LVJeff Reviews: After the Fact 2002


	After the Fact 2002 Capsule reviews for movies released in 2002 viewed after 2002. 13 Conversations About One Thing Director: Jill Sprecher Rating: 6/10 I kind of want to blame Magnolia for the current continuing emergence of movies about groups of loosely interconnected miserable characters, most of whom barely interact with each other, all of whom together represent some sad slice of society. Sometimes these movies work, and sometimes they don't. This one only halfway does -- its characters focus quite literally on the search for happiness, only to become more bitter as the film goes on. As they get more depressed, the story gets more tiresome, especially as it continues to mount a conspicuous effort to be profound. But at least it ends on a strong note of encouragement, as if it's daring its viewers to take small, simple steps toward battling human alienation. About a Boy Director: Chris and Paul Weitz Rating: 9/10 How nice it is to see a movie about characters and their relationships as opposed to plot devices and situation set-ups. But I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised since the source for the film was a book by Nick Hornby, who also wrote the book High Fidelity, which itself was the basis of another good movie about people struggling to overcome their weaknesses in dealing with human relationships. What was a surprise, and a pleasant one at that, was Hugh Grant's performance as a smooth 38-year-old who is quite content living his leisurely shallow life until his unlikely bonding with a 12-year-old boy (Nicholas Hoult) reveals to him how much he's missing from the realm of personal contact. Both Grant and Hoult carry the movie because they are believable as people -- flawed, assured of the wrong things, and scared to admit how much they may really need the company of others. The movie mis-steps in the end, trying to tie up everything up too neatly, but the way there makes for a fresh and funny journey. Dark Water Director: Hideo Nakata Rating: 7/10 Nakata revisits the work of Kôji Suzuki, author of Ring (or Ringu, in Japanese). This time, the adaptation is of Dark Water, and it suffers a bit from feeling like the younger sister of Ringu. Many of the same ideas are revisited -- single mother protagonist, young child in danger, and hauntings from a little girl's ghost -- but this time the scares are dialed down and the creepiness is content to bubble beneath the surface. Nakata has opted to make a more traditional ghost story and, for the most part, succeeds. He's still an expert at creating atmosphere and is patient in setting it up. The movie, which explores the trauma associated with abandonment, benefits from having an undercurrent of sadness, which makes it feel quite similar to the ghost stories in Kwaidan. Actually, with a bit of selective editing, Dark Water might have fit pretty comfortably in Masaki Kobayashi's 1964 anthology. By itself, it feels a bit slight, albeit effective in all the right places. Curiously, the movie seems to have been remade for U.S. audiences twice -- Nakata re-explores Dark Water elements, with much less success, in his own The Ring Two; and Walter Salles puts his slant on things with the direct remake, Dark Water. (added 7/7/2005) Devdas Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali Rating: 8/10 It's a big soap opera, although a gorgeous one. Devdas has the distinction of being the highest-costing Bollywood movie of its time, and this is lavishly evident on the screen, from the set/art decoration and costumes to the choreography. The source material earns this treatment through its reputation as one of the most famous romances of Indian literature, likened to Romeo and Juliet or Gone with the Wind out west (and, naturally, this isn't the first time this book was filmed). Overall, it's a story about pride coming before a fall, and the universality of this theme is a main drawing power for the movie. Well, ok, that and the fact that three of current Bollywood's biggest stars are front and center: Shahrukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit, and Aishwarya Rai. Rai's natural beauty anchors the film's three best musical numbers, which balance out the slower and heavier melodramatic parts. All in all, a classy production. (added 7/22/2004) Frida Director: Julie Taymor Rating: 6/10 The appealing idea asking to be noticed in Frida is the notion that Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek), 1920-to-30's Mexican painter and wife of artist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), was really more or less an ordinary woman who went through an inordinate amount of pain and suffering and was blessedly able to effectively express that pain on the canvas throughout her life. Such expression, in and of itself, is a wonderful thing. Much of the time, however, that theme is lost among bullet-point-biography exposition and various actors taking their turns dramatically speechifying about politics, art, and fidelity. For as much as it delights us by using inventive "Pageant of the Masters"-style moments to illustrate Frida's visualizing, it lapses into somnambulistic tedium as it dutifully marches on from one life-affecting event to the next. Less worrying about covering all the drama in Frida's life and more time spent exploring her process of turning pain into art would have made this a superior movie. The Good Girl Director: Miguel Arteta Rating: 5/10 An unremarkable film about a woman who shakes up her humdrum existence by having an affair. The movie wraps itself in the guise of a dark and quirky comedy, but it isn't as quirky as it thinks it is and its comedy is generally mean-spirited, using largely stereotypical two-dimensional side characters to emphasize (with a capital "E") the lameness of the Texas boondocks world the protagonist (Jennifer Aniston) is trapped in. The trajectory of the story is straightforward and predictable -- woman has affair, affair leads to all the usual complications, woman needs to find resolution. Points must be awarded for the movie's latter-half reality checks -- the young boy she has the affair with (Jake Gyllenhaal) is in no way an ideal man, the cuckold (John C. Reilly) is actually a sweet guy, and the fantasy of escaping is seen for what it is. However, I get the idea that if such a big deal wasn't made of Aniston's "breakout" dramatic performance in an indie movie, The Good Girl would have been considered nothing special to take notice of. The Scorpion