MAY 2002 RELEASES IN AUSTRALIA
Star Wars Episode 2 Attack Of The Clones opens May 16, 2002.
2 MAY
Collateral Damage (M): National. Roadshow. Action. 109 mins. Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Leguizamo, John Turturro, Elias Koteas, Francesca Neri. D: Andrew Davis (The Fugitive). Arnie tries one more independent shot at success before he ties on the tried and true shoes of T3, Generic Action Movie 5 and True Lies 2. Maybe it'll work this year? Its about a man after revenge when terrorists kill his family. Light-hearted fun, then.
Count of Monte Cristo (M): National. Buena Vista. Adventure. UK. 131 mins. James Caviezel, Guy Pearce, Dagmara Dominiczyk, James Frain, Richard Harris, Michael Wincott. D: Kevin Reynolds. Jim Caviezel (Edmond Dantes) and Guy Pearce (Fernand Mondego) star in this classic tale of love and revenge. Mondego is a complex villain and his relationship with Edmond Dantes is a curious contrast in character. "We've taken the liberty with this film of making these two childhood friends, so there's more at stake within the relationship. "
Focus (M): Selected, Melb. Sydney July 18. UIP. Drama. 107 mins. William H Macy, Laura Dern, David Paymer, Meat Loaf, Kay Hawtrey, Michael Copeman, Kenneth Welsh. D: Neal Slavin (debut). In the waning months of World War II, a man and his wife are mistakenly identified as Jews by their anti-Semitic Brooklyn neighbours. Suddenly the victims of religious and racial persecution, they find themselves aligned with a local Jewish immigrant in a struggle for dignity and survival.
John Q (M): National. Sneaks from 24th April. Roadshow. Thriller. 116 mins. Denzel Washington, Robert DuVall, Ray Liotta, James Woods, Anne Heche, Kimberley Elise, Shawn Hatosy, Keram Malicki-Sanchez. D: Nick Cassavettes. A down-on-his luck father, whose insurance won't cover his son's heart transplant, takes the hospital's emergency room hostage until the doctors agree to perform the operation.
9 MAY
American Desi (M): Selected, Sydney. Double Loop Films. 99 mins. Drama. USA. Deep Katdaire, Ronobir Lahiri, Rizwan Manji, Kal Penn, Purva Bedi, Sunita Param, Anil Kumar, Eric Axen, Ami Shukla, Sunil Malhotra. USA. D: Piyush Dinker Pandya (debut). College freshman Krishna Reddy, who has never cared for his Indian-American cultural heritage, looks forward to a new life on campus but is surprised to find that he has been assigned Indian roommates. Through his new experiences, he struggles to understand the side of himself he has always turned his back on in order to fit in.
High Crimes (M): National. (Reading, 6th May). Fox. Thriller. 115 mins. Ashley Judd, James Caviezel, Morgan Freeman, Adam Scott, Amanda Peet, Tom Bowler, Jesse Beaton, Joe Mazza. D: Carl Franklin (One True Thing). High powered lawyer Claire Kubik finds her world turned upside down when her husband, who she thought was Tom Kubik, is arrested and is revealed to be Ron Chapman. Chapman is on trial for a murder of Latin American villagers while he was in the Marines.
Mean Machine (M): National. UIP. Thriller/ comedy. UK. 99 mins. Vinnie Jones., David Hemmings, Jason Stratham, Vas Blackwood, Danny Dyer, Sally Phillips. D: Matthew Vaughn (debut). "It's Not Just About Football, It's About Pride Inside!" Jones stars as Danny 'Mean Machine' Meeham in this English prison soccer flick.
Storytelling (MA): Selected. (Previews 4th- 6th May). Roadshow. Comedy. 87 mins. Selma Blair, Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, Jennifer Elise Cox, Leo Fitzpatrick, Mark Webber, Robert Wisdom, Conan O Brien, Franka Potente. Comprised of two separate stories set against the sadly comical terrain of college and high school, past and present. Following the paths of its young hopeful/ troubled characters, it explores issues of sex, race, celebrity and exploitation. This is the new film from the guy (Todd Solandz) who gave us Welcome To The Dollhouse and Happiness, so expect equally sick/ hilarious/ touching/ cool content.
Summer Catch (M): National. Roadshow. Drama. 108 mins. Jessica Biel, Freddie Prinze Jnr, Courtney Driver, Matthew Lillard, Brian Dennehy, Fred Ward, Brittany Murphy, Gabriel Mann. D: Michael Tollin (Hank Aaron: Chasing The Dream). A rich girl whose family summers on Cape Cod has a romance with a local poor boy who hopes to become a major league baseball player.
