time sitting through. Allen has written himself in as, well, an incredibly uninteresting caricature of himself here. Yet, because all of his co-stars are unbelievably second or third rate throughout this gnawing disaster, he actually stands out as the shining point we few sitting in the dark end up longing to see return in the next scene. I suspect that wasn't his intention, since Woody has apparently never considered himself to be a great actor. Rightly so. He hasn't been good in front of the camera since starring as unthawed goof Miles Monroe in 'Sleeper' (1973), quite frankly. One thing I was relieved to see with 'Anything Else' was that the early buzz about this disappointing turkey was wrong: Art doesn’t imitate life with this sixty-eight year old falling in love with a woman half (or less) his age in this one after-all. Bottom line, I'd say take a pass on this pedantically lousy stage-on-celluloid stinker, and just stick to the two movies I've mentioned above - and the several others he’s successfully directed over his long career - until this deservedly famous prolific funnyman finally gets his second wind back.

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American Splendor
REVIEWED 10/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

"Why does everybody have to be so stupid?" That's the question that seems to have shadowed Cleveland-born full-time Veteran's Hospital file clerk and underground comic book writer Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti) like a sullen cloud for the majority of his grey and dreary life. It's a burning conundrum that has resonated throughout his tumultuously stalled careers, ever since he first asked it as a boy back in 1950, after standing in a Hallowe'en line-up with other neighbourhood kids who were dressed as superheroes holding loot bags, having to explain who he was supposed to be to the woman handing out treats at her door. While he was actually there for the candy, Harvey wasn't wearing a costume. And so, like many obsessively disgruntled outsiders, Pekar grew up basically keeping to himself, attracting other like-minded self-made pariahs while surviving two failed marriages and severe vocal chord problems. However, it was his kinship with then-fledgling Pop Culture cartoonist Robert Crumb (James Urbaniak), who first offered to illustrate some of Harvey's crudely sketched life-based stories, that ended up changing his path for the better. Despite himself. What this strangely surreal pseudo-documentary does - with a kind of 'curb your enthusiasm' attitude - is show us these and other vignettes from this guy's personally-induced existance of gleeful misery; Including his odd meeting with fan and subsequent partner Joyce Brabner (Hope Davis), his dubious celebrity with both an L.A. play adapted from his books and as an antagonistic regular on the David Letterman TV show in the 1980's, as well as Pekar's battle with cancer that would become the subject of a graphic novel he co-wrote with Brabner. In the midst of it all, still not coming up with a good enough answer to that all-consuming question from his childhood...

Well, this one's really the kind of flick where you need to be in the right mood to sit through a lot of overtly deadpan yet bizarrely captivating stuff to process. I called it a 'pseudo-documentary' because it does have the qualities of being a straight Point A to Point Z style of biography, with interviews from Pekar and some of his colleagues (not including Crumb). However, most of this movie is actually an over-dubbed narrative, played out as a drama with actors taking on the roles of these people and reliving what they've gone through. It's really two films about the same thing overlapping and colliding at times, with some visually interesting results. This is probably best seen where Giamatti, who's completely believable as Pekar, finishes a scene with Judah Friedlander (as co-worker Toby Radloff) and the camera stops, only to have us see the set from a different angle with the real Harvey chatting with the real Toby over jellybeans - while the actors who just played them look on in the background. While slightly slow-paced at times, 'American Splendor' is a stylishly playful picture in that respect, aptly shifting gears near the end during his coping with drastic lymphoma therapy, and then pulling most of the story together with a real party celebrating this curmudgeonly underdog's day job retirement. It's a good Art House show for a select audience plugged into the American alternative comic book and 'zine scene, but isn't as intimately disturbing or quirky as 'Crumb' (1994). I liked it for the clever use of cinematography tricks, as well as the macabre humour throughout, and would recommend it as a slightly demanding rental that's worth checking out for cult pic fans - especially those who loved Pekar's similarly flavoured short bit in 'Comic Book Confidential' (1989).

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The Alamo
REVIEWED 05/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

During the last days of February, 1836 - less than a year after the sovereign country of Mexico's military President Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana's (Emilio Echevarría) forces lost the Battle of San Antonio de Bexar to a rebel army of naturalized Texans and local Tejanos - this grandiose General leads five thousand soldiers through the dead of winter to regain that occupied land and lay waste to these treacherous immigrants from America and their traitorous compadrés, marching towards the hallowed ruins at the centre of this conflict. One that San Franciscan Monk Antonio de Olivares had originally established there under orders from Spain in 1718: The Alamo. Continually used as a dubiously strategic outpost over the years since Olivares' time, this small and crumbling holy facade nestled at the edge of the dusty town of Gonzales stands barely fortified by two cannons under the command of Texas' Lieutenant Colonel J.C. Neill (Brandon Smith) and his ragtag troop of servicemen, non-commissioned volunteers, and slaves. The arrival of reinforcements led by the young and newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis' (Patrick Wilson) are a welcome sight, as is the legendary knife fighter and intimidating Ranger, James Bowie (Jason Patric), on his separate arrival - despite his worsening health. Bowie has been sent by politically aspiring General Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid) to return to San Felipe with the Bexar cannon that President Antonio's men had failed to secure in December. However, close to bedridden in his deepening choleric delirium, James chooses to stick around. Much to the chagrin of Travis, now in charge of the fort during Neill's absence rallying more men and supplies, but to the delight of former frontiersman and ex-Tennessee Congressman David 'Davy' Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton) who materializes in the middle of the night with a small band of followers to support the fledgling State's independence from Mexican rule - as long as the bloodshed is over. It isn't. And, as Lopez's army easily surrounds them with their overwhelming arsenal at the ready, launching this doomed historic thirteen-day stand off, these hundred and eighty-six men valiantly ready themselves for the fight of their lives...

Quite frankly, this is probably one of the best performances of Thornton's onscreen career so far. While it's obvious that co-writer/director John Lee Hancock was trying to give us a far more realistic yet surprisingly no-fault version than was offered by John Wayne's Oscar-nominated two hour and forty-seven minute 1960 epic, his and screenwriters Leslie Bohem's and Stephen Gaghan's script tends to get bogged down with the often uninteresting back stories and ego-fuelled personal squabbles of this main cast of fatalistic players throughout. Allowing Thornton's wryly eccentric Crockett to steal every scene as pretty much the only reliable voice of reason and source of entertainment. That might have been the case in reality, but what suffers is the actual battle at The Alamo that a paying audience probably expects to see focused on to the fullest here. As though the days leading up to that siege were little more than a interruptive backdrop for the individual goals and aspirations of these few fighters and dreamers who, let's face it, were attempting to abscond territory from the Mexicans with backing from an expanding European-dominated America. Perhaps it's because I didn't grow up inculcated by the legend of that flashpoint battle, but sitting through this two hour and seventeen minute screening rife with otherwise captivating characters slightly embellished yet made strangely boring compared to the pages of history, I was hard pressed to feel any sort of empathy for those souls who fought under the banner of Travis' martyrdom and were later avenged by Houston and the remaining Texas army at the Battle of San Jacinto. Remove the dismally flat war scenes, and the way in which this movie was presented probably wouldn't have been much different. That's the main problem with 'The Alamo'. It's anti-climactic from the opening credits. Either because of last-minute budget trimming or possible concerns over sensationalizing war, it doesn't seem to want to be about The Alamo, nor apparently interested in pulling non-historian moviegoers in to what went on. So, you're left waiting for another comparably fresh scene from Thornton, and then ultimately sent out of the theatre wondering what the fuss was all about in the first place. Disappointing.

