We've seen the spawn of Satan in such films as Rosemary's Baby and The Omen, and bad seeds have frequently tickled and terrified audiences. Child saviors haven't been as prevalent in the movies. But in The Seeker, based on the popular children's novel The Dark Is Rising, we have the story of a child chosen by the forces of light to battle evil spirits; the fate of the earth hangs in the balance. With some quasi-religious overtones, the film might have a built-in audience, though it's not going to make much of a dent in the Harry Potter franchise.
The opening cleverly thrusts us into an ultra-contemporary world of cell phones and high-tech malls where Will Stanton (Alexander Ludwig) is not quite at home. The youngest of six sons in an American family transplanted to England, Will is not comfortable with his peers. To make matters worse, he keeps seeing flocks of ravens that want to claw his flesh. Eventually, he learns that he has a mission to save the world from dark forces that intend to wreak havoc. His nemesis is a threatening figure called the Rider (Christopher Eccleston), but he also has a group of allies known as the Old Ones who instruct him in his supernatural powers and guide him on his otherworldly quest.
Seeker is well cast with a mix of British and American actors. Ian McShane, who often is cast as a Satanic figure, here plays Will's spiritual guide, and he lends stature and dignity to the battle between good and evil. Eccleston exudes malevolent power, and he has fun playing the Rider's alter ego, a bumbling English doctor. The young actors who play Will's siblings have a natural ease on camera, and Ludwig is inherently likable, capturing the character's befuddlement as well as his innate decency.
Yet the film plods along without a lot of excitement or inspiration. There's one scary sequence with an army of snakes led by an albino cobra, but a lot of other scenes depend on elaborate CGI effects that aren't all that thrilling. Another problem is that the plot requires young Will to go through a series of trials to find the six signs that will enable him to save the world, and there simply isn't enough variety in these ordeals. The movie's one surprise twist will be pretty transparent to anyone above the age of 6.
Although the film is extremely well photographed by Joel Ransom, it fails to build a sense of mounting terror. The denouement is completely predictable, which might be satisfying to young viewers who haven't seen a lot of movies. For the rest of us, Seeker is a ho-hum exercise in mysticism and hocus-pocus.
THE SEEKER: THE DARK IS RISING
20th Century Fox and Fox-Walden
Marc Platt Prods.
Credits:
Director: David L. Cunningham
Screenwriter: John Hodge
Based on the novel by: Susan Cooper
Producer: Marc Platt
Executive producers: Ron Schmidt, Adam Siegel
Director of photography: Joel Ransom
Production designer: David Lee
Music: Christophe Beck
Costume designer: Vin Burnham
Editors: Geoffrey Rowland, Eric A. Sears
Cast:
Will Stanton: Alexander Ludwig
The Rider: Christopher Eccleston
Merriman Lyon: Ian McShane
Miss Greythorne: Frances Conroy
Dawson: James Cosmo
Old George: Jim Piddock
Maggie Barnes: Amelia Warner
John Stanton: John Benjamin Hickey
Mary Stanton: Wendy Crewson
Gwen Stanton: Emma Lockhart
Max Stanton: Gregory Smith
Running time -- 99 minutes
MPAA rating: PG...
The opening cleverly thrusts us into an ultra-contemporary world of cell phones and high-tech malls where Will Stanton (Alexander Ludwig) is not quite at home. The youngest of six sons in an American family transplanted to England, Will is not comfortable with his peers. To make matters worse, he keeps seeing flocks of ravens that want to claw his flesh. Eventually, he learns that he has a mission to save the world from dark forces that intend to wreak havoc. His nemesis is a threatening figure called the Rider (Christopher Eccleston), but he also has a group of allies known as the Old Ones who instruct him in his supernatural powers and guide him on his otherworldly quest.
Seeker is well cast with a mix of British and American actors. Ian McShane, who often is cast as a Satanic figure, here plays Will's spiritual guide, and he lends stature and dignity to the battle between good and evil. Eccleston exudes malevolent power, and he has fun playing the Rider's alter ego, a bumbling English doctor. The young actors who play Will's siblings have a natural ease on camera, and Ludwig is inherently likable, capturing the character's befuddlement as well as his innate decency.
Yet the film plods along without a lot of excitement or inspiration. There's one scary sequence with an army of snakes led by an albino cobra, but a lot of other scenes depend on elaborate CGI effects that aren't all that thrilling. Another problem is that the plot requires young Will to go through a series of trials to find the six signs that will enable him to save the world, and there simply isn't enough variety in these ordeals. The movie's one surprise twist will be pretty transparent to anyone above the age of 6.
