BY JASON LYNCH
ROMANTIC COMEDY
The man who played The X-Files' Fox Mulder as Mr. Mom? It's an irresistible idea, promised by the engaging opening moments of Trust the Man. Having just quit his job as an advertising executive, Tom (Duchovny) now spends his days patrolling his family's New York City apartment and drolly supervising his son's potty training. It's bathroom humor that's actually—gasp!—funny.
Alas, it's also one of the only comic scenes in Trust the Man, which instead focuses on a pair of faltering long-term couples deciding whether to tough it out or cut bait. Tom and his actress wife, Rebecca (Moore), are in a sexless marriage, while Rebecca's self-absorbed brother (Crudup) would rather watch SportsCenter than settle down with his baby-minded girlfriend of seven years (Gyllenhaal).
Moore, who aces dramatic roles in her sleep but hasn't clicked in a comedy since 1998's The Big Lebowski, falters again here. (She can blame writer-director Bart Freundlich, her real-life husband.) The silly climax, set at the opening night of Moore's play, which appears to be the worst Broadway production since Kelsey Grammer's Macbeth, is embarrassing for all involved. (R)
Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell
DRAMA
Apparently, Vienna in 1900 was the safest place imaginable. The city's chief inspector Uhl (Giamatti) has nothing to do but skulk about at the astonishing performances by master illusionist Eisenheim (Norton). His dubious mission, given to him by the envious crown prince (the ever-villainous Sewell), is to investigate Eisenheim for fraud.
When a real crime finally does occur—the prince's fiancée Sophie (Biel) is murdered soon after rekindling an affair with Eisenheim, her long-lost love—Uhl turns up the heat on the magic man. These two actors make formidable onscreen opponents, between Norton's poker faces and Giamatti's steely gazes. But in a classic magician's misdirection, the powerhouse performances disguise a vaporous plot by writer-director Neil Burger (Interview with the Assassin). Instead of an awestruck "How'd they do that?" one wonders dejectedly, "Is that all there is?" (PG-13)
Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Lewis Black
COMEDY
Like Ferris Bueller before him, Bartleby (Long) has mastered all the angles. He finagled his way out of gym class by faking an allergy to sweat and once got a bully kicked out of school on sexual harassment claims. So when "B" is rejected by all eight colleges he applied to, he conjures up a faux Ohio college (South Harmon Institute of Technology, with an all-too-appropriate abbreviation)—located in an abandoned psychiatric facility—that attracts hundreds of tuition-paying fellow rejects. Long is plenty likable in his first lead role, but he's weighed down by the pedestrian direction of first-timer Steve Pink, who wrote Grosse Pointe Blank, and a script that refuses to heed its own advice about unleashing one's creativity. Instead, Accepted sticks to the usual college-comedy lesson plan: bubbly hot blondes, good; frat boys and smarmy deans, bad. (PG-13)
Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei
DRAMA
A factotum is a person who performs various tasks. Technically, this term should not apply to Henry Chinaski (Dillon), who finds odd jobs in pickle factories and bike-supply warehouses, but invariably goes MIA after a few hours to marinate at the local bar. The alter ego of writer-poet Charles Bukowski (who wrote the novel Factotum in 1975), Henry stumbles through life, falls for a fellow alcoholic (Taylor) and writes about the monotony of it all. Dillon nails the occasional quip, but one mostly feels trapped in a drunk tank. (R)
AGE: 28
WHERE YOU'VE SEEN HIM LATELY: He's the laid-back Mac in Apple ads, Jennifer Aniston's quirky coworker in The Break-Up and a performer on Vince Vaughn's comedy tour.
ON HIS SCHOOL DAYS: "I'd make up names of scientists to impress my chemistry teacher. This beautiful girl would turn around and smile. One day I dropped 'Dr. Emmett Brown' and the teacher goes, 'I've seen Back to the Future too. I'm on to you.' The girl shook her head, like, 'It's over.' It crushed me. Now she's probably married to, like, some critic who hates my movies."
Indie film queen Lili Taylor, 39, prefers dark roles—like Factotum's chain-smoking alcoholic Jan. How does she keep her edge?
TAKE A STAND I'd rather play someone dark and complicated than someone one-dimensional.
DON'T GO METHOD If I'd smoked regular nicotine [in Factotum], I would have started smoking again. I smoked herbal cigarettes.
WORK WITH FRIENDS I've known Matt for about 20 years, so it felt familiar. Any kind of depth to the relationship helps [the acting].
TAKE A BREATHER I'm kind of tuckered out right now, so I'm going to relax. I want to hit some water. I like to frolic.
SAMUEL L. JACKSON
Hollywood's king of cool, 57, takes on hundreds of poisonous reptiles at 30,000 ft. in the new tongue-in-cheek action movie Snakes on a Plane.
COULD YOU HANDLE YOUR SCALY COSTARS ON A REAL RED-EYE? People think I've got to be a tough guy because I play tough guys. I avoid trouble all the time. People seem to think I'm cool. If you spend a day with me, you'll think, "Really? That's it?"
ARE YOU AFRAID OF SNAKES? Nope. I grew up in the country, so I know that everything has a place to live. There was a rattlesnake in my yard just the other day.
HOW ABOUT PLANES? I generally get on planes and tell people, "Wake me up when we crash."
WHAT'S BEHIND THE INTERNET OBSESSION WITH THIS MOVIE? If people at the studios could figure it out, they'd be bottling it. A site has a song "Someone Tell Sam Jackson He's My Bro." I love it. I'm trying to download it to my iPod.
DID YOUR CURSE-FILLED LINES HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE'S NEW R RATING? Once you say what I said in the movie, you can't stay PG. We've got nudity, we've got gore, we went all the way. Don't you like to see snakes gnawing on people's necks?
ARE YOU AS AGGRESSIVE ON THE GOLF COURSE AS YOU ARE ONSCREEN? If I hit a bad shot, people five fairways away know it because I'm yelling [his favorite curse word], but if I hit a good shot, I'm yelling too. Everybody knows the difference in the yelling. Either Sam is playing well or he's playing bad.
For a first look at PEOPLE's review of Snakes on a Plane, go to www.people.com/snakesonaplane
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