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David Goyer should stick to writing.

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TOT UP FILM RATING


ALCOHOL RATING

(5 users)

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Total Film Feb 20th 2009
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Cinema reviews

It’s no wonder that The Unborn’s US marketing campaign made a last-minute about-face, dashing the scary, monster-kid angle and focusing almost exclusively, in print-ads and trailers, on lead actress Odette Yustman’s impressive, pantyhugging backside.

Aside from Yustman’s looks, The Unborn is stillborn. Based, broadly, on Kabbalistic myth, the story follows Yustman’s college girl as she discovers a ghostly dead twin and his connection to Nazi genetic experiments.

It’s up to Rabbi Gary Oldman and cinema’s first Jewish exorcism to save the day. Hampered by the 15 rating, director David S Goyer is reduced

to yawn-worthy jump-scares and recycled Exorcist gags to do his dirty work.

Ken McIntyre

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User Reviews (5)

Dominc

Not really bad but could of been better it was not scary but had some jumpy bits in this film looked so good it could of been so much better but its still ok worth a watch.
Not as bad as these lot make out.

Narcotic addict rating:

3
Posted Aug 6th 2009 // 10:47PM

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Over the years, dozens of actors have embodied Charles Dickens’ dour, greedy, event-hating miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, but most movie lovers agree Alastair Sim’s 1951 story leads the pack. Yet beforehand Sim became the Scrooge pillar-bearer, Reginald Owen crafted his own take on the cantankerous old nutter who’s transformed by three ghosts into a giddily benevolent softie one memorable Christmas Eve. His performance in MGM’s 1938 version of A Christmas Carol may look a scrap cartoonish when compared to his successors, but Owen in spite of that captures the character’s essence, and makes Scrooge’s climactic transformation typically wondrous and heartwarming.

Owen, at any rate, was not MGM’s first choice for the coveted role. For years, Lionel Barrymore regaled audiences with his interpretation of Scrooge on an annual radio scatter, and MGM hoped A Christmas Carol would immortalize that enduring portrayal on celluloid. Sadly, a in maltreatment that would later confine the actor to a wheelchair forced him to bow out of the casting. Barrymore bracelets-picked Owen to put in place of him, and granting his theatrical makeup and fake-looking bald cap detract somewhat from his performance, Owen seizes the occasion and makes Scrooge his own. Most skilfully known for dapper, often stupid-witted supporting characters, Owen seems a moment uneasy-at-artlessness as the hoarse, ornery miser, but as the ice around Scrooge’s frozen heart begins to liquidize, the actor relaxes and allows his bona fide love to infuse the film. When he delivers the prize turkey to the stunned Cratchit group on Christmas morning, and gives his very first fair toast, it’s difficult to conceal a put up with in the throat.

At a absolute 69 minutes, A Christmas Carol breezes by, yet truncates Dickens’ story somewhat to achieve its laconicism. Number the casualties is young Scrooge’s fiancée, Belle, who is deleted entirely. Also gone is the evolution of Ebenezer from an enthusiastic, fun-loving rookie in Albert Fezziwig’s office to a cold, avaricious businessman who abhors Christmas, and browbeats and belittles all who sound out him. Those unknown with the libel won’t criticism the omissions, but purists want understandably (and rightfully) decry them. After all, MGM had recently mounted lavish and lengthy adaptations of two Dickens classics—David Copperfield and A Fish story of Two Cities—to excellent critical and popular acclaim, so the studio’s decision to present a trimmed down A Christmas Carol seems odd. MGM also trimmed the film’s budget after Barrymore’s withdrawal, which accounts quest of the movie’s unfortunate bargain basement look.

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Owen may not be the finest small screen Scrooge, but without a disquiet Gene Lockhart is the quintessential Bob Cratchit. No actor in any other version can top his robust portrayal of this endearing character. With his butterball physique, bouncy demeanor, and mile-wide smile, Lockhart oozes core, and helps the tightly-wrinkle Cratchit one’s own flesh supply A Christmas Carol with its warmest moments. Of course, it helps when your real-life wife (Kathleen) and daughter (13-year-old June, in her film debut) play those same roles in the large screen, but top dog Edwin L. Marin’s depiction of the Cratchits’ sparse, obtuse Christmas—and how the family reaps tremendous delight from the most meager offerings—forms a beautiful centerpiece for the shoot.