Although the film is extremely well photographed by Joel Ransom, it fails to build a sense of mounting terror. The denouement is completely predictable, which might be satisfying to young viewers who haven't seen a lot of movies. For the rest of us, Seeker is a ho-hum exercise in mysticism and hocus-pocus.
THE SEEKER: THE DARK IS RISING
20th Century Fox and Fox-Walden
Marc Platt Prods.
Credits:
Director: David L. Cunningham
Screenwriter: John Hodge
Based on the novel by: Susan Cooper
Producer: Marc Platt
Executive producers: Ron Schmidt, Adam Siegel
Director of photography: Joel Ransom
Production designer: David Lee
Music: Christophe Beck
Costume designer: Vin Burnham
Editors: Geoffrey Rowland, Eric A. Sears
Cast:
Will Stanton: Alexander Ludwig
The Rider: Christopher Eccleston
Merriman Lyon: Ian McShane
Miss Greythorne: Frances Conroy
Dawson: James Cosmo
Old George: Jim Piddock
Maggie Barnes: Amelia Warner
John Stanton: John Benjamin Hickey
Mary Stanton: Wendy Crewson
Gwen Stanton: Emma Lockhart
Max Stanton: Gregory Smith
Running time -- 99 minutes
MPAA rating: PG...
- 10/5/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" does a most difficult and brave thing and does it brilliantly. It is a movie about a concept. Not just any concept but the shop-worn and often wrong-headed idea of "heroism."
The movie performs this task amid the fog of war on Iwo Jima in 1945, when the Associated Press' Joe Rosenthal took the iconic photograph of six American servicemen raising Old Glory on Mount Suribachi. The movie deconstructs that moment, shattering it into a jigsaw puzzle of flashbacks and flash-forwards, to explore how that photograph turned into a major prop of the U.S. government's war bonds campaign and how the government designated the three surviving flag raisers as "heroes."
From a boxoffice standpoint, this might be a rare instance of having your cake and eating it, too: The film also takes a hard, unblinking look at the cynicism and PR manipulation that went into the war bond tour and what we today recognize as the nascent fluttering of the cult of celebrityhood, when the three surviving flag-raisers were among the most famous men in the U.S.
Yet Eastwood packs the movie with action as tough and bloody as such benchmark films as "Saving Private Ryan", "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers". Nor does he ever deny the sacrifice and achievements of the men who fought and died in the battle for Iwo Jima. So the movie should attract viewers across the political spectrum. Critical acclaim and year-end awards can only expand its potential boxoffice.
The film is based on a book by James Bradley (with Ron Powers) about his father, Navy Corpsman John Bradley, one of the flag-raisers who nevertheless would never discuss that or any other aspect of his war experiences with his family. William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis' screenplay has a complex structure that takes awhile for audiences to read.
A soldier runs alone in a bleak landscape that looks like the lunar surface, then awakens in a cold sweat in his bed, his wife comforting him, many years later. Three soldiers, scaling a mountaintop with explosions everywhere, reach the summit and survey a sea of faces in a football stadium, roaring approval for this re-enactment of their experiences of only weeks before. Meanwhile, a man in more recent times -- we later realize this is the son, James Bradley (Tom McCarthy) -- interviews key people who knew his father.
In this manner, the movie moves back and forth in time to watch people come to grips with the question of heroism and how that flag raising became a symbol Americans desperately clung to as the war in the Pacific hung in the balance. "If you can get a picture, the right picture, you can win a war," a retired captain (Harve Presnell) tells Bradley.
The film introduces the six servicemen as U.S. warships steam steadily toward Iwo Jima. Initially it's hard to tell who's who, but Eastwood and his writers probably do this deliberately as they want us to consider these young men as ordinary Joes doing a job in combat. It is totally random how fate chooses the six -- and actually it's three as the others are killed not long after the photo is taken.
Within days the U.S. government calls the surviving flag-raisers back to the mainland: Doc Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), a Navy Corpsman called upon to help the Marines raise the flag; Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), a "runner" who happened to bring the flag to the mountaintop; and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), an Indian who is the most uncomfortable at finding himself a national hero.
