I Spy
In this update of the classic TV-series, much is lost in the translation. As an inept special agent and his loudmouth civilian partner, Owen Wilson and Eddie Murphy break no new ground here but still manage their share of cheap laughs; Wilson being the more "gee-whiz-this-is cool" one and Murphy pretty much recycling his performance from last spring's Showtime. (Or worse, maybe he's doing his Chris Tucker impression.) Still, they have a weird and silly chemistry as they track down the perfunctory villain (the apparently sleepwalking Malcolm McDowell) and the perfunctory high-tech device, a high-tech attack jet so secret we never even get to see it until the last ten minutes of the movie. The inane plot does allow them to cross paths with fellow spy Famke Janssen. Stunning, smart and funny, she's the real highlight of the movie, even if she's done this sort of thing before and better (Goldeneye). All in all, it's a throwaway effort that's occasionally amusing. That said, why does it seem like 75% of spy movies made these days have to be comedies about incompetent operatives who succeed only by luck? Between the The Tuxedo, Austin Powers and now I Spy it's no wonder the increasingly loud and dopey James Bond movies still pack in audiences; he's the only spy out there who seems to know what he's doing.
**1/2 out of 4 stars

The Ring
This American take on the Japanese cult-hit Ringu works far better than one might think it would, due to the efforts of star Naomi Watts and director Gore Verbinski. Staying largely to the source material, yet straying just enough to keep everything intriguingly creepy, the film works wonders with it's premise while wearing it's implausibility and ambiguity like badges of honor. In this story, having to do with a videotape that dooms all who watch it to death within 7 days, as much is left to our imagination as is spelled out for the audience, and Verbinski (this is the director of Mousehunt and The Mexican??) seems to realize that our imagination is where real horror lives. He gets a lot of mileage out of the actual tape we are shown from start to finish, and decent performances from his cast, Watts in particular. A completely different turn from her work in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, here she's equally effective. Verbinski has succeeded in translating a tense, if slow, small scale Japanese thriller into a big budget studio offering without sacrificing any of the inventiveness or any of the fear.
***

Bowling For Columbine
Michael Moore, satirist-author and rebel-with-a-microphone, takes the weapons-in-America issue into his crosshairs and opens fire relentlessly. Tracing the insanely large number of violent acts and murders in the US from the streets, through the media and government programs, into our cities' poorest neighborhoods and family homes, Moore shows from A to Z how tragedies like the Columbine High School massacre, the Oklahoma City bombing and even the 9/11 WTC disasters came to be. Not content to aim high and wide, Moore also focuses on the personal stories of two survivors of Columbine and even has a chat with NRA figure Charlton Heston. In examining the problem of guns in this country, Moore examines things from all angles (himself a member of the NRA) and pulls no punches in his impression of our weapons-crazy society as one not so much righteous in its freedom as ruled by its fear. At once shockingly informative and scathingly hilarious, Moore has given us his most important work yet. One critic remarked that it should be required viewing in every school in this country. I'd have to agree. Thank you, Michael Moore, for being sanity's point-man.
****

Punch-Drunk Love
The film isn't really the huge departure for neither star Adam Sandler nor director Paul Thomas Anderson that it may seem. Rather, it's a "poor shmuck" romantic-comedy seen through the lens of a unique artist. Sandler is quirky fun and Emily Watson is a revelation, as always. While the film has more in common with the works of Hal Hartley or Wes Anderson (yet never quite reaches the same fable-like heights), one does wish that real-life romance could be as elegant and surprising as it is played out here. The director's humor is allowed to flourish along with his cast's performances, which include a wildly angry turn from Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the team sets jokes up with punch lines that aren't what we expected -- or that never come at all. In making his least epically detailed film Anderson has also given us his cutest one, an equally rewarding accomplishment.
***

The Truth About Charlie
Reinventing his aesthetics while fashioning his most enjoyable work since Something Wild and Married to the Mob, director Jonathan Demme presents this remake of the classic Audrey Hepburn/Gary Cooper romance, Charade. Thandie Newton delights as the center of everyone's attention, moving from trashed hotel rooms to back alley confrontations trying to figure out who her soon-to-have-been ex-husband (now deceased) really was, and why she's being pursued by various strangers, among them the US government, the Parisian Police and a mystery-man (Mark Wahlberg) who might be interested in more than just her smile. Newton possesses all the charm and elegance of Hepburn in her role, Wahlberg does better-than-expected in his. The screenplay features characters who surprise us in their roles, save for one who is all-too transparently involved. Some films make plot twist after plot twist to the point of alienating the audience; here they spin so intensely they make us dizzy with laughter. Using a lot of handheld camerawork and even apparently some high-def video, Demme deviates from the original only slightly and offers several lively musical interludes to brighten things up. It's as if he's telling us "have fun, it's only a movie" driving that point home gleefully in the film's closing moments. Slight, yet sweet.
***

-Matt Goltz