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Review by Richard Kuipers:

Fans of sci-fi scourge The Matrix intention be in real, virtual or whatever heaven they sigh for with this exhaustive look at every conceivable element of the franchise's planning, execution and future. If the level of hype on this disc is anything to go by it's a fair bet we'll be seeing Matrix conventions in years to lay. 
If Keanu Reeves and company fall on painful times they'll have appearance fees at Matrix get-togethers to help pay the rent. Speaking of Reeves, he's as bamboozled by The Matrix as anyone else as he attempts to make plain its appeal and, more ambitiously and unwisely, its meaning. Oh baby, he even starts quoting Baulldriard. Creators and directors the Wachowski brothers don't descent into the same trap, wise that too much explanation may let out the emperor is perhaps not that well dressed after all. 
Fortunately there's not much homestead on the equable meanings of virtual realities and the vast mass of footage is geared to fulfilling the behind-the-scenes bric-a-brac of aficionados. If you want to know all about watched for video games, a Japanese anime series based on The Matrix or you want to vigilant raw digicam footage of choreographer Yuen Wo Ping blocking out fight scenes, this is the home. Your on-screen stroll sign is executive fabricator Joel Sweet who pops up in unsullied slacks and a couple of glaring Hawaiian shirts, looking close to a proud dad whose crazy originative kids have made those priceless tutelage fees well worth it. 
The Matrix Revisited is more a merchandising spinoff than a legitimate documentary but it is jolly well produced and every explanation player from shipwreck throw off and gang makes an manner. It's a palatable value video armoury that's certain to keep converts happy until the next significant screen fix, The Matrix Reloaded, in 2003.

Published April 18, 2002

You can acquisition bargain it

HERE

- next broad daylight conveyance within Australia

MATRIX REVISITED, THE

(PG)
(US/AUS)

TINT:
Keanu Reeves, Joel Polished, Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski, Carrie Ann
Moss, Owen Patterson, Laurence Fishburn

DIRECTOR:
Josh Orek

RUNNING TIME:
123 min

SPECIAL FEATURES:
DVD-Rom hand-out serious (PC compatible only). Language:
English. Subtitles: English (HOH)

DVD DISTRIBUTOR:
Roadshow Home Entertainment

DVD LET GO:
April 4, 2002

She sings. She struts. She skips. And she trots escape some dulcet generic phase moves to go along with her big, high-concept numbers that are influenced by Mid-Eastern and Indian culture.

But Shakira is to all intents not deserving of the lampooning she got in the romantic comedy “Music & Lyrics.” Look past the gimmicks and glitz, aside some pretty nasty choreography (like her lapsing into “robot” moves in at least four branch songs) and it’s tranquilly to interview why this Colombian thrush is the biggest Latina entertainer on the planet.

Yes, she’s rusticate-dead gorgeous, but she’s also a bona-fide genius. She writes most of her own lyrics and music, co-choreographs it, plays lilt guitar as a remedy for some of it, and staid breaks out a harmonica at one verge. A harmonica. Name one other female pop singer in this period of excessively-produced sounds, voices, and shows that has the cojones (or the female equivalent) to do that!

At a time when so diverse singers receive had their tracks as touched up as their photographs, Shakira, who is barefoot throughout, gives you an honest concert that has her shifting gears with her decision so multifarious times that you have to admire her willingness to deviate from the processed music that dominates the industry today. Some of the sounds she makes have got to be an acquired bit-like a guttural warble she does on warrant, or the fall down she sings from the diaphragm other times. She’s not regretful to change personalities as cordially as voices, unusually when she leans against a piano towards a unagitated ballad or sits in an acoustic set to do a plain, square, but somewhat flap.

When you ready for some of the bonus features that chaperone this concert video, you open to twig that she’s as interested in making music her way as she is in taxing to solve her audience’s tastes and expectations, so that the concert seems like a talk or compromise. But she certainly knows how to perform upon to a crowd, holding up the microphone frequently to let the audience sing and being openly flirtatious with the mixed mass of all ages. She also knows how to bear the energy, opting for the sake the key clothes change after the ninth inexpensively, when other lemonade singers would pull someone’s leg already gone through several outfits by then (while their bands played to take them time).

As concert videos go, this one has both good and bad. There are long way too many shots from behind the press showing those lighters held high and waving, and some of the reaction shots have all the hallmarks too ingenious. But for a concert that could have been a cinematographer’s nightmare, with all the red-orange-pink-purple lights, streaming spotlights, smoke and assorted pyrotechnics, this “Oral Compulsion Tour” concert video is surprisingly punctually. Partly that’s because of the camera angles. At most in days gone by does the cameraman shoot directly into the offending lights, and that’s when we see graininess and haloing. The rest of the formerly we’re seeing the concert from angles that circumvent the lighting problems.

The cacophony is another matter. Shakira’s microphone is prearranged higher than her overdue renege-up singers so dependably that you have to guess it’s the singer’s preference. But if I was customer artist Alejandro Sanz or Wyclef Jean, I’d be violent with Ms. Shakira. Both men had to practically shout into their microphones, and hers was still five times louder. We’re not talking involving egos at that verge. It was so inconsolable that these duets just didn’t sound amend at all. That’s my biggest gripe about “Shakira: Oral Thing Tour.”