For most of the war bond tour, the trio's "minder" John Benjamin Hickey) has double duty. He must overcome the men's resistance to playing heroes, a label they feel belongs to others more deserving. And he must keep Ira sober. War has kept the Marine's alcoholism in check; back home he fears banquet halls more than the blood-stained soil of Iwo Jima.
Then the background to the photo itself undermines the men's sense of purpose. The fact is that Rosenthal's famous photo is of the second flag-raising that day. The first occurs before Rosenthal made it up the top. When he does arrive, he finds soldiers, who had been laying a telephone line, preparing to raise a second, larger flag the moment the first one comes down. And that photo, taken blindly at the last moment, is the one that hit the wires worldwide. This leads to confusion, cleared up only years later, as to the identities of the soldiers in the photo since none of their faces is visible.
Cinematographer Tom Stern shoots in washed-out colors, much like old color film long faded so that only blues, grays, browns and flesh tones prevail. This situates the film in a hallucinatory no-man's-land between Iwo Jima and a peaceful U.S., where no one has any concept of the horrors these men endured.
There are many astonishing moments. A Japanese soldier lies dying next to a critically injured Yank, the two men now linked in death. A search of caves deep within the island causes American soldiers to realize the surviving Japanese are committing suicide with their grenades. The persistent racism Ira faces is so casual that everyone is blithely unaware of the demeaning nature of their remarks.
Eastwood's own musical score, infusing the film with understated valor and light melancholy, and Henry Bumstead's fine sets and period design are crucial components of Eastwood's vision of a world that needs "heroism" to help it understand and process the incomprehensible cruelty and sacrifice of war. Says one vet, "We need easy-to-understand truths and damn few words."
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
Paramount Pictures
DreamWorks and Warner Bros. Pictures present a Malpaso Prods./Amblin Entertainment production
Credits:
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriters: William Broyles Jr., Paul Haggis
Based on the book by: James Bradley with Ron Powers
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Robert Lorenz
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Clint Eastwood
Co-producer: Tim Moore
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
John Bradley: Ryan Phillippe
Rene Gagnon: Jesse Bradford
Ira Hayes: Adam Beach
Keyes Beech: John Benjamin Hickey
Bud Gerber: John Slattery
Mike Strank: Barry Pepper
Ralph Ignatowski: Jamie Bell
Hank Hansen: Paul Walker
Running time -- 132 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
The movie performs this task amid the fog of war on Iwo Jima in 1945, when the Associated Press' Joe Rosenthal took the iconic photograph of six American servicemen raising Old Glory on Mount Suribachi. The movie deconstructs that moment, shattering it into a jigsaw puzzle of flashbacks and flash-forwards, to explore how that photograph turned into a major prop of the U.S. government's war bonds campaign and how the government designated the three surviving flag raisers as "heroes."
From a boxoffice standpoint, this might be a rare instance of having your cake and eating it, too: The film also takes a hard, unblinking look at the cynicism and PR manipulation that went into the war bond tour and what we today recognize as the nascent fluttering of the cult of celebrityhood, when the three surviving flag-raisers were among the most famous men in the U.S.
Yet Eastwood packs the movie with action as tough and bloody as such benchmark films as "Saving Private Ryan", "Black Hawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers". Nor does he ever deny the sacrifice and achievements of the men who fought and died in the battle for Iwo Jima. So the movie should attract viewers across the political spectrum. Critical acclaim and year-end awards can only expand its potential boxoffice.
The film is based on a book by James Bradley (with Ron Powers) about his father, Navy Corpsman John Bradley, one of the flag-raisers who nevertheless would never discuss that or any other aspect of his war experiences with his family. William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis' screenplay has a complex structure that takes awhile for audiences to read.
A soldier runs alone in a bleak landscape that looks like the lunar surface, then awakens in a cold sweat in his bed, his wife comforting him, many years later. Three soldiers, scaling a mountaintop with explosions everywhere, reach the summit and survey a sea of faces in a football stadium, roaring approval for this re-enactment of their experiences of only weeks before. Meanwhile, a man in more recent times -- we later realize this is the son, James Bradley (Tom McCarthy) -- interviews key people who knew his father.
In this manner, the movie moves back and forth in time to watch people come to grips with the question of heroism and how that flag raising became a symbol Americans desperately clung to as the war in the Pacific hung in the balance. "If you can get a picture, the right picture, you can win a war," a retired captain (Harve Presnell) tells Bradley.
