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clips opening or returning: Art of War, The: Wesley Snipes plays an American agent who must uncover an international plot to bring down the United Nations on the eve of an historic summit with China. Anne Archer, Maury Chaykin and Donald Sutherland also star. R. Movies 12. Contender, The: Three big stars -- Joan Allen, Gary Oldman and Jeff Bridges -- star in this political drama directed by Rod Lurie. Allen's character is a senator in line to be Vice President, but Oldman plays an old enemy who remembers a sex scandal from the past. R. Cinemark 17. Cinema World 8. Dr. T. and the Women: Robert Altman's comedy/romance stars Richard Gere as an overbooked Dallas gynecologist with domestic problems. Also stars Helen Hunt, Laura Dern, Kate Hudson, Shelley Long, Farrah Fawcett, Tara Reid and Liv Tyler. R. Cinemark 17. Cinema World 8. Exorcist (2000), The: Classic horror tale that scared the pants off 1973 audiences remains a truly terrifying tale of a young girl possessed by the devil. Film raises fascinating questions about the nature of evil and fate. Directed by William Friedkin, screenplay by William Peter Blatty based on his book and excellent performances by Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair. Digital theatrical re-release is the moneymaker of the fall season. R. McDonald. Cinemark 17. Highlander: Endgame: It's been 14 years since the first movie in this TV-series-remake and five since the last in the series. So, is this really the last we'll see of the immortals? Stars Christopher Lambert and Adrian Paul. R. Movies 12. Ladies Man: Saturday Night Live spinoff stars Tim Meadows and Will Ferrell, directed by Reginald Hudlin. It's about a dumb-as-bread dude who thinks he's hot stuff and goes on the radio to prove it. R. Cinemark 17. Cinema World 8. Loser: College sex comedy stars Mena Suvari (American Beauty) and Jason Biggs (American Pie). Directed by Amy Heckerling (Clueless). PG-13. Movies 12. Lost Souls: Thriller stars Winona Ryder as a woman who becomes aware of a conspiracy to enable the Devil to walk the earth in human form. With Ben Chaplin as the crime writer who can't believe he's the target. R. Cinema World 8. Movieland 6. Cinemark 17. Outlaw: See Treyf, below. Pay It Forward: Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) star in this drama about a boy whose class project turns into phenomenon taken up by lots of people. Directed by Mimi Leder. PG-13. Sneak 10/14. Cinemark 17. Replacements, The: During an NFL players' strike, coach Gene Hackman brings in a bunch of misfits and has-beens to take his team to the play-offs. Howard Deutch's comedy stars Keanu Reeves, with Jon Favreau, Brooke Langton and Orlando Jones. PG-13. Late night Bijou. Thief, The: Russian coming-of-age film. English subtitles. Free. 122 Pacific Hall, UO. At 7 pm on 10/17. Treyf: Alisa Lebow and Cynthia Madansky's film about a Jewish lesbian couple is shown with Lebow's 1994 Outlaw. No On 9 Benefit. Noon, 10/15. Not rated. Bijou. Way of the Gun, The: Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects writer), this twisted crime drama stars Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro as career criminals who kidnap a surrogate mother (Juliette Lewis). Also stars James Caan and Taye Diggs. R. Late night Bijou. Films open the Friday following date of EW publication unless otherwise noted. continuing: Big Momma's House: Martin Lawrence plays an FBI agent assigned to protect a single mom, played by Nia Long. He goes to Georgia dressed as her grandmother, Big Momma. Directed by Raja Gosnell. PG-13. Movies 12. Bring It On: Kirsten Dunst (The Virgin Suicides) is a cheerleader who wants to lead her squad to a national title. Gabrielle Union (She's All That) is head of a rival, inner-city hip-hop squad that has a score to settle with their suburban counterparts. PG-13. Cinemark 17. Cell, The: Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughan and Vincent D'Onofrio star in this science fiction thriller. Lopez is a psychologist who becomes trapped in the mind of a serial killer. R. Cinemark 17. Movieland 6. Chicken Run: Nick Park (Wallace and Gromit) and Peter Lord work their animated magic on clay creatures. Life on Tweedy's Farm has become brutal, and the chickens' fearless leader, Ginger (Julia Sawalha) recruits an American rooster (Mel Gibson) to teach them to fly. Hilarious good fun for all. G. Movies 12. Digimon the Movie: Japanese animated shorts became a children's series on Fox Kids Network, spread to toys, an action apparel line and trading cards. Now it's a movie and soundtrack CD. Great. PG. Cinemark 17. Movieland 6. Dinosaur: Disney gets a little risqué with a PG rating, no songs and computer-generated dinos against live-action backgrounds. Otherwise, it's your classic cuddly Disney. Stars the voices of D.B. Sweeney, Julianna Margulies and Della Reese. PG. Movies 12. Get Carter: Sylvester Stallone stars in remake of 1971 British film about a revenge-seeking man looking for his brother's killer. Directed by Stephen Kay, it also stars Michael Caine and Miranda Richardson. R. Cinemark 17. Cinema World 8. Gladiator: Ridley Scott's Roman spectacle stars Russell Crowe (The Insider) as Maximus, a famous Roman general now slave gladiator. His enemy, Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), also stars Richard Harris, Oliver Reed and Djimon Hounsou. Highly recommended. R. Movies 12. Gone in 60 Seconds: Angelina Jolie, Nicolas Cage, Robert Duvall, Delroy Lindo and Giovanni Ribisi star in Dominic Sena's car-thief drama. Cage and Ribisi play siblings. Surprisingly entertaining. R. Movies 12. Kid, Disney's The: Played by Spencer Breslin, a child meets himself at 40, a man played by Bruce Willis. Is he impressed? Find out in Jon Turteltaub's comedy. PG. Movies 12. Me, Myself and Irene: Jim Carrey plays a man with a split personality disorder who runs into trouble when he runs out of medication. Renee Zellweger plays a woman on the run who falls in love with both of them. R. Movies 12. Meet the Parents: Ben Stiller plays the unfortunate prospective son-in-law to Robert Di Niro's overly protective father. Directed by Jay Roach, the film also stars Teri Polo and Blythe Danner as the engaged daughter and her mother. PG-13. Cinemark 17. Cinema World 8. Mission Impossible 2: Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames return to this lucrative franchise, based on the 1960s TV series, with John Woo directing and Thandie Newton (Besieged, Beloved) as the love interest. Great action. R. Movies 12. Nurse Betty: Neil LaBute's new satire, a comic crime story, concerns a small-town waitress played by Renée Zellweger, who escapes an abusive husband (Aaron Eckhart) for soap opera land. She's followed by two hit men (Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock). Great fun! R. Cinemark 17. Movieland 6. Patriot, The: Roland Emmerich directs Mel Gibson as a war hero who doesn't want to fight the British in the war for independence until they try to take his South Carolina home. Co-stars Heath Ledger, with Tom Wilkinson, Chris Cooper and Joely Richardson. Violent, patriotic fare. R. Movies 12. Perfect Storm, The: Wolfgang Petersen directs this true action adventure based on Sebastian Junger's nonfiction bestseller. Six fishermen out of Gloucester, Mass. run into a killer storm on the high seas. Stars George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Diane Lane and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and William Fichtner. PG-13. Movieland 6. Remember the Titans: Football movie based on the true story of a 1971 Virginia high school falling apart from racial conflict until a black coach (Denzel Washington) from out of town pulls them together. Directed by Boaz Yakin, it also stars Will Patton and Kip Pardue. PG. Cinemark 17. Cinema World 8. Space Cowboys: Director Clint Eastwood attracted Tommy Lee Jones, James Garner and Donald Sutherland to star with him in this outer space adventure flick. They play retired Air Force test pilots who have to defuse a leftover Cold War satellite in space before it hits earth. PG-13. Cinemark 17. Movieland 6. Tao of Steve, The: The main reason to see Jenniphr Goodman's film isn't named Steve. His name's Dex, and he's played by Donal Logue with such laconic self-confidence and self-effacing good nature that you believe he can get any woman he wants. Until he meets Syd, played by Greer Goodman, that is. R. Bijou. Urban Legends: Final Cut: Student filmmakers (Jennifer Morrison, Matthew Davis and Joseph Lawrence) make a psychological thriller about urban legends in a competitive film school where someone is killing off other students. R. Cinemark 17. What Lies Beneath: Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer star in Robert Zemeckis' spooky psychological thriller about a husband who has an affair with a woman who kills herself in their house. PG-13. Cinemark 17. X-Men: Marvel Comic mutant superheroes are called X-Men regardless of gender. Halle Berry, James Marsden and Famke Janssen help "gifted youngsters" learn to use their powers. Prof. Charles Xavier is played by Patrick Stewart, newcomer Hugh Jackson plays the lead, and Ian McKellan is the evil mutant. PG-13. Movies 12. movie
