Christmas crunch

>> Our critics round up the season's reelings

by MATTHEW HAYS, JOANNE LATIMER and MARK SLUTSKY

The Family Man Sometimes a movie is so slick you keep forgetting, just for a few brief moments, what a load of shit it is. Such is the case with The Family Man, Rush Hour director Brett Rattner's new Capra-emulating holiday flick. Nicolas Cage is a wealthy businessman who, years ago, left his sweetheart (Téa Leoni) behind to pursue his career. On Christmas Eve he's visited by a trash-talkin' heavenly messenger (Don Cheadle, of all people) who shows him what might have been. I must confess that the performances are all good here--Cage gives the character a little more nuance than you'd think and Leoni's pretty adorable--and of course it's shot well and thus pretty easy on the eyes. It's sentimental nonsense aimed at guilty yuppies, and it falls apart completely by the end, but--damn it--it did have me there. Just a couple of times, though. I swear. (MS)



Cast Away Tom Hanks can work well in certain roles and he does well here, reunited with director Robert Zemeckis. Indeed, I would argue the two were made for one another--both are certainly talented, but there is something so inherently, deeply superficial about their product. And Cast Away proves the perfect example to drive my argument home.

Zemeckis has a real knack for conveying basic sensory stuff, as well as a clear command of special effects. The plane crash, when Hanks' FedEx flight goes down in a storm, is truly brutal and realistically captured. When Hanks lands ashore and works desperately to find food and start fire and that sort of thing, we sense his desperation in the details Zemeckis fills us in on; as Hanks cuts his hand, we can almost feel it. His survival instinct is so tangible we can taste it.

This is the best part of the movie, by far, with Hanks' use of the contents of various courier packages--a figure skate becomes a knife, a volleyball becomes a makeshift companion--maintaining our fascination. Hanks has a bunch of conversations with himself (or the volleyball, rather) and even makes an obligatory reference to Gilligan. The island stuff is so great it's almost a shame to see Hanks get rescued.

And he does, unfortunately. That's where the film falls apart, and that's also where the film points up Hanks' and Zemeckis' considerable shortcomings. Upon his return to civilization, of course, Hanks finds that things have changed dramatically. His wife (the omnipresent Helen Hunt), assuming him dead, has remarried and has procreated with her new mate. Hanks must find a new way and build a new life.

Here, the film really did remind me of Gilligan's Island. Not the original series, but one of the reunion specials. In '78, the original cast (sans Tina Louise, who reportedly demanded a Godfather sum to reappear as Ginger) actually managed to get rescued in the highly rated (and logically titled) Rescue From Gilligan's Island. The show understandably won boffo ratings--after all, these seven dopes, stuck on an island and in a seemingly perpetual rerun loop, were finally getting back home. But when they returned, they found things weren't the same. In one touching subplot, Mary Ann learned that her fiancé (who had waited 15 years for her to be rescued) was not the man for her. In a witty and droll scenario, Gilligan and the Skipper arrive to rescue Mary Ann from the ceremony, driving away with her on the back of a truck. (This special was devoid of a laugh-track, though it probably could have used one.)

So why am I recounting this plot? (And, for that matter, why the hell do I remember the Gilligan's Island reunion special in such detail?) Because Zemeckis and Hanks manage about as much depth with the back-to-civilization part of Cast Away as the seven stranded castaways did with their made-for-TV special. The first part of Cast Away is stellar; it's in the second half, intended to be dimensional, when things really get stranded. Zemeckis did better overall, I would argue, with his standard-but-highly-efficient take on the horror genre, What Lies Beneath, earlier this year. He's got the surface moves, but when it comes to emotional depth, he gets lost in the veneer. (MH)



Finding Forrester What the hell is Gus Van Sant doing? His latest movie, Finding Forrester, is a real puzzler. In plot, it's almost identical to his Good Will Hunting: a brilliant young man from a poor neighbourhood achieves his true potential through the intervention of an older, emotionally wounded man, who perhaps sees something of himself in the prodigy. In this case, the neighbourhood is Queens, the young man is newcomer Rob Brown, and the mentor character is Sean Connery, who plays the titular Forrester, a reclusive, J.D. Salingeresque author.

