Director: Michael Radford
Cast: Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins
Release: December 29, 2004
Synopsis: In Venice, young Bassanio needs a loan of 3,000 ducats so he can properly woo a wealthy heiress of Venice named Portia. To get the necessary funds, Bassanio approaches his friend Antonio, a merchant. Antonio’s money, unfortunately, is invested in merchant ships that are presently at sea; however, to help Bassanio, Antonio arranges for a short-term loan of the money from Shylock, a Jewish usurer. Shylock has a deep-seated hatred for Antonio because of the insulting treatment that Antonio has shown him in the past. When pressed, Shylock strikes a frightening bargain in wicked humor: the 3,000 ducats must be repaid in three months, or Shylock will exact a pound of flesh from Antonio. The merchant agrees to this, confident in the return of his ships before the appointed date of repayment.

View Trailer:
* Medium (Flash)

Prognosis: Positive. When I read Merchant of Venice in college for the first time, freshman year in Karen Keres’ English 102: Your Free Time Is Mine class, I was a bit confused by it. Not by the plot, mind you, but by the language. It takes a while before the ear becomes accustomed to the sounds and lilts in the player’s voice and words. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING was my first Shakespearian film adaptation and that was pretty much all she wrote when it came to decide what I wanted to do with the next four years of my academic life.

There have been absolutely splendid filmic adaptations to Shakespeare’s work. Baz Luhrmann’s envisioning of a modern Romeo and Juliet was a frenetic speed overload that captured the essence of what it meant to be from the wrong side of the tracks. Kenneth Branagh’s HAMLET was wonderfully put together and, in my opinion, hasn’t been rivaled since its debut. Now comes this version of Merchant of Venice which looks to take its place in the pantheon of films that high school kids will be renting in order to pass their English classes.

What you notice, immediately, is that this sucker is rated R. Now, I don’t remember a lot of drugs, explicit sex, or swearing so I am a little caught off guard as to why this flick would be given such a rating. Al “hoo-ha” Pacino is Shylock, that Jewish troublemaker who is at the center of so much brouhaha in this story, and it’s not until I see him being spat upon by Jeremy Irons, who plays the part of Antonio, that I feel the flood of plot points come back to me. The location is obviously Venice, but never before has it looked so period specific. Joseph Finnes, breaking out his best Shakespearian wares since wooing many a lady with that SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE flick, is back in wonderful form.

Even though this is a Sony Pictures Classics release there are helpful crib notes displayed to get everyone on the same page about what’s the big deal here.

“To win her love…money must be borrowed.”

The trouble in this story, as with everything else in life, all begins with a woman. Ralph wants to get her, needs cash to get the girl, thousands of ducats to be precise, and then things go sour when, as we all should know and say in harmony, the loan that Shylock lends Irons defaults and his buddy is on the hook for repayment. The story has many things going on, to say nothing of the undertone of anti-Semitism, but there are some very relevant things that are brought up that make this play timeless. The issue of law, friendship and romance are not bound by the time in which this film takes place.

When it comes to the rest of this trailer, though, it’s great to see the trial where Pacino is about to take a pound of Irons’ flesh. Irons faints like a little girl and we get a little classic Pacino rage when he says of the flesh he is about to exact, “’Tis mine!” We see how Portia, played here by Lynn Collins who was last seen in a bit part of 30 GOING ON 30, goes from playing a fairly good-looking woman to a dude in order to get Irons out of legal trouble. I tell ya, it takes a woman to get into a trouble and one to get you out.

The overall look of the selected scenes shows this to a painstakingly time-specific piece and I could take far more of these sitting down in the theater than I could of just one AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE. There is such an attention to costuming here, to the language and there seems to be a real emphasis on really accentuating the most riveting of moments in this play and it all comes across.

What I still can’t figure out, though, is why in hell this movie is getting an R rating. Maybe we’ll be getting a little more than just some male flesh; ‘tis might be a fair maiden’s we might be getting a randy gaze at.

Director: Adam Shankman
Cast: Vin Diesel, Lauren Graham, Brittany Snow, Carol Kane, Brad Garrett
Release: March 5, 2005
Synopsis: Assigned to protect the five out-of-control children of an assassinated scientist working on vital government secrets, Navy SEAL Shane Wolfe (Vin Diesel) is suddenly faced with juggling two outrageously incompatible jobs: fighting the bad guys while keeping house. Replacing his usual arsenal of wetsuits and weapons are diapers and juice boxes, with which Shane must not only must battle a deceptive enemy but wrangle with the five children.

Prognosis: Negative I was watching BOILER ROOM the other day and reminisced about how saturated the movie buzz was when Vin Diesel was heralded as the next “IT” action star. PITCH BLACK was fairly entertaining, I really enjoyed FAST AND THE FURIOUS and then XXX was about to come out; I was amped and then I went to see it opening weekend.

