Critic's Choice
Pixar's fourth feature for Disney is yet another miracle of computer animation, an instant classic, but with less of the surface brightness of Toy Story or Monsters, Inc. Nemo, which plunges a vulnerable little fish to the inky bottom of the ocean, also dips a fin into the deeper emotional waters of such traditional Disney masterpieces as Pinocchio.
Nemo is the sole surviving offspring of a clownfish named Marlin (Brooks), whose mate—along with countless fertilized eggs—was scarfed down by a shark in an attack on their home, a coral reef off Australia. On his first day of school Nemo, chafing at his father's fretful chaperoning, swims into open water beyond the reef. He's captured by a diver and added to a dental-office aquarium. While Nemo attempts to escape the tank aided by Gill, a tough, scarred tropical fish with the existential cool of William Holden in Stalag 17, Marlin sets out after his son. Accompanied by Dory, a regal blue tang suffering short-term memory problems (a weird but funny gag, thanks to DeGeneres's twittery delivery), he confronts primal terrors of the deep. Among these is our times' unshakable Spielbergian bugaboo, the Great White. (If Prokofiev were alive today, he'd be composing Peter and the Shark.) Its mouth, bristling with teeth, looks like a portable missile arsenal.
Which isn't to say the film is a trauma fest, Bambi with bubbles. A current of quicksilver humor sparkles through Nemo. That shark, named Bruce (which was what Steven Spielberg used to call the mechanical monster in Jaws), attends 12-step meetings to kick the fish-devouring habit. The animation is both sophisticated--creating two aquatic worlds, ocean and fish tank, is no lap around the kiddie pool--and breezily witty. When Marlin asks a school of fish for directions, they can't resist shuffling themselves into different answers, like a cheerleading squad with too many routines. (G)
BOTTOM LINE: Fin-omenal
BOTTOM LINE: Fin-omenal
Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron
Just when it seemed that Wahlberg was making a career out of starring in crummy remakes of classics (think Planet of the Apes and The Truth About Charlie, which was a redo of 1963's Charade), he breaks the jinx with this entertaining if unremarkable heist film, a snazzily updated version of a 1969 movie starring Michael Caine. But playing a thief bent on revenge against a fellow crook (Edward Norton) who double-crossed him, Wahlberg is the weak link in an otherwise solid ensemble cast. He remains curiously impassive throughout, as if he never quite connects with the character he's playing. A salami shows more emotion. (PG-13) --L.R.
BOTTOM LINE: A Job fairly well done
BOTTOM LINE: A Job fairly well done
•BRUCE ALMIGHTY Jim Carrey plays God in a funny if less than divine comedy. Peters out halfway through. (PG-13)
•SPELLBOUND In a rousing documentary, eight adolescents from diverse backgrounds compete for the title at the National Spelling Bee. (G)
The sun shone brightly on the French Riviera, and the beach, mere feet away, beckoned temptingly. But its lure was lost on the crowds shouting and shoving, to see movies like Dogville, in which Nicole Kidman's character is berated and mistreated on a setless soundstage for three hours. And that was one of the better, or at least more provocative, films among a notably dull lot at last month's Cannes Film Festival.
The annual 10-day fest showcases world cinema, leaning to fare that's decidedly meditative—movie critic speak for "sloooow." After opening with a fluffy French swashbuckler, Fanfan La Tulipe, the festival moved on to such seat-numbing entries as Distant (two Turkish men suffer from ennui but—in what passes for suspense—hope to trap a mouse that's scampering through their flat), Bright Future (an alienated bloke in Tokyo commits suicide, first bequeathing his pet jellyfish to his roommate) and, worst of all, The Brown Bunny, a vacuous, sexually explicit road movie written and directed by and starring Vincent Gallo (Buffalo 66), which deservedly drew derisive hoots at press screenings.
Even the festival's top prize winner, Elephant, director Gus Van Sant's film about a high school incident similar to Columbine's, is so free of a point of view one wonders why Van Sant bothered.
So what was worth seeing and will be opening in the U.S.? Dogville, from Danish director Lars von Trier (Dancer in the Dark), is Our Town if written in acid by Bertolt Brecht. It features a virtuoso performance by Kidman as a woman seeking refuge in a Rocky Mountain town in the 1930s. Though verbose and belabored, Dogville stays with you. Swimming Pool is an elegant mindbender about an English mystery novelist (Charlotte Rampling) in Provence. And The Fog of War, a documentary by director Errol Morris, is a fascinating reexamination of the legacy of former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and the Vietnam War.
Though all in all? The beach was Cannes' best bet.
- Contributors:
- Leah Rozen.
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