SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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To see or not to see… that is the question.

Proceed with caution. Shakespeare in Love boasts the year’s best screenplay, Gwyneth Paltrow’s best performance (even better than her work in Emma), and an incredible supporting cast including Judi Dench in her most outlandish, showstopping role. It is as lusty as movies come…

…but it’s also lust-filled, and that’s a different matter entirely.

Shakespeare in Love proves once and for all that the Fiennes family must have put something spicy in the baby food. Joseph Fiennes as Shakespeare demonstrates as much… nay, even more intensity than his melodramatic brother Ralph (Schindler’s List, Quiz Show, Prince of Egypt). You get the feeling that if this Shakespeare had to fight it out with the English Patient over a woman, there would be the screen’s most spectacularly bitter duel… and it would be fought with Ralph and Joseph’s stares.

Eyes intent as blowtorches, Fiennes plays Shakespeare as a man so hot-blooded that just to sit down and write he has to go out, intoxicate himself with lust, dawdle with tawdry mistresses, then return to his desk, spin around three times, spit on the ground, clap his hands, rub his quill pen between his sweaty palms, and then sit down and write as though he’s were a wrestling champion. If writing were this much fun, people would buy tickets to a rough draft and shout, “Go, Playwright! Fill those pages! Pin this play to the ground!”

If it weren’t for Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola, Shakespeare’s dream girl, this play would burn itself out with overacting. With Fiennes about ready to explode, Gwyneth provides the cool. She is graceful, subtle, practically glowing as she moves from the elaborate ballroom dances to a secret rendezvous in the shadows. When she hears Shakespeare’s latest verse, she sighs, “I will have poetry in my life, adventure, and love… love as there has never been in a play….” (She seems here far more eloquent at spontaneous speech than Shakespeare, who is left stammering about his play’s premise: “Well, there’s this pirate…”.)

Viola seems honestly enraptured by the language… the language, not the man. Even when she’s trapped by Shakespeare’s Death Star Tractor Beam stare, it is clear that she is thinking of the plays, and thus is swept away by the great creator, somehow blind to the fact that he’s a womanizing fool as well as an eloquent scribe. Before they’ve even had an honest-to-goodness “Hi, How are you?” conversation, they’re rolling in the sheets. It’s as though they’re stuck in one of those movies where a meteor is coming to destroy the world, and they’re “seizing the day.”

But alas those difficult times. Viola must marry Lord Wessex, a Disney-esque villain (Colin Firth) who is an investor in tobacco (Tobacco: the investment of villains.) Wessex cares only about her fortune and seems indifferent to her beauty, grace, and rumored virtue.

Virtue. Is this play about virtue? We are compelled to be repulsed by the idea of this forced mismatch of Viola and Wessex. We must, of course, desire Viola to wed her heart’s true love, Shakespeare. The movie certainly makes one wonder which God will smile on more; her “arranged” marriage or her fornication with her lover. I was leaning towards thinking that her “true” marriage was with Shakespeare… until I thought about one fact that the movie hopes we’ll forget.

Shakespeare is already married — and he’s abandoned his wife and children to run around winning the hearts of young Viola’s.

We are given a moment to ponder the gravity of this, and for a moment I was excited the movie was going to tackle a seriously messy moral dilemma. But alas, no such luck. After the moment of tension, we’re supposed to accept that marriage means nothing when the hormones move. We’re expected to laugh off the bard’s past errors and applaud his latest passionate mistake. We never see the wife he left behind. We never see his children. This movie is as much in denial of the value of responsibility and faithfulness as this Shakespeare himself. The filmmakers seem to shrug their shoulders and say, “That’s tough, but here’s Gwyneth Paltrow, and what married man in his right mind wouldn’t abandon wife and children to jump into the sack with her?”

It is this love inconvenienced by a greedy suitor that supposedly drives Shakespeare to his greatest work, Romeo and Juliet, and the play’s debut provides the stage for the movie’s brilliantly executed (if thoroughly implausible and predictable) resolution.

Still, for all advocacy of unfaithfulness and self-destructive behavior, the artful screenplay does offer a thousand true delights, witty turns of phrase, and truly stirring speeches.

Geoffrey Rush, who has proven that he can play everything from a disabled genius composer (Shine) to a malevolent comic book villain (Mystery Men), here creates another engaging character. A clumsy bankrupt theater manager, he’ll do anything to host Shakespeare’s next play. Judi Dench’s Queen is a cross between Mrs. Brown and Jabba the Hutt, as intimidating, awe-inspiring and ornate as any character on the screen this year. Ben Affleck works hard to fit in with all of these classically trained Brits, and he doesn’t embarrass himself, but one does pity him as he watches his real-life girlfriend get hot and heavy with Fiennes over and over again. Rupert Everett is a welcome sight as Christopher Marlowe, vital to the film’s most brilliant subplot and twists. Even Simon Callow, one of my favorite period-piece regulars (the lovable Mr. Beebe in A Room With a View) storms in a few times to add some muscle. I kept applauding with all of the surprising cameos… what a dream cast!

But why, oh why, did they have to pour so much syrup on what might have been the year’s finest confection? Shakespeare in Love is rated R for an abundance of nudity, sexual references, nasty puns, and violence. I am not against the use of nudity in films if it serves a purpose and enhances our understanding of the characters and their story; Shakespeare in Love is fine art interrupted by a gob of self-indulgent eroticism. One hot and heavy love scene would have given us all we needed to know: these kids are totally and compulsively infatuated with each other. The audience at the screening I attended began to laugh about halfway through when they were supposed to be sighing romantically.

This film is wrongfully named. It has powerful language and a wealth of talent as its distinguishing marks, but it shies away, curiously, from poetry, subtlety, and art whenever the lovers embrace, and we’re left with no heroes or heroines worth swooning for. It should have been called Shakespeare in Lust.

RECOMMENDATION: If you enjoy this film, track down and rent the other Shakespeare variation written by the same screenwriter, Tom Stoppard, titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. In this critic’s opinion, it is an even more clever and inventive script, featuring fine performances by the young Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfuss!

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Director – John Madden
Writers – Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard
Director of photography – Richard Greatrex
Editor – David Gamble
Music – Stephen Warbeck
Costumes – Sandy Powell
Production designer – Martin Childs
Producers – David Parritt, Donna Gigliotti, Harvey Weinstein, Edward Zwick and Marc Norman

Miramax Films. 113 minutes. This film is rated R.

STARRING: Gwyneth Paltrow (Viola de Lesseps), Joseph Fiennes (Will Shakespeare), Geoffrey Rush (Philip Henslowe), Colin Firth (Lord Wessex), Ben Affleck (Ned Alleyn), Judi Dench (Queen Elizabeth), Rupert Everett (Christopher Marlowe), Simon Callow (Tilney, Master of the Revels), Jim Carter (Ralph Bashford), Martin Clunes (Richard Burbage), Antony Sher (Dr. Moth), Imelda Staunton (Nurse), Tom Wilkinson (Hugh Fennyman) and Mark Williams (Wabash).

SHALL WE DANCE?

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Masayuki Suo’s Shall We Dance? became a favorite of moviegoers around the world when it opened in 1996.

Thus, as they have done with so many acclaimed foreign films, American filmmakers have taken something beautiful and hammered it down into an unremarkable mush. They proceed to spoon feed it to the audience, assuming that we don’t want to be bothered by having to chew on anything.

