D.C. MOVIE GUYS

King’s Ransom
Directed by Jeff Byrd
Terrorizing audiences at theatres nationwide beginning 4/22/2005
1 *
I recently saw King’s Ransom at a preview screening and I feel dirty.
The 19th FilmFest DC opened with a tedious Bengali melodrama entitled Raincoat. In both a final title card and in his remarks afterwards, the director had the temerity to compare his film to the O. Henry short story “The Gift of the Magi” and to claim that his film was adapted from this much beloved and well-known story. They are similar in that both story and movie feature a man and a woman, but that is about it. (more…)

MOVIE REVIEW: “FEVER PITCH”

Ben (Jimmy Fallon) is a nice guy. A hard working physics teacher at a
Boston middle school who actually gets along with the kids and gets them to
understand the complex subject. He’s the kind of guy who, on a first date
with a woman he really likes, spends the night taking care of her when it
turns out she;s eaten the wrong thing at lunch and is sick as a dog when he
comes to pick her up, He’s kind, thoughful and funny, the kind of guy
who’ll do a stanger a favor without thinking twice about it, There’s just
one problem with this dream guy. He’s a baseball fan, A very passionate
fan. A Boston Red Sox fan. And, as the new romantic comedy “Fever Pitch”
makes clear, that sporting passion may cost him the love of his life.

Based on the 1997 British film of the same name, “Fever PPitch” follows the
course of Ben’s relationship with Lindsey (Drew Barrymore), a smart and
driven executive at a marketing firm. Through the fall and winter, their
relationship blossoms and grows deeper. Things seem perfect, until Ben
explains he has to pass on going with Lindsey to her family’s week of
birthday and anniversary events-because he and his friends have to attend a
week of Sox spring training. When the season opens, Lindsey attends the
opening day game, but finds it difficult to fit in with Ben’s
“summer family” of baseball fanatics. Can their love survive the stress of
the customay Red Sox late season swoon, as well as Lindsey’s push to get a
major promotion at work?

The brother directing team of Bobby and Peter Farrelly (”Dumb and Dumber”,
“There’s Something Abount Mary”) aren’t known for their subtly or grace.
But, working with a script written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, of
City Slickers” and “Laverne and Shirley” fame, actually deliver a restrained

and touching little movie that entertains without the brother’s usual
excesses. They draw engaging performances from Fallon and Barrymore, the
kind that will have viewers believing the storyline, despite its flaws, and
rooting for things to work out. Fallon shows some real skill and
possibility of growth as an actor, something that could hardly be said after

seeing his work in last year’s “Taxi”.

Though Ganz and Mandell garener solid laughs and heartfelt emotion in
telling the story, the movie is unable to recreate the complexity of emotion

and passion for team that takes over one’s life that the original film
caputured. (By the way, that version’s available on video and stars Collin
Furth. It’s based on a novel by acclaimed British novelist Nick Hoirnby.)
Also, the Feway Park regulars seem a bit tame and a tad colorless, perhaps a

nod to the fact the Farrelly’s are from New England and didn’t want to draw
on any stereotypes. Happily, Fallon avoids utilizing the stereotypical
Boston accent he used on “Saturday Night Live”.

Still, despite its flaws (and the quirky twist offate that turned the Sox
into winners the same years a movie about their lovable loser stauus was
being filmed), “Fever Pitch” delivers plenty of laughs, real warmth a bit of

a twist on the plot in its final moments that makes it well worth seeing.

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for profanity and sexual situatiins
JOE’S RATING: THREE STARS.

MOVIE REVIEW: “THE INTERPRTER”

Crafting a credible thriller is a tricky task. You’ve got to crate a plot
that can get an audience’s blood pumping while keepin the storyline within
the bounds of some kind of reality. The fate of nations and characters are
on the line and danger is at every turn, but your hero better find a way to
triumph, even at the cost of a friend, lover or a limb. Your storytelling
focus must be flexable enough to shift from huge special effects and
dazzling stunt work to the smallest of details, like the name on a piece of
paper tossed into a trash can. The number of directors who can pull this
off in an entertaining and engrossing manner can be counted on two hands.
Sidney Pollack, who turned this trick brilliantly in “Three Days of The
Condor” and “The Firm” tries to pull off a
hat trick of sorts with “The Interpter”, starring Nicole Kidman and Sean
Penn. Despite some semi-
serious flaws, the movie delivers solid value.

Kidman is Silvia Broome, an interpter at the United Nations. A survivor of
the war-torn African nation of Motoba, she’s lost many of the people closest

to her, but has come to the U.N. tp be a part of peaceful change and
progress. While leaving her booth after a drill, she accidentally overhears

a whispered plot to assassinate the controversail leader of her native
country when he arrives to speak in defense of himself and his tactics
before the General Assembly.

When she reports what she’s overheard, she’s questioned by Tobin Keller
(Penn), the top agent for the Secret Service’s Diplomat Protection Division,

the U.S. Government agency responsible for protecting the Motoban leader
while he’s in New York. Keller knows the government can’t afford to take
any chances, but is suspicious of Silvia and begins digging into her past.
As the leader’s arrival draws closer, a web of past and current connections
between Silvia and opposition forces emerges. Is she helping the ploters or

providing a diversion from a more sinister plot? Is she a victim of
circumstance or a tool of those seeking to kill the Motoban president and
embarass the United States and the U.N. ? Can Keller uncover the trruthin
time?

Director Pollack manages to keep all these plotlines moving smoothly, for
the most part, towards an exciting and unexpected conclusion. Among the
bumps in the road, however, are one too many conincidental sub plots that
act as annoying red herrings. These sub-plots clutter the movie and slow
the pace, robbing the movie of some needed energy. Penn’s low-key, tightly
restrained performance as Agent Keller is also a problem. Though he’s a fine

actor, his typical acting syle works against the natural dynamics of a
thriller. Kidman, however, is dead solid perfect, delivering a complex,
layered performance that powers and stablizes the movie.

