Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney, Holland Taylor
When this piffle of a movie was being pitched, someone must have optimistically promised, "Think Pretty Woman in reverse." Yeah, and Alexander was Patton in togas.
In The Wedding Date, Kat (Messing), a successful, single woman in Manhattan, hires Nick (Mulroney), a high-priced male escort, to pose as her date during her younger sister's wedding in London. Like all movie prostitutes, Nick has a big ol' heart of gold, along with an impressive brain—he was a comparative lit major at Brown University—and abs of steel. Sure enough, in between playacting at being an ardent couple to fool the wedding party, Kat and Nick show signs of being smitten for real.
This is obviously whipped-cream-light romantic fantasy, but a movie like Date has to be grounded in reality to work. The film is so skimpy on details (Why did Nick become an escort? What exactly is Kat's job?) and so choppily edited that characters and situations are never established well enough for a viewer to give much of a hoot what happens next. Messing displays a nervous charm, and Mulroney speaks in a slow, sexy drawl, but in no way is this a Date to remember. (PG-13)
ROMANTIC COMEDY
Judy Davis, Geoffrey Rush, Jesse Spencer
His own dreams of glory on the soccer field lost to marrying young, the Great Depression and rivers of alcohol, a father pushes his sons to achieve athletically in Australia in the 1950s and early'60s. Two of the boys are skilled swimmers and he pits them against each other, never bothering to conceal his favoritism for the younger. It is the story of the rejected son (played by Spencer, a promising hunk) that is at the center of this engrossing drama, based on the boyhood of screenwriter Anthony Fingleton, who won the Australian backstroke championship in 1961 and '63.
As directed by Russell Mulcahy (Highlander), Swimming Upstream does an excellent job of conveying a specific sense of time and place and a son's difficult journey to understanding and forgiveness. Rush, as the abusive father, and Davis, as his long-suffering wife, both give superb performances. (PG-13)
BIOPIC
James McAvoy, Steven Robertson, Romola Garai
Two young men with severe physical disabilities band together in an inspirational Irish movie. Rory O'Shea Was Here begins as potentially cloying but ends up, through a combination of skilled performances and the careful accretion of detail, winning over an audience.
Michael Connolly (Robertson) has been warehoused in an institution near Dublin since shortly after he was born with cerebral palsy. One day, Rory O'Shea (McAvoy), a rebellious hellion afflicted with muscular dystrophy, arrives and quickly makes shy Michael his ally, partly because Rory is the only person who can understand Michael's slurred speech. The two eventually get an apartment together in the city, hire a female caretaker (Garai) to whom both are attracted, and learn the ins and outs of independent living.
Rory, while covering familiar territory, works because it keeps its focus tightly on its lead characters, enmeshing viewers in the nitty-gritty of their daily struggles. The more we come to know them, the more we care. (R)
DRAMA
Yûya Yagira, Ayu Kitaura
CRITIC'S CHOICE
Four children spending a day exploring their urban neighborhood are thrilled to discover flowers stubbornly poking through the metal and concrete of a sidewalk grate. Like the posies, the kids manage to survive despite the worst of circumstances in this small, beautifully wrought Japanese film. The four siblings, aged 5 to 12 and each by a different absent father, have been abandoned in a cramped Tokyo apartment by their flighty, self-indulgent mother. We see the world through their eyes as the months pass and seasons change, with money and food growing scarce. The few adults the kids encounter are clueless as to the gravity of their situation.
Director-writer Hirokazu Kore-eda (After Life), who was inspired by a true story, gets wonderfully naturalistic performances from his young actors. Of particular note is Yagira, who, as the oldest, has a solemnity that's heartbreaking. (PG-13)
DRAMA
Assault on Precinct 13
A solid, slam-bang action film in which cops and criminals join together to protect a police precinct house from attackers. Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne star in this remake of a 1976 cult movie. (R)
Fascination
In a laughably inept crime thriller, a widow (Jacqueline Bisset, lovely as ever) reweds soon after her hubby's drowning, causing her son (Adam Garcia) to suspect the worst. You'll wait in vain for a line of dialogue that isn't hopelessly clichéd. (R)
Born into Brothels
In this don't-miss documentary, deservedly nominated for an Oscar, filmmaker Zana Briski (with codirector Ross Kauffman) gives cameras and photography lessons to the children of prostitutes in Calcutta. The kids' photos are inspiring, as is Briski's quest to enroll the children in a good school. (Not rated)
James Cameron Titanic director James Cameron, 50, is back at sea: For the new IMAX documentary Aliens of the Deep, Cameron dived nearly 3 miles below the ocean's surface with a crew of scientists to film some of Earth's most exotic creatures.
ON SHOOTING UNDERWATER I love imaginative filmmaking. But every time I go on a dive, I think, "You can't make this stuff up." We had two ships, four submersibles and robotic cameras. A big challenge was the ocean itself. You never know what it is going to do to you.
ON DIRECTING SCIENTISTS If you put a camera on somebody long enough, they become an actor. They get nervous about what they're wearing, if their hair is okay, whether they said something stupid. We had to create trust.
ON TURNING 50 It's a reality check, but I'm happy where I am. I'm embarking on another big movie project [Battle Angel, a science fiction adventure based on a Japanese comic book]. I'm doing these documentaries, which I love.
ON STILL FEELING LIKE THE KING OF THE WORLD As a dad I feel like a king when I come home and our four kids [with actress wife Suzy Amis] climb all over me.
Ray ($29.98)
Movie:
With a transcendent performance as Ray Charles, Jamie Foxx nails the role of a lifetime in this finely tuned biopic, released on DVD in the wake of its six Oscar nominations (including Best Picture, Director and Actor).
Extras: Educational commentary from director Taylor Hackford, who points out where the film takes liberties with Charles's real life; affecting deleted scenes (best viewed individually, as they lose potency when included in the DVD's alternate "extended" version of the film); must-see preproduction footage of Charles, who died last year, exuberantly proclaiming "I think the boy got it!" as he teaches Foxx to play "Mess Around." (PG-13)
Shall We Dance? ($29.99)
Movie:
Richard Gere takes up dance lessons after becoming transfixed by instructor Jennifer Lopez. The 1996 Japanese original (also newly available on DVD) glided along gracefully, but this overly broad, chemistry-deficient remake has two left feet.
Extras: Fun glimpses of the actors learning their choreography and bemoaning post-rehearsal soreness; lively excised dance numbers featuring the supporting cast, which prove far more energetic than any sequences in the final cut. (PG-13)
The Notebook ($27.95)
Movie:
James Garner reads a tale of star-crossed 1940s South Carolina lovebirds to an Alzheimer's-afflicted Gena Rowlands in this slow-as-molasses weepie. Only Garner's understated turn rises above the sugary surroundings.
Extras: Mildly diverting making-of featurettes; genial commentary from director Nick Cassavetes, who makes a valiant (though unsuccessful) attempt to rebut criticism that his film is "schmaltzy." (PG-13)
- Contributors:
- Leah Rozen,
- Sabrina Mcfarland,
- 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!
