Drama Archives - Page 75 of 120 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

A Farewell to Arms (1957) + Francis of Assisi (1961) – DVDs

November 8, 20051950s, 1960s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Romance, War

A FAREWELL TO ARMS
½*/**** Image B Sound B- Extras D
starring Rock Hudson, Jennifer Jones, Vittorio De Sica, Mercedes McCambridge
screenplay by Ben Hecht, based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway
directed by Charles Vidor

FRANCIS OF ASSISI
*/**** Image B Sound B- Extras D
starring Bradford Dillman, Dolores Hart, Stuart Whitman, Pedro Armendariz
screenplay by Eugene Vale, James Forsyth and Jack Thomas
directed by Michael Curtiz

by Walter Chaw One of David O. Selznick's many attempts to shape the largely immutable mug of lady-love Jennifer Jones into the face that launched a thousand cinematic ships, the badly-fumbled Hemingway adaptation A Farewell to Arms finds Jones, about two decades past the age of her Red Cross nightingale Catherine, paired opposite the not-quite-long-in-the-tooth-but-almost Rock Hudson as her doomed love Lt. Henry. The setting is Italy during The Great War; playboy Lt. Henry falls for mad "Cat," who, as written by the legendary Ben Hecht (himself a decade removed from his best work and well on his way to becoming king of cheese epics), comes off as an entirely inappropriate nod to Blanche Dubois. Selznick served John Huston–the right man for this picture–his walking papers early on for correctly identifying the love story in Hemingway's novel as just a metaphor for the tragedy and irony of WWI's carnage, subbing Huston with second-stringer Charles Vidor, who meekly agreed to amplify the alleged love between Lt. Henry and Cat while pushing all manner of hysterical spectacle to the wings of the proscenium.

The War Within (2005) + Paradise Now (2005)

November 4, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, Palestine, Theatrical, Thriller, War

THE WAR WITHIN
**/****
starring Ayad Akhtar, Firdous Bamji, Nandana Sen, Sarita Choudhury
screenplay by Ayad Akhtar, Joseph Castelo, Tom Glynn
directed by Joseph Castelo

PARADISE NOW
***/****
starring Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal, Amer Hlehel
screenplay by Hany Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer, Pierre Hodgson
directed by Hany Abu-Assad

by Walter Chaw Two films, one by New Jersey filmmaker Joseph Castelo, the other by Palestinian lenser Hany Abu-Assad, begin to make inroads into what is perhaps the most inscrutable phenomenon of the so-called War on Terror: suicide bombing. They’re important films, I think, mostly because suicide bombers, like the Japanese Kamikaze pilots of WWII, make it easier to generalize and dehumanize/demonize the enemy as faceless zealots. Every manned car-bomb, every explosives-strapped martyr, creates ideological schisms on either side–more so and deeper, I’d offer, than conventional missiles or rifle shells do, because here we’re striking at the very heart of the way we perceive life and the afterlife: holiness and sin, valour and cowardice. If there’s ever to be some sort of olive branch in this millennia-old conflict, it has to start with an agreement not only to recognize the humanity beneath the atrocities committed by both sides in the name of defending home and hearth, but also to admit that centuries-old texts about the supernatural are piss-poor signposts pointing the light of right reason.

Save the Green Planet! (2003) – DVD

November 3, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, South Korea, Thriller

Jigureul jikyeora!
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Shin Ha-gyun, Baik Yun-shik, Hwang Jung-min
written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan

