This Australian film stars Anthony Lapaglia (don’t be surprised at his accent, he’s a native of Oz), Geoffroy Rush, Barbara Hershey, and Kerry Armstrong as husbands and wives whose paths cross through work and play. Lantana is a drama that compares the lies that bind couples to the lantana, “a genus of tropical shrub with small, colorful blooms that hides a dense, thorny undergrowth.” In fact director Ray Lawrence consistently uses shots of lantana to move our viewpoint into scenes, beginning with the very first frames of the movie. Perhaps he and writer Andrew Bovell were a little unsure their audience could pick up on a more subtle take but overall I did enjoy this character-driven piece.

Lapaglia is married to Armstrong who is a patient of psychiatrist Hershey who is married to Rush, then Hershey disappears after her car breaks down on a dark country road and police detective Lapaglia investigates. Rachel Blake, who attends a salsa dance class with Lapaglia and Armstrong, sees her neighbor toss a ladies shoe into some lantana across the street and has her husband Glenn Robbins (from whom she is separated) call Lapaglia, with whom she had a brief but ended affair. When Lapaglia shows up at her house, Robbins recognizes him from the pub where they had met a night or two before after Robbins was accosted in the street by Hershey. Confused yet? Don’t worry, the movie doesn’t tax your mind keeping track of all these connections. An arthouse film worth seeing.

highly recommended

Let’s start out by saying that this is a James Bond movie, released in 1967. But Bond is not played here by Sean Connery, the vastly underrated George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, or Pierce Brosnan. Instead there are many agents named James Bond, although the real one is David Niven and there is a Jimmy Bond, James’ nephew, played by Woody Allen. James has a daughter, Mata Bond (the luscious Joanna Pettit), Moneypenny is here (the luscious Barbara Bouchet), a very young Jacky Bissett as Miss Goodthighs, and Ursula Andress (luscious and also the original Bond girl in Dr. No) are just some of the luscious women. Have you picked up on my vibe that this is like no other Bond film? With five directors and even more writers, Casino Royale is all over the place and at the end just gets ridiculous–I am not surprised at all that Joseph Heller is one of the writers. Peter Sellers is in here somewhere as a baccarat expert who plays one of the Bonds and takes on the original novels villain (Orson Welles as a SMERSH director). I laughed, this film has an amazing melange of ’60s and British humor, with some Woody slapdash thrown in. Robert von Dassanowsky has an interesting article, Casino Royale at 33, that gives a great deal of the history and reaction to a movie that was quite controversial at it’s release: “It’s really a courtly epic in ’60s drag, kids!”

Recommended!

Arnold was looking to get back his big action movie following after the lackluster results of The 6th Day and The End of Days with Collateral Damage. Frankly, 1994’s Junior and True Lies were his last really successful movies (and True Lies 2 is his next movie to be released). With some strange luck, Schwarzenegger made this movie about terrorism coming home to America before Sep. 11, which ought to have been a bigger help at the box office than it has been. I guess that’s because the movie basically stinks.

Arnold is his usual self and the scenario seems open to the possibility of a taught, tense movie but director Andrew Davis seems to have blown his creative wad with The Fugitive and, to a lesser degree, Under Siege. He reuses too many elements from those movies, most noticeably the jump from a height through water; in The Fugitive Harrison Ford jumped off a dam and here Schwarzenegger jumps through a nasty waterfall. Elias Koteas is decent as the asshole CIA agent but Davis and first time scriptwriters David and Peter Griffiths made him an idiot in the end. Francesca Neri plays her Selena about as well as one could ask but again the script takes her in a strange, unbelievable turn at the end. Of course, the little deaf terrorist’s son bonds instantly with Arnold, which also is completely believable. Let’s just say that Collateral Damage has enough plot holes to drive a small truck through.

Not recommended.

Yes, for thos of you keeping count, this was my third viewing of The Fellowship of the Ring and I enjoyed it as much as the first two. What an incredible movie! I was able to focus on details that slipped by in my eagerness to see everything in the previews views. Jackson does some excellent foreshadowing and mirroring, for example. Aragorn/Boromir, Frodo/Sam, Frodo and Sam/Pippin and Merry, Aragorn/Uruk-Hai (more of this relationship in the next two films will provide lots of fireworks and excitement) are just some of the relationships Jackson highlights to give us depth of character. If you haven’t seen it yet, get off your ass and go!

Well, after much indecision, we finally decided to see A Beautiful Mind tonight and I’m really glad. The trailers just didn’t attract me and the subject matter, a man’s battle against mental illness, hit a little too close to home. Still, after most of my family and friends saw it and gave glowing reviews, the time arrived. Apparently I’m not the only one to feel this way because the showing (admittedly, prime time on a Saturday night) was sold out.

Russell Crowe is magnificent and Jennifer Connelly is superb as the woman who sees more than just the social ineptness and around the damaged mind–and no doubt, she is amazingly gorgeous–but the performance I truly appreciated was Paul Bettany as Princeton roommate and imagonary friend Charles Herman. Ron Howard is nearly invisible as the director, which I say as a commendation, since one never feels manipulated into some emotional reaction.

recommended

The remake got terrible reviews, so we decided to watch the 1975 original version of Rollerball. Note that with the exception of the general play of the game and the idealistic main character, there is not commonality to these two Rollerballs. James Caan plays Jonathon E, the most famous athlete in a future world where nations, war, and poverty have faded away and six corporations rule everyone’s life. Jonathon has become bigger than the sport and this the corporations cannot allow.

But Jonathon has not become the champion he is without also learning a few things, so we have a sweet scene where he confronts the system, in the form of his ex-wife Ella (the gorgeous Maude Adams, who was taken away from him years before when an Executive desired her), and he tells her people have made the wrong choice: comfort over freedom. She replies that comfort is freedom but from the look on Jonathon’s face we know that we are to to understand that Ella is a captive of the system unable to break free from the blinders imposed by it.

Director Norman Jewison has never been afraid to use blood to make a point and he certainly does so here. Players are as likely, and in the end more likely, to end up as splatter as to walk away. His previous film was Jesus Christ Superstar and he definitely gives Caan’s Jonathon somewhat of a messianic cast, not unlike the apotheosis Keanu Reeves undergoes in the Matrix. Jewison made a Hollywood movie, but one that was obviously influenced by the visual and auditory techniques developed by European directors in the ’60s.

The film has strong performances from John Houseman as the Executive who confronts Jonathon, John Beck as the teammate who is sacrificed to teach Jonathon one final lesson, Burt Kwouk (Cato in the old Pink Panther movies) in a small role as a doctor, and Moses Gunn as Jonathon’s mentor.

If you want to see a good Rollerball, save your $9 from the new release and rent the original.

recommended