It was like I wanted to run back into a store and demand a refund on the hope I had wasted.

The guy then started to moan about XXX 2 (Thanks for taking up the slack, Ice Cube. If you can go the 90 minutes without making a lame-ass PlayStation joke I might actually watch it) and passed on 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS (Who whoulda thunk that Ludacris and Tyrese, 2 dudes who are 2 cool to have 2nd names, would turn out a not-entirely-crapworthy film?), and then decided that PITCH BLACK 2 would have us quaking in our collective Jockeys only to score a $112 million, give or take, at the box office when production and marketing had cost around $140. Whups on all three accounts.

Now, here’s the new softer side of Vin. That whole action thing was so passé anyway, right?

Vin is introduced as Shane Wolf. Military drums rap-a-tap-tap as decorations reinforce the idea that he’s an ex-Navy SEAL.

He’s tough as nails, dammit, as we’re given his resume as a tough as nails Navy SEAL guy. He’s been in Somalia (apparently wearing nothing but camo pants and a white Hanes-His-Way T-shirt), Serbia (where he’s operated jet ski’s to evade enemy choppers), Bosnia (where he’s choreographed amphibious landings wearing not a wetsuit but a Hanes-His-Way white T-shirt), and now this.

Voiceover guy gets desperately throaty when he says that Shane Wolf is going where his skills mean NOTHING: Suburbia. A pink bike is on its side at the bottom of the steps leading to the front door. Cue the requisite: “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

This where the trailer really starts to confuse me; the music that starts to play is Tone Loc’s “Funky Cold Medina.” While I try to understand why, of all the music I listened to in 8th grade, why this was chosen over Inxs’ “Suicide Blonde” the kid who answers the door lets out a shrilling screech because she obviously has never seen a man look so menacing wearing a Hanes-His-Way T-Shirt.

The eventual gist, I take it, is that he has to protect a family. We’re not told why but we’ll play along.

This is when his tough as nails bit comes in as he comes off all hard and emotionless. He tells the kids that since he has no time to learn their names they’ll be given designations Red 1, Red 2, Red 3 and one Red Baby.

Ah, yes. Red Baby. It’s at this point when the old tried and true gag of a man not knowing how to change a diaper comes in to play. Cindi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” comes chiming in. Are we in a flipping time warp backwards that not one current ditty would have sufficed or could have been cleared by legal?

Oh yeah, and this is good, the movie, we’re told, is being directed by the same man who gave us BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE. I felt vomit at the back of my throat trying to make an escape.

From baby we go to the minivan. Again, apart from the hilariousness of Vin driving a car that has World’s Greatest Mother bumper sticker on the back, the whole problem his ego has with realistically accepting a car for what it is has him cracking wise as he says, “Think of it as a Bradley assault vehicle.” Good one, Vin. I’ve got to catch my breath from the giggles that spilled from my funny bone.

He has problems with acting normal at the park, he can’t tell a bedtime story without relating it to war, but he eventually gets an epiphany to turn his frown upside down and take charge of the family. Yeah, he straps on a baby carrier, loading it up with juice boxes instead of bullets, holstering air freshener instead of a side arm, and becomes the best friend to all the kids in the family.

He gets into some kind of altercation with Brad Garrett, to which Vin treats him like his little bitch, and then we get a couple more gags to fill up the running time.

Bottom line: I saw this movie when it was called Mr. Nanny. I didn’t actually see it, per se, but I did read the back of the box cover while perusing the video store for the latest Van Damme movie back when I was in high school but the plots seem oddly, and disturbingly, similar.

Look, twelve years won’t erase the memory of the man who was the touchstone of my youth, as he was emasculated when Hulk Hogan had to put on that pink tutu and I only hope I’m not around when we see Vin having to play dress-up with the mother’s muumuus, wearing lipstick. How the mighty have fallen.

Director: Jean-Francois Richet
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Bryne, Brian Dennehy, Maria Bello, John Leguizamo, Ja Rule, Drea de Matteo
Release: January 21, 2005
Synopsis: On New Year’s Eve, inside a police station that’s about to be closed for good, officer Jake Roenick (Hawke) must cobble together a force made up cops and criminals to save themselves from a mob looking to looking to kill mobster Marion Bishop (Fishburne).

Prognosis: Positive. Rogue pictures, those masters of marketing who decided to release SEED OF CHUCKY well after the Halloween holiday had passed (Good one, fellas…), bring us a tale about a snowy city downtown precinct that is supposed to be closing its doors for good. Voiceover guy really hams that last line up for all its worth. Ethan Hawke, reprises his good cop role from TRAINING DAY, as we see the precinct essentially empty.