by Walter Chaw The first third of hyphenate Jeong Joon-hwan's cinematic debut Save the Green Planet! (Jigureul jikyeora!) is sort of like Fargo if David Fincher had directed it, the second third like Sleuth if Terry Gilliam had directed it, and the final third like a mescaline hallucination, complete with a portly/heroic high-wire artist (Sooni (Hwang Jeong-min) and a swarm of murderous bees thrown into action by a jar of royal jelly. There's a crucifixion, entirely unspeakable and lawless references to 2001 and Blade Runner, and, without warning, a flashback to the unhappy childhood of our hero, Lee (Shin Ha-Kyun), composed with a lyrical sadness that brings a wholly-unexpected tear to the eye. Save the Green Planet! has been shot with scary confidence in a style long on provocative evocation and clarity and short on pyrotechnics for their own sake–something astonishing given that the plot revolves around alien invasion, gruesome torture, serial murder, corporate malfeasance, and Korea's tumultuous recent history. It's indescribable, is what I'm trying to say, but I do know that I was rapt through two screenings, seduced by its sprung logic and affected during its wordless epilogue of a child at play with his parents in a past unrecoverable full of light and love.

Millions (2005) – DVD

November 1, 20052000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Family, UK

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C+
starring James Nesbitt, Daisy Donovan, Alex Etel, Lewis McGibbon
screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce, based on his novel
directed by Danny Boyle

by Walter Chaw Unbelievably sentimental and, finally, corrupt with a hideous paternalism (how a flick like this ends first at a child’s Nativity pageant à la Love Actually, then in Africa, where a well is being dug for dying Africans, is one of those all-timers), Millions finds director Danny Boyle, after last year’s brief return to some semblance of Shallow Grave/Trainspotting form with 28 Days Later…, returning to his A Life Less Ordinary/The Beach form in all its excrescent glory. It’s the tale of two adorable, buck-toothed British urchins (the rage after Finding Neverland) who stumble upon pilfered millions in the form of the soon-to-be-Euros British Pounds Sterling and, Shallow Grave-like, ultimately hide the money in an attic with cunningly-placed slats in the floorboards for panicked eyeballs. It’s Pay It Forward, with younger Damien (Alex Etel) obsessed with the lives and messy deaths of saints and dedicated to giving the wealth to the poor (even Mormons, whom the film portrays as evil little twats), and it’s Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana in the poor’s reaction to getting rich, sporting its own version of the beggar’s banquet Last Supper from Buñuel’s picture in a scene set in a pizza parlour. And it’s Pay It Forward again in its subversion of that film’s “teach the world to sing” finale: a genuinely disturbing mob scene starring the superstars of organizations asking for your money to save the world from itself. But finally, it’s just another Danny Boyle film–a little meat and a lot of showing off with CGI pyrotechnics and confused editing.

Forty Shades of Blue (2005)

October 26, 2005****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Music, Romance, Theatrical

****/****
starring Rip Torn, Dina Korzun, Darren Burrows, Paprika Steen
screenplay by Michael Rohatyn and Ira Sachs
directed by Ira Sachs

by Walter Chaw Muscovite Laura (Dina Korzun) lives with her boyfriend, legendary music producer Alan James (Rip Torn), in Memphis. He's twice her age, they have a young son together, and when Alan's grown son Michael (Darren E. Burrows) comes home to visit, Laura begins to realize that although she's living her dream of prosperity, she's a stranger in a strange land, divorced from her ambitions and beginning to cramp from the positions her little deceptions demand of her. She's defined almost entirely by her sometime- lover and keeper–at restaurants, people ask her if Mr. James will be showing up later, and when an impulse has her shopping for Michael, she's asked if she's picking something up for Mr. James. Most films that share a set-up with Forty Shades of Blue are about how it is that the Alans of the world can have everything but be incapable of maintaining a marriage, muddying the relationships with their children with the same brusque inconsiderateness. Just as likely is the film about the vagabond son trying to build a bridge back to his larger-than-life father–the chiseller trophy wife as background decoration and occasional plot lubricant.