There. Having confirmed what we all knew would be the case—that Peter Chelsom’s version of the movie is inferior to the original—let me now say that the news is certainly not as bad as it could have been. In fact, if the original Shall We Dance? didn’t exist, this one would deserve praise as a lively, spirited piece of light entertainment.

That’s because, for all of its easy jokes, unremarkable performances, and unbalanced comedy, Chelsom’s movie sticks to the script. It defies the wishes of those viewers who came in wanting to see a steamy romance between Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. In fact, he restricts Lopez to a surprisingly small role, and lets Susan Sarandon share the spotlight. Infidelity, which looks like such a glamorous possibility, is defeated. The film ends up celebrating marriage. For that, it earns some big points.

Gere plays John Clark, a father and a husband who finds his life has gone stale. He’s lacking passion for anything, including his marriage. When he sees a beautiful woman (Lopez) staring sadly out of a dance studio window, he’s lured to set foot on the dance floor for the first time. There, he discovers that her name is Paulina, and she’s an instructor with a troubled past. Motivated by his weaknesses, he enrolls in the class just to be near her.

At home, his wife Beverly (Sarandon) and daughter (Tamara Hope) grow suspicious of his long evening absences, while he steps carefully around the floor with his classmates (including Stanley Tucci, Bobby Cannavale, and Omar Miller). Eventually, Beverly decides to hire a private detective (the always-fantastic Richard Jenkins), which relieves her initial fears but deepens her curiosity.

And so the gear wheels of the plot begin to turn, awkwardly and, at times, predictably. Will John give in to his temptation and run off with the sexy instructor? Will he compete in the ballroom dance championships? Will his wife find out about his new obsession? Is his marriage doomed?

While Chelsom’s version of the film is strikingly different in tone and pace than the original, it has charms all its own, especially in the chemistry of the ensemble cast. Stanley Tucci turns in a crowdpleasing, if hammy, performance. The Station Agent’s secret weapon, Bobby Cannavale, is amusing in the first half hour, but fades into the background later.

But while it earns some cheers and some laughs, it remains a comedy trifle, one that tries too hard to please us. The cast attempt to merge the subtle flourishes of the original with the flamboyant, exaggerated comedy of Strictly Ballroom, and they frequently lose their balance; the comedy feels increasingly forced and eventually falls flat. Poor Richard Jenkins has his typically witty work spoiled by an appallingly un-funny sidekick played by Nick Cannon.

Still, when the dancers strut their stuff—especially in a much-anticipated, after-hours practice between John and Paulina—the movie musters enough magic to keep us engaged. Gere gives a winningly low-key performance, and Lopez is convincing when she needs to be (although she has yet to match her strong work in Out of Sight).

Fortunately, the film can boast of having a strong moral center, one that honors marriage more than any commercial film in recent memory. It may not be a memorable film, but it’s certainly not the nightmare it could have been.

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Director – Peter Chelsom

Writer – Audrey Wells

Based on the film by Masayuki Suo

Director of photography – John De Borman.

Editor – Charlie Ireland

Choreographer – John O’Connell

Production designer – Caroline Hanania

Producer – Simon Fields

Released by Miramax Films.

106 minutes. Rated PG-13.

STARRING: Richard Gere (John Clark), Jennifer Lopez (Paulina), Susan Sarandon (Beverly Clark), Stanley Tucci (Link Peterson), Bobby Cannavale (Chic), Lisa Ann Walter (Bobbie), Omar Benson Miller (Vern), Anita Gillette (Miss Mitzi), Richard Jenkins (Detective) and Nick Cannon (Scotty).

Shanghai Noon

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Shanghai Noon, Tom Dey’s high-spirited new action comedy, is a winner.

While the formula’s familiar, the dialogue crackles and the action’s ablaze. It never takes itself seriously for a moment. And while a troubling western boastfulness (“The U.S. is so much better and wiser than the East”) is squirm-inducing, Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan make the adventure a barrel of fun. In a summer when the special-effects-extravaganza blockbusters have been disappointments, here’s a movie that doesn’t promise much, but delivers plenty. It’s the same kind of guilt-free, old-fashioned, get-your-five-bucks’-worth good time that made The Mask of Zorro a pleasant summertime surprise two years ago.

It’s 1881. A Chinese princess (Lucy Liu) is about to enter a forced marriage, and she’s less than impressed with her husband-to-be. What to do when home gets difficult? Go to America, of course. So Princess Pei-Pei makes a secret deal to travel to America, where her plans go terribly awry and she ends up in the hands of a nasty slavemaster who has made a hellish forced labor camp for Chinese immigrants. Meanwhile, the Emperor sends members of the Imperial Guard off to find her and bring her home.

One of those guards is a bumbling oaf named Chon Wang (pronounced, of course, John Wayne.) Chan soon finds himself traveling solo across the old American West in search of his beloved princess, telling himself the story of The Frog Prince as he dreams of winning Her Highness’s favor. Along the way, he is welcomed into an Indian Tribe, finds himself friends and enemies, and takes up with an arrogant, simple-minded outlaw in hopes that he can finish his quest against all odds.

That outlaw, Roy O’Bannon, is played by Owen Wilson, who can take a lot of credit for this film’s success. His mix of Dennis Hopper’s half-sane, bug-eyed enthusiasm and Brad Pitt’s roguish, arrogant machismo makes for an entertaining combination. There’s even a dash of Jeff Goldblum’s “This is easy!” demeanor in his nervous banter during gunfights. He’s dumb enough to trust a villain to set the rules of a gunfight, but valiant enough to sacrifice his vigilante reputation in order to save his friends.

And Jackie Chan gets kudos too, for being so willing to share the spotlight. This seems to be the first movie in which the affair doesn’t feel like a forced repackaging of an Eastern celebrity into a Hollywood star. Chan brings what he usually brings to a role; contagious energy, brilliant martial arts in service of comedy, and the same kind of over-the-top cheer that Roberto Begnini exudes on and off camera. You can tell he loves what he’s doing.

There’s something of a slump in the second act. Chon and Roy end up soaking in tubs at a whorehouse, far less interested in the girls than in their own mid-bath drinking games. That sequence slows the pace considerably, but there’s a full-recovery when the heroes and villains all converge on a chapel for a Mexican standoff (in which, the villain observes, “We don’t got any Mexicans.”)

Director Tom Dey (Bad Boys 2) strikes just the right tone of comedy and adventure. The action scenes are whimsical and spirited, the soundtrack suitably traditional (except for some annoying tangents into electric guitar), and the sets elaborate and convincing. Of course, there is a barfight, a jail break, a duel in the street, and guns that refuse to shoot more than the six bullets they were given no matter how hard the shooter pulls the trigger. The backgrounds are crowded with the usual standbys of dusty cowboys who make a better argument than any dentist for better dental hygiene. And the Indians aren’t any more authentic or politically-correct than those in Disney’s Peter Pan.

The villains, the stereotypical Bad Sheriff and the Chinese slavemaster, lack the detail and development that might have made them memorable. But this is such a light-hearted affair it would seem incongruous for something to make us sit up and come close to the edge of their seats. Yosemite Sam might have walked through the saloon and I wouldn’t have blinked. Better, in preposterous plot like this, to let the bad guys remain relatively uninteresting, keep it simple and playful, and don’t ask too much of the audience.

