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A Walk to Remember (2002)
Formulaic Fiasco
Pop princess Mandy Moore joins the long queue of singers attempting the transition to big screen stardom in the teen tearjerker A Walk To Remember. Despite winning an MTV award for her adequate performance, A Walk To Remember promises to short-circuit Moore's cinematic ambitions in a similar fashion to Mariah Carey and the much-maligned Glitter.
Based on the allegedly best-selling novel by schmaltz-meister Nicholas Sparks (Message in a Bottle) and directed by Adam Shankman (The Wedding Planner), A Walk To Remember is the cinematic equivalent of a midday movie but without the entertainment value offered by the television commercials. It is the type of film that treads such overly familiar narrative ground that most audiences will have accurately predicted every clichéd plot twist and turn after the first ten minutes.
Mandy Moore plays Jamie Sullivan, the sickly daughter of a small town Baptist Minister (Peter Coyote in a performance that is one of the films few redeeming features). With her conservative values and unfashionable dress-sense, the bible carrying Jamie is a constant object of ridicule amongst her fellow high school students. One of her detractors is troubled teen Landon Carter (Shane West). Landon is a middle-class rebel without a cause who is mixing with a bad crowd. As to be expected, circumstances bring the two teens together and before long they share a very chaste romance, much to the disapproval of Landon's friends and Jamie's father. Inevitably, tragedy awaits the two ill-fated lovers and director Shankman launches an all out assault on the tear ducts. The final quarter of this formulaic fiasco will have audiences either reaching for their tissues or more wisely, rushing for the exits.
Aimed squarely at a young female audience, A Walk To Remember has enough saccharine sentimentality and two new Mandy Moore tunes to keep them happy. Those outside that demographic might find some entertainment from guffawing at the abominable dialogue delivered by a cast that should know better. Including the once glamorous Daryl Hannah as Landon's mother. Like many of her contemporaries, Hannah has followed the disturbing trend of overdosing on cosmetic surgery in the lip area and is currently looking eerily similar to Daffy Duck.
Overall, another film to add to the worst of 2002 list.
Bad Company (2002)
Brainless Buddy Movie
Few filmmakers have done more to dumb-down mainstream cinema, than producer Jerry Bruckheimer. In the last twenty years he has been responsible for countless cinematic atrocities, from Flashdance and Top Gun in the 1980's, to more recent efforts such as Pearl Harbor and the mind-numbingly trite, Coyote Ugly.
`Bad', is most certainly the operative word when it comes to Bruckheimer's latest offering, Bad Company. This feeble attempt at the comedy-thriller genre, is most notable for the almost total absence of laughs and suspense and the squandering of such major talent as Anthony Hopkins and director Joel Shumacher (The Lost Boys, Falling Down, 8mm). The hackneyed plot follows ticket scalper Jake Hayes (Chris Rock, in an inanely inept performance), who is recruited by the C.I.A. to impersonate his identical twin brother, who has been assassinated by terrorists. Under the watchful eye of C.I.A. agent Gaylord Oakes (Anthony Hopkins), Jake Hayes is soon transformed in true Pygmalion-style from a hip-hop loving petty criminal to an urbane super-spy, whose responsibility it is to save New York City from nuclear annihilation.
The ever-so predictable antics that ensue, make Bad Company an excruciatingly tedious 116 minutes. One can only assume that Hopkins was paid extraordinarily well to tarnish his reputation with this brainless buddy-movie.
The Bourne Identity (2002)
Somnambulistic spy saga
In Australia recently to promote his latest film, the would-be espionage thriller The Bourne Identity, toothy superstar Matt Damon was at his most amiable whilst running the media gauntlet. Surprisingly, he was able to maintain his composure even during the most inane of questions. This was especially the case during a press conference via video-link between Adelaide and Melbourne. The Adelaide media contingent was out in force, ranging from the overly earnest scribes of university publications to fawning, bow tie wearing film critics and most unfortunately, ex-footballers who appear hell-bent on turning any `news' story into a footy fuelled farce. Nevertheless, amid this avalanche of absurdity, Damon did make one candid and telling comment regarding The Bourne Identity. `
the story itself isn't that original, what makes it unique is its style and execution'. Herein lies the dilemma with this updating of Robert Ludlum's 1980 bestseller (previously filmed as a television mini-series in 1988).