This concert was filmed at the American Airlines Arena in Miami in December of 2006, and so there’s a mixture of English and Spanish, both in terms of the songs and the introductions to them. Don’t look for any succour in translation, either. Righteous cool and sham you’re at the concert, watching her perform:

1) Intro
2) Estoy Aqui
3) Te Dejo Madrid
4) Don’t Disorder
5) Antologia
6) Hey You
7) Inevitable
Si Te Vas
9) La Tortura (with Alejandro Sanz)
10) No
11) Whenever, Wherever
12) La Pared
13) Underneath Your Clothes
14) Pies Descalzos
15) Ojos Asi
16) Hips Don’t Lie (with Wyclef Jean)

The English titles are sung in English and given English introductions, and the Spanish titles are done furthermore in that intercourse. With Ben Peeler on guitar, Brendan Buckley on drums, Archie Pena on percussion, Jon Button on bass, and Albert Menendez on keyboards, Shakira delivers a great-sounding concert. But as I said, the choreography was pretty uninspired, and it’s not a moment ago me reasonable so. I watched this everybody with my daughter, who teaches Spanish and uses concert videos in her classroom, and she was virtuous as disappointed. There were too many robot moves, too tons hip thrusts, and not adequately of the signature belly-dancing moves that set Shakira apart from the rest of the pop-pack. Too much of the yet she wholly strutted, half-skipped, or tossed her hair have a weakness for any other pop diva. But take away the two guest-songs with that poor soundboard mixing and you’ve got a substantial concert that sounds faithful in LPCM 2.0 concert (which is the default) or, if you prefer, the LPCM 5.1 environment.

Of course, the bona fide story here is whether by thoroughgoing deed of commitment, Sly can muscle without hope in on the box-appointment exertion he decidedly took with a view granted, and although it’s austere to withstand the sensibilities that you’re being gypped to salve his mid-life moment, the big lug’s calm an inexplicably winsome screen presence. The movie’s tiresomely sluggish for most of its running dead for now, sloshing with indulgent sentimentality as it lingers for former haunts and recalls long-lived triumphs, and barely believable (except if you’re George Foreman) – yet stillness we’re rooting with a view the weighty cat, and even now there’s an involuntary nostalgic frisson when the training montage locks with Bill Conti’s theme music. Still, even-tempered goodwill can’t offset this look like anything more than a glorified TV special. Surely it’s without delay for the audience to throw in the towel?

Many fee-based streaming video movie sites warn that cost-free watching video sites can only provide you bad quality movies with annoying resolutions that hinder your online movie watching experience, it is almost often host, i.e. does the site have alot of bandwidth for uninterrupted viewing, or streaming links to the streaming movies you want to see? These very important considerations that will have the greatest influence on the quality of your relaxation is what you will choose: download movie sites or watching site. Download movie sites offers a great resolution , so you can get pleasute of your favorite movies in hd quality anytime. Downloading The Dog Who Saved Christmas full length excellent quality online

Clueless

is drunk on its own cleverness and afraid, at the same time, that its target audience won't understand the joke, thus it proceeds to explain itself in studied detail. An awkward love affair between gnomish teachers Wallace Shawn and (associate producer) Twink Caplan has moments of genuine pathos, but because they're reduced to cutesy fetish objects for the patronizing manipulation of our stable of clothes horses, it's tough to separate our feelings of recognition therein from that cozy Red Cross tingle of relief at being better off, at least, than these lovable oafs. For all its meta-winking,

Clueless

is completely

sans

irony, substituting in its gaping absence a desperation to seem better than its premise.

Same problem applies to Matthew Leutwyler's winking gorefest

Dead & Breakfast

, a spam-in-a-cabin flick that takes its cues from

The Evil Dead

pictures and

Dead Alive

but comes off as a flick wilfully goofy without any commensurate smarts or, really, any truly memorable geek thrills. Lacking much in the way of visual signature, it's a lot of flat jokes layered in among a few uneven gross-out gags. Everyone in the cast is so

Clueless

-ly self-aware that it veers dangerously close to undermining the very undertone of

gravitas

that made the films

Dead & Breakfast

obviously reveres so great. When the movie and its horde of two-stepping hick zombies pause in their siege on our surviving heroes to "Thriller"-dance to Greek chorus Zach Selwyn's hick-a-billy croon, there's just a little too much winking in the air of its one idea stretched until the white shows.

It goes down like this: a group of attractive twentysomethings are stranded in the middle of nowhere, check into a mysterious roadside attraction run by some freak (David Carradine), and before you know it, the whole town erupts with the pitter-patter of the soft-shoe shuffle of the shambling undead. There're moments to love: Jeremy Sisto (essentially the same one-dimensional character here and in

Clueless

) spends the last part of the film as a severed head puppet; a massacre at a hoedown showcases a pretty neat geysering stick-to-the-eye; and a religious fanatic gets the top part of his head blown off. But there's simply not enough energy to the carnage, not enough verve in the jokes, and no centre to the production. In fact, possible heroes keep getting dispatched, and that lack of focus kills any possibility for identification. No Ash emerges from the wreckage–and that's bad news for the picture.