Desperate Housewives: The Complete First Season (2004-2005) – DVD

October 24, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Television

Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
"Pilot," "Ah, But Underneath," "Pretty Little Picture," "Who's That Woman?," "Running to Stand Still," "Anything You Can Do," "Guilty," "Suspicious Minds," "Come Back to Me," "Move On," "Every Day a Little Death," "Your Fault," "Love Is in the Air," "Impossible," "If It's Brown, Flush It Down," "There Won't Be Trumpets," "Children Will Listen," "Live Alone and Like It," "Fear No More," "Sunday in the Park with George," "Goodbye for Now," "One Wonderful Day"

by Walter Chaw The writing on Marc Cherry's "Desperate Housewives" is astringent and bright for the first dozen episodes or so. For more than half the first season, the show works as an effervescent satire of evening potboilers like "Dallas" or "Falcon Crest": It understands the attraction/repulsion dynamic of venerable bodice-ripping soapers and boils them down to their base elements of women, houses, relationships, and desperation. Eventually, though, the series falls off the tightrope all satires walk between commentary and indulgence–it starts having too good a time pretending to be that which it disdains and, in so doing, reveals its true colours as a drag revue played by women, ultimately freeing it of irony. Just look to the reports of on-set strife and photo-shoot jealousy to see that the tabloid has overtaken the snark, with intelligence and purpose quick to follow.

Capote (2005)

October 21, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Canada, Crime, Drama, Theatrical

**/****
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr., Chris Cooper
screenplay by Dan Futterman, based on the novel by Gerald Clarke
directed by Bennett Miller

by Walter Chaw You hear him before you see him: Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), raconteur, socialite, showman, standing at the centre of the kind of swinging party immortalized in the glossy, offensive film version of his Breakfast at Tiffany's. He's telling a story in a claustrophobic storm of admirers, his reedy, almost-falsetto voice broken now and again by his wheezing, self-conscious laugh. He's flirting with his own persona, I think (Hoffman, not Capote), and the tiny moments I'm able to see through the barrage of misdirection thrown up by screenwriter Dan Futterman and director Bennett Miller (all three old friends–the film plays smug like an exclusive reunion) to strike at the heart of Hoffman's own situation as a sensitive soul trapped in the body of a second fiddle (Kevin Smith syndrome–or, more flatteringly, Charles Laughton), are the moments Capote means something to me beyond another exhumation of the Clutter Family murders already chronicled (and exploited twice already by Capote's In Cold Blood and Richard Brooks's magnificent film treatment of the same) and mythologized. It's as Americana as Grant Wood, marking this tiny Kansas landscape with the same brush as Ed Gein's Wisconsin–and making Capote sexy in a ghoulish way when it fails to be sexy in a revelatory way.

North Country (2005)

October 21, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical

*/****
starring Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, Sissy Spacek, Woody Harrelson
screenplay by Michael Seitzman
directed by Niki Caro

by Walter Chaw North Country is a sensationalistic, pandering film that crafts from a landmark legal case a cinematic martyrdom the equivalent of Christ’s and Joan of Arc’s rolled up into the noble, trembling lips of Charlize Theron (who once had the temerity to chastise the press for focusing on her appearance in Monster whilst wearing a see-through, painted-on size-4 gold dress). I’m not decrying the stunt-casting of a statuesque blond in the role of the tiny Minnesotan mine worker the life upon which this film is ever-so-loosely based, nor am I begrudging, per se, the natural instinct of Roger Ebert and the Academy to foam over turns like this from starlets undergoing extreme make-unders. No, what I really don’t like are movies like North Country that fudge humanity in all its ugliness and imperfection so tragically that the real issues of the picture end up looking like one of those glossy fashion mag covers Theron will grace as she embarks on her promotional turn. According to the world of North Country, it’s not terrible enough that awful things happen to a real live person–no, awful things have to happen to Mother-freakin’-Teresa.

