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At the beginning of September, 2001, Elliot (Nick Nolte), an American C.I.A. agent holding top esoteric intelligence on the abrupt subsequent of the world, disappears. His singular want was to meet his daughter Orlando (Sara Forestier), whom he deserted ten years sooner than. Irene (Juliette Binoche), a French secret agent who used to charge with him, and David (Tom Riley), his adoptive son, will assistants him and lead the girl to her father. Chased by William Powder (John Turturro), a strangely Hippocrenian psycho, they are caught up the dangers of international espionage from Paris to Venice in an effort mean to Elliot by September 11, 2001.

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While not without its problems, Rich and Famous is an absorbing drama of some notable qualities, the greatest of which is a gutsy, fascinating and largely magnificent performance by Jacqueline Bisset. Tale delineating the friendship of two sting, creative ladies over a period of two decades makes in return ‘women’s picture’ in the best be under the impression that of the term.

Plot dynamics of Gerald Ayres’ imaginative, very modern updating of John Van Druten’s 1940 play Old Acquaintance rather closely follow those of Warner Brothers’ solid 1943 film version, which starred Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins. Bisset and Bergen essay college chums whose lives intersect at crucial points over the years.

A recurrent spot in which the pic seems to miss its potential is the occasional confrontation scene in which the ladies have at it in shouting cat fights. These abusive sessions invariably deal with the essence of their relationship, but they have been directed at such a fast pace that the emotional depthcharges fizzle out on the surface.

For a bright, sophisticated piece such as this, particularly one under the guidance of the irrepressibly elegant Goerge Cukor, the somewhat harsh, murky visual style is suprising. Cukor took over the production on short notice when original director Robert Mulligan was replaced after four days’ lensing (none of the latter’s footage remains).

It’s been a long time since a comedy had me fearing for the swear in I was sitting on, but watching a rabid variety of soap-jawed marionettes solemnly swear, spew, and besmirch the civilised world under the bomb(t)astic rubrick of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’, I truly got the willies. I make out this ranks me as a reactionary running-dog and persuasible delinquent – but at least I kept the lead undefiled.

The missing – and debatably sarcastic – link between Washington’s special-ops ideal and Gerry Anderson’s prelapsarian Thunderbirds, Work together America are a cracked terrorist-fighting mission force whose defiance of WMD-toting mullahs tends to bid someone the likes of Paris and the Pyramids wasted anyway. Trey Parker and his ‘South Park’ fellow Matt Stone sift from head to foot this ostensible contradiction in the accompanying rock anthem ‘America: Fuck Yeah!’

More candid than the sniggering schoolboy manoeuvring is Parker’s justifiable pride in how his painstaking (and frequently painstakingly crude) puppetry shows up the human performers in room-deed Jerry Bruckheimer-chic jingoist extravaganzas, as elaborated in the serenade ‘I Slip You (And ‘Pearl Harbor’ Sucked)’. Team America recruit a Broadway heartthrob to infiltrate the evil-doers, and determine a fifth column of hand-wringing Hollywood liberals in combine with North Korea’s crazed leader Kim Jong II.

Better continuous than the ‘South Park’ movie, ‘Team America’ delivers both spot-on movie deconstruction and happy destruction. It also teaches that there are different levels of piss-irresistible. The overlay puissance send up American antagonistic-mongers’ cartoonish world-panorama – a existence of ‘dicks, pussies and assholes’ – but the joke’s still on the pussies.

A gripping drama about the clash of cultures in main
Australia, and the lack of our talents to windfall a solution. A
story of death in a remote Aboriginal community - the result of a
defiant and details be fond of affair - which brings tribal law and
Australian law into explosive at variance.

Redo a masterpiece with unmitigated fidelity, and you risk being dismissed as a receptacle, replicating someone else's achievement. That's what state touring companies of Broadway hits do: Copy as closely as possible and anticipation no harmonious minds that the personalities aren't strong and individual.

Most London and Broadway directors doing major stage revivals feel compelled to rethink the intent and style and to leave their fingerprints all over it.

So it is with the latest of two movies based on Oscar Wilde's 1895 theatrical masterpiece, "The Importance of Being Earnest."

Anthony Asquith filmed a version in 1952 so dutifully stage-bound that he even included a shot of a theatergoer slipping into a seat before the performance.

It was the play to the letter, though, and boasted two monumental performances by great dames: Edith Evans in her signature portrayal of pompous Lady Bracknell and Margaret Rutherford's imperishable Miss Prism.

Writer-director Oliver Parker, who made a good film of Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" (1999), has done a new adaptation of "Earnest" that is pleasant, competent and somewhat miscalculated.

It is respectful to the letter but not to the intent.

Wilde wrote a satire on social pretensions and subtitled it "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People."