Dead & Breakfast

is a parsing of better splatter flicks; and like a Cliff's Note, it's good for cheating but bad for a screenplay.

Paramount refurbishes

Clueless

, the flick-that-spawned a television show (and the

Legally Blonde

franchise–and possibly greased the way for Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore and Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Simpson) with a cosmetic makeover on DVD: a slipcovered, sparkly pink monstrosity outfitted with a handful of documentaries mixing old junket and B-roll footage with new interviews. The sparkling 1.85:1 anamorphic presentation of the film itself is such a drastic improvement over the late-1999 issue that it's almost like watching a different movie. (Unfortunately, it also isn't.) DP Bill Pope's traditionally-dark, colour-saturated cinematography is given a brightening that lends the flick glow in its details, while grain has disappeared and black level is corrected up. The DD 5.1 audio appears untampered-with and does well with the dialogue and the sometimes-oppressive pop soundtrack. At least the

Radiohead

tune ("Fake Plastic Trees") sounds good–even if its only purpose is to be mocked by the idiot heroine.

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"The Class of '95" (18 mins.) kicks off the festivities with a sort of self-bemused style that fits the film just fine, locating a few of the principals (though not, curiously, Silverstone) reminiscing about how much fun they had and how great the project was and so on and so on. The only thing of any interest is the recounting of how Silverstone's hilariously ignorant pronunciation of "Haitians" wasn't scripted and was, in fact, a reflection of Silverstone's actual ignorance. Meaning that at that moment in the film when we're laughing uproariously at the sucking stupidity of this character, we're actually laughing uproariously at Silverstone's real stupidity. That everyone's so delighted by her gaffe kind of underscores the meanness at the base of this endeavour. Most shocking to me is the revelation that actress Stacy Dash was 28-playing-17 and looks young for the role. "Creative Writing" (10 mins.) is Heckerling recalling the genesis of this piece intercut with more dusty stories of how the project used to be called "I Was a Teenage Teenager", and of how the film's similarities to Austen weren't accidental at all! "Fashion 101" (11 mins.) has Donald Faison speculating that Mona May's costume design for the film was actually influential somehow to the way people dressed in the mid-nineties, to which I say, Whatever.

"Language Arts" (8 mins.) pats itself on the back regarding Heckerling's astonishing mastery of pseudo-teen vernacular…but, you know, of the many ways that

Clueless

is no


Heathers


–here's one. Onwards: "Suck & Blow: A Tutorial" (3 mins.) is a circa 1995 on-set thing with the kids giggly about the hormonal party game; "Driver's Ed" (4 mins.) is an increasingly desperate bit concerning the difficulty of driving on the freeway in L.A.; and finally "We're History" (9 mins.) offers more reminiscences, including Heckerling acting a little defensive about her approach to her happy bimbos. A recounting of Paramount's Sherry Lansing loving the flick is the highlight of the piece (for which Silverstone remains absent). Two trailers for

Clueless

plus forced trailers for

Airplane!

, "Charmed" The Complete Second Season,

Mad Hot Ballroom

,

Tommy Boy

,

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

, "Laguna Beach" The Complete First Season, and "The Brady Bunch" First Season round out the exhausting single-disc presentation.

Still, it's not as exhausting as the special features for

Dead & Breakfast

, which kick off with two feature-length commentaries. Sigh. The first features Leutwyler, F/X man Michael Mosher, and cast members Erik Palladino and Zach Selwyn. It's the usual yakker with the boys commenting on how hot they think the girls are and how cool they think the special effects are if they do say so themselves. There's a little self-awareness about how superfluous it was to include an


Evil Dead


poster in the background of one scene–but it sort of ends there. Leutwyler resurfaces in the second, even more collegial (if also proportionately less informative) yakker with cast members Ever Carradine, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Palladino (again!), and Oz Perkins. "Did he spend the

whole

shoot with that thing in his eye? Gross!"

A 10-minute, non-chaptered deleted/extended scenes is all dialogue, and a three-minute blooper reel is the usual assortment of flubbed lines and motorcycles not starting. One-minute of "additional music" is just another croon from the croon well. A large poster and stills gallery plus a trailer for the film itself shares space on the disc with a fine if dedicatedly unspectacular 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer and a booming DD 5.1 mix that makes decent use of the surround channels. Forced trailers for

Man with the Screaming Brain

,

All Souls Day

, and

It Waits

finish off the DVD.

-



Walter Chaw

© Sheet Freak Middle; filmfreakcentral.snare. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the explicit yield of its maker.



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DVD


GRADES


:


Image


A


Investigate


B

Extras


B-


DVD


VITALS:


Competition Time

97 minutes

MPAA

PG-13

Side Ratio(s)

“The Iron Ladies” depicts such testaments to the athletic spirit. Based on
the story of a real-life Thai men’s volleyball team composed of gay,
transvestite and transsexual players, “Iron” is queeny, corny and impossible
to resist.

Barred by prejudice from competing in their up-country village,
transvestites Jung and Mon win spots on a top-flight team in Bangkok. All but
one of the straight players bolt in protest, so Jung and Mon recruit their old
college teammates: a well-built military man who rivals Jung in campiness; an
engaged, closeted gay law student; and a beauty-queen pre-op transsexual.