King Director: Chuck Russell Rating: 4/10 Goofy ode to mythic swashbucklers is playful, but lacks imagination. It doesn't have anything of its own to offer, content to just go through the motions of a dopey action/adventure. Here, The Rock, who would prove to be so naturally charismatic in his next movie, The Rundown, is as shackled as the movie's many prisoner characters, forced to recite dumb dialogue, react to corny villains and sidekicks, and otherwise be muscular. The movie isn't horrible because it's so obviously non-serious, but just being wink-wink silly isn't enough to breathe life into it, especially when the special effects are bad and the writing is on auto-pilot, leading to one of the worst climaxes in filmdom. Showcasing Kelly Hu's beauty may be one of the only things this flick can brag about. (added 9/27/2003) Secretary Director: Steven Shainberg Rating: 8/10 A sly female empowerment movie, although not in a way anyone would expect. A young woman (Maggie Gyllenhaal, in a standout performance) has a history of dealing with stress through self-mutilation, until she discovers love through her job as a lawyer's (James Spader) secretary and finds being dominated via light S&M a much preferable form of emotional outlet. This doesn't sound feminist until you realize the man is actually the one who is uncomfortable with his fetish and the woman becomes the one who takes action, learning to seek contentment on her own terms. It's a movie that believes people should be allowed to find their own happiness, no matter how marginalized their activities may be to "normal" society, just as long as they aren't destructive. Lightly humorous in tone overall; includes a charming score by David Lynch's composer of choice, Angelo Badalamenti. Spider Director: David Cronenberg Rating: 7/10 Portrait of a schizophrenic. Call it the "tails" to A Beautiful Mind's "heads" -- instead of being about a protagonist who identifies his illness and takes steps to conquer it, it's about someone who is a complete victim of it. "Spider" (Ralph Fiennes) is therefore a tragic figure -- his delusions are played out on the screen, earning our pity. The movie is quiet, subtly haunting, and presented as a puzzle, shifting from the present to several parts of the past without warning, while offering a mystery for the viewers to solve. However, the film's minimalism and fractured nature create a distant atmosphere -- I felt like I was invited to a house, but when I got there the door was open, so I walked in and the host just went about his business and ignored me. Consequently, I didn't feel strongly affected by the events, nor did I feel the urge to consider them more deeply. Fiennes's performance is both good and a little grating -- he doesn't do much but mumble -- but Miranda Richardson is superbly chameleonlike. Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams Director: Robert Rodriguez Rating: 6/10 Not quite as charming as the first one -- this one doesn't have its predecessor's plot inventiveness nor novelty, which was a major bonus at the time. It is, however, decidedly on crack. Rodriguez makes the movie feel as if he's making it up as he's going. Some good laughs are had along the way, and I liked the nods to monster-effects wizard Ray Harryhausen. However, its thin plot and a noticeably stuttering, stop-and-go rhythm hurt its energy and ability to involve. It also has a Disney Channel movie feel, which gets old rather quickly for me. (added 7/13/2003) Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron Directors: Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook Rating: 5/10 A horse is a horse, of course, unless that horse's personality traits render it indistinguishable from a human being. I don't understand why they didn't just let Spirit talk -- unlike the other horses in the movie who more or less just react to things, Spirit acts, thinks, and logically reasons like a college student. He's even smart enough to put on a ruse to escape captors. We hear his thoughts in the form of a voiceover by Matt Damon, which is just one step away from him talking, so why not just make him talk? The movie itself is sappy and manipulative; it's further weighed down by an overloaded, over-politically-correct script -- the frontier era U.S. government and military settlers become Spirit's natural enemies, and at one point we're even encouraged to cheer as a train engine slides down a hill and destroys the camp of railroad construction workers. Perhaps I would have been goaded into cheering if I didn't personally find Spirit's frequent displays of pride and righteousness so off-putting. In any case, at least the colorful animation is pretty enjoyable to watch. Unfaithful Director: Adrian Lyne Rating: 4/10 Adrian Lyne's movie about a housewife's adultery and its consequences would play better as a study of the human predisposition toward infidelity were its characters not so illogically single-minded and its atmosphere not so cheap-romance-novel trashy. One can believe Diane Lane's character, subconsciously bored by routine suburban life, would flirt with the idea of an affair -- even act out such a whim in a singular rush of the moment -- but her premeditated visits to her lover (Olivier Martinez) continue with neither strong evidence of her dissatisfaction with her family life nor any sign of a debilitating struggle to stop doing what she knows would hurt her loved ones if they found out. Credibility is further stretched when Martinez is presented more as a plot device than as a character, laughably whirling his prize away to the land of cheesy sensuality (watch him guide her hand across a page of Braille) before moving on to low-impact S&M ("Hit me!") and bathroom quickies. In a sudden tonal shift, the film's latter half focuses on the husband's (Richard Gere) reaction, which makes his wife's motivations seem all the more insignificant to the movie -- less as central theme, more as plot-driver. The film is watchable due to high potential for audience participation -- yelling at the characters on the screen is fun and seems to be common during viewings. (Not quite) Updated Top 10 list for 2002: 1. Spider-Man (10/10) 2. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (10/10) 3. Far from Heaven (10/10) 4. Punch-Drunk Love (10/10) 5. Minority Report (10/10) 6. Spirited Away (10/10) - 2002 U.S. release 7. Adaptation (10/10) 8. Lilo & Stitch (9/10) 9. Bowling for Columbine (9/10) 10. Catch Me If You Can (9/10) ©Jeffrey Chen, 2003 Home \| Feedback welcome