Featured attraction
In an excellent performance that's both inspired and shrewd, Grant confronts and exploits the fact that, at 41, he's inching past the age at which he can play those frisky, sexually playful Anglo puppies. Cast as Will Freeman, a single, independently rich Londoner who revels in a shallow genius for seduction, Grant hasn't lost his dexterity with facial muscles: The lips, the jaw, the brows shift and raise and lower in amazing syncopation, like a coin-operated mechanical head in an arcade.
Still an undercurrent of dysfunction seeps through. Will's latest trick for hitting on women is to join a single-parents group and pretend he has lost custody of a son. But the old mojo isn't to be relied on, and finally Will retreats to his loft and collapses in princely solitude. His condition, as played by Grant, is a deep but gentlemanly funk (see p. 169).
Will's game trips up after a date from the support group brings along a friend's child named Marcus (Hoult). A strange boy with a bowl cut and an ugly peaked cap that make him look like an emotionally needy acorn, Marcus is the son of a would-be earth mother (Collette) who can't cope with the world and has fallen into a suicidal depression. Marcus gravitates toward Will for help, and Will slowly responds. If the story gets dangerously thin—no climax should hinge on a reformed swinger and a frail little boy singing "Killing Me Softy with His Song" at a school concert—Grant is pretty well flawless. And Collette, always good, is heartbreakingly believable. Her concrete pain is the right balance against Grant's dapper despair. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Hugh's the man
Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon, Judi Dench
Oscar Wilde's 1895 comedy unfolds in a world in which the oxygen has been pumped out and a lighter, dizzying element pumped in. The plot—something to do with two Victorian playboys, a terrifying pillar of society named Lady Bracknell and a baby in a handbag—is close to Dada, and the dialogue pings back and forth in a volley of arch, nonsensical epigrams. ("All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.") It's brittle fluff. Not something Oliver Stone would want to get his mitts on.
Instead Earnest has been adapted and directed by another Oliver, surname Parker, who does plenty of rough damage on his own. Parker jollies things up, doling out the play's action into a number of randy period settings, including a gambling club—and a tattoo parlor! Even with a cast as sharp as Everett as ne'er-do-well Algernon Moncrieff, Witherspoon as moony young Cecily Cardew and Dench as Lady Bracknell, the performances blur in the hurly-burly. (PG)
Bottom Line: Misguided walk on the Wilde side
Documentary
Cultural history can be mined from the tiniest, weirdest strands of Americana. As comprehensive as it is laid-back, Dogtown examines a band of long-haired skateboarders who today would be called extreme but in the '70s just seemed jubilantly crazy as they swooped up and down emptied pools in L.A. Directed by Stacy Peralta, a veteran of this scene, Dogtown begins with the Venice Beach surfers who influenced the skateboarders and ends, as do many tales of teen rebellion, with a lifestyle repackaged and sold to the millions. Not that any of the gang, now middle-aged, seems cynical. To hear them talk about it, skateboarding remains the Holy Grail on urethane wheels. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Rad
Lior Ashkenazi, Ronit Elkabetz
This unsettling, powerful movie from Tel Aviv kicks off as a nicely nuanced social comedy. At 31, Zaza, a Ph.D. student, hasn't married, and his parents are determined to make a match for him. A meeting with a 17-year-old beauty seems to go well. But—farcical complication No. 1—Zaza already has a lover, an older divorcé with a little girl. Then—farcical complication No. 2—his parents are locked out of their apartment overnight. They take refuge with relatives who urge them to lay it on the line with Junior. After that, humor gives way to stinging rebukes, and the uniformly good cast, who were such enjoyable, even familiar company, leave the audience touched by their shame and regret. (Not rated)
Bottom Line: Taut comedy about family ties
John Guth and Jeff Tweiten
They've slept in a 24-ft.-by-10-ft. tent since January, but Guth, 32, and Tweiten, 25, are neither soldiers nor homeless. Try two rabid Star Wars fans making darn sure they're first in line to see Episode II Attack of the Clones when it opens May 16 at Seattle's Cinerama Theatre. "It's urban camping," says Guth, who runs a local multimedia company as well as the 1,300-member Seattle Star Wars Society. The pals take turns ducking out for supplies and showers at a friend's place; tent amenities include a grill, a model of R2-D2 and an Internet-wired computer. "A lot of ladies send their pictures and want to know if I'm interested," says Guth. (Yep, both guys are single.) Other e-mailers "say, 'Get a life. You're a nerd.'"
At least they're caring nerds. The two hope to raise $300,000 for children's charities from donations. Tweiten, an artist, also sees the 136-day feat as a sort of Jedi-Zen experiment. "I was trying to capture the essence of waiting," he says. "We're entering the new millennium; everything is instant gratification." And after the credits roll? "I want to go home," Guth says, "and cut my yard."
The Believer Prickly, intense drama about a neo-Nazi thug who turns out to be Jewish. Ryan Gosling (the kid psycho in Murder by Numbers) gives a strong, complex performance in a difficult role. He's repugnant, magnetic, funny, scary and finally pitiable. (R)
Changing Lanes Green light. An involving drama about the bruising battle of wills between a hotshot lawyer (Ben Affleck) and a salesman (Samuel L Jackson) after a minor car collision. (R)
The Rookie Fine family film about a high school science teacher (Dennis Quaid) who, in his mid-30s, takes one last shot at pitching in pro baseball. (G)
The Scorpion King Rock-bottom. Wrestling's the Rock (Dwayne Johnson) makes like an action hero. (PG-13)
Spider-Man A lot of fun, though we like Spidey (Tobey Maguire) better when he's out of tights than in 'em. (PG-13)
Unfaithful Steamy thriller about adultery from Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction). As the straying wife, Diane Lane goes full-throttle. As the wronged husband, Richard Gere goes nowhere. (R)
Y Tu Mamá También Sexy but profound Mexican movie tracks a road trip by two youths and an older woman who carries a secret. (Not rated)
- Contributors:
- Cynthia Flash.
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!
