James Rocchi At The Movies

Oscar Contenders, Sleepers For Fall Film Season

CBS 5 Film Critic James Rocchi

The change of the seasons means shorter days, damper weather … and the arrival of Oscar contenders in theaters big and small, plus some 'sleepers' you shouldn't miss. Here's CBS-5 Film Critic James Rocchi's take on several recent arrivals to the big screen.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age
3 out of 4 reels
Following 1998's Elizabeth, director Shekhar Kapur and star Cate Blanchett team up again to show us the life and times of England's Elizabeth I. Blanchett's Elizabeth is still childless, still unmarried, and still determined to rule with a fair-but-firm grip. Elizabeth faces personal troubles -- including a strong-but-impossible attraction to Clive Owen's rakish Walter Raleigh -- at court. She's also forced to contend with the advances of Spain, intent on conquering England in the name of God. Blanchett is as strong as she was the first time around in the role, and director Kapur gives us more of the gorgeous visual poetry of the first film; while Elizabeth: The Golden Age isn't as striking, strong and new as the first film, it's still a gorgeous historical drama -- and Blanchett's guaranteed another Oscar nomination in the part.


Great World of Sound
4 out of 4 reels
"Independent" movies aren't what they used to be -- nowadays, you're more likely to find an A-list star slumming it for the Sundance crowd in an 'independent' film than a real undiscovered talent in an independent film. But Great World of Sound is truly independent -- and truly impressive, following 'talent scouts' played by Pat Healey and Kene Holiday through the South. Healy and Holliday work to 'discover' artists for a record label that cons musicians into paying for part of their record releases. In time, Healy and Holiday realize they're front men for a sham -- but will they play along? Director Craig Zobel mixes in everything from The Music Man to Robert Altman's Nashville with the unblinking comedy style of a Christopher Guest mockumentary, making Great World of Sound tough and tender, funny and fierce, hilarious and heartfelt -- and one of the best American independent films in years.


We Own the Night
3 out of 3 reels
Shot in rainy blues and neon night-tones, We Own the Night has a simple plot, as cop Mark Wahlberg's race to take down the Russian Mob in '80s New York leads him to clash with his good-time nightclub owner brother Joaquin Phoenix, with their cop dad Robert Duvall trying to keep the uneasy peace between the two. But when the bad guys go after the trio, they come together out of urgent need. Writer-director James Gray is trying to combine a solid family drama with a run-and-gun action film, and while the results may not be even, they're never dull, either. Phoenix, Walhberg and Duvall are all great -- as you'd expect -- and Eva Mendes get to be more than just a pretty face as Phoenix's girlfriend. We Own the Night's a moody, brooding old-fashioned crime story, and it's fairly solid entertainment delivered by a trio of teriffic actors.


Rendition
3 out of 4 reels
Spanning the globe, Rendition feels like an uneasy mix of two very different movies, the Lifetime-network made-for-TV tearjerker and the modern geo-political techno-thriller. It works more often than you'd think, even if the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Chicago wife and mom Reese Witherspoon is waiting for her Egyptian-born husband Omar Metwally to get home from a business trip to South Africa; somewhere during his journey, he disappears. U.S. Intelligence suspects Metwally may have links to a terrorist cell, so they've kidnapped him and flown him to an unnamed country in North Africa, where CIA man Jake Gyllenhaal and local intelligence officer Igal Naor can try to break him. Rendition jumps between teary drama as Witherspoon tries to get some information on her husband's whereabouts and ticking-clock action as Gyllenhaal and Naor try to get inside a local terrorist cell. Rendition wants its audience to think and feel, and while that ambition isn't perfectly executed, that ambition still makes it worth seeing.

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