Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman
A long with the vivid foliage, one of the pleasures of fall is that movies aimed at grownups return to theaters. In these, characters are complex, relationships are difficult and not every challenge can be overcome. The latest honorable entry is The Human Stain, depicting the tragic love affair between a widowed classics professor and a cleaning lady nearly 40 years his junior.
Of course, "honorable" is a weasel word, appropriate for conveying admiration but not outright praise. That nuance would be appreciated by Coleman Silk (Hopkins), an academic whose precision with language gets him into trouble—he refers to absent students as "spooks," meaning ghost, unaware that the truants are African-Americans. The resultant campus uproar forces him to retire. He soon embarks on a steamy affair with broom-pushing Faunia Farley (Kidman, in a skilled performance both sexy and sorrowful). Of their unlikely pairing, Silk prophetically tells a pal, "She's not my first love, and granted, she's not my great love, but she is sure as hell my last love." Silk has a big secret that has warped his life. In the sad-eyed Faunia, he finds someone he can trust with it.
Stain, based on Philip Roth's 2000 novel and directed by Robert Benton(Twilight), is about the costs of mendacity. Its themes are clear, but the telling fails to compel. It awkwardly toggles between the Coleman-Faunia love story and flashbacks of Coleman's youth(when he's played by a praiseworthy Wentworth Miller, see page 112), which serve to reveal his secret. The movie ends up never igniting. Hopkins gives a committed and thoughtful performance, but the Welsh-born actor is badly miscast—to say why would be to reveal the plot's major surprise—and it throws the film off pitch. (R)
DRAMA
Hayden Christensen, Peter Sarsgaard
CRITIC'S CHOICE
Not since All The President's Men (1976), the true story of how two young Washington Post writers brought down President Nixon, has there been a real-life journalistic thriller that so enthrallingly explains why reporters and their methods matter. But while Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein became fourth estate heroes for uncovering Watergate, this movie's protagonist, Stephen Glass, betrayed the profession.
Glass (Christensen) was still in his early 20s when, as a hotshot staff scribe at The New Republic in the mid-'90s, his byline began showing up above splashy scoops. When competitors tried playing catch-up, they had trouble tracking down Glass's sources. The explanation eventually became shockingly clear: Glass had created his stories largely out of thin air and then gone to elaborate lengths to cover his tracks.
Christensen, making up here for his stiff turn in Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones, is terrific. His Glass is a neurotic mess desperate to please. "Are you mad at me?" is his constant, gulping refrain. The unlikely hero of tyro director-writer Billy Ray's Shattered is meek Chuck Lane (Sarsgaard), Glass's editor, who only slowly grasps the scope of the younger man's fictions. Like his character, Sarsgaard blooms before your eyes, growing and taking on color. (PG-13)
DRAMA
Charlie Sheen, Simon Rex, Anthony Anderson, Anna Faris
The Scary Movie franchise, which began in 2000 as a parody of Scream, now passes from director Keenen Ivory Wayans to David Zucker (Airplane!). This is a mistake. True, we wouldn't even have Scary Movie without the wet-pasta formula established by Airplane! back in 1980: Hurl a joke against the screen and hope it sticks with a loud, sloppy splatter. But Scary Movie 3, a spoof of recent hits including The Ring, Signs and, strangely, 8 Mile, feels more like fossil than formula. When Leslie Nielsen turns up as the President—the same sort of stone-faced-idiot role he perfected in all those Naked Gun comedies—you stop hoping for the inspired, crazy gags that made the previous movies such a kick. Nothing here comes close to Scary Movie 2's parody of Raging Bull, in which a black cat swings a paw and knocks out a human adversary in blood-spurting slo-mo. (PG-13)
COMEDY
Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo
Teacher Frannie Avery (Ryan) is an unhappy woman with few friends and an empty love life. After a woman is murdered near Frannie's New York City apartment, she begins a torrid affair with the detective (Ruffalo) investigating the case. There's just one teeny problem: Frannie suspects he maybe the killer.
In the Cut is a well-intended failure. Director Jane Campion (The Piano) and star Ryan have said they wanted to bring a woman's perspective to a crime thriller. Tell it to Gloria Steinem. Though Ryan and Ruffalo both give bold performances, Cut is so irritatingly dim when it comes to its heroine's motives and conduct that one quickly loses patience. It is really no more than a so-so woman-in-peril film tricked up with arty camera work and look-who's-nekkid! sex.
One scene, though, tantalizes with the promise of what might have been. It's when the cop tells the better educated and more articulate Frannie that he has to work double-time mentally just to keep up with her. How, and whether, a smart woman persuades a guy that staying around is worth it is the film I want to see. (R)
THRILLER
Katie Holmes Dawson's Creek alum Katie Holmes, 24, costars with a turkey in Pieces of April, Robert Downey Jr. in The Singing Detective and beau Chris Klein offscreen.
ON WRANGLING A BIRD IN APRIL: "I don't need to work with a turkey again. We shot in New York in the middle of a heat wave, and it started to smell."
ON SINGING WITH DOWNEY: "It was a crazy, crazy movie. I loved lip-synching and just dancing around. I did a musical in high school. I'd do it again—maybe."
ON LIFE IN HER TWENTIES: "I'm not as protected as I was. It's confusing and it's hard, but it's a lot of fun. I'm having a good time in L.A. A lot of drugs. No, no, no, I'm kidding. I'm a loner, so I watch movies, shop a lot."
ON MAKING TIME FOR ROMANCE WITH CHRIS KLEIN: "We're both busy. That's the nature of acting. It can be Monday at 3 and you're home, and then Monday at 6, you're suddenly on a flight somewhere."
ON HER DAWSON'S COSTARS: "I miss having breakfast with them in the makeup trailer. I went to Kerr [Smith]'s wedding this June. It's weird, like when your siblings get married. It's like, 'Ohhh! Wow! We're all growing Up.' "
ALIEN
Billed as "The Director's Cut," this rerelease of the 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece includes a few snippets of previously unseen footage restored by director Ridley Scott. Is it still scary? You bet. (R)
Die Mommie, Die!
Female impersonator Charles Busch is brilliant fun as a former pop star turned monster out to murder her husband in a campy comedy that runs out of steam long before its finish. (R)
Elephant
Empty and exploitative. Students wander through a high school, doing little. Then something violent happens. Director-writer Gus Van Sant (Gerry) leaves it to viewers to decipher the whys. (R)
- Contributors:
- Leah Rozen,
- Tom Gliatto,
- Sona Charaipotra.
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!
