Master of Disguise
REVIEWED 08/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Well, I guess I have nobody to blame other than myself for sitting through this one. I really did expect it would be funny. I figured this is a kid's flick, so it's got to be at least partially funny. Besides, Dana Carvey is supposedly a funny guy. Not here, though. Not throughout the entirety of this awful and moronic excuse for a movie is he (or any of his co-stars) the least bit funny. Sure, some of the antics are so incredibly stupid that you can't help but shake your head in gut-wrenching disbelief. However, that's not funny. That's just cruel and unusual punishment for buying a ticket to see this load of crap.

It's like when somebody's telling a dull joke to a captive audience using a corny accent while making quirky gestures with their face and arms, just to get them to laugh. The joke-teller knows the joke isn't particularly funny, so they try to embellish it in the hopes that you'll at least laugh at them acting like an idiot. Doing dramatic pratfalls. Crossing their eyes and sticking their tongue out. Jamming a lampshade on their head, dropping their trousers, and dancing spasmodically on the dinner table. Lame. Did I mention that I paid to see this overpaid twit jerk around as though he was on a mega-sugar rush for ninety minutes, telling several unfunny jokes? Fart jokes. Big butt jokes. Slap in the face jokes. Ethnic jokes. None of which were funny. Frankly, the comatose tell jokes that have better punchlines.

In fact, this big screen dud is so incredibly anti-funny that I'm not going to bother telling you any more specifics about the story. You knowing this much might be enough to stunt your unborn children. Instead, I'm going to strongly suggest that you avoid this one like a West Nile mosquito. Ignore the ads. Run away. Don't rent or borrow or even rescue this film off the street thinking you've just found something worth watching. It won't be. Simply put, 'Master of Disguise' is very likely the cinematic chalk outline of Dana Carvey's comedic career.

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My Big Fat Greek Wedding
REVIEWED 08/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Taken to the extremes of ethnic stereotyping, this hilariously goofy movie grabs us by the shoulders and shoves us head first in to the lives of a huge and boitrous Greek family. Everything about them is larger than life, brimming with dramatic pride, and overzealously emoted with glass-smashing bravado. Especially the patriarch's overblown fears that his thirty year-old daughter will never marry a nice Greek man and birth lots of beautiful Greek babies. Ergo, when she finally blossoms from her rather stifling and frumpish coccoon, and becomes involved with a man who is not the least bit Greek, the family does what comes naturally: They freak out.

The only problem that I had was with the title. It's somewhat of a turn off for at least half of those who'd potentially get a lot of enjoyment out of what transpires on the big screen, but who will likely never go see it due to the 'chick flick'-like title. I almost didn't bother with it, solely because of the title. Fact is, the title doesn't really acknowledge that most of what you see has nothing at all to do with weddings. Greek Orthodox, or otherwise. That part is just the feel good pay-off at the end. It's really about being embarassed by your conspicuously strange relatives, and putting up with them anyways. It's about finding happiness, on a path riddled with well-meaning lunacy. And, as you learn, it's about the miracle of Windex.

'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' is an outrageously quirky, delightfully romantic offering that had me laughing out loud more often than anything else dished up that I've seen so far this year. There are so many wildy funny scenes in this irreverant romp that could very easily be applied to any family of any nationality, that this aspect really doesn't get in the way of connecting (or empathizing) with any of the humour. The cast of caricatures are all played with such wonderful enthusiasm, that you can't help but find them and their weird idiocincracies magically endearing. If you've wanted to see a side-splitting screwball comedy wrapped around a completely satisfying love story, this is definitely the one you've been waiting for.

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My Wife is an Actress
REVIEWED 11/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Well, the title of this quaint French comedy says it all. Sports reporter Yvan (Yvan Attal) is married to International movie star Charlotte (Charlotte Gainsboroug). Yvan loves his effevescent young wife deeply, but he seems to have always been weary of her adoring fans. Becoming increasingly aggrivated with them, as her cinematic stardom draws more and more autograph hounds in to their private lives. To him, everything having to do with the make-believe world of acting is inconsequential, elitist or stupid. So, he opts to deny that Charlotte's worldwide sex appeal really means anything. That he has nothing to worry about, despite him being embarassed by her big screen lovemaking scenes, when Charlotte leaves for England's Pinewood Studios to star in a steamy romantic flick.

That is, until a series of pointed questions from his pregnant sister's rather inconsiderate former suitor regarding Charlotte convincingly kissing her hunky leading men and repeatedly baring all for the camera plants a poisonous seed of insecure suspicion in Yvan's brain. A neurotic jealousy then blossoms within him, when he makes a surprise visit to the movie set on the day of his better half's sex scene with her notorious British co-star (John, played by Terence Stamp) - only to find that everyone in the production crew is also naked, because of an off-the-cuff remark an uneasy Charlotte had made during an earlier arguement with her director. Sending Yvan back to France in a delirious huff, convinced that all actors are wackos, and so confused about his wife's profession that he secretly joins a local theatre troupe to find out what the heck's going on inside these thespian's heads. Which, as he soon discovers, makes matters a whole lot more complicated for him - and his already strained marriage.

What you get here is a mildly entertaining yet slightly disappointing story sparingly peppered with very few instances of outrageous humour throughout. It could have been a much funnier romp, frankly. Writer/Director/Star Attal does do a nice enough job of pacing the realistic aspects of the main plot between his frazzled character and that of Gainsboroug's (his real-life leading lady), but doesn't really manage to lift his script to the potential level of total hilarious mayhem it deserves. Choosing instead to err on the side of deflative moderation, noisy filler and charming sap, almost as if this indie-like labour of love is afraid to be outright funny. Let's hope Harold Ramis decides to spearhead a remake.

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Men in Black 2
REVIEWED 07/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Agents K (Tommy Lee Jones) and J (Wil Smith), and pretty well all of the popular characters from the first movie, return to caricature themselves in this fairly contrived, slightly updated remake. That's about the only way to take this one. It can't stand on it's own merits, nor does it seem to want to. You have to compare the two films in order to find any redeeming qualities that'll keep you from walking out of the theatre after half an hour. That is, if you're like me and still love watching the first movie. Last time, Agent J was recruited and they saved a galaxy (and the world) from a big nasty bug masquerading as a big stupid man. This time, Agent K is brought out of retirement and they save M.I.B. headquarters (and the world) from a big nasty bug masquerading as a sexy half-naked woman. It's likely that the vegetative writers for TV's 'The Love Boat' could have dusted off a better script.

The first movie was fresh and quirky and hilariously clever, mainly because K and J kept things in perspective as the audience was introduced to this exotic hodge-podge of trans-planetary relations on Earth. The comic book based characters were funny and real enough for us to care about them and their adventure. It had a good story, with the comedy relief and gadgets thrown in to enhance the plot. This second one gets sidetracked by the same comedy relief and gadgets we've seen before, and seems to take for granted that there's nothing really new in the way of a story for the audience to hook in to - except for a few twists on the same special effects, similar bad guys wearing different prosthetic masks, and a handful of cheesy in-joke references to the original movie - as we watch these obviously bored sapiens and spacefolk sleepwalk through each inherantly familiar scene. Even the tiny love interest subplot in 'M.I.B. II' is clumsily thrown away.

This is why the 'Ghostbusters' sequels never surpassed their original's Saturday morning cartoon adaptation. In fact, while I was watching scenes such as a monstrously ghoulish worm eating a fleeing New York subway train in 'M.I.B. II', I had momentary flashbacks of those 'Ghostbusters' bombs.

You know a Sci-Fi comedy has failed miserably on the big screen when the funniest scenes are a cameo by Micheal Jackson, the phrase "Can't move, too scared", and Wil Smith trying to wriggle out of a pile of big plastic tubing. The first 'M.I.B' is still better. Even the cartoon is probably better. The producers of this half-baked rip-off should have just re-released the first one, and mailed the millions spent on their disappointing pastiche to me, c/o Uranus.

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Minority Report
REVIEWED 06/02, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Steven Spielberg has seen the future. It is bleached and gritty. Where institutionalized invasiveness has breached the bounds of benevolent user-friendly technology. Where advertising billboards call to you by name, and your whereabouts can be tracked in the blink of an eye. Where the slightest intention of committing murder is a crime. Or rather, a pre-crime. Tapped in to by three psychic dreamers. Recorded, judged, and intervened by the police.

Tom Cruise's character, chief of the Capitol's pre-crime experiment, falls victim to this shining five-year marriage of clairvoyance and computers when he is accused of committing cold blooded murder days before the actual event. Sending him underground. Relentlessly pursued by his own department. Relying on any scrap of evidence that will not only prove his innocence, but stop a murder, and inevitably dredge up a terrible secret that can no-longer remain buried.