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Around the World in 80 Days
REVIEWED 06/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Vaguely borrowing from famed French novelist Jules Verne's (1828-1905) renowned classic adventure that was first published in 1873; one year after his fictional forty year-old "calm and phlegmatic" Englishman Phileas Fogg and portly, newly-hired ex-patriot Parisian servant Jean Passepartout set out on the evening of October 2nd to win a gentlemanly twenty-thousand pound sterling wager circumnavigating the globe armed with little more than Bradshaw's Continental Railway Steam Transit and General Guide, and "a goodly roll of Bank of England notes", this predominantly dumbed down two hour family flick sprinkled with celebrity cameos plays out more as a fluffy vehicle for comedic martial arts actor Jackie Chan to retool bygone trailblazing New York World newspaper journalist Elizabeth Jane 'Nellie Bly' Cochran's (1864-1922) actual Verne-inspired journey around the world begun on November 14, 1889. Well, probably with a few more karate chops and drop kicks than Nellie used. Chan plays Lau Xing, a Chinese villager on the lam in London after stealing back his people's protective jade Buddha figurine recently lifted by the malicious Black Scorpions led by General Fang (Karen Mok), held as payment in the Bank of England in lieu of gaining military backing through her connections with Britain's unscrupulous Minister of Science Lord Kelvin (Jim Broadbent). Yes, this is definitely a watered down and virtually unrecognizable version of even the memorably silly yet lavish 1956 Hollywood adaptation starring the late David Niven (1910-1983) as Fogg, with Steve Coogan taking over that role here as a kind of well to do but terribly accident prone crackpot inventor - who more closely resembles Dick Van Dyke's gangly Caractacus Potts from 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' (1968) - out to win the respect of his jeering peers and Kelvin's title by blundering across the major continents and two oceans in record time. However, Coogan's somewhat annoying character and that of dreadfully corny Cécile De France's (as this duo's French free spirited co-traveler Monique La Roche), as well as pretty well the entire trip by steamer and train and balloon apparently shot mainly in Germany and Thailand - where our heroes never venture, are merely used as human props and contrived premise for Chan to single-handedly steal the show from, and actually move co-screenwriters David N. Titcher's, David Benullo's and David Andrew Goldstein's fairly droll plotline along by sheer will. In that respect, this oftentimes ridiculously patronizing actioner obviously intended for children does manage to be funny and entertaining. It's most of the other bits from the remaining ninety minutes or so, where a paying audience is forced to sit through a lot of stupidly puffy-cheeked supporting cast theatrics and a clumsily budding no-where romance, weird walk-ons such as by Owen and Luke Wilson playing the bickering Wright Brothers and Arnold Schwarzenegger's embarrassing Turkish Prince act that visually triggers comparisons to Rhea Perlman from TV's 'Cheers' (1982-1993) on gamma rays, that regularly stall any lasting enjoyment throughout. Frankly, 'Around the World in 80 Days' is easily one of the worst page to screen adaptations offered so far this year, but it's probably one of the best over-all performances from Jackie Chan worth checking out in some time.

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Anchorman
REVIEWED 07/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

According to the opening scene of star and co-writer Will Ferrell's sometimes ridiculously hilarious comedy 'Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy', "This movie is based on actual events. Only the names, locations, and events have been changed." However, Ferrell has apparently mentioned that this ninety-one minute blast from the past from the world of American television newscasting was inspired by the actual career of former NBC Nightly News anchor Jessica Savitch (1947-1983) - already the first woman to anchor a news broadcast in the South while at KHOU-TV in Houston, Texas during the early 1970's. Deadpan co-star Christina Applegate co-anchors as chain smoking upwardly career-minded Veronica Corningstone, hired on from North Carolina's WYPN news to join the ratings-topping team at KVWN Channel 4 in San Diego - much to the chagrin of narcissistic chauvinist four-time Emmy-winning news anchor Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) and his goofy trio of on air compadres. If you remember and loved Ted Knight's (1923-1986) bumbling egomaniac news reader Ted Baxter from TV's seven-time Emmy-winning 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' (1970-1977), you'll definitely notice a resemblance. Sure, a lot of the jokes throughout stem from this often-silly flick taking place sometime during the Seventies. The turtleneck and mahogany era, when women were still considered second class to men simply because of their gender. Of course, the remaining laughs are timeless because of this absolutely irreverent cast of supporting players that Ferrell and former 'Saturday Night Live' head writer and this picture's co-writer/director Adam McKay has assembled throughout. Steven Carell is completely side splitting as moronic weatherman Brick Tamland, and full marks also go to the unaccredited performance by Vince Vaughn as Burgundy-hating KQHS Channel 9 rival Wes Mantooth. There are actually quite a few really funny cameos here, from Ben Stiller and Tim Robbins to Jack Black and Luke Wilson. The story is really about Burgundy, though. His "suits so fine that he makes Frank Sinatra look like a hobo" super stardom reading the six o'clock evening teleprompter, to his sudden untimely downfall - partly due to falling in love with Corningstone, but mostly because his brain's the size of a peanut. 'Anchorman' is pure, unadulterated sophomoric humour that seems to come naturally to Ferrell. It does wear a bit thin two-thirds of the way through, but the entire screening is such an enjoyably stupid riot that it's still well worth the price of admission. Check it out for some of the best comedy at the movies so far this summer, however you'll probably want to leave the little ones at home because of the fairly lewd jokes used at times. Good stuff.

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Alien Vs. Predator
REVIEWED 08/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Very loosely based on the smash hit 1989 Dark Horse Comics-published mini-series that initially pitted the toothy, acid-bleeding creatures originally created by Swiss visionary H.R. Giger for the Oscar-winning space horror 'Alien' (1979) against a hunter race of conceptual artist Stan Winton's invisibility-cloaked aliens first seen in the Academy Award-winning Sci-Fi gore fest 'Predator' (1987); spawning a voracious progeny of popular books and computer games since, writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson ('Event Horizon' (1997), 'Resident Evil' (2002)) dutifully fulfills the wishes of fans who have apparently been speculating about this grand meeting of the monsters ever since catching a glimpse of a certain familiar memento in the now infamous onboard trophy room scene in 'Predator 2' (1990). Yeah, this one's been in the works for a while now. Thankfully, Anderson does a great job in tapping the legacy of both these celestial killers here, wonderfully meshing their known history with that of humanity's ancient civilizations to give you a rip roaring contemporary adventure two thousand feet under a long-abandoned Antarctic whaling station. It's great to see the return of 'Aliens' (1986) and 'Alien 3' (1992) Lance Henriksen here as corporate billionaire explorer Charles Bishop Weyland, cobbling together a team of experts to investigate a mysterious underground pyramid that has apparently awakened and turns out to be the battleground of a Millennial-old rite of passage hundred-year ritual where Predators and Aliens fight to the death. Weyland, his group, and their strong-willed guide Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan) are merely unsuspecting victims here, forced to avoid becoming part of the chest-bursting and skull-claiming carnage while evading being trapped in that creepy ruin's continuously changing maze of richly pictogrammed tunnels - and trying to stop either brood of blood-thirsty invaders from reaching the surface to reap their malicious havoc upon the Earth. As Alexa's new compadre, rogue Italian archeologist Sebastian de Rosa (Raoul Bova) realizes, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Wow. Sure, a lot of this hugely satisfying actioner is unabashed pretense pulled together for a paying audience chomping at the bit to see an Alien fight a Predator on the big screen. The humanoids here aren't anywhere near as interesting as, say, Sigourney Weaver's Ripley or even Arnold Schwarzenegger's Dutch are in the original separate flicks, but Lathan does do a pretty good job of keeping you from rolling your eyes in a huff every time those heavily CGI-enhanced adrenaline-pounding extra-terrestrial wrestling matches are interrupted by actual acting and dialogue that serve to move the over-all story along. Designers Alec Gillis' and Tom Woodruff, Jr.'s faithfully outstanding rebirth of these creatures - with Woodruff suiting up as the Alien first played by seven foot two inch-tall Masai tribesman Bolaji Badejo, and with ex-basketball player Ian Whyte stepping into the Predator costume Kevin Peter Hall (1955-1991) had brought to life twice, whenever intricately engineered animatronics or computer animation wasn't appropriate to Anderson's vision of this picture having a realistic feel - is absolutely well worth the price of admission alone. 'Alien vs. Predator' definitely isn't a pared down rehash of 'Godzilla vs. Mothra' (1964), and while it does accelerate things a bit and seems to have a tough time deciding what's impervious and not at times, this is truly an extremely entertaining monster movie that's well worth checking out on the biggest screen you can find. More! More!