The film introduces the six servicemen as U.S. warships steam steadily toward Iwo Jima. Initially it's hard to tell who's who, but Eastwood and his writers probably do this deliberately as they want us to consider these young men as ordinary Joes doing a job in combat. It is totally random how fate chooses the six -- and actually it's three as the others are killed not long after the photo is taken.
Within days the U.S. government calls the surviving flag-raisers back to the mainland: Doc Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), a Navy Corpsman called upon to help the Marines raise the flag; Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), a "runner" who happened to bring the flag to the mountaintop; and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), an Indian who is the most uncomfortable at finding himself a national hero.
For most of the war bond tour, the trio's "minder" John Benjamin Hickey) has double duty. He must overcome the men's resistance to playing heroes, a label they feel belongs to others more deserving. And he must keep Ira sober. War has kept the Marine's alcoholism in check; back home he fears banquet halls more than the blood-stained soil of Iwo Jima.
Then the background to the photo itself undermines the men's sense of purpose. The fact is that Rosenthal's famous photo is of the second flag-raising that day. The first occurs before Rosenthal made it up the top. When he does arrive, he finds soldiers, who had been laying a telephone line, preparing to raise a second, larger flag the moment the first one comes down. And that photo, taken blindly at the last moment, is the one that hit the wires worldwide. This leads to confusion, cleared up only years later, as to the identities of the soldiers in the photo since none of their faces is visible.
Cinematographer Tom Stern shoots in washed-out colors, much like old color film long faded so that only blues, grays, browns and flesh tones prevail. This situates the film in a hallucinatory no-man's-land between Iwo Jima and a peaceful U.S., where no one has any concept of the horrors these men endured.
There are many astonishing moments. A Japanese soldier lies dying next to a critically injured Yank, the two men now linked in death. A search of caves deep within the island causes American soldiers to realize the surviving Japanese are committing suicide with their grenades. The persistent racism Ira faces is so casual that everyone is blithely unaware of the demeaning nature of their remarks.
Eastwood's own musical score, infusing the film with understated valor and light melancholy, and Henry Bumstead's fine sets and period design are crucial components of Eastwood's vision of a world that needs "heroism" to help it understand and process the incomprehensible cruelty and sacrifice of war. Says one vet, "We need easy-to-understand truths and damn few words."
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
Paramount Pictures
DreamWorks and Warner Bros. Pictures present a Malpaso Prods./Amblin Entertainment production
Credits:
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriters: William Broyles Jr., Paul Haggis
Based on the book by: James Bradley with Ron Powers
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Robert Lorenz
Director of photography: Tom Stern
Production designer: Henry Bumstead
Music: Clint Eastwood
Co-producer: Tim Moore
Costume designer: Deborah Hopper
Editor: Joel Cox
Cast:
John Bradley: Ryan Phillippe
Rene Gagnon: Jesse Bradford
Ira Hayes: Adam Beach
Keyes Beech: John Benjamin Hickey
Bud Gerber: John Slattery
Mike Strank: Barry Pepper
Ralph Ignatowski: Jamie Bell
Hank Hansen: Paul Walker
Running time -- 132 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/10/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Movie-star charisma and the public's insatiable appetite for serial killers are the chief drawing cards for this urban thriller about a quadriplegic police crime scene forensics expert who teams with a young female cop to capture an imaginative murderer with a penchant for baroque clues.
Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, whose visages are prominently featured in an endless series of screen-filling close-ups, provide the charisma, and director Phillip Noyce has invested the material with gripping cinematic tension. "The Bone Collector", which received its world premiere during the weekend at the Montreal Film Festival (it was partially lensed in Montreal), should do solid fall business for Universal.
Washington plays Lincoln Rhyme, a forensics expert and best-selling author whose brilliant career was cut short as a result of a terrible accident in a subway tunnel during a crime scene investigation. Paralyzed from the neck down and connected to a battery of machines, he is still technically a cop, periodically assisting on investigations. But mostly he lies on his motorized bed in his well-appointed New York apartment, watching the peregrine falcon perched outside his window. With a doctor friend's help, he is preparing to commit what he euphemistically calls his "final transition."
Rhyme puts those suicidal plans on hold when he's enlisted by his fellow cops to help them with an investigation. A wealthy couple has been abducted by a New York cabbie (his visual trademark is a tiny monkey hanging from a noose on the rear-view mirror), and the husband is found dead -- buried except for his outstretched hand, skinned to the bone and wearing a wedding ring.