This is an incredible movie. Based on a novel by the same name from the prolofic and disturbed mind of the late Phillip K. Dick. This is a powerful crime drama. Full of cleverly plotted twists and turns, and cranked to the max with nail-biting action. This is fantastic science fiction. Loaded from start to finish with eye-popping special effects that will leave you spellbound. Argueably, Spielberg transcends the marvel of 'Blade Runner', Ridley Scott's now-classic dark wet interpretation of Dick's slightly weak 'Do Electric Sheep Dream' vision of the future, in that his sci-fi who(will)dunit puts humanity even more at the forefront in a world overrun by the mechanised redundancy of Mankind.

I have seen the future. I will go see it again, with popcorn. And, hope that it's only a movie and not the shape of things to come.

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A Mighty Wind
REVIEWED 05/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

On ebay recently, you could have placed a six-dollar bid on an original cuneiform clay tablet no bigger than the palm of your hand. Known as the world's first written language, cuneiform was developed by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia over five thousand years ago in the Middle East region widely considered to be the Cradle of Civilization: Present-day Iraq. The Oud - a wooden-bodied musical instrument with gut strings that were strummed with a kind of plectrum - was also born there. However, the exact date is uncertain and it didn't resemble a full-sized acoustic guitar until long after 9th Century Spaniards first created crude narrow forms of both it and the lute; it had enjoyed several surges in popularity throughout the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods, and Manual Torres (1850-1892) enlarged its shape and perfected its resonance to what we're familiar with today. Which brings us to Leadbelly. Born in 1885, Huddie 'Leadbelly' Ledbetter was a two-time convict and legendary guitar player from Louisiana who recorded the first American Folk Music album in 1939 and inspired generations of musicians long after his death from Lou Gerhig's Disease in 1949. His music, and that of his peers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, influenced 'The Great Folk Music Scare' of the late 1950's and early 1960's that gave rise to The Weavers, Harry Belafonte, The Kingston Trio, and a host of other first wave Folk revivalists. According to the official Spinal Tap website (www.spinaltap.com), it's also supposedly the roots of The Folksmen - a somewhat fictitious Folk trio who opened for the drummer-challenged 'loudest band in England' during the famed mockumentary Rock group's made-for-TV 25th Anniversary London Sell-Out concert in 1992.

Coaxed out of retirement by the death of aged Folktown label record producer Irving Steinbloom (loosely fashioned after John Lomax, the guy who actually discovered Leadbelly in prison), Alan (Christopher Guest), Jerry (Michael McKean) and Mark (Harry Shearer) return with their Burl Ives-like song list as The Folksmen for a memorial concert hastily slated in two weeks at the Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan. They're not alone, though. The New Main Street Singers - who released thirty albums in ten years, before their first incarnation, and are still full of peppy vim in their squeaky-clean blue vests and well-manicured hairstyles at the Glenwood Gardens Amusement Park in Tallahassee, Florida - are primed and ready to lend their commercially polished 'neuftet' sound to this celebration to be aired live on Public Television. Conversely, the third group approached by Steinbloom's grieving and rather neurotic son Jonathan (Bob Balaban) is the lovably flaky Hippie-like duo, Mitch and Mickey - whose 1966 on-air kiss while performing their only hit single captivated the Nation. Thirty-seven years later, Mickey (Catherine O'Hara) is eager to relive those misty watercoloured memories singing and playing her dulcimer in front of a two-thousand seat audience again. However, Mitch (Eugene Levy) still hasn't quite recovered from his self-destructive solo career during the 1970's or his subsequent mental breakdown at the Cherry Hill Psychiatric Hospital, which are both quickly apparent when he appears at Mickey's doorstep after a sixteen hour bus ride from his heavily sedated absentia.

Rife with hilariously deadpan mock interviews and some brilliantly goofy 'behind the scenes' footage, this flick is definitely well worth checking out. Sure, eventhough there are similarities to Rob Reiner's enormously popular spoof documentary 'This is Spinal Tap' (1984), it's a completely different movie comprising an ensemble cast of comedic ad-lib talent. Two of my favourite hams on the screen are easily Jane Lynch's wonderfully cheeky ex-adult film actress turned chirpy singer by day/colour vibrancy worshipper by night Laurie Bohner, and Jennifer Coolidge's outrageously vacuous public relations agency rep and Ivana-esque shmooze-tress Amber Cole - whose line about model trains still cracks me up. There are a few corny jokes sprinkled throughout that tend to slightly flatten the momentum, but you soon find yourself laughing out loud at this lighthearted romp of quirky idiosyncrasies and dopey human errors spun together by an impressively convincing repertoire of original songs. Even if you can't stand Folk music as a genre, keep in mind that this one's actually about the fabulously created pastiche of irreverent bygone stereotypes enthusiastically played full tilt for kicks and giggles. Good stuff.

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The Matrix 2
REVIEWED 05/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Defrag your mind and escape. Picking up six months beyond where the first ground breaking sci-fi flick ended, Neo (Keanu Reeves) is still unsure that he is 'the one' who will free we human batteries powering our machine overlords - that have ruled this scorched Earth for a hundred years by locking our minds within the virtual reality norm of The Matrix. Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) - the warrior prophet and unofficial leader to the freed people of Zion's underground city - believes he is. So does Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), and has fulfilled her end of the prophecy by falling in love with him. Even the now virally vengeful Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) suspects Neo's importance to the foregone destruction of this digital dream world he calls home. However, as the battle-scarred and metallic slug-like hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar recharges under heavy guard in the survivors' cavernous home base's Bay 7, Defense Commander Lock (Harry Lennix) is more concerned about the deadly reality that an angry swarm of two hundred and fifty thousand robotic Sentinels could possibly breach the gates within seventy-two hours. So, Neo finds The Oracle (the late Gloria Foster) who sends him and the gang on a quest to save The Keymaker from The Merovingian and his ghoulish albino twin assassins, so that he can access and fry The Matrix at it's big shiney source. She also confirms an ominous nightmare that haunts Neo.

What a load of ridiculous junk. With all of the hype and money ($100 million worth of special effects, which bankrupted several animation companies along the way) and special pre-movie teasers, I really should have known ahead of time that this incredibly boring and disjointed sequel couldn't possibly live up to the first one. Sure, you get some of the same astounding camera effects that nobody else has been able to repeat, and a whack of heavily choreographed fight scenes that build to a feverish pitch more than once - with a couple of them running for at least ten minutes on-screen, and one or two that actually aren't laughable. The downside is, there ain't no real sense of continuity, absolutely no reason to care what happens, nor (a la 'Lord of the Rings') does it have any ending! Plus, Fishburne's so way over the top in his righteous postulating that I wanted to jump up and smack him around with my bag of stale popcorn more than once, just so the wispy turtle of a story could get off it's lazy butt and lurch forward a notch. Plainly and simply, no-matter who tells you differently, 'Matrix Reloaded' is not the least bit worth getting a speeding ticket or a theatre ticket to see. Trust me on this one, folks. Wait a couple of months and rent it along with the first one, watch both in the comfort of your home, and pray the third one's remotely better. Awful.

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The Man Without a Past
REVIEWED 08/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Beaten up and robbed, and pronounced dead about an hour after arriving by train in Helsinki, Jaako (Markku Peltola) cobbles together a new life on the streets under an amnesiatic fog. Nameless, no cash, no papers, no boots, he doesn't remember anything about his past before that trio of thugs attacked him in a dark city park. So, it's merely by chance that he ends up living in a makeshift shanty town of rusted old transport trailers on the river's edge near a busy shipyard, run by pathetically opportunistic security manager Nieminen (Juhani Niemelä). Still, things begin to turn around for this forty something year-old strong-willed former welder, when he catches the eye of a homely Salvation Army volunteer named Irma (Kati Outinen) at the traveling Monday night soup kitchen, and he ends up getting a job sorting and loading donated sundries for their shop in town. These two sad and forgotten souls start dating, usually listening to American Rock 'n' Roll standards echoing from his dump-found 'M Fonic' jukebox, after picking through a ruined meager meal made on his unreliable hotplate. However, when he becomes witness to a bank robbery and then befriends the rifle-toting burglar after being taken in for questioning, Jaako's former wife tells the authorities who he is, and he's faced with deciding which life - the past, or the present - he wants to continue living.

Well, there are certainly a lot of empty spaces and long silent pauses in this sub-titled, predominantly deadpan, 2002 comedy from Finnish writer/director Aki Kaurismäki ('Leningrad Cowboys Go America' (1989)). As though there's something intrinsically human that's lost in the translation and never ceases to keep you outside of this overwhelmingly depressive and loping picture. Sure, there are a few sparks of soft quirky humour here, such as Nieminin's 'vicious male' guard dog Hannibal (a part that won the 'Palm Dog' Award from the London Evening Standard at Cannes, for the best animal role, along with an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film) turning out to be a completely domesticated female snuggle puppy. However, the storyline doesn't start to get interesting until about two-thirds in, after Jaako encourages the Sally Ann band to broaden their repertoire and start doing gigs at the smoky, mausoleum-like local community centre, and his friendship with that fairly captivating crook from the bank sends him on a simple journey of redemption. Maybe life in Finland is actually like this, with everyone locked in silent torture with one foot already in the grave, but the pervasive moroseness of all these characters sure does make it tough to empathize enough to actually care what happens to them. I read someplace -likely on the movie poster - that critics have raved about this one, but I kept expecting the main cast to suddenly join hands and gleefully hurl themselves into an on-coming train, in this world where it seems suicide is probably the most popular hobby per capita. So, I'd say keep clear of 'Mies vailla menneisyyttä' ('The Man Without a Past') if you're looking to be entertained by a bright and lively script, because you won't find it here. Too bad.