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Anacondas
REVIEWED 09/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Shortly after smooth-talking Dr. Jack Byron (Matthew Marsden, 'Shiner' (2000), 'Black Hawk Down' (2001)) and Dr. Gordon Mitchell (Morris Chestnut, 'Boyz N the Hood' (1991), 'Breakin' All the Rules' (2004)) convince their well-moneyed corporate pharmaceutical backers at Manhattan's Wexell-Hall to put off cutting their research funding and instead finance their scientific expedition into the tropical jungles of Borneo for the Perinnia Immortalis - an extremely rare species of orchid whose scarlet petals only bloom for six months every seven years, and subsequently shown to contain a natural chemical that could prolong life indefinitely in their initial studies with minute doses - the small team of Byron and Mitchell Research rapidly find themselves stranded and at the mercy of the elements and a writhing nest of overgrown blood-thirsty anacondas, when Byron's desperately impatient machinations end up obliterating their ramshackle boat captained by ex-patriot American Special Forces former grunt Bill Johnson (Johnny Messner, 'The Sweetest Thing' (2002), 'Spartan' (2004)). Uh, okay. Apart from the fact that all three species of this biggest of the boa constrictors - including the green anacondas that are given fairly cheesy CGI and animatronic stand-ins for this rather contrived sequel to 'Anaconda' (1997) - are apparently only found in their indigenous South American Rainforest, and that it's a strangely unsurprising revelation that this fairly noisy, waterlogged actioner was mostly shot in Figi and California, director Dwight H. Little ('Murder at 1600' (1997), 'Deep Blue' (2001)) still manages to offer up a reasonably entertaining thriller here. Sure, all of the characters are little more than clichéd finger puppets vaguely altered from the star-studded cast of its predecessor, tossed onboard a doomed vessel aptly named the Bloody Mary, for the dreadfully obvious purpose of them each becoming possibly tasty bite-sized human-shaped snake food throughout the course of their search for this fictitious rock-clinging plant. However, I can easily give it the nod of approval, knowing full well that I went into this hundred and seven minute screening fully prepared to fall into a boredom-induced coma shortly after this picture finally picked up where the detailed trailer left off. That didn't happen. It's clear that Chestnut and co-star Salli Richardson-Whitfield ('A Low Down Dirty Shame' (1994), 'Antwone Fisher' (2002)) worked their butts off to strengthen their roles and cobble together interesting moments out of John Claflin's, Daniel Zelman's, Michael Miner's and Edward Neumeier's aggravatingly formulaic screenplay, with Messner and the other main players following suit. They really didn't have much to go on here, further marginalized by cinematographer Stephen F. Windon's uninspired camerawork and Marcus D'Arcy's off tempo editing style, but these actors do inevitably manage to cultivate enough audience empathy to make this romp a pretty good summertime popcorn flick. If you enjoyed the first one, starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, and Eric Stoltz, you'll undoubtedly leave after the closing credits feeling just as satisfied, frankly. Yes, the snakes are dumb. Yes, the make up department might as well have pasted a long thin black moustache on Marsden to villainously twirl during most of his scenes. 'Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid' (its international title) doesn't contain one single overwhelming plot surprise, or a particularly memorable quote; nor does it have any nutritional value what so ever. It's still a fun movie if you're willing to get caught up in its sheer momentum, though. Check it out as a purely frivolous yet surprisingly entertaining rental.

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Alexander
REVIEWED 11/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Sired by the Grecian Kingdom of Macedon's fairly barbaric ruler Philip II (382-336 BC) (Val Kilmer; 'Tombstone' (1993), 'Spartan' (2004)) and raised by his crazed, snake-loving - grand-daughter of the warrior Achilles, no less - Epirote Princess mother Olympias (Angelina Jolie; 'Girl, Interrupted' (1999), 'Taking Lives' (2004)), Alexander III (356-323 BC) (Colin Farrell; 'Phone Booth' (2002), 'S.W.A.T.' (2003)) ascends to the throne at twenty years-old and, using his father's fearless army, casts his shadow from Greece to present-day Pakistan, Afghanistan and northern India to initially avenge Philip's assassination by Persia's King Darius III of Babylon, but eventually to discover the fabled Eastern Passage he'd learned of as a precocious boy at the knee of Aristotle that would lead his conquering troops on a looping waterway home. Trouncing Darius' much larger forces at Gaugamela, easily securing Babylon and freeing Egypt (not seen here), and then defying regal norms by taking a woman of no political importance (Roxane of Bactria, played by Rosario Dawson ('Men in Black II' (2002), 'The Rundown' (2003)) as his first wife, before commanding his growing legion of exhausted and disgruntled soldiers from atop his black war-horse Bucephalus into unknown, monsoon-swept jungles towards their ultimate defeat.

Reportedly influenced by Oxford University's Ancient History professor and Financial Times' gardening correspondent Robin Lane Fox's published biographies, 'The Search for Alexander' (1980) and 'Alexander the Great' (1991), what writer/director Oliver Stone's oftentimes eye-popping yet exhaustively simplified and disjointed cinematic three-hour movie attempts to do is examine the mixed character of this legendary man as both an extremely brutal warmonger and as an emotionally fragile intellectual. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as captivating cinema for the most part. It's deflated by faulty dialogue and Vangelis' aggravating soundtrack, as well as a crutch-like reliance on unsupported natural screen presence and obstructive camera tricks throughout. So, a paying audience ends up seeing a few blurry fight scenes, with heads and limbs being slashed and gored and lopped off by Farrell's trusty sword, followed by him continually breaking down and bursting into tears without much in the way of an explanation. That's where the overwhelming potential of this film is completely wasted. It actually feels like a big budget attempt to portray Alexander as Hamlet, without the benefit of Shakespeare or the need for you to understand or care. If you do your homework beforehand, you'll be left wondering where all of the good stuff is. And, if you go in simply expecting pure entertainment tinged with a kind of 'JFK' (1991) retelling of actual events, you'll likely find it pretentiously coma-inducing and leave the theatre with bald patches from scratching your head in utter bewilderment. Sure, 'Alexander' vaguely touches upon the mindset of his time regarding what appears now to be bisexuality, and it does essentially cast him as a naive opportunist who rode into infamy on Philip's coat tails while concocting much loftier goals as he went along, but it doesn't really go deep enough or tell you anything memorable. And, since so much background is left out or lazily glossed over by Anthony Hopkins' narrative as an aged Ptolemy, Stone's and Christopher Kyle's screenplay ends up becoming a surprisingly disappointing patchwork of meandering and inaccessibly overblown drama punctuated by briefly captivating moments of yelling and crying, the horrors of war and suspicions of fatal conspiracies and, well, more crying. Inexcusably marred by weirdness, such as in one heavily filtered lensed battle scene where Farrell looks like he's covered in ketchup and mustard, as though he's just won a hotdog eating contest. Double entendrés aside, this otherwise proven cast of marvelous talent seems betrayed by an undercooked script lacking a steady hand or an obvious focus, hardly making this one worth the price of admission as anything other than richly brain-numbing eye candy. Too bad.