The film is, however, sorely flawed in its treatment of Eastern culture. Throughout, Chon and Roy are given dialogue that exalts the United States and condemns the traditions of the Princess’s home. While it may be true that Imperial China was guilty of heinous crimes, it is hardly appropriate to say that the life of a self-serving “free spirit” is the answer to all the world’s ills. When Billy asserts, “The sun rises in the East, but it sets in the West”, his words are meant to be a boast, but I couldn’t help hearing a strange foreboding in the pronouncement. Indeed, something bright and beautiful is “setting” here in this wilderness of vigilantes, evil lawmen, and every-man-for-himself. Namely, the beauty and strength that comes from a people who work together and serve each other, the elegance that makes the first scenes of Imperial China in this film strikingly beautiful. Perhaps it would have been better to hear them discuss a fusion of values, a meeting of minds.

But never mind. I have already spent more time making this complaint than the movie spent provoking me. I doubt anyone will walk away any more prejudiced than they already were. This is summertime entertainment, after all, and so we’re lucky to get away with only one objection. Verdict: One quibble, but many memorable bits.

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Director – Tom Dey
Writer – Alfred Gough and Miles Millar
Director of photography – Dan Mindel
Edited by Richard Chew
Music – Randy Edelman
Production designer – Peter J. Hampton
Producers – Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber and Jonathan Glickman

Touchstone Pictures/Spyglass Entertainment. 110 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.

STARRING: Jackie Chan (Chon Wang), Owen Wilson (Roy O’Bannon), Lucy Liu (Princess Pei Pei), Brandon Merrill (Indian Wife), Roger Yuan (Lo Fong), Walton Goggins (Wallace) and Xander Berkeley (Van Cleef).

Sideways

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Nothing can rankle my nerves like a movie review. More than once I’ve been prompted to write a film review because someone else’s review infuriated me with misinterpretation, exaggerated praise, or inappropriate condemnation.

So I understood perfectly when a friend emailed me to proclaim her dismay at the critical acclaim for Alexander Payne’s latest film, Sideways. The film upset her because some of its central characters are self-absorbed, promiscuous, and willing to enable each other’s reckless misdeeds.

I understand her objections. But I must politely disagree with her, because I don’t think Payne’s film is condoning misbehavior. Sideways is likely to make viewers wince, and sometimes even laugh. The characters do make alarming decisions, but they glow with such conflicted personalities that I cannot help but feel affection for them as they blunder their way into all kinds of trouble. Beneath all of the tomfoolery and trouble, each one has a big, beating heart and qualities that earn my respect.

Sideways follows two friends, Jack (Thomas Haden Church) and Miles (Paul Giamatti), on a road trip during the week before Jack’s wedding. Miles wants to enjoy this last “guys’ week out” by touring wineries and savoring life, even as he groans over his failure as a writer and his disillusionment with love. Jack, on the other hand, wants to spend the week getting laid with any woman who will give him the time of day.

These are not characters we admire for their morality.

They’re sad, lost fools for whom patient viewers will develop some affection. We hope to see the Connoisseur and the Neanderthal learn something before it’s too late. By the end of their reckless and problem-prone journey, one of them clearly hasn’t learned a thing. The other … well … let’s just say there’s a glimmer of hope, but not much.

Coming after Election and About Schmidt, Sideways is the first of Payne’s films in which we have the chance to really care for the characters, because he reins in his harsh, unfair satire better than before. We laugh in dismay and sympathy more often than we’re asked to laugh in contempt.

Still, it is true that Payne continues to express contempt for certain varieties of people, while he is far too forgiving of his snobbish, self-absorbed “heroes.” (There is a scene late in the film that is its most outrageous, but also its most cruel.) As in About Schmidt, the characters that he sympathizes with get special treatment, while those who are more simple-minded are also portrayed as despicable beasts. This is a disappointing weakness in a film of surprisingly warm, human, and insightful moments.

One of the two remarkable strengths of the film is Paul Giamatti’s performance. Giamatti just gets better and better with each role he plays. I loved him in last year’s American Splendor, but he’s even better here as Miles, who, like some fine wines, may reach his life’s “peak” later than most others do.

And he’s working with a fantastic supporting cast, including Virginia Madsen in her most radiant performance, playing the one woman in the world who speaks Miles’ language.

Thomas Haden Church is also strong as the thick-headed Jack. Jack is as dangerous and destructive in his reckless ignorance as Jude Law’s Closer character is in his malevolent selfishness. He’s a despicable character portrayed in far too forgiving a light here. But while he’s insanely promiscuous and heartless toward women (especially a winery worker memorably played by Sandra Oh), he does at least try to muster some understanding for his despondent friend.

The other virtue of the film is Payne’s delicate use of wine as a metaphor throughout the script … a wonderful way of phrasing what he wants to say about human beings.

Sideways is a film that offers some quiet and rewarding insights. But you may find that, despite moments of sweet profundity and rich insight, the characters’ misbehavior leaves a bitter aftertaste.

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Director – Alexander Payne.

Writer – Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor.

Director of photography – Phedon Papamichael.

Editor – Kevin Tent.

Music – Rolfe Kent.

Production designer – Jane Ann Stewart.

Producer – Michael London.

Released by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

124 minutes. Rated R.

STARRING: Paul Giamatti (Miles), Thomas Haden Church (Jack), Sandra Oh (Stephanie) and Virginia Madsen (Maya).

Shrek

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Shrek is a somewhat subversive fairy tale about a reclusive swamp-dwelling ogre who strikes a bargain with an egotistical power-mad lord.

You see, the swamp has become crowded with fairy tale chracters cast out of the castle where the wicked ruler Lord Farquand routinely tortures and abuses them. Shrek, demanding to be left alone in his unhappy existence, marches in to the castle and makes a deal: In exchange for a little peace and quiet back home, he agrees to rescue an imprisoned princess from a fire-breathing dragon so the conniving Farquand can marry her and become king. Then, with sidekick Donkey in tow, he ventures off on a journey that will teach him that the world does not have the right to call him ugly. Beauty… surprise surprise… is more then skin deep.

Even as it embraces a familiar fairy tale structure, Shrek pokes fun at the biggest Fairy Tale Dismemberment machine of all, Walt Disney Studios. The movie exuberantly and sarcastically skewers the clichés that have become Disney’s bread and butter, even as it pulls off some heart-warming and surprisingly meaningful storytelling of its own.

It’s also the flashiest animated feature yet from DreamWorks, the studio led by former Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg. With enthusiastic vocal performances by Mike Meyers (Shrek), Eddie Murphy (jabbermouth Donkey), Cameron Diaz (Princess Fiona), and John Lithgow (the moo-ha-ha menace Farquand), the movie never applies the brakes, plunging headlong through action, machine-gunning jokes, and innumerable pop culture references. It has an advantage in its devil-may-care attitude, which gives it a fresh and unique energy; but that same advantage dates the movie, shortening its shelf-life… and it makes the film off-puttingly cocky and arrogant. This doesn’t kill the fun, but it does unfortunately taint it with unnecessary flaws.

Critics like Anthony Lane at The New Yorker and Eric Metaxas at Books and Culture think Shrek is trying to teach us that we don’t need fairy tales.

