Movie Guide
(Page 4 of 4)
Sex/Nudity: None. Violence: 16 scenes of cartoonish violence. Profanity: None. Drugs: None.
Director: Billy Morrissette. With: James LeGros, Maura Tierney, Christopher Walken (97 min.)
Staff ** This reworking of Shakespeare's MacBeth is set in a rural Pennsylvania diner in the 1970s. Joe McBeth, an underappreciated cook and his waitress wife, Pat, conspire to eliminate the owner of Duncan's and transform the sleepy diner into a fast-food McDonald's clone. Walken gives a good performance as a Columbo-style, laid-back cop. Some creative adaptions to the Bard include Lady McBeth's guilt manifesting as a deep-fat fryer burn that won't heal. Director Morrissette tries too hard to make the dark comedy feel like "Fargo." By Seth Stern
Staff **1/2Quirky, low-budget feel, clever, dark.
Sex/Nudity: 8 instances, 2 with nudity. Violence: 10, including several murders. Profanity: At least 53 expressions, some harsh. Drugs: 41 scenes with smoking and drinking.
Director: Nanni Moretti. With Nanni Moretti, Laura Moranti, Giuseppe Sanfelice, Jasmine Trinca. (99 min.)
Sterritt ** In the modest Italian city of Ancona, a gentle psychotherapist and his family face unexpected trauma when his teenage son dies. Don't look for Moretti's comic touch and autobiographical approach in this drama, which relies on straightforward screenwriting for its emotional power. Moretti's acting skills aren't up to the demands of the main role, and his portrait of family life is too simplistic to be credible. In Italian with English subtitles.
Director: Randall Wallace. With Mel Gibson, Madeleine Stowe, Greg Kinnear. (140 min.)
Sterritt * Gibson leads American soldiers through a blood-filled battle of the Vietnam war in this fact-based but cliché-riddled melodrama. The filmmakers take advantage of their 1965 setting to dish out guts-and-glory archetypes, ignoring the bitterness and cynicism that welled up among US troops when they started questioning the war's moral and political basis later in the decade. Meanwhile, every female character is portrayed as a midcentury stereotype that would make Ozzie and Harriet squirm. How can so much money and star power add up to so little authenticity and conviction?
Staff *** Convincing, grimly fascinating, horrific, square-jawed heroism.
Sex/Nudity: 1 instance implied sex. Violence: 14 violent battle sequences, some are gory. Profanity: 22 strong expressions. Drugs: 10 instances of smoking and drinking.
Director: Steven Spielberg. With Haley Joel Osment, Frances O'Connor, Jude Law, William Hurt. (140 min.)
Sterritt *** The time is the distant future, and 11-year-old David is a new kind of android whose "artificial" intelligence is programmed with "authentic" emotions. But what if David's human love proves incompatible with his robotic nature? Spielberg took over this fantasy from the late Stanley Kubrick, but his own approach favors the pure fantasy styles of "E.T.," bringing the results closer to a high-tech joyride than a thought-provoking parable. Watch out for violence.
Staff ** Pointless, shallow characters, stale.
Sex/Nudity: 1 scene implied sex. Profanity: 1 expression. Violence: 20 scenes, one torture scene. Drugs: None.
