Park City's Flick Chick by Jill Adler
July 2005 - Lastest Movie Reviews in a Nutshell
War of the Worlds
Film Rating: PG13
Breaking
Paramount Studios’ box office records on opening day, this
reworking of the classic H.G. Wells Sci-Fi thriller is one evil,
intensely wild ride filled with incredible special effects and
riveting drama. Just think how much MORE money Steven Spielberg
could have made if only Tom Cruise had kept his pie-hole shut.
The Katie Holmes Cruisade was marketing genius. But then the self-ordained
minister of all-knowing goes on a rampage against Brooke Shields
and anti-drepressants, pissing off millions of Americans, and
you know what? They’re boycotting his movies! Check out
http://www.petitiononline.com/Tomkat/ if you don’t believe
me. Tom should be more like his deadbeat dad persona Ray Ferrier
in WOTW. Ray, forced to deal with his two estranged kids (Dakota
Fanning and Justin Chatwin) finds himself risking everything to
get them safely back to Boston (and their mom) in the middle of
an alien invasion. Never stopping to wonder what the hell these
mechanical “tripods” are and why they are vaporizing
every human on the planet (and keeping a few for blood refueling),
Ray could care less if half of them are on drugs or what others
around him are doing. It’s all about his children. The clichéd
ending is practically laughable but thankfully the first hour
and a half has enough action and hold-your-breath moments to keep
you on the edge of your seat and thoroughly satisfied.
Dark Water
Film Rating: PG
You
loved The Ring? Rent it and forget about having the same experience
watching Dark Water. I’ll give it to you in a nutshell:
little ghost girl reaches out from a watery grave to lasso a new
mommy. Sound familiar? Only here, people don’t have seven
days to die a horrible death. They (and us) are merely tortured
by an endless murky water leak and a creepy superintendant in
a dilapidated apartment building. Dahlia (the perpetually teary-eyed
Jennifer Connelly) is a recently divorced, depressed mom who drags
her daughter Ceci to Roosevelt Island for a rent-controlled apartment
where the little ghost becomes Ceci’s “imaginary friend”.
DW goes no where fast, giving us plenty of time to guess the backstory
on the dead girl and quickly surmise Dahlia’s fate. Walter
Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) remakes another Hideo Nakata film,
but blows it by not giving the audience anything to hang their
hat on but a stylized look and some clean acting. Dark Water drowns
in its own water weight.
Hustle and Flow
Film Rating: PG
Yo,
Bro! This reel about a wannabe rapper living in a cribhole in
Memphis, Tenn., ain’t for everyone but it was definitely
for me. DJay (Terrence Howard) is a pimp with a poet’s mouth.
Rough around the edges and harsh on prose, he’s got raw
talent to turn his real shanty life into something that will make
the audience rock whether white or black. Of course, my Dad might
disagree but he’s 75 and stuck on Willie Nelson. The badass
Hustle and Flow by Producer/Director John Singleton features a
superb and relatively unknown cast, a well-crafted script, Grammy-quality
soundtrack, precise editing and pointed cinematography. It’s
8 Mile in black but with more humor and intensity than Eminem
could ever dream of drumming up. I dug this Rocky-like tale in
a big way; feeling the tugs of emotion in all the right places
with a satisfying ending that doesn’t totally sell out.
Beware of some violent scenes, lewd lyrics and gutter sex talk.
The shy and reserved need not attend.