The Count Of Montre Cristo : opens May 2, 2002.
16 MAY
The Devil's Backbone (MA): Selected, Sydney. Melbourne May 23. Columbia. Mexico/ Spain. Spanish language/ subtitles. Horror. Eduardo Noriega, Marisa Paredes, Federico Luppi, Fernando Tielve, Irene Visedo. D: Guillermo del Toro (Mimic). Centred in an orphan in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, the movie focuses in the lives of the people (teachers and children) who have to keep hidden there from a war they've lost and from the people who'd like to kill them. But inside this orphan a mystery more interesting than all this is about to being unveiled...
Fast Food Fast Women (M): Selected, Melbourne. Comedy. 95 mins. Anna Thomson, Jamie Harris, Louise Lasser, Robert Modica, Austin Pendleton, Victor Argo, Joe Davieau. D: Amos Kollek (Angela). Overworked Manhattan coffee shop waitress Bella (Thomson) isn't looking forward to her 35th birthday. Stuck in a relationship with a married man for far too long, Bella takes a chance on frustrated novelist/ taxi driver Bruno (Harris). Determined not to scare yet another man off with her dreams of marriage and family, Bella plays it cool and tells Bruno she hates children.
Just Visiting (PG): National. Columbia. 88 mins. Comedy. Jean Reno, Christina Applegate, Christina Cleaver, Matt Ross, Tara Reid, Bridgett Wilson, Malcolm McDowell. D: Jean-Marie Gaubert (The Visitors). A knight and his jester are plagued by a witch, and to repair the damage they make use of the services of a wizard. However, something goes wrong and they are transported from the 13th century to the year 2000.
The Majestic (PG): National. Roadshow. Comedy / Drama. 152 mins. Jim Carrey, Martin Landau, Bruce Campbell, Allen Garfield, Lauren Holden, Amanda Detmer. Directed by Frank "The Green Mile" Darabont. Set in 1951, a blacklisted Hollywood writer (Carrey) has a car accident, loses his memory and then settles in a town where he is mistaken as a long lost son. Running a movie theatre, he finds some relief, especially when he finds love. However, he has to testify in front of a Senate Communist hearing committee.
My Wife's An Actress (M): Selected, Syd/ Melb. Palace. 95 mins. Comedy. France, subtitled. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Yvan Attal, Terence Stamp, Noemie Lvovsky, Ludivine Sagnier. D: Yvan Attal (I Got A Woman). Attal plays Yvan, a struggling sports writer who is married to a rather famous actress named Charlotte. Though the couple tries to live a normal life, her fame makes things tough.
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of The Clones (PG): National. Fox. Sci-fi action adventure. Ewan McGregor, Samuel L Jackson, Natalie Portman, Temura Morriosn, Christopher Lee, Hayden Christensen, Jimmy Smits. Written and directed by George Lucas. Further instalments of the whole star wars soap opera. Features Yoda fighting (at last!), more Boba Fett (or at least his dad), the rebel clones and a whole lot more. Yes there's Ja Ja, but this one looks to be a vast improvement on Episode 1. Having said that, I actually liked that one.
Texas Rangers (M): National. Western/ action. Roadshow. 90 mins. James Van Der Beek, Racheal Leigh Cook, Dylan McDermott, Usher Raymond, Ashton Kutcher, Randy Travis, Tom Skeritt, Alfred Molina. D: Steve Miner (Lake Placid). A ragtag group of youngsters band together after the American Civil War to form the Texas Rangers, a group charged with the dangerous, ruthless duty of cleaning up the West.
23 MAY
Beneath Clouds (M): Selected. (May 13, May 16+ Advance screenings Dendy). Dendy. Drama. 84 mins. Australia. Tristian Bancks, Danielle Hall, Damian Pitt. D: Iven Sen (Dust). Beneath Clouds is the story of Lena, the light-skinned daughter of an Aboriginal mother and Irish father and Vaughn, a Murri boy doing time in a minimum security prison in North West NSW. Dramatic events throw them together on a journey with no money and no transport. To Lena, Vaughn represents the life she is running away from. To Vaughn, Lena embodies the society that has rejected him. And for a very short amount of time, they experience a rare true happiness together.
