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FINDING NEVERLAND – Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet

Finding Neverland (2004)
Direction: Marc Forster
Screenplay: David Magee; from Allan Knee’s play The Man Who Was Peter Pan
Cast: Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Radha Mitchell, Julie Christie, Freddie Highmore, Dustin Hoffman, Joe Prospero, Ian Hart, Kelly Macdonald
 

 

Back in 2001, German-born director Marc Forster brought a much welcome touch of non-Hollywood flavor to the independently made psychological drama Monster’s Ball. Besides the daring (if way overlong) sex scenes, that film imparted a refreshingly realistic atmosphere that was much enhanced by Forster’s minimalist touch.
As the title implies, Finding Neverland, also directed by Forster, and adapted by David Magee from Allan Knee’s play The Man Who Was Peter Pan, has absolutely nothing to do with reality, whether James M. Barrie’s or anyone else’s. Still, [...]

LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS – Jim Carrey

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Direction: Brad Silberling
Screenplay: Robert Gordon, from Daniel Handler’s books The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window
Cast: Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, Liam Aiken, Emily Browning, Jude Law, Timothy Spall, Catherine O’Hara, Billy Connolly, Dustin Hoffman, Craig Ferguson, Luis Guzmán, Jennifer Coolidge, Jaimie Harris
 

 

Three of Daniel Handler’s Gothic tales about three siblings on the run from a ruthless and greedy relative are given the Hollywood treatment in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Not surprisingly, the US$100,000,000+ film boasts first-rate production values, with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s lenses perfectly capturing (and enhancing) the eerie Gothic-ness of production designer Rick Heinrichs‘ preternatural creations.
On the other hand, as befits most Hollywood fare, both [...]

BEING JULIA – Annette Bening, Jeremy Irons

Being Julia (2004)
Direction: István Szabó
Screenplay: Ronald Harwood; from W. Somerset Maugham’s 1937 novel Theatre
Cast: Annette Bening, Jeremy Irons, Shaun Evans, Bruce Greenwood, Miriam Margolyes, Juliet Stevenson, Lucy Punch, Michael Gambon, Sheila McCarthy, Leigh Lawson, Rosemary Harris, Rita Tushingham
 

 

A LITTLE ABOUT AVICE
In Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1950 Oscar-winning classic All About Eve, Bette Davis plays Margo Channing, a major Broadway star who, despite her talent and wit, falls prey to the ambitious wannabe Eve Harrington: sweet, soft-spoken Anne Baxter on the outside, ruthless, poisonous gargoyle on the inside.
More than a decade earlier, in 1937 to be exact, W. Somerset Maugham had written Theatre, a novel about a West End star, the stage diva Julia Lambert (that four years later would [...]

LES CHORISTES d: Christophe Barratier

Les Choristes / The Chorus (2004)
Direction: Christophe Barratier
Screenplay: Christophe Barratier and Philippe Lopes-Curval; inspired by the 1945 motion picture La Cage aux rossignols / A Cage of Nightingales, written by Georges Chaperot, Noël-Noël, and René Wheeler
Cast: Gérard Jugnot, François Berléand, Jean-Baptiste Maunier, Kad Merad, Marie Bunel, Jacques Perrin, Maxence Perrin, Didier Flamand, Grégory Gatignol, Thomas Blumenthal
 

 

A gigantic hit in France, Christophe Barratier’s feature-film début, Les Choristes / The Chorus, is the newest cinematic incarnation of that old theme: the teacher who, through firmness, kindness, and understanding — mostly kindness and understanding — tames the savage hearts of his/her pupils. In addition to those qualities, the boarding-school teacher in Les Choristes, like the one played by Noël Noël in [...]

YESTERDAY d: Darrell Roodt

Yesterday (2004)
Direction and screenplay: Darrell Roodt
Cast: Leleti Khumalo, Lihle Mvelase, Kenneth Kambule, Harriet Lehabe, Camilla Walker
 

 
To date, nowhere has the AIDS pandemic been felt more strongly than in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to approximately 10% of the world population and to more than 70% of the planet’s 40 million AIDS cases. In the past twenty-five years, it is estimated that more than 20 million Sub-Saharan Africans have died from complications of the disease. Even today, drug cocktails that are relatively accessible in other parts of the globe are still beyond the means of the vast majority of Africans.
Writer-director Darrell Roodt’s South African drama Yesterday is set in this catastrophic scenario. The film depicts the effects of AIDS in the life [...]

THE AVIATOR – Leonardo DiCaprio – d: Martin Scorsese

The Aviator (2004)
Direction: Martin Scorsese
Screenplay: John Logan
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Kelli Garner, Gwen Stefani, Ian Holm, Adam Scott, Frances Conroy, Willem Dafoe, Jacob Davich, Jude Law, John C. Reilly, Edward Herrmann, Stanley DeSantis, Danny Huston, Matt Ross
 

 

WHAT’S NOT GOOD FOR THE SPRUCE GOOSE. . .
Imagine Citizen Kane directed by Steven Spielberg. The final result would look something like a Barry Levinson film — for instance, the superficial and glitzy Bugsy. Or the superficial, glitzy, and bloated The Aviator. Except, of course, that Levinson is not the man responsible for the mega-production starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the eccentric, billionaire ladies’ man Howard Hughes. Strangely enough, that man is Martin Scorsese, the director of hard-hitting [...]