But Shrek is dependent on the very fairy tale models that it lampoons. Rather than condemning traditional stories, I think Shrek is slamming what Disney has done to those stories by sterilizing them. Disney studios and animators, with films like The Little Mermaid and Pocahontas enforces enforces for children that only a certain Barbie-esque look is “beauty.” They also perpetuate a sort of pop culture paralysis, hammering into our heads the necessity of diva-delivered pop anthems at any emotional turn in the story. Worst of all, Disney force-feeds us contrived happy endings, contrary to the original fairy tales that aspire to tougher truths. Some of our best fairy tales sometimes deliver tragedy and horror as well. (Read any Brothers Grimm lately?) Disney’s relentless happy-ending-hysteria sets kids up for disappointment, I believe. Better to take the long, hard road to a Joyful Ending, a real honest hope, than to sell young imaginations a happy ending full of artificial sweeteners that eventually cause cancer.

I will agree with many critics that Shrek is too reckless in its humor. Sex jokes and double-entendres are inappropriate in children’s movies. And the fart-jokes are just more of the base humor you can find in run-of-the-mill classless comedies opening every week. But to some extent I agree with David Ansen at Newsweek, who asks, exasperated, “Why can’t scripts this smart and economical be written for flesh-and-blood actors?” He calls recent CGI movies like Shrek and Toy Story “throwbacks to the classical style of Hollywood filmmaking, where the story came first, the stars knew their place, and the movies were made to please the widest possible audience without stooping to the lowest common denominator.” While I do register a complaint about some unnecessary jokes in Shrek, I still agree with him.

But I also sympathize with Salon.com’s Stephanie Zacharek and The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane, who express dismay at the film’s state-of-the-art animation. Lane summed up the complaint: “I don’t recall firing off indignant letters to Warner Bros. to complain about Wile E. Coyote and his insufficiently detailed snout. All I ever required of Road Runner was a drastic simplicity … and I still want the same thing.” Yes, digital animation can do marvelous things for movies. (This year’s Moulin Rouge was a magnificent exhibition of digital enhancement!) But must we waste resources and energy so we can pridefully show off our technical prowess in a kids’ cartoon? Toy Story’s animation seems a good balance of skill and simplicity. Shrek, with its swirling 3-D Donkey fur, is perhaps taking things a touch too far. Don’t distract us from the storytelling with the latest technological flourish; use it only if it serves to enrich the storytelling.

Still, Shrek’s pros outweigh its cons, making this overall a delightful and fun entertainment with a refreshingly honest message. You don’t have to look like Cameron Diaz to be beautiful. Beauty is a deeper thing. And plastic surgery is a waste of money. It is part of society’s downfall that we embrace the Princess Fionas when they’re glamorous rather than real.

While we owe many thanks to Disney studios for some of animation’s highest achievements, they have been asking for a rebuke like this for a while. Early on in the movie, when one of the characters prepares to break into a platitude-heavy pop song, the grouchy ogre furiously tells him to shut up, and the story marches on. Kids and grownups alike laughed and applauded appreciatively. That moment made the point brilliantly. For those of us weary of Disney formulas, DreamWorks’ Antz and Shrek are evidence of animation’s exciting future. Disney is like pop music for the masses, clean, cheesy and dreamy; DreamWorks is rock ‘n’ roll, rebellious, rowdy and real. Let’s hope Disney is paying attention. And let’s hope Katzenberg has worked out his grudge, and can now go on to stronger storytelling, leaving cheap shots and in-jokes behind.

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Director – Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson
Writers – Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman and Roger S. H. Schulman, based on the book by William Steig
Editor – Sim Evan-Jones
Music – Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell
Production designer – James Hegedus
Producers – Aron Warner, John H. Williams and Jeffrey Katzenberg

DreamWorks Pictures. 89 minutes. Rated PG.

WITH THE VOICES OF: Mike Myers (Shrek), Eddie Murphy (Donkey), Cameron Diaz (Princess Fiona), John Lithgow (Lord Farquaad) and Vincent Cassel (Monsieur Hood).

Sin City

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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“After a while I’m only punching wet chunks of bone into the floorboards, so I stop.”

That’s just a snippet of the narration provided by one of the “heroes” in Sin City, an effects-heavy orgy of violence and sensuality based on Frank Miller lurid comic book. The narrator tells us this after we’ve watched him beat a man senseless, and eventually beat him face-less … just about head-less, in fact.

But the lines captures the nature of the whole film.

Here’s how you tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys in this Robert Rodriguez movie: Villains in Sin City take pleasure in hateful violence of appallingly graphic and extreme proportions. And the heroes? They take pleasure in hateful violence with the added aspect that they’re doing it to protect somebody. But let’s face it — that doesn’t change the fact that they’re taking pleasure in the destruction of life, and that their elaborately bloody executions are presented with maximum cool in order to give us pleasure at the same time.

This isn’t like Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, where the violence is presented as absurdity and the performers as utter buffoons whose crimes show them to be severely naïve and contradictory. This is all manner of things that should dismay us wrapped up in a package to present it as utterly and compellingly cool. Tarantino, who directed one of these sequences, could have invested something meaningful into this otherwise bankrupt project, but he does damage to his own integrity instead.

Thus, Sin City is truly destructive, its graphic content almost entirely gratuitous. These artists were clearly eager to blaze new trails for animation and desktop-computer moviemaking. And what did they do with the opportunity? They designed something that throws fuel on the destructive appetites of adolescents, both young and old.

Sure, some of the characters are putting their lives on the line to protect the innocent, but their virtue is not going to inspire anyone. The film obviously focuses on cheap thrills for the majority of its screen time, and it wastes the formidable talents of actors who should know better — Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, and others.

It doesn’t matter how fantastic your frosting might be — if you spread it over a cake laced with poison, it’s still a poisonous cake. Sin City is a “gateway drug” for pornography and hyperviolent entertainment, sure to be rented and relished by young moviegoers everywhere, encouraging them more toward recklessness than responsibility.

The immature minds that invented it should be sent to detention and grounded from the big screen for a few years to come. Alas, they’re being praised for breaking new ground, and we can expect plenty more of the same, setting the bar lower and lower, encouraging the audience to become more and more permissive of the lewd and the lurid.

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Director – Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez.

Writer – Frank Miller, based on his series of “Sin City” graphic novels.

Director of photography – Robert Rodriguez

Editor – Robert Rodriguez

Music by Robert Rodriguez, John Debney and Graeme Revell

Producers – Elizabeth Avellán, Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Miller

Dimension Films. 126 minutes. Rated R.

STARRING: Jessica Alba (Nancy), Devon Aoki (Miho), Alexis Bledel (Becky), Powers Boothe (Senator Roark), Rosario Dawson (Gail), Benicio Del Toro (Jackie Boy), Michael Clarke Duncan (Manute), Carla Gugino (Lucille), Josh Hartnett (The Man), Rutger Hauer (Cardinal Roark), Jaime King (Goldie/Wendy), Michael Madsen (Bob), Brittany Murphy (Shellie), Clive Owen (Dwight), Mickey Rourke (Marv), Nick Stahl (Roark Jr./Yellow Bastard), Bruce Willis (Hartigan) and Elijah Wood (Kevin).

The Sixth Sense

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense is the best kind of scary movie.

These days, most horror films and thrillers are like electroshock treatment, and audiences, eager for new sensations — any sensations at all — line up to have wires applied to their heads. We jump and shriek, growing more and more desensitized all the time, and having nothing worth remembering after the film is over.

But The Sixth Sense is good old fashioned storytelling of the creepiest kind. Its shocks are not gratuitous; they’re meaningful. And the movie is not intended to send us home scared of the dark. It’s intended to inspire us to reflect on our lives.