The players surprise competitors and become media darlings by reaching the
national tournament. But the sheriff tries to keep them out of the tournament,
foes mock them incessantly and tournament officials try to wear them out with
too many matches in a day.

Internal conflict also rocks the team. Jung, for one, seems to lack the eye
of the tiger in a big way, preferring to ogle opponents or blow them kisses
across the net. He and other players pay more mind to their syncopated dance
warm-ups than to returning the ball. All of this irritates more serious-minded
teammates.

By the time team captain and lone straight guy Chai gets fed up with the
distractions, the audience is exasperated, too. As Jung, Chaichan
Nimpoolsawasdi especially goes way over the top.

But a thread of desperation runs through “Iron Ladies,” one that exposes
the haughty ‘tude-throwing as a smoke screen for insecurities. Sadly, there’s
a common theme to the movie’s jokes and put-downs: The transgendered players
belong on the streets, not on the court. “There are no happy endings for gays,
” one says.

Ah, but there might be — one that entails bandaged hands, battered bodies
and powerful spikes over the net. Director Yongyooth Thongkonthun uses some
nifty shots to showcase the physically punishing and nail-biting aspects of
elite volleyball.

“Iron Ladies” suffers from heartfelt but stagy pleas for tolerance that
stop the action flat. They’re easy enough to get past, though, if you embrace
the film’s disarming naivete.

A few in the cast appear to be natural athletes as well as actors. Sahaparp
Virakamintr, as the serious, handsome transvestite Mon, and Jesdaporn Pholdee
as Chai touchingly show how their characters’ shared commitment to the game
sparks a friendship that transcends straight or gay.

But the actors are strictly bush-league compared with the real players,
shown in the closing credits. Just as flouncy but more physically imposing
than their screen counterparts, these guys really tear it up on the court.

– Carla Meyer

Horror. Starring Ryo Ishibashi and Eihi Shiina. Directed by Takashi Miike.
(Not rated. 115 minutes. At the Castro.)

It’s hard to imagine a worse time to consider going to a horror movie,
especially one that becomes as hard to take as “Audition” does. However, for
the record: Here’s one that is not schlock but actually is about something.

Japanese shock director Takashi Miike knows what he’s doing — he just
doesn’t let up. His “Dead or Alive” opened last week, and now comes “Audition,
” a horror thriller disguised as sexual politics.

It is about a middle-aged producer who sets up an audition for a movie as a
pretext for “auditioning” a new wife. It turns into a hallucinatory nightmare
of female revenge that will pin back the audience’s eyelids.

This movie can be recommended only to dyed-in-the-wool fans of the genre.
Anyone who goes into one of Miike’s films must be prepared to be put through
the wringer.

“Audition” has a long, carefully paced setup that introduces a lonely
widower (Ryo Ishibashi) who feels ready to remarry. Ishibashi is a warm actor,
and the widower is not at all an unsympathetic figure. There is nonetheless
little doubt that he objectifies the women he auditions — they go by in a
flash of quick shots — and knows exactly what he wants in a wife.

As played by Eihi Shiina, she is in virginal white, deferential with
downcast eyes, and has a voice that remains tiny, soft and accommodating even
when things turn their most macabre.

The first big shock doesn’t occur until well into the movie, when something
in a large, unexplained bag suddenly lurches. Thereafter, in a bizarre time
warp, syringes, acupuncture needles and piano wire all will be put to use.

– Bob Graham

Horror. Starring Peter Mullan and David Caruso. Directed by Brad Anderson.
Written by Anderson and Stephen Gevedon. (R. 100 minutes. At the Roxie.)

Scottish actor Peter Mullan (”My Name Is Joe”) plays Gordon, an asbestos-
abatement contractor who wins the bid on the crumbling building and encounters
the ghosts of patients past. Gordon already has problems with a shifty crew
chief (David Caruso) — but that’s nothing next to the terrors found in the
hospital’s vast gothic corridors: Noises pierce the darkness. A worker finds
taped interviews with a woman who suffered from multiple-personality disorder.
And a crew member is haunted by the awakening of repressed family memories.

Anderson creates a strong atmosphere with nimble camera work and ominous,
ear-teasing sound design, and he uses his location, the Danvers Mental
Hospital in Massachusetts, to creepy effect. The enormous structure, built in
the 1880s, actually inspired “Session 9″: Anderson used to drive past the
hospital.

The script, co-written by Anderson and one of his actors, Stephen Gevedon,
is the liability. The story doesn’t quite pay off, characters are underwritten
and the surprise ending is contrived and unconvincing.

There’s no emotional hook: We ought to care about one of the work crew, and
side with him against whatever forces press against him. Anderson doesn’t
achieve that, even though his cast, which includes Josh Lucas (”The Deep End”)
and Brendan Sexton III (”Boys Don’t Cry”), is fine.

– Edward Guthmann

Film noir. Starring Claire Keim, Agathe de la Boulaye. Directed by Sande
Zeig. Written by Zeig and Monique Wittig. (Not rated. 84 minutes. At the
Lumiere).

