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Looking for only the most recent of home video releases? Stop here for the 15 latest reviews posted at Baboon Video. RECOMMENDED
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TIME CROOKS - B-Starring: Woody Allen, Tracy Ullman, Hugh Grant, Elaine May, Jon Lovitz, Michael Rapaport, Tony Darrow, Brian Markinson, Elaine Stritch Directed by: Woody Allen Comedy, 95 min (PG) (DreamWorks, 2000) Woody Allen plays tribute to both his 1969 crime farce Take the Money and Run and TV's Honeymooners with this modestly amusing comedy. Allen casts himself (unfortunately, given his increasingly irritating mannerisms) as Ray Winkler, an inept bank robber whose latest scheme involves opening a cookie shop for his wife, Frenchy (Tracy Ullman), as a front for his plan to tunnel into the bank two doors down. Not surprisingly, his plan backfires, but Frenchy's cookie business takes off, launching them into the high class even though they have very little of it themselves. The themes in Small Time Crooks - money vs. happiness, celebrity vs. reality - are familiar sights in Woody-land, but the screenplay has enough laughs to ensure that you don't feel robbed yourself and there are strong supporting performances from comic chameleon Ullman, Elaine May as Frenchy's ditsy cousin and Hugh Grant, sending up his classy persona as an art dealer/scam artist. (top) (back)  SNATCH
- B-Starring: Jason Stratham, Brad Pitt, Dennis Farina, Vinnie Jones, Jason Flemyng, Benicio Del Toro, Rade Serbedziga, Mike Reid, Alan Ford Directed by: Guy Ritchie Comedy, 104 min (18A) (Columbia Tristar, 2001) If it were considered a crime for a man to steal from himself, this violent, tough-guy comedy from director Guy Ritchie (aka Mr. Madonna) would be a good candidate for imprisonment. After all, Snatch doesn't so much bare a resemblance to Ritchie's last film, the enjoyably foul-mouthed Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, as it does rip it off every step of the way. As before, Ritchie's film focuses on a bunch of colorful low-level crooks as they all stumble about trying to get rich while dodging bullets and each other (this time around, the focus is on a stolen diamond and crooked boxing). As before, Ritchie throws every music video trick he knows into the blender, tossing in an abundance of blood and coincidences in the hopes that whatever comes out will stick. As with Lock, Stock, Snatch is enjoyable on its own terms - a particular highlight is the wonderfully incoherent performance by Brad Pitt as a Gypsy - but is nonetheless the lesser film, thanks primarily to Ritchie's refusal to reach into a new bag of tricks. (top) (back)  SNOW
DAY - DStarring: Chevy Chase, Chris Elliot, Mark Webber, Jean Smart, Schuyler Fish, Pam Grier, Iggy Pop, Zena Grey, Emmanuelle Chriqui Directed by: Chris Koch Family, 89 min (PG) (Paramount, 2000) Only in the movies could a snow day as eventful as the one in this Nickelodeon family film be more tepid than a two-hour math class. Chevy Chase, looking more desperate and bored with every consecutive picture, plays an unappreciated meteorologist whose eldest son (Mark Webber) chooses a snow-filled day without school to be the one where he wins his dream girl (Emmanuelle Chriqui). In the meantime, Chase's daughter (Zena Grey) tries to thwart the efforts of the dentally challenged Snowplowman (Chris Elliot) in order to successfully earn two snow days in a row. Filmed in the Calgary area in 1999, Snow Day is a tedious children's comedy that doesn't even have believable snow, let alone realistic characters, actors or storylines. The romantic angle of the film is numbingly predictable, Chase is doing little more than showing up for a paycheck, and any scenes in which little brats battle a severely awful-looking Elliot come across as second-rate Home Alone hijinks. Beware. (top) (back)  SNOW
DOGS - C-Starring: Cuba Gooding Jr., James Coburn, Sisqo, Joanna Bacalso, Graham Greene, Brian Doyle Murray, Nichelle Nichols Directed by: Brian Levant Comedy, 99 min (G) (Walt Disney, 2002) It's never a sign of comedic smarts when animals start wearing sunglasses, so be forewarned that this is one of many low-inspiration touches in Snow Dogs, an obvious and gratingly hyperactive Mystery, Alaska-meets-Cool Runnings family picture. Cuba Gooding Jr., who was hopefully shown a lot of money for signing up here, gives a frantic and frighteningly over-the-top performance that makes his work in Rat Race seem subtle. The slumming Oscar-winner plays Ted Brooks, a Miami dentist who learns he was adopted after his birth mother dies and she wills him her pack of sled pooches. So it's off to Alaska for the beach-loving doc, where he hopes to make some money off of his new possessions and maybe learn a little more about himself. Of course, it is all just an only-in-the-movies set-up to get a fish out of water, with Ted going through all of the usual big city-to-small hamlet predicaments, finding love, freezing his butt off, repeatedly sliding on the ice and encountering a ornery Grinch you just know will eventually show his real heart (James Coburn). As directed by Brian Levant, there's desperation to the proceedings that has an unpleasant aftertaste and, though kids may enjoy these pups, most adults will agree that Snow Dogs is movie mush. (top) (back)  SNOW