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The Magdalene Sisters
REVIEWED 09/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Finally ending with the last closure in 1996, the one hundred and fifty year legacy of Ireland's infamous 'Magdalene Laundries' is one of outrageously indecent cruelty towards an estimated thirty thousand women at the hands of the church. They were illegitimate daughters and unwed mothers, or those considered immorally wayward or unwanted or simple-minded, who were mercilessly locked away behind various convent walls throughout that country. To work under gulag-like conditions for no pay in for-profit operations run by nuns. To wash away their sins as penance for (in many cases) simply existing. One such 'Magdalene' - named after Mary Magdalene, a prostitute who is believed to have found redemption by the hand of Christ during his lifetime - is Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff), a shy lithe farm girl whose parents carted off to one such asylum after her young cousin raped her during a church-held wedding reception in 1964. Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), an attractive teenaged orphan housed at St. Attractis, is sent to that same grey institution after her innocent fun chatting across the barred fence with the local boys sparks the ire of her pious keepers. Afraid and disoriented, these two women are initially marched upstairs along with Patricia (Dorothy Duffy), a recent unwed mother who was delivered from the maternity ward within hours of giving up her newborn baby for adoption, into the office of Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan) and an undetermined sentence of relentless servitude. Bridget oversees her securely enclosed Magdalene Laundry with an iron fist that deftly serves to break the will of these three women. They are banned from speaking except to pray, stripped of whatever worldly possessions they've brought, and fed meager portions of gruel and bread when they're not forced to scrub clothing by hand, shoulder-to-shoulder, in the stifling heat of the laundry room. Bernadette is the first to attempt escape, using her raw beauty to convince a delivery boy (Sean Colgan) to help her. However, her plans fall apart when he panics, and she is torturously punished and humiliated by the Sister in the middle of the night. Margaret also discovers a way to freedom, but has by then become so brainwashed by her imprisonment that she quietly returns to the fray without being caught. Release seems altogether futile, until her brother suddenly appears on Christmas Day - after four years of this Hell - to finally take Margaret home. However, Bernadette hasn't given up just yet and, with Patricia by her side, she tries once more to find a way beyond that hard stone wall, to the rolling green fields that will lead to a new life in Dublin.

Wow. This overwhelmingly powerful 2002 movie truly leaves nothing to the imagination as it depicts these women's unthinkably degrading stories. Director/screenwriter Peter Mullan immediately gives you a true sense of what these real life characters must have endured, while his impressively tight script virtually grabs you by the collar and drags you along with them. You can't help but care about and feel for those caught under the often malicious thumb of McEwan's wonderfully tyrannical performance throughout. Along with the main cast, full praise should also go to Eileen Walsh's role as the mentally and sexually abused Crispina, who eventually snaps and lashes out during one of many successfully emotion-charged scenes that (in this case) has her repeatedly screaming "You are not a man of God!" more than two dozen times. At another point, when Margaret is standing outside the convent gate looking in, I was sure that I heard the sound of the audience's collective hearts breaking at her sad choice between fleeing or not. This movie is unabashedly rough and gritty, forcing you to actually pay attention to the atrocities wrongfully meted out against these people by the ones who were supposed to be saving their souls with kindness and purpose. Frankly, it's all part of a cycle of corruption that history has shown was all too frequent within the Catholic church around the world - not so much to erroneously prove that the religion of Christianity is inherently evil, but that unchecked authority and power given to the wrong people hiding behind the cloak of righteousness has obviously been a terrible mistake for all concerned. This otherwise important flick does fail to point that out, but the fact remains that what happened to tens of thousands of women in those convents will continue to haunt the Irish populis and its clergy for generations. And, what we're left with from 'The Magdalene Sisters' is a brutally honest glimpse into the thankfully short amount of time that a tiny fraction of victims endured and survived against insurmountable cruelty towards their ultimate freedom. This controversial and incredibly touching picture likely won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you're hungry for a captivatingly human story about something that actually happened, I'd definitely recommend that you check it out. Awesome.

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Matchstick Men
REVIEWED 09/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Veteran California con artist Roy Waller (Nicolas Cage) and his conniving sidekick Frank Mercer (Sam Rockwell) have laid out a pretty good life for themselves, turning the simple greed of everyday folk into a fairly lucrative telemarketing scam selling the Waterson 2000 water filtration system - a cheap $50 faucet at any hardware store - for hundreds of dollars a pop with the sales hook of their marks possibly winning a free European trip or a brand new car if they buy now. Of course, it's all well-rehearsed fakery that quickly vanishes once a cheque is cut and in their hot little hands. That's the game. And, every so often, these two flim flam men up the stakes by playing the field with Roy acting as an International moneychanger for an undisclosed bank while Frank reels in the rich who are eager to cash in on the volatile exchange rate. However, Roy has a problem. Many problems, actually. Although he's a chain-smoker who feels justified in his dubious profession, Waller is also a hypochondriac, compulsively neat, suffers from bouts of facial ticks, and is wildly uncomfortable being outdoors. Taking little pink pills illegally bought through a suspicious source vaguely relieves these anxieties when he's on a job, but his supply soon runs dry and Mercer ends up teeing him up with a local psychiatrist who forces him into weekly therapy sessions in return for renewing Roy's prescription in the form of little blue pills. They help, but so does Dr. Klein's (Bruce Altman) patient probing into the failed marriage and true source of our quirky grifter's incessant maladies, quickly leading to the sudden intrusion into his life by Roy's estranged fourteen year-old daughter, Angela (Alison Lohman). Angela, still on vacation before starting Summer school in a week, wants to learn the ropes from her newfound Dad. So, much to his cagey partner's chagrin and fear of this domestic upheaval messing up their current big-money sting, Roy hesitantly takes her under his wing and soon learns that he likes how things are panning out. He's happy, reasonably symptom-free, and beginning to realize that there's more to life than the easy swindle. However, what he doesn't realize is that this new life of fatherhood could turn out to be nothing more than a flash in the pan.

What a great movie. Not only do you get an outstanding performance from Cage and crew, but the story here is also chock full of truly captivating and sometimes hilarious moments as the smart and clever script takes you along for the ride. This is one of those wonderfully pieced together flicks that lets you know everything a paying audience needs in order to get caught up with the main roles and their underhanded dealings, but also pulls everything together in such a completely satisfying way that you can't help but laugh at the plot twist your gut keeps telling you is in the works behind the scenes here, where it would have easily failed under a fog of gut-wrenching cliché if put in less capable hands. Director Ridley Scott hits the mark, giving you a stylishly entertaining crime romp with all the extra frills of brilliant character development that run the gamut from deep introspection to hilarious comedy throughout. Cage is a master at squeezing every drop out of his dialogue, and deftly balances Waller's oddball contortions with the sometimes-riveting personal growth that unfolds before our eyes. You can't help but love to see him in action, using his wits to rip off people, but you also want to see this basically good guy find his way back to a decent life. Rockwell is also perfectly cast, as the somewhat belligerently droll wise acre who you know can't be trusted as far as you could throw him, but you like him just the same. You can tell this picture was a labour of love for all concerned, just from the energy that comes off the screen, pulling you further in. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised to see this one on the short list come Oscar time, since it really does deliver on all fronts where it counts. Definitely check out 'Matchstick Men' as one of the most fully satisfying offerings out of Hollywood so far this year. Awesome.

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The Matrix 3
REVIEWED 11/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Stranded in a realm between the illusion of the matrix and the reality of the machine world, Thomas 'Neo' Anderson (Keanu Reeves) must find his way back to the former and the esoteric guidance of The Oracle (Mary Alice), and then return to the horrifying core of the latter with the help of his lover Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), before fulfilling his epic destiny in a showdown against everyone's unexpectedly virulent foe - Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) - as The One. Meanwhile, Captains Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) race against time through the scorched Earth's labyrinthine ruins towards the sieged underground city of Zion, in the hopes of setting off an electro-magnetic pulse that will tip the balance against an overwhelming horde of deadly Sentinels that has breached its walls and is close to crippling these freedom fighters' well-armed first line of defense. However, systematically infecting everyone in his path inside the matrix, as well as finding a way to reap havoc in the real world, Smith has become more powerful than ever - to the point where even the machines need help to contain his seemingly unstoppable destruction - leaving Neo with little choice as to who or what he needs to ally himself with in order to bring a lasting end to this Century-old war.