In The Bourne Identity, Matt Damon plays a victim of amnesia who is found floating, near death in the ocean during a storm. What few clues he has regarding his identity are troubling. There is a Swiss bank security box containing several passports featuring his photograph, his uncanny skill with guns and martial arts and most disturbingly, two bullet wounds in his back. He soon finds himself on the run, attempting to uncover his past before a horde of mysterious secret agents can assassinate him. Numerous shoot-outs and a car chase ensue. Including, what appears to be a fairly lethargic homage (or is it just product placement?) to the famous Mini sequence in the 60's classic, The Italian Job (another film currently being remade!). Fortunately audiences are seemingly spared any computer enhanced fight sequences that are de rigueur in action films. Although, towards its conclusion, The Bourne Identity features a stunt that is so outrageous it may well go down in cinematic infamy.
Matt Damon is obviously hoping to establish a film franchise with his first foray into the action genre. With two further Bourne novels in print and healthy US box office for this installment, it is highly likely that we will see more of him in the role. Hopefully, this will be a character that he can grow into, as Damon (who turns 32 next month) is perhaps currently too young for the part.
Indie director Doug Liman (Swingers, Go) and writer Tony Gilroy have taken Robert Ludlum's cold-war tale and attempted to invest it with 21st Century sensibilities. Unfortunately, beyond the cunning casting of hip Euro-star Franka Potente (from Run Lola Run, wasted as the obligatory love interest) and a contemporary score featuring the likes of Moby and Paul Oakenfold, The Bourne Identity appears hopelessly anachronistic. The `unique
style and execution' that Matt Damon spoke of during his interview are sadly lacking. Perhaps the film would have fared better had the original era and East versus West tensions of the novel been maintained.
After the relentless energy of director Liman's cult favourite Go, this somnambulistic spy saga is a major disappointment that once again suggests many filmmakers do their most interesting work outside the Hollywood system.
Y tu mamá también (2001)
Hot, hilarious, and heartbreaking
From the full-frontal frankness of it's opening scenes to the bleakly honest finale, Y Tu Mama Tambien is a enchanting, intelligent and erotically charged coming of age tale from Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron (Great Expectations, A Little Princess).
Two 17-year-old stoners, Tenoch (Diego Luna), the son of a wealthy politician and his less affluent best friend Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal), plan a summer brimming with sexual misadventures after their girlfriends go on a European vacation. At first, the best the two friends can muster is a bout of poolside masturbation, but they hit the jackpot after meeting Luisa (Maribel Verdu), a captivating twenty-something woman, unhappily married to Tenoch's cousin. Tenoch and Julio quickly concoct a plan to entice Luisa to join them on a long road trip in a borrowed car by promising her an idyllic stay on a non-existent beach which they name Heaven's Mouth. At first charmed by, but wary of her suitors advances, Luisa finally agrees to accompany the two teens on their journey after she learns of her husband's infidelity while he was away on business. Over the next few intense days, Luisa takes solace and ultimately finds liberation in the libidinous attention her young companions focus upon her. They in turn discover many bittersweet truths about one another.
Using the often treacherous back roads of Mexico as a metaphor for self-discovery, director Cuaron has fashioned a sensual character piece that is powered by the uninhibited performances of its three leads. Also, a restless energy is created by the constantly prowling, hand-held camerawork by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki.
Definitely a cinematic journey worth taking, Y Tu Mama Tambien is a hot, hilarious, yet heartbreaking meditation on the limitations of friendship, trust and love.
Joy Ride (2001)
Frenzied B-Grade Romp
Duel meets Silence of the Lambs in the frenzied B-Grade romp, Roadkill. The film makes it's way onto Australian screens after a change of title from Joy Ride (aka Highway Horror and most fetchingly, Squelch) and a delay of almost twelve months that suggested Roadkill was destined for straight-to-video Hell.
