The Whole Nine Yards

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:16 am

Surprisingly enough, there is a nice little comedy genre about mob hit men living in suburbia. This one doesn’t quite live up to Steve Martin’s neglected gem “My Blue Heaven,” but it has some very funny moments.

Matthew Perry plays Oz, a miserable dentist from Chicago, now living in Canada with a wife (Rosanna Arquette) who despises him. He is trying to pay off the debts of her father, who had been his partner, and who embezzled money and then committed suicide.

When the notorious Jimmy “The Tulip” Tedeski (Bruce Willis) moves next door, Oz becomes involved in a series of double- and triple-crosses, involving Jimmy’s former colleagues in the mob, an assortment of hired killers, and Jimmy’s beautiful and lonely wife, Cynthia (Natasha Henstridge, both funny and surprisingly tender).

This is a fast and funny comedy that checks morality and political correctness at the door. Perry spends most of his time falling down, when he isn’t getting beat up (mostly by “The Green Mile’s” Michael Clark Duncan). Amanda Peet is simply terrific as Oz’s sympathetic receptionist, with an unexpected expertise in hired killers. And the resolution, following a tough choice between love or money, is very satisfying.

Parents should know that this movie is rated R for language, sexual references and situations (including sex used as a negotiating technique), substance abuse (including liquor used to cope with problems), and violence (including the death of a major character).

Families who see this movie can discuss issues of loyalty and the choice put to Natasha Henstridge’s character at the end.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy “Married to the Mob,” with Michelle Pfeiffer.

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Boiler Room

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:16 am

Seth (Giovanni Ribisi) wants two things very badly. He wants to make a lot of money quickly, and he wants the respect of his father (Ron Rifkin), a federal judge. Seth drops out of college to run a highly profitable business. His entrepreneurship and work ethic are impeccable. But his line of business — a casino run out of his home — is not.

A casino customer tells him about a way to make a lot of money as a stockbroker. At a huge cattle call of an interview, Jim Young (Ben Affleck) promises that everyone who stays in their program will become a millionaire within three years, tossing the keys to his Ferrari on the table as proof. Seth signs up as a trainee at J.T. Marlin, a Long Island stock brokerage firm.

Seth quotes a rap song that says that to make money fast “you have to have a jump shot or sling crack,” and adds that for white boys, the equivalent of slinging crack is selling stock. And the stock he sells, like crack, provides a giddy, addictive high while it is destroying the victim’s finances, and more. Seth finds that it can destroy the seller as well as the buyer.

First time writer-director Ben Younger creates a realistically edgy world that runs on rap music and testosterone. Rival brokers taunt each other like Sharks and Jets in Armani suits. They spend money on huge toys and empty mansions, and watch a video of “Wall Street” together, reciting the lines along with Gordon Gekko. And their mantra is taken from “Glengarry Glen Ross:” “ABC-Always Be Closing.” Each sale is a victory in a war against loneliness and loserdom. They just want to win. They don’t care at what, as long as everyone else loses.

These are lonely, insecure, immature men. The ironically named Jim Young points out that at age 27 he is one of the oldest people in the firm. When Seth asks Chris why he still lives with his mother, Chris does not understand the question. They travel in packs and except for Seth we never see them with families or on dates. They’re like Long Island Lost Boys, in a perverse Never Neverland.

Seth is drawn to this world in part because the masculine leadership and approval makes up for his emotionally absent father. But he is unable to turn away from his growing awareness that something is wrong and that J.T. Marlin is far more corrupt than his casino operation.

This movie has one of the best scripts in many months. In one superb scene, Seth is so proud of his skill as a salesman that he coaches a telemarketer who calls to sell him a newspaper subscription. Younger has a fresh and clever take on things and his music video experience lends a raw, hyper, thrill-seeking tone to the movie. The young performers do very well, especially Vin Diesel as Chris and Nia Long as Seth’s love interest.

Parents should know that the primary reason for the R rating is very strong language, including racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-semitic epithets. Characters smoke, drink, use drugs, and beat people up. Two characters have an affair, though nothing is shown. Families whose teens see this movie should talk about how moral choices are made, how consequences are evaluated, and how difficulties in family communication can affect behavior outside the family. They might want to check out the film’s website before seeing the movie, to familiarize themselves with terminology like IPO, cold call, and rip.

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Crime Drama Family Issues

Erin Brockovich

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:16 am

The poster says, “She brought a small town to its feet and a huge company to its knees.” So we know where it’s all going, and just settle back to enjoy the ride. And an enjoyable ride it is, too.

The guy who deserves next year’s best acting Oscar is the actor who has the impossible job of playing a doctor who is interviewing single mother Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) for a job and is not utterly charmed by her. The audience has no such obligation, and we lose our hearts immediately.

Erin leaves that interview, climbs into her crummy car, and gets slammed into by another doctor. When she loses her lawsuit against him, she forces the lawyer who represented her to give her a job (Albert Finney as Ed Masry). No one wants her there, and no one likes her because she has a big mouth and wears trashy clothes. But she is curious and tenacious. She gets interested in a real estate file that includes medical records, and she goes off to investigate.

It turns out that the community of Hinkley has been poisoned by hexavent chromium, leaching into the drinking water from a PG&E plant. Erin is able to gain the trust of the community and help Ed put together a case that would win the largest direct claim settlement in American history.

