by CHRIS BARRY, RUPERT BOTTENBERG, MATTHEW HAYS and JOANNE LATIMER

It was sort of unclear how a movie packing a team like this could fail. Alexander Payne, the über-cynic behind such sublimely dour fare as Citizen Ruth (his underseen and underrated skewering of both extremes in the abortion wars) and Election, writing a screenplay specifically for the equally cynical Jack Nicholson.

As it turns out, they didn’t go wrong. This is one of the most hilarious films I’ve seen in quite some time; a sharply drawn character study that offers Nicholson some real meat to work with. I’ve long thought his performance in As Good As It Gets was wildly overrated (and that he stole the Oscar from Robert Duvall, who really deserved it for The Apostle). Here, he’s in the dumps as a sharply flawed character, Schmidt, who faces his retirement years in a detached, depressed state. Nicholson loses himself in the role, clearly savouring the delicate drawbacks to his character. As the film rolls along, we learn about his faults just as Nicholson realizes he wasn’t really much of a husband, nor a father, nor anything else.

As obvious as it may sound, it’s worth pointing out that this is a hugely depressing movie - not exactly what I would have thought of as holiday fare. It’s also despairing in its hatred for the characters who populate it; there are no warm, fuzzy moments, no redeeming, his-human-side-is-showing epiphanies. This is dark to the bone, grim and unflinchingly revealing in the nastier side of human nature. You have been warned.

It’s also one helluva performance film. As well as Nicholson, there’s Hope Davis as his long suffering daughter, who’s about to marry a boob (an unrecognizable and mulletted Dermot Mulroney), and his divorced and still-sparring parents (Kathy Bates and Howard Hesseman). At once a star showcase and an ensemble film, Payne not only co-wrote this (with Jim Taylor) he also drew astonishing turns from a broad array of talent.

It was an odd feeling, as the film drew to a close: I wanted to yell “Bravo” and slash my wrists at the same time. Not everyone, understandably, is taking to the film’s unrelenting cruelty and its derision of its characters. (MH)

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Lord of the Rings devotees are going to love this movie. The second installment in Peter Jackson’s trilogy based on the famous JRR Tolkien books, The Two Towers is a momentous piece of work, a grand indulgence that is sure to leave the Dungeons and Dragons’ crowd breathless. With a cast of thousands and the smartest special effects team this side of Ultra Man, The Two Towers is, in every sense of the word, a blockbuster which will likely surpass its predecessor at the box office.

No mean feat when you consider that the first flick in the series, last year’s The Fellowship of the Ring, has already delivered its masters close to $1-billion (U.S.) in gate receipts. That’s right, $1-billion - and counting. For that kind of money Jackson can buy himself one heck of a lot of nifty CGI effects, not to mention at least a dozen sets so elaborate that they put Kevin Costner and Waterworld to shame.

But for those of you who couldn’t care less about Tolkien’s magical elves or talking trees, I cannot stress enough, stay away from this film. It’s like sitting through three hours of Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules TV show, only with higher production values. Personally, I never bought into any of this Lord of the Rings stuff. I tried reading The Hobbit when I was a kid and put it down halfway through because, to my sensibilities, it read like the literary equivalent of a Rush record.

Which might explain why most of the time I was wrestling with the plot of this film, not sure exactly who was who, what their motivation was, and who, if anybody, I was supposed to be rooting for. Now that’s just me, and I admit I’m a little dense, but probably no more clued out than any other filmgoer who walks in to this flick relatively unfamiliar with Tolkien’s books or the previous Lord Of The Rings cinematic adventure. To grasp the essence of The Two Towers, Jackson expects you to have seen the first film, or at least to be familiar with the novels, and makes no apologies for continuing to leave the uninitiated, well, uninitiated.

