Author Archives: natezoebl
Sex and Lucia (2002)
“Put lots of sex in it. Thats always good,” says a character in Sex and Lucia, the steamy Spanish import now playing. And Sex and Lucia is true to its very title. There are many scenes with Lucia, our heroine, and there’s also oodles of sex. This is the type of movie where if people can walk around without a stitch on, they will. This is the type of movie where a babysitter will masturbate to her mother’s porno. This is the type of movie where shower heads are not used for their intended purpose. No wonder this movie went unrated.
Sex and Lucia is a genuinely erotic movie. And when it comes to eroticism in cinema, the Europeans make us look like sickly amateurs. After exploring whatever late-night stimuli is offered on Showtime or Cinemax youll get an idea of how poor American eroticism is. Usually they involve an adventurous couple, or a sex therapist, or a Jacuzzi/swimming pool, or a lonely stewardess/waitress/secretary and usually Shannon Tweed stars. What disarray the state of our erotic union is in. But for all its shocking and stimulating moments, Sex and Lucia is an intriguing tale of loss, love and sexuality, of course, even if it’s told rather obtusely.
Lucia (Paz Vega) is a waitress in Madrid. She enters into a fiery relationship with a writer named Lorenzo (Tristian Ulloa). Their passion seems to burn as fast as the many cigarettes in the film. Their relationship is full of joyous sex, impromptu strip teases, and blindfolded foreplay. But Lorenzo has a secret he hides from Lucia. Six years ago he fathered a daughter he has never seen when he had a tryst on the beach of a Mediterranean isle. The mother has sent their daughter, Luna (named after the full moon on her conception), into the care of a former porn star and Belen, her randy teenage daughter, in Madrid. Its here that Lorenzo first meets his daughter and then Belen starts coming onto him.
After learning some disconcerting news about her boyfriend, Lucia leaves to take some refuge on the same sunny Mediterranean island where Luna’s mother lives. Lucia actually takes refuge with her and looks back upon her stormy relationship with Lorenzo. The island has many deceiving holes that fall into caverns all along its beach, directly echoing the rabbit hole for Alice.
This, believe it or not, is the most easily understandable part of the movie. I’ve told you what took place but after seeing it even I dont know what happened. The story has several moments, even entire subplots, that could be the truth, fantasy, sections of Lorenzo’s story, an exaggerated dream, or maybe all of them combined. Your guess is as good as mine, reader.
Writer/director Julio Medem utilizes about every narrative trick in the book to create an alluring puzzle. He washes out the colors of the film (also seen in Three Kings) and seems to correspond to the surreal quality of many story lines. The cinematography is a gorgeous delight. Vega has a smolder and can act circles around her Spanish competition. She gives a brave performance, partially for being as nude as often as she is, and also for displaying the fragile emotions of Lucia so well.
Sex and Lucia is indeed quite sexy but it’s more than just art house porn. The film’s story is an intimate tangle that just might stimulate the largest organ: the brain.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
The Rules of Attraction (2002)
The Rules of Attraction is based on Bret Easton Ellis’ hedonistic 80s novel about boozing coked-out, aloof teenagers and their rampant debauchery. Roger Avary was Quentin Tarantino’s writing partner for years, with an Oscar sitting at home for co-writing Pulp Fiction. As a director Avary lays the visual gloss on thick utilizing camera tricks like split-screens and having entire sequences run backwards. While Ellis’ source material is rather empty, echoing the collegiate friendships bonded over substances or social lubricants, Avary does his best to represent the dazed world of college.
We open with Lauren (Shannyn Sossamon) getting raped by some drunk “townie” while the film buff she had her eyes on videotapes it. She’s just broken up with the bisexual and apathetic Paul (Ian Somerhalder), and both are interested in the sociopath Sean Bateman (James Van Der Beek), a self-described emotional vampire. Lauren keeps a picture book of venereal diseases to ward her from her wayward sexual urges. Her roommate Lara (Jessica Biel) needs no such book. Our introduction of Lara has her dancing down a hall, liquor bottle in each fist, bedding an entire sports team. Some attractions connect, many don’t, but the fun is watching the characters interact in their own seedy yet often hilarious ways.
