Bandits is like seltzer water: Effervescent at first, it eventually goes flat. A caper comedy about two escaped bank robbers and the high-strung beauty with whom they both fall in love, the movie is often amusing but meanders throughout.
Convicts Joe Blake (Willis) and Terry Collins (Thornton) break out of a federal penitentiary and begin sticking up a string of banks in the coastal Northwest. Quick-tempered Blake is the duo's action man, while hypochondriacal Collins is the brain. They have a dream: to raise enough money to open a swanky nightclub down in Mexico. Things get complicated when Kate Wheeler (Blanchett), a bored housewife with a mercurial temperament, allows herself to be carjacked by Collins. She talks her way into joining their little gang, first pairing off romantically with Blake, then with his shy guy partner. "Kate," Collins warns Blake, "is an iceberg waiting for the Titanic."
Blanchett (Elizabeth) doesn't appear until 40 minutes into the film, but her arrival adds much needed fizz. Her performance here is likely to do for her career what The Fabulous Baker Boys did for Michelle Pfeiffer's. Blanchett is at once sexy, funny, wily and vulnerable. Willis cruises through this one, doing his tough but charming act, while Thornton is all comic twitches and quirks. He gets most of the picture's best lines ("I've got Quasimodo going off in my ear," he says, complaining of a ringing sound). The problem is, director Barry Levinson (Wag the Dog) allows the willfully colorful Bandits to drag on too long. While it's lovely seeing Willis and Blanchett slow dance in evening clothes on a beach, they later prance about on another beach lighting sparklers at sunset. The first scene is a mood setter, the second a self-indulgent waste of time. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Don't bank on it
Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Ann Miller
This noirish thriller has more twists than the winding mountaintop Los Angeles road after which it is named. Following the lyrical forthrightness of The Straight Story (1999), writer-director David Lynch has returned to the woozy, surrealistic vision he made his trademark in Blue Velvet (1986) and TV's Twin Peaks (1990-91).
Drive revolves around a mysterious beauty (Harring) who suffers amnesia after a car crash in L.A.; a fresh-faced actress new to Hollywood (Watts); and a hotshot film director (Theroux) who is threatened by sinister businessmen. Halfway through, though, the characters change names and personalities and the story makes a screeching U-turn, depositing viewers on the slippery grounds of the Planet Lynch. Why is a woman with bright blue hair crying rivulets while lip-synching a Spanish song at a nightclub portentously called Silencio? And who is that fuzzy-looking creature hanging out near a coffee shop?
Lynch originally made Drive as a pilot for ABC in 1999. When the network passed, he reassembled his cast and shot new footage almost a year later. Expect to be both piqued and puzzled; Drive intrigues while leaving you scratching your head over what, if anything, it all means. (R)
Bottom Line: Beautiful drive, no clear destination
Leelee Sobieski, Albert Brooks, Carol Kane, John Goodman
At 17, Jennifer (Sobieski) rings her eyes with dark makeup, wears gold jewelry through her pierced chin, nose and eyebrows and dresses in black. Her wardrobe matches her morose view of life. Shortly after 49-year-old Randall (Brooks) reluctantly hires her to work in his store, he jokingly asks, "Do you have a copy of The Bell Jar by your bed?" Indeed she does. Sylvia Plath's self-pitying autobiographical novel about a young woman too sensitive for this world is Jennifer's bible.
My First Mister, actress Christine Lahti's debut as a feature director (she won an Oscar for a short, Lieberman in Love, in 1996), is a sweet, soulful drama that captures the angst and uncertainties of late adolescence deftly and with humor. Jennifer desperately needs a friend and so, it turns out, does the lonely, buttoned-down Randall. Slowly the two become confidantes and fill the empty spaces in one another. He makes her see that she can connect with the world; she goads him into loosening up, even persuading him to get a tattoo. "Does it come in a flesh color?" he asks. A melodramatic plot twist—Randall has a big secret—cheapens and drags down Mister's final third but not enough to leave a bad aftertaste. Both Sobieski and Brooks give carefully considered, nuanced performances, she providing the pepper and he the salt. (R)
Bottom Line: Almost Mister right
Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida
At the start of this feminist firestorm from France, 12-year-old Anaïs and her 15-year-old sister Elena live in wary coexistence. On a family vacation, Elena (Mesquida, who looks like a French Mena Suvari) flirts with a college student. When he pressures her into sex, she at first shrinks away in fear, asking him whether he loves her. Anaïs (Reboux), the less pretty sister, says she wants to lose her virginity without such an emotional to-do. Yet she turns her face to the wall and weeps when, in a scene that induces cringes, Elena and the student make love in the girls' shared room.
This unsettling interplay of harshness and tenderness ends in appalling violence. (Warning: The movie is very tough to watch.) If the finale seems implausible, it's just director Catherine Breillat's unapologetically brutal way of driving home the girls' powerlessness. (Not rated)
Bottom Line: Unforgettable sister act
Don't Say a Word In order to get his daughter back from kidnappers, shrink Michael Douglas must induce patient Brittany Murphy to divulge a secret. Psychobabble. (R)
Joy Ride Vroom with a view. Sharp, scary movie about two brothers (Paul Walker and Steve Zahn) and a pal (Leelee Sobieski) being chased by a murderous trucker. (R)
The Others Nicole Kidman gives a haunting performance in this smartly told ghost story. (PG-13)
Training Day Denzel Washington is spellbinding as a corrupt L.A. cop trying to draw idealistic rookie Ethan Hawke into his web. (R)
Zoolander A slight but inventive comedy set in the hip, carefree world of fashion, with Ben Stiller. (PG-13)
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