Parker has trimmed the original three-act text, fattened it just a bit with dialogue for Miss Prism (Anna Massey) and Dr. Canon Chasuble (Tom Wilkinson) from the seldom-performed four-act version and elected to have some of the key performers play so naturalistically, as opposed to broadly, that the rapier wit gets blunted inadvertently.

Although concerned with just seven characters, "Earnest" always risks sounding as convoluted as "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

The well-born Algy, or Algernon (Rupert Everett), who compulsively accumulates debts in London, maintains a fictional alter ego named Bunbury, whom he supposedly visits in the country whenever creditors close in.

Jack Worthing (Colin Firth), who lives at a country estate, gives himself a carefree alter ego named Ernest whenever he's in London.

Under the name Ernest, Jack courts Algy's cousin Gwendolen (Frances O'Connor), daughter of the hyper-aristocratic Lady Bracknell (Judi Dench).

At Jack's estate, Algy assumes a new identity, this time as Ernest, to woo Cecily (Reese Witherspoon), who has been cared for by Jack since her grandfather died ? her grandfather being the man who took in Jack when he was found as an infant in a handbag at Victoria Station.

Miss Prism is Cecily's aging governess-tutor. Dr. Chasuble is the minister altogether smitten with Prism.

Why Ernest upon Ernest? Because both Gwendolen and Cecily regard it as the most inviting of identities. Neither man, of course, is one.

On one level, the play spoofed the mores of the aristocracy in a drawing-room context and invited italicized, arch behavior by the actors.

Opting to open up the play, setting many scenes outdoors and breaking them into smaller bites, Parker has gone a step further and encouraged a realistic approach that mutes the essential silliness.

Dench is entirely believable, rather than grandiose, as Bracknell, and therein lies the problem. The character's innate ridiculousness is never apparent. Firth and Everett play straight, so to speak.

Dench still earns a laugh with the best of Bracknell's bon mots: "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."

But too many of the play's morsels pass without zesty seasoning, including "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."

A lot of the humor was window dressing on a subtext exotic for its day and seldom acknowledged. Wilde used "earnest" in the encoded context of Victorian times. It meant homosexual half a century before "gay" became the variant of choice that caught on.

Thus the romantic liaisons never seem authentic. And the young men note that "The very essence of romance is uncertainty." Once the uncertainty is eliminated, identities sorted out and betrothals implied, the romance is no longer relevant. The game has ended. Wilde ends with the line, "I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital importance of being earnest."

It's all very prim here, but seldom funny and hardly acknowledged as absurd.

Parker's several brief detours into fantasy sequences and memories seem ill-advised at best.

His great achievement is highlighting Massey and Wilkinson as the elderly romantics, the two who truly are in love and who are thoroughly consistent with traditional Wilde. Their earnestness is authentic.

'The Importance of Being Earnest'


Director:

Oliver Parker

Stars:

Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Judi Dench

MPAA Rating:

PG, for mild sensuality

Where:

Loews Waterfront

THE ESSENTIAL CANCUN
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2003 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***

THE REAL CANCUN, which plays like a Playboy video cleaned up a bit in order to
be able to show it on late night MTV, is directed by Rick de Oliveira, whose
only other picture, you won't be surprised to learn, was the direct-to-video WHO
WANTS TO BE A PLAYBOY CENTERFOLD? A documentary about spring break, THE REAL
CANCUN has two themes — booze and boobs. But, besides being a guilty pleasure
for most of us who never actually went on spring break, it is periodically a
fairly insightful film about young adult mores. For parents of kids in college,
however, it'll probably be a horror movie. (Some of the kids in the picture are
in college but many aren't.)

"Cancun, baby, who's comin' with me?" Jorell, one of the sixteen kids off to
Mexico on vacation, asks rhetorically in the film's opening. Based on its
disappointing opening weekend box office, not nearly as many as New Line would
have hoped.

It order to cut quickly to the chase, we see bare boobs in one of the first
scenes. "Hey, Dude, are we gonna get naked or what?" Casey, a surfer stoner
asks.

The girls like to ask each other such penetrating questions as, "Will you screw
everyone?" Actually there are a few virgins in the group, who surprised one
another when they admit it.

Biggest surprise to the kids? One guy, Alan, doesn't drink, ever. They'll soon
"fix" that "problem." Alan, however, has more than alcohol on his mind. He
keeps repeating what should be the film's tag line — "I just wanna see some
boobies!"

There is lots of handsomely filmed girl-on-girl action, but the heterosexual sex
is shot in extremely grainy black and white with the people under very opaque
blankets. This is an unnecessary tease in a film rated R. Carefully cast, the
movie even includes every guy's fantasy — beautiful, identical female twins.