The best thing that The Rules of Attraction has going for it is its about-face, against-type casting. The film is populated with the WB’s lineup of clear-skinned goody-two-shoes getting a chance to cut loose. Van Der Beek broods like a predatory hawk and bursts with spontaneous rage. Biel sexes it up as a cocaine-addicted harlot who asks if she’s “anorexic skinny” or “bulimic skinny.” Even Fred-Wonder-Years-Savage shows up briefly to shoot up between his toes! The adults of this world are no better than the kids. Eric Stoltz has an extended cameo of a duplicitous professor offering a higher GPA if any coeds are willing to go down on their morals. Swoosie Kurtz and Faye Dunaway show us that pill-popping ditherheads may likely breed drug-addled teenagers.
Attraction may have the most disturbing suicide I’ve ever witnessed in film. After having her advances rejected a woman slips into the bathtub, razor in hand. The scene is as unsettling as it is because the camera hangs on the poor woman’s face every second and we gradually see the life spill out of her as the music becomes distorted, not letting us escape the discomfort.
Some of Avary’s surface artifice works perfectly, like Victor’s whirlwind account of an entire semester in Europe. Some of the visual fireworks are distractions to the three-person narrative but the film is always alive with energy, even when it’s depressing you. What The Rules of Attraction does get right is the irrational nature of attraction. Each character is trying to fill an inaccessible void with what they think is love but will often settle for sex, drugs, or both. The Rules of Attraction is made up of unlikable, miserable characters that effectively do nothing but find new ways to be miserable. It constantly straddles the line of exploitation and excess but maintains its footing. The movie is entirely vapid but it is indeed an indulgently fun yet depraved ride. If you’re looking for degeneracy instead of life-affirmation, then The Rules of Attraction is your ticket.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Documentary filmmaker, political activist and corporate pot-stirrer Michael Moore prefaces his latest film Bowling for Columbine by admitting his lifetime membership in the National Rifle Association (NRA). He even received a marksmanship award as a teenager in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Bowling for Columbine is Moore’s sprawling and hilarious search for answers among America’s zealous gun culture and alarmingly high number of homicides. It’s the tangents Moore just can’t help but take along the ride that add some of the more fun moments.
He opens a checking account at a Michigan bank that’s offering a gun for new customer accounts. Moore astutely asks an employee, “Do you think it’s a good idea handing out guns in a bank?” Moore travels to Canada to find out what reasons exist that make our cultures so different when it comes to crime. After hearing from citizens about how they don’t lock their doors, Moore decides to go door-to-door and see for himself. Sure enough, he walks into half-a-dozen homes.
Moore is better at pointing the finger than fathoming real answers. He touches media sensationalism, our nation’s bloody history, corporate greed, past military involvement, and an environment of fear being developed by those who profit from such actions. The sobering truth is that there are no easy answers to be debunked. The film’s climax involves an impromptu sit-down with NRA president Charlton Heston. Moore questions the sensitivity of the NRA after it held support rallies days after the school shootings in Littleton and Flint. Heston becomes weary and walks out of the interview after five minutes.
The film demands to be seen. It’s complex, challenging, and thought-provoking. Not only is Bowling for Columbine the most important film of 2002, it’s also one of the best.
Nate’s Grade: A
Share this:
Red Dragon (2002)
The following is a conversation overheard between two studio producers:
Person #1: So this Hannibal movie made like a ton of green. What else can we do to squeeze out some more money?
Person #2: Hey, do you remember a movie called Manhunter based on the first Lector novel?
Person #1: Nope.
Person #2: That’s fine because nobody else does.
It’s official folks: Hannibal Lector, America’s favorite cannibal, is now more comical than scary. See the element that 1991’s Silence of the Lambs carried with it was a stealthily gripping sense of psychological horror. It hung with you in every closed breath you would take, surrounding you and blanketing your mind. I mean, there aren’t many serial killer movies that win a slew of Oscars. And while the follow-up, last year’s Hannibal, gleefully bathed in excess at least Ridley Scott’s sequel was so over-the-top with its Baroque horror that it was entertaining. So what’s Red Dragon, the latest Lector flick based on Thomas Harris first novel like? Well it’s like the bastard child of Lambs and Hannibal after a drunken one-night-stand neither would be proud of in the pale light of morning.
