"Speed, Greed, and other Animal Behaviors"

Hot from the Oven

Encroaching bad reviews—from the mainstream and the religious press—didn't phase most filmgoing families; the $25 million the film brought in over the weekend practically guarantees we'll be seeing more of this stuff. Murphy, whose fans grumble that his best work seems to be a thing of the past, manages to be more popular than ever.

The prevalence of sex-related humor throughout the film prevented its acceptance with critics in the religious media. Preview warns that the subject of "mating" may be inappropriate as the central thread of a children's movie, and also joins the collective critical sigh over the typically crude humor. "But," Preview's critic concludes, "Doctor Dolittle also realizes that communication with family is as important as talking to the animals." "I took my 15-year-old son and his friend to get an honest critical reaction from the demographics who will see this movie," writes Holly McClure at The Dove Foundation, "and I was surprised to hear they both liked it a lot." However, she adds, "I'm glad I took younger 'critics' with me because they were able to enjoy this movie from a lighthearted, younger perspective that (in this instance) I didn't have. I only laughed a couple of times and overall I thought it was silly, slow and overloaded with way too many animal jokes about passing gas, urinating and mating."

Movieguide's critic saw the movie take a wrong turn when it abandoned the romance plot for a hackneyed confrontation about environmentalism. "The trouble is the audience cared about the former, which took up most of the movie, not the latter," says the reviewer. "Therefore, kids stopped laughing and critics started mumbling that the movie was way too long. Running out of story and unaccustomed to character development, the movie tried to hold the audience by increasing the bathroom humor and lightweight sexual references, which made the later half of the movie just plain dirty." Focus on the Family's Bob Smithouser writes, "Viewers who hate to feel manipulated by filmmakers' social agendas will loathe Dr. Dolittle 2 for wearing its environmentalism on its sleeve. While it effectively drives the story, it still feels preachy." Still, Smithouser found some things to like: "The script isn't spectacular but it has a good heart, as well as a gaggle of hit-and-miss gags and pop culture nods that had me laughing from my gut more than once. Long-time Eddie Murphy fans will find him domesticated and censored here (a pleasant change), much closer to Bill Cosby than Axel Foley."

Let's all hope the dangerous Road Warrior-style racing of The Fast and the Furious doesn't inspire young viewers to try this kind of thing. Actor Vin Diesel, who "arrived" as a soldier in Saving Private Ryan, was the voice of The Iron Giant, and played a dangerous criminal in Pitch Black, is back as a tough-talking gang leader who hijacks cars and participates in high-speed illegal racing on the streets of Los Angeles after dark. Paul Walker plays an undercover cop who infiltrates the racing gang and finds himself accelerating into trouble, partly because he's falling in love with the leader's sister (Jordana Brewster). Director Rob Cohen, who directed Dragonheart and The Skulls, is surprising many critics with his skillful choreography of some thrilling action sequences. But when it comes to a meaningful story, most agree that the film is running on fumes.

"Cohen's formula race and chase scenes alternate with constant macho posturing for a dull but noisy tale of justice ignored," says the U.S. Catholic Conference. Preview cautions, "While the dialogue includes a lot of obscenities … one area of concern is the glamorization of the dangerous and illegal street racing. Young drivers may find it hard to resist imitating the high-energy racing scenes. Along with gasoline and nitrogen, this racing story is also fueled by images of alcohol use and abuse, implied promiscuous sex and questioning loyalties." Movieguide's critic agrees: "Despite some minor redemptive elements, The Fast and the Furious condones, if not glamorizes, reckless, dangerous driving and casual premarital sexuality. Although slickly photographed, it also has an over-complicated, formulaic, sometimes hokey script. Furthermore, Paul Walker's acting fails to match Vin Diesel's intensity."