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Alfie
REVIEWED 11/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Strapping young ex-patriot Londoner turned Manhattan-based Elegant Limo and Chauffeur driver Alfie Elkins (Jude Law; 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' (1999), 'I Heart Huckabees' (2004)) loves the ladies like a true player. Armed with his insightfully experienced philosophy about women (cough), he's steadfastly determined not to seriously get involved with them outside of his - and what he believes are their - basic needs and desires. Yes, Alfie lives every freely unattached man's fantasy and he knows it. However, the carefree Swingin' Sixties ended long before he was born, and the various lovers he tenuously devotes his time and trinkets of trite affection towards are all obviously living in the here and now. Julie (Marisa Tomei; 'What Women Want' (2000), 'Anger Management' (2003)), the lovely single mother Elkins secretly considers having "not enough of the superficial things that matter", seems close to realizing she's being strung along and used by him. Same goes for the gorgeous middle aged trophy wife named Dorie (Jane Krakowski; 'The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas' (2000), 'Marci X' (2003)) Alfie's been conspicuously enjoying in the back seat for the past dozen or so weeks. And, then there's Nikki (Sienna Miller; 'High Speed' (2002), 'Layer Cake' (2004)), the exciting blonde enchantress for whom Alfie quickly feels the slight twinges of wanting to settle down with, until the blunt disillusionment of that reality - shortly after a cancer scare and the later prospects of him possibly meeting someone better - sends her packing in tears from his small attic apartment in the pouring rain, and drops an uncertain Alfie back to being a now rather unconvincing "heat-seeking bachelor" trying to recapture the luster of his former fantasy life.

Billed as a contemporary remake of writer/director Bill Naughton's renowned stage-to-screen, Cannes-winning and five-time Oscar nominated 1966 breakthrough hit for Michael Caine, yet somewhat more recognizable as a younger retooling of the hugely satisfying 'Something's Gotta Give' (2003), Academy Award-winning co-writer/director Charles Shyer ('Irreconcilable Differences' (1984); 'Father of the Bride 2' (1995)) attempts to shake up the fairly outdated notion that it's a Man's World by presenting this blindly sexist lady killer with a host of truly modern women throughout. The problem is, despite heavily relying on the one-sided conversational asides to viewers that was best seen in the original, Law's character is neither smart enough nor particularly interesting enough to hold a paying audience's attention throughout the course of this hundred and three minute movie. By the time he freely boasts to his next drunkenly flirtatious target that he's never made his own bed, you already know he's a manipulative man child. When he eventually finds himself completely entranced by Uptown cosmetics mogul and kindred spirit Liz (Susan Sarandon; 'Thelma & Louise' (1991), 'Moonlight Mile' (2002)), it's tough not to give up hoping that something more than the now familiar result first seen nearly forty years ago will transpire. Sure, pretty well all of the female performances are extremely good - particularly from Nia Long ('Soul Food' (1997), 'Big Momma's House' (2000)) as Lonette - but, because the much-needed opportunity to give you reasons to care about this new Alfie fail to materialize, those who've sat through the Caine version are bound to feel that this one's little more than a pale and over-long moment of comparably weak deja vu. Horribly burdened by supervising sound editors Christopher Ackland's and Max Hoskins' awful handling of Mick Jagger's and John Powell's soundtrack. Nothing else. Nothing fresh or new. Unless you're a huge fan of Law or Sarandon, I can't really recommend wasting your time with this amateurishly boring, cinematic monologue.

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After the Sunset
REVIEWED 12/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Seven years after the first time FBI agent Stanley P. Lloyd (Woody Harrelson; 'Wildcats' (1986), 'Palmetto' (1998)) was humiliated by infamous cat burglar Max Burdett (Pierce Brosnan; 'Mrs. Doubtfire' (1993), 'Die Another Day' (2002)), and almost a year after Burdett and longtime accomplice/girlfriend Lola Cirillo (Salma Hayek; 'Desperado' (1995), 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico' (2003)) quietly retired at the top of their criminal game to a secluded beachside hideaway in the Bahamas, Lloyd appears at their doorstep warning of his intention to finally bring Max to justice if he decides to steal the heavily-guarded Napoleon Diamond - one of three from the famous French emperor's gilded sword's hilt, and the only one that this quick-witted mastermind hasn't already snatched - that's crowning an approaching luxury ocean liner's onboard exhibit of rare jewels. Burdett is intrigued, secretly itching for one more chance to test his mettle against unbeatable odds, but defers to Lola's determination in enticing him towards staying clear of his old ways by any means, including - as she coyly purrs while reclining her sultry nubile body for her man - "substituting temptation for something more... tempting". She impatiently wants them to settle down and enjoy this rather hedonistic paradise of breath taking sunsets together as husband and wife. However, that ship of valuable treasure has also spurred former Detroit, uh, businessman and local entrepreneurial gangster Henri Mooré (Don Cheadle; 'Devil in a Blue Dress' (1995), 'Swordfish' (2001)) to inspire Max's legendary light-fingered services, merely serving to add to Lloyd's personably relentless badgering chipping away at Burdett's resolve.

If any of that synopsis sounds vaguely familiar, it's probably because this surprisingly intriguing yet slightly aggravating crime drama is a contemporary retooling of the Oscar-winning Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) classic 'To Catch a Thief' (1955) starring Cary Grant (1904-1986) and Grace Kelly (1929-1982), based on writer David Dodge's 1952 potboiler. Director Brett Ratner ('Rush Hour' (1998), 'Red Dragon' (2002)) takes his time with this one, letting his main cast develop their wonderfully idiosyncratic characters with hugely satisfying results over-all. That's both good, and bad. Brosnan, Hayek and Harrelson are brilliantly cast and in their collective prime here, obviously having a blast with Paul Zbyszewski's and Craig Rosenberg's somewhat muddled screenplay of juicy dialogue, wry humour and double cross machinations. Max is basically the James Bond of diamond thieves, with Lola riding shotgun for better or worse. It's easy to relate to them, as well as to Stan's obsessive, admiration-tinged need for retribution. That's what makes 'After the Sunset' such a rewarding hundred and nine minute screening for the most part. Unfortunately, it's over-long, the ending turns out to feel rather cobbled together as little more than a hurried Hollywood contrivance, and Cheadle's extremely well-written crime boss seems curiously thrown away in favour of a suspiciously accelerated romance between Lloyd and the lovely local Police Constable named Sophie (Naomie Harris) come the third act. Sure, I realize that a certain amount of this effort's eventual plot twist requires a degree of storyline subterfuge for full effect, but those points tend to deflate this picture's otherwise impressive momentum at the wrong moments. Betraying an expected level of elegance already suggested during the opening scenario and fabulously explored through the intimately matured relationship between Burdett and Cirillo. With all of that said, it's still a worthwhile and entertaining rental - especially for the extraordinary acting and amazing location captured throughout. Fans of these proven talents will definitely enjoy this picture, but those who still love the original might do well to stick with that memorable Grant/Kelly favourite.