Which I suppose may be fair enough, given that most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that The Two Towers, being the second film in a trilogy, is essentially a whole lot of middle. I doubt many LOTR fanatics will be disappointed with the story, and even those other dense souls who find themselves confused by the whole ordeal may find solace in the sheer enormity and non-stop action of the film. As hokey as this sounds, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers will indeed transport you to another world. Although, if you lack enthusiasm for this kind of majestic gobbledygook, it might well be a world you could live without visiting. (CB)

Gangs of New York

Well, here it is: the most talked about, bitched about, speculated about art movie of the year. The mighty Scorsese, widely considered America’s greatest living filmmaker, sought to create an epic ode to the Big Apple, delving further back in history than he did with Bringing out the Dead to transpose a crucial part of the city’s history. The journey here was fraught with peril, of course. Fights with the titanic ego that is Harvey Weinstein were so horrific, their clashes have already become stuff of movie-lore legend, highlighted by the tale of Scorsese smashing his phone during one particularly nagging chat.

Well, it certainly is beautiful, all close to three hours of it. The film opens as New York gang leader Daniel Day-Lewis, in epic battle with Liam Neeson, murders him in a nasty, bloody battle. (In fact, from now on in this description, please assume that all of them are bloody - they really blew the ketchup budget on this one.) Gazing on as a horrified, traumatized witness is Neeson’s son, who clutches his father’s hand as Day-Lewis skewers Neeson’s torso, effectively slicing the life right out of him. They really knew how to do people in in the good old days.

Cut to 15 years later, and sonny has grown into über-box office Teen Beat cover boy Leonardo DiCaprio. Mercifully, this is no Titanic, but much darker territory. DiCaprio returns the marked son and, undercover, endears himself as a tough guy to Day-Lewis in order to exact the ultimate revenge upon this evil madman.

As beautiful as it is, one can almost feel the complications that touched this movie as it unreels. Day-Lewis plays the ultimate baddie, and his performance is extreme and laced with an occasional wicked touch of biting humour. And DiCaprio looks pleasant in the tight-fitting outfits he’s given. But beyond their struggle, we’re left with precious little else to fill three hours, and scant little to care about. DiCaprio, for some reason, doesn’t come across as a fully fleshed out character, despite all the suffering we have to accompany him through. He’s burned, skewered, stabbed, robbed and so on. Cameron Diaz is handed a thankless role as an artful, dodgy ho who’s hankering for a piece of DiCaprio and some of the action (now there’s a stretch).

This is no Goodfellas, another Scorsese epic film about gang warfare also based quite closely on historical fact, in which we gained a knowledge of the Mob while getting to know some Mafioso characters in what seemed like intimate ways. This is a stunning, coffee-table-book of a movie, but I felt its heart got lost somewhere along the way. Still, if your idea of holiday cheer is to watch people get skewered, chopped up, hacked up, sliced, diced, peeled, puréed - all on a photogenic layer of snow which goes from lily-white to bright pink due to the oozing blood - then this movie is for you.

Yes, it’s good, but it’s not quite choice Scorsese. Hey, I love Marty as much as the next Scorsesephile. When in doubt, blame the Weinsteins, I say. (MH)

Night Train

The comparisons to Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil have flown thick and fast for Les Bernstein’s Night Train, and with good reason. They’re both in black and white, which they use to jarring effect, and they’re both film noirs set amid the squalor of the moral vacuum that is Tijuana, Mexico. That said, the sleaze factor of Night Train, which saw its Montreal debut at FantAsia a couple of years ago, makes Touch of Evil look like a Capra joint.

The flick’s central figure - I can’t in good conscience attach the word “hero” to a reprehensible, drunken slob like Joe Butcher - is played with greasy delight by John Voldstad. Remember Larry’s brothers Darryl and Darryl on Newhart? Voldstad was the pudgy one with the overbite.

Butcher’s in Tijuana to find out who killed his brother Darryl - sorry, I mean Zack. Holing up in a filthy pit called Hotel Colon (one of many references to excrement in Night Train), he finds himself tangled up with a pitiful yanqui drunk, a creepy crippled woman, a vicious stripper and an even more vicious midget crime boss. And that’s before the snuff film angle comes into play.