Two twenty-something brothers, Lewis and Fuller (Paul Walker and Steve Zahn), take a cross-country drive to pick up Lewis' would-be girlfriend Venna (Leelee Sobieski). During their long journey across desolate highways, the siblings decide to pass time by playing a prank on an unsuspecting trucker. Via CB radio, Lewis pretends to be an alluring female named Candy Cane and arranges a late night rendezvous at a cheap motel with the unseen trucker who uses the CB handle of Rusty Nail. When Rusty Nail arrives at the motel and discovers that he is the victim of a hoax, he reveals a decidedly homicidal side to his nature and is soon in pursuit of the terrified pranksters in his menacing 18-wheeler.
Director John Dahl (Red Rock West, The Last Seduction) does his best to inject some tension into this highly derivative mix of horror and road movies which was handled with greater flair and originality in last year's chilling, Jeepers Creepers. However, he succeeds admirably during the film's tense, early scenes. In particular Rusty Nail's motel rampage, which is imbued with a gothic ghoulishness, courtesy of cinematographer Jeff Jur. Inevitably, the lack of originality inherent in the script prevents Roadkill from getting out of first gear.
The Scorpion King (2002)
Beefy Bravado and Little More.
The Rock, the owner of the most emotive eyebrows in Hollywood, returns in the sword and sorcery epic, The Scorpion King. In this spin-off of the 'Mummy' series of films, The Rock reprises his role as Mathayus (first seen in The Mummy Returns), an assassin for hire, who has a way with swords, crossbows and damsels in distress. Blessed with a beefy bravado, and dramatic range slighter greater than that of Steven Seagel, The Rock has some success in surviving a script so cliched, that a lesser screen hero may well have put down his sabre and surrendered.
(Plot spoilers ahoy!)
Set some 2000 years before the earlier films, evil warlord Memnon (Steven Brand, in a suitably hissable, performance) and his horde of barbarians, are only one battle away from their ultimate, unholy goal of domination of the desert peoples of the world. Memnon's greatest ally and strategist is the seductive sorceress Cassandra (played with slinky conviction by former Miss Teen USA, Kelly Hu). Gifted with both exotic beauty and psychic visions, Cassandra victoriously guides her master through one treacherous battle after the other. Fearing annihilation, the remaining tribes of desert people, enlist the services of Mathayus and his motley band of fellow assassins. Their task is to kidnap and ultimately destroy Cassandra. Therefore, reducing Memnon's chances of success in future battles. Predictably, matters are complicated when the inevitable romance ensues between Mathayus and Cassandra. With his greatest asset and bride-to-be being held hostage, Memnon is suitably enraged. Thus, paving the way for the ultimate, fiery confrontation with Mathayus.
Overall, The Scorpion King is a fairly cynical piece of Hollywood fluff. A product geared largely towards a non-demanding, adolescent male audience. Director Chuck Russell's (A Nightmare on Elm St. 3, The Blob) pedestrian direction, fails to elevate the material to any degree. Fortunately, the formidable physical presence and charisma of The Rock goes some way to redeeming this shamelessly airheaded adventure. This bodes well for his evolution from professional wrestler to film actor.
With Arnold Schwarzenneger's career in rapid decline and Sylvester Stallone soon to be put out to pasture, Hollywood is in desperate need of a new action star. The Rock may well be there man.
La ville est tranquille (2000)
The heroic nature of love
Idiosyncratic French filmmaker, Robert Guediguian, returns to his beloved hometown of Marseilles, for the gritty and ultimately heart-wrenching, La Ville est Tranquille (The Town is Quiet). This neo-realist lament details the often intertwined lives of numerous, diverse characters living within Marseilles' sun bleached confines. Much like Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia and the films of Robert Altman (Nashville, The Player), La Ville est Tranquille is built upon disparate vignettes and characters that ultimately converge, or in some cases collide with often devastating results.