CLOSER – Julia Roberts, Jude Law

Closer (2004)
Direction: Mike Nichols
Screenplay: Patrick Marber, from his 1997 play
Cast: Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Clive Owen, Natalie Portman
 

 

THE PERFECT DYSFUNCTIONAL DATE MOVIE
Mike Nichols‘ first feature film, an adaptation of Edward Albee’s acclaimed play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is a harrowing dissection of two married couples whose inner demons are let loose during a night of game playing, drinking, and screaming. That was nearly forty years ago. Fast forward to 2004 and to Nichols’ newest film adaptation of an acclaimed play, Patrick Marber’s Closer, another look at two dysfunctional heterosexual couples, this time in the age of cyberspace and AIDS.
On the surface, not much has changed since 1966: although the action has been stretched out from one night [...]

MILLION DOLLAR BABY – Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank

Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenplay: Paul Haggis, mostly from "Million $$$ Baby," one of the six short stories found in F. X. Toole’s (aka Jerry Boyd) Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Jay Baruchel, Mike Colter, Lucia Rijker
 

 

Fresh off the multiple Academy Award nominee Mystic River, Clint Eastwood has gone on to tackle the ups and downs of the boxing world in Million Dollar Baby. Despite the cheery title, this is not the usual Rocky-esque rags-to-riches story of the determined underdog who inevitably becomes a super-topdog once she (in this case it’s a “she”) puts on her gloves, jumps into the boxing ring, and starts using other women as punching bags. About two-thirds [...]

HOTEL RWANDA – Don Cheadle

Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Direction: Terry George
Screenplay: Keir Pearson and Terry George
Cast: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix, Desmond Dube, Neil McCarthy, Jean Reno
 

 
In the second quarter of 1994, while much of the world was gearing up to the World Cup to be held in Los Angeles, one of history’s deadliest wholesale slaughters of human beings was taking place in Central Africa. Following the death of Rwanda’s President Juvenal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu whose plane was shot down above the Kigali airport on April 6, 1994, the Hutu powers-that-be decided it was time to eliminate the Tutsi minority who were blamed for the crash. What followed in the next three months was an orgy of hackings and shootings throughout [...]

VERA DRAKE d: Mike Leigh

Vera Drake (2004)
Direction and screenplay: Mike Leigh
Cast: Imelda Staunton, Philip Davis, Peter Wight, Daniel Mays, Alex Kelly, Eddie Marsan, Ruth Sheen, Sally Hawkins, Chris O’Dowd, Heather Craney
 

 
Director Mike Leigh’s touches are found everywhere in Vera Drake, from the drab working-class social setting to the somewhat bizarre characters that inhabit that milieu (at least in Leigh’s oeuvre). Even so, Vera Drake cannot quite be considered a Mike Leigh Film. This bleak drama about a kind and gentle — if none too bright — part-time cleaning woman, part-time wife and mother, and part-time abortionist truly belongs to its leading lady, veteran stage and screen actress Imelda Staunton, whose superb tour de force carries the film to heights it would never have [...]

KINSEY d: Bill Condon

Kinsey (2004)
Direction and screenplay: Bill Condon (There’s a "thank you" credit to Kinsey biographer Johnathan Gathorne-Hardy and his book, Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All Things)
Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Chris O’Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Lynn Redgrave
 

 

At one point in Kinsey, Liam Neeson’s polemical Dr. Alfred Kinsey tells a reporter that it would be "useless" to make a film of his 1948 tome on male sexuality. Be that as it may, even Kinsey himself would probably have recognized that his difficult, extraordinary life could well be the stuff that great movies are made of. Writer-director Bill Condon surely thinks so, and his Kinsey is an honorable attempt to portray the [...]

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN – Daniel Radcliffe

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Direction: Alfonso Cuarón
Screenplay: Steven Kloves, from J. K. Rowling’s novel
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Gambon, Richard Griffiths, Alan Rickman, Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Julie Christie, Pam Ferris

 

 
Alfonso Cuarón may seem like an odd choice for director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third installment of the Harry Potter series — if one thinks only of Cuarón’s sleeper hit, the Truffaut-esque Y tu mamá también, while ignoring two of his earlier efforts, the critically acclaimed A Little Princess and the moderately respected Great Expectations.
This time around, working with a reported $130 million budget, state-of-the-art [...]

SIDEWAYS d: Alexander Payne

Sideways (2004)
Director: Alexander Payne
Screenplay: Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, from Rex Pickett’s novel
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh

 

 
DAYS OF WINE AND LOSERS
With Election, Alexander Payne demonstrated a flair for satirical comedy the likes of which would have turned Billy Wilder green with envy. With About Schmidt, Payne demonstrated that his comedic flair could go the way of Wilder’s in fluff like Sabrina — artificial, cutesy, and bland. In Sideways, Payne unfortunately opted for Schmidt’s route. I found his adaptation (with Jim Taylor) of Rex Pickett’s novel an overlong, superficial, and thoroughly unconvincing road movie about adult men — who should have been killed at birth — learning to grow up.
First of all, the film’s [...]

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