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The Aviator
REVIEWED 12/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

As an eight year-old boy rattled by his doting mother Allene's obsessive fears during a devastating cholera epidemic that struck Houston, Texas in 1913, Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (Jacob Davich) had two dreams: To fly the fastest planes, and to be the richest man in the world. So, shortly after inheriting his father's hugely successful manufacturing plant of the patented Hughes Rock Eater diamond-studded oil drilling bit, dashing young nineteen year-old Hughes Tool Company CEO Howard Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio; 'The Quick and the Dead' (1995), 'Catch Me If You Can' (2002)) moved to Hollywood and produced movies such as two Oscar-nominated silent features, the violent aerial war epic 'Hell's Angels' (1930) that was completely reshot at least once before being re-edited for sound under a cloud of scandal over the rising cost and three years-worth of delays, and the uproariously shocking 'Scarface' (1932). Just as he'd always done, Hughes gambled everything with calculated abandon, and he came out on top. Vindicated, but unsatisfied. He went on to break flight records as a solo pilot, first becoming the fastest man alive by flying at over 350 miles per hour, followed by winging from Los Angeles to New York in less than seven and a half hours in 1937, and then surpassing famed aviator Charles Augustus 'Lucky' Lindbergh's (1902-1974) legendary 1928 Spirit of St. Louis solo Trans-Atlantic flight by circling the globe in ninety-one hours a year later. By the age of thirty-three, Howard hadn't only realized his childhood dreams, but was maneuvering his newly-acquired TWA fleet towards trans-continental passenger air travel. Much to the chagrin of rival Pan-Am owner Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin; 'The Shadow' (1994), 'Along Came Polly' (2004)) and well-bribed United States Senator Ralph Owen Brewster (wonderfully portrayed by Alan Alda ('The Four Seasons' (1981), 'What Women Want' (2000)) scheming to secure Trippe's monopoly in the skies. Almost nine years later, bruised by lingering controversy over buxom starlet Jane Russell's ('Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' (1953)) copious cleavage seen in 'The Outlaw' (1943) and recuperating under a morphine fog after the near-fatal crash of his experimental dual propeller, twin engine spy plane, the XF-11, an increasingly reclusive Howard was forced to stand before a very public Congressional hearing for allegedly defrauding the American Government of millions of dollars in unfulfilled contracts.

Whew, what an amazing life this guy had. Unfortunately, director Martin Scorsese ('Goodfellas' (1990), 'Gangs of New York' (2002)) lets this otherwise impressive picture of thoroughly believable actors run on far too long for his effort's own good here. Sure, presenting the tumultuous life and times of renowned megalomaniac, famed womanizer and clinically paranoid obsessive compulsive billionaire Howard Hughes (1905-1976) as a true biography would have been a virtually impossible task in one screening, considering all that Hughes accomplished before reaching middle age - as well as all that his corporate legacy continues to bring. Scorsese attempts to take short cuts though, focusing on the highlights between 1928, before his unmentioned four-year marriage to Ella Rice had ended in divorce, and 1947. However, he still manages to spread screenwriter John Logan's ('Star Trek: Nemesis' (2002), 'The Last Samurai' (2003)) disjointed script too thinly, instead of concentrating on presenting a complete story arc that includes Hughes' relationships with women - including Hollywood screen idol Ava Lavinia Gardner (1922-1990) ('Mogambo' (1953), 'The Night of the Iguana' (1964)) and four-time Oscar-winner Katharine Houghton Hepburn (1907-2003) ('Adam's Rib' (1949), 'Love Affair' (1994)), or fleshing out his relentless love of aircraft and need for speed in the skies, or simply sticking with Howard's flawed addiction to movie making (which reportedly led to the demise of RKO, shortly after he bought it in '48), while encouraging DiCaprio to examine this incredibly powerful magnate's self-destroying psychotic tendencies with sometimes inspired delicacy throughout. While the man remains a larger than life enigma, it's not the actors who betray the lofty aspirations of this film. Cate Blanchett ('An Ideal Husband' (1999), 'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King' (2003)) and Kate Beckinsale ('The Last Days of Disco' (1998), 'Underworld' (2003)) both completely disappear in their faithful roles as Hepburn and Gardner respectively. Since it's common knowledge that Scorsese essentially edits his own features scene by scene, neither credited film editor Thelma Schoonmaker or cinematographer Robert Richardson can take the blame for allowing this disaster to unravel into arduous bouts of gassy dullness for a paying audience. 'The Aviator' is a tiring, over-long hundred and sixty-nine minute turkey because far too much was piled on to its meandering wisp of a plot line without any real pay off come the closing credits. The other major problem is that memories of Hughes' latter years as an aged hermit in Las Vegas are still fresh to many moviegoers, and yet that time period is merely referred to here using murky split-second clips. Annoying, even though I realize this movie isn't about circa 1970's Howard Hughes. On a more positive note, a lot of the CGI enhanced aerial footage is absolutely fantastic. This director's keen passion for old movies is also clearly evident, and the shots of Hughes' various planes - including The Hercules, or 'Spruce Goose' - are seamlessly fascinating. The attention to detail throughout probably rivals Hughes' own obsessive perfection at times. By all rights, it's a great-looking movie with an outstanding cast of talent obviously giving their all. However, none of that is enough to sustain your lasting interest from beginning to end as much more than decadent eye candy. As though you could probably step out for half an hour, and not feel like you'd missed anything important upon your return. And, that's a disastrous shame unworthy of all those connected to and depicted in this cinematic lost potential. Definitely rent this one for the astounding visuals and award-earning performances, but be prepared to feel as though you're sitting through a disconnected series of Hughes' short stories all schizophrenically jumping around, relentlessly daring you to fast forward (which you probably should) while vying for your steadily beleaguered attention throughout.

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Assault on Precinct 13
REVIEWED 01/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Eight haunted months after a narcotics sting gone mortally sour forced five year veteran undercover Police Sergeant Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke; 'Reality Bites' (1994), 'Taking Lives' (2004)) behind a desk and under continued psychiatric evaluation, his fate appears to be a foregone conclusion as his old precinct at the edge of the city prepares to close its doors forever. Roenick bristles at the idea of serving out his tenure at the new, high tech Precinct 21 downtown - behind yet another desk - while the best years of his life blur towards obscure retirement. His counselor, the nubile Doctor Alex Sabian (Maria Bello; 'The Cooler' (2003), 'Secret Window' (2004)), tells him that she thinks he's just lost faith in himself. Her note filled files on him - which Jake lifts in an uncharacteristic moment of precocious curiosity - hammers home just how far his capacity to deal with responsibility has fallen. Although, the crutch of booze and pills stashed in his office might have led him to the same conclusion, if he was willing to accept this obvious truth. However, hours before the stroke of midnight marks the end of Precinct 13, a far more sinister reality lands on the Sergeant's doorstep when a harsh winter storm reroutes a Sheriff's bus containing four prisoners destined for trial - one of whom just so happens to be the notorious cop killing gangster Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne; 'What's Love Got to Do with It' (1993), 'The Matrix Revolutions' (2003)) - and Jake is forced to take action against a heavily armed, masked gang determined to breach his headquarters and take Bishop. Retiring flat foot Jasper O'Shea (Brian Dennehy; 'F/X' (1986), 'Romeo + Juliet' (1996)) is against the plan, insisting they merely toss that low life to the wolves and save themselves. Roenick stands firm, even after realizing that they're actually being attacked by dirty cops led by Precinct 21's NARC leader Marcus Duvall (Gabriel Byrne; 'End of Days' (1999), 'Vanity Fair' (2004)) who's deeply entwined in Bishop's underworld network, and this accidental hero ends up turning to more unorthodox methods of self preservation - arming Sabian, his staff secretary Iris (Drea de Matteo; 'Deuces Wild' (2002)), and this quartet of dubiously trustworthy prisoners - in an impossibly doomed fight for their lives against a relentless squad of murderous hit men and a gauntlet of merciless rooftop snipers out to cover their tracks in blood.