FALLING ON CEDARS - C+Starring: Ethan Hawke, Youki Kudoh, Max Von Sydow, James Cromwell, Richard Jenkins, James Rebhorn, Sam Shepard, Eric Thahl Directed by: Scott Hicks Drama, 128 min (14A) (Universal, 1999) In Snow Falling on Cedars, there's a lot of snow and a lot of cedars, all of it captured with a sumptuous beauty by cinematographer Robert Richardson. What the film doesn't have, however, is much in terms of compelling drama. As it turns out, director Scott Hicks, in his first film since 1996's Shine, has turned David Guterson's meditative novel into a ponderous, slow-moving drama about Japanese-American relations in the 1950s. Ethan Hawke, whose melancholy drone should never be employed in a film this quiet, plays Ishmael, a small-town journalist covering the trial of a local Japanese fisherman who has been accused of murder and who also happens to be the husband of Ishmael's old sweetheart (Youki Kudoh). The film, enveloped in a blank of snow so thick few emotions can peek out, wants to tug at the heartstrings with its story of race and love but, with the exception of Max Von Sydow's hammy turn as a lawyer, it's too low-key to be involving. (top) (back)  SOLARIS
- C+Starring: George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies, Ulrich Tukur, Donna Kimball, John Cho, Morgan Rusler, Michael Ensign Directed by: Steven Soderbergh Drama, 99 min (PG) (Fox, 2002) After the one-two-three-four punch of Ocean's Eleven (2001), Traffic (2000), Erin Brockovich (2000) and The Limey (1999), director Steve Soderbergh has every right to get a big head. That said, the goodwill he's generated thus far still isn't enough to make up for Solaris, a pompous and ponderous sci-fi drama that runs only 99 minutes but feels twice as long (particularly considering his last anemic effort, Full Frontal). Based on a Polish novel by Stanislaw Lem that was turned into a 1972 Russian movie by Andrei Tarkovsky, Solaris stars George Clooney as a psychologist in the near future who sets out for a distant space station in order to investigate the mental stress of its inhabitants (including a fidgety-to-the-point-of-exhaustion Jeremy Davies). When Clooney's character arrives, the place is virtually deserted, but he gets a surprise visitor in his wife (Natascha McElhone), despite the fact that he is still mourning her suicide. From here, Solaris turns into an isolating look at love, life and death through a string of flashbacks, dreams and moments of emotional panic. Unfortunately, it all adds up to surprisingly little, with Soderbergh obviously aiming for the tone of 2001, but coming up all cold, shiny, metallic and dramatically sealed. (top) (back)  SOMEONE
LIKE YOU - CStarring: Ashley Judd, Greg Kinnear, Hugh Jackman, Ellen Barkin, Marisa Tomei, Catherine Dent, Donna Hanover, Sabine Singh Directed by: Tony Goldwyn Comedy, 97 min (PG) (20th Century Fox, 2001) Actor Tony Goldwyn (Bounce), who last directed Diane Lane to the best performance of her career in Walk on the Moon, takes several artistic steps backwards with this contrived romantic comedy, a Sex and the City-wannabe that pretty much defines the word "predictable." Ashley Judd, an engaging performer when given the right material, plays Jane, the talent booker for a Manhattan-based talk show who is hopelessly lost when it comes to matters of the heart. That is, until she gets hers broken by her show's executive producer (Greg Kinnear), becomes roommates with a womanizing friend (X-Men's Hugh Jackman), and formulates a theory comparing men to bulls and women to cows. Someone Like You attempts to make us believe that this theory becomes something of a national sensation, but it is all a bunch of only-in-the-movies nonsense and, though Jackman is a charmer, Judd doesn't have the same dazzling spark that makes someone like Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock so endearing in their romantic adventures. Goldwyn's fuzzy, soft-focused direction certainly isn't much help, placing far too much emphasis on wordless musical montages that suggest people falling in and out of love rather than showing how or why. (top)  SORORITY
BOYS - C-Starring: Barry Watson, Michael Rosenbaum, Harland Williams, Melissa Sagemiller, Heather Matarazzo, Tony Denman, Bree Turner Directed by: Wally Wolodarsky Comedy, 94 min (14A) (Touchstone, 2002) Imagine Tootsie: The College Years or The Bosom Buddies Movie and you'll know what to expect from Sorority Boys, a raunchy comedy that is a drag in all sense of the word. With an outlook on higher education life so unbelievable it makes National Lampoon's Van Wilder look like Wonder Boys, Sorority Boys stars Barry Watson (TV's 7th Heaven), Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville) and the only-funny-in-very-small-doses Harland Williams as three popular fraternity brothers who, after being framed for stealing money from their friends, decide to slip into dresses and pledge loyalty to a sorority house for free room and board. For an understanding of Sorority Boys' complete lack of wit, it is worth noting that the party-hearty frat house here is Kappa Omega Kappa (or KOK) and the girl's house, home to the campus losers, is Delta Omicron Gamma (or DOG) and that anytime someone even mentions these names on screen, director Wally Wolodarsky seems to think it is hysterical (it isn't). Of the leading "ladies," Rosenbaum earns the few laughs, Watson seems more comfortable in a dress than in trying to romance the DOGhouse leader (Soul Survivors' Melissa Sagemiller) and the whiny Williams is definitely an acquired taste. (top) (back)  SOUL
SURVIVORS -