See, Brown is an under-achieving savant, a basketball-playing kid who, inside, is some sort of awesome writer or something (it's never clear exactly what form his genius takes; like ol' Will Hunting, he just seems to know everything about everything--the easiest, laziest way to depict brilliance). Will his true talent be recognized? Forrester sets up about 10 different plot paths--a potential girlfriend (Anna Paquin), a potential rival (a hot-shot rich kid), a potential basketball story--and follows through with exactly none of them. And what's with that Matt Damon cameo? You'd think that would be a comparison the filmmakers would want to avoid. Yikes. (MS)

Dracula 2000 It's hard to know why this one didn't just go straight to video. Foolish thieves come across an ancient coffin and, thinking they've struck it rich, steal it. Naturally, or should I say supernaturally, they find out they've made a big mistake. Dracula is soon out and about, desperately seeking one specific girl he wants to bond with. There are the usual sexual overtones allowed the Count, some pseudo-Matrixed high-kicking fight scenes and the added bonus of a class act like Christopher Plummer as the chief vampire hunter. But Dracula 2000 never really congeals, leaving us with yet another lacklustre vampire movie (and they can be so much fun!). Director Patrick Lussier (who edited the Scream trilogy), while not exactly a particularly deep filmmaker, certainly gets his surfaces right: Gerard Butler, as Dracula, is a Goth babe; Johnny Lee Miller, as one of the vampire hunters, is far sexier than he appeared in Afterglow and Jennifer Esposito masters that trashy ho look. (MH)



Miss Congeniality You'll see from the film poster that Miss Congeniality is a Sandra Bullock film, but I maintain that it's a Goldie Hawn movie. Goldie isn't in it, but her spirit is alive in the plot: a sassy girl-next-door foils the criminals and her bonehead boss. All the while, her sexuality is being saved like a trump card. If Goldie and Chevy were only a few years younger.

This is the kind of tinny, clean comedy that you'll be subjected to on an Atlantic flight, soon. Miss Congeniality made it to celluloid on the power of Bullock's likeability, I suspect, but sheer likeability cannot sustain this Pygmalion-like film. It's about an FBI agent that goes undercover at a beauty pageant--after she gets dolled up by a pageant guru. Although Bullock conned Michael Caine into reprising his role from Educating Rita, her film isn't worthy of his cunning self-parody. He's responsible for the good gags--both of them.

Candice Bergen and William Shatner play it up as has-been pageant professionals and they make sure to fillet the industry's moronic spin on feminism. But their efforts are undermined by Miss Congeniality herself, who doesn't find enlightenment until she befriends the beauty contestants. Goldie would be proud. (JL)



Winter Sleepers People who know director Tom Tykwer from his breakout film Run Lola Run might find themselves mighty surprised by this, his previous feature. It's a far less frenetic animal, but almost as rewarding if you have the patience. The film is populated by an odd crew, five disparate characters who live in a snowy mountain town whose paths cross due to a car accident. Again, Tykwer is obsessed with the idiosyncrasies of fate. While this film is much more accessible than his first film, Deadly Maria (which was about--no kidding--a woman and her insect collection), I've no doubt it will leave some cold. There are some intriguing moments here, but Winter Sleepers remains primarily of interest for Tykwer enthusiasts. (MH)



Chocolat Lasse Hallström won over some critics, and, apparently, some members of the Academy, with last year's Cider House Rules. For the record, I found that film insufferably sentimental. Chocolat, while not quite as bad, still suffers from a bit too much artificial sweetener. Set in a sleepy French town where nothing ever changes, the film has Juliette Binoche arrive with daughter in tow to start up a fancy chocolate shop. While some of the townsfolk take to her candy, others, still steeped in the rigidity of the Catholic church, reject her sugar-laden ways. It's a quaint bit of symbolism, with the decadent food representing whatever sin you want it to stand in for. And Binoche does an endearing job of filling out her character (as always). But this Miramax film feels a bit like processed chocolate, rather than the fine, rich, delicate and more complicated variety you find at one of those highfalutin sweets shops. Hallström's best work remains My Life as a Dog and What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (MH)



