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theo47
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Pootie Tang (2001)
A little miracle
In this by-the-numbers summer movie season of 2001, here is, to quote Monty Python, "something completely different." Satirizing black culture is not exactly politically correct, which makes it near-impossible for even black comics to pull off. This might be a "Chris Rock Production," but Rock himself will tell you that POOTIE TANG is the brainchild of white writer/director Louis C.K., a fellow stand-up and writer on Rock's now-defunct "Chris Rock Show". Pootie, like too much of hip-hop culture, is considered to be hipper-than-hip, from his garish clothing to his gibberish patois. (In a great swipe at the M.C. Hammers & Puff Daddys of the world, Pootie manages to top the charts with a song containing no lyrics or music. Cut to scenes of an eager listening public, glued to their radios, jamming to dead silence.)
C.K. stretches the movie to about 70 minutes by making Pootie a Dolemite-style superhero, using (and mocking) the SUPERMAN II defeated-superhero cliche. Superman has x-ray vision; Pootie dispatches foes with the belt his father whupped him with. Superman's weakness is kryptonite; Pootie is rendered weak by "hoes." (In his desperate hour of need, like Jor-El at the Fortress of Solitude, Pootie is counciled by his dead father, who he sees in a cornstalk.)
If this seems like a series of in-jokes, it should. POOTIE is by no means a "professional" production; it's written, directed, and acted by a bunch of friends from the stand-up comedy and comedy-writing circuit. Anyone without an appreciation of that world may walk out of POOTIE scratching their head. Everyone else will be beaming and laughing throughout the movie, as I was. Stand-ups like Rock, Wanda Sykes, Dave Attell, Andy Richter, Conan O'Brien, Mario Joyner, and David Cross are all welcome sights. Bob Costas and Gwyneth Paltrow pop up in cameos, and Lance Crouther will no doubt enjoy the cult-hero status that his character, Pootie, does.
After the dull summer pap of MUMMY RETURNS, PEARL HARBOR, TOMB RAIDER, and FAST & THE FURIOUS.....POOTIE TANG is a welcome breath of fresh air. These are our funniest young comedians and social satirists at work -- support them. Maybe you'll even get the joke.
The Cell (2000)
Here's a riddle for you...
Q: What do you get when you give a pretentious music video director a multi-million dollar budget and let him masturbate for 2 hours?
A: "The Cell".
All the talk is about the visions inside the serial killer's head, but we get the visions in the director's head instead -- laborious art pieces and nonsequitors that are tedious instead of meaningful, script be damned. This guy has obviously seen "2001" and "Coma" too many times. Not that the script is anything special -- it's right off the serial-killer-movie assembly line. The only thing more disheartening than the movie was the previews for all the OTHER serial killer movies we will have to endure this year. "Se7en" is the only worthy entry in this genre, taking a formula plot and turning it into an indictment of American life. Any nice moments in "The Cell" are wasted, as the movie is only interested in itself. The proof is in the scenes which are NOT in the fantasy world -- they are shot as dry and boring as possible. You can sense the director's impatience during these scenes, anxious to get back into the fantasy world so he can show off his stuff.
Word of mouth should give "The Cell" an early death in theatres, which is what it deserves. Even a shot or two of The Posterior cannot redeem a sad exercise in directoral masturbation. Save your money -- and that goes for any Hollywood exec wanting to hire the director, too.
X-Men (2000)
Best comic book adaptation ever?
X-MEN, besides being the best comic book adaptation since the original SUPERMAN, works nicely as a cultural allegory and is directed with a confident hand by Bryan Singer. The story, with its climax on the Statue of Liberty, is, admittedly, a bit comic book-y, but - do I really need to say this? - it IS based on the Marvel comics. However, the movie captures the comics' tone perfectly, and has its tongue-just-far-enough-in-cheek to acknowledge the absurdity of the situation without giving in to camp. Perhaps most refreshing is the movie allowing itself to spend the first hour getting to know each of the X-Men (and their counterparts, The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants) -- their personalities as well as their powers. The movie's central theme - growing up feeling different - plays out amongst the heroes: Professor X as a father figure to the X-Men, Wolverine as a big brother to Rogue, Cyclops as the son trying to make Professor X proud, etc. This new "family" manages to gel enough to challenge the evil mutants' plans at the end, with the fireworks and fisticuffs you'll expect. Some of these scenes suffer because of a (relatively) low budget and a studio which rushed a movie to summer that was supposed to come out at Christmastime (or perhaps, "X-Mas"?). Once Fox counts up all the profits from this movie, I would hope they would spend enough on "X-Men 2" to replace some of the unconvincing wire work seen here with those do-anything CGI effects. Another smart move would be to replace Michael Kamen (whose last project was conducting an orchestra with Metallica) with pretty much anyone else, and giving that person time enough to write a decent score. With 30-odd years of X-Men history, there are plenty of additions and subtractions that could be made to the cast of the sequel. However, each charactor in "X-Men" merits a return, in smaller or larger ways. The most important ingredient is obviously Singer, who has a firm grasp on just how to translate that long history to film, and how to do it with style.