Well, this one's certainly far more entertaining than the first sequel to 'The Matrix' (1999) that was released in theatres earlier this Summer, but it still doesn't measure up to the fascinatingly captivating original movie. Pretty well everything you might have loved about those two predecessors is here in one form or another, from the outstanding computer-aided bullet-riddled fight scenes to the hefty doses of metaphysical bafflegab filtered through a religion-tinged superhero comic book-like script. Actually, just as the first flick was rife with anagrams and 'Alice Through the Looking Glass' references, this final chapter contains quite a lot of religious overtones throughout. Which I guess was inevitable, considering Neo is supposed to be the people's saviour here. Good thing is, the Wachowski Brothers writer/director duo mercifully do cut back on the amount of relentless and borderline boring hand to hand combat and rave fluff that pretty well ruined their last offering for me. However, what really gets in the way of this being a much more intellectually enjoyable flick than it is, is that the story quickly loses steam and takes the lazy way out in wrapping up as many loose ends as possible. So, if you remember the whole premise of the first one being the freeing of all humanity: Those grown by the machines to become organic batteries in an ashen world without any other means for electric power, this ending will likely send you out into the streets scratching your head afterwards, wondering what the heck happened. Sure, 'Revolutions' is a great-looking feast for the eyes from beginning to end - even though it apparently starts exactly where the comparably computer game-like 'Reloaded' ended, and relies heavily on the audience either renting that one or having a good enough long-term memory for detail before seeing this one - but it's unfortunately more of a 'turn off your brain and enjoy' kind of picture than something that nurtures the legacy of what is already a cinematic sci-fi benchmark of the last Century. Check it out for the awesome visuals set to a trippy soundtrack, but don't expect much in the way of exceptional acting or real depth.

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Master and Commander
REVIEWED 11/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

The Napoleonic War is spreading to the far side of the world, and the British man-of-war HMS Surprise has been sent across the swirling storm-rapt open seas to hunt down and capture or sink a much larger French gunship, the Acheron, that has been laying waste to anything afloat along the Brazilian coastline that bares the English flag. Unfortunately, Captain 'Lucky' Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and his ragged collection of one hundred and ninety-one officers and crew fall under mercilessly heavy cannon fire just as they arrive to complete their mission. The Acheron has been waiting for them, taking full advantage of it's more powerful target range in the thick dawn fog, leaving the Surprise crippled and taking on water as this fierce enemy vessel moves in for the kill. Quick thinking and sheer man power are the only things that save Aubrey's damaged frigate from destruction, but he is determined not to turn back defeated, and orders his men to make repairs with what's onboard and ready themselves for mortal combat. Jack has spent most of his life on the ocean, serving under Admiral Nelson with his friend and ship's surgeon Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), before taking command of this fast and formidable sea wolf. Maturin is dubious about his fearless friend's reasoning to continue the hunt under such strained conditions, but the Naturalist side of him is soon placated when the doctor learns they will be making their way towards the Galapagos Islands and it's as yet mysterious cornucopia of undiscovered flora and fauna. However, the Acheron reappears like a phantom in the dark near the already treacherous Cape Horn, and the hunter becomes the hunted a second time as their lurching warship is pummeled from behind under the eerie blanket of a moonless night, galvanizing Jack's seething vendetta to send his rival to the pits of Hell by any means at his disposal.

Holy cripes, what a thoroughly engrossing epic. Taken from the pages of renowned bygone war-at-sea fictionalist Patrick O'Brian's (1914-2000) series of popular novels, this wonderfully captivating and beautifully detailed adventure packs so much into its two hour and eighteen minutes of screen time that you feel as though you've known these characters for ages and feel like a flabby wimp for not signing up to serve alongside them. The utter hardship these men go through is all there, from the tediously endless days of open sea exposure navigating through sometimes gut-churning choppy waves just to get from Point A to Point B, to the horrifyingly frantic and gritty reality of wooden ship to wooden ship combat before either boarding or being boarded to do battle up close with swords and pistols drawn. It certainly isn't a romantic look at early 19th Century seamanship by any means, but Crowe and Bettany - reunited after working together in the astounding 'A Beautiful Mind' (2001) - and the entire supporting cast fill out their roles with such believable conviction, that you're quickly thrown into their world without question. Writer/director Peter Weir's immensely satisfying screenplay goes to great pains to make these men real and all of their stories and subplots intriguing, against a backdrop of historic seafaring war that cleverly serves to crank up their sense of doom or glory to maximum capacity for a paying audience. From the grunts and their sometimes ignorant superstitions leading to near mutiny, to the boy officer demonstrating incredible dignity and strength after losing half his arm to a simple fracture that nothing can be done about except amputation, to the multi-faceted indelible mark of loyalty and honourable friendship between Aubrey and Maturin, I can't say enough great things about this extremely powerful movie. Frankly, it would be a terrible shame if a sequel wasn't already in post-production, because they have at least eighteen more of O'Brian's books to bring us and a winning cast that's sure to carry on the lasting cinematic legacy that this incredible oceanic adventure has already begun. Do yourself a huge favour and check out this picture for one of the best high seas action/dramas that have hit theatres in years. Awesome.

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My Life Without Me
REVIEWED 11/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Ann (Sarah Polley) is quietly preparing herself to die. At twenty-three years old, this night shift Vancouver University cleaner living in a cramped camper trailer with her blue collar labourer husband Don (Scott Speedman) and their two small girls hasn't told anyone about the irreversible cancer that has spread to her stomach, but she is determined to make sure everyone around her is taken care of. Of course, Ann has made a list of the things she wants to do before she passes on - including making love to someone other than Don; the first boy she ever kissed, which she does with a lonely heartbroken surveyor named Lee (Mark Ruffalo). However, most of her last wishes have to do with giving her family - including her sourpuss mother (played by Deborah Harry) - permanent reassurances that she loves them dearly, in the form of a series of teary-eyed audio cassettes that she records late at night in her car by the moonlit Pacific Oceanside or at home while everybody is away at work or school during the day. Ann has accepted her painful fate with astounding courage for a life-loving woman her age. So, when she discovers that her single next-door neighbour (Leonor Watling) is also named Ann, she decides to befriend that kind-souled nurse in the hopes of ensuring that Don and their kids make an easy transition in finding her suitably loving replacement after she's died.

Well, I was vaguely hopeful going in that this English-language Spanish/Canadian flick would in some way put a quirky spin on the rather morose subject matter of young death. Unfortunately, this one's pretty much a sluggishly depressing tearjerker where every adult seems locked in a state of sad emotional repression. The acting and dialogue throughout isn't too bad, but there's such a wealth of agonizingly long pauses and faraway glances over-dubbed with fairly self-indulgent narratives citing the futility of modern life, that I found myself wondering why this movie needed to be made at all. Sure, the context makes for an interesting personal examination of what this fictional young woman must be going through during her final days and weeks of life, but everything is so heavily down-played with grey contrived commiserations from the supporting players, that it's as though writer/director Isabel Coixet was trying to tap reality in a way where this probably would have been a far better and more thoroughly captivating film if she had simply chosen to scrap her script and cast of actors in favour of shooting a proper documentary about somebody actually going through what Polley portrays here. It has that kind of National Film Board flavour to it already, and did win First Prize from the Guild of German Art House Cinemas earlier this year. Unsurprisingly. However, the main problem I had with this dour cinematic offering was that nothing really happens with any impact, plot-wise. Ann's affair isn't particularly passionate or tumultuous. Her annoyance at her mother's constant poisonous whining never peaks with an expected transference of anger over her own predicament. Nor does she follow through with the sort of devil-may-care attitude suggested in her handwritten list, that showed the potential for some entertaining asides that the audience could have empathized and laughed along with as a breather. All in all, 'My Life Without Me' is a marginally interesting story as a humanist teleplay, but I wouldn't recommend it if you're feeling hopelessly gloomy and looking for something to cheer you up. There were probably few dry eyes in the theatre when the ending credits rolled, but I found it tediously boring for the most part.

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The Missing
REVIEWED 12/03, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Strong-willed yet God-fearing frontier doctor Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett) becomes embroiled in the New Mexican White slave trade of the 19th Century, when her eldest daughter Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood) is kidnapped by a band of US Army Sioux deserters led by a malevolent Brujo (Eric Schweig as Chidin). Chidin is a very powerful Shaman who casts horrific curses on his enemies, and is known to summarily torture and kill anyone who displeases him. Luckily, Maggie's estranged father Samuel (Tommy Lee Jones) - the man who left her mother long ago to live among the Indians as one of them - has found her secluded farm in order to complete his own life-saving ritual. Samuel is slowly dying from a rattlesnake bite, and wants to make amends with his brittle-edged daughter. Maggie bristles at his apologies, and at his offered money, but soon realizes she needs his help in finding the Cavalry to save Lilly, before Chidin's motley crew of bandits successfully complete their arduous trek across the desert and disappear with their stolen human cargo into Mexico. However, Gilkeson's hopes for military aide soon crumble when she discovers the General (Val Kilmer) leads little more than a uniformed crew of ragged looters heading in the wrong direction towards Florida with prisoners of their own. So, with Sam tracking Chidin, and her younger daughter Dot (Jenna Boyd) at her side, Maggie sets out against the perils of a brutal landscape and that Brujo's devilish magic to rescue Lilly herself. Meanwhile, Lilly demonstrates her own inner strength by attempting escape by any means at her terrified hand, and has not only brought bad luck to her fellow captives but has earned to superstitious ire of this wily blood-thirsty Shaman...