Despite thinking the movie is a "vapid experience," Michael Elliott of Movie Parables believes the film is review-proof, and this weekend's gross (an uncannily appropriate term) of more than $40 million proved he's absolutely right. "It doesn't matter that the story is lame or that the dialogue is cheesier than a wheel of gouda. The Fast and the Furious will bring in its millions faster than its souped-up cars can race down Manhattan's streets." Elliott argues that the film's characters are shown to be victims of a sort of idolatry in the way they treat their flashy cars.

"Well, it's not the worst movie I ever saw," says Crosswalk's Phil Boatwright. "In fact it's difficult not to get caught up in the splendidly photographed racing sequences." He goes on to berate the film's caustic soundtrack and its "cliché-ridden storyline, which has all the profundity of a Tidy Bowl commercial." His biggest objection is the film's "moral ambiguity. We find ourselves rooting for the baddies. … It is the members of the establishment who seem to be the real outlaws."

SPOILER WARNING!Focus on the Family's Steven Issac calls it "A veritable Point Break clone [that] replaces surfing with racing and bank heists with truck-jacking." Issac finds some signs of meaningfulness in the way the team members watch out for each other, and for family. But he also sees dangerous moral relativism at work in the film's finale: "The Fast and the Furious subscribes to a new, more relativistic sensibility in which the cop lets the crook go in the end because he can't bear to cage such a beautifully wild creature. In other words, he feels sorry for him. Despite how outraged some folks get about the inadequacies of our justice system, that's an abominable message to throw at teens. If it's okay to be the 'bad guy' if you're a nice guy, then we should just throw all the annoying people in jail and be done with it. [This] marks a radical shift in our cultural conscience."

Still Cooking

At Hollywood Jesus, David Bruce now offers a generously in-depth look at the symbolism of the popular musical Moulin Rouge. (We covered reviews of this film a few weeks back.) "There is no surprise ending," writes Bruce. "We have seen this familiar story before in other incarnations. And yet, this film tells this story in a such a way that we feel it is being told for the very first time. On a deeper level this story is about the needless divorce between Christian spirituality and natural sensuality. It is about how the worldly system exploits God-given sexuality for greed and money. It is about overcoming sexual shame and dehumanizing behavior, while enjoying human love and sexuality as it was intended by God." Personally speaking, Moulin Rouge is my favorite film of the year so far, for its relentless imagination, its energy, and its insistence on the superiority of committed, wholehearted, selfless love over the carnal appetites of possessive and lustful "love." Bruce's examination of the movie's use of color deepened my appreciation for director Baz Luhrmann's achievement.

Side Dishes

Amy Taubin at The Village Voice argues that the title refers to its hero, a large gangster with a slowly softening heart, named Gary Gal Dove. Played with depth and sensitivity by Ray Winstone, "Gal" is charming in his easygoing enjoyment of his tacky "villa" in Spain, which looks like a cookie-cutter gangster home from southern California with its swimming pool and kitschy deco. "Gal is sexy," Taubin explains, "not because he's gorgeous or powerful or narcissistic (if narcissism weren't sexy, Tom Cruise would never be a movie star), but because he lives as beasts do, tuned to his immediate sensory experience of the world. He has animal magnetism."

Gal's criminal past is coming back to haunt him, rumbling like a boulder broken loose and tumbling down the hill toward his home. That boulder is Don Logan, a small but savage messenger come to lure Gal back in for—yes, the crime genre's greatest cliché—one last job. What Don Logan wants, Don Logan gets, Gal's friends remind him. But Gal, feeling principled and protective in the presence of the woman he loves (an ex-porn star who is also trying to live a better life), decides to dig in his heels and refuse the job. He and everyone else present knows he may as well have signed his own death sentence.