The young policewoman who makes this gruesome discovery is gorgeous Amelia Donaghy (Jolie), who reveals her natural penchant for forensics by her quick-thinking preservation of the evidence. She's also more than a little daring, as demonstrated by her single-handedly stopping a train that's about to intrude upon the crime scene. Rhyme, sensing a kindred spirit, enlists her to assist him in the case despite her lack of experience and impending transfer to a desk job.
Soon the traditional cinematic cat-and-mouse game between killer and capturers ensue, with the former leaving a series of clues that seem to have come from the turn of the century. As the police use Rhyme's apartment as a base of operations, Amelia acts as Rhyme's eyes and ears, exploring a series of grisly crime scenes.
But she invariably arrives too late to save the victims, who suffer such horrors as a deadly scalding by steam and being eaten alive by rats -- details of which are not kept from the audience.
Most of the detectives on the case are Rhyme's friendly former colleagues, played in suitably hard-boiled fashion by Ed O'Neill, Mike McGlone and Luis Guzman. But this wouldn't be a cop movie without a conflict between the lead character and his captain; sure enough, Rhyme's boss, Capt. Cheney (Michael Rooker), is unaccountably hostile to his disabled employee and Amelia in a plot angle that becomes wearisome.
Equally tiresome is the relationship between Rhyme and his devoted nurse, Thelma, with the charismatic Queen Latifah reduced to saying things like "Not on my shift", looking concerned and doing crossword puzzles while listening to Rhyme's urgent radio messages to Amelia.
The convoluted plotting culminates in the none-too-credible revelation that the killer is not merely some anonymous wacko but one of the supporting characters, and the climax features one of the more unusual fight scenes in recent memory: between the deranged killer and Rhyme. The fact that his character is paralyzed doesn't prevent Washington from kicking a little ass -- the encounter is both ludicrous and a total hoot. But the main focus of the story concentrates on the growing relationship between Rhyme and his beautiful protege, with the possibility of a romantic relationship not excluded.
Jeremy Iacone's screenplay, adapted from a novel by Jeffery Deaver, is as occasionally clunky and cliched as his previous effort for producer Martin Bergman, "One Tough Cop", but it mostly gets the job done.
Noyce, who demonstrated his acumen for suspense in such works as "Dead Calm" and Harrison Ford's Tom Clancy flicks, wrings the maximum tension from the proceedings, delivering a highly professional and visually handsome production whose pace rarely slackens. Noyce is smart enough to know that his best assets are his stars, in whom he places a great deal of visual emphasis.
Washington delivers his usual charismatic intensity as the immobile Rhyme, and Jolie provides further proof that she definitely has the goods for big-screen stardom.
THE BONE COLLECTOR
Universal Pictures
A Universal Pictures and Columbia Pictures presentation
Credits: Director: Phillip Noyce; Screenwriter: Jeremy Iacone; Producers: Martin Bregman, Louis A. Stroller, Michael Bregman; Executive producers: Michael Klawitter, Dan Jinks; Director of photography: Dean Semler; Production designer: Nigel Phelps; Editor: William Hoy; Music: Craig Armstrong. Cast: Lincoln Rhyme: Denzel Washington; Amelia Donaghy: Angelina Jolie; Thelma: Queen Latifah; Capt. Howard Cheney: Michael Rooker; Detective Kenny Solomon: Mike McGlone; Eddie Ortiz: Luis Guzman; Richard Thompson: Leland Orser; Dr. Barry Lehman: John Benjamin Hickey; Steve: Bobby Cannavale; Detective Paulie Sellitto: Ed O'Neill. MPAA rating: R. Color/stereo. Running time -- 120 minutes.
Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, whose visages are prominently featured in an endless series of screen-filling close-ups, provide the charisma, and director Phillip Noyce has invested the material with gripping cinematic tension. "The Bone Collector", which received its world premiere during the weekend at the Montreal Film Festival (it was partially lensed in Montreal), should do solid fall business for Universal.
Washington plays Lincoln Rhyme, a forensics expert and best-selling author whose brilliant career was cut short as a result of a terrible accident in a subway tunnel during a crime scene investigation. Paralyzed from the neck down and connected to a battery of machines, he is still technically a cop, periodically assisting on investigations. But mostly he lies on his motorized bed in his well-appointed New York apartment, watching the peregrine falcon perched outside his window. With a doctor friend's help, he is preparing to commit what he euphemistically calls his "final transition."