It's sometimes interesting how Hollywood tends to feed off of and regurgitate itself. Example: This potentially gripping actioner openly acknowledging that it's based on John Carpenter's gangs versus cops flick 'Assault on Precinct 13' (1976), which was openly admitted to being an urban remake of the acclaimed John Wayne (1907-1979), Dean Martin (1917-1995) Western 'Rio Bravo' (1959) - itself based on B.H. McCampbell's short story. Of course, all three are obviously decidedly different movies. Hawke actually does turn out a compelling performance here, truly shining against Fishburne's trademark silky smooth yet reptilian coolness. The reason that this hundred and nine-minute production (primarily shot in Toronto, with more stunt actors than there are actors with speaking roles) works in premise is because the antagonists appear far more ruthless and cunning than this personably disheveled protagonist can handle all at once. French director Jean-François Richet ('De l'amour' (2001)) seems to clearly understand and aptly manipulate this dynamic, encouraging your natural desire to cheer for the underdog throughout. Unfortunately, the surprisingly pedantic efforts of cinematographer Robert Gantz and film editor Bill Pankow overwhelmingly diminish the otherwise high-powered mood and pacing of this $20 million feature. Silly choices and lazy post-production sabotage this entire crew's efforts. At one point, while a paying audience is riveted by a desperate escape during the last half - where our fleeing heroes resort to torching what's left behind them - you end up watching the bad guys furiously empty a few rounds at a wall of fire, instead of at the people they've been targeting all along. In another pivotal scene, the foley artist's interpretation of crunching snow under foot is apparently so incredibly fascinating that it's about the only detail allowed to eat up precious screen time. Yawn. Sure, there's definitely loads of great action and captivating twists to James DeMonaco's otherwise clever screenplay, but a lot of it ends up looking unintentionally goofy for the most part. Check out this one as a reasonably worthwhile rental spotlighting both Hawke's and Fishburne's superb acting styles, as well as the frenetic energy of John Leguizamo, but don't be surprised if you find yourself laughing at it for the wrong reasons over-all.

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Alone in the Dark
REVIEWED 01/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Ex-Bureau 713 paranormal investigator turned archeologist for hire and lone wolf paranormal investigator Edward Carnby (Christian Slater; 'Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles' (1994), '3000 Miles to Graceland' (2001)) becomes a marked man before his transcontinental passenger plane from Buenos Aires lands in North America. Simply because of the ancient artifact - a lost golden piece of an elaborate puzzle left scattered across the globe by the legendary Abkani Tribe ten thousand years ago - Carnby is bringing to the city's museum for his girlfriend, arcane languages specialist Aline Cedrac (Tara Reid; 'American Pie' (1999), 'My Boss's Daughter' (2003)), to study and decipher before adding to a priceless collection due to be displayed in an upcoming exhibition of that vanished civilization. The Abkani believed that the worlds of light and darkness truly exist. Some thought that the only key to their survival was through symbiosis with the evil that lurks in the shadows. That horrific bond of flesh and phantasm reemerged in 1967, when twenty children were secreted from their Our Lady of Perpetual Light Orphanage beds to an underground lab by Doctor Lionel Hudgens (Mathew Walker). The same man now heading the museum's Abkani exhibit twenty-two years later. That same secluded three story orphanage where Edward escaped from as a scared little boy on that cold night when the other nineteen children mysteriously disappeared. Resurfacing as something else in human form. Sleepers, left to live their normal lives while unwittingly awaiting the moment when the beasts of the darkness once again rise up to destroy humanity. Carnby's determined to unearth the answers to both his hazy past and the Abkani legend, much to the chagrin of the Bureau's hard line leader, Commander Burke (Stephen Dorff; 'FearDotCom' (2002), 'Cold Creek Manor' (2003)). The final clue rests locked within a sarcophagus of pure gold dragged from the ocean floor by Hudgens, and unintentionally released upon this unsuspecting continent with disastrous consequences.

Reportedly based more upon Infogrames-cum-Atari's Resident Evil-like 2001 survival horror computer game, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare - itself a loose reinvention of defunct Interplay's trio of novelist Howard Phillips 'H.P.' Lovecraft (1890-1937) inspired, ground breaking shoot 'em up, puzzle solving computer games beginning with Alone in the Dark (1992) - this dreadful celluloid concoction plods along with as much believable enthusiasm as a puddle of plastic cheese. Slater, apparently borrowing his wardrobe from Arnold Schwarzenegger's Hollywood rogue cop days, gives a furiously mediocre performance here as a kind of Indiana Jones meets Fox Mulder persona while snarling out his vapid dialogue under bad lighting. He looks bored throughout this ninety-six minute, Vancouver-based turkey, offering a paying audience little to no reason to actually care what happens to his character or to any of this cast of squealing, fleeing, trigger happy monster food. Director Uwe Boll ('German Fried Movie' (1991), 'House of the Dead' (2003)) seems completely perplexed about how to create a thoroughly creepy actioner, choosing instead to essentially toss scenes from 'Aliens' (1986), 'Starship Troopers' (1997) and 'Resident Evil' (2002) into a rusty meat grinder with suspected hopes that something entertaining might extrude into your lap. Besides coughing out a soggy, hairy mess, he fails. Miserably. Sure, a few of the special effects are reasonably eye-catching. It's also fun to pick out vaguely recognizable locations from Canada's favourite West Coast city. Other than that, Boll probably should have stopped with the poster design and considered disappearing to South America with the rest of this cinematic stinker's budget. It's not even campy enough as a live action cartoon to work as a lovably awful cult hit. Bad acting, a lazy screenplay, amateurish camerawork, and far too much emphasis on plot-unimportant props truly make this coma inducing creature feature one of the worst pictures of the year so far. Yawn.

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The Assassination of Richard Nixon
REVIEWED 03/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Thirty-seventh President of the United States of America Richard Milhous Nixon will die on February 22, 1974. It doesn't matter that he showed incredible foresight in approving the Space Shuttle program two years earlier, established the DEA last year, and the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. He's a liar - just like all of the other liars who have secretly conspired to destroy recently hired Jack Jones Inc. Fine Office Interiors furniture junior salesman Samuel Bycke's (Sean Penn; 'Dead Man Walking' (1995), '21 Grams' (2003)) life and family and dreams - only worse. Money hungry, power hungry liars like President Nixon deserve to feel the full brunt of the oppressive boot heel that keeps honest, law abiding and struggling people like Samuel down and without hope and desperate for change. Change for the better, for everyone, where being an employee doesn't just stand for being a slave. The kind of change that The Black Panthers understand. He knows that they know what he means. Change against dishonest politicians and the morally corrupt man at the top who controls the bureaucrats who, despite Nixon creating the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, stonewall and stifle the loan for Bycke's mobile tire repair company idea simply because his best friend and business partner Bonny Simmons (Don Cheadle; 'Ocean's Eleven' (2001), 'Hotel Rwanda' (2004)) is Black. Sam knows that's the reason. He'll show them. He'll show his wife Marie (Naomi Watts; 'The Ring' (2002), 'I Heart Huckabees' (2004)) that their separation was a big mistake. A big mistake. They're going to remember Samuel Bycke forever. They'll see that he was right. That even the smallest grain of sand can stand up and be smarter and powerful enough to make it happen. Now that Jack Jones (Jack Thompson) has fired him simply because a salesman who's a failure in marriage is also a failure in sales, Sam has had the time to plan it all out to the minutest of details so that nothing can go wrong. He will fool the airport security guards, and take the briefcase carrying the gasoline bomb, and the gun strapped to his leg, through the departure gate's metal detector nice and easy. He will hijack the DC-9 airplane before take off, and then make the pilot crash it and him and all of the passengers on board into the White House. Samuel Bycke will kill the President - that lying President of the United States of America Richard Milhous Nixon, who's now on television every day because of Watergate - and make everything alright…