Numbingly dull and repetitive, “The Girl” is at least pretty to look at for
a time. Actresses Claire Keim and Agathe de la Boulaye make a lovely pair, and
the movie portrays an intimate, enticing Paris of cobblestone streets,
artists’ lofts and smoky nightclubs. De la Boulaye plays the narrator,
referred to only as the Painter — because she apparently aspires to do more
than just smoke incessantly. All the characters have generic names, a conceit
that’s either minimalist or just stupid.

The Painter encounters a sleek, insouciant nightclub singer known as the
Girl, and the couple fall into bed. “The sheets are soaked vivid with our
perfume,” says the panting Painter, in just one of many wince-worthy voice-
over moments.

But the mysterious Girl apparently does a lot of entertaining. Among her
visitors is the Man (Cyril Lecomte, looking desperate for a mustache to twirl),

owner of the club where she sings. The creep sends his henchman to smack
around the singer’s new lover. From there, the movie becomes an endless loop
of the women having sex and the Painter getting her butt kicked by the goon.
She wears the same crumpled linen blazer throughout the picture, which only
heightens the maddening sense of repetition.

As the singer, Keim has a slithery charm and great chemistry with the
gorgeously butch de la Boulaye. They photograph so well together that the
movie would have been better as a series of still shots.

By about the lovers’ 10th time in the sack, though, the thrill has gone, as
has any hint of dramatic tension. Trying to spice things up, director Sande
Zeig shoots a bedroom scene in such extreme close-up that it’s impossible to
discern body parts. An elbow here and a clavicle there don’t add up to sexy.

– Carla Meyer

How is it possible for a silver screen about two hot Latin lovers and full-bodied South American comestibles, to be so unruffled? You wouldn't cogitate on it would be easy to achieve, yet
Woman on Top
in one way manages it.

All through this dismal love story, I kept waiting for something to happen that would catch my attention or generate that spark which all great movies possess. An hour after the movie ended, and I'm still waiting.

It's not that I hated this movie. It's simple story of a young Brazilian girl with magical cooking powers, who leaves her cheating husband to come to San Francisco and ends up starring on her own sexy cooking show, was fairly entertaining. And there were some funny lines and comic situations, but it just wasn't entertaining enough.

Only two things make this movie redeemable at all, Penelope Cruz's easy on the eyes,
exotic sexiness, and Harold Perrineau Jr.'s humorous portrayal of best friend, Monica. He
gets all the funniest lines and steals most of the scenes in which he appears.

I had hoped this movie would go one of two ways. Either sweet and romantic, as an entertaining love story. Or hot and sexy with nudity and rampant sex. Instead the movie ends up somewhere in between. Lukewarm and not overly romantic.

Did you enjoy Scott's review?



+
1



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1


While I approve of with Scott that this talkie was not nearly as laughable as it could have been, I fantasize he has painted the picture a little too black. It is a pleasant, inconsistent infinitesimal movie that is quite well done to look at. The cast does a healthy pursuit and the feeling and setting are all very imagined. I don't think they did anything wrong, except hinder b withhold back on the belly laughs.

Unlike Scott, I found the love story aspect to be very endearing. The leads are all properly attractive and the dynamics of the characters are believable. Penelope Cruz is completely charming as the innocent chef with magical culinary skills. In fact I think her show Passion Food would be a real hit television show.

The setting and atmosphere costar in this movie. The director has made good use of both the exotic Brazilian seaside and the streets of San Francisco. The only thing that keeps

Woman On Top

from being a classic romantic comedy is that it is simply not funny enough. Still, this is an enjoyable enough movie if ones expectations are not too high. I think the perfect time to watch it would be a quiet wintry afternoon. And to quote the movie you should share it with someone you love.

Did you appreciate Patrick's review?



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1



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1



Little woman On A-one

is a great uncivilized draft in requital for a movie. There is this hot
Brazilian chick who falls in love with and marries this Latin Russell
Crowe. She gets travel sickness a lot. She catches her hubby cheating
so she moves to San Francisco to live with her drag queen friend.
Before any one can call immigration she's got the hottest new cooking
affectation this side of Julia Child. Stillness pursues, makes like Frank
Sinatra, serenading her every chance he gets. THAT'S ALL THAT HAPPENS!

Okay there are a few jokes, but so much is made of her having motion
sickness that you would expect more jokes about it. The drag queen,
playing the role of, what else, comic relief, is fairly tame as well.
'Holy Mary and Rhoda!' is the best line out of this Queens mouth. The
only thing worth watching in this movie is Penelope Cruz.

Cruz is one savory dish. I could spend all day eating at her buffet.
She is a spicy, hot pepper that could burn my mouth any time. She is
one full basket of fresh, juicy, mouth watering fruit. Hey, the movie
is about food.

American women as sex symbols seem to always be playing a character.
The big breasted, dumb, blonde; Marilyn Monroe, Suzanne Summers or
Pamela Anderson. The big breasted warrior; Raquel Welch, Linda Carter,
or Famke Jansen. The girl next door; Annette Funicello, Julia Roberts,
or Brittany Spears. Latin sex symbols always seem to be more
comfortable with their sexuality, just look at Sophia Loren in any of
her films. Cruz has that same casual sexiness. She knows that she's
hot and doesn't need to do the hair shake, or the exaggerated smile to
get attention. She's comfortable with her looks, and it makes her all
the more attractive.

Did you enjoy Eric's review?