Big Trouble (M): National. Buena Vista. Comedy. 85 mins. Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Tom Sizemore, Zooey Deschanel, Omar Epps, Dennis Farina, Renee Ruso, Ben Foster, Jason Lee, Janeane Garofalo, Stanley Tucci. D: Barry Sonnenfeld (Wild Wild West). The lives of several Miami denizens, from ad agents to gunrunners to street thugs to law enforcement to school-children, intersect with humorous and dangerous results. Ensemble comedy piece
The Business Of Strangers (M): Selected. (Previews Chauvel 17-22 May). Fox. Thriller. 84 mins. Stockard Channing, Julia Stiles, Fred Weller, Mary Testa, Jack Hallet, Marcus Giamatti, Tony Devon. D: Patrick Stettner (Flux). A dark thriller about a successful businesswoman (Channing) and her young assistant (Stiles) who toy with a slow-witted businessman (Weller) while stuck at an airport hotel.
Crush (M): National. (Hoyts Chadstone 8th May/ other cinemas 12th May) Becker. 111 mins. UK. Comedy. Andie MacDowell, Imelda Staunton, Anna Chancellor, Kenny Doherty. D: John McKay (Wet And Dry). This is quite an unusual movie centering, as it does, on 3 middle-aged single women friends in their forties. Who are as the working title for the film indicates, part of a Sad Fuckers Club. A much younger man provides some relief and inspiration.
Life as a House (MA): National. (Melb Village 6 May, GU/ BCC Charity Screening 19 May) Roadshow. Drama. 123 mins. Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas, Hayden Christianson, Jena Malone, Mary Steelburgen, Mike Weinberg, Scott Bakula, Sam Robards. D: Irwin Winkler (At First Sight). When a man is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he takes custody of his misanthropic teenage son, for whom quality time means getting high, engaging in small-time prostitution, and avoiding his father.
Mothman Prophecies (M): National. Roadshow. Thriller. 119 mins. Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Will Patton, Debra Messing, Alan Bates, Lucinda Jenney. D: Mark Pellington (Arlington Road). A reporter is drawn to a small West Virginia town to investigate a series of strange events, including psychic visions and the appearance of bizarre entities.
Sidewalks of New York (M): Selected. UIP. 108 mins. Comedy/ romance. Edward Burns, Rosario Dawson, Dennis Farina, Heather Graham, Brittany Murphy, Stanley Tucci. D: Edward Burns (Brothers McMullen). Six New Yorkers have an interrelated series of relationships. TV producer Tommy, who's just broken up with his girlfriend, has a short relationship with commitment-phobe Maria, who he meets in a video store, and also hooks up with married real-estate agent Annie, who he meets while apartment hunting. Annie is open to a relationship because her husband, Griffin, is cheating on her, which she slowly comes to realize through talking to her friend/co-worker who's gone through the same thing.
30 MAY
Charlotte Gray (M): National. (May 11, BBC/ GU). UIP. 121 mins. UK/ France. WW2 Romance. Cate Blachett, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon, Rupert Penry-Jones, James Fleet, Robert Hands. D: Gillian Armstrong (Little Women). A young Scottish woman (Cate Blanchett) joins the French resistance during WWII to rescue her royal air force boyfriend (Billy Crudup) who is lost in France. Written by Jeremy Brock from the novel by Sebastian Faulks.
Harts War (M): National. (22 May Village Cranborne). Fox. 125 mins. War. Bruce Willis, Colin Farrell, Terrence Howard, Vicellous Shannon, Cole Hauser, Michael Weston. D: Gregory Hobbit (Primal Fear). A law student becomes a lieutenant during World War II, is captured and asked to defend a black prisoner of war falsely accused of murder. Along the way all sorts of sub- Hogan's Hero's claptrap occurs, the worst of it occurring form patriotic scenery chewer Captain Hardass (Brucey-boy Willis).
The Hard Word (MA): National. (23rd May Luna) Roadshow. Thriller. 103 mins. Guy Pierce, Rachael Griffiths, Joel Edgerton, Vince Colosimo, Robert Taylor, Damien Richardson. D: Scott Roberts (debut). Australian black comedy crime flick. Its about how relationships change after a crime- ie sex and greed get in the way. Filmed (to Oct 01) around Melbourne. Three fraternal bank robbers languishing in jail, discover a profitable (if not dodgy) way to spend their time. Crime can most certainly pay, if you "know wot I mean?" However when sex and greed rear-up between the good crims and the bad cops, the consequences are both bizarre and fatal.