Loosely based on the actual, unsuccessful lone plot concocted by high school drop out and former US Army soldier Samuel Joseph Byck (1930-1974), who ended up killing two men, and being wounded by police gunfire before committing suicide after attempting to hijack Atlanta-bound Delta Airlines Flight 523 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, co-writer/director Niels Mueller's big screen debut is an oftentimes chilling examination of an obviously troubled and delusional mind. Not so much because of the story's eerie similarities to the horrifying 9/11 al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, but due in large part to Penn's extraordinary - if not particularly empathetic - portrayal of this broken, self-defeatist little man clearly angry at the world for his string of bad luck. What this ninety-five minute picture doesn't show is that Byck was apparently clinically treated for depression, and was reportedly in the FBI's files as early as 1972 after first committing a Federal Offense by openly threatening Nixon (1913-1994). He'd also been arrested at least twice for illegally protesting without a permit, long before madness finally nudged him towards murderous martyrdom and recording a series of strange confessional tapes that he mailed to famed American composer Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) and others. Ironically, Nixon faced an impeachment hearing starting in May 1974, and then three months later became the first US President to resign from office, because of his link to the notorious break in at the Democratic Party's Watergate Hotel offices that would figuratively kill him in the eyes of the world. In some ways, 'The Assassination of Richard Nixon' does suffer from excluding Bycke's thorough details in favour of co-writer Kevin Kennedy's screenplay editorially compressing the facts for dramatic effect over-all. To the point where this flick almost feels like a one-man stage to screen offering, where all of the supporting players are merely incidental human props for Penn to play off of. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but the need to care about the people around him and their stories isn't satisfied. Watts' talent seems completely wasted here in a walk on part that could have benefited from a lot more dialogue and screen time. Only Cheadle manages to flesh out his role enough to give a paying audience any sense of psychological balance here. This one could have been better, but check it out as a small yet captivating spotlight easily validating Penn's and Cheadle's incredible acting ability.

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The Amityville Horror
REVIEWED 04/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

It was the deal of a lifetime. Newlyweds George (Ryan Reynolds; 'Van Wilder' (2002), 'Blade: Trinity' (2004)) and Kathy Lutz's (Melissa George; 'Mulholland Dr.' (2001), 'Down with Love' (2003)) newly acquired dream house, nestled amongst the softly swaying trees that lined that picturesque Long Island, New York shore. They didn't notice the realtor's uneasiness while giving them a tour of that three story, fifty year-old Dutch Colonial home built on a 16th Century foundation. The creaking floorboards and low murmurs coming from its simple walls were just a sign of age and easily renovated neglect, they assumed. In every way, from its wrap around porch to its distinctive pair of quarter circle attic room windows to the weather beaten boat house docked at the edge of its wide backyard, this Amityville treasure promised this young couple a new life filled with many happy memories for them and Kathy's three children, Billy (Jesse James; 'As Good as It Gets' (1997), 'The Butterfly Effect' (2004)), Michael (Jimmy Bennett; 'Hostage' (2005)) and Chelsea (Chloë Grace Moretz). Even after these parents had been told that the house was for sale at a bargain price because of an earlier incident - a crime... a murder - they wanted to live there. "Houses don't kill people," George decides aloud, "People kill people." And then, something stirred in the darkness. Just as it had risen from the depths a year earlier, to finally nudge young Ronnie DeFeo, Jr. towards taking the rifle and loading it, walking from bedroom to bedroom starting with his parents, and killing them all while they slept during that three fifteen in the early morning slaughter. Jodie DeFeo (Isabel Conner), the little girl who lives in the closet of Chelsea's big third floor room, tells her new blonde playmate that she likes this new family that's moved into her last place on earth, but she doesn't like the man who lives here. He's a very bad man, who makes her do bad things and scares her. Just like George - who spends most of his sleepless nights in his dingy basement office staring at a cold grey wall where the voices come from - has started to do bad things, becoming increasingly irritable and harsh towards the boys as their dream house turns into a house of horrors before month's end...

Okay. First of all, it's common knowledge that the so-called true story that writer Jay Anson's bestselling 1977 novel was based on was exposed as an elaborate hoax linked to a fictitious Salem witch hunt survivor admittedly concocted over several bottles of wine by the real Lutz family, freelance writer Paul Hoffman, and apparently unscrupulous lawyer William Weber shortly before attempting to redefend his client, Ronald 'Butch' DeFeo, Jr. - the then-twenty-three year-old convicted of murdering his parents and four siblings in their beds at that Ocean Avenue address in 1974, currently serving six consecutive life sentences in prison. However, moviegoers still flocked to the actual house soon after the release of the 1979 original Oscar nominated horror that spawned at least four theatrical sequels and a handful of made-for-television movies. Supernatural myth seems more compelling than down to earth fact, which is a shame here, but I'll get to that in a moment. Director Andrew Douglas' stylishly creepy contemporary remake set within a mid-Seventies motif does clip along at a good pace, despite enjoying a rather lumpy old bag of familiar spooky atmosphere and all out cheesy frights throughout. Reynolds does pull in a strong performance based on little more than acting grumpy and wearing weird contact lenses as his character's slow possession by evil forces grows more deeply unsettling until completely insane mayhem explodes across the screen, but it's not enough to keep you interested over-all. Scott Kosar's predictably mediocre screenplay doesn't really make any sense or try anything particularly new. Apart from the obvious, it feels borrowed from pretty well every horror film sporting a haunted house that was inspired by the first Amityville Horror flick and 'The Exorcist' (1973). Which brings me back to my earlier point: The myth versus the facts. Kosar and Douglas had a great story but walked away. The real Amityville Horror was the actual gun murder of the DeFeo family, capitalized upon and continuing through the legal system with subsequent law suits and counter suits traded between the Lutz's and pretty well everyone concerned, including the next owners of that notorious house relentlessly invaded by demon seeking tourists. That comparably far more captivating web of human drama and intrigue are what this offering should have been about, frankly. Not yet another opportunity-wasting cinematic load of whiplash edited, blood spattered special effects that a paying audience has seen done fresher a million times before. Disappointing. As the latest in an aggravating string of Hollywood regurgitations of twenty year-old movies being cranked out for a new generation, 'The Amityville Horror' makes for an enjoyable enough rental for the eager white knuckle crowd, but its reliance on cheap tricks and its lost potential when compared to the real horror story turn this one into a gooey curiosity barely worth the price of admission.

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The Aristocrats
REVIEWED 09/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

A man walks in to a Talent Agent's office with this great stage act that he performs with his wife, their son and daughter, and the family dog...

