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What would you do if you found out you had only three or four months to live? Upon receiving a fatal diagnosis, George Monroe (Kline) decides to tear down the coastal California shack he has been living in and build his dream house. He also uses the time, and his construction project, to repair a badly frayed relationship with his surly, drug-taking teenage son (Christensen), patch up lingering differences with his ex-wife (Scott Thomas) and get back to his old foundations. There's only so much metaphorical weight that one house can bear. Life as a House piles it on to the breaking point but still, somewhat miraculously, manages to hold up.
House is one of those movies that sucks you in, even as you recognize it for the elegant soap opera that it is. This is due to the splendid central performance by Kline, an actor equally comfortable with comic and dramatic scenes and skillful at combining the two. Here he pours on the charm without edging into bluster. Even during a hokey scene in which he has to writhe in pain in his bed, Kline adds just the right touch of poignancy as George uses his last bit of energy to pull up a quilt to cover himself. The other reason House works is that the troubled relationships between George and his ex-wife and alienated son seem rooted in truth. George knows it's partly his fault that things deteriorated so badly, and he can't kick off before mending them. As he tells his boy, "I want you to be happy, and you're not."
Scott Thomas, given a chance to play a character warmer than her prissy misses in Random Hearts and The Horse Whisperer, purrs and gurgles like a radiator. Christensen (who'll portray Anakin Skywalker in the next Star Wars) is impressive as their son. As directed by Irwin Winkler (At First Sight), House is essentially a smiley-faced version of American Beauty: Middle-aged, suburban male has a life crisis but, instead of telling his family where to get off, enlists them in erecting a handsome home with huge picture windows overlooking the Pacific—the kind of place you'd die for. (R)
Bottom Line: Build it, and we'll come
Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Mary McCormack, Alfre Woodard
Kevin Spacey specializes in playing guys who either are, or think themselves, the smartest person in the room. If he's not sneering outright, there's often a smirk playing at the edges of his lips. He's at it again in K-Pax, an initially intriguing but ultimately disappointing drama in which Spacey is cast as Prot, a man who claims to be visiting Earth from a distant planet.
Prot is committed to a psych ward in Manhattan where his shrink is Dr. Mark Powell (Bridges). The patient tells Powell that he's an alien from the planet K-Pax, then adds reassuringly, "But I'm not going to leap out of your chest." Powell soon finds himself wondering if the brainy, serene Prot may indeed be a genuine E.T. Just about then, K-Pax takes a regrettable plot turn that puts it on a plodding path that viewers have already traveled too many times. Spacey and Bridges click together, and McCormack has her moments as Bridges's wife, but the gifted Woodard, cast as Bridges's boss, is woefully underused. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Looney bin there, done that
David Wenham, Susie Porter
Emotional involvement. That's the answer to the question, "What can possibly be better than sex?" posed by the provocative title of this slight but beguiling romantic comedy from Australia. There's sheet scraping aplenty in Better Than Sex, but the real workout involves the gyrations that a couple put their heads and hearts through trying to go beyond the physical.
Sex comes easily for Josh (Wenham), a photographer, and Cin (Porter), a dress designer, but they grow skittish when an intended one-night stand at her Sydney loft turns into something more. As he puts it, "It starts off as a sex thing, and then suddenly there's an emotional energy you can't control." Wenham and Porter are tremendously appealing here, he a sort of suave dork, she a cynic easily bruised. Writer-director Jonathan Teplitzky, who's making his movie debut, has spent years shooting ads and music videos and it shows: The low-budget Sex has plenty of zip but is also rather facile. (R)
Bottom Line: Here's to good Sex
Lance Bass, Joey Fatone
'N Sync member Bass makes his movie-acting debut as Kevin, a run-of-the-mill Chicagoan who meets the girl of his dreams (Emmanuelle Chriqui) while riding the L train. They know they were meant for each other five minutes into their conversation: They both can recite the names of all the Presidents! But Kevin chokes—can't bring himself to ask for her name or number—and so spends his time in a lovelorn search, assisted by three buddies (including 'N Sync bandmate Fatone) and a local paper interested in his story.
This is a boy-meets-girl romance for Bass's fan base and no one else. When Bass smiles, which is mostly what he does here, he has the slightly startled expression of someone in his high school yearbook photo. (PG)
Bottom Line: 'N Sync-ing feeling
Snoop Dogg, Pam Grier, Khalil Kain
An enterprising young man (Kain) buys a decaying mansion in an inner-city neighborhood, planning to turn it into a nightclub. When he moves into the dump with two siblings and a buddy, the neighborhood psychic (Grier) stops by to issue a dire warning: "If you stay in this house one more night, you may as well be sleeping in your grave."
Per horror movie formula, the kids ignore her, and soon the floorboards are slick with blood. The ex-owner of the place, a rackets king named Bones (the rapper Snoop Dogg) who was murdered in 1979, returns from the dead seeking vengeance. Proficiently directed by Ernest Dickerson, Bones is lurid enough to satisfy hardcore chiller fans but lacks the substance to win over new converts. Snoop Dogg glides through Bones as if being a ghost was the world's coolest job, which it is when you get a romantic scene with the ever-sexy Grier. (R)
Bottom Line: Snoop Dogg earns his Bones
In 1999 moviegoers were chilled to the bone by Haley Joel Osment's whimpering Sixth Sense confession, "I see dead people." Now Brittany Murphy, 23, has them mimicking her creepy, sing-songy "I'll never tell," the tag line from the thriller Don't Say a Word. "Everybody asks me to say it," she says. "I get a kick every time I hear it."
Especially in a crowded theater. With the premiere canceled after the Sept. 11 attacks, Murphy found herself plunking down $6.50 to see the movie in Detroit, where she's working on a film. Says she: "I was yearning for some escapism."
She is now offering audiences a double dose with Don't and Riding in Cars with Boys. On the set of that movie the actress, who lives in L.A. with her mom, escaped boredom by prank-calling costar Drew Barrymore's husband, Tom Green. "We'd leave him silly songs on voicemail," she says, bursting out laughing. What kind of songs? She'll never tell.
Bandits Bank robbers Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton both fall for mixed-up housewife Cate Blanchett, who's fun to watch. (PG-13)
Focus Drama about prejudice has clerk William H. Macy being mistaken for Jewish when he starts wearing glasses. Based on a 1945 novel by Arthur Miller, the movie plays like a dutiful public TV offering. (PG-13)
From Hell A police inspector (Johnny Depp) in Victorian London tries to track down Jack the Ripper. Stylish and smarter than it has to be. (R)
Mulholland Drive More weirdness from director-writer David Lynch as a beautiful amnesiac (Laura Elena Harring) tries to figure out who she is. (R)
Training Day Denzel Washington scores big as a corrupt L.A. cop. (R)
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto,
- Michael Fleeman.
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!
