Diane Lane, heartbreak, and the beauty of Tuscany combine for a decent, but not great, movie. Under the Tuscan Sun is inspired by the book of the same name and Lane does play a character with the name Frances Mayes (the author of the autobiographical travelogue), but there was no story in the book, so writer/director Audrey Wells just made a bunch of crap up.

Wells has specialized in chick flicks so far in her career (The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Guinevere, next year’s English language remake of Shall We Dance? starring Richard Gere and J.Lo) and Tuscan Sky certainly falls into the same…pit. Now, I’m not saying this simply because the main character is a woman but because the character has the heartache and bad breaks piled on, yet fights her way to emotional stability with only the help of a few wise friends. Plus lots of foreshadowing, can’t forget the foreshadowing.

Tuscany is beautiful, Lane/Mayes meets up with colorful, if blemished, characters. Everyone calls her Francesca, even the slightly loony older English actress (think a mid-50s English Kim Catrell-ish Sex and the City type) who befriends her. She has a heart-opening affair with a wonderful Italian man who conveniently (for the plot) lives hours away in the South (Positano, not far down the Amalfi Coast from where I vacationed back in 2001). She even gets everything she asks for in the end. Yeah, it’s a chick flick though not a bad one–just like Spitfire Grill a few years ago.

Note: Yes, this does not mean I’ve in any way changed my mind from last week’s rant, we saw this movie at the CineLux theater in Almaden.

Recommended for date nights

Nicholas Cage and Sam Rockwell are con artists–Matchstick Men being a little-used alternative name for the profession–and all of a sudden Cage hooks up with the 14 year old daughter (Allison Lohman) he knew was a possibility but had never met. He struggles with his Dadness. He tries to get better with the help of a psychiatrist. Cage and Rockwell try to pull a big con on Bruce McGill but the ending has a twist or two. Or three.

Ridley Scott is much better known for directing bigger, more active movies like Black Hawk Down, Gladiator, and Alien. Though he did do fairly well with the lighter Thelma and Louis, got to give him that. But while there are some funny and some touching moments in Matchstick Men, almost all between Cage and Lohman, there was just too much confusion over whether this is about a father finding his daughter or a con man learning he no longer has the heart for the con.

Somewhat recommended

Robert Rodriguez puts aside his spy kiddies and gets back to his adult film series with the third film featuring his guitar playing, gun-toting El Mariachi, Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Antonio Banderas stars, along with Johnny Depp, Willem Dafoe and Selma Hayek and WhereIsHeNow Mickey Rourke in a nice cameo. Most of you will probably be more familiar with 1995’s Desparado, the second film, than with the low-budget indie original El Mariachi.

Writer/director Rodriguez–who also produced, edited and scored OUATIM–got a big budget to make this one and the money’s not hard to see on the screen, plenty of big explosions and wire work fight choreography for sure. The problem is that it’s all show and little substance. I kept thinking ‘This is a very slow moving cartoon’ as it played. There’s too much voiceover, too many flashbacks (including every single seen in which Hayek appears), and too little coherence.

Not recommended

Somehow I’m not surprised that there is no scriptwriter credit (which would actually belong to Richard Steen) in the IMDB database; makes me wonder what name’s the writer equivalent of Alan Smithee and why it wasn’t used for this piece of dreck. The Shipment does nothing for the careers of Mathew Modine or Elizabeth Berkeley, though clearly they hoped to show off the ability to carry a romantic caper comedy. Some moments of amusement but not nearly enough to justify the investment of 100 minutes of lifespan.

Not recommended

Some movies take a novel and make something completely unrelated from it, save perhaps a few character names and a basic idea, while others slavishly attend to the author’s word as stone tablets; either way the movie may be good or bad. Yet some movies stay quite faithful to the author’s work while creating an original and authentic work, and this is what writer/director Liliana Cavani has done with Ripley’s Game (official site).

Released theatrically in Europe to some reasonable box office success, the film could not secure a distribution deal here in The States and went straight to cable where it premiered last night on the Independent Film Channel (next showing doesn’t appear to be until Sep. 20!). And yes, this is the same Ripley character that Matt Damon played in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Patricia Highsmith wrote five Ripley novels with the Damon feature giving us the ‘origin story’ more or less while the others show him 15 or more years later. Recall that Tom Ripley isn’t even Tom Ripley but another person who murdered the real person of that name and stole his identity.

So it’s not unreasonable for Tom Ripley to be played in Ripley’s Game by John Malkovich; this version of Tom is much older, settled in his skin as one who simply does not have a conscious and does not miss it. While I do appreciate Damon as an actor (Bourne Identity and Italian Job were top of my list the last two years), he has yet to learn the subtle and casual acting skills which Malkovich was born with.

In this outing, Ripley is matched with ‘innocent wanker’ Jonathan Trevanny (played by Dougray Scott) and ruthless crime lord Reeves (Ray Winstone of Love, Honour & Obey and Sexy Beast). Ripley and Reeves have earned together in the past, established by the opening act where the partner on the sale of some forged art, while Trevanny runs a framing shop in the little village where Ripley hides away to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. But Trevanny is dying of leukemia and Reeves needs someone unknown to get close to a rival and murder him–the viewer should understand that though the film is set in the present, the novel was written in the post-WWII, pre-Free Love period and it reflects that sensibility.

Ripley, somewhat maliciously, matches Reeves and Trevanny and Trevanny heads off to Munich to do the contracted deed. He takes his pay, thinking he’s gotten a little stash to leave behind when the disease takes, but of course life in a mystery story isn’t so easy. Reeves shows up and tells him that there’s a second job, like it or not, this one not as simple. Fortunately Ripley shows up to help out with the assignment but then the baddies come after the three of them, having seen through Reeves’ attempt at misdirection.

Scott is almost too hard and pretty to be believable in his part of the innocent but with a little makeup and determination, does well. Winstone has zero problems with the Reeves character, just another in the long line of gangsters he’s played; perhaps he even was a bit of one before falling into acting? Lena Headey plays Scott’s wife, reasonable job though only a small piece of meat, and Italian actress Chiara Caselli is Louisa Harari, Tom’s concert harpsichordist wife.

Cavani has done a very interesting job with Ripley’s Game and I’m disappointed that the movie isn’t getting a bigger play. Many people who might otherwise enjoy it will miss out but perhaps in the near future it will show up on DVD or a major cable channel. She moved the locale of Ripley’s home from rural France to rural Italy, a choice that only enhanced the movie, and made smart choices in the simplification/editing that must take place in tranforming a several hundred page into a two hour movie.

Definitely recommended if you get IFC.