Disturbia. The No. 1 movie at the boxoffice these last three weeks is Rear Window for kids, and if it leads any of them back to the source then it will have done its job. They'll be surprised to find that the Hitchcock film, while taking full advantage of its voyeuristic set-up, also critiques such behavior, a consideration that the writers and director of the new movie have ignored. Disturbia luxuriates in the peekaboo possibilities of home surveillance gadgetry you can find at any CompUSA store, and the only one to complain is the bad guy (David Morse), whose own house is outfitted with a brine pit stuffed with bedraggled corpses. In the commercial cinema, at least, civil liberties and the right to privacy are suspect, and the feel-good implied by computerized peeping tom-ism is likely to stick in the craw of anyone not bamboozled enough to still care. Otherwise Disturbia is a familiar, efficient, somewhat poky thriller, lucky in its lead, 20-going-on-15 years old Shia LaBeouf, whose large, soulful eyes and rebellious (but not too rebellious) attitude are clearly a draw for the target audience. If only John Hughes were around to find more interesting ways to explore his formative years than this picture, Transformers, and the next Indiana Jones movie.
Fracture. Rising young Academy Award nominee Ryan Gosling breaks onto the "big time" with this minor legal thriller, as a chomping-at-the-bit public defender bedeviled by the felon from hell, Anthony Hopkins. The senior actor, who has tried to kill his faithless wife and is making little attempt to evade prosecution, reuses his Lecterisms and is as stale as week-old ham. For his part, Gosling tries to make his role work for him, and sinks into its callowness; he's watchable, but the movies are full of on-the-make lawyers growing moral backbones and there's only so much distinction he can lend. The director, Gregory Hoblit, has a better story of this type to his credit (Primal Fear) but has had this one filmed in a gauzy way where grittiness was called for, and stalls the surprise ending for so long it's no particular shock to anyone when it comes. A full two hours is too long to spend on a scenario like this, which had the makings to be like one of those Levinson/Link Columbo-type TV movies that Hopkins made years before he put on Hannibal's mask.
Hot Fuzz. Funny, but not Shaun of the Dead funny. That film was a near-perfect blend of astute character comedy with on-the-money movie spoofery that woke the dead with laughter. This time, the scale tips too far over into the self-referential cinematic gags, and explicitly references movies like Point Break and Bad Boys II that were already way over-the-top. There's little for Hot Fuzz to add, or play off of, and the gags are largely buckshot. Still, it's hard to truly dislike a comedy that, after a lot of leisurely paced and poundingly edited non sequiturs, comes alive in the home stretch to allow deeply lined action movie vets like Timothy Dalton, Edward Woodward, and Stuart Wilson to haul out semi-automatic weapons one more time and blast away at landmarks in the twee English town where the Wicker Man-like story unfolds.
Private Fears in Public Places. I can only assume that the Alan Ayckbourn comedy on which Alain Resnais has based his latest film had actual humor to it. For the screen Resnais leaches most of it out of the stage play, leaving only the dry husks of its would-be friends and lovers rendezvousing in an endless Parisian winter behind when all their uncomfortable truths and evasions have been laid bare. But it is fascinating to watch Resnais' paring knife whittle away at a fine cast of veteran French performers, all of whom are at an age when most films lose interest in people. And the play has been very elegantly translated to the wide screen, with imagery that has a liquid clarity. The film is as soft--and as cold--as the cascading snowfall that acts as dissolves between scenes.
Waitress. A comedy too slight and lightweight to bear the weight of the tragedy that surrounds it. The writer and director Adrienne Shelly, who also co-stars, was murdered last November, and what was meant to be a whimsical and uplifting story based around her anxieties about impending motherhood now has the pall of an epitaph. Working hard to dispel the gloom is its star, Keri Russell, who gives off a sweetly warming glow as she tries to juggle an uncaring husband (the inevitable Jeremy Sisto) and an overly helpful obgyn (Nathan Fillion) while baking numerous delicious-looking pies for every emotional happenstance on the job. Lightly refreshing, it's a cute, little movie, with none other than Andy Griffith as the small-town grump who lends a hand to the empowerment, and it marked a change in the weather for an actress who first made her mark in cooler independent fare like Hal Hartley's Trust. That she died on an upswing is at best cold comfort.
Year of the Dog. The writer, Mike White, is a disturber of the peace. 2000's Chuck and Buck is one of the braver indies in recent years, and his smackdown on Hollywood violence in today's New York Times is food for thought, and politically incorrect in an industry that would just rather move on from the latest real-life tragedy (why do Americans like me clamor to repeal the so-called "right to bear arms," while resisting the notion that fictional characters might lay down their weapons, too?). There is no firepower in his directorial debut but its leading character, Peggy (Molly Shannon), stings, with her stubborn, almost psychotic, refusal to stick to the status quo. A dog lover, Peggy (played uncomfortably close to the bone by the actress), comes unglued when her pet passes away; a need to nurture leads to acts of aggression, and by the close the film is Repulsion with canines, as Peggy is surrounded not by phantom hands but by frolicsome pooches. The very ending too neatly ties a ribbon around its themes, which were more compelling when less defined. Yet the air of deadpan hysteria, which a fine cast including John C. Reilly, Peter Sarsgaard, Regina King, and Laura Dern all breathe, lingers.
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