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clips American Pimp: Documentary by Albert and Allen Hughes follows real-life black male pimps from Chicago and Milwaukee to the streets of L.A. and New York. Tricked out with clips and music from the blaxploitation films of the 1970s, the film covers superficial aspects of pimp life but never shows pimps with customers and the prostitutes they exploit. R. Beowulf: Cheesy sci-fi rendition of the classic 8th century tale directed by Graham Baker stars Christopher Lambert and Rhona Mitra. R. Heavy Metal 2000: To the music of Billy Idol and Machine Head, a warrior played by Julie Strain goes after space pirates. R. Rules of Engagement: Samuel L. Jackson plays a decorated 30-year Marine officer on trial for a rescue mission that went bad. Tommy Lee Jones takes his case. Directed by William Friedkin. With Guy Pearce, Philip Baker Hall, Bruce Greenwood and Kim Delaney. R. Toy Story 2: John Lasseter directs this wholly computer-generated sequel to the '95 original. Vintage toy collector steals Woody (Tom Hanks). Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the gang to the rescue! Joan Cusack plays a cowgirl from Woody's past, and Barbie puts in an appearance. G. Next week: Center Stage, Eye of the Killer, First Daughter, The Patriot, U-571 and Up at the Villa. movie
reviews Alice et Martin: Directed by Andre Techiné. Written by Techiné, Gilles Taurand and Oliver Assayas. Produced by Alain Sarde. Cinematography, Caroline Champetier. Editor, Martine Giordana. Music, Philippe Sarde. Costumes, Elisabeth Tavernier. Production design, Ze Branco. Starring Juliette Binoche and Alexis Loret, with Mathieu Amalric, Carmen Maura, Jean-Pierre Lorit, Jeremy Kreikenmayer and Marthe Villalonga. USA Films, 2000. R. 123 minutes. An unsettling film that touches on family secrets, passion and pathology while following a compelling cast of strong characters, Andre Techiné's Alice et Martin begins on a prosaic note. Ten-year-old Martin (Jeremy Kreikenmayer) lives with his mother, Jeanine (Carmen Maura), who owns a beauty salon. Inexplicably from the boy's perspective, she shunts him off to live at the country manor of his well-off biological father, Frederic (Jean-Pierre Lorit), a married pater familias and industrialist. The boy lives there for 10 years, perplexed by his mother's rejection, tolerated by Frederic's wife, Lucie (Marthe Villalonga), but never receiving positive attention from his overbearing father. An abrupt transition from provincial life is heralded by Martin (Alexis Loret) sprinting for the gate to the family home following his father's death. Subsequent scenes are confusing and hard to watch as Martin devolves into a feral creature who sleeps in a makeshift shelter under an overpass. He steals eggs from a farmer's hen house until he is caught. But the minute he's released, Martin takes off again. Disturbed and depressed, he treks past the chairlift of a closed ski resort on his mysterious journey. Martin makes his way to Paris where his favorite half-brother, Benjamin (Mathier Amalric), shares a tiny apartment with Alice (Juliette Binoche). Benjamin is a gay actor, and Alice is an under-employed violinist; their relationship is non-traditional but committed. Alice allows Martin into the apartment reluctantly. Furtive and uncommunicative at first, Martin slowly gets better. But along the way, he develops an obsessive attachment to Alice. Techiné's earlier films -- My Favorite Season (1993), Wild Reeds (1994) and Thieves (1996) -- are character-driven, intimate films that are cinematically arresting and technically accomplished. Although Alice and Martin doesn't live up to the best of them, Techiné's work is always worth seeing, more so in a year of mind-numbing mainstream offerings. Nevertheless, the film suffers from several jarring transitions. An intensely personal and psychologically complicated scene between Alice and Martin set on the coast of Spain ends without any verbal or visual transition. Suddenly the scene is a heated disagreement between several men that takes place in an industrial setting. I thought I was in a different movie until I worked out that it's a flashback to a quarrel between one of Martin's older half-brothers and his father. Half-way into the film, the story switches from being about Martin, which honestly is a bit tiresome, to tracking Alice's actions. It's a real improvement. Binoche is a self-assured, competent actress playing a more sympathetic character. Loret acquits himself nicely in his screen debut, but Binoche has put her stamp on many fine films, including Anthony Minghella's 1996 The English Patient, Phillip Kaufman's 1988 The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1994 Blue. Alice's scenes with Martin's mother and stepmother are among the film's strongest. Maura, a gifted actress who is part of Pedro Almodóvar's ensemble, makes Jeanine a sexy woman who loves to party on Saturday night. Lucie, as played by Villalonga, is a chilling, dominating mother whose iconic power extends directly into the lives of her grown children. She is particularly fierce and unbending toward outsiders, recalling for me the judging eyes and ruthless bitterness of the women villagers in Zorba the Greek. Creepy! Support the only theater in town that regularly shows the best of foreign filmmakers working today. The complexities of Alice et Martin are human and realistic, and the performances are psychologically nuanced. Opens at the Bijou Friday, Oct. 13.