D+Starring: Melissa Sagemiller, Wes Bentley, Eliza Dushku, Casey Affleck, Luke Wilson, Angela Featherstone, Allen Hamilton Directed by: Steve Carpenter Horror, 85 min (14A) (Artisan, 2001) The video and DVD boxes of this abysmal picture promise "more blood, more sex, more terror" than the theatrical release, but what the filmmakers and studio should have really focused on is establishing more coherence, more depth and less random editing. Another stake in the coffin for recent teen idol-heavy horror pictures, Soul Survivors chronicles the story of a college freshman (Get Over It's Melissa Sagemiller) tormented by visions of her recently deceased boyfriend (Casey Affleck) and growing increasingly wary over the intentions of her two best friends (Wes Bentley and Eliza Dushku), both of whom were involved in the car crash that killed Affleck's character. Directed with about zero interest in structural integrity by Steve Carpenter, Soul Survivors opens with a random act of violence that makes no sense when linked with the rest of the story and it quickly goes downhill from there. The actors, many of whom have done better work elsewhere (Bentley in The Claim and American Beauty, Dushku in Bring It On and Jay and Silent Bob) are clearing slumming here and their remote performances do little to disguise this. Sagemiller really gives it her all but, considering the murky material, not much can - or does - come of it. (top) (back)  SPACE
COWBOYS
- BStarring: Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, James Garner, James Cromwell, Marcia Gay Harden, Loren Dean Directed by: Clint Eastwood Drama, 130 min (PG) (Warner Bros., 2000) Clint Eastwood takes his dear old time getting this geezers-in-space epic off the ground, but once liftoff is accomplished, everything slips neatly into place. Of course, it certainly helps that Eastwood has surrounded himself with a group of veteran actors so accomplished, familiar and at ease in their roles they even manage to soften up Dirty Harry once and a while. The film casts Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner as four retirement-age aviation pioneers who, having been shorted of their chance to visit space back in their heyday, have now negotiated themselves onto a ship headed for a wayward Russian satellite. Together, the actors are all clearly having a blast and their charm goes a long way, particularly when it comes to the too leisurely paced scenes of the foursome preparing for takeoff. It's in space that Eastwood's direction matches the performances, effectively channeling the gentle comic aspects of the early scenes into a rousing and friendly sci-fi adventure. (top) (back)  SPIDER-MAN
- BStarring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe, James Franco, J.K. Simmons, Bill Nunn, Rosemary Harris, Cliff Robertson Directed by: Sam Raimi Action, 121 min (PG) (Columbia Tristar, 2002) It took years of legal wrangling to finally get Spider-Man to the screen, but in the end, the wait was worth it: thanks to advances in computer technology and playful direction from Sam Raimi, Spider-Man surpasses both the Superman and Batman franchises as a true comic book come to life. Tobey Maguire's voice occasionally seems a little too tentative coming from Spider-Man's mask, but the actor does a note-perfect interpretation of the hero's alter ego, Peter Parker. When the film begins, Parker is a shy high school photographer nursing a serious crush on girl-next-door Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst, with whom Maguire shares considerable chemistry) but after being bitten by a genetically altered spider, he develops into the web-slinging crusader we all know, swinging colourfully between skyscrapers and scampering up walls. Spider-Man's first archenemy is the mad-with-power Green Goblin and, unfortunately, this is where the film is a touch of a letdown. Though Willem Dafoe brings an appropriately snarly Jekyll and Hyde spin to the role, the character's mask is too restrictive for any dimension. As a result, the Green Goblin never seems to be more than a hammy retread of Jack Nicholson's Joker in Batman (1989). (top) (back)  SPIRIT:
STALLION OF THE CIMARRON - B-Voices: Matt Damon, James Cromwell, Daniel Studi. Directed by: Lorna Cook, Kelly Ashbury Animated, 82 min (G) (Dreamworks, 2002) As anyone who has doodled a very ugly dog can tell you, it isn't easy to draw a horse, but the animators behind Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron have done a dazzling job of bringing equines to life thanks to skilled animation and a lush palette of colours. Even more amazingly, they have done so without the use of dialogue, skipping the talking animal approach of, say, Bambi or The Lion King and choosing to have the picture's four-legged animals speak primarily in neighs and grunts, with only sporadic voice-over narration by All the Pretty Horses' Matt Damon as the title animal, a wild mustang in the Old West who refuses to be tamed or corralled by the likes of army soldiers or railroad workers. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron wisely shows no need for standard-issue comic sidekicks or cutesy jokes, but it does dedicate far too much time to bland soft-rock tunes written and sung by Bryan Adams that almost make one yearn for the subtlety of the Canadian singer's mushy ballad from 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The galloping story - following Spirit as he is captured by humans and makes repeated attempts at finding freedom - is a little too square to appeal to all viewers, but horse lovers will eat it up like a mare with a fresh apple. (top) (back) |