Shyamalan is a director to watch. He does not seem to need digital animation or rapid-cut editing to hold our attention. He understands that a subtle hint of music and patient camerawork can keep an audience riveted. He scares us with questions about what might happen, instead of jarring us with grotesque imagery. Sure, it’s slow moving, but as another critic said… “the slower the buildup, the greater the payoff.”

The highest honors go to Haley Joel Osment who plays Cole Sear, a young boy who is either gifted or cursed, depending on how you look at it. He’s haunted by visions of the dead, testing his mother’s patience with his wide-eyed, trembling questions. Osment gives a performance that ranks right up there with the best young performances of all-time. He’s utterly convincing, drawing us into sympathy as we catch glimpses of his living nightmare.

But Bruce Willis’s performance should not be overlooked either. As Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a celebrated child psychologist who tries to help Cole cope with his burden, Willis casts off all of the machismo and sarcasm we’ve come to expect from him. There’s a new gentleness and restraint here that convinces us of his thoughtfulness. His hushed conversations with Osment draw us in. Even more admirably, Willis does something he’s never done before — he steps aside and lets Osment be the center of the film. As with his work in Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, Willis is proving himself as a leading man with remarkable range.

Toni Collette’s performance as Lynn, Cole’s frustrated, divorced mother, is touching and sincere where it might have been just shrill. Lynn’s relationship with Cole is completely convincing, and we can sympathize with her frustrations and doubt.

That’s another virtue of Shyamalan’s approach to a ghost story: He does not need to introduce a human villain. He causes us to care about all of his characters, no matter how intensely they disagree about what is really going on in young Cole’s troubled mind. He treats this story, which so easily could have been a disposable thriller, as if these people are real… as if what they’re experiencing really matters.

The script is so cleverly constructed that very few will anticipate the surprises of the film’s last half hour.

But the film is about so much more than its now-famous twist ending. It’s about loss, grieving, and the importance of listening… really listening… to each other. The film’s most arresting aspect is the fact that we can tell it’s personal, and that the storyteller has a passion to convey something valuable.

Shyamalan is clearly a student of the Spielberg school of filmmaking, but he has chosen wisely in giving cinematographer Tak Fujimoto the chance to frame his scenes. Fujimoto, who filmed Silence of the Lambs, brings a great deal to the project, finding just enough shadow, just enough texture to enhance the creepiness of Cole’s ghostly reality.

The Sixth Sense will convince you that spooky movies can be exciting, chilling, mysterious, and rewarding, while all other recent evidence points the other way.

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Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan
Director of photography – Tak Fujimoto
Editor – Andrew Mondshein
Music – James Newton Howard
Production designer – Larry Fulton
Producers – Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy and Barry Mendel
Hollywood Pictures/Spyglass Entertainment. 107 minutes. Rated PG-13.

STARRING: Bruce Willis (Malcolm Crowe), Haley Joel Osment (Cole Sear), Toni Collette (Lynn Sear), Olivia Williams (Anna Crowe), Trevor Morgan (Tommy Tammisimo) and Donnie Wahlberg (Vincent Gray).

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Writer/director Kerry Conran is very much in touch with his inner 10-year-old. In fact, his feature-length debut seems like it has been downloaded directly from the wildest dreams of a kid who spent the day watching old B-movies, playing with action figures, and reading old Buck Rogers comics.

Or you could say that, like a meal dreamed up by a kid, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is all dessert and no vegetables. I was pleasantly surprised by how much guilt-free fun this movie is… it’s one of the summer’s best films. Its lack of interest in a comprehensible plot may cause some critics to call it “trite” or “disposable,” but not this moviegoer. I remember how Star Wars and Indiana Jones ignited my imagination so that my dreams were full of derring-do, dogfights, massive dangerous robots, evil geniuses, and smart heroes with smarter (and more beautiful) sidekicks. How many filmmakers are capable of delivering such a harmlessly satisfying and thrilling treat? How many can so powerfully remind a theatre full of grownups of what it was like before we were burdened with the pressure of “cool” when we were teens or the practical demands of adulthood?

Now, don’t get your expectations up for anything profound: this is as frivolous as storytelling gets. Like I said, it’s a dessert movie… the kind of empty calories that put a big fat smile on your face and leave you oblivious to the dollop of whipped cream on your nose. It’s the best cinematic antidote for a lamentable and dirty election year–something that’s pure enjoyment start to finish, set in a world where right is right and wrong is wrong.

Sky Captain advertises, again and again, that this movie is just a big excuse to revel in the clichés of ’30s-era imagery, especially comic books. (In fact, when the good guys are making their battle plans, their maps and technical blueprints are spread out on the table along with Buck Rogers comic books, which prove to be important as well.)

It’s an inspired fusion of comic book clichés, new ideas, and absolutely enthralling animation. Those, and the relentlessness of the pace, the perfectly-pitched humor of the piece, and the sporting enthusiasm of the actors — who give this film the warmth and humanity that other special effects films like Final Fantasy lack — make this one thoroughly original. It’s got the inspired, consistent, complete kind of world-making vision that made films like Tron and The Nightmare Before Christmas so unique. Seems that all of George Lucas’s talk about digital animation giving the filmmaker the tools of a painter are really coming true, and Kerry Conran’s style is distinct, artistic, dripping with nostalgia, and beautiful to watch.

Lines, action scenes, and plot twists will have you thinking of Indiana Jones (Sky Captain has his Sallah), The Wizard of Oz, The Empire Strikes Back (Sky Captain also has his Lando Calrissian), Jurassic Park, Independence Day, The Iron Giant (there are so many iron giants! Kerry Conran LOVES iron giants!), film noir classics, the Red Baron, Ray Bradbury sci-fi, The War of the Worlds, and more.

But the film I came away thinking about was Dark City. Dark City was much darker and more “adult” whereas this is pure dime-store novel pulp for kids. But the film starts like a rocket and never slows down, like Dark City, so that the whole film feels like one big action scene, the suitably-formulaic “hero music” propelling us along without a break. It’s the same quick-cut, fever-pitch intensity of Dark City, but it also resembles that film in that it makes sure that every single frame of the film is interesting, creative, and artistic. There isn’t one single wasted moment of screen time. It’s the most efficient big screen adventure in years, and by comparison Spider-Man 2 looks bloated.

No, the characters aren’t deeply developed. But there’s just enough personality, just enough history, just enough humor to make them memorable. They really do feel like comic book characters because they never have long conversations. Everything is clipped, quick, and stick-to-business. Gwyneth Paltrow steals the show as Polly Perkins. She gives a performance that actually registers as just that… a performance… in spite of the fact that she’s acting in front of a blue screen. She and Jude Law actually have chemistry, and the film gives them enough Indiana Jones/Marion, Han Solo/Princess Leia banter that some good-old-fashioned archetypal romance develops. Giovanni Ribisi is goofy and fun; he’s Sky Captain’s James-Bond-gadget-man. And Angelina Jolie, who’s role is not much more than a cameo, doesn’t spoil anything. (She, by the way, is the Lando Calrissian.)

If there’s any weak link at all… well, there isn’t. I was going to point out that Jude Law, while a strong leading man, still fails to bring anything… oh… anything distinctly his own to his roles. He always delivers what’s required, but there’s never that added flourish, that spark of genius, that thing that makes it distinctly his own. But well, I’ll let that point go, because Sky Captain is, essentially, a living, breathing action figure, and perhaps Law’s all-business manner is suitable to the part. He certainly looks the part.

Sir Laurence Olivier? Very cleverly employed. There’s no reason to be concerned about his posthumous performance.