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Photos © Copyright 2000 20th Century Fox All Rights Reserved

Fractured or twisted fairy tales can translate into highly entertaining movies, like “Ever After” or “The Princess Bride.” Mark Palansky’s “Penelope” is a nice try at the genre, but falls short.

It has a good cast and a few funny and affecting moments, but it sets up too many stumbling blocks to succeed. When you find yourself asking plausibility questions about what’s supposed to be a charming variation of “Beauty and the Beast,” something’s gone wrong.

Penelope (Christina Ricci), born to a wealthy family in a fantasy version of London, is a perfectly normal baby girl, except that she has a pig’s snout. This affliction is the result of a family curse from ancient times, and can only be cured when an aristocratic suitor agrees to marry Penelope as she is. To protect the girl, her parents (Catherine O’Hara and Richard E. Grant) fake her death. When Penelope comes of age, Mom and Dad bring in a series of would-be suitors, all of whom proceed to hurl themselves out the nearest window when they see her porcine face.

Here’s the first problem. Penelope looks exactly like Ricci wearing a modest prosthetic snout – not exactly a face to drive aristos to screaming fits.

There’s much ado about keeping Penelope’s face a secret, and the wannabe grooms are required to sign a confidentiality agreement. One especially obnoxious suitor (Simon Woods) hooks up with a tabloid photographer (Peter Dinklage) to snatch a picture of Penelope, whom the Woods character has described as a pig-faced monster.

That’s one plot engine. Another is Penelope’s encounter with a nice-guy gambling addict (a rumpled James McAvoy) who’s obviously her proper match – though there’s an obstacle to their relationship that I can’t reveal.

Eventually, Penelope runs away from home and her overbearing parents and tries to live a normal life in town, hiding her appearance with a scarf. The city is a magical, twinkling version of London with bits of New York and maybe Paris thrown in. Reese Witherspoon, one of the picture’s producers, shows up as a tough-girl bike messenger who befriends Penelope and tries to teach her the ropes.

The ending raises further issues about how we’re supposed to take Penelope’s disfigurement.

Ricci, McAvoy, Grant, Dinklage and Woods are decent. I usually like O’Hara, but her high-pitched performance here belongs in another movie, and Witherspoon’s appearance is not really essential to the proceedings.

Director Palansky and screenwriter Leslie Caveny seem to have many of the right ingredients for creating something beguiling, but the film is, finally, surprisingly pedestrian. What a shame, with all these good performers.

“Penelope” was made in 2006. I’m guessing that’s it’s been pulled off the shelves now to capitalize on McAvoy’s good notices for “Atonement.”

- Walter Addiego

‘City of Men’

Drama. Starring Douglas Silva and Darlan Cunha. Directed by Paulo Morelli. In Portuguese, with English subtitles. (R. 110 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

Putting a toddler at peril is one sure way to rivet an audience. It worked so well in “Battleship Potemkin,” where a baby in a carriage rolls down the Odessa Steps, that the makers of “The Untouchables” copied the scene. In “City of Men,” a compelling and visually arresting drama from Brazil, the baby boy at risk belongs to Ace (Douglas Silva), who is barely more than a child himself. When the boy’s mother goes to São Paulo for work, the child stays with his father in Rio. But Ace would rather comb the beaches with his buddy, Wallace (Darlan Cunha), than change diapers. He hands his son over to a group playing ball in the sand as if the child were another plaything. In a heart-stopping scene, the youngster is shown wandering around on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean by himself. A big wave could come at any moment and sweep him up.

The infant is rescued – thank goodness. But the movie is chock-full of other examples of risks faced by children of the slums of Rio. Gangland warfare is likely to break out at any time in Rio’s more than 300 favelas, shantytowns incongruously perched on steep hills, affording breathtaking views of the mountains and bay, if you don’t mind dodging bullets.

The saga of the favelas’ drug dealers and hustlers is scary but perversely captivating, like that of America’s Mafia. A group of Brazilian filmmakers have developed a Hollywood-style franchise on the story of the kids who live there. First came “City of God” in 2002, an Oscar-nominated film starring many actual residents of favelas. This spun into an enormously popular Brazilian TV series, focusing on Ace and Wallace’s struggles to grow up and leave their perilous surroundings for a normal life.

Watching Silva and Cunha play these teens, it’s obvious why the TV show and now a movie were built around them. Their physical closeness when they roam the streets indicates the depth of the boys’ friendship. They bring a sense of restlessness to their roles that is exciting to watch, almost like James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause.” Cunha projects raw emotion in a scene where he confronts his long-lost father, an ex-con who may not have Wallace’s best interests at heart.

Director Paulo Morelli is a master at creating tension, pumped up by the soundtrack’s pulsating beat. Screenwriter Elena Soarez creates parallel stories. In the more personal one, Ace and Wallace struggle with their new identities as, respectively, someone’s father and someone else’s son. This unfolds against the background of a gang leader attempting to take control of a favela with gunfire.

Soarez’s script borders on soap opera. A secret from Ace and Wallace’s past is so preposterous as to be laughable. The tough guys in the favela overplay their parts. They may have seen too many Hollywood gangster movies.