In an extended prologue we see the capture of the good doctor with a good appetite, Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins, completing his trilogy of the character). FBI Agent Will Graham (Edward Norton) seeks his advice on a profile of a serial killer, not knowing that Lector more than fits the bill. A violent struggle ensues that leaves Graham with a long scar across his abdomen and Lector locked away for nine consecutive life sentences.
Turns out there’s another madman on the loose. The Tooth Fairy, dubbed by tabloid journalist Freddy Lounds (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), has butchered two families in their homes and inserted shards of broken mirror into their eyes. The FBI coaxes Graham out of retirement to try and track down the Tooth Fairy. But it seems in order to make any significant ground he must seek help from an old advisor – Hannibal Lector.
The crux of the film follows Graham’s attempts to figure out the identity of the Tooth Fairy, which we learn fairly fast is pretty boy Ralph Fiennes. Seems Fiennes has a cleft palette and years of physical and sexual abuse to toil over. He desires to transform into a mythical Chinese creature known as the Red Dragon. But wait, the lonely Fiennes is befriended by a lovely blind woman (Emily Watson) who identifies having people look differently at her. Can her affections melt the cold heart of a cold-blooded killer? Well, if they did thered be no other half of this movie.
What Red Dragon feels like is more of a checklist of what we expect to see in a Hannibal movie than anything of creative nourishment. It’s like a slimmer version of Lambs plot. Once again there’s an FBI agent who recruits Hannibal for advice on tracking down a serial killer. Once again there’s a disturbed killer trying to transform himself. Once again Hannibal Lector scares the crap out of anyone at will. Check, check, and check. Creative stagnation? Double check. The most disappointing aspect is the rudimentary feel this whole exercise has. Even though Red Dragon is a prequel it still seems like it’s begging to meet our expectations of two earlier films.
The first stab at the Red Dragon novel was in 1986 by director Michael Mann (Ali, The Insider) with the thriller Manhunter. William Peterson (before his work at CSI) was a more brooding Graham, Tom Noonan was a spookier Tooth Fairy, and the tension was stacked better. There were no comparative expectations.
Norton is the finest actor of his generation but has certain trouble breathing life into Graham. The character is far more straight-laced than what we’ve been told is an expert at delving into the minds of killers. Grahams relationship with Lector doesn’t have any of the complexity, or interest, that Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling had. He can even be very flat-footed in his detective work for a specialist. He stares at the home videos of the two slain families for about an hour wondering what the connection is while we in the audience shout it out to him. Lets go to the videotape Ed!
Anthony Hopkins returns as the devil in the flesh and seems to have another grand old time. Lector worked in Lambs because he was caged up, like a wild animal not meant for four glass walls. You never knew what would happen. He’d get in your head and he would know what to do with your gray matter — not that he didn’t have a culinary degree in that department with Hannibal. With Red Dragon, Hannibal is just window dressing to another serial killer. He’s a supporting character in a story that he has nothing to do with. He’s reduced to comic relief with his sudden attacks of chattering teeth and velvety voice. The amazing supporting cast of actors all do well, especially the beaming Watson who will shine in anything you put her in. Just try.
Ultimately the story of Red Dragon is far from flawless and meanders for quite a while. It would have been a marginally competent movie had it not been trying to replicate Silence of the Lambs so damn hard. So, is this the last youll see of Hannibal Lector? No as long as clinging cash registers can still be heard. Cue evil laughter.
Nate’s Grade: C+
Share this:
Secretary (2002)
Secretary is a new romantic comedy with a few kinks to it. Its actually the most romantic S&M movie ever. It’s the first S&M romantic comedy since maybe Garry Marshall’s disastrous 1994 Exit to Eden. Im still trying to get the image of Rosie O’Donnell in a bondage mask out of my ongoing nightmares.