Frankly, I really had high hopes for this Ron Howard oater based on novelist Thomas Eidson's 1999, three hundred and seventy-six paged 'The Last Ride'. Unfortunately, it was as though the director became far too sidetracked with the production value of an action-packed Western adventure about halfway through, and forgot about the entirely captivating 'small picture' dynamic between Blanchett's and Jones' characters. They're where the real story is here. Her raw simmering wounds since childhood, watching her brother and mother die without dignity, and carrying this repressed pain with her until it all surfaces and splinters with seeing Samuel again. His tortured confusion and self-loathing as he tries to give them both some sense of reconnection and closure, before it's too late. Them both wrestling within this emotional quagmire, while being forced to spend time together on this rescue. That's the guts of this movie. However, we instead get thrown a bunch of gross aboriginal sorcery and fairly wooden caricature bad guys spittin' and slingin' rifles on horseback, confusing gun battles that go nowhere, and somewhat ridiculous dangers that obstruct a paying audience's focus from all of the enormously more interesting stuff that probably ended up on the cutting room floor. Sitting through what's left, I kept thinking about how Howard was able to create such an incredibly riveting human drama with little more than three guys stuck in the bowels of a damaged spacecraft in 'Apollo 13' (1995), and wondered just what the heck happened with this latest flick. Sure, there are some great scenes and wonderful talent that bob in onscreen here and there - plus the now-humourous obligatory cameo by brother Rance Howard that's become a given - but it's hardly in the same league. 'The Missing' actually becomes a teeth-gratingly boring episode quite quickly and unmercifully never really gets back on track until just before the closing credits. That's definitely a puzzle to this fan. Check it out for some pretty good acting from Jones and newcomer Boyd, but really only if there's nothing new at the rental store. Terribly disappointing.

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Mona Lisa Smile
REVIEWED 01/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

It was in the autumn of 1953; under the impressive gothic architecture of Galenstone Tower, near the shore of Massachusetts' Lake Waban, that Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) first encountered the immense tradition and proud seventy-eight year legacy deeply ensconced within the walls and sprawling campus of Wellesley College for Women. Katherine Lee Bates, Wellesley's former professor of English Literature who penned the immortal words to 'America the Beautiful', was one of this prestigious institution's earliest alumnae, graduating in 1880. Now, this Katherine had arrived by train from the West Coast to teach Art History to the next generation of America's best and the brightest female scholastics. Daunting, to say the least. Exceptionally so, when she discovers at her first lecture that her entire class of natural over-achievers has already learned the mandatory and supplemental text for that semester on their own initiative. So, Watson decides to stray from the established curriculum and encourage debate by introducing less acceptable paintings: One of French expressionist Chaim Soutine's (1894-1944) vibrantly bloody 'Carcass of Beef' studies, and one of her own childhood painting of pastoral cows - later followed by a field trip to a warehouse viewing of a huge splattered canvas by American abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) - to get her students thinking about what good or bad art is. Radical. And, after her friend and housemate Amanda Armstrong (Juliet Stevenson) is dismissed from her duties as school nurse for twenty-one years for openly dispensing birth control pills to students, Katherine is also hauled in front of the faculty administrator for making waves. Of course, her pupils have a few problems of their own too. Blushing bride Betty Warren (Kirsten Dunst) is slowly finding her quaint matrimonial life isn't as blissful as she'd dreamed, viciously turning her silent remorse on her unsuspecting friends: prim bride-to-be Joan Brandwyn (Julia Stiles), sumptuous party girl Giselle Levy (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and naively trusting Connie Baker (Ginnifer Goodwin), as well as upon her unconventional Art History teacher - who has recently been seen fraternizing with Bill Dunbar (Dominic West), Wellesley's heartthrob Italian Language teacher - raising unapproving eyebrows even higher, as Katherine's possible return next year comes up for evaluation...

The controversy was obvious afterwards, but it was probably brewing during the making of this fairly light-hearted and fluffy dramatic comedy, because it truly did feel heavily watered down throughout. With most of the indoor campus scenes shot primarily at Columbia and Yale University, this flick still doesn't show the faculty and 'hoop racing' debutante-like students of circa 1950's Wellesley College - also scholastic home to the likes of former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (1959) and former First Lady now US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (1969), successful screenwriter Nora Ephron (1962) and veteran journalist Diane Sawyer (1967) - in the best of lights. Alumnae President Diana Chapman Walsh (1966) cites distortions and damage and Time magazine's review of 'Mona Lisa Smile' beginning with the rhetorical question, "Can a college sue a movie for libel?" in her recent letter found on the college's website, along with one by the movie's producers run in USA Today that has been posted there - both attempting to calm any hard feelings on either side - but there frankly really wasn't any need to make such a big deal. 'Mona Lisa Smile' isn't that great an offering to begin with, despite its star-studded cast. It's not particularly about this specific private school for women anyways, merely using it as a backdrop during a time when women were beginning to openly realize their full potential as complete people within the incessant restraints of societal norms in America and elsewhere. Wellesley College began as, was, and likely still is an unconventional vanguard anyways, in reality. Where this dismal feel-good fantasy desperately fails is that either director Mike Newell or Lawrence Konner's and Mark Rosenthal's script couldn't decide just who actually stars as having the more important story here. So, you end up sitting through a mish mash of sweet bohemian Julia Roberts' silk-handed culture shock head butting for attention against Dunst and gangs' individual silver spoon sorority-tinged trials and tribulations, free of any real acting or interest, all wrapped up in a polite red bow for the majority of its almost two hour screening. No-where near as captivating as 'To Sir, With Love' (1967) or even 'Dangerous Minds' (1995), even though the basic similarities are there. Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), if you've seen the ads for this one, you've seen 'Mona Lisa Smile'. Boring and hardly worth the attention afforded it, the price of admission, or your time. Disappointing.

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Mystic River
REVIEWED 02/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

Three childhood friends come together under very different circumstances as adults. Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), still pretty much a loner and now separated, returns to his old Charlestown, Massachusetts riverfront neighbourhood as a police detective with the unenviable task of investigating the mysterious late night murder of teen Katie Markum. The few clues frustrate his partner Whitey Powers (Laurence Fishburne), but what's more troublesome for Devine is that this shot and bludgeoned young victim was the daughter of his old street hockey pal Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn). They played near here, and in this bush-gnarled abandoned zoo turned crime scene, as boys; sticking together during the first traumatic event to touch them and their buddy Davey Boyle's (Tim Robbins) young life, almost twenty years ago. That chilled autumn day when two men posing as cops took eleven year-old Davey away in their car - abducting and sexually abusing him for four days - until he escaped through the woods along the Mystic River, and made his way home. None of them were ever the same again. Sean's family soon moved away to Boston where he eventually joined the force. Jimmy turned to crime, finding himself released from prison a twenty-two year-old widowed and doting father of Katie (Emmy Rossum), and vaguely going straight running a small corner store in his home town. Boyle kept close to home as well, falling in and out of dead end jobs, trying to make a reasonable living for his wife and son. Trying to put the terrible past behind him. Until now. Until a horrible thing happened to him on the night Katie Markum was killed. While desperately grieving Jimmy struggles to deal with his own tragic loss, tenuously holding back from fully using his underworld connections to overstep Devine's and Powers' lawful sleuthing of what happened and who might have committed this act of savage brutality, Davey seems unusually shaken and haunted. When he came home late, cut and bleeding, he couldn't even talk to his wife Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden) about it. Lying to her, and lying to anyone who asked him about his strange wounds. Giving the detectives a tough time when he's hauled in for questioning. Making a lot of people suspicious, including Jimmy - who's numbing agony has already begun to simmer towards vengeful rage...