Get Carter: Directed by Stephen Kay. Written by David McKenna, based on the novel, Jack's Return Home by Ted Lewis. Produced by Mark Canton, Elie Samaha, Neil Canton. Cinematography, Mauro Fiore. Production design, Charles J.H. Wood. Editor, Jerry Greenberg. Costumes, Julie Weiss. Music, Tyler Bates. Starring Sylvester Stallone, with Miranda Richardson, Rachel Leigh Cook, Alan Cumming, Mickey Rourke and Michael Caine. Franchise Pictures, 2000. R. 102 minutes. While the press material touts this loser of a film as based on an obscure novel by an equally unrecognized writer, everyone knows that it's really a lousy remake of a successful 1971 British film. I haven't seen Mike Hodges' original starring Michael Caine, which is reputedly a terrific revenge movie, but here a dead-eyed Sylvester Stallone staggers through the motions of a man obsessed with discovering who killed his brother. Maybe I'm still under the spell of Steven Soderbergh's excellent 1999 vengeance film, The Limey. Terrence Stamp plays an unrepentant British ex-con who comes to L.A. to avenge his daughter's death. He knows she didn't die in a car accident but was murdered, and he is ruthlessly committed to finding the perpetrators and exacting revenge. My advice: Rent Soderbergh's taut thriller and skip director Stephen Kay and screenwriter David McKenna's disjointed mess. I'd like to report that because relatively few automatic weapons are used the film is less bloody than much Hollywood sleaze, but even this comfort is denied. Graphic, brutal beatings stand in for shootings, that's all. Stumbling out of the theater, I felt like I had been assaulted by the film's effectively repellent thug, Cyrus Paice (Mickey Rourke). Ultra-muscled Paice beats Jack Carter (Sylvester Stallone) to a pulp at least twice. See, they have a past. We never actually learn what Carter did in his former life in Seattle, where the film is set. Likewise his current role as an enforcer for a Las Vegas mob-like club owner is slathered with euphemisms for his occluded occupation. We learn only that Carter's reputation is highly charged, in part for up and disappearing five years ago. His brother's wife, Gloria (Miranda Richardson), and daughter, Doreen (Rachel Leigh Cook), still live in Seattle, and the family is not reaching out to Carter now that he's back. But Carter knows his brother died under suspicious circumstances, and neither he nor his street savvy niece believe he was driving drunk. Carter meets up with Cliff Brumby (Michael Caine), who played Carter in Hodges' film. Carter's bro managed Brumby's club for him, and Geraldine (Rhona Mitra), who works there, was his lover. There's also a super-rich computer nerd named Jeremy Kinnear (Alan Cumming) who's such simpering slime he makes your skin crawl. Meanwhile, back at the Vegas casino, his mobster boss has figured out that Carter was involved with his wife, played by Gretchen Mol. This narrative line is fractured and bent out of shape by the film's inept direction and mystifying screenplay, to say nothing of the murky interiors where much of the film is shot. The characters are so poorly defined, particularly Carter, that efforts to make sense of the project feel doomed. Incoherent and meaningless, the action sequences in this film are among the worst I've seen this year. And that's saying a lot. If you read trade mags like Variety, you learn that the film industry is reeling under audience apathy, with exhibitors (theater owners) having the worst time of it. With pictures like Get Carter, it's no wonder. The delicate issue here is that unless audiences respond favorably to the few films that rise above the muck -- Almost Famous or Nurse Betty, for example -- the automatons who determine what films get made will just keep sending out swill like Get Carter. Do what you can to support worthwhile cinema. Get Carter is now playing at Cinemark 17 and Cinema World 8. What's Happening |
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