Rhyme puts those suicidal plans on hold when he's enlisted by his fellow cops to help them with an investigation. A wealthy couple has been abducted by a New York cabbie (his visual trademark is a tiny monkey hanging from a noose on the rear-view mirror), and the husband is found dead -- buried except for his outstretched hand, skinned to the bone and wearing a wedding ring.
The young policewoman who makes this gruesome discovery is gorgeous Amelia Donaghy (Jolie), who reveals her natural penchant for forensics by her quick-thinking preservation of the evidence. She's also more than a little daring, as demonstrated by her single-handedly stopping a train that's about to intrude upon the crime scene. Rhyme, sensing a kindred spirit, enlists her to assist him in the case despite her lack of experience and impending transfer to a desk job.
Soon the traditional cinematic cat-and-mouse game between killer and capturers ensue, with the former leaving a series of clues that seem to have come from the turn of the century. As the police use Rhyme's apartment as a base of operations, Amelia acts as Rhyme's eyes and ears, exploring a series of grisly crime scenes.
But she invariably arrives too late to save the victims, who suffer such horrors as a deadly scalding by steam and being eaten alive by rats -- details of which are not kept from the audience.
Most of the detectives on the case are Rhyme's friendly former colleagues, played in suitably hard-boiled fashion by Ed O'Neill, Mike McGlone and Luis Guzman. But this wouldn't be a cop movie without a conflict between the lead character and his captain; sure enough, Rhyme's boss, Capt. Cheney (Michael Rooker), is unaccountably hostile to his disabled employee and Amelia in a plot angle that becomes wearisome.
Equally tiresome is the relationship between Rhyme and his devoted nurse, Thelma, with the charismatic Queen Latifah reduced to saying things like "Not on my shift", looking concerned and doing crossword puzzles while listening to Rhyme's urgent radio messages to Amelia.
The convoluted plotting culminates in the none-too-credible revelation that the killer is not merely some anonymous wacko but one of the supporting characters, and the climax features one of the more unusual fight scenes in recent memory: between the deranged killer and Rhyme. The fact that his character is paralyzed doesn't prevent Washington from kicking a little ass -- the encounter is both ludicrous and a total hoot. But the main focus of the story concentrates on the growing relationship between Rhyme and his beautiful protege, with the possibility of a romantic relationship not excluded.
Jeremy Iacone's screenplay, adapted from a novel by Jeffery Deaver, is as occasionally clunky and cliched as his previous effort for producer Martin Bergman, "One Tough Cop", but it mostly gets the job done.
Noyce, who demonstrated his acumen for suspense in such works as "Dead Calm" and Harrison Ford's Tom Clancy flicks, wrings the maximum tension from the proceedings, delivering a highly professional and visually handsome production whose pace rarely slackens. Noyce is smart enough to know that his best assets are his stars, in whom he places a great deal of visual emphasis.
Washington delivers his usual charismatic intensity as the immobile Rhyme, and Jolie provides further proof that she definitely has the goods for big-screen stardom.
THE BONE COLLECTOR
Universal Pictures
A Universal Pictures and Columbia Pictures presentation
Credits: Director: Phillip Noyce; Screenwriter: Jeremy Iacone; Producers: Martin Bregman, Louis A. Stroller, Michael Bregman; Executive producers: Michael Klawitter, Dan Jinks; Director of photography: Dean Semler; Production designer: Nigel Phelps; Editor: William Hoy; Music: Craig Armstrong. Cast: Lincoln Rhyme: Denzel Washington; Amelia Donaghy: Angelina Jolie; Thelma: Queen Latifah; Capt. Howard Cheney: Michael Rooker; Detective Kenny Solomon: Mike McGlone; Eddie Ortiz: Luis Guzman; Richard Thompson: Leland Orser; Dr. Barry Lehman: John Benjamin Hickey; Steve: Bobby Cannavale; Detective Paulie Sellitto: Ed O'Neill. MPAA rating: R. Color/stereo. Running time -- 120 minutes.
- 8/31/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Tanya Wexler's debut indie feature is a sort of "Will & Grace" for the big screen. It's a quirky road movie exploring the growing friendship between a gay man on a mission dictated by his deceased lover and a big-haired Brooklyn native who discovers her inner strength while accompanying him.
Although the film has its moments and appealing lead performances by John Benjamin Hickey and Wendy Makkena, its primary virtue is as an industry calling card for its young filmmaker, the daughter of veteran cinematographer Haskell Wexler. It opens today for an exclusive engagement at New York's Quad Cinema.
