Nov 20, 2007 2:53 pm US/Pacific
Give Thanks for Movies!
CBS 5 Film Critic James Rocchi
The fall's biggest holiday is a huge weekend for new movies -- everything from family-friendly fantasy to scary popcorn fun and strong independent films. Here's CBS-5 Film Critic James Rocchi's take on some of this Thanksgiving's movies.
Enchanted 3out of 4 reels It takes guts to mock the movies that made you famous -- and that's exactly what the Walt Disney Company does with Enchanted, their new family fantasy. In an animated storybook kingdom, the young Giselle (voiced by Amy Adams) meets a Prince (James Marsden) who wants to marry her; the wicked queen (Susan Sarandon) magically banishes Giselle to ... modern-day New York. Enchanted walks a tricky line between celebration and mockery, delivering animated-romance clichés while making fun of them, but the carefully-calibrated comedy works for kids and parents. Also, the wide-eyed, shell-shocked Adams is a real delight, and her performance is a big part of what makes Enchanted as charming as it is. The film's a little long for very young kids, but they'll nonetheless be won over by Adams's big, bold yet touching performance and some fairly clever gags.
The Mist 3 out of 4 reels After mining Oscar-quality drama from Stephen King's work with The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, writer-director Frank Darabont goes to the scary stuff, adapting a King short story about a group of Maine residents trapped in a supermarket as a thick, other-worldly mist that's hiding hideous monsters rolls in. ... Thomas Jane plays our hero, who tries to keep his son and a few other townspeople safe from the beasts outside -- and from the unhinged contingent (led by a creepy Marcia Gay Harden) inside the store as well. The Mist isn't high art, but it's impressively scary and disturbing; think of it as a grade-A B-movie, with plenty of jolts and jumps as things go from bad to worse with scary-fast speed. Add in one of the bleakest endings I've seen from a horror film in years, and The Mist succeeds as a smart, chilling monster movie that mixes old-fashioned story ideas with modern special effects.
I'm Not There
4 out of 4 reels
Director Todd Haynes's new film is "Inspired by the life and music of Bob Dylan," but don't expect a conventional bio-pic like Ray or Walk the Line or Selena. Instead, Haynes has six different actors play fragments of Bob Dylan. Marcus Carl Franklin is a rail-riding young folksinger; Ben Whishaw is an enigmatic poet; Christian Bale is a folksinger celebrity who quits the business in the '60s; Heath Ledger, an actor who played the folksinger in a movie; Cate Blanchett, a black-and-white Dylan analogue in '60s London; Richard Gere, a weird cowboy-prophet in a never-was old West. It sounds infuriating -- and it can be -- but I'm Not There is also one of the most artistic and challenging films of the year, a piece of pure cinema where every shot and sound effect and camera angle and performance means something. I'm Not There is not for everyone -- you have to be a little bit of a Dylan fan to follow it -- but it's also bizarrely riveting, and a fascinating look at three decades of American history through the life and art of one man.
Margot at the Wedding 3 out of 4 reels
Writer-director Noah Baumbach got an Oscar nomination for exploring family friction in The Squid and the Whale; Margot at the Wedding is more of the same, as Nicole Kidman's Margot comes to her sister Jennifer Jason Leigh's home for Leigh's wedding to Jack Black. Margot's not enthusiastic about the wedding -- and she's not crazy about her own life, either. Kidman and Leigh (who's married to Baumbach) both deliver great performances, capturing both the past tense and tense present of the relationship between their very different siblings. Somehow harsh and loving, bleak and hopeful, Margot at the Wedding is an extraordinarily well-made independent comedy-drama with plenty of scenes that will have you torn between cringing and laughing.
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