(Potential plot spoiler ahead)
At its core is the harrowing story of a working class mother Michele (Ariane Ascaride), and her heroin-addicted daughter, Fiona (Julie-Marie Parmentier). Played with an earthy dignity by Ascaride (wife of director Guediguian), Michele, labours throughout the night at a fish market to support her daughter and infant grandchild. When the addiction grows more severe, Michele turns to prostitution to procure the drugs needed to ease her daughter's agony.
This expression of love at its most extreme, brings Michele into contact with an old friend and lover from her youth, Gerard (Gerard Meylan), who now runs an always deserted bar that is a front for his dual careers as drug dealer and assassin. Soon, Michele's life is further complicated by a client Paul (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), a porn-addicted taxi driver who quickly falls for her. The relationships she shares with Paul and Gerard offer Michele the only degree of stability in her otherwise fractured existence
Other, intriguing stories intersect along the way before the films genuinely shocking denouement. Michele's ultimate solution to her predicament is in equal parts horrifying and heart-breaking.
Finally, amid this bleak landscape filled with shattered lives, Guediguian offers us the faintest glimmer of hope. The dreams of an incidental character, a young immigrant pianist, are fulfilled to the suitable accompaniment of Bach's 'Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring'.
Whilst La Ville est Tranquille is profoundly depressing, it does reward the viewer with a gripping exploration of the often heroic nature of love.
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
A bitter and beautiful cinematic treat!
Few recent films have prompted as much discussion and dissection as director David Lynch's latest exploration of the relentlessly bizarre, Mulholland Dr. Film journals and internet message boards are currently ablaze with analyses of this neo-noir fable set in present day Los Angeles.
(Plot spoilers ahead!)
At first, Mulholland Dr. plays like a relatively conventional (by Lynch standards) thriller. Through the perilous, winding roads of the Hollywood Hills, a black limousine makes its way. The limousine's cargo, a darkly beautiful, unnamed woman (Laura Harring) is soon to be the sole survivor of a horrific, head-on collision. She escapes with a small wound on her head but has a large case of amnesia. Stumbling from the wreckage, she eventually takes refuge in an apartment that is being briefly vacated by its tenant. Little does she know that the tenant's niece is about to move in. The niece, Betty a guileless ingenue and aspiring actress who moves to Los Angeles after winning a 1950's style dancing contest (Australian Naomi Watts is truly a revelation in this role), soon becomes embroiled in the search for the mystery woman's identity. It is at this point that the serpentine plot of this unique thriller thickens most deliciously. We are soon confronted with a typically Lynchian dreamscape inhabited by Mafioso, psychics, seedy Hollywood types, smoldering nightclub singers and the obligatory midget or two. To add an extra layer of the bizarrely kitsch, a lecherous pool-cleaner is played by Billy Ray Cyrus! Thankfully minus his trademark mullet this time. Australian audiences are also sure to be intrigued and amused with appearances by soapie alumni, Marcus Graham (E Street) and Melissa George (Home and Away). Possibly the preponderance of television performers has something to do with Mulholland Dr.'s' conception as a pilot for a weekly series. Not that the film in any way resembles typical television fare. Like his groundbreaking television masterpiece 'Twin Peaks', Lynch offers an unnerving mix of quirky humour, dark sensuality and jolting violence. Longtime Lynch collaborator, composer Angelo Badalamenti provides the suitably unsettling score and in concert with the precision cinematography of Peter Demming, a sense of intense foreboding hangs bleakly over the entire film.
Much like his 1997 mindbender 'Lost Highway', Lynch takes us on an abrupt detour at around the halfway mark as we descend into (or is that out?) of nightmare and to an exploration of multiplicity of identity and parallel worlds. Well, that's my theory anyway.
Those audiences looking for conventional narrative structure and neatly resolved plot threads had better steer clear of this demanding film. The more adventurous filmgoers amongst you will be rewarded with a bitter and beautiful cinematic treat that is guaranteed to haunt you, long after the final credits roll.