And the look of the film on the big screen… man, I just wanted it to go on and on and on.

Anyway, GO SEE THIS on opening weekend, because Conran’s made a sensational debut, and I’d love to see him expand this into a franchise. It’s cotton candy, but what it lacks in substance (which would have seemed inappropriate anyway) it makes up for with a childlike enthusiasm and invention. There’s more imagination in 30 minutes of Sky Captain than in most complete action movies. I have a hunch that Steven Spielberg is going to LOVE this movie; it will remind him of the kind of madcap action hysteria he hasn’t offered us since… well… since Last Crusade. In a strange way, I feel like I saw Sky Captain twenty-five years ago when I was a kid playing with model airplanes and drawing pictures of big scary robots… it’s got that soft-focus glow of great childhood memories.

In fact, I’m already nostalgic for this nostalgia-based film, and it hasn’t even opened yet. Isn’t that dangerous? Am I in danger of producing a black hole in the fabric of time and space?

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Writer and director – Kerry Conran

Director of photography, Eric Adkins

Editor – Sabrina Plisco

Music – Edward Shearmur

Production designer – Kevin Conran

Producer – Jon Avnet, Marsha Oglesby, Sadie Frost and Jude Law

Released by Paramount Pictures.

107 minutes. Rated PG.

STARRING: Gwyneth Paltrow (Polly Perkins), Jude Law (Joe “Sky Captain” Sullivan), Giovanni Ribisi (Dex Dearborn), Michael Gambon (Editor Morris Paley), Trevor Baxter (Dr. Jennings), Bai Ling (Mysterious Woman), Omid Djalili (Kaji) and Angelina Jolie (Franky Cook).

Sleepy Hollow

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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When I attended a screening of Tim Burton’s new film Sleepy Hollow last week, I was not surprised to hear euphoric cheering, half-hearted applause, and outraged boo-ing as the end credits rolled past. On the way out, several people grumbled about how Burton consistently disappoints us, failing to provide anything of substance. It is worth mentioning, though, that those same peeved viewers had waited in line eagerly with the rest of us for 90 minutes just to feast their eyes on Burton’s latest achievement. Substance or not, we love this guy.

Since he stormed into the spotlight with Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Burton has occupied a unique corner of eccentricity in the faculty of big box-office directors. He’s provided us with so many unforgettable characters and spectacles –Michael Keaton’s melancholy Batman and hysterical Beetlejuice, the big screen’s most memorable suburban landscape in Edward Scissorhands, Michelle Pfeiffer’s most memorable role in Batman Returns, Martin Landau in Ed Wood, and the breakthrough stop-animation of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Burton’s works are hard to classify; they make a comedy out of a horror, showing up the conventions of scaring people for the silly parlor tricks that they usually are. (His only sincerely scary accomplishment remains the Landau performance of a sad and despairing Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood.)

Still, Burton’s work only seems to increase the disdain many have for him. Many were shocked that Mars Attacks!, the first movie to be based on a series of bubble gum cards, was frivolous and thinly plotted. In response to Sleepy Hollow, The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum bemoans how Burton disrespects the integrity of Washington Irving’s novel, while William Arnold of the Seattle P-I is upset that the movie if devoid of suspense and horror. Clearly, Burton’s Sleepy Hollow does not even attempt to recreate Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It’s not very scary. When the monsters in the movie actually HAVE heads, they’re of the cartoony Beetlejuice variety. And when the action rises to Indiana Jones pitch (there’s a nod to the classic truck chase here), Burton is far too busy looking for good laughs to inspire any genuine screams.

Sleepy Hollow is a hilarious tribute to the old-style Hammer horror that loved to announce how scary it was. Entertaining but artless, they TOLD rather than SHOWED. And there is a lot of telling in this film.

In Burton’s version of the story, Ichabod Crane is a constable from New York whose penchant for deduction carries him to solve a particularly riddling series of decapitation homicides in the backwoods village of Sleepy Hollow. The gallery of grizzled geezers who greet him there (Michael Gambon, Jeffrey Jones, Ian McDiarmid, and Burton’s beloved Michael Gough) waste no time trying to outdo each other with quavering voices and tales of woe. When the incredulous Crane stammers, “The heads were taken?!” Gough rasps: “Taken… taken by the headless horseman… taken…. BACK TO HELL!!” If you try taking this melodrama seriously, you’ve already lost any chance of enjoying this picture.

In spite of its satire, Sleepy Hollow does provide more substantial treats than any Burton film since Scissorhands. The director’s work with actors is steadfastly brilliant. There is no better actor/director team than Johnny Depp and his curious coach. Depp’s Ichabod is a pillar of cowardice, a pale, jittery man who is all too quick to hide behind women and children when the monster rides into town. While Christina Ricci has an enchantingly cherubic face to charm feeble Ichabod, and while the talents of others like Miranda Richardson are given a lot of over-the-top license, it is Depp who holds our attention in this context.

And what a context. Sleepy Hollow is, above all, beautiful to look at. Instead of using special effects to make things look real, Burton works the other way, making everything look like a painting. From Irving, he selects only the elements that interest him most: windmills, scarecrows, haunted houses, hard restrictive Bibles, mysterious witchcraft symbols. There is more mist than forest in this forest, and what trees there are look absolutely miserable. The townsfolk fare no better… all but the children are physically warped in one way or another by bitterness, arrogance, greed, jealousy, or fear. Grownups are hard, cold and suspicious; religion and the law are instruments of torture.

Freud would have had a field day with this film, postulating on Burton’s own childhood in view of how threatening and wicked these people really are. Adults tend too loom over the camera, glowering, punishing. Perhaps the movie’s biggest surprise is that the horseman is not the story’s greatest villain. Ichabod’s memory of his own vindictive father is far more fearsome, yet another dark lord who uses the Bible as a tool of hate and fear rather than liberation and love.

But these lurches toward meaningfulness never get very far. Depp and Ricci keep the laughs coming with their perfect balance between sincerity and irony. Funniest of all is Christopher Walken, relishing his brief and silent appearances. And the stereotypical Danny Elfman Burton-class-soundtrack (lots of chimes and choral stuff over the dark gothic dirge theme) is as much of a presence as any character, running though almost every frame of the film (but hardly an original work, calling up his signature chimes and choral effects over that dark Batman dirge.)

Although not as dark as I anticipated, this is definitely an R-Rated Tim Burton film. One word: blood. The heads do indeed roll. And bounce. And bleed. But the violence is campy, exaggerated for the sake of a shock, more in the vein of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure than Halloween. Ray Park, who made such a great Darth Maul in Phantom Menace, is similarly menacing here, compensating with confidence and aggressiveness what he lacks in… well… a head. Fortunately, Burton doesn’t make this a splatter-fest, like I feared he would. The horseman comes, he lops off heads, he leaves. It’s obvious that his appearance, bolting out of the fog on his black horse like an inevitable nightmare, was the image that compelled Burton to make this film.

Although many critics are taking turns using Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay for target practice, it’s not a disaster. The new story is suitable to the genre that it nearly spoofs, peppered with foreboding pronouncements of doom, hushed conspiracies to catch the crook, and sentimentally gooey romantic interludes. Walker also wrote Seven and Fight Club. He’s at home in the verbiage of cops and serial killers in the big city, but here he strains to achieve the archaic dialect of the Irving world, and as a result there are no memorable voices. The cast basically have the job of divulging information between the action scenes, so we have enough story to provide structure. The villain’s inevitable tell-all speech is the film’s one truly embarrassing low point; as loose ends are desperately tied up the film comes to a crashing halt and the enchantment is broken.

