Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Scarlett Johansson
Dan Foreman's new boss looks like he has barely started shaving. "How old are you?" demands Foreman (Quaid), 51, on meeting whippersnapper Carter Duryea (Grace), the 26-year-old interloper who has snatched the older man's corner office and title following a buyout of the sports magazine where Foreman had headed advertising sales.
Old enough to know that firing the savvy veteran would be bad for business. Despite their generational clashes, the ambitious Duryea keeps Foreman on as his No. 2 in this smartly written, compassionate comedy about the contemporary workplace from writer-director Paul Weitz (About a Boy). What the young biz whiz takes longer to realize is how much he will learn about life, love, family and actually liking one's job from the old-timer.
Quaid is ruggedly appealing as the self-assured Foreman, and Grace continues to impress with his light comedic touch. In supporting roles, Marg Helgenberger and Johansson add zest as, respectively, Foreman's wife and daughter. In Good Company pulls its punches toward the end, but that doesn't keep it from being tremendously entertaining. (PG-13)
COMEDY
Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix
CRITIC'S CHOICE
Paul Rusesabagina didn't intend to be a hero. But that's what he became in 1994 when members of the Hutu group in Rwanda began slaughtering fellow countrymen who belonged to the Tutsis. Rusesabagina—who was Hutu himself but married to a Tutsi—sheltered more than a thousand Tutsi refugees in the four-star European-owned hotel in Kigali where he served as manager.
It is an inspiring, heartbreaking true story, one well served by the terrific Hotel Rwanda and especially the talented Cheadle. He is quietly compelling as Rusesabagina, never showboating the way a lesser actor might. Watch his resolve as it becomes clear there will be no help from the West. Cheadle shows Rusesabagina using guile, wit and even bribes of whiskey to save those he could, risking his own life repeatedly because, as a decent man, he had no other choice. There are standout turns by Okonedo as Rusesabagina's wife and Nolte as a frustrated U.N. official. (PG-13)
DRAMA
Sean Penn, Naomi Watts
Sean Penn is the reason—isn't he always?—to see this muddled movie about a ne'er-do-well who, having failed at marriage and various jobs, decides to hijack a plane and crash it into the White House in 1974.
Inspired partly by the real-life story of would-be killer Samuel Byck (spelled Bicke here), The Assassination of Richard Nixon gives Penn the opportunity to deliver another accomplished performance full of feeling and nuance as he charts Bicke's unraveling. The movie posits that Bicke's cockamamie assassination plan is somehow a noble expression of his frustration at both Watergate and the hamster wheel of the American dream. No matter how good Penn is, it's difficult to sympathize with Bicke. This former tire and office furniture salesman is, after all, more than a little nuts. Watts scores in her few scenes as Bicke's understandably out-of-patience ex-wife, and Don Cheadle (see Hotel Rwanda review, above) has a couple of remarkable scenes as a buddy with whom Bicke hopes to go into business. (R)
DRAMA
Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Benjamin Bratt
The troubled protagonist of this impressively clear-sighted film has spent a dozen years in prison for child molestation. Newly released, Walter (Bacon) is trying to get his life back on track. He lands a job at a lumberyard in Philadelphia, begins a tentative romance with a coworker (Sedgwick) and does his best to suppress the urges he still feels. The Woodsman, sensitively directed and cowritten by first-time filmmaker Nicole Kassell, presents a realistic, if guardedly optimistic, look at Walter's prospects for overcoming his sickness. In an intense performance, Bacon shines brightly as a man only slowly beginning to understand why what he wants can never ever be had. (R)
The Aviator
Director Martin Scorsese has made a lively if overlong biopic about moneybags Howard Hughes, focusing on his early years as a Hollywood playboy, movie producer and aviation pioneer. Leonardo DiCaprio scores as Hughes and Cate Blanchett contributes a witty turn as a bossy Katharine Hepburn. (PG-13)
The Merchant of Venice
That fellow William Shakespeare sure knew how to write a courtroom scene. There's a corker of one near the end of this handsome, crisply played version of the Bard's drama about Shylock (Al Pacino), the vengeful moneylender. Jeremy Irons and Lynn Collins costar. (R)
Fat Albert
Hey, hey, hey, this kids' comedy is no more than okay. (PG)
HOTS TOTS Identical twins Bradley and Spencer Pickren, 2, share the role of Little Jack, Robert De Niro's sign-language-fluent grandson, in Meet the Fockers.
DO THEY REALLY KNOW SIGN LANGUAGE? Yes. Mom Wendy, a former pediatric occupational therapist in Sacramento, taught them to sign words like "hungry" before they could talk: "We had an insight into what they were thinking much earlier than if we had waited for them to speak."
POTTY MOUTH
In the movie, Little Jack's first word is a dirty one. But don't tell Bradley yet—his mom taught him it meant "French fry." When he said it on cue, she says, "it was our proudest moment."
Troy ($29.95)
Movie:
Extras:
Brad Pitt's big fat Greek epic, a bloated adaptation of Homer's Iliad, features plenty of muscles but little heft. As the warrior Achilles, Pitt broods and preens (where did he find hair gel in ancient Greece?), leaving the heroic acting to Eric Bana, as Pitt's Trojan foil Hector, and a regal Peter O'Toole, playing Troy's King Priam. Extras: A second disc of bonus material yields three brief but interesting making-of featurettes (most notably on the fight sequence preparations) and an overview of the Greek gods, who are barely mentioned in the movie. (R)
Garden State ($29.98)
Movie:
Extras:
Making his writing and directorial debut, Zach Braff impresses in this poignant comedy as a washed-up actor who returns to his New Jersey hometown for his mother's funeral and ends up connecting with a quirky stranger (a magnificent Natalie Portman). Extras: In two engaging commentaries and a charming documentary, the Scrubs star explains how he navigated the independent-film world to make his Garden grow. (R)
The Ultimate Ron Burgundy Two-Pack ($27)
Movie:
Extras:
As a chauvinistic '70s TV anchor, Will Ferrell mines occasional nuggets of comic gold in the uneven Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (released in an unrated version that features some gross new gags). This set includes a second film, Wake-Up Ron Burgundy, which has been cobbled together from Anchorman outtakes and a discarded subplot involving bank robbers. The result is scattershot but offers funny turns from Saturday Night Live vets Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler. Extras: Several hilarious deleted scenes and clips of Ferrell-as-Burgundy on MTV and ESPN prove that the character works best in small doses. (Not rated)
- Contributors:
- Leah Rozen,
- Carolyn Campbell,
- Jason Lynch.
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!