In a Savage Land Aussie director Bill Bennett wowed the arthouse crowd a few years back with Kiss or Kill, his wicked take on two criminals on the lam. Now fascinated by the history of colonial exploration, he's made this, a film about an anthropologist couple (Martin Donovan and Maya Stange) who head off to Papua New Guinea's Trobriand Islands to examine the natives. Bennett has the couple's own life fall apart as they witness and learn from the natives' complicated gender politics. Bennett manages to turn our expectations upside down, taking what looked like it might end up your average we're-off-to-a-dark-and-savage-spot-where-we-might-just-fall-in-love movie and infuse it with some real surprises. It's not utterly brilliant, but there are enough intriguing moments to keep the couple's in-a-strange-land dilemmas worth the look. Again, Bennett makes it seem like 'Aussie' and 'good filmmaker' are synonymous. (MH)



State and Main David Mamet has certainly earned his laurels, from some brilliant playwriting (Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo) to some excellent film directing (Homicide, The Spanish Prisoner). State and Main is his latest, a comedy about a sleazebag film crew showing up in a small, naïve town and trying to make a movie there. Mamet has collected a fine cast: William H. Macy is the director, hurdling various road blocks that threaten his finished celluloid product; Alec Baldwin and Sarah Jessica Parker seem to be having the most fun here, playing gently self-mocking roles, as vacuous, sex-addled, self-obsessed Hollywood celebrities. The film as a whole, however, only works to an extent. The central plot twist, which involves Baldwin's insatiable lust for underaged girls and the trouble it ultimately gets him into, begins to feel somewhat tried by the film's final third. And though film-industry types will get a kick out of Mamet's jabs at the wonderful world of movie production, the jokes may seem too insie for civilians and many of the clichés concerning showbiz come across as just that. (MH)



Malèna Giuseppe Tornatore is a ludicrously manipulative director, and I, for one, found the non-stop tugging at heartstrings in the Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso a bit much to take. Malèna sets off this way, showing us the World-War-II-era world of a pubescent boy (Giuseppe Sulfaro, in a fine performance) living in southern Italy. He's madly infatuated with Malèna (Monica Belluci, also fine), the town's most beautiful woman. Hopelessly smitten, Tornatore lets us in on all the details of Sulfaro's devotion, from his film-inspired fantasies about her to his masturbatory sessions (yes, at times it does feel like a wee bit too much information).

But then the film takes a turn for the better, ironically enough, as Malèna's fortunes take a turn for the worse. Her husband is killed in battle and her father is killed during an Allied bombing raid, and she's forced to turn tricks for food. The most horrific moments in the film come when the Allies liberate the town from Nazi rule. Tornatore plays out a scene in which the village women vent their anger about occupation on the town whore, a sequence made all the more nasty when one considers its historical accuracy (there are numerous accounts of this occurring throughout France and Italy in '45). Tornatore, having drawn us into thinking we're watching a fairly jovial film about a boyhood crush, twists the knife in our collective stomach. It's manipulative, certainly, but Tornatore is good enough at it that it pushes Malèna above your run-of-the-mill coming-of-age movie. (MH)



A Hard Day's Night So 2000 may well go down in history as the year of massive overhype concerning the Beatles. Yeah, yeah, they're a great group and set all sorts of rock 'n' roll precedents and bla bla bla--but enough already. This film proves a worthy antidote. The Fab Four in '64, in their relatively sweet and innocent youth, attempt to take a day off in this highly original and extremely entertaining mockumentary. The film may have been part of their publicity machine at the time, but something about it feels sweetly naïve. I confess I'm not much of a Beatles fan, but A Hard Day's Night set the standard for movies starring rock celebs. (The Village Voice referred to it as "the Citizen Kane of jukebox movies" at the time of its release.) Director Richard Lester even managed to get a decent performance out of Ringo Starr. Now that's an achievement! The film received two Oscar nominations for screenwriter Alun Owen and music director George Martin. (MH)



Rollerball This '75 Norman Jewison oddity had James Caan involved in a nasty, violent sport in a nasty, not-so-far-in-the-future world. The film, like much '70s sci-fi, has copious camp value (think Soylent Green, The Omega Man or Logan's Run), funky art direction and ludicrous moral logic. But one thing most don't note about the film: listen closely to the background music, a completely hilarious score indicative of the zaniest kitsch of the period. The Cinéma du Parc is late-nighting this one in honour of the remake, which is currently shooting in Montreal.

Cast Away, Chocolat, Dracula 2000, State and Main, A Hard Day's Night, Miss Congeniality, Family Man and In a Savage Land open Friday, Dec. 22. Finding Forrester and Malèna open Monday, Dec. 25. Winter Sleepers and Rollerball open Friday, Dec. 29 at Cinéma du Parc