Uprising (2001)
DIRECTOR: Jon Avnet
CAST: Hank Azaria, David Schwimmer, Leelee Sobieski, Stephen Moyer, Donald Sutherland, Jon Voight, Cary Elwes
REVIEW:
Uprising, an NBC TV miniseries about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during the Holocaust, is an attempt to bring some spotlight to the striking true story of Warsaw’s Jewish resistance, but unfortunately fails to give a true-life inspirational tale the movie presentation it deserves. Maybe a harder-hitting, grittier film could have been a better format; the restrictions of NBC and the TV movie format leaves Uprising, while earnestly well-intentioned, feeling like it soft peddles a story that shouldn’t be soft peddled.
Continue readingRat Race (2001)
DIRECTOR: Jerry Zucker
CAST: Breckin Meyer, Rowan Atkinson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jon Lovitz, Whoopi Goldberg, Seth Green, Lanei Chapman, Amy Smart, Vince Vieluf, John Cleese, Kathy Najimy, Wayne Knight, Dave Thomas
REVIEW:
Rat Race, a throwback to screwball chase comedies like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, is not a great comedy, but it’s a hard-working, fast-paced, sometimes creatively zany one that serves up a reasonably steady supply of laughs until running out of gas at the finish line. Jerry Zucker (Airplane, Naked Gun) hasn’t delivered a comedy classic, but it’s an entertaining enough diversion. Continue reading
Jurassic Park III (2001)
DIRECTOR: Joe Johnston
CAST: Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Tea Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, Trevor Morgan, Michael Jeter, John Diehl, Laura Dern
REVIEW:
Ironic for a series about genetically resurrected dinosaurs, the Jurassic Park franchise just keeps devolving. 1997’s The Lost World had its moments but was a step down, and now Jurassic Park III is easily the weakest entry yet. With Steven Spielberg moving on and replaced in the director’s chair by Joe Johnston (he of such mediocre titles as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Jumanji), the third installment has descended into a pointless hour and a half of generic scurrying around that when it’s over barely feels like it happened.
Continue readingThe Score (2001)
DIRECTOR: Frank Oz
CAST: Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando, Angela Bassett
REVIEW:
The Score isn’t a classic entry in the heist movie genre, but it’s a slick little diversion that sets fairly modest goals and achieves them, gives us some interesting interplay between accomplished actors, and treads familiar ground with enough assurance to make us not mind coming along for the ride. Continue reading
Pearl Harbor (2001)
DIRECTOR: Michael Bay
CAST: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin, Jon Voight, Colm Feore, Tom Sizemore, Cuba Gooding Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Mako
REVIEW:
Pearl Harbor is intended to be a crowd pleaser, combining a wartime historical backdrop to rouse patriotic American audiences flocking to the theater with one of those melodramatic wartime love stories from the 1950s or 1960s. Considering it’s a product of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay, it also features lots of splashy special effects, “dramatic” slow-motion shots, cheesy one-liners, corny “patriotic” speeches, over-the-top flag-waving, and stuff blowing up real good. When it comes to the centerpiece depiction of the Pearl Harbor attack, the $135 million budget is all over the screen. It’s a pity a little more effort couldn’t have been spent on the script. Also, that centerpiece sequence only occupies about 35 minutes of a bloated 183 minute “epic” runtime.
Continue readingConspiracy (2001)
DIRECTOR: Frank Pierson
CAST: Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth, Ian McNeice, Kevin McNally, David Threlfall, Ewan Stewart, Brian Pettifer, Nicholas Woodeson, Jonathan Coy, Brendan Coyle, Ben Daniels, Barnaby Kay, Owen Teale, Peter Sullivan
REVIEW:
This Made-For-TV HBO original movie, based on the sole surviving copy of the transcript of the infamous Wannsee Conference, will likely be found “boring” by those without an interest in the historical subject matter—after all, at least on the surface, it consists of nothing but fifteen men sitting around a table talking—but for those with an interest, Conspiracy is a disturbing docudrama that embodies the phrase “the banality of evil”. Continue reading
Along Came A Spider (2001)
DIRECTOR: Lee Tamahori
CAST: Morgan Freeman, Monica Potter, Michael Wincott, Billy Burke, Dylan Baker, Jay O. Sanders, Penelope Ann Miller, Michael Moriarty, Mika Boorem, Anton Yelchin
REVIEW:
1997’s Kiss the Girls was not a great thriller, but even so, this sequel is disappointing. Another adaptation of one of crime novelist James Patterson’s series of page-turning novels following brilliant detective Alex Cross, Along Came A Spider at least brings back Morgan Freeman, but while that’s an ace in the hole, it’s not enough to salvage this hackneyed thriller from the realm of contrived mediocrity it inhabits.
Continue readingHeartbreakers (2001)
DIRECTOR: David Mirkin
CAST: Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Gene Hackman, Ray Liotta, Jason Lee
REVIEW:
Despite a little star power in its cast, Heartbreakers doesn’t really rise above television sitcom level, but it’s an entertaining enough diversion that serves up enough laughs to be enjoyable, at least until its overlong runtime and dragged-out third act starts to wear out its modest welcome. Continue reading
Enemy at the Gates (2001)
DIRECTOR: Jean-Jacques Annaud
CAST:
Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Ed Harris, Bob Hoskins, Ron Perlman, Eva Mattes, Gabriel Thomson, Matthias Habich
REVIEW:
The Russian front in WWII hasn’t gotten much attention in a big-budget war film, so French director Jean-Jacques Annaud deserves some credit for giving us a rarely-shown viewpoint. However, the result is a mixed bag. Continue reading
Hannibal (2001)
DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott
CAST:
Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Giancarlo Giannini, Ray Liotta, Gary Oldman, Frankie Faison, Zeljko Ivanek, David Andrews
REVIEW:
As a follow-up to 1991’s Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal was one of the most anticipated movies of 2001, but its journey from Thomas Harris’ page to the screen was a tumultuous one. Continue reading