Lee Halloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is fresh from a stop at a mental institution for her hazardous habit of cutting herself to feel relief. Her overbearing mother stashes the entire kitchen cutlery in a locked cabinet. The sheltered Lee resorts back to a kiddy make-up box stashed under her home bed. Instead of colorful brushes and arrays of lipstick, she has a selection of sharp objects. Lee goes job hunting to step back from her habit, and is hired as a secretary to E. Edward Gray (James Spader). He is a rigid taskmaster who delights in pointing out typographical errors with his red marker, his weapon of choice. Gray enjoys his dominance and Lee complies, even if its routing through garbage. He ticks away Lee’s flaws like a checklist of annoyance but also appears to have genuine concern for her. When he notices her wounds Gray confronts her and convinces Lee to stop cutting herself.
The turning point arrives when Gray orders Lee into his office one afternoon. He commands her to bend over his desk and then delivers a sound spanking. Lee stares at her purple rump with fascination, like something has been awakened inside her. Soon enough Lee purposely makes typos so she can re-assume her spanking position.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is a cinematic find with a fearless and breathtaking performance that is at once delicate, nervous, self-controlled, seductive and delightful. Gyllenhaal, with her heart-like face and pert lips, radiates star quality. She allows the audience into Lee’s head and we quickly fall in love with this peculiar yet charming heroine. If there is any justice in this world Gyllenhaal should at least get an Oscar nomination (she didn’t). Spader can do this left-of-center creepy character stuff in his sleep.
Secretary on the surface may seem like a fetish flick but it’s no different than boy (sadist) meets girl (masochist) and falls in love. Director Steven Shainberg treads carefully around serious subject matter, like Lee’s self-mutilation, to focus on these two very special characters. Secretary isn’t making any loud statements on sadomasochism or post-feminism, it’s just showing us that S&M is the route these two people take to find true love. It doesn’t judge them for their unconventional tastes and neither should we. This is one of the finest romances in recent memory and it seems to come from one of the most unlikely places.
Sadomasochism has been predominantly shown involving pain or some leather-masked madman evoking torture. Secretary may be the film that shows there can be pleasures with pain. Some people regard what Lee and Edward do as sick, perverted, or downright wrong. Secretary is a foot in the door to get people to understand what willing sadomasochism really is about. We all have fetishes and interests, and S&M is the number one fetish truth be told. This isn’t your everyday romance.
Obviously, this is a movie that will not appeal to everyone. The relationship between our leads is surprisingly complex but gentle and even sweet (if thats the proper word for an S&M romantic comedy). Secretary shows that it truly takes different strokes and, despite an overly silly ending, is the most pleasing romance of the year. Youll never look at red felt pens the same.
Nate’s Grade: A
Share this:
One Hour Photo (2002)
Do we regularly invite strangers to view the picturesque and personal moments of our life like marriages, celebrations, and maybe even a handful of hastily conceived topless photos? Well we all do every time we drop off a roll of film for development.
Robin Williams continues his 2002 Tour of the Dark Side (Death to Smoochy, Insomnia) as way of Sy, your friendly photo guy working at your local Sav-mart superstore. Sy takes an intense artistic pride in the quality of prints he gives. He knows customers by name and can recite addresses verbatim. One family in particular Sy has become fond of is the Yorkins, mother Nina (Connie Nielsen), father Will (Michael Vartan) and nine-year-old Jake. The Yorkins have been coming to Sav-mart and Sy for over 11 years to have their photos developed. He tells Nina that he almost feels like Uncle Sy to the family. For Sy, the Yorkins are the ideal postcard family with perennially smiling faces and the happiest of birthdays. He fantasizes about sharing holidays with them and even going to the bathroom in their posh home.
Sy is an emotionally suppressed and deeply lonely man caught in his delusions. In one of the eerier moments of the film we see that Sy has an entire wall made up of hundreds of the Yorkin’s personal pictures. When Sy attempts to become closer to the objects of his infatuation that’s when things begin to unravel at a serious pace. The more Sy learns that the Yorkins are not the perfect family he yearns for the more he tries to correct it and at any cost.
One Hour Photo is an impressive film debut by music video maven Mark Romanek (best known for the NIN “Closer” video). Romanek also wrote the darkly unrepentant story as well. One Hour Photo is a delicate voyage into the workings of Sy’s instability with lushly colorful metaphors. Romanek’s color scheme is a lovely treat, with vibrant colors popping out and Sy’s life being dominated by cold, sterilized whites. His direction is chillingly effective.