Kim Powers' screenplay is not exactly strong on realism or credibility, which, perhaps, is why the press notes describe the film as a modern fairy tale. It begins with love-starved Rhonda Portelli (Makkena) driving across The Brooklyn Bridge with some friends, spotting a suicidal, naked young man with a "nice ass" dangling precariously from the bridge. He doesn't take the leap, and later she spots him at the bank where she works, mistaking him for the male stripper who she's hired for her birthday. (See what I mean about credibility problems?)
We discover that the man, Travis Furlong (Hickey), has recently lost his lover to AIDS. Through a series of plot contrivances too silly to explain, the pair find themselves traveling to Texas, where Travis has set out to fulfill a series of taped instructions left by his lover, who wants Travis to go to his hometown so the deceased man's relatives can come to terms with his sexuality and so Travis can come to terms with his grief. Naturally, during this process, Travis and Rhonda help each other with their respective emotional crises.
Trying to be a combination of screwball comedy and sensitive drama, "Finding North" traffics a little too hard in whimsy and wackiness and often suffers from a strained, artificial air that makes it difficult to be fully engaged with the characters. Fortunately, Hickey and Makkena are highly appealing performers, and their entertainingly contrasting acting styles -- the former stoically underplaying, the latter rather over the top -- help us overcome the strained plotting and dialogue.
FINDING NORTH
A Cowboy Booking International release
Director: Tanya Wexler
Screenplay: Kim Powers
Executive producer: Hal "Corky" Kessler
Producers: Steven A. Jones, Stephen Dyer
Director of photography: Michael Barrett
Editor: Thom Zimny
Production designer: James B. Smythe
Music: Cafe Noir
Color/Stereo
Cast:
Rhonda Portelli: Wendy Makkena
Travis Furlong: John Benjamin Hickey
Voice of Bobby: Jonathan Walker
Debi: Anne Bobby
Gina: Rebecca Creskoff
Mrs. Portelli: Angela Pietropinto
Mr. Portelli: Freddie Roman
Running time -- 95 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Although the film has its moments and appealing lead performances by John Benjamin Hickey and Wendy Makkena, its primary virtue is as an industry calling card for its young filmmaker, the daughter of veteran cinematographer Haskell Wexler. It opens today for an exclusive engagement at New York's Quad Cinema.
Kim Powers' screenplay is not exactly strong on realism or credibility, which, perhaps, is why the press notes describe the film as a modern fairy tale. It begins with love-starved Rhonda Portelli (Makkena) driving across The Brooklyn Bridge with some friends, spotting a suicidal, naked young man with a "nice ass" dangling precariously from the bridge. He doesn't take the leap, and later she spots him at the bank where she works, mistaking him for the male stripper who she's hired for her birthday. (See what I mean about credibility problems?)
We discover that the man, Travis Furlong (Hickey), has recently lost his lover to AIDS. Through a series of plot contrivances too silly to explain, the pair find themselves traveling to Texas, where Travis has set out to fulfill a series of taped instructions left by his lover, who wants Travis to go to his hometown so the deceased man's relatives can come to terms with his sexuality and so Travis can come to terms with his grief. Naturally, during this process, Travis and Rhonda help each other with their respective emotional crises.
Trying to be a combination of screwball comedy and sensitive drama, "Finding North" traffics a little too hard in whimsy and wackiness and often suffers from a strained, artificial air that makes it difficult to be fully engaged with the characters. Fortunately, Hickey and Makkena are highly appealing performers, and their entertainingly contrasting acting styles -- the former stoically underplaying, the latter rather over the top -- help us overcome the strained plotting and dialogue.
FINDING NORTH
A Cowboy Booking International release
Director: Tanya Wexler
Screenplay: Kim Powers
Executive producer: Hal "Corky" Kessler
Producers: Steven A. Jones, Stephen Dyer
Director of photography: Michael Barrett
Editor: Thom Zimny
Production designer: James B. Smythe
Music: Cafe Noir
Color/Stereo
Cast:
Rhonda Portelli: Wendy Makkena
Travis Furlong: John Benjamin Hickey
Voice of Bobby: Jonathan Walker
Debi: Anne Bobby
Gina: Rebecca Creskoff
Mrs. Portelli: Angela Pietropinto
Mr. Portelli: Freddie Roman
Running time -- 95 minutes
No MPAA rating...
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