I almost want to say this star-studded Cannes-winning adaptation of Dennis Lehane's 416-page 2001 noir novel is an astounding masterpiece. Director Clint Eastwood immediately sets an underlying tone of uneasiness from the beginning, and patiently lets it build to an almost claustrophobic pitch during the course of its slightly over two hour screen time. And, all of the stars definitely do pull out all the stops in giving a paying audience some truly wonderful performances here. Problem is, the pacing is surprisingly slow and the final pay-off is astoundingly disappointing. Sure, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion what's going to happen to Boyle once Markum gets his hands on him someplace dark and secluded - regardless of whether or not he's innocent - and that relentless feeling of dread powerfully sustains this incredibly depressing movie throughout. So does Robbins' brilliant downward spiral into the abyss, while you sit there trying to judge him as the evidence mounts on both sides. All of these characters are flawed, and weighed down by the burden of their failures. The atmosphere that Eastwood and Brian Helgeland's screenplay fully create here is wonderfully dim and brooding and haunted. There is no redemption for the majority of these people. This murder is like a broken cotter pin that sends an already fragile yet lumbering piece of heavy machinery into slow irreversible destruction, with all of its components being dented or shattered in the process. Nothing will survive untouched. And, that's where this picture fails as a satisfying offering. It drags you down with it, without giving you anything to hope for or to tap into as a much-needed breather from this toppling house of cards that seems to be everyone's brittle sanity here. Maybe it just plays too close to reality, focusing too heavily on the affects of violence and how it victimizes more than just the person who's targeted, but I did find myself sitting there in the dark wishing that even the smallest of light-hearted diversions had been thrown into this murky grey mix. If only to prevent the advent of mass suicides breaking out outside the theatre, once the last credits roll and moviegoers have gotten into their cars. Call me crazy, but I'm fairly certain that big screen entertainment should try to avoid such things. So, although I almost want to say that 'Mystic River' is an astonishing masterpiece, the profound acting and compelling waves of bleak depression leading to a somewhat anti-climactic ending just weren't enough for me to push it to that level of praise. It's definitely a good movie worth checking out, but make sure you've had a good day before you do.

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Monster
REVIEWED 02/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

November 30, 1989 was the last straw for Aileen 'Lee' Wuornos (Charlize Theron). That was the date this long-time drifter and highway prostitute took a drive in to the Florida woods with a local trick turned bad, leading her to kill him at point blank range with his own 22 caliber gun. She hadn't planned it that way. Lee just wanted to have some extra pocket money to spend on her new friend Selby Wall (Christina Ricci) - a young Colorado woman she'd closed an Orlando gay bar with a couple of evenings ago, who Wuornos was meeting back at a nearby roller-skating arena where they'd first kissed the previous night. She had no idea this guy she'd flagged down just outside of Daytona Beach would beat her unconscious once they were alone, tie her naked across the front seat of his car, and mercilessly rape her over the course of several hours. However, unemployed and suffering from a broken arm, family-outcasted Selby leaves the claustrophobic home of her father's God-fearing friends to be with her now slightly traumatized lover, settling in to their bleakly furnished Little Diamond Motel room while Lee tries to go straight hunting for work without any previous business experience. That plan quickly falls through, and Wuornos has little choice but to hustle for money at the side of the road once more, falling victim to her fear of being raped again. Turning to murder, and then returning to Selby afterwards, with enough cash to see them through a while longer. Six men in total would die by her hand over a nine month period, until a State-wide investigation led to Wuornos' capture by undercover police - with Selby giving cold testimony at the jury trial that would sentence Lee to death.

This one was definitely a tough movie to sit through. Not necessarily because these characters - including Theron, who must be the only actress in the history of Hollywood to be praised by the industry and the media for gaining thirty to forty pounds - aren't particularly sympathetic. I vaguely remember the hugely hyped case, and the real Aileen Carol Wuornos (who went by several aliases and was adopted shortly after capture, by elderly born-again Christians) and her actual lover-turned-witness for the prosecution Tyria Moore didn't appear to be fairly lovable people at the time. Sitting in the theatre watching writer/director Patty Jenkins' version of this fact-based slice of life crime drama, it was difficult ignoring the gnawing feeling that a lot of the actual story had been left out here. Sure, 'Monster' does contain flashbacks and overdubbed wry narratives of Wuornos' degrading life, and it plays out at a pretty good click without wasting any time before those unsuspecting horny johns start getting pumped full of rage-fuelled lead. The problem is, no-where during this almost two hour screening is a paying audience given any clear reason to care about what's happening to whomever. The peripheral players' lives are inconsequential and you're not really invited into Lee's fractured mindset to fully understand why these murders need to happen. On any level. I took a wild guess in my synopsis, not wanting to just rubberstamp her as crazy. And, I suspect that's the fault of the screenplay, which seemed to rely too heavily on Theron's star power to keep you captivated. It doesn't. There should have been more background, or something to pull you in. For instance, in Marlee MacLeod's thorough column featured on Court TV's Crime Library website (http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/women/wuornos/1.html), Wuornos served eighteen months of a three-year sentence in 1981 for holding up a supermarket at gunpoint, drunk and wearing only a bikini. Why wasn't this wonderfully provocative event in the movie? It should have been, along with several other incredibly interesting things about this woman's life that would have made 'Monster' a far more superior offering than what we see in the final cut. And, although Ricci is physically a good choice for her role, her clumsy brand of soullessly unrefined acting quickly leaves you cold and bored during her scenes. All in all, despite the one or two artfully shot moments that must have gotten through by accident, this multi-award winning flick feels more like a badly edited after school special than a seriously completed motion picture. Disappointing.

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Man on Fire
REVIEWED 05/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
www.ofrb.gov.on.ca | www.rcq.gouv.qc.ca


REVIEW:

There is one kidnapping in Latin America every sixty minutes. Seventy percent of those taken are children. In the past six days, there were twenty-four kidnappings in Mexico City alone. Lupita 'Pita' Ramos (Dakota Fanning), the otherwise cheery young daughter of wealthy Mexican businessman Samuel (Marc Anthony) and American socialite Lisa (Radha Mitchell), is painfully aware of these terrifying facts. They're why her troubled parents have pulled this bright blonde child from her heavily guarded Catholic school, while arrangements can be made to secure a new protection policy for the family through their trusted legal advisor Jordan Kalfus (Mickey Rourke). Jordan suggests they hire a bodyguard for the interim. Somebody cheap and reliable, with a clean enough history, who they can let go once things get back on track. Enter John Creasy (Denzel Washington). A brooding loner, haunted by unseen ghosts from his sixteen years of military service, this alcoholic drifter has made his way across the Texas border to Aduana by cab on a whim visit to old pal Rayburn (Christopher Walken). It's Rayburn who hooks up John with Ramos as a favour, while this screwed up misfit figures out what to do next. Problem is, Peta likes him. So much so that, slowly but surely, this little girl manages to get under Creasy's rough and stoic exterior while he oversees her daily life returning to normalcy under his intimidating presence. That's why it tore his heart out, looking through her notebook of childish musings and stickers and doodles shortly after he awoke from gunshot wounds sustained during Lupita's brutal daylight kidnapping by a gang notoriously connected to a corrupt police force. Rayburn was the one who told him of her subsequently mortal fate; as a result of Sam's night drive delivery of the first half of their ten million dollar ransom going wrong. That's why this one-man army - whose particular talent is death - has declared war on anyone involved. Anyone who touched her. Anyone who touched the money. Anyone who gets in his way of finding out the truth. Anyone. Fuelled solely by a seething vengeful rage, he will find them. He will hunt them down, get as much information as possible out of them - by any means necessary - and then he will kill them. Laying waste to this city's underworld one body at a time if he has to, until he's slammed a bullet into the brain of the ring's shadowy mastermind.

Wow. At first, I couldn't quite figure out why the pacing for this movie, retooled from prolific crime mystery author A.J. Quinnell's 1980 novel first featuring this complex mercenary character, seemed to take forever. That is, until I quickly realized that director Tony Scott wasn't interested in this remake of the 1987 cinematic version merely becoming yet another live-action cartoon full of cardboard caricatures all furiously gnashing their teeth to a trippy beat behind a white hot arsenal of pyrotechnic bullet-spraying rage, for a first night audience of blood-thirsty teenagers with fake i.d.'s. 'Man on Fire' is an indisputably raw and intensely gory revenge flick, but it's also an incredibly methodical detective story that's capably wrapped around the thoroughly captivating development of this main character. Creasy is a killing machine, yet he's a likable flawed human being marvelously fleshed out in pretty well all directions by Washington here. You can see why this little girl - impressively played by Fanning - honestly likes him. You get to understand and like this introvert, throughout the course of this two hour and forty-seven minute screening, because there's an easily accessible truth to how he handles himself. Frankly, very few leading actors could do better at presenting such a broad palette of emotions with such awesome presence and stamina. What renowned screenwriter Brian Helgeland's script does is masterfully walk you through this world of impending treachery as an outsider in Creasy's shadow, while brilliantly opening him up for us through the eyes of Peta. The first half of this picture is purely driven by those two coinciding stories of discovery while these unlikely friends connect as a surrogate family unto themselves. Sure, this effort does stray from the sort of Hell's wrath shortcuts seen in the ads, but it's an important and (I'd suggest) often neglected aspect of these types of films where a paying audience is supposed to care what happens to the starring bad man while he blows away legions of bad men, relying heavily on how much we like the performer playing the guy pulling the trigger or detonating the explosives. This outstanding release takes none of that for granted. Washington is John Creasy, father figure and protector of Peta, by the time she's torn from her family and he believably steps into the role of avenging archangel during the second half. Definitely check out this astounding achievement for the amazing main characters, awesome camerawork by Paul Cameron and breath taking editing by Christian Wagner, and an incredibly moving ending that's bound to stay with you long after leaving the theatre. I mean, wow!