So often, Tiny Tim is portrayed as a wimpy, wussy shut-in, but Terry Kilburn lends the character admirable spirit and strength. As the Ghost of Christmas Past, Andy Hardy’s Polly Benedict (Ann Rutherford) acquits herself well, while Leo G. Carroll brings stone-faced solve to Jacob Marley, and Barry Mackay makes a jovial impression as Scrooge’s important-hearted nephew, Fred.

The MGM film version of A Christmas Carol not in a million years completely eclipses the 1951 British application, but this sincere, reverent giving away the whole show of Dickens’ immortal yuletide yarn should please well-founded about everyone. Reginald Owen may be a poor man’s Alastair Sim, but he files a rich performance that decades later still brims with holiday cheer.

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Zhang Yimou (”Raise the Red Lantern“) has securely
grounded a “feel good” film with characters who have greatly touched me,
even though the film is bogged down with much communist propaganda and
it ends like a typical Hollywood “feel good” movie. In this case with too
much good cheer over nothing much accomplished to make it so proud about
itself. Nevertheless, this is a brilliantly directed austere film, for
the most part, telling about ordinary people in a very poor, rural village
in China’s Hebei Province. It held my interest as I observed the classroom
dynamics taking place in a broken down one-room schoolhouse and in the
contrasting lifestyle shown in the modern Chinese city. These are human
interest stories I have not seen before about the new China, presented
here in such an informal way. The cast of mostly nonprofessional actors,
playing themselves, acquitted their task with a spirited performance, giving
power to the story about the problems with rural education for the poor
people of that region.

“Not One Less” tells about the duplicitous mayor (Tian Zhenda) of
the rural village forced to bring a 13-year-old girl from a farm family,
Wei Minzhi, to be a substitute teacher in the Shuixian Primary School (grades
one through four) when the regular teacher, an elderly man, Gao Enman,
has to leave the area for a month to be with his ailing mother and there
is no one else available. In her chat with the regular teacher, we see
that she not only doesn’t look like a teacher — but more like the students
she is about to teach; and, she also lacks the proper educational skills
to function as a teacher. Wei’s only gift is that she knows a few lines
of one patriotic song to teach the children, which she sings in an off
key voice. To compensate for her inadequacies, Teacher Gao, a dedicated
teacher, leaves her 26 lessons she is to write on the board for the month
he is gone and 26 precious pieces of chalk, as she will have the students
copy her boardwork in their notebooks. He admonishes her not to write the
characters too large, because the chalk will run out. The characters should
be about the size of a donkey turd. The chalk is in such short-supply that
the classroom monitor tells her, the teacher scrapes pieces of it off the
floor to use.

Worried about receiving the 50 yuan pay she is promised, Wei is told
that she will receive it when the teacher returns if she keeps the 28 pupils
she has, not one less. Teacher Gao says he keeps losing these primary grade
students who drop-out to work, as he has already lost 10 pupils this year;
and, even though he hasn’t been paid in 6 months, he will give her a small
bonus of 10 yuan from his own pocket if she keeps the class intact.

Teacher Wei has difficulty getting her class to respect her and call
her teacher; she also can’t handle the class troublemaker, an always smiling
11-year-old bully named Zhang Huike. But Wei can be bossy when she has
to, and looks upon her main role as keeping the same number of students
she was given. Wei’s first major problem arises when a girl who is spotted
as a fast runner, is taken away by a city school recruiting her for her
athletic ability. This upsets Teacher Wei, who is only interested in keeping
her pupil and getting her bonus at the end of the month. The mayor tells
her to stop worrying, it’s good for the girl and Teacher Gao will understand
that he lost a pupil who wants to better herself and not one who dropped-out.