Julia Roberts keeps getting better and better, more luminous, and at the same time more vulnerable and more in control. She plays Erin as a woman who never stopped believing in herself and yet is deeply touched when others believe in her, too. She understands the way the people in Hinkley feel, mistrustful of lawyers and overwhelmed by the odds. She understands that “people want to tell their stories.” And she has enough confidence in herself to know that, while she might not have been able to keep her beauty queen promise of ending world hunger, this is a promise she can keep.

She understands, too, that there will be costs. A romance with a loving biker/nanny (George, played by Aaron Eckhart, who makes that combination endearingly believable) and her relationships with her children are threatened by her devotion to the case. In a heartbreaking scene, she is driving back home after a hard day and George tells her that her baby spoke her first word. Erin is overjoyed at the news and devastated to have missed it. The look in her eyes as George tells her all about it is complex, rich, perfect.

And there are many “Rocky”/”Norma Rae”-style feel-good moments, like when PG&E’s first lawyer, looking like a high school debate club president, tries to bully Erin and Ed, and when Erin uses everything from her cleavage to her baby to get access to the records she needs.

Parents should know that the movie’s R rating comes from very strong language and some sexual references (Erin jokes that she got the cooperation of the town’s residents by performing sexual favors). And no matter how high the settlement, the fact remains that children and their families were made terribly ill, and no amount of money will make up for that.

Families who watch this movie should talk about why it is that Erin is able to connect with the residents of Hinkley, why she is reluctant to accept help from anyone, and the importance of not judging people based on their appearance. They may also want to talk about the issue of corporate responsibility. No one at PG&E wanted anyone to get hurt. How do problems like lack of accountability arise?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Sally Fields’ Oscar-winning performance in “Norma Rae.”

Mumford

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:16 am

This is a cleverly updated version of a 1930’s movie staple — a genial small-town comedy with eccentric but endearing characters and a leading man who is not what he pretends to be. Loren Dean plays Doctor Mumford, a psychologist who has become very popular after just a few months in town (also called Mumford), despite unconventional methods of treatment. He refuses to treat a patient he finds annoying (Martin Short) and casually reveals information from his sessions to other people. But he is a good listener, his patients like him, and he seems to have real insight. Most important, he really helps them.

His patients seem to have a wide variety of problems. A pharmacist lives in a world of pulp-fiction fantasies. A wealthy woman is a compulsive shopper. A teen-age girl wants to look like the models in fashion magazines. A beautiful young woman (Hope Davis) has chronic fatigue syndrome. And a high-tech billionaire named Skip (Jason Lee) just needs someone to talk to. As they talk to Mumford, though, it becomes clear that all of them have the same problem — a need to connect to another person, and a fear that they are not worthy. And it turns out that Doctor Mumford has the same problem, too. He had come to Mumford (the name and the town) to escape the mistakes of his past. When he finds a real friend in Skip, he begins to be able allow someone to know the truth about his past. And when he falls in love with one of his patients, he realizes that he has to tell everyone the truth about himself and be accountable for his past mistakes.

Writer/director Lawrence Kasden brings his “Big Chill” ability to create a believable world with many interesting and engaging characters struggling with issues of intimacy and risk. Doctor Mumford says that his hope for his pharmacist patient is to make him comfortable enough to star in his own fantasies. In a way, that is what he does for all of his patients, even himself, only to find that they can then move on to the real thing.

Parents should know that this movie has a lot of mature material, including nudity and sexual references and drug abuse. Mature teens will appreciate the struggles of the teen-age characters to find a way to feel good enough about themselves to enter into a relationship, and the disconnect between the words and the feelings of Mumford’s teen-age patient. Families should discuss the role that families play in the way each member sees himself, and how the families in the movie help or hurt each other.

Note: Listen for the pharmacist’s comment about “the lost ark,” a reference to one of Kasden’s most famous screenplays.

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Comedy Remake

Run Lola Run

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:16 am

Teenagers with a taste for the offbeat will enjoy this German import about a woman who gets a frantic phone call from her boyfriend and has only 20 minutes to find 100,000 marks (about $60,000), or he will be killed by the drug dealer to whom he supposed to deliver the money. Lola (Franka Potente) and her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) live in a sort of of punk post-modern demi-mondaine. The key image of the movie is Lola, with her Raggedy Ann mop of bright red hair, running to save her beloved Manni from the drug dealer, and from himself — he has threatened to hold up a store if she cannot get him the money. When she interacts with people on her way — and in her way — we sometimes get glimpses of what their lives ahead will hold.

Lola runs to her father, who works at a bank, to ask him for the money. But he has his own problems. She does not make it in time, and the result is tragic. But Lola’s determination is such that she will not let that happen. All of a sudden, we are back in her apartment and she is getting Manni’s call again. Everything starts over, this time with tiny differences that have huge consequences for Lola and Manni and for the people around them. It takes three tries before Lola’s running is over.

The movie is fun to watch, with a lot of very clever jump cuts and effects, and it can be a nice jolt for kids who are used to pedestrian big-budget film-making. Parents should know that there is some rough street language, references to out-of-wedlock pregnancy and adultery, and that the main characters live on the edge of the underworld — the money Manni leaves on a train belongs to a drug dealer. Families may want to discuss the movie’s theme about the way that the tiniest choices and interactions can have the most wide-reaching consequences.

Families who enjoy this movie will also like “Diva.”