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Main Hoon Na
REVIEWED 05/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

For over fifty years, there has been a war torn chasm dividing India and Pakistan from reaching a livable peace. 'Project Maalap' is the first small step towards reconciliation between these two countries, but homeland terrorists under the mercilessly treasonous leadership of shadowy Raghn 'Raghavan' Dutta (Sunil Shetty) threaten to undo that auspicious August 15th event mere weeks before it gets underway. Storming the heavily guarded television studio where Indian Army General Singh Gakshi was in the process of promoting this Parliament-approved initiative during a live broadcast. Gakshi is saved from summary on-air execution when Brigadier Shekhar Sharma (Naseeruddin Shah) heroically leaps into the bullet's path, but Major Ram Prasad Sharma (Shahrukh Khan) fails to bring that brutal mercenary to justice, and Raghavan escapes to continue his hateful bloody rage. To make matters worse, while Ram is still locked in simmering shock over the agonizing death of his father Shekhar, he faces further disgrace by being reassigned as little more than a babysitter for the General's much-loved yet estranged college student daughter Sanjana (Amrita Rao) - whose life has been put in danger by Dutta, if 'Project Maalap' moves forward. Ram's only conciliation is that his long lost half brother Lakshman 'Lucky' Sharma (Zayed Khan) is also a student there, giving the Major hope that he can fulfill his father's deathbed wishes of reuniting this family split apart by indiscretion almost twenty years ago. However, Ram is dealt more than he bargained for when both Sanjana and Lucky dismiss him outright, he becomes embarrassingly smitten with curvaceous Chemistry teacher Chandni (Sushmita Sen), and Raghavan quietly insinuates himself into life on campus...

Haunted by reports of former choreographer and Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Kahn's on-set illness, this hugely westernized and subtitled crime/musical/comedy/drama marks his fledgling production company's big screen debut. 'Main Hoon Na' - which apparently means 'I will be there for you' in Hindi - is obviously influenced by John Woo, as well as the movies 'Grease' (1978), 'First Blood' (1982) and 'The Matrix' (1999), yet it still remains faithful to its structural roots in contemporary Indian Cinema. Often playfully mixing cultures while attempting to push this medium in a new direction. One of the boisterously contagious dance numbers, where college prom night features gorgeous women in traditional saris refreshingly bopping and singing along to a Rockabilly-like tune, easily comes to mind here. While the main story does tend to slightly suffer from a script that tries to pack a lot of campy character-driven plot and rip-roaring thrills into its almost three hour runtime (plus intermission), this flick's fairly capable pacing does manage to keep a paying audience reasonably interested throughout. Sure, most of the primary roles are somewhat familiar caricatures burdened by simplistic dialogue and affected gesturing, but it does work within this cinematic universe for the most part. And, despite Shahrukh giving us a better performance in 'Chalte Chalte' (2002), this immensely talented onscreen powerhouse still delivers with awesome tenacity. Of course, director Farah Khan filling the cast with Rao's and Kahn's vaguely green yet wonderfully enthusiastic natural presence, cleverly peppering this tale with hilariously self-effacing asides by a host of supporting players, and capping it all off with some of the most enjoyably original fantasy sequences spurred on by Sen's undeniable jaw-dropping grace and beauty, this ambitious offering is definitely well worth the price of admission for fans of this genre. Also impressive is the camerawork and digitally enhanced editing used for most of the decidedly violent pyrotechnic action, that I suspect lift production values to daring new levels for East Asian studios and their international peers. This inordinately long movie isn't exactly wholesome family entertainment, but it still manages to be a satisfying fun romp worth checking out.

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Mean Girls
REVIEWED 05/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Apparently, this fairly campy teen flick is based on the three hundred and fifty-two paged 2003 non-fiction book 'Queen Bees and Wannabes' by Washington-based feminism activist and private school teacher Rosalind Wiseman. Regardless, the result is big screen co-star and television's 'Saturday Night Live' comedian Tina Fey's script pretty well giving us an irreverently enjoyable Illinois high school romp primarily shot in Toronto, featuring a delightfully fresh starring performance by captivatingly gorgeous Lindsay Lohan as former home schooled in South Africa brainiac Cady Heron, transplanted into North American adolescent culture when her rather dopey zoologist parents move back to the States.

Sure, the majority of these characters are familiar caricatures and clichés seen in countless similar movies such as 'The Breakfast Club' (1985) and 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' (1986), but both Lohan and Fey manage to lift the momentum of this relatively simple picture with loads of humourously smart dialogue and well-paced chirpy scenes that don't make you feel pandered to or overtly preached at, while Heron is convinced by her new friends - Goth grrl Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and proudly Gay Damian (Daniel Franzese) - to undermine the school's reigning 'Plastics', led by popular alpha blonde yet venomous backstabber Regina George (Rachel McAdams). Much to the compounding threat to our naive social saboteur's true self and her romantic interests in soccer team hunk Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett). The clips where we're flipped into Cady's slightly weird imagination are priceless, as this surprisingly tight and delightfully enjoyable feel good caper clicks through its hour and thirty-seven minute screening.

Definitely check out this hugely worthwhile comedy that the MPAA has apparently rated PG-13, for sexual content, language and (curiously) some teen partying. Too funny.

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Monsieur Ibrahim
REVIEWED 07/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Based on French playwrite Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's sixty-page 1999 novella and stage play 'Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran' - apparently the second offering from his 'Trilogie de l'Invisible' series, this decidedly small subtitled 2003 coming of age flick starring award-winning Omar Sharif as Ibrahim Deneji, aged shop keeper of a tiny cramped grocery and the personably sly ex-patriot Turkish mentor to sexually precocious Parisian teenager Moses 'Momo' Schmitt (Pierre Boulanger) during the 1960's is a surprisingly well-crafted piece of slow paced mature entertainment.

There's still a devilish twinkle in seventy-two year-old Sharif's warm dark eyes, that flashes the wonderfully captivating spirit of Ibrahim's often playfully wry wisdom throughout here. Pulling you in closer, waiting to be tutored on the subtleties of life, even though whatever pearl he's ready to impart might not necessarily be in everyone's best interest. It's that underlying force embodied by this longtime famous screen actor - who was reportedly arrested, given a one-month suspended sentence and fined a hefty sum for head butting a police officer after an arguement broke out with a Pontoise casino roulette croupier two weeks before this film's premiere in France - that keeps this picture delightfully fresh. Boulanger also pulls in a magnificent performance here, as sixteen year-old Momo struggling for some semblance of self-worth under the claustrophobic depressive fog of his ever-distant yet oppressively judgemental father (Gilbert Melki), determined to find acceptance and human tenderness by turning to the prostitutes working the street across from his bedroom window, before quickly falling under Ibrahim's altruistic nurturing wing.

Sure, there are gaps in momentum that make co-screenwriter/director François Dupeyron's efforts of widening these two main characters' horizons by sending them on a spontaneous roadtrip to the Middle East feel more like artsy travelogue filler at times, but those puzzling hiccups are thankfully sporatic and brief for the most part. This one really is an over-all gem, running the gamut from high drama to pernicious humour. It's also fun seeing French Cinema legend Isabelle Adjani trot around in her short cameo as a tight-bloused blonde actress on a nearby location shoot, and the soundtrack featuring memorable tunes from Chuck Berry and Domingo Samudio bring you right back to that American dance-crazed era - even though most of this ninety-five minute sleeper takes place in a rather decrepid corner of Paris.

'Monsieur Ibrahim' might be a tough one to track down, but do yourself a favour and do track it down as a fabulously satisfying R-rated escape well worth checking out.

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Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
REVIEWED 07/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

After fourteen years as famed bassist for the LA-spawned thrash metal band Metallica, Jason Newsted quit to officially begin his own music project called Echobrain. That ominous moment in 2001 is where directors Joe Berlinger's and Bruce Sinofsky's slightly meandering documentary 'Some Kind of Monster' kicks off its rather weepy confessional-like exposé of the remaining bandmates. Lyricist/vocalist James Hetfield, manic drummer Lars Ulrich, and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett scramble together the pieces with studio producer Bob Rock temporarily on bass for 'St. Anger' - their ninth album since Hetfield and Ulrich created Metallica back in 1981 - while kept in check by management-assigned therapist Phil Towle on hand over the two and half years of filming.

I remember these forty year-olds when they started to emerge after years of building a huge fan base despite little to no radio play back near their beginning, so it was tough watching them mewl out continual reams of what felt like patronizing psycho babbley verbal hugs at each other for the camera, knowing full well that their infamously conflicting and often blunt egos were what made them one of the greatest heavy metal bands in music history. Sadder still is when Lars blankly points out that 'St. Anger' is the first album created with what he calls positive aggression, almost a year after Hetfield returned from a self-imposed eleven-month exile in rehab and about seventeen days following Ozzy Osbourne's former bassist Robert Trujillo being hired on to finally replace Newsted (and vice versa) before touring the new material. Sure, a lot of 'good old bad days' history and residual demons are somewhat politely covered for fans with heavy doses of predictable catharsis, and you are given some insight into how the guys hash out raw tracks in studio sessions that become monotonous by Day 600+, but a lot of this picture just seems staged as PR for their Grammy-winning record to an audience outside the usual MTV venues by these old lions still in love with the creative process and live performances but visibly tired of the lifestyle and each other. There's nothing new, really. It's hard to say if more of the candid 'peace talks' with ex-member Dave Mustaine or longer scenes with Ulrich's delightfully curmudgeon father Torben would have made any difference to the momentum, but what these main subjects have grown into (rebellious James the full-time daddy, arrogant Lars the drunken art collector) just aren't interesting enough as presented during this feature-length screening.

