Oscar-winning turn on screens here

Oscar-winning turn on screens here

JAKARTA (JP): Naughty angels, newborn psychics and gender
confusion fills up our movie theaters. The following reviews and
grades are by Rayya Makarim (RM), Oren Murphy (OM) and Tam
Notosusanto (TN).

American Beauty. Dark comedy, 120 minutes; starring Kevin
Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Chris Cooper and Peter
Gallagher. Directed by Sam Mendes.

Forty-two-year-old Lester Burnham is having a mid-life crisis.
He hates his job, his wife can't stand him and his teenage
daughter Janey thinks he is a loser. Feeling comatose for years,
Lester undergoes a radical life change when he meets Janey's
cheerleader friend Angela. This story about dysfunctional
families in demented suburbia is a perfect blend of powerful
drama and black comedy. The characters are expertly developed,
and the acting is superb. Graded A (RM)

Boys Don't Cry. Drama, 118 minutes; starring Hilary Swank,
Chloe Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard and Jeanetta Arnette. Directed by
Kimberly Peirce.

It is a misguided assumption that Swank easily won an Oscar
thanks to her gender-bending role. She practically slips under
the skin of Brandon Teena, the real-life Nebraskan youngster who
successfully convinces everybody, including herself, that she is
a man. When her object of desire (Sevigny) falls for her, Teena
becomes even more steadfast in denying her actual identity and
follows her impulses instead, all the way to her tragic end.
Director/cowriter Peirce manages to mold this fact-based story
into a powerful human drama, even though we wish she had gone
deeper into Teena's soul. Graded B+ (TN)

The Beach. Drama, 119 minutes; starring Leonardo DiCaprio,
Virginie Ledoyen, Tilda Swinton and Robert Carlyle. Directed by
Danny Boyle.

A young American backpacker, Richard (DiCaprio), heads to
Thailand and hears of a mysterious beach undiscovered by the
parasitic hoards of other tourists. He finds it and also
discovers the cost of the pursuit of unadulterated pleasure.
Boyle frequently diverges from Alex Garland's original storyline,
but remains true to many of its themes. The film lacks the book's
wit and freshness, but is worth a watch anyway. Graded B (OM)

The Green Mile. Supernatural fable/ Prison drama, 185 minutes;
starring Tom Hanks, David Morse, James Cromwell, Michael Clarke
Duncan and Bonnie Hunt. Written and directed by Frank Darabont.

Darabont's Oscar-nominated second attempt to adapt a Stephen
King prison story has Hanks leading a group of Depression-era
death row prison guards whose new inmate is a retarded, towering
black man (Duncan). It turns out this gentle giant has miraculous
healing powers which some of them get a chance to benefit from.
But nobody can seem to help him avoid the electric chair. Aside
from some ghastly execution scenes, this is a poignant story with
some biblical resonance which is bolstered by a first-rate cast
that includes a lovable, scene-stealing mouse. Graded B (TN)

The Insider. Drama, 160 minutes; starring Al Pacino, Russell
Crowe, Diane Venora and Christopher Plummer. Directed by Michael
Mann.

Tobacco company whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe) teams up
with CBS newsman Lowell Bergman (Pacino) to uncover the dishonest
schemes of the tobacco industry. Not only are they hurdled by the
big, bad conglomerates, but also by the 60 Minutes news show
producers who suddenly freak out and refuse to air Wigand's
interview. Miami Vice's Mann presents a riveting retelling of
this true account, while Wigand's descent into near madness as
his life unravels is beautifully evoked by Crowe's subtle, Oscar-
nominated performance. Graded B+ (TN)

The Prophecy II. Action-fantasy, 85 minutes; starring
Christopher Walken, Russell Wong, Jennifer Beals and Eric
Roberts. Directed by Greg Spence.

Imagine angels going really, really bad. This silly movie has
Walken playing archangel Gabriel, who is overcome with worldly
desires and has formed a band of renegade angels to battle the
ones loyal to their Creator.

Now one of the good angels has impregnated a female human
being (Beals) because their baby is believed to be the one who
will put an end to the war. And Gabriel is out looking for this
woman. All heaven breaks loose. Graded C- (TN)

Stir of Echoes. Supernatural thriller, 99 minutes; starring
Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Erbe, Kevin Dunn and Illeana Douglas.
Written and directed by David Koepp.

Completing Hollywood's 1999 trilogy of supernatural flicks,
this movie is clearly riding on The Sixth Sense's coattails with
its wide-eyed tyke who communicates with dead people. Only here
the boy's father (Bacon), who recently acquires the gift himself
thanks to a hypnosis session joins in the effort to decipher the
messages of a teenage girl's ghost. Koepp's haunting visuals keep
us thrilled throughout the film. But it all eventually leads to
the unearthing of a predictable, unexciting murder secret.
Graded C+ (TN)

Very Bad Things. Comedy/thriller,100 min; starring Christian
Slater, Cameron Diaz, Jon Favreau, Daniel Stern and Jeanne
Tripplehorn. Directed by Peter Berg.

A bachelor party in a Vegas hotel, complete with drugs,
alcohol, gambling and sex, goes terribly wrong when a prostitute
is accidentally killed while having wild sex. The cover-up,
planned by the five friends, gets increasingly complicated as the
bodies start piling up. This nonsensical film with over-the-edge
characters has some good film editing with some great music-video
moments, but that's not enough to make us feel for any of the
characters. They are created merely as devices to further the
warped plot. Graded B- (RM)