I do agree with Jonathan Rosenbaum, to a point: “Beauty separated from meaning isn’t nearly as likely to be as memorable as beauty arising from and commingling with a good story.” Of course. But should we criticize the moviemaker for failing to deliver something he never intended to deliver? “Beauty separated from meaning” is as fascinating to Burton as heads separated from bodies. It’s pure and… forgive me… brainless fun. We don’t get mad at kids for playing with their toys; in fact, sometimes we join them. Why be hard on Burton?

Ultimately, Sleepy Hollow is an elaborate Halloween party, where everybody gets to ham it up. It’s the kind of movie Beetlejuice or Jack Skellington would have felt right at home in. Critic Michael Atkinson puts it best: “Every shot of Sleepy Hollow is a box of candy sent directly to every Boomer brat who ever spent a Saturday watching old horror movies on local TV, reading Famous Monsters of Filmland, or assembling an Aurora monster model.” Burton is indeed the Willy Wonka of campy horror. He’ll never win a director’s Oscar, but we owe him credit for providing some of our most enthralling visual fantasies.

And as for those who gripe about the lack of nourishment in their dessert… well… I’m tempted to make some jab about how they’ve lost their heads.

a second opinion – guest review by Danny Walter

Sleepy Hollow, Tim Burton’s latest foray into the land of the macabre, has Johnny Depp arching his eyebrows through foggy moonlit nights, chasing headless horsemen, and hacking blood spurting trees of death with a hatchet. The animated Legend that Disney spun this isn’t.

Though gruesome in parts, and downright violent in others, this horror story comes off as somehow playful in Burton’s capable hands…a tale of terror where the audience need never fear becoming terrified themselves.

Depp plays New York inspector Ichabod Crane, a lone pioneer of the forensic sciences, struggling through the dark ages of late 18th century investigation where, “If you found him in the river he obviously drowned.” At least this is how Crane’s backward superiors see things, and tired of listening to his sermons on scientific investigative techniques, they banish him to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of grisly beheadings.

Arriving in Sleepy Hollow, Crane meets with the town elders, and learns who they suspect is behind the murders when they tell him the legend of the Headless Horseman. Executive producer Francis Ford Copolla’s presence is felt in Burton’s showing us the legend through a flashback stylistically reminiscent of the flashback tale in Copolla’s own Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

The Horseman, a Germanic warrior sent to America to help Britain quell the revolution, rides through the foggy hay fields lopping off the heads of many a silhouetted foot soldier. Even his horse is named Vlad. Played with ferocious zest by Christopher Walken, the horseman winds up losing his own head, by his own sword, and is buried in the woods outside Sleepy Hollow. However, the Horseman has risen from his grave, and is terrorizing the townsfolk by stealing the heads of their neighbors. Ichabod, skeptical of this theory, announces that the killer is of flesh and blood, and will be caught through logic and reason.

The film then begins to play out as less of a horror story and more of a whodunit, as Crane searches for connections between the victims, and begins to unravel a conspiracy involving the town elders. Even when encountering the Horseman himself, Crane faces his fears, and takes to the woods to seek out who the Horseman is, and why he is collecting heads. When we finally do find out whodunit, the killer is asked “Why?”, and we are dragged through a monologue ALA “Bond villain” to help out the brain-dead in the audience.

Burton’s horror film draped over the bones of a murder mystery, while devilishly fun, suffers from a bland plot hidden well within stylization, and wonderful character creation. Again the shadow of Copolla is seen in the cleanness of the visual effects only twice indulging in the “Large Marge” effect of eyes and tongues slingshotting out of heads that Burton loves to showcase in such films as Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, and Beetlejuice. And the Horseman! Thank God for CGI. This man had no head! He was beautiful. Not some guy stumbling around with a fake pair of shoulders on his head. No. It was Ray Parks, master of evil, Darth Maul, from the Phantom Menace, and they erased his head!
Lovers of the Disney version of Sleepy Hollow were rewarded by Burton’s nod to the animated feature with frogs echoing croaks of “Ichabod, Ichabod”, and a Headless Horseman hurling a flaming jack-o-lantern at a fleeing Crane.

A subplot of suppressed memories haunting Crane as he sleeps pops up throughout the film. Memories of Ichabod watching his mother with (Freudian?) adoration as she dances around him, draws magical symbols in the ashes of the fireplace, (which Christina Ricci’s Katrina mimics later) and spins into the air, floating, with a look of joyful rapture on her face. These surfacing memories also reveal that his puritanically religious father repeatedly punishes his mother, in the family torture chamber we assume, for indulging in these rituals, until he is finally responsible for her death.

These scenes are completely with out dialogue, and edited in confusing dream like imagery. They do much for establishing Crane’s state of mind and perhaps explain why he holds to the idea religion and all things spiritual are to be feared or dismissed as superstition. They do not, however, beautiful as they are to watch, do much for moving the plot forward.

Another odd scene that departs from the tone of the rest of the film, is of the Horseman mercilessly assailing an entire family of innocents. Burton goes out of his way to show us how healthy this family is. (Much different from Crane’s experience) Young Mother and Father obviously in love with each other and their impossibly cute son, Horseman bursts in and terrorizes them all. Why so ruthlessly? Yeesh!
Depp’s Ichabod is endearingly squeamish, and prone to fainting spells. His facade of disbelief in all things of the spirit world, thinly veils the faith of a child who knows that ghouls and goblins really do exist. He is a hero who actually experiences fear and shows it, but is still able to behave heroically.

A beautiful set that profits from a smaller scale, and singularity of tone, turns out to be one of Burton’s best realized worlds. Where Gotham overwhelms, and the world of Edward Scissorhands jars the viewer with its contrasts of one locale to another, Sleepy Hollow can be held within the scope of comfort and easy recognition. The woods, the homes, the church, and the cemetery, are all places we expect to see in a setting like Sleepy Hollow. Even the giant windmill, though obviously a bit self indulgent as the base of operations for the killer, fits in with the rest of the town.

Like many autuers, Burton surrounds himself with those he has had success with before. This is his third film with Depp, previously as both Edwards “Wood” and “Scissorhands”, and his tenth partnership with composer Danny Elfman, who brilliantly turned out a soundtrack that blends well with the film while not sounding anything like his other Burton projects. More Burton favorites include Martin Landau as headless victim number two, Jeffrey Jones as the minister in bulbous powdered wigs, Lisa Marie as Cranes mother, and of course, Mr. Headless himself, Christopher Walken.

Although Christina Ricci seems like she sprang directly from the head of Burton himself, this is their first time working together. With little to do other than play love interest to Depp’s Crane, replacing what he lost with the death of his mother, she’s such an interesting creature we love her anyway.
Miranda Richardson is unfortunately absent throughout most of the film, and when she is present she’s doing her best Joan Allen impersonation. Happily there are a few moments of classic over the top Miranda, and while satisfying they leave us wanting more. It is also wonderful to see Michael Gambon in so many pictures lately, and quite a treat to see the usually evil Ian McDiarmid playing a smallish fearful man sporting the same goatee as the mayor of Munchkinland. Newcomer Marc Pickering was wonderfully expressive as Depp’s sidekick/assistant Young Masbeth.