This may be the first time we can truly say Robin Williams has not merely played a version of Robin Williams in a movie. Sy’s thick glasses and thinning peroxide-like hair coupled with an array of facial pocks allow us to truly forget that the man behind the mask is Mork. His performance is unnerving and engrossing. The supporting cast all work well. Nielsen (Gladiator) is a sympathetic wife even if her hair looks like it was cut with her eyes closed. Vartan (Vaughn on ABC’s wonderful Alias) plays understandably wary of Sy’s friendliness. The great Gary Cole has a small role as Sav-mart’s manager who grows tired of Sy’s outbursts and peculiarities.
One Hour Photo is rife with nervous moments and titters. Williams almost has an uneasy predatory feel to him when left alone with Jake. The greatest achievement the film has is that is depicts the scariest person youll ever see, sans hockey mask, and by the end of the film you actually feel degrees of warmth for this odd duck.
Not everything clicks in Romanek’s dark opus. A late out-of-left-field revelation by Sy feels forced and needlessly tacked on. The Yorkin family photos all appear to be taken by a third party, since the majority of them involve all three of them in frame. The climax to One Hour Photo also feels anything but climactic.
A compellingly creepy outing, One Hour Photo is fine entertainment with beautiful visuals and a haunting score. And maybe, in the end, it really does take an obsessive knife-wielding stalker to make us realize the importance of family.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
The Good Girl (2002)
Jennifer Aniston, a Friends favorite, has been getting attention for her less than attractive turn in adultery with The Good Girl. However, the movie’s biggest flaw is Aniston herself. The Good Girl can try and make her look as disheveled as they can, and they can try and make her wear as much unflattering baggy clothing as possible, but in the end we’re still watching Mrs. Brad Pitt groan about the purgatory that is Middle America. An actress of better caliber could likely pull off the rub, but alas, Aniston is not quite that actress yet.
Aniston narrates the disenchantment as Justine with her dead-end job working at a Wal-Mart-esque chain store and her dead-end marriage to perennially stoned house painter Phil (John C. Reilly). She longs for an escape and a change of pace from a grind where there appears none. Then one day a new teenage co-worker named Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal) comes into her life and seems to represent the danger and vitality Justine has felt missing in her life for so long. Her affections are at first stalled in apprehension, but soon Holden and Justine are ducking into motels and finding excuses to get busy in the stock room. But soon enough the honeymoon ends. Justine learns more distressing items about the emotionally dependent and unstable clerk, like his real name is Tom (“Tom is my slave name” he tells her). What once seemed exciting is now becoming more perilous to cover up.
The Good Girl then descends into blacker territory with some unexpected turns, but also some more unbelievable moments. When confronted by Phil’s best friend Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson) about her infidelity she is given a rather unpleasant ultimatum that she gives in too way too easily. The longer the affair and messy cover up continues the more audience loyalties shift toward the victim, Phil. He admits he isn’t the smartest man or the best husband, but his feelings are authentic for his wife. And the more the audience views him the more they see that he truly does love Justine.
And again, we have to come black to that road block of a lead. A more accomplished actress could pull off this bittersweet role with aplomb and believability. A better actress could have slowed down the audience shift in loyalty away from her unfaithful protagonist. The supporting cast of The Good Girl has a lot more bite to them. Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko) now seems to be an expert in the disturbed youth. Reilly starts off as a loaf but transforms into a sympathetic character that has his own touching moments of unannounced affection to Justine. Nelson gives the film some of its funniest moments along with the lethally deadpanned Zooey Deschanel. The lone stereotype in the bunch is played by Mike White (who wrote the film) as an overly enthusiastic Christian do-gooder.
It’s a pity The Good Girl has its anchor around the neck of Aniston and willing to go as far as she will take it, because The Good Girl is indeed a good film with some wicked moments of comedy and a well-written story. It’s just that Aniston’s acting limitations gravitate what could have been a better film.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
S1mone (2002)
Director Viktor Taransky (Al Pacino) needs a hit like a crack addict (my apologies to Chris Rock). His new movie is in the can but his temperamental star (Wynona Ryder in a juicy cameo) pulls out and demands all footage of her be left on the cutting room floor. The studio is close to dropping Taransky’s film deal, and the studio head just happens to be Taransky’s ex-wife (Catherine Keener).
