COMEDY
CRITIC'S CHOICE
Do not see this one on an empty stomach, because that would be too trying during the constant parade of loving close-ups showing heaping platters of pasta, crusty loaves of bread and free-flowing ruby wine. Better to savor all of this savvy comedy about a divorced American woman building a new life for herself while restoring a crumbling villa in Italy than to expire of hunger pangs halfway through.
Under the Tuscan Sun is loosely adapted from the bestselling 1996 memoir of the same name by Frances Mayes. In her scripts for such earlier films as The Truth About Cats and Dogs and The Kid, writer-director Audrey Wells (Guinevere) demonstrated a knack for injecting wistful heart and knowing humor into commercial material. She delivers the same here. Using Mayes's passion for Italy and cooking as a base, Wells whips up an appealing, partly fictionalized story about a recently divorced professor and writer named Frances (Lane), who while vacationing in Italy impulsively buys a rattletrap house in Tuscany and begins renovations. Along the way our heroine makes friends, takes on a lover (Bova) and learns life is about risk.
It's standard enough stuff, but between a charming and committed performance by Lane, splendid scenery (shot on location in Cortona, Positano, Rome and Florence) and a realistic—for a big studio movie—view that there's often bitter mixed in with the sweet, this Tuscany earns its place in the sun. Finally, a word of praise for Oh (HBO's Arliss), who portrays Frances's best friend, a wisecracking, pregnant lesbian. One could happily watch this actress if she were simply breaking eggs; like a rubber band, she brings snap to her every scene. (PG-13)
The Rock, Seann William Scott, Rosario Dawson, Christopher Walken
ACTION-ADVENTURE
The Rock is growing on us. We're still not going to spend our Friday nights watching pro wrestling on television, but this muscular behemoth has a definite sense of humor, including about himself, and he shows both it and his chiseled physique off to advantage in The Rundown, a chase-'em-and-shoot-'em movie that is a cut above the average action-hero flick.
Witness this exchange, which occurs when the Rock (born Dwayne Johnson) enters a shanty bar in the middle of the Amazon jungle and says, "I'm looking for a man."
"What's your type?" replies Mariana (Dawson), a saucy barmaid.
The Rock plays Beck, who longs to open a gourmet restaurant but in the meantime hunts down people for pay. He travels to Brazil to find the adventurer son (Scott) of a rich client but soon finds himself battling both rebel soldiers and a corrupt mine owner (Walken) who commands whip-wielding thugs.
Director Peter Berg (Very Bad Things) brings a hip goofiness to the proceedings without sacrificing the action. Dawson does what she can with a dopey part and Scott is less offensively irksome than in his recent American Wedding turn. (PG-13)
Dennis Quaid, Sharon Stone, Stephen Dorff, Juliette Lewis
THRILLER
Anyone considering buying a house in the country might want to make sure the previous owner isn't a psychotic hunk who'll apply for a handyman job with you as soon as he gets out of jail. That's what happens to the Tilsons (Quaid and Stone), a nice Manhattan couple who relocate with their two kids to a rundown mansion in Upstate New York. When the ex-owner (Dorff) comes back, bad stuff—a dead pet pony, snakes in the beds—starts occurring.
Despite a decent cast (especially Quaid) and director (Mike Figgis of Leaving Las Vegas), Manor is a mediocre genre thriller. It starts off semi-promisingly, building some psychological depth into its characters, but then goes where far too many similar movies have gone before.(R)
Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman
HORROR
Everyone is young, wears leather, sports a pallor and sits or stands around looking louche while a heavy metal soundtrack clangs in the background. Figure you just wandered into an exclusive metropolitan nightclub? Nope, it's just the vacuous world of Underworld, a morose movie that pits vampires against were-wolves—all the folks described above belong to one of the two groups and have for centuries.
First-time director Len Wiseman (who also came up with the story) previously made music videos, and it shows. Underworld is fabulously sleek looking, but Wiseman unwisely forgets that viewers want to sink their teeth into a coherent plot, complicated characters and pungent dialogue, all of which are sadly lacking. Beckinsale and Speedman, who have been promising (she) and adequate (he) elsewhere, do little more than strike poses here. (R)
Jason Biggs
Jason Biggs, 25, plays a neurotic Jewish writer who falls for a difficult woman in Woody Allen's latest comedy, Anything Else.
ON WORKING WITH ALLEN "Woody can be very honest in his criticisms. I did a take, and he said, 'We could stop right now. But then I'm really afraid your parents are going to fall asleep at the premiere watching it.' It was a matter of being prepared for his sarcasm. But I definitely feel that it's the best work I've done."
ON COSTAR CHRISTINA RICCI "I worked with her before, on Prozac Nation. We're like the new Hepburn and Tracy. Move over, Ben and Jen, Hollywood's new power couple has arrived! We were both nervous around Woody, but we knew that we had each other."
ON DATING HIGH-MAINTENANCE WOMEN "I would like to think I'd put on the brakes before I fell for that [kind of] person. I just got out of a long relationship, so I'm readjusting to single life and having some fun."
Bollywood/Hollywood
A Canadian romantic comedy by director Deepa Mehta falls flat while trying to make fun of both Bollywood and Hollywood clichés. Its Indian-Canadian hero (Rahul Khanna), under pressure from his mom to date a nice Indian girl, hires an escort (Lisa Ray) he assumes is Hispanic and asks her to pretend she's Indian. (Not rated)
Luther
Joseph Fiennes flashes fiery eyes and makes thunderous speeches as Martin Luther, in a dull costume drama about how the rebel German monk started the Reformation in the early 1500s. (PG-13)
My Life Without Me
Sarah Polley and Mark Ruffalo have trouble breathing life into a drab drama about a young cleaning woman who, after a fatal diagnosis, embraces life fully—albeit briefly.
- Contributors:
- Leah Rozen,
- Sabrina McFarland.
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!
