"The Mummy Returns full of sound and fury and not much else. Also, vampires lurk in The Forsaken, and that legendary monster Infidelity rears its ugly head in Faithless."
Jeffrey Overstreet | posted 5/01/2001 12:00AM
4 of 4
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At The Village Voice, Michael Atkinson goes further, not only noting the film's excellence, but that it signifies the emergence of an important new theme in contemporary filmmaking: the responsibility of parenthood. "Bergman is nothing if not an artist finely focused on secret narrative weaponry and snowballing decimation … 'Is this how we pay?' Marianne murmurs at one point, just as the movie subtly refocuses upon the actual cost of whimsical family collapse—the needless, hellacious dynamiting of a child's world. Faithless becomes contingent on that little girl, on the moment when she closes up and walks out of the room, and in that Bergman has sampled the new great theme of modern culture: parental anxiety. The plight of children as they suffer the whims of the adult world has become one of movies' primary issues."
Maybe this calls for a sequel … The Mommy Returns.
Still Cooking
Free of monsters and messy realistic human drama, the Sylvester Stallone actioner Driven continued to draw audiences. This week, CultureWatch.net proposes questions for further discussion of the film: "Everything in life is competition, and we want to succeed and win, just like the characters, because we see all around us, in sports, in business, in schools, that winning is everything. This message of 'doing what it takes to win' often means we shut out people, throw away what is truly important and lose our focus, like the characters in the movie. In a competitive situation, can you really be a winner without finishing first? Most people would probably say they believe "winning isn't everything" but in today's society, does that notion still hold true?" (See our earlier roundup of reviews here.)
Next week:A Knight's Tale and other early entries in the summer movie season get their share of critical responses.
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.
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