Under this intense pressure Taransky retreats to mourn his failed potential, until an eccentric one-eyed computer engineer gives him the key to his solution. It seems that instead of interacting with actors and their egos and trailer demands, Taransky has found a new movie star — one completely made up of ones and zeroes named Simone. Taransky edits Simone into his film and soon after the nation is in love with the digital blonde. Simone mania sweeps the nation and soon her smiling image graces all sorts of memorabilia. The public can’t get enough of the mysterious Simone who never goes to public functions and only seems to speak or appear for Taransky.
Writer/director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca) has some fun with the premise but tries to have his cake and eat it too when it comes to his satire. S1mone starts out satirizing egotistical stars, then the Hollywood system, then the press, then the public as star worshipers. The movie is all over the map trying to have something witty to say about all these different topics but is too busy to settle down on any one for a while. The satire S1mone embodies feels deflated from all the work it’s trying to do.
Pacino has always been able to do comedy but seems wearier than ever. He indulges in his comic like over-the-top aggression he’s been doing since Dick Tracy. Keener plays another of her icy businesswomen roles although she thaws quite easily and quickly in the film.
There’s a rather funny subplot involving Pruitt Taylor Vince and Jason Schwartzman as tabloid reporters on the prowl of the elusive Simone that deserves much more attention than it gets. The bulk of the movie could have been these two entertaining characters.
When Taransky finds that his creation has become more than he can handle he tries to discredit her through a series of very funny public appearances and avante garde film choices. But then S1mone sadly goes back to its more mediocre roots. Taransky tries to get rid of Simone but it all horribly backfires.
As the film progresses you start to realize all the gaping holes that come up – like how can Taransky, a self-described computer illiterate, handle the most technical computer program of all time? How come no one would find out that Simone lacks a birth certificate, social security number or even tax records for her studio work? And why does the audience have to sit through the disgustingly cute daughter of Taransky and Keener, who just happens to be a computer whiz-kid, besides the fact she’ll have a late fourth quarter save of dad?
It’s not that S1mone is necessarily a bad film; it just has this missing piece to it when you watch it. Some scenes are funny, many drag, and the whole thing needed to be tighter and punchier. And to clear up any confusion, it is indeed an ACTRESS who plays Simone. Her name is Rachel Roberts.
Nate’s Grade: C+
Share this:
XXX (2002)
By the time you see Vin Diesel surf on a snack tray in his pimp coat you’ll know there is no hope for humanity anymore. Easily the dumbest action movie ever that doesn’t have Steven Seagal’s name to it.
Nate’s Grade: D
Share this:
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
Is anyone else getting tired of watching the same re-heated jokes again and again with the Austin Powers franchise? Making Goldmember is basically considered money in the bank, so I’m sure the creative people toiling behind the scenes don’t want to rock to boat of a financially proven formula. But when you become creatively stagnant then what was once entertaining turns sadly redundant.
I think there was four actual things I laughed at in the whole movie, and that in no way should justify admission price. I might be alone in my thinking but I feel the Austin Powers spy-spoof series is just getting less and less funny the more financially successful it becomes. Do we need to see more scenes with the grotesque and unfunny Fat Bastard? Do we need more scenes with the requisite underwritten female role (this time played by Beyonce Knowles)? And do we really need Austin at all? I mean if you want to talk about the weak link in this comedy troupe, it’s the name bearer himself. Whenever the film has to switch back to Powers the comedy drops to the floor. I would gladly pay good money to see an entire Dr. Evil movie. Michael Caine is the only solid addition to this movie.
It doesn’t matter what goes on in this some hour and forty minutes of screen time, because it will be huge. Many of the jokes fall flat, are devoid of wit, and just go for the cheapest and most scatological way out. Im not saying I expected much seeing the latest Austin Powers movie but I did expect to laugh, and not doing so is the biggest sin for a comedy.
Nate’s Grade: C
nathanzoebl 
You must be logged in to post a comment.