The last of the baddies seem to be in transit to a new holding pen but before things end quietly for the boys in blue, ta-da, a school bus filled with “Detroit’s most lethal prisoners” have to make a stopover for the night because there is so much damn snow on the ground.

Ok. First of all, let’s chuck the believability factor out the window because, having lived in Chicago, I know the city can be a bitch when it comes to snow plowing but there’s never been enough, in my short history, that would have made something like this happen. Even disregarding that whole snow thing let’s take a look at Detroit’s “most lethal prisoners.”

First, you have John Leguizamo. The man is like X-MEN’s Toad; completely worthless in a fight. Then you have Lawrence Fishburne. Ok. Him? I’ll believe that he has the vibe of an astute Hannibal Lecter with the kind of clothes he has on. Ja Rule? Hell, no. I will not believe that even a dude like him with as big of a Napoleon complex as he must have is any more dangerous than the guy who stole my lunch money in grade school. For those that have been unfortunate to see his many Cribs appearances can relate I’m sure.

Anyhoo, we’re supposed to get that Lawrence is supposed to be this tough as crap gangster who seems to have cajones of steel. Well, being how he is this big kingpin of Detroit crime he has some people collecting outside the precinct to bust him out of jail. I’m not sure how his thugs knew he was going to be caught up in a snowstorm or that these hoods cobbled together an entry/exit plan in a matter of hours but there you go.

It looks like the bad guys bust in, guns blazing, and try to free Larry. The phones, obviously, are dead and Ethan and Maria Bello (just the kind of gal you need by your side when you know you’ll be one of the last people alive by the end) intend to fight off some cops who, apparently, are the masterminds behind this and I’m a bit off guard. I’ve seen DIE HARD 2 and I’m totally an expert on these kinds of things but I had no idea that these cops weren’t in fact trying to get Lawrence out of jail but to try and put him six feet under for reasons that haven’t yet been explained.

Now, I’m no John Carpenter completest, but I had no idea that we now have a vested interest in keeping Larry alive as he is about to give testimony that will put Gabriel Byrne, one of the po-pos waiting outside to kill ol’ Lar’, and a few other cops behind bars. Brian Dennehy, one of the greats in the business to ever don a cop uniform, is back to his crotchety roots as he disagrees with Ethan’s estimation to arm the criminals in order to get out alive.

From here, bullets start flying and we get a real quiet hip-hop beat bouncing in the background as Ethan gets all bombastic with the thugs he’s trying to lead. The producer of TRAINING DAY is back on the case here and you barely have time to focus on that as flames start exploding, bullets start whizzing and mayhem ensues all around everything. Even with my mild affliction of ADD I couldn’t stay on task in figuring out what in hell was happening. Needless to say, though, I liked the style of it. Who among us couldn’t go for the fictional depiction of bad cops getting capped, the promise of needless violence getting out of hand wantonly, and the hope that Ja Rule dies a horribly slow death? I’m in.

Director: Mark Brian Smith, Tony Montana
Cast: Troy Duffy, Willem Dafoe, Billy Connolly, Jeffrey Baxter
Release: November 10, 2004 (Limited)
Synopsis: OVERNIGHT begins as the classic Cinderella story when Boston-bred bartender and budding filmmaker Troy Duffy sells his screenplay, “The Boondock Saints,” to Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films. A bidding war gets Duffy much more than a hefty check; it also gets him the right to direct the film plus a deal for his band to produce and perform its soundtrack. Then, in a gesture straight out of a fairy tale, Weinstein offers to buy Duffy the very bar in which he works, turning the young man and his yet-to-be-made movie into overnight sensations.

View Trailer:
* Medium. The movie reel icon is on the front page (Flash)

Prognosis: Positive. I’ve never heard of this guy. I’ve heard of the movie, it being some 2nd rate, low-budget crime flick but I’ve never heard of him. In a documentary about how a man had chance for it all and then let it slip away as he implodes, this has to be good.

The trailer opens up with a really jaunty voiceover that says that the man who this documentary is about went from, “bartender to movie maker, overnight.”

The film festivals this movie has played at are flipped though quickly, which surprises me as being at Sundance is something that should, at the very least, warrant a moment to show that off. However, in lieu of actually seeing what this film has garnered, critically, we rush to get the first sound bite from the filmmaker:

“I hope to conquer the world!”

Just looking at the crazed look in the guy’s eyes who is saying this you know things will blow up wonderfully, and eventually, with everything that he touches.

Quick clips fill the screen with shots of revelry, alcohol and partying as we’re given a little more context about this, so far, nameless lottery winner of sorts. He essentially goes from the bar life to a million dollar contract deal with Miramax Films. The only difference between this guy and Kevin Smith is that Kev already had a movie to pimp and Kev wasn’t a screaming lunatic, as this trailer makes this guy out to be.