A perfect example of the sum being greater than its parts, “The Interprter”
is engaging and thought provoking piece of adult entertainment at the
movies, something we rarely get from Hollywood studios these days. Warts
and all, it’s a welcome sight.

MPAA RATING:PG-13 for profanity and violence.
JOE’S RATING:THREE STARS.

MOVIE REVIEW: “THE HITCHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY”

In the early 1980’s, a gifted British author with a wickedly off beat sense
of humor named Douglas Adams created a radio program for the BBC about the
adventures of an ordinary man plucked off the Earth just before the planet
is destroyed. . .to make room for an interplanetary highway bypass.
Apparently, no one in the universe ever heard of eminent domain. But I
digress. Before anyone realized what was happening, the radio show begat a
series of recordings, a theatrical production and the first in a series of
delightfully daffy, bestselling books. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy” has gone on to spawn a wildly popular television mini-series and
several more bookks. Douglas Adams died suddenly four years ago, but his
work lives on, wonderfully so, in a clever new big screen adaptation of the
“Guide” that will leave you laughing from begining to end.

Martin Freeman (the adult film “stunt double” in “Love, Actually” and the
salesman in the original BBC version of “The Office”) stars as Arthur Dent,
a pleast fellow whose thinks his biggest problem one bright Saturday morning

is that his home is about to be leveled by a government construction crew.

Things take a definate turn for the strange whren Arthur’s best friend Ford
(Mos Def) shows up, telling Arthur the world is about to come to an end.

As it turns out Ford is correct but, just before the end, he and Arthur
“hitch” a ride on the spaceship of the galactic construction crew that wiped

out Earth. Ford reveals to Arthur that he’s a writer, of sorts, for the
“Hitchiker’s Guide”, a book that the average intergalactic traveler simply
connot leave their home planet without. Ford is an alien an was visiting
Earth to update the Guide’s chapter on the planet.

Earth turns out to be a key piece in answering the ultimate question in the
universe, the one question that all spieces of life need answered. Teaming
up with the only remaining Earth woman, Trillian (whom Arthur happened to
know ) and her rescurer, the crazy/cool President of the Galaxy Zaphrod
Beeblebox, Arthur and Ford travel millions of light years and confront a
number of wild creatues and situations while trying to solve that ultimate
questioin and find a future.

Director Garth Jennings has done a spot on job of capturing the sprit of
Adams’ books and the feel of the vast, yet intimate, universe he created.
Utiliizing live action, animation and puppetry, he brings Adams’ vision of a

wildly eccentric, oddly familiar world to life. The screenplay, credited to

Karey Kirkpatrick and Adams (who worked on it for several years before his
death), clearly has its tounge firmly planted in its cheek as it glides
between our heroe’s wild ride and the numerous entries in the Guide,
brought to life brilliantly with the help of actor Stephen Fry, who narates
the segments and the film overall.

The cast is uniformley strong, with stand out work done by Zooey Deschanel
as Trillian, Sam Rockwell as Zapbrod and Alan Rickman as the voice of
Marvin, the eternally depressed robot. Jennings does a fine job of keeping
the various elements ofthe movie in balance, while giving his human actors
the room to shape intriguing characters that fiit the movie’s classic
fablesque atmosphere.

The most imaginative movie to arrive in theaters so far this year, “The
Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is great, good fun.

MPAA RATING: PG for mild violence and some profanity.
JOE’S RATING: FOUR STARS.

MOVIE REVIEW: “WINTER SOLSTICE”

“Winter Solstice” is a movie that values silence as much as dialog. Often
in this subtle, quietly intense film, what charachters do not say to each
other is as important as the words they speak.
Written and directed by first time filmmaker Josh Sternfeld, the movie does
a fine job of examining the desolate territory of the broken dream, which
can also be the uncharted landscape of open possibility.

Set in a small town in upstate New Jersey, the film tells the story of Jim
Winters (Anthony LaPaglia of the “Without A Trace” television series) and
his two teenage sons, Gabe and Pete. Widdowed five years earlier when his
wife was killed in a car accident that also damaged Pete’s hearing, Jim has
focused all his attention on raising his boys and keepng his landscaping
business going. Gabe, the oldest son, has finished high school and taken a
job at a local factory rather than going to college or joining the family
business.

Pete, formerly a good student and promising athlete, has become indifferent
to his studies after his mother’s death and sleeps late, spending most of
his time playing basketball with his friends. Meanwhile, Gabe has become
restless with his job, his life and his longtime, younger girfriend, Stacey,

and is actively planning to leave town for a new start.

As spring drifts into summer, a ripple of change arrives when Molly (”The
West Wing”’s Allison Janney) arrives in town to housesit for friends. She
strikes up a friendship with Jim, who’s at first reluctant to get too cclose

to her. While his feelings begin to thaw, he finds his carefully managed
world coming apart, with Gabe announcing his plan to leave and Pete
struggling to deal with his latest assignment to summer school.

Sternfeld concentrates on closely examined moments in which not everything
is revealed in dialog. He allows his cast the room to explore the unspoken
tension and desperation in their character’s plights. He-and they-are not
afraid to allow silence to hold the moment, creating a kind of reality films

rarely trust audiences have the patience for. From the leads on down, the
actors do their work with skill and grace.

Running only 98 minutes, “Winter Solstice” has the rich and satisfying feel

of a well written short story. In its silences, it speaks volumes.

MPAA RATING:R for profanity.
JOE’S RATING: THREE STARS