At The International Film Journal, Kevin Lally writes, "Anyone with any doubts about the range of Oscar winner Ben Kingsley should look no further than Sexy Beast, the ultra-stylish new British crime film that showcases a ferociously menacing performance by the man who once embodied that paragon of pacifism, Gandhi." Entertainment Weekly's Owen Glieberman writes, "Winstone … lets you see the fear that most gangster movies gloss over. … By the end, we realize that crime may pay, but those who make their pact with the BadFellas pay more." Salon's Andrew O'Hehir calls the film "both electrified and haunted, a nightmare set in paradise, a lurid dream state in which strange things happen underground and underwater." And he claims that it "belongs alongside Amores Perros and Memento on a shortlist of 2001's most exciting revelations, all of them movies that push the crime genre in adventurous new directions."

I too was quite impressed by the way Winstone and Kingsley held the audience's attention, even with the stylish widescreen camerawork and the shifty criminal characters on the edges of the frame. Winstone has one of those faces that is half tough guy, half softie; he might be John Goodman's quiet younger brother. He is exactly what Logan calls him in a venomous sneer—a loveable oaf. Kingsley's performance as Logan is truly chilling; he's vicious enough to take on any of the pit bulls in Amores Perros. Like a predator, his eyes are shifty, cold and calculating. It's almost funny—he's so much smaller than those he antagonizes, and yet they jump when he talks. They know what he can do, and they know his connections. The movie's best special effect is Kingsley's bald cranium, which in close-up reveals crevasses, furrows, and a curve around the ear that suggests he might have crawled out of the sea a thousand years ago. When Gal says "No" to Logan's offer, Logan immediately contradicts him, barking fitfully like a dog, "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES!" And when Logan doesn't like something, it's "No! No! No-no-no-no-NO!" You know the confrontation's coming. This is the angel of death in the guise of a summer houseguest, and everybody knows that fire will eventually shoot out of his eyes and he'll blow the house down. But also impressively fearsome is Teddy, the crime lord with the grin of death, portrayed by Ian McShane. McShane is as unsettling in his silences as Kingsley is in his profanity-laden tirades. These three performances elevate the film above most crime dramas.

Sexy Beast is unique in that it has compassion for its criminals without glamorizing their behavior. The violence is mostly verbal (and mostly delivered by Kingsley), and there's remarkably little in the way of gunplay. It doesn't flaunt its power over the audience with shock value. In fact, when the criminals get tough, they look and sound rather ridiculous. Logan's swearing comes so fast and jumbled that you have no idea if he was trying to say something or merely letting off steam. For all of its familiar territory, Sexy Beast shows that there are still plenty of interesting characters in the crime genre. Most crime stories, from Cain and Abel to Macbeth, from Bonnie and Clyde to Pulp Fiction, exist to show us that crime doesn't pay. But Sexy Beast has more to say than that, like how a step toward love can make life worth living, no matter what price is on your head, no matter what past is coming back to haunt you. In fact, grace may even sometimes grant you a pardon from inevitable ruin.

Other critics in the religious media are not enthusiastic. "Despite a rich layer of meaning in its story, Sexy Beast ultimately fails to do much with it," says Movieguide. "Though at times it is a very stylish movie, it is also frequently foul and lacks redemptive or uplifting elements to counteract the brutal, immoral world it depicts."

The Anniversary Party portrays a complicated collision of misguided lives in Hollywood. Sally (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a starlet passing her prime, and her husband, an acclaimed novelist and soon-to-be director, throw a party to celebrate their marriage even as it teeters on the brink of disaster. The friends (and enemies) at the party are not much help, bringing their own tangles of depression, anger, dishonesty, and selfishness through the door. Everyone is groping for something that will bring peace, or at least a short spell of blissful denial and escapism. One is a new mother, who seems completely out of place at a Hollywood party now that she has a child to care for back home; she's become addicted to pregnancy-related drugs merely to calm her nerves as the awesome responsibility of motherhood becomes clear to her. Another (John C. Reilly) is a movie director who can't sit still at the party, so he disappears into a back room to watch the dailies of his new film and berate himself for his own mediocrity. The uptight neighbors show up at the party, and it takes only moments before they are arguing about whose dog keeps the neighborhood awake at night.