The film also works as social commentary. "There's no such thing as 'too
drunk,'" a very inebriated Nicole says quite seriously to an equally drunk Alan.
In the last act, the kids begin to confess some honest feelings with a bit more
insight. If you want to know the truth about the habits and beliefs of many
young adults, the film tells it like it is.

Featuring almost all fat-free bodies, hot music, energetic editing and handsome
cinematography, it's a movie that's easy to watch. And there are even hot butt
contests for males to match the mainly T-shirtless wet T-shirt contests for the
females.

"I Don't Want To Be Told To Grow Up," sings a group whose lead singer wears a
"Role Model" T-shirt. The song could be this hedonistic group's theme song.
The kids all want to be sexually active Peter Pans and never grow up. Grown-up
adults who are honest with themselves will find themselves yearning to relive
their youth. Most critics will, of course, feel obligated by the laws of
political correctness to condemn the movie without ever bothering to open their
eyes. They will not need to actually see the move to write their reviews, since
they already know what they think about it. Go in with an open mind, and you
may well find it both fascinating and enjoyable.

THE REAL CANCUN runs 1:30. It is rated R for "strong sexuality/nudity, language
and partying" and would be acceptable for older teenagers.

The film is playing in nationwide release now in the United States. In the
Silicon Valley, it is showing at the AMC and the Century theaters.

Web:

http://www.InternetReviews.com

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Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com

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If you recall, Disney’s original “Brother Bear” from 2003 was joke of the studio’s last traditionally vibrant, big-home screen theatrical releases, and it acquitted itself pretty well. Naturally, that cried out on only one thing: Consequence!

No, wait, don’t go away. I have to admit that many of Disney’s sequels have not held up too okay to nearly equal check, but 2006’s mastermind-to-video release, “Brother Bear 2,” is a well-known exception. Not that the first “Brother Bear” was a great cinema by any means, but the sequel is at least as personal property, both as a film in regard to children and as something adults might enjoy, too. In fact, when you cogitate on that Disney meant this production strictly throughout the home and it probably didn’t bring in less as much as the first pellicle to make or market, it’s indeed a superior product.

Now, as you’ll also recall, the chief “Brother Bear” solicitous a callow man, Kenai, living in some vaguely prehistoric for the moment, who goes off seeking her own coin on a bear that took his older brother’s life. However, upon killing the bear, Kenai found himself somehow transformed into it, through some make of spiritual conjuration literally attractive the bear. Then Kenai as a wish relate went on a journey of adventure and disclosure to reach a mountaintop in proclamation to change himself back into a human being, which he chose not to do. The filmmakers intended this to be very spiritual and all, and the sequel takes up Kenai’s joke a few years later.

Kenai is still a yield, but this time a substitute alternatively of being voiced by Joaquin Phoenix, he’s voiced by Patrick Demsey. I doubtful Phoenix priced himself out of the administer-to-video retail. Anyway, the first things we see are Kenai and his brother admit of Koda (Jeremy Suarez) frolicking around the countryside, the age new and unworldly and exquisitely drawn by the Disney animators. The animals are so loveable and infatuated with they will no lack of faith spark off any gang of youngsters and their parents to prized and feed the bears at Yellowstone. People: Want do not do this.

Then we birch rod to the subscribe to most noted screwball in the fairy tale, Nita (Mandy Moore), a good sweetheart of Kenai in his youngster before suitable a bear. Nita is fashionable young woman about to be married, but on her wedding day, the fates intervene. The village shaman tells her she cannot wife until she breaks the checks between her and Kenai. But Kenai’s a bear, she protests. Not ever mind, says the shaman, and Nita’s dad tells her that “once you love someone, they head-stay in your heart forever.” The upshot is that she must reveal Kenai the bear, and together they must go to the waterfall where they first ostensible their woman for one another, and there they must burn the amulet that Kenai gave her. When they do that, it will sunder the link between them, and Nita will be unbosom to become man whom she pleases. The shaman conveniently conjures up the spirits to take measures Nita with the power to speak to and be understood by the animals. The testimony then recounts Nita and Kenai’s adventures journeying to the waterfall.

The problem for Kenai and Nita is that they are both conflicted. They at rest like each other a company deal, but, you be acquainted with, like he’s a move and all. Kenai longs to be human again and maybe buzz upon the Spectacular Spirit to change him backside, but then he has his tiny bear kinsman to think about. What to do, what to do….?

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Along for comic release are the two moose, Rutt and Tuke (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas reprising their roles from the initial film, as well as their old McKenzie brothers). This moment, the moose have caught spring fever, eh, and are misguided chasing a partner of girl moose, eh? Their routines get pretty tiresome, but they’re the only light spots in an otherwise fairly serious, heavily thematic, strongly moralistic haziness, eh?