COMEDY-DRAMA
If New York City sex columnist turned author Carrie Bradshaw (Parker), who spent six stylish seasons looking for love on HBO's Sex and the City, could somehow review her own movie, it would go like this: They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and four years after my series finale, I would have run a marathon in my Manolos to watch myself and my three best friends again catch up on gossip, drool over couture and sip cosmos. But our frothy fun, always at the heart of the series, soon vanished from the film like last year's bubble dress. As I left the theater, I couldn't help but wonder: Where is the joy of Sex? How could this 142-minute movie come up short? And why do I waste so much screen time bonding with my dull new assistant (Hudson) instead of my closest pals?
For its trip to the big screen, Sex has packed emotional baggage by the truckload: Carrie, Miranda (Nixon) and Samantha (Cattrall) all hit monumental relationship roadblocks. These darker journeys are stirring—Nixon's and Parker's anguish in particular is heartbreaking—but writer-director Michael Patrick King fails to nurture his most important love story: the Fab Four. It's tempting to overlook Sex's flaws and simply revel in another chance to hang with Carrie and company. But they would never compromise—in labels or in love. Why should we?
Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman | R |
THRILLER
Most modern horror films fail to tap into our primal fears—does anyone really worry about encountering Saw's Rube Goldberg-like death devices or the desert-dwelling mutants from The Hills Have Eyes? But the creepy premise of The Strangers—crumbling couple James and Kristen (Speedman and Tyler) are startled by a seemingly lost 4 a.m. visitor to their cottage and subsequently terrorized by her and two other masked figures lurking outside—will rattle anyone who has ever nervously bunked in a remote country home. At least, until it becomes apparent that the trio (and the film's first-time writer-director Bryan Bertino) have no tricks up their sleeves other than rapping angrily on doors and loitering ominously. Meanwhile, Tyler and Speedman are stuck stumbling around the property. Tyler tries valiantly, but there are only so many ways one can scream the name "James!" After such initial promise, it doesn't take long for The Strangers to become awfully familiar.
>• The actress and mother of two, 47, plays a mom who had an incestuous relationship with her son in Savage Grace, based on a true story.
WHAT A DARK ROLE. She was so extreme. Virtually a sociopath. But I had to make her human, because she was—it happened.
AS A MOTHER, WAS IT DIFFICULT TO GET OEDIPAL? No. I'm acting, you know? I very rarely identify with my characters.
DO YOUR KIDS CALEB, 10, AND LIV, 6, KNOW WHAT MOM DOES FOR A LIVING? Yeah. They like sets, and that their father [director Bart Freundlich] makes movies, but they're not interested in seeing anything that I do—nor should they be!
IT'S SUMMER. HOW DO YOU COPE WITH YOUR FAIR SKIN? I wear sunscreen every day, and I won't walk in the sun. I walk in the shade, and people laugh at me.
SAVAGE GRACE In an overwrought biopic, Julianne Moore (above left) drifts stylishly into dissolution as Barbara Daly, a social climber who weds the English heir to the Bakelite fortune. (Not rated)
THE FOOT FIST WAY Will Ferrell helped release this raw, rocky comedy about a deluded Tae Kwon Do instructor (Danny McBride, above left). Strictly for college dorm viewing. (R)
• I's a split verdict from critic Leah Rozen on Clint Eastwood and Steven Soderbergh's flicks
Bleak art house fare—reflecting global filmmakers' responses to anxious times—dominated at the French film festival. But two highly anticipated American entries from Oscar-winning directors Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby) and Soderbergh (Traffic) delved into the past. Eastwood's Changeling, a likely Oscar contender, is a powerful true story about a mother (Angelina Jolie, far left) whose child disappears from her L.A. house in 1928. Far less compelling is Soderbergh's lifeless Che, a two-part tush-tester (clocking in at four-plus hours) about martyred revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Benicio Del Toro, right). It plays like an army training film.
ONLY IN People
Bringing Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo's bestseller to the big screen, producer Nancy Juvonen said she "was scared of populating the film with too many familiar faces." But she changed her tune after Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore and Scarlett Johannson all wanted to be part of the romantic comedy's ensemble. The film, due out Oct. 24, has already inspired one real-life pairing: Barrymore fell for costar Justin Long after they bonded at costume fittings.
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!