It's tough to tell how much of this big screen home movie videotaped over the course of two years from debuting director Paul Provenza is based on accuracy or slight of hand, frankly. Not the joke itself, but the history of the joke as cited in fits and starts throughout. It's attributed to the bygone era of burlesque, when Vaudeville was still king, but this pervasively cuss-riddled adults only feature is also co-produced by Penn Jillette ('Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' (1998)) - the talking half of the notoriously irreverent American comedy magic act Penn and Teller ('Penn & Teller Get Killed' (1989)) - who's renowned for putting his own spin on facts. You don't know if the joke truly is an antique or if that's just how the legend has evolved as a kind of spoof of old fashioned back stage anarchy. In a letter to FLM magazine that's reprinted on this ninety-one minute pseudo-documentary's official website (www.thearistocrats.com), Jillette goes so far as to say that everyone who sees 'The Aristocrats' will love it, and then proceeds to alienate everyone who could possibly be offended by its relentlessly obscene sexual and scatological and psychotic humour, just to ensure that everyone who goes to see the movie won't be offended and is guaranteed to leave the theatre satisfied afterwards, proving his claim. That's what I mean. The joke - whose punch line really isn't the funniest bit of ironic word play ever - is attributed to writer Gershon Legman's 1975 book, Rationale of the Dirty Joke, Vol. 2, as apparently told to him by Ed Sullivan's (1902-1974) 'Toast of the Town' TV show (1948-1971) early player Jay Marshall, who appears here. But, where did Marshall hear it, and when? He's never asked. The joke is attributed to what were reportedly the legendary mid-Seventies private house parties of television's Saturday Night Live alumnus Chevy Chase ('Caddyshack' (1980), 'National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation' (1997)), where guests such as John Belushi (1949-1982) are said to have attempted to stretch out the joke for half an hour, but Chase isn't put in front of the camera to tell where he'd heard it from. Its noted semi-public coming out - cited by New York Observer reporter Frank DiGiacomo - from it (we're told) being an arcane after hours secret handshake initiation amongst comedians in the States and the UK, didn't happen during the New York Friars Club Roast for Chase on September 28, 2002. It'd happened the previous year, during the 2001 Friars Club Roast of Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner, when comedian Gilbert Gottfried ('The Adventures of Ford Fairlane' (1990), 'Funky Monkey' (2004)) switched gears and told it to a 9/11-traumatized crowd of funnymen and women who jeered his terrorism-tinged punch lines for being told too soon after al-Qaeda's aerial attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon days earlier. The crowd was offended at a gathering meant to be offensive, so he brilliantly offended them a different way, with this old blue joke that most everyone there already knew about. That untelevised clip is shown here. The Friars Club began in 1904, but you're never told if the joke originated with that fraternity of celebrities, or who first told it. This lack of context is a shame, because its the various stories that revolve around The Aristocrats joke that are what actually make this movie the most enjoyable throughout. Not the joke itself, which basically encourages over the top Tourettes Syndrome-like shock value for its own sake, and that you're invited by the website to tell your own way for a contest that ends on September 30, 2005. The joke just is. It's as crass as the teller makes it. As the undefeated master of melodically vulgar cadence George Carlin ('Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure' (1989), 'Jersey Girl' (2004)) - who easily steals the spotlight with his hilariously creative yet grotesquely specific take on part of it - cites, The Aristocrats joke is the type of shaggy dog gag where "You get to play". You're supposed to be as offensive as humanly possible while telling it. The so-called delight is in the details, where the more you outrageously embellish the middle part with what ever the times dictate are taboos, the better it's considered. "It's not the song, it's the singer," Jillette points out. It's just too bad that the song ain't too great to begin with. Sure, I had a good time with this guilty pleasure. Some of the patter is funny, and its adaptation by a few comedians is undeniably original, but the laughs are sporadic and hinge on a novelty that seems quaint and boring by today's standards. I've overheard worse at the mall. Check out 'The Aristocrats' if you're a fan of disgusting locker room humour that obsessively trashes the boundaries of morality and good taste, or if you're curious to see how a dozen or so different comedians tell the same dirty joke in whole or part, but this one is probably just as worthwhile as a cheap and naughty rental that's basically along the same lines as finding swear words in the dictionary when you were a kid.

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Aeon Flux
REVIEWED 12/05, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Stealthfully emerging from the shadows like Death personified, secret Monican Rebellion operative Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron) aimed her gun mere inches from Bregna's ruling scientist Trevor Goodchild's (Marton Csokas) face. It was his fault that her beloved sister was dead. He hadn't been there when the police had stormed the tidy apartment of Una Flux (Amelia Warner; 'Quills' (2000)). Like a coward, he hadn't witnessed that summary execution of Aeon's only living relative who Goodchild had ordered snuffed out, but Una's young life had been stolen from her because of his unwielding oppression for the sake of maintaining Bregna's perfect society of civilization's last remaining five million souls ever since the industrial accident four hundred years ago. Una was gone because of Trevor's regime. Now, it would end. Aeon wanted to be there when Trevor died. The Handler (Frances McDormand; 'Wonder Boys' (2000), 'North Country' (2005)) knew this, but would have chosen the rebels' best killer for this impossible mission at any rate. Aeon's personal vendetta would only fuel her determination to breach the dangerous perimeter outside of the civilian zone, follow the embedded map through the heavily guarded complex and succeed. She ached to pull the trigger, to feel her gun's recoil as the bullet punched into his skull at point blank range. To stare into Trevor's eyes in that lonely hall as his cold judge and merciless executioner, and see this so-called great man crumble against her boiling rage. But, she hesitated. His eyes were the colour of memories. Her memories, but that weren't from her life. She knew him, but as a woman intimately connected to Trevor, and not as who Aeon knew she was. It made no sense. She would have remembered. Aeon Flux should have kept sharp and finished him. But, she needed to know the secrets from this murky past of strange and yet familiar glimpses and emotions that were locked within Trevor's soft, welcoming gaze.

There's a moment early on, during this fairly strange yet overtly pedantic Sci-Fi flick from director Karyn Kusama ('Girlfight' (2000)) when it seems clear that looking great took precedence over original story telling. 'Aeon Flux' - which is really just a naughty sounding, enigmatic way of saying "A period of time in a constant succession of changes" - was originally the brain child of American animator Peter Chung that initially appeared in 1991 as a six-part series of stylish three-minute shorts on BBC 2's experimental 'Liquid Television', before that ground breaking program was continued in the States by MTV and Chung developed his futuristic femme fatale rebel spy named Aeon Flux for two additional seasons that also saw the birth of 'Beavis and Butthead'. In the cartoon, Aeon Flux would die each time, usually emphasizing a rather fetishistic ambiguity about right versus wrong while illustrating the ironic futility of taking sides in conflict or war. In Kusama's ninety-three minute live action cartoon of 'Matrix' (1999) acrobatic fight scenes and noisy gun play lazily strung together by a fairly plot unimportant mission to assassinate the utopian walled city of Bregna's ruling scientist Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas; 'Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones' (2002), 'The Bourne Supremacy' (2004)) under the direction of deadly secret operative Flux's (played by Oscar winner Charlize Theron; 'The Devil's Advocate' (1997), 'Monster' (2003)) Monican rebel leader The Handler (Frances McDormand) in the year 2417, there's not really too much for a paying audience to tap into except for the wonderfully weird special effects. Buy a ticket and switch off above the neck while the glossy PVC and pyrotechnic colours wash over you, seems to be the only reason to see it. Sure, there are references to Chung's impressive work beyond the haute couture for cult fans, with vague nods to Aeon's love of shoes and a lifted scene where her eyelid acts as a venus fly trap, but 'Aeon Flux' is pretty well a vapid snack of empty clichés set to a trippy beat from beginning to closing credits. It's silly and boring when it shouldn't be either. Screenwriter Phil Hay obviously didn't get it, instead cobbling together a poor distant cousin of 'Logan's Run' (1976) bloated by bad post production decisions reminiscent of 'Blade Runner' (1982), where all of the primary characters robotically talk at each other like theatrical ingenues still learning their lines for a 1950's Ingmar Bergman Art House film until another yawn inducing, break neck (Theron was reportedly injured during a stunt) fight trashes a different corner of the set. Its ending is pure cinematic cheese - particularly when Hay's screenplay finally reveals that you've basically been watching a gender switched 'Demolition Man' (1993) meets 'The Island' (2005). The saddest aspect of this big screen stinker of patch worked editing room swipes and wasted talent is that you can easily come up with far more fascinating scenarios while you're stuck sitting through it. I kept being reminded of the hugely under rated 'Solaris' (2003), for instance. In the final cut, 'Aeon Flux' is more like a sequel of 'Catwoman' (2004).

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