Definitely rent this one as a vaguely worthy behind the scenes curiosity, but I suspect a lot of hardcore fans will feel as though they're sitting through a disappointing, cuss-filled Beach Boys reunion.

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The Manchurian Candidate
REVIEWED 08/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Based on prolific writer Richard Condon's (1915-1996) famous novel about a brainwashed assassin first published in 1959, in this contemporary remake of the late great director John Frankenheimer's (1930-2002) renowned Oscar-nominated 1962 cloak and dagger thriller starring Laurence Harvey (1928-1973), Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) - who owned that film and reportedly had the clout to pull it from theatre circulation in 1963 after the assassination of his friend, US President John F. Kennedy, for fear of parallels between its characters and Lee Harvey Oswald being made, finally allowing its re-release in 1987 - and a very young Angela Lansbury in her intensely chilling, Golden Globe-winning performance, director Jonathan Demme casts Denzel Washington as severely beleaguered Major Bennett Ezekiel Marco. Marco ends up on a lone hunt for the truth about his small pre-Gulf War unit stationed in Kuwait, the three days they were supposedly lost in the desert after being ambushed by heavily armed militants, and the rice-sized metallic implant apparently manufactured by shadowy worldwide conglomerate Manchurian Global that he eventually gouges out of his shoulder, shortly after bumping into one of his former grunts over a dozen years following them being returned Stateside. Bad timing, considering Marco soon suspects all of his men were somehow subjected to secret invasive medical procedures - including his Medal of Honor-awarded ex-Sergeant Raymond Prentiss-Shaw (Liev Schreiber), who's currently on his party's fast track towards possibly becoming the next Vice President of the United States of America if his spooky and politically savvy widowed mother, Senator Eleanor Prentiss-Shaw (Meryl Streep), has her way - at any cost.

Over all, 'The Manchurian Candidate' is an extremely fascinating and powerfully provocative movie in much the same ways as its hugely acclaimed cinematic predecessor. Aside from it virtually being released on the eve of an actual Presidential election rife with it's own bag of turmoil. And, where this newest version lacks in Frankenheimer's sometimes jarring black and white starkness, Washington balances that by pulling out all the stops in breathing much deeper life into the Korean War veteran role Sinatra capably played previously, in giving a paying audience this updated Post-Traumatic Syndrome survivor systematically spiraling out of control, fighting every inch of the way, from the stoic sobriety of being an exemplary military leader into little more than a trembling mess of obsessive paranoia. Brilliant. However, impressively strong performances from Schreiber and Streep give this thoroughly riveting maze of intrigue and unfolding secrets an additionally unsettling edge throughout this entire two-hour and ten-minute screening. This immensely talented trio individually explode off the big screen, creating a monumentally taut three-way dynamic as they all wrestle towards their specific goals. Sure, the ending does feel somewhat cobbled together at the last minute, but this offering is well worth the price of admission. I'd go into more detail, but words simply pale by comparison without spoiling the entire experience. You've really got to see it. It's also great to see longtime Oscar-winner Jon Voight given a meaty supporting part in a top-notch feature for a change.

Absolutely check out this incredibly worthwhile big screen achievement that easily stands beside Frankenheimer's masterpiece as a truly memorable, acting award-worthy motion picture. Wow.

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The Mother
REVIEWED 08/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Former 'Coronation Street' Brit TV ten-year regular Anne Reid (age 69) stars in this fairly intense R-rated 2003 UK flick as May, a very recently widowed suburban Londoner who's somewhat willingly thrust onto a rather steamy path of sexual reclamation soon after her neurotic and needy single mom daughter Paula (Cathryn Bradshaw) asks her to befriend Darren (Daniel Craig, age 36) - Paula's emotionally wayward, on again off again lover - while he lazily completes the one-man construction of May's workaholic and distant son Bobby's (Steven Mackintosh) modern Downtown home's new backyard conservatory.

Well, 'The Mother' certainly isn't for the faint of heart. Director Roger Michell ('Changing Lanes' (2002), 'Notting Hill' (1999)) gives you an often realistic and sometimes graphic interpretation of screenwriter Hanif Kureishi's ('My Beautiful Laundrette' (1985)) marvelously touching mature script, impressively captured by cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler throughout. The visuals alone, where you're given these elegantly blocked scenes in which half the screen is a bare wall, are deliciously artful and truly captivating. Küchler paints this film with an incredibly rich palette of unspoken lament and melancholy, as well as measured hope and stark lust. Reid is absolutely wonderful here, as her grieving character tries to deal with facing her own mortality alone and pretty well accepting her two self-absorbed adult children's cold detachment and eventual shocked disgust, while rediscovering that passionate part of herself lost to an unfulfilling long-time marriage to her ailing grey husband Toots (Peter Vaughan). Yes, a paying audience is exposed to subsequently raw moments between May and Darren in the bedroom, but there's much more to this deeply fascinating character study rife with flashpoint pettiness and brittle insecurities, as their lives become more complicated. By the time you see May pushed into a rather awkward situation with aged novice writer Bruce (Oliver Ford Davies), you're thoroughly convinced that whatever stigma remains attached to her intimacy with Darren is silly and outdated. Despite an uneasy realization that no good can come from that May-December tryst. It's actually quite surprising that we don't see more films taking on the topic of older women being with younger men explored with this kind of serious consideration. Particularly in light of the recent success of 'Something's Gotta Give' (2003) pairing Diane Keaton with Keanu Reeves opposite Jack Nicholson dating women half his age, for instance.

Definitely check out this hundred and twelve-minute offering for its thoroughly astounding presentation and some great performances from a truly capable cast.

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Maria Full of Grace
REVIEWED 08/04, © STEPHEN BOURNE
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REVIEW:

Sixty-two thumb-sized ten gram latex packets; each worth $100 US and filled with pure Heroin, sit in the pit of pregnant seventeen year-old Maria's (Catalina Sandino Moreno) aching stomach on her first direct five hour and forty-five minute, twenty-four hundred and eighty-mile flight from Bogotá to New York City as a 'drug mule' for one of her homeland's notorious drug cartels. She needs the money to support herself, and her mother and single mom sister back in their tiny Colombian village, after this otherwise intelligent teenager's head strong pride sabotages her menial flower plantation processing job, and she meets Franklin (John Álex Toro) - a silver-tongued lady's man who offers her the chance to make a lot of money by taking this short trip to America. However, it's not long before Maria realizes just how life threatening her decision to swallow and carry those packets is, as she and her friend Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega, as another contraband courier) discover the horribly marginalizing truth in how they're treated. By her new boss Javier (Jaime Osorio Gómez), the Customs officers at JFK airport, and by her malicious Queens-based contacts.

Wow. California-born writer/director Joshua Marston apparently took meticulous care in thoroughly interviewing several people whose lives have been touched by these insidiously dangerous smuggling rings, and the result is this - his incredibly powerful and captivating first-time full-length feature film. Moreno, an ex-patriot South American now working in the States, gives an astounding performance throughout as her character first strives to shed her hopelessly claustrophobic existence back home, and then is torn between returning to that familiar fate or trying to secure the beginnings of a better life in the Little Colombia quarter of Jackson Heights, New York. Outstanding. First time actor Orlando Tobon - whose actual twenty-year job of taking care of his fellow immigrants and overseeing the homeland burial of those lives taken by underworld violence has reportedly made him a well-respected real life community leader - truly is well-cast and fantastic as Don Fernando here. 'María, llena eres de gracia' (its Spanish title) is unflinching, gritty, and an extremely superior telling that easily pulls you in and keeps you hanging on the edge of your seat in desperation for Maria's plight. Sure, this hundred and one-minute subtitled picture does slightly suffer from its over-all supporting cast of unpolished actors at times, but it's the main players and their story that immediately grab a paying audience and definitely deliver. Marston's hugely satisfying screenplay masterfully doles out measured glimpses of hope, building upon the frenetic energy that runs up against each barrier systematically thrown in this girl's daunting path. The entire scene where Maria is held by two outwardly unsympathetic customs officials wonderfully depicts the sense of torturous bleakness that you can't help but imagine actually does happen on any given day to the scores of people who choose this type of work. I really can't say enough great things about this movie, it's just so strongly based in its believable reality and tends to haunt you after the closing credits.

Do yourself a huge favour and check out this incredibly worthwhile dramatic offering. Awesome.

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