Wondrous sets, Beautiful soundtrack, Brilliant actors, and a world from the mind of Tim Burton dress up a well-used plot, to make Sleepy Hollow a horror story we can indulge in with glee…as if we were small children on grandfather’s knee, safe in the protection of his burly arms to giggle at the antics of those spooky ghouls and goblins that we know really do exist.

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Director – Tim Burton
Writer – Andrew Kevin Walker, based on Washington Irving’s tale ”The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Director of photography – Emmanuel Lubezki
Editor – Chris Lebenzon
Music – Danny Elfman
Costumes – Colleen Atwood
Production designer – Rick Heinrichs
Producers – Scott Rudin and Adam Schroeder

Paramount Pictures. 110 minutes. Rated R.

STARRING: Johnny Depp (Ichabod Crane), Christina Ricci (Katrina Van Tassel), Miranda Richardson (Lady Van Tassel), Michael Gambon (Baltus), Casper Van Dien (Brom), Jeffrey Jones (Reverend Steenwyck), Marc Pickering (Young Masbeth), Michael Gough (Notary Hardenbrook), Christopher Lee (Burgomaster) and Christopher Walken (Hessian Horseman).

Small Time Crooks

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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A question that frequently arises in my conversations with film buffs is “What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie?”

The question comes up again and again, partly because the guy writes and directs a new movie every year. It seems like everybody has a favorite. While his resume boasts an incredible range — zany sci-fi epics (Sleeper), mock documentaries (Zelig), fairy tales (The Purple Rose of Cairo), weighty morality plays (Crimes and Misdemeanors) — they all bear that unmistakable wit and bizarre knack for characterization that was true of his early standup comedy routines. Pull out any conversation, any introspective monologue from his work — it’s not hard to recognize Woody Allen’s voice.

That voice in the 1990s was souring, at times becoming a caustic, painfully embittered tantrum about failed loves and an unforgiving society, tainted with self-loathing. (Deconstructing Harry may be have been the peak of Allen’s most self-interested and self-indulgent work, while remaining a fascinating exploration of the artist and ego. It may have been his most autobiographical film, inadvertently or otherwise.)

Perhaps with the dawn of new decade, or millennium, Allen wants to go back to the basics. His new film is a strong indication. Small Time Crooks sounds more like early Woody — simpler, zanier. But, not unlike George Lucas’s mixed success at returning to Star Wars storytelling, the seams are showing. The transitions are clunky; there may as well be chapter headings for the film’s abrupt changes in tone. The characters are closer to being caricatures than believable individuals. Still, a mediocre Woody Allen film is better than most Hollywood comedies any day of the week.

Small Time Crooks tells the rags-to-riches story or Ray and Francis Winkler. Ray’s a bone-headed dishwasher who spent time in prison for burglary, and he hasn’t quite outgrown his criminal impulses. Francis, once an exotic dancer, now keeps house and puts up with her wisecracking husband, from whom she has genuine affection…once in a while. They dream about a better life, but they’re not miserable.

Then Ray gets an idea, like a bored kid who has too much time on his hands. He and his cronies decide to buy an open retail store space and then tunnel from there into the bank on the same block. Easy, right? Not for Ray and his dumb-and-dumber cohorts.

Ray talks Francis into opening a cookie shop in the space to cover for their criminal endeavors. In the basement of their new small business, the tunneling begins. Needless to say, with much hysteria they brilliantly botch the robbery. But “Sunset Cookies”, on the other hand, in Francis’s capable hands, becomes a startling success. “Sunset Cookies” expands like Starbucks, and the film’s most successful sequence (a storytelling trick Woody has used before) is a 60 Minutes’ style news story on the Winklers’ success. Journalists interview the employees of the first store who went on to become “The Board”, who have “Board Meetings” to discuss “important” issues, such as what to do when the company toilet overflows. And thus, we’ve arrived at Act Two: Riches.

Soon Francis has taken a beautiful mansion and turned it into expensive and appalling squalor, with a leopard skin motif and a beautiful harp in the living room because she likes the “visual sweep” of it. But when they host their first dinner party with New York’s elite and discover they’re still considered vulgar, Francis is heartbroken. After all, her materialistic dreams have come true, and she’s still a social outcast. At this point, Ray decides he wants to return to the simple things, simple pleasures, simple crimes, the things he understood and loved. Francis wants to learn how to be sophisticated, how to be rich, how to like the right things.

Is class merely a matter of money? Who are more humane, the lower class or the upper class? And what is the relationship between money, education, and taste? The Winklers serve to show that money doesn’t bring happiness, but is it that simple? The movie almost proposes that money and power in the hands of those uneducated in the finer things leads to a shoddy culture.

But Woody resists the allure of such questions and goes for easy laughs and caper contrivances. Maybe he wanted to give something to the fans of his early work, or maybe he just wanted to do a tribute to “The Honeymooners”. Very little room for social commentary here. Like Ralph Kramden, Ray boasts to his buddies about being head of the household, but his arrogance falls flat in the presence of his smarter, stronger wife, so he’s reduced to empty threats like ”I’m gonna slam your head off!”

This may be the first Woody film where I came away most impressed with the cinematographer (Zhao Fei) than the actors. He captures one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen in onscreen; I almost had to shield my eyes from the blazing sun. The Winklers’ mansion is a wonderland, a vast and beautiful place that might have been a Stanley Kubrick set before Francis got to it with her decorating sense.

No Oscar-worthy performances this time around. (Usually Woody gives somebody a major star turn.) A few fine comic actors are sorely under-used. Jon Lovitz and Michael Rappaport must have been frustrated, being in a Woody Allen movie and having so few good lines. Woody himself is in fine form, much closer to his early slapstick persona than anything in recent memory. Casting Tracey Ullman as Francis is his smartest move of all. She’s his best on-screen match since Diane Keaton in Annie Hall; smart, funny, a fully-developed character. I hope he brings her back in a better movie. She deserves it. It’s not hard to imagine him writing an Oscar-worthy part for someone who has long deserved a place in the comediennes Hall of Fame. Hugh Grant’s scenes with Ullman also gave me visions of the two of them in a romantic comedy someday; their chemistry was undeniable, her bluntness playing perfectly off his characteristic, well-mannered sophistication.

Elaine May is the most pleasant surprise of all, earning the biggest laughs as a perpetually bewildered minimum-wage employee at “Sunset Cookies.” She seems unfazed by the change in circumstances when the money starts coming in, as blundering and simple-minded as she was when she had nothing. She shares a touching moment with Ray, sitting on a plush couch in the mansion, sipping Pepsi from a wine glass and watching an old movie. It’s a scene of rare sentiment, and one that gave me great hope for Woody’s new direction.

Perhaps Woody Allen is a little like Ray Winkler, having come so far as an intellectual’s filmmaker, as an artist, as a success, that he’s longing to go back to the simpler things, the carefree zany things. In the story, it’s a whole lot easier for Ray than it may be for Woody himself. We’ll see.

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Writer/director – Woody Allen
Director of photography – Zhao Fei
Editor – Alisa Lepselter
Production designer – Santo Loquasto
Produced by Jean Doumanian

DreamWorks Pictures. 95 minutes. Rated PG.

STARRING: Woody Allen (Ray), Tracey Ullman (Frenchy), Tony Darrow (Tommy), Hugh Grant (David), George Grizzard (George Blint), Jon Lovitz (Benny), Elaine May (May), Michael Rapaport (Denny) and Elaine Stritch (Chi Chi Potter).