Doom (2005) + Stay (2005)

October 21, 20052000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Czech Republic, Drama, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, UK

DOOM
½*/****
starring The Rock, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, DeObia Oparei
screenplay by David Callaham and Wesley Strick
directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak

STAY
*½/****
starring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling, Janeane Garofalo
screenplay by David Benioff
directed by Marc Forster

by Walter Chaw For a split second, the clouds part and I think I’ve kenned a glimmer of an idea in Andrzej Bartkowiak’s video game adaptation Doom that doesn’t involve homoerotic gun worship or ripping off everything from Aliens save its humanity. Semper Fi, gung ho, muscle-bound jarhead Sarge (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) takes it upon himself to order his own mini-Mai Lai because he’s a stickler for details, and his stock marines balk to varying degrees of morality-inspired mutiny. Suddenly, and just for that split second, Doom of all things becomes Casualties of War (and, in fact, literalizes that film’s tagline of “In war, innocence is the first casualty”), and although what’s leading up to the moment isn’t that great, I was ready to roll with this totally unexpected, thought-provoking tickle. Alas–it flees like hope so often does, leaving fifteen minutes of semi-gory first-person perspective to simulate the first-person perspective of the video game (marking this as the first–and probably last–time someone thought that ripping off Uwe Boll was a good idea), ending with the sort of mano-a-mano showdown between its warring alpha males that everyone’s seen enough of by now.

Oliver! (1968) [Special DVD & CD Gift Set!] – DVD

October 17, 20051960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Drama, DVD, Family, Musical, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, Harry Secombe, Mark Lester
screenplay by Vernon Harris, based on the novel by Charles Dickens and the play by Lionel Bart
directed by Carol Reed

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There’s an exception to every rule, and Oliver! bucks one of the most depressing: that every bloated, twilight-of-old-Hollywood musical is crass and overblown. To be sure, Carol Reed was far from his The Third Man/Outcast of the Islands heyday when he directed this Oscar-winning roadshow, and one can sense a sigh of resignation as he puts on the mega-musical feedbag. But unlike the once-great craftsmen who started turning in horrors like Hello, Dolly!, the movie has style and credibility–Reed is genuinely interested in the narrative and the mood, as opposed to what other declining directors would highlight: the production design and the money. Oliver! is still sealed in an expensive cocoon, but what’s inside is a world worth watching and enjoying.

Crash (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

October 10, 20052000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Crime, Drama, DVD, Germany, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito
screenplay by Paul Haggis & Bobby Moresco
directed by Paul Haggis

by Walter Chaw In peeking under the satin-slick bedclothes of the latest crop of high-falutin' liberal diatribes tarted-up with matinee idols and compromised ideals, one finds that whatever the trappings of sophistication, we're still making Stanley Kramer movies, all of grand speeches and peachy endings. Seems to me the common denominator among the Interpreters and Constant Gardeners and Lord of Wars is a good unhealthy dollop of white man's guilt, that could-be beneficial malady that afflicts the affluent and socially well-established once in a while so they'll pay lip service to Africa, and race, and class. (Just as long as it has nothing to do with actual activism.) They're issues considered phantom offices at which to give and then leave with a sense of closure at best or, at the least, a feeling that all the tempests in the world are fit for a teacup you can put away somewhere in a mental cupboard. Race as a fable, Africa as a fantasy–and the last reel interested in beautiful, rich white people falling in love; I think about Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels and a couple of challenges presented therein to white, privileged, "morbid rich" filmmaker Sully, played by Joel McCrea: "What do you know about trouble?" and, later, "I have never been sympathetic to the caricaturing of the poor and needy, sir." To which Sully responds: "Who's caricaturing?"

Oliver Twist (2005) + Kings & Queen (2004)

October 5, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Czech Republic, Drama, Esoterica, France, Romance, Theatrical, UK

OLIVER TWIST
**/****
starring Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark, Leanne Rowe, Mark Strong
screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
directed by Roman Polanski

