EW review: 'Castle' another triumph
By Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
(Entertainment Weekly) -- There's no confusing the wizards and goblins who populate the dazzling animated adventure "Howl's Moving Castle" with their relatives from Harry Potter's branch of the wiz biz.
The conjurer named Howl -- part romantic human dreamboat who fancies emerald earrings and tight pants, part massive bird -- may be voiced with whispery gravity, in the English-language version, by Christian Bale (soon to be whispering gravely as Batman). But the worldview, the sense of childlike fun shaded with adult melancholy, and the joyful, serene attention to visual oddity and wordless beauty could only be made in Japan. And, specifically, made by Hayao Miyazaki.
When the peerless master of hand-drawn animation last cavorted with the supernatural, in "Spirited Away," the director unfurled his marvelous tale from the perspective of a child, true to the real fears and equally real thrills experienced by a little girl learning how to separate from her parents.
With "Howl's," Miyazaki brings the wisdom of his 64 years to a story, dense with complications, about a workaholic teenage hatmaker named Sophie who comes into a true appreciation of love, passion, playfulness, and even politics, as well as of her own beauty, only after she is transformed by an evil spell into a stooped and wrinkled 90-year-old woman. (Long story short, Sophie's meet-cute encounter with Howl on a city street irks the jealous Witch of the Waste, a mountainous matron of a competitor for Howl's affections. This sorceress boasts the look of Marx Brothers regular Margaret Dumont and the imperious, Fancy Feast voice of Lauren Bacall.)
In other words, maturity is achieved working backward from experienced seniority rather than forward from wide-eyed youth. And in moments of developmental breakthrough, the young Sophie reemerges out of the contours of the old one. (Emily Mortimer voices young Sophie with a combination of Cinderella pluck and Notting Hill class; Jean Simmons gives old Sophie a lovable layering of tolerance and self-confidence.)
But enough about developmental psychology -- how about that humongous castle?! Howl's mobile home heaves and clanks around the countryside (a landscape of indeterminate Euro provenance, over which a war of indeterminate provocation is about to be fought against an indeterminate enemy) on intrepid mechanized feet that appear to be part steel, part chicken. The fixer-upper is cobbled together from a million wheezing parts, the whole thing running on flames from a combustible blob named Calcifer (voiced by Billy Crystal).
And, naturally, the