Over the course of the evening, the uptight will loosen up with the help of the drug Ecstasy. In fact, the movie doesn't condescend to remind us of the obvious dangers of the drug. Instead, the drug does something far more dangerous; it erases inhibitions and all sense of appropriateness, so that they start telling each other the truth for a change. Once the truth is set free, all manner of emotional damage is done, and no one will ever be the same.

Preview's critic writes that the film's digital video presentation makes it feel like a home movie, "but the average home was never like this. While Leigh and Cumming may be striving to reflect real-life Hollywood couples, it's still an unreal lifestyle to the average viewer." Movie Parables' Michael Elliott writes, "The Anniversary Party is far from talentless. The cast is quite accomplished and certainly no one has damaged their career by their work in this film. The project just smacks of self-indulgence. While it can be argued that the film gives us a rare inside look at how the 'image-makers' live, the movie fails to involve us or really let us into the lives of these characters. Thus when the histrionics begin (and continue), we simply aren't compelled to care enough to follow them down their angst-ridden path of self-discovery."

I'd have to disagree. Sure, these lifestyles are out of reach for the average viewer. And the movie does pack too many characters into too small a space. But I found it compelling to see how, even without a good example among them, without one single person that might minister to their real needs, they all are brought to see something of the light merely by seeing the devastation that they have wrought. All manner of wealth and creature comforts have failed to help these characters in coping with life. If anything, the money, the luxuries, and the drugs have only served to further separate them from each other. Is there any hope for them? Are there any glimmers of real love left in their hearts? While this party is definitely not a pleasant experience, it was fascinating to search for the hearts under the layers of makeup, denial, disguise, excuses, fantasies, and ego. You just might catch fragments of the Answer. The one complete family at the party—played by the real-life family of Kevin Kline, Phoebe Cates, and their children—exhibit tenderness toward one another, in spite of their flaws and blind spots. This tenderness and balance seems missing from the other partygoers. Sometimes you have to lose love, or witness it in the lives of others, before you can recognize the absence of it in your own heart.

Going Back for Seconds

In Sandy Pollard's experience, yes. She wrote to tell me about a personal crisis in her own life, and how she found healing in part due to Steven Spielberg's film The Color Purple.

Involved in an unhealthy and damaging relationship, Pollard felt trapped. "I saw no way out of my situation. I felt as though God had abandoned me at times, leaving me to trudge on in hopelessness. I lost view of the big picture.

As I watched Celie's story play out over the years in that wonderful film, and realized that God was indeed at work in her life, and in the lives of others, I began to hope that my situation would someday change. As Celie poured her heart out to God in her letters to him, he did indeed answer her prayers . …not in her timing, but in his. He turned Earth upside down to insure that her children would be protected, by, of all people, the person that Celie loved the most, their Aunt. He eventually returned the children to their mother . …and all of the characters in the movie experienced redemption; through bitter providence, but redemption nonetheless. I have raised my three children as a single mother. But God began to work in my heart, and like Celie, I experienced transforming redemption because of the circumstances I had experienced. Looking back, I can see the hand of God, moving heaven and Earth to protect my children and me, until we could experience the grace and forgiveness that he wanted us to know. My children and I have all become believers, I have grandchildren who are precious, and we spend our lives happily pursuing the God that pursued us for so long.

Looking at the big picture of Celie's life in that film was one of the biggest motivators in an otherwise dark time for me. I will always be grateful to Alice Walker for having the courage to write of redemption and to Steven Spielberg for so beautifully transferring the story to film.

Writing from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Scott Grandi has another recommendation for readers. He writes about Roland Joffe's The Mission, which stars Jeremy Irons as a Jesuit priest and Robert DeNiro as a troubled soldier who has different ideas about how God's work gets done. "The Mission challenges you from the first scene—a priest tied to a cross sent over the falls—to the last. The scene where the former conquistador is climbing the falls dragging his old armor, and has it cut off, is one of the finest pictures of grace I have seen in a movie."

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