Rois et reine
***½/****
starring Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric, Catherine Deneuve, Maurice Garrel
screenplay by Roger Bohbot, Arnaud Desplechin
directed by Arnaud Desplechin

by Walter Chaw Roman Polanski is an architectural director. By that I mean he moves his camera in careful, constructed motions, and the characters he places within these movements are best when they seem restrained by them, oppressed by the presence of the director in a way similar to Hitchcock’s protagonists. Indeed, Polanski at his best (Repulsion, Knife in the Water, The Tenant, Rosemary’s Baby, Macbeth, Chinatown) makes films that Hitchcock might have made: alight with social revulsion, weighted by claustrophobic set-pieces, and thick with subtext. But Polanski at his worst (Bitter Moon, The Ninth Gate, Frantic, Pirates, Tess) betrays a tendency towards the frenetic–an unbecoming manic energy that leans towards the childish instead of what I think is the intended demoniacal. Polanski close to the vest is Polanski at his best, and when midway through something tending towards mediocre like The Pianist, he erected a literal wall within which to restrain his antihero (tellingly, the best Polanski protagonists are acted-upon)–that architectural boundary allowing the director to regain his footing, if only for the last part of the film.

Red Cockroaches (2003) – DVD

October 3, 20052000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Cuba, Drama, DVD, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B
starring Adam Plotch, Talia Rubel, Diane Spodarek, Jeff Pucillo
written and directed by Miguel Coyula

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover You have to give Red Cockroaches full props: it takes a no-budget budget, some half-understood ideas, and a whole lot of ingenuity and almost pulls off a movie. Alas, “almost” is as far as I’m willing to go, because the film never really understands what the hell it’s trying to say. Though it manages to make you forget its neophyte director’s sex fantasies and complaints, it’s more suggestive than articulate and gets your hopes up only to dash them with noncommittal execution. I have no idea where its combination of Blade Runner dystopia, Polanski perversity, and Sundance relationship drama was supposed to go, and it’s to writer-director Miguel Coyula’s credit that he can keep you praying that he isn’t going to take any sophomoric turns. Alas, he does, and Red Cockroaches does, and your rental night is done for.

The Breakin’ DVD Collection (1984) – DVD

October 2, 20051980s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Musical, Romance

BREAKIN'
**½/**** Image C- Sound D+
starring Lucinda Dickey, Shabba-Doo, Boogaloo Shrimp, Ben Lokey
screenplay by Charles Parker & Allen DeBevoise and Gerald Scaife
directed by Joel Silberg

BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO
***/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Lucinda Dickey, Adolfo "Shabba-Doo" Quinones, Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers, Susie Bono
screenplay by Jan Venture & Julie Reichart
directed by Sam Firstenberg

BEAT STREET
**/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Rae Dawn Chong, Guy Davis, Jon Chardiet, Leon W. Grant
screenplay by Andy Davis & David Gilbert & Paul Golding
directed by Stan Lathan

by Alex Jackson Ebony and ivory are living in perfect harmony in 1984's Breakin'. This is hardly a "white" movie, but it's not really a "black" one, either. It actually seems that Breakin' is genuinely multicultural: The film doesn't neutralize or marginalize blackness–in fact, it quite certainly celebrates it. But it's not black at the expense of excluding white faces. Instead of aligning itself with one particular racial identity, Breakin' aligns itself with a conglomerate of all of them. This is a party to which everyone is invited.

TIFF ’05: Dear Wendy

September 26, 20052000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Romance, TIFF, UK

*½/****starring Jamie Bell, Bill Pullman, Michael Angarano, Danso Gordonscreenplay by Lars von Trierdirected by Thomas Vinterberg by Bill Chambers It's a classic catch-22: Dear Wendy reveals that Jamie Bell was born to play Billy the Kid, but it probably also squanders his chances of doing so. As Dick, the orphaned son of a miner, Bell dons Michael J. Fox's effeminate cowboy duds from Back to the Future Part III and transforms the town's social lepers into a gang of gun fetishists known collectively as the Dandies; director Thomas Vinterberg and screenwriter Lars von Trier give us the gay burlesque version…

TIFF ’05: Heading South

September 24, 20052000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Canada, Drama, Film Festivals, France, TIFF

Vers le sud***½/****starring Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, Louise Portal, Ménothy Cesarscreenplay by Laurent Cantet & Robin Campillo, based on short stories by Dany Laferrièredirected by Laurent Cantet by Bill Chambers Heading South (Vers le sud) represents such a departure from the milieu of Laurent Cantet's previous film (2001's brilliant psychological thriller Time Out (L'Emploi du temps)) that you can't really say it rounds out a trilogy he started with Human Resources. Nevertheless, it resumes his fascination with people in transience, people who've erected complex façades to avoid the repercussions of personal or professional failure; Cantet's pictures are screwball comedies played…

