Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Ghosts and hoopsters and rioters ... oh my!: Movie roundup

Recent viewings are starting to pile up, so here's a multi-movie post for your reading pleasure.

Watts the big deal?: "The Ring Two"
The first "Ring?" OK, I guess. I like my horror movies a little more concrete than supernatural, but the story was interesting enough -- and the kid was creepy enough -- to keep me watching. Also, after seeing Naomi Watts in "Mulholland Dr." and "21 Grams," there's always a chance she'll get naked, and that's a good thing. Anyway, Naomi and the creepy kid are back in "Two," with the ghost of that girl from the killer video in the first movie haunting them in a new town, Astoria, Oregon. I've been to Astoria ... not so scary. Kind of the same with this movie. Decent special effects, and sure, I had no idea what was going to happen. But mostly we get a muddle, and it's not going too far out on a limb to say Watts won't be around for "The Ring Three: Spooky Spokane."

If "Hoop Dreams" seemed way too long ... : "Through the Fire"
Can't say I automatically gravitate to the ESPN movies. C'mon ... Brian Dennehy as Bobby Knight? Dude, he's an alien ... didn't you see "Cocoon?" But "Through the Fire," the account of Brooklyn high school hoops star Sebastian Telfair, seemed decent. And that's about the best I can say about it ... "decent." As a documentary, "Fire" has an aura of authenticity, but alas, it doesn't go to any lengths to challenge our subject. Telfair is a "legend" at age 17, and we're asked to hang on his every word and action as his family charts his fate. College or NBA? It's interesting, sure, but when Bassy was filmed driving a Lexus halfway through the movie, I was more than a little curious about why there was no explanation for how a high school senior living in the projects had come into that.

When Irish eyes are dying: "Bloody Sunday"
Here's a movie that's been on our TiVo list at least a couple of times before being deleted to make room for other movies. ("Hey, 'They Live' is on!") It's not the first movie by Paul Greengrass -- whose "United 93" looks good -- that I've seen. That was "The Bourne Supremacy," which had too many herky-jerky, close-up camera shots for me. In "Bloody Sunday," those work much better, with the hand-held camera work giving this tragic tale a nice intimacy. "Sunday" captures the day in 1972 when a march for civil rights in a Northern Ireland town turned into a bloodbath at the hands of the British military. But even if there's a clear villain here, the movie does an excellent job of showing how everything led up the fateful shootings. It's a bit jarring, perhaps, with a bunch of short scenes split up by quick fades-in and -out. But that helps the plot move along quickly, so much that even if you know the massacre is coming, it's still on you like that. And even Jason Bourne can't do anything to stop it.

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