But the warmth between Ace and Wallace humanizes what might have been just another shoot ‘em up. At nighttime when the favelas are lit up, they’re a cinematographer’s dream. Adriano Goldman captures the city’s iridescent colors, making you wonder how a place of such beauty could be a cesspool of crime. Goldman also shot “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation,” the Brazilian film that opened last week. Two films from Brazil in two weeks indicates the current strength of cinema in that country.

- Ruthe Stein

‘Romulus, My Father’

Drama. Starring Eric Bana, Franka Potente and Marton Csokas. Directed by Richard Roxburgh. (R. 109 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

It’s always nice to see Eric Bana in a movie where he’s not out to stab Brad Pitt or doing battle with giant green Hulk dogs. When the handsome Australian isn’t trying to be a matinee star, he’s a pretty good indie film actor.

Bana is the titular dad in “Romulus, My Father,” and he gets plenty of opportunities to do the Daniel Day-Lewis thing – teaching his son tough life lessons, getting in crippling accidents and occasionally acting like a complete maniac. But the uneven film is stolen from him by Franka Potente, who turns out to be an even better actress when she stops running for five minutes. Kodi Smit-McPhee also contributes one of the better child actor performances of the past year, playing Romulus’ son.

Note that we’re talking about the performances first with this film. They’re the best part of “Romulus, My Father,” which is competently directed by character actor Richard Roxburgh, based on Raimond Gaita’s memoir. Screenwriter Nick Drake packs three or four lifetimes worth of depression into 109 minutes, but not much to think about or learn from once you step outside the theater.

Potente is Christina, Romulus’ always-straying wife, who makes few apologies for her apparent nymphomania. She returns to the lives of Romulus and Rai, two Eastern Europeans who have immigrated to Australia, and quickly throws a hand grenade in their simple lives. What looks like it might become a “Places of the Heart”-style save-the-farm drama becomes a story about love and sexual addiction and its effects on a family.

As Christina, trying to suck Romulus’ best friend, Hora (Marton Csokas), and his brother Mitru (Russell Dykstra) into the love quadrangle, Potente remains convincingly beautiful and wild enough to keep all of these men obsessed with her. The way she uses everyone, including her son, to fill her endless emotional needs is the most interesting part of the film.

But while the matters of the heart in “Romulus” work in a voyeuristic kind of way, it’s not clear what we’re supposed to take away from the film. The triumph of human spirit or important life lesson that seems promised in the build-up never really materializes. Muddying things further is the Romulus character, which Bana plays as a cipher for most of the film. When he does display emotion, his actions are sudden and extreme, and not particularly believable.

- Peter Hartlaub

‘Military Intelligence and You!’

Starring Patrick Muldoon, Elizabeth Bennett, Mackenzie Astin. Directed by Dale Kutzera. (Not rated. 78 minutes. At the Lumiere in San Francisco and the Shattuck in Berkeley.)

Think back, way back, in your memory to a time when there may have been one or two “Saturday Night Live” sketches that you found mildly clever and maybe even sporadically amusing. Got the image? Great. Now imagine that sketch stretched out to 78 minutes. Do you think it would hold up?

If the sketch had to do with the idea of mixing old military training films, even older propaganda disguised as ’40s Hollywood movies, and new footage meant to look old, then the answer would be “No freakin’ way.” But that’s the general idea behind – way behind – “Military Intelligence and You,” written and directed by Dale Kutzera.

This cinematic decoupage is meant to play off the oxymoron of the term “military intelligence.” We get the idea – we may even agree with it: Just don’t make us sit through 78 minutes of empty cleverness.

A voice-over narration announces that this will be a military training film meant to illuminate us raw recruits about the invaluable contribution of military intelligence to the war effort. Since Hollywood was desperate to prove its patriotism during World War II, not to mention desperate, as ever, to make money, the studios churned out a whole lot of really bad movies that serve as fodder for “Military Intelligence.” And since a lot of major actors were afraid of being called unpatriotic for getting out of military service during the war, you’ll see some big names in the pieces of old movies pasted together for Kutzera’s questionable effort.

Meanwhile, there’s an actual story line about Army Major Nick Reed (Patrick Muldoon) who’s trying to find the secret base of the “Ghost Squadron,” Nazi flying aces who come out of nowhere and attack the good guys (that would be us) for no good reason. Lo and behold, Nick shows up in the war room and runs smack into his old flame, Monica Tasty (Elizabeth Bennett) and her current boyfriend, Major Mitch Dunning (Mackenzie Astin). Like the old footage, these scenes are filmed in black and white. The characters are given dialogue meant to spoof the dialogue of the ’40s movies, which was larded with patriotic pronouncements. The problem is that the original is much more humorous, albeit unintentionally so, than the parody dialogue.

- David Wiegand

‘The Overlooked Suspect: O.J. Is Guilty, But Not of Murder’

Documentary. Starring William C. Dear. Directed by Phil Smith. (Not rated. 84 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

The measure of this movie’s success is that it can take something you thought you knew all about and make you wonder. We all know Simpson did it, don’t we? The case is open and shut, right? Well, maybe not. By meticulously piling evidence on top of evidence, “The Overlooked Suspect: O.J. Is Guilty, But Not of Murder” makes a convincing case for another interpretation.