Mission: Impossible II (2000)
not Mission much
Can Tom Cruise and John Woo put their respective egos aside and deliver a fun summer spy movie?
Mission: impossible.
The sky is the limit in the 007 genre, but "M:I 2" (ugh, I can't believe I used the acronym) ends up a bloated, retreaded mess. Early proof: Cruise is introduced climbing a cliff, an ooh-it's-really-him-climbing moment a la William Shatner in "Star Trek V," a scary indication of where the movie is headed.
The movie then rolls over and dies, desperately in need of an editor and delivering exposition slower than Woo's patented slo-mos. The villain is yet ANOTHER rogue agent - apparently, psychological testing is not yet part of the IMF training program. There is an attempt at a Dougray Scott-Thandie Newton-Cruise love triangle, but the boys are so deadly dull that it's a wonder that Newton gives them the time of day. Newton is all dreamy-eyed, amazing-cheekboned, smirking sexuality; if one good thing comes from this movie, it's that she'll get more work (in better movies). And remember how imposing and dangerous Ving Rhames was in "Pulp Fiction"? Here, he's behind a laptop again, when he should be mixing it up with the bad guys, right along with Cruise.
A lot of familiar ground is covered. The villian apparently saw the first "Mission: Impossible," as he correctly guesses that Cruise will penetrate a high-security building by lowering himself down on a wire. (If he does it again in "M:I 3," I'm walking out.) Then he's a moving blip on Rhames' screen, sneaks around, and blah, blah, blah.
Stuff gets blowed up real good when we finally get to the last half hour. We're treated to the same high-flying two-gun John Woo Nutcracker that you've already seen a dozen times before. It's entirely inappropriate for the genre, something the 007 movies have been guilty of as late, also. Our spies used to outthink their opponents and ingeniously escape deadly situations; now they just mow the bad guys down with a submachine gun. Thanks to new back-end deals, Hollywood screenwriters are making bigger bucks now than ever before; the studios should demand smarter scripts.
Even so, I'm afraid that even those of you just looking for a summer "popcorn" movie will walk out disappointed. Go see "Gladiator" again instead. I did. Twice.
Fight Club (1999)
You are not ready for Fight Club
Fight Club. I'd read the book (twice), but it still didn't prepare me for seeing it. It's brilliant, jarring, amazing -- and I can't recommend it to anyone. Put simply, you are not ready for Fight Club. These are images and ideas that you are not ready to handle. Where's the choreographed fights, the romantic subplot, the happy ending? Not here. I counted three or four walkouts at the preview screening I attended. Upset that you paid $9 for the cinematic equivalent of a punch to the gut? Sorry. This movie is disturbing in the best sense of the word. And funny as hell. Can't figure out that knawing feeling? The discontentment, the anger, the insanity of day-to-day life? Fight Club will show you, even if it has to beat it out of you. Want a nice night out at the movies? Don't go. Want more? Do you need more? Then put up your dukes and join in.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
There's nothing else like watching a Kubrick film.
This was my first and last time seeing a Stanley Kubrick film in a theatre -- and that's a shame. A lot of Tom & Nicole fans probably won't know quite what to make of this movie. But Cruise & Kidman, to paraphrase Chris Isaak, did a good, good thing by exposing Kubrick's work to a lot of people who might otherwise never have seen it.
I was amused to read that some critics didn't think it was "sexy" enough, which misses the point completely. What makes sex sexy is intimacy, which almost all the characters in the movie are lacking. The tender scenes with the prostitute and (late in the film) with his wife are more compelling than any of the "sexy" scenes in the movie.
I hope that someday we'll able to see it as Kubrick originally intended - without the computerized revelers in the orgy scenes. Cruise's character is on a voyeuristic journey for an hour and a half, only to have digital bodies inserted in front of what he really wanted to see. His breakdown in front of his wife afterward would have been much more compelling had we seen the horrors that he did. Again, simulated violence is more palatable to the MPAA than simulated sex is. This is an adult film for adults, and their pressure to change Kubrick's film protects no one.
Out of Sight (1998)
Easily the best Elmore Leonard adaptation & a GREAT film
Expect good things in the future from everyone involved with this film, because they all come off nicely. Scott Frank gets Elmore Leonard just right, and Steven Soderburgh makes all the right decisions, pulling George Clooney's best performance out of him. Clooney has great chemistry with Jennifer Lopez, who is sly and tough as always. Their characters' conversation in a Detroit hotel bar is the sexiest scene I've ever seen. Albert Brooks and Don Cheadle are perfect, and Steve Zahn steals yet ANOTHER movie. The DVD is nice, if only for one deleted scene (right before the bathtub scene) that is hilarious, yet still never would've worked had they kept it in the film. SEE this film - and see how long the characters stay with you.