The lottery winner lives the high life for a while. No worries. Then, one of the guys involved with the documentary, says, “and then overnight…boom.” We’re not told how the bottom fell out for our fearless director but we are, interestingly enough, shown the famous people involved with BOONDOCK SAINTS and the people he hung with while he was still the man. It’s impressive that a first timer had access and was able to persuade some good names to star in his film.

Willem Dafoe, Paul Reubens, Marky Mark, Billy Connolly, Emilio Estevez (although, Emilio really only counts for ½ a celebrity. A full one if you want to count his dalliance with Paula Abdul and his seminal work on MEN AT WORK), Patrick Swayze and Jeff Goldblum were some of the people he kept company with.

Our child prodigy keeps going on and on about how he’s the best there is at what he does and before I start hallucinating, thinking he’s ripping off every issue of Wolverine I’ve ever read, the world starts to crash around him and I’m loving my place in the grand scheme of things.

He starts bitching out someone over at Miramax for not getting enough attention, Dafoe tells the poor schmuck to keep his mouth shut, he’s yelling at anyone who’s in front of him, he’s denied entrance into Miramax proper, and then he descends into a drunken bender that I’m sure not even Dean Martin would’ve approved of.

Overall this is a great way to set up a documentary. The essential nature and aim of a doc should be to simply show events as they transpired while telling a story. The fact, though, that we know how this story begins, gets going, peaks and then descends into a disastrous crescendo is enough to whet any appetite for some good old “sucks to he him” movie going.

Director: Olivier Assayas
Cast: Maggie Cheung, Don McKellar, Nick Nolte, Beatrice Dalle, Laura Smet, Jeanne Balibar, Ian Brown, Tricky
Release: To Be Announced
Synopsis: Emily Wang (Maggie Cheung) is a woman who wrestles with her dream of becoming a singer, her fitness as a mother, and daily life without her partner Lee (James Johnston). Her past is riddled with drugs and regrets, the result of which left Lee dead in a desolate motel room in Hamilton, Ontario, and landed Emily with a six-month jail sentence.

Clean follows Emily to Hamilton, Paris, London and San Francisco and in three languages (English, French and Cantonese), as she battles for a place in a world reluctant to forget the woman she has been and unwilling to accept her as the woman she longs to be.?

View Trailer:
* Various (Real Player, Windows Media, Quick Time)

Prognosis: It’s such a pleasure to watch. Man, I dig it when trailer people actually utilize music and not treat it like it’s simply background filler.

Metric, a wonderful contemporary band that mixes synthesizers and pure alt rock with a female vocal lead, gets to play their song “Dead Disco” live while things open up.

Maggie Chung, coming to us Statesiders off her enrapturing performance in HERO and before, hopefully, coming to us later in Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 (a follow-up to his sweet and tender story IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE), is all sorts of punk rock in this trailer. Wearing black leather and donning a frightening fro and a greasy man on her side she enters a nightclub where, as the trailer would have you believe, Metric is rocking the crowd.

Outside, twenties are counted like singles as Maggie scores teeny-tiny Ziploc bags of white powder. Smack, Horse, Crank, Cocaine, Black Tar, whatever you want to call it, all makes its way back to the fleabag motel she’s staying in with her sleaze of a companion.

The rock continues to rock the kids as Maggie lights up a cigarette, as her nameless man tries to tell her something, he pisses her off, and she takes the car to someplace dark and quiet to light up another cigarette.

She eventually goes back to her hotel room to find the po-po’s there. The door to her room is open and she tries to see what’s happened, we find out, to her husband. The cops find a body and drugs. She’s arrested.

A graphic on the screen lets us know this flick got some play at Cannes this year.

The rock stops and is replaced by a soothing monotone. Maggie is in the back seat of a cop car, crying. She’s shown in prison, sitting. She eventually gets out and walks alone on the side of a busy suburban street in the middle of the day.

She ships out to a different country to get a clean start. She starts waitressing. Nick Nolte enters her life. Although we’re not really told what he’s supposed to be doing it appears he acting in a sympathetic capacity.

Maggie cries again. Is she lonely? Desperate for the drug life she left behind? It’s ambiguous but it’s enough to see that she’s a woman who feels something crushing down on her.

I am a big fan of what Chung has done with her body of work and I like it when Nolte plays people with a muted restraint as it appears he is in this movie. I love the way things are put together here and it’s enough for me to seek this one out if and when it ever surfaces here in the States.

Too often art is too arty for its own sake but this seems like a good story about a fractured soul and one can only hope it’s as good as it appears.

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