It’s worth noting that “The Overlooked Suspect” was not made by a crank. William C. Dear is a respected private investigator who, over a 35-year career, has solved many high-profile cases. He first approached the Simpson case assuming, like everyone else, that Simpson did it. But his investigation soon took him in another direction.

Just offhand, ask yourself this: If Simpson practically decapitated his ex-wife, how come he had only a microscopic trace of blood in his car and on the white rug in his house. And if O.J. got into a brutal fight with Ron Goldman, a strapping young man whose hands were found blistered from punching his assailant, why did middle-aged Simpson not have a scratch on him?

But this movie goes beyond making the case for why Simpson might not have done it. It makes a full case for another suspect’s guilt, a suspect that the police, according to Dear, barely investigated. It’s a suspect that Simpson might have had an interest in protecting.

As a work of filmmaking, “The Overlooked Suspect” has its flaws. Its biggest is that most of the key witnesses Dear talked to refused to appear on camera.

However, having seen the documentary, I find it hard to imagine anyone coming away from it believing that the police investigation was thorough and conclusive. Rather it seems that the L.A.P.D. had its suspect and looked no further. If “The Overlooked Suspect” doesn’t completely solve, beyond a doubt, the Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman murders, it demonstrates that the police haven’t done so, either.

At the very least, “The Overlooked Suspect” is a convincing call for reopening the case.

By the way, Dear will be at the Roxie for the evening shows tonight and Saturday. He will introduce the movie, poll the audience as to their initial impressions of the case and then take questions after each screening.

- Mick LaSalle

– See complete movie listings and show times, and buy tickets for select theaters, at sfgate.com/movies.

E-mail Walter Addiego at waddiego@sfchronicle.com.

The movie year 1998 epigram Jim Carrey trapped fundamentally a compensate for-believe television world in “The Truman Show” and then Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon trapped inside a be like cosmos in “Pleasantville.” Although “Pleasantville” wears its messages rather more openly than “Truman,” both fantasies are shrewd fables for our times, wholesome fun, and idea provoking. If you liked “The Truman Show,” you are sure to like “Pleasantville,” maybe even more.

So, predilection Maguire and Witherspoon play the field pretend these two everyday, modern teenagers, you know, named David and Jennifer. I definitely, like, they´re really cool, you know? Grandly, Jennifer is, but David is kind of a geek. He´s really into “Pleasantville,” a fifties, family-word choice program that plays endlessly on cable TV. David knows every happening by crux. The old television show is a party of “Father Knows Best,” “Ozzie and Harriet,” and “Leave It To Beaver,” filled with typically vapid fifties TV people and circumstances. Anyway, one night David and Jennifer are fighting during who´s going to have an impact direct of their TV set´s unfamiliar when they come apart the possibility a affairs. Showing up out of pocket of the down in the mouth to fix it is TV repairman Don Knotts. Like, who better than an lasting fifties TV guy, right? He gives them a concerted remote, a wonderful control, that transports both of the teens reactionary into the “Pleasantville” TV show itself! Why? Because it´s a day-dream, you have knowledge of? But, more portentous, because it gives the moviemakers a chance to conjure up something conflicting for a change.

Once the kids are caught in this alternative universe TV land, they and everything around them appear in heavenly furious and deathly white. Second, the movie could have just gone on to make them a division of another vapid situation comedy about kids from the future living in the past. Instead, the filmmakers employ the opening championing social commentary and sarcasm. The kids don´t perfectly become involved in the municipality of Pleasantville´s ways, they indeed change them. Gradually, they discipline the TV characters a strange life, a trendy clearance of living, that helps them to become more human, while in the process reminding the film´s viewers of what it means to be a genuine individual. The TV characters discover art, literature, thought, ideas, love, and, yes, having it away.

As the Pleasantville folk begin outlook for themselves and expressing more and more human passions and feeling, they begin one by one turning to color. It is not an straightforward system for them, nothing so complex as a settled change in mental outlook is simple, but the shoot does a assets c incriminating evidence vocation chronicling their slow and sometimes painful conversion from one-dimensional cutouts to fully realized, open-minded anthropoid beings.

The two kids are elegant in their roles, but it´s William H. Macy who stands out as the telly father, a double for Ozzie Nelson, and ditty of the last persons in municipality to understand himself. Pastor may know pre-eminent, but it takes him a while to be afflicted by on. Joan Allen plays the mom, a Donna Reed clone, who finds a renewed, liberating message lower down her gray exotic. Jeff Daniels plays the neighbouring soda jerk, a control who realizes a love for aesthetics and a strength repayment for painting hidden covered by his banal alien. And J.T. Walsh plays the town´s mayor, the last, unwilling convert to a more liberal lifestyle.

The image is, of course, entertainment first and main, and here it succeeds wonderfully; but on a deeper anyhow equally visible raze, it is an analogy, a metaphor on our age. It is perhaps on this second level that the filmmakers overreach themselves by trying too hard to take into account too uncountable bases. For exemplar, not satisfied to let us on the qui vive for people discovering their actual selves, the filmmakers also check out to show us what happens when the town´s newly established reformer forces clangour with the old-role ultraconservatives. When some of the townspeople begin turning colors, they are naturally referred to as the “coloreds” and are mannered to do things like seat in the restricted indigent balcony in the story´s climactic courtroom scene.