TIFF ’05: Wassup Rockers

September 23, 20052000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Teen, TIFF

**½/****starring Jonathan Velasquez, Francisco Pedrasa, Milton Velasquez, Usvaldo Panamenowritten and directed by Larry Clark by Bill Chambers These days, when I think of Larry Clark, I think of Stephen Wiltshire, the outsider artist profiled in Oliver Sacks's An Anthropologist on Mars. Diagnosed with autism early in life, Wiltshire soon after began doing immaculately detailed sketches of animals before moving on to buses and eventually cityscapes. So advanced was Wiltshire's technique at such an early age that Sacks and co. were fascinated to learn that his talent came pre-evolved: as a child, he drew like a grown-up, but he drew like…

The Sting (1973) [Legacy Series] – DVD

September 22, 20051970s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD

**½/**** Image B Sound B (DD)/B+ (DTS) Extras B
starring Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Robert Shaw, Charles Durning
screenplay by David S. Ward
directed by George Roy Hill

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Sting has hung on tenaciously despite widespread critical neglect. Though it was rapturously received in 1973 (copping seven Oscars in the process), subsequent generations of critics haven't really had the inclination to go over it like a murder scene for clues to its brilliance. It's the Neil Simon version of vintage crime: well-written in a pejorative sense, it thinks every thought through for you instead of allowing you to participate in the experience. There's a place for this kind of movie, but a slight disappointment is almost unavoidable–all these talented people could surely have done something more with the milieu than refurbish Scott Joplin with Marvin Hamlisch arrangements.

TIFF ’05: All the Invisible Children

September 20, 20052000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: John Woo, Directors: Ridley Scott, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Italy, TIFF

**½/****
directed by Mehdi Charef, Emir Kusturica, Spike Lee, Jordan Scott and Ridley Scott, Kátia Lund, Stefano Veruso, John Woo

by Bill Chambers Named after an initiative of the Italian Development Cooperation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs that supports Unicef and other global charities, this omnibus project assembles seven short subjects about children from a handful of world-class directors, all of whom were instructed to locate their contributions in their home and native land. Poverty seems to be the unifying theme until Jordan and Ridley Scott's vaguely autobiographical segment, which sticks out like a sore thumb but subversively suggests that if All the Invisible Children proper has any lessons to impart, they revolve around the auteur theory. Having never seen a film by Mehdi Charef or Stefano Veneruso, I don't know how closely their episodes hew to their previous work, but I can tell you that Emir Kusturica, Spike Lee, the Scotts, Kátia Lund, and John Woo tread familiar ground in a borderline egotistical fashion.

Proof (2005) + An Unfinished Life (2005)

September 20, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Mystery, Theatrical

PROOF
*½/****
starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hope Davis
screenplay by David Auburn and Rebecca Miller, based on the play by Auburn
directed by John Madden

AN UNFINISHED LIFE
*/****
starring Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez, Morgan Freeman, Josh Lucas
screenplay by Mark Spragg & Virginia Korus Spragg
directed by Lasse Hallstrom

by Walter Chaw Gwyneth Paltrow sops through nearly every frame of John Madden's Proof with the sturdy dedication of a Method actress swallowed whole by a red-rimmed wet blanket. It's not a performance so much as a dip into her own navel, which, while not the worst fate I can imagine, is certainly not very interesting to watch. I find that contemporary American arthouse fare, thrilled to sift its way to the bottom of a mystic grain silo in a stately, lachrymose manner where the corn is alien, bears no relationship to any reality I've ever known–its sole purpose, at least to the extent that I can glean, to vet some collective desire to win the Good Will Hunting/A Beautiful Mind lottery by pretending to be really good at math (a fine excuse, after all, for being barmy).