There’s an interesting creative tension underlying Night Train in that Bernstein’s hardly the hack he’s trying to parrot. Sure, the film was deliberately overdubbed in post-production to give it the feel of crappy foreign grindhouse fodder. And while its limited budget is as obvious as the bare, cracked walls of Hotel Colon, and all the “local colour” that feeds the film’s vibe was captured on the fly, Bernstein’s competence can’t be hidden.

Long established as an above-average viz-f/x jock in Hollywood (he’s worked on Fight Club and such), Bernstein poured real cinematic passion into his own project, choosing rare, German B&W stock to really cement the gritty, hateful, hungover feel. Daytime has a harrowing glare while night is a foul tarpit to get lost in. All told, Night Train damn near stinks of blood, shit, gasoline and tequila. Cheers to that! (RB)

Two Weeks Notice

Not quite as vile as Maid in Manhattan, this romantic comedy tries a little harder to hide its old-fashioned fairy-tale credentials. How? Two conceits: the female lead has a Harvard law degree and isn’t a gold-digging social climber. Yet, it saddens me to report, she is rescued from spinsterhood by a playboy billionaire whom she reforms with her do-gooder heart of gold. All the clichés fit. This is another turn for Cinderella, law degree be damned.

While this premise should induce the gag reflex, there was no heaving in the theatre during the premiere. Instead, there were giggles and a few audible sighs. That had a lot to do with the lead actors. The playboy billionaire in question is played by Hugh Grant. He has minted a style of guilt-free carelessness that is easily confused with rakish charm. Cinderella is played by Sandra Bullock, who has minted a style of weathergirl-meets-siren accessibility. They’re highly watchable, but they don’t seem to be acting in the same movie. Their quirky charms cancel each other out, leaving no spark on the screen. Two Weeks Notice rides on the good will of Grant and Bullock’s fan base for two hours, and that’s exactly one hour too long.

Bullock plays an urban activist who works at legal aid clinics and protects heritage buildings. Grant plays the affable front man for his family, who build condos and shopping plazas for a ridiculous profit. Their worlds collide over a doomed community centre and Bullock becomes Grant’s chief legal adviser. She ends up being his moral crutch and social adviser, never losing that “you’re impossible” frown across her forehead. Grant even gets her to test a mattress and answer phone calls in the middle of the night to consult about bimbos he meets in bars. To save her sanity, Bullock quits her job and trains her replacement - the redheaded competition for Grant’s heart. There’s a tennis match, to drive the point home, and a corporate catfight over a stapler.

The film stalls at this point, waiting for Grant and Bullock to get it together. This is when some inventive folly is badly needed in the script, and writer-director Marc Lawrence doesn’t deliver. There isn’t a single surprise throughout the film, which will comfort the Cinderella crowd, while disappointing others. Bullock claims she’s retiring from romantic comedies and it’s a shame, as her inner weathergirl has yet to be rattled by the likes of Owen Wilson, or someone oddly compelling enough to highjack conventional love stories. (JL)

Ayurveda: Art of Being

This feature-length documentary explores its namesake, an old form of health care that the authors of this film clearly subscribe to. We see them travel to India and Greece and throughout America to show us success stories of people being treated with herbs as well as their inner spiritual strength to cure them of various maladies. Some of the treatments are fascinating and it’s always a treat to see people finding alternate ways of mending their various illnesses.

Funny, but I’m not entirely convinced it was a bright idea to open this film opposite the traffic jam that holiday season 2002 is turning out to be. Gosh, I wonder how this film will fare up against Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Tolkien, Sandra Bullock, Tom Hanks etc. It will take a bloody miracle if this thing doesn’t tank completely, unless of course everyone in the left-handed, vegan, bisexual, granola-freebasing demographic shows up in full force. (MH) :

All of the above films open Friday, Dec. 20, except
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, which is now playing

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