Connect Savannah 01.10.07 www.connectsavannah.com
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movies|Screenshots
by Matt Brunson
Little Children 1/2
A richly textured and profoundly pensive drama that missed making my 10 Best list by one slot, Little Children finds Todd Field returning to the battlefields of Everytown, USA, that marked his startling directorial debut, In the Bedroom. An adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s novel, Little Children offers a petri dish dissection of several of the residents of a Massachusetts suburb in which most of the adults’ lives are defined by the manner in which they relate to the kids who scamper around the margins of both their lives and the movie itself. Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) and Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson) are both unhappily married stay-at-homes who engage in an adulterous tryst scheduled around outings to the pool and the park with their small fry. First, though, they have to navigate their way around the disapproving clucks of their neighborhood’s battalion of soccer moms, robo-parents whose familial devotion has stripped them of anything resembling a personality or an inner life. And then there’s Ronnie McGorvey (Jackie Earle Haley), a convicted sex offender whose emergence in this quiet community understandably draws attention, though it also allows the other residents the opportunity to smooth over their own flaws. The entire cast is superb -- as Ronnie’s blind date, Jane Adams is sensational in a role that would draw award attention were it not so brief -- but it’s former 70s child star Haley who’s the most memorable. His sexual predator is by turns loathsome and sympathetic -- not unlike most of the “normal” characters in the film -- and Haley is able to locate the humane within the inhuman. It’s a complex portrayal, perfectly suited to the weighty movie that shelters it.
Perfume: The Story of a Murder
As chilly as Nova Scotia in December, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer draws its fire not from its cold-hearted plotline but from director Tom Tykwer’s passion for dressing up this tale with all manner of technical flourishes. Working from Patrick Suskind’s
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obsessed with discovering the perfect scent, and so he starts murdering women in the belief that extracting their aroma will help him create this ultimate fragrance. Running overlong at 150 minutes, Perfume stalls during its final stages, culminating in a risible (and too-literal) finale that reminded me (though not in a good way) of similar setups in Shortbus. Yet Tykwer’s startling stylistics tilt the film into the realm of pitch-black satire -- as straightforward drama, this would doubtless be too much of a slog -- and casting Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman in choice supporting roles doesn’t hurt, either. Unpleasant yet intriguing, Perfume isn’t exactly a breath of fresh air -- it’s more like having smelling salts applied to one’s cinematic experience.
Notes On a Scandal Children of Men 1/2
No matter how closely I scoured each scene in Children of Men, I couldn’t find Charlton Heston lurking anywhere in the background. Yet a Heston cameo would have been apropos, given that this adaptation of P.D. James’ book harkens back to the cinema of the early 1970s, when Hollywood was hellbent on churning out nightmarish visions of the future in such works as THX 1138, Z.P.G., The Omega Man and Soylent Green (the latter two starring Heston). Yet whereas several of the 70s sci-fiers have ripened like cheese over time, it’s impossible to envision Children of Men ever reaching similar camp status. Director Alfonso Cuaron, building a remarkably diverse filmography (Y Tu Mama Tambien, A Little Princess, even a Harry Potter sequel), is an absolute master behind the camera, and aided by spectacular cinematography and set design, he creates a future world (the film is set in 2027) that is utterly believable and quite frightening, not least because it looks so much like our present-day world. The premise here is that women haven’t been able to get pregnant in nearly 20 years, meaning that humankind is on its way out. As a result, chaos is the order of the day, and only in London does there exist a pretense of a (barely) functional society. But when it’s revealed that an immigrant (Clare-Hope Ashitey) somehow finds herself carrying a child, it’s up to a working drone (Clive Owen in a forceful performance) to protect her from the various political factions that would exploit her for their own cynical means. The multi-tentacled storyline begs for a mini-series length that would allow for a detailed exploration of this society’s clashing politics, philosophies and social orders, but armed with only a feature-film running time, Cuaron still manages to pack a lot of incident into this exciting tale of our world as one gargantuan war zone. worldwide bestseller, Tykwer (best known for the similarly audacious Run Lola Run) examines the life of a serial killer in 18th century France, a mass murderer with a singular -- and unique -- obsession. Jean-Baptiste
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Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is an orphaned peasant who possesses the world’s greatest olfactory mechanism, the ability to absorb and analyze each and every scent that exists on this planet. Eventually, Jean-Baptiste becomes
Judi Dench is so good at what she does that in recent years, she’s become something of a bore. Aside from her atypical role as an Alzheimer’s victim in Iris -- the one time her character wasn’t in control of everything happening on the screen -- she’s always cast as the no-nonsense matriarch with more brains and gumption than anyone else in the room. Her career’s been in a depressing holding pattern, culminating in an utterly unexceptional performance in 2005’s Mrs. Henderson Presents. Notes On a Scandal doesn’t exactly find her breaking away from this mold, but because she’s given so many more nuances to explore, she’s able to excel via her finest work in quite some time. Here, she’s playing a character so pitiless that she refers to a boy with Down’s Syndrome as “a court jester.” The lad is the son of Sheba Hart (solid Cate Blanchett, not surrendering an inch of the screen to her formidable costar), a newly arrived instructor at the same British school where the humorless Barbara Covett (Dench) also teaches. Initially irked by the presence of this luminous newcomer, Barbara eventually becomes her confidante, imagining in her mind that their affection for each other might even run deeper than mere friendship. After Sheba foolishly starts an affair with a 15-year-old student (Andrew Simpson), Barbara feels betrayed, but also realizes that she now has a perfect in-
Victory Square Stadium 9
Victory Square Shopping Center at Victory Drive & Skidaway Self serve soda & butterstations • Free Refills Digital Sound • Bargain Matinees until 6:00 pm everyday • All New Stadium Seats
BARGAIN TUESDAYS! *SOME FILMS EXEMPT
The Holiday* Daily- 9:50
Visit our website www.trademarkcinemas.com
Eragon*
Fri-Sun - 12:00 2:00 4:20 7:30 10:00 Mon-Thur - 2:00 4:20 7:30 10:00
Charlotte’s Web*
Fri-Sun - 11:15 1:15 3:15 5:20 7:25 9:35 Mon-Thur - 1:15 4:30 7:10 9:15
Happy Feet*
Happily N’ever After
Fri-Sun - 12:30 2:40 4:50 7:10 Mon-Thur - 1:25 4:20 7:10
Fri-Sun - 11:30 2:00 4:30 7:00 9:00 Mon-Thur - 2:00 4:30 7:00 9:00
The Pursuit of Happyness* Fri-Sun - 12:45 3:00 5:15 7:35 9:55 Mon-Thur - 1:15 4:10 7:20 9:50
Rocky Balboa
Fri-Sun - 11:45 1:50 4:10 7:00 9:50 Mon-Thur - 1:50 4:10 7:00 9:50
The Good Shepherd Daily - 1:00 4:00 8:00
Night at the Museum*
Fri-Sun - 11:30 1:45 4:15 7:15 9:40 Mon-Thur - 1:45 4:15 7:15 9:40
No one under 18 admitted unless accompanied by a parent anytime after 6pm. Evening ticket price: $8
We are Marshall*
Fri-Sun - 12:15 2:45 5:15 7:45 10:15 Mon-Thur - 1:00 4:00 7:20 9:50