"Bridget Romances, Josie Rocks, Joe Cleans Up"
"Critics in the mainstream and religious media mull over Bridget Jones's Diary, Josie and the Pussycats, Kingdom Come,and Joe Dirt. Plus, critics find a moral sensibility in Amores Perros."
Jeffrey Overstreet | posted 4/01/2001 12:00AM
4 of 4
Still Cooking
While Spy Kids still reigns supreme at the box office, delighting families for three weeks straight, the Morgan Freeman thriller Along Came a Spider entertained a large audience again as well. Peter T. Chattaway at The Vancouver Courier caught up with this detective-versus-serial killer flick this week, and writes, "As formulaic as it may be, Along Came a Spider has a number of things working in its favour, beginning with the performances." He gives special praise to actress Monica Potter, saying that she "gets to flex her acting muscles well beyond the girlfriend roles and lame romantic comedies that have dominated her career to date." He also applauds the film's "intriguing set pieces."
Side Dishes
2001's most highly acclaimed movie to date is a long, intense, and violent picture about several characters whose lives collide in a car chase through Mexico City. Amores Perros has won major awards around the world, was nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the Oscars, and is finally showing in a limited release here in the States. Critics in the religious media have yet to write about the film, but the mainstream press is raving about it. And they point out that one of the film's strengths is a strong moral sensibility often lacking in movies that explore the darker side of human nature.
Entertainment Weekly
's Lisa Schwarzbaum says this first feature from Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu is "fierce, loving, and electric." While the story contains a good deal of criminal behavior, Schwarzbaum observes that, in this film's perspective, wrongful actions are shown to bring on heavy consequences. She concludes, "The elemental dog-eat-dog nature of humans is expressed not only in disturbing glimpses of brutal, backroom dogfights, but also in the relationships between the animals and their owners." At the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert raves, "[Iñárritu's] characters are not the bland, amoral totems of so much modern Hollywood violence, but people with feelings and motives. They want love, money and revenge. They not only love their dogs but desperately depend on them. And it is clear that the lower classes are better at survival than the wealthy, whose confidence comes from their possessions, not their mettle."
Next week: You think comedies have been sinking low? Wait until you read critical reaction to Freddy Got Fingered. Also, early reports on The Claim, and, no, I am not making this up … Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles.
Jeffrey Overstreet is on the board of Promontory Artists Association, a non-profit organization based in Seattle, which provides community, resources, and encouragement for Christian artists. He edits an artists' magazine (The Crossing), publishes frequent film and music reviews on his Web site (Looking Closer), and is at work on a series of novels.
Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere
See earlier Film Forum postings for these other movies in the box-office top ten: Spy Kids, Blow, Pokémon 3, Enemy at the Gates, Someone Like You, and Heartbreakers.
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