The teacher’s idea of teaching is to sit outside in front of the
classroom door and make sure no one leaves, never mind what mischief or
learning goes on inside the classroom. The film is based on the novel by
Shi Xiangsheng, who was a teacher in a rural school and should therefore
know how shoddy education could be in such places.

When Zhang Huike is missing from school and Teacher Wei goes to his
house and speaks to his sick mother and finds that the family has debts
because the father is dead, and that Zhang went into the city to get work
– she can only think of getting the address of his workplace in the city
and going there herself to bring him back. But the mayor will not give
her transportation to the city and shrugs his shoulder, saying that’s just
the way it is with poor people around here. The resolute girl tries to
shake down her class for bus fare to the city, but the class is too poor
to come up with the money needed. But when a student says you can get money
by carrying bricks, the teacher brings the children to work there and raises
just enough money to get her to the city. This leads to the only lesson
she ever thought, as she has the children do the math for this real-life
problem, of trying to figure out how many bricks it would take to move
before she has enough for round-trip bus fare. It’s a communal effort,
since her math is not much better than her student’s math.

The selfish teacher finds herself bewildered in the big city of Jiangjiakou
and is further disappointed that Zhang never showed up to work, but ran
away from the girl he came with, as he left her to go for a pee in the
train station and never returned. In this government-sanctioned pic the
story was really absorbing up to this point, but it now takes a radical
turn for the worst as the teacher decides to find Zhang and bring him back
to school no matter what suffering it takes on her part to do it. Supposedly
she is no longer doing it out of her own selfishness, but in her inarticulate
and resolute way she has learned what it is to be a teacher and care about
her pupils and all she’s still missing are the teaching skills.

Wei finds out it is useless to go to the police, they’re just too
busy for this kind of job (which struck me as either strange or very revealing
about modern China). Wei ends up listening to a stranger in the train station
who tells her to go to the TV station. After unsuccessfully trying to see
the TV station manager, she ends up sleeping on the street and does this
for a day and a half until the manager, who turns out to be sensitive to
her plight, gets her onto a popular Oprah-like show, and she tearfully
connects again with Zhang. He was seen wandering the streets and begging
for food in a restaurant. This looked so unreal, that I thought the last
reel got mixed in with one of those typical Hollywood films of this kind.
Though what was interesting about this part of the film, was taking a gander
at the city and how clean and boring and crowded it looked. Unfortunately,
the film never recovered from this artificial twist to the story and concluded
with Chinese TV donors sending in money to pay off Zhang’s family debts
and the school is given many school supplies to take care of its scarcity
and enough money to build a new schoolhouse to replace its broken down
one. The message of the film, about the poor conditions of China’s rural
schools, was unfortunately delivered in a heavy-handed manner.

The film was so adeptly done and looked and felt so good, and the
parts of all the people were played by those playing themselves in such
a natural way that I didn’t see its downfall coming until it was too late.
By that time I was really getting off on the film and was amazed by the
simple daily life rhythms of the schoolchildren and the common villagers,
that I was already hooked on liking the film. I especially found the performance
of Wei Minzhi to be impactful. I was taken in by the simplicity of who
she was and the truth in her character, and the way she was still an innocent
child. Because of her cultural background she was obedient and took on
the responsibilities of being a substitute teacher, something that she
knew she had no ability for but reluctantly had to do, even if she couldn’t
explain why. This fictional story showed the power of human love over all
the coldness in the world.

We all need Dirty Harry. Even Clint Eastwood needs him — with his you-feel-lucky-punks and that all-perceiving squint of moral discernment. Clint-as-Harry isn’t a man’s man; he’s a man’s man’s man, a paragon of taciturn machismo that other paragons look to in times of crisis. When you need some dude to come along and wreak justice upon the scum of the Earth, he’s pretty much your guy.

So I be conversant with, really I do, why Eastwood the principal dusted afar Smutty Harry and hired Eastwood the actor to play him in

Gran Torino

. He isn’t called Angry Harry in the talkie — he’s an old fart named Walt — but there’s no mistaking the rasp in his voice or the uncompromising crankiness of his

Weltanschauung

. If you wondered whatever became of Inspector Callahan after

The Spent Pool

, well, look at him modern: a widowed Polish-American Korean War vet stubbornly hanging onto his strain, his ethnic hatreds and his 1972 Ford Gran Torino in a ruffian part of Detroit.

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Walt needs redemption. That’s obvious enough, even without the puppy-faced cleric (Christopher Carley) who keeps showing up outside his door, pressing him for his confession. Father Janovich is a stock character cut from some truly flimsy cardboard — he can barely hold it together in two dimensions — but he’s a fair indicator of the movie’s best inclinations and worst flaws. It wears its morals on its sleeve, right next to its cliché heroics and transparently manipulative plot.

This marks Eastwood’s first show as an actor since 2004’s

Million Dollar Baby

, and he’s already earned accolades for his work behind and before the camera. But I belong to a different discipline of scheme. In my school, dubbed the What Am I Not Getting? Academy,

Gran Torino

is the most obvious and least interesting of the four movies he’s directed in the model two years.

Written by first-timers Dave Johannson and Nick Schenk, it opens at the funeral for Walt’s late wife. There we find his spoiled granddaughter and two boob sons, who seize the occasion to whine about his shortcomings (great timing, fellas): “Dad still lives in the ’50s,” and “There’s nothing anyone can do that won’t disappoint the old man.” In the eulogy, the priest lobs the usual rhetorical questions. “What is death? Is it the end, or is it the beginning?” And, while he’s on the subject, “What is life?”

Walt’s response to this and other stabs at philosophizing is to look annoyed and mutter a flood of pejoratives, including several outmoded racist terms from the drive-in era. He calls the Hmong in his neighborhood “slopes” and “gooks” and “swamp rats,” which would, under normal circumstances, reveal him as the worst sort of jackass, but these are hardly normal circumstances. This is Eastwood, people. Before long, the angry white codger will come to their rescue.

The key to everything is that beaut in the garage, a shiny ’72 Torino. Bookish teen Thao (Bee Vang), forced by a shady cousin and his gang, makes a weak attempt at stealing it. Walt busts him, holds him at gunpoint and scares off the gangsters. In the days that follow, Thao’s grateful family crowd his porch with riots of flowers and tray after tray of food. They persuade him to let Thao work as recompense. And, sure enough, Walt bends his stiffly bigoted posture for the lovely Hmong clan next door.

These scenes, driven by abrasive humor and gently simmering warmth, are the beating heart of

Gran Torino

. When Walt mentors Thao, spars with his feisty sister (Ahney Her) or avoids his warlike grandmother (Chee Thao), the film has an easy, unforced vibe. Eastwood does a happier job directing the largely non-educated Hmong cast than he does directing himself. He just keeps doing his Dirty Harry glare, spanking out guns real and illusory. But it’s hard not to see him as Mr. Wilson — Dennis the Menace’s crotchety neighbor. Skinnier, hairier, no mustache. All the same, a startling resemblance.

The Produce:

Now into the second half of the series, Ghost in the Shell: Standalone
Complex continues to deliver strong, well written stories. The
fifth volume features four more episodes, the first three of which are
’stand alone’ stories, and the fourth a ‘complex’ episode that continues
that mystery of the Laughing Man.

In the not too distant future, most humans are augmented by cybernetic
implants. These implants make people faster, stronger, and more powerful.
No longer do you have to spend excruciating hours in the gym to get the
perfect body, you can just order one. Crime is still prevalent in
this future society, and the criminals are now much more powerful.
In order to combat these criminals, a special division of the police, Section
9 has been created. Manned with state of the art cybernetically enhanced
officers Section 9 handles the cases that no one else is equipped to.

This volume starts off with three stand alone episodes that are all
enjoyable. The first one showcases the chiefs talents. While visiting
an old friend in England, the chief finds himself in the middle of a hold-up.
Rather than being a hostage though he tries to help the crooks evade the
police, and in the process shows how powerful an unarmed old man can be.

In the next episode Section Nine has to protect a visiting dignitary
from being assassinated. Even though the assassin is only 16
years old, it will take all of their talent to protect the foreigner.

Then Section Nine has to come to the aid of a politician. A powerful
Senator’s daughter has been kidnaped, along with several other anonymous
women, so that their organs can be harvested and sold on the black market.
This is a crime that the Senator has strongly denied ever takes place,
and it would be political suicide for him to admit that this is a problem.
That might be the only way to flush the criminals out of hiding though.
Which is stronger, a man’s ambition or the love for his daughter?

The final episode on the disc gets back to the mystery of the Laughing
Man. Togusa is still thinking about his time undercover at the Cyberbrain
treatment facility (volume three.) He’s convinced that one of the
children he was working with is the Laughing Man. Something that
the boy wrote gets the wheels spinning, and he convinces himself that Section
Nine has been going down the wrong path. They know that the Laughing
Man is after data, and they have been looking for evidence that computer
files have been copied or accessed improperly. Togusa believes that
the criminal isn’t after computer data, but something that is only available
as a hard copy. After spending days inventorying a certain warehouse
full of government records, he discovers that one volume is missing: a
chronicle of a medical experiment that was done years ago and declared
a failure. Who would want such information, and how does it connect
with the Laughing Man’s previous crimes?

It’s no secret that I really enjoy this series. Part police procedural,
part action show and part psychological drama, Ghost in the Shell: Stand
Alone Complex creates a world that is very detailed and rich.
The stand alone episodes are always fun, often gripping and sometimes horrific.
The series does a good job of telling an interesting story while also revealing
details of the world that Section Nine operates in.

I enjoy watching Section Nine go through their paces. The mystery
unfolds as the detectives find new clues, and the police work that they
do gives the series a realistic feel. While the plots can sometimes
be a little confusing and conveluted, someone always explains just what
was going on and everyone’s motives at the end of the show.

As much as I enjoy the stand alone shows, the complex episodes are my
favorites. They are the real meat of the series. Watching this
case go one for many months, possibly years, is not only interesting but
engrossing. The Laughing Man is such an enigma, and the clues
that he leaves in his wake are so rare, that every new piece of information
about him that is revealed gets your brain spinning about what it all means.

The complex episodes remind me of William Gibson’s landmark book Neuromancer
a bit. They both contain a very complex and convoluted story that
seems to be random at times. However you know that in the end the
underlying themes and meanings will all be revealed.

I was sorry to see that the Tachikomas, the sentient robot tanks, are
no longer featured in the series. As revealed in the previous volume
they had to be sent back to the factory because their AI programs were
developing in unexpected ways. I was happy to discover that they
continued having Tachikomatic Days as a bumper after the credits
though. These short cartoons are often funny and distinctly odd.
A wonderful match to the show.

The DVD:

This DVD comes in two versions. A regular version, which is the
version that is reviewed here, and a deluxe version. The deluxe version
has an extra disc with the same episodes repeated but with a DTS sound
track and a “collectible ID card.”

Audio:

The viewer has the choice of viewing this program with either an English
dub (5.1 and 2.0) or in the original Japanese (also 5.1 and 2.0.)
There is good use of the full sound stage on the 5.1 tracks, giving the
show a very encompassing feeling. Music and incidental effects come
from all angles surrounding the viewer, but these never become overpowering.
There isn’t a trace of hiss or distortion, and everything is very clear
and crisp. I viewed the show in both English and Japanese, and I
had a preference for the original language, but the English dub sounded
great as well, with the voice talent doing a good job. There are
optional full English subtitles or just subtitles for the signs and song
lyrics.

Video:

The video on this show is absolutely stellar.
The anamorphic widescreen video was encoded from a high definition master
and is just about flawless. The colors were excellent, blending gracefully
from shade to shade without any signs of banding. The picture was
sharp and the definition was first-rate. This is a great looking
show.

Extras:

In addition to a series of trailers, this DVD, like the previous volumes,
includes a pair of interviews. This time around we get to hear
from the mechanical designers Kenzi Teraoka and Shinobu Tsuneki in one
and DP Koji Tanaka and 3D director Makoto Endo in the other.

Final Thoughts:

Another great volume. Ghost in the Shell is one of those shows
that starts going strong from the first notes of the intro song and doesn’t
let up until the credits start to roll. The animation is absolutely
fantastic, with a seamless mix of CGI and traditional animation, and the
stories are interesting. Highly Recommended.

A romantic dramedy that wobbles between self-indulgent references and genuinely affecting moments of pathos, The Jane Austen Book Club seems to cheekily capitalize upon the recent surge in popularity the English author has enjoyed at the multiplex. Adapted from Karen Joy Fowler’s 2004 novel of the same name, writer/director Robin Swicord (making her directorial debut)’s elegant, diffuse look at the lives and loves of a clutch of Austen-loving women (and one fella) has its pleasures, but they are maddeningly few and far between.

Armed with a truckload of talent — Kathy Baker, Maria Bello, Marc Blucas, Emily Blunt, Amy Brenneman, Hugh Dancy, Maggie Grace, Jimmy Smits, Kevin Zegers and Lynn Redgrave comprise the main cast — and a loose, episodic structure (the club reads all six of Austen’s novels over a six-month period), The Jane Austen Book Club has a breezy feel from its opening moments, a mood occasionally darkened by life changes such as divorce, injury or heartbreak. Unsurprisingly, the main thrust of the film is just how Austen’s timeless works mirror the turbulent lives of those turning the pages.

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The myriad plots don’t go anywhere too unexpected — although I will say the Blunt/Blucas/Redgrave thread had a few surprising tweaks; it’s arguably the strongest of all plotlines in the film — but the journey’s the thing here, not the destination. Dancy and Bello enjoy some low-key chemistry and only Baker seems strangely miscast, floating above it all like a ditzy den mother.

Granted, I’m not really the target audience for The Jane Austen Book Club, but it’s to Swicord’s credit that the few shots she takes at the male species are either justified by Austen’s point of view or are surprisingly well-observed. If only all of the film packed the punch of Blunt and Blucas’s work or the funny-sad dynamic shared by Bello and Dancy, it would be a far more successful, compelling work. As it is, this Club is almost not worth joining.

Jasmine Dellal’s documentary of the 2001 traffic in-ended visit of the US undertaken by a specially convoked five-nation group of Gypsy musicians offers some individually vibrant performances and captivating ‘back-home’ to footage but is somewhat contract out down by a scarcity of directorial intuition and uninteresting or clumsy editing. The great Albert Maysles is credited among 11 cinematographers, a plenitude that may assistants extenuate the film’s be without of visual coherence, rhythm and proper colour balance. In the same, its insights into the yesteryear of the Romany diaspora, however sympathetic, seem quick. Still, you can’t keep a legitimate band down, and famous names such as Romania’s Taraf de Haïdouks, Macedonia’s ‘official leading light of the Gypsies’ Esma Redzepova, Andalucia’s Antonio El Pípa and Rajastan’s Maharaja not only blow up a storm or cry a river but divulge foot-stomping evidence of the contrast and connectedness of the vital Roma musical tradition.

When we fundamental see Rae Crane (Lorraine Bracco) in John McTiernan’s spectacularly thrilling new movie “Medicine Guy,” she’s strapping on a pair of boots as if she were a warrior preparing recompense fight. And, in significance, she is. A brilliant up on scientist, Crane has been sent to South America by her employers, an American pharmaceutical firm, to check up on Richard Campbell (Sean Connery), a renegade biochemist who’s spent the last six years living yawning in the shower forests along the Amazon searching for the sake what he believes to be a miracle serum.

For some time, though, Campbell has been doing precisely as he pleases, refusing to submit reports on his findings, account for his expenses, or even communicate with his superiors. Like Kurtz in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” he’s off on his own. And, like Marlow, Crane has been sent upriver to find out what the hell is going on.

After an arduous trek on foot and by canoe — it’s a good thing she laced on those boots — she finally confronts her subject, who is stinking drunk and outfitted for a native ceremony in a lavish straw head-dress, topped with an enormous beak. To say that her first impressions are negative would be a gross understatement. For the audience, though, their initial exchange of antagonistic cross talk and bickering is sublimely funny, a sort of forest primeval variation on ’30s movie banter that sets the stage for the battle of sexes to follow.

“Medicine Man,” which was written by Tom Schulman (”Dead Poets Society”) and Sally Robinson, is a unique confluence of elements: a screwball comedy, a love story, and a medical detective yarn, all in one. And from this heady opening salvo, we get a sense of just what a rare movie we’re being drawn into. Few pictures work on this many levels, or present us with characters as strong and richly conceived as these. And yet, miraculously, the film doesn’t come across as merely an expedient hybrid of movie conventions. It’s a surprise from start to finish, a fresh, compelling, moving tale with real people and real conflicts. It’s a wonder.

Crane, the feisty but inexperienced outsider from the Bronx, provides us with a window onto Campbell and his unorthodox methods. She’s at the center of the story; it’s about her blossoming self-discovery. At first, she’s half-convinced that this inhospitable eccentric with the long gray ponytail trailing down his back is mad. Mad or not, though, she’s certain she hates his guts. Her opinion changes somewhat when she finds that, during the course of his research, he has come across a compound that is, in effect, a cure for cancer. There’s a problem, though. Except for the initial batch of the stuff, he’s been unable to reproduce the formula, even after hundreds of attempts. “I found the cure for the plague of the 20th century, and now I’ve lost it,” he bellows.

Having learned of his discovery, Crane is convinced that the company should be brought in to complete the research. It’s an enormous breakthrough, and far too important to be left in the hands of only two researchers working with a makeshift lab. But Campbell, for reasons having to do with an earlier tragedy, refuses to allow outside interference. And so he and Crane have to plunge ahead on their own. The key to the formula, Campbell believes, is a flower that grows in the tops of the enormous jungle trees. And the scenes in which, like Tarzan and Jane, they use rope harnesses to ascend high up into the vast leafy canopy of the rain forest are as giddy and unexpected as they are breathtakingly beautiful. They’re simply dazzling.

So is the slow progress of the relationship between Campbell and Crane, who turn out to be the most satisfying screen couple in years. There’s no sex here, and no real romance, per se. Instead, there’s something deeper — a true meeting of minds and souls. These are two powerful personalities, each as bullheaded and cantankerous as the other, and the antagonism between them never fully abates. But underneath it, an emotional connection is forged, primarily out of mutual respect, and, at least in Crane’s case, compassion for a man in tremendous pain.

It’s impossible to see how the actors could be any better. As Crane, Bracco displays the kind of tenacious, emotional ferocity that Debra Winger showed in some of her earlier roles, and yet which is completely her own. She’s an all-or-nothing actor with the kind of depth and power that plugs directly into your solar plexis. And if that weren’t enough, there are scenes in “Medicine Man” — such as the one in which she gets a buzz off an Indian concoction — that show an equal talent for comedy.

As for Connery, well, there’s just nobody even close to being in his league. Campbell is a tortured man, but Connery underplays his agony so subtly that we feel it all the more strongly. It’s a great character for this magnificent actor, one that allows him to express the full range of his talent — his humor, his charm, his full-bodied emotional resonance. And if he didn’t make it all seem so effortless, he might finally be recognized for what he is — simply the greatest actor alive.

The pleasure we take from “Medicine Man” comes not only from the actors or the engrossing progress of the narrative, but from every aspect, including Donald McAlpine’s ravishing cinematography and Jerry Goldsmith’s luscious score. Even the ecological message — which focuses on the building of a road that threatens not only the Indians who have made their home in the forest but also the trees that contain the miracle flowers — is woven so skillfully and naturally into the fabric of the story that it hardly seems like a message at all. McTiernan’s focus as a director is always on the human elements; though his work may have been more flamboyant in “Die Hard” and “The Hunt for Red October,” it is even more distinguished here for its integrity and insight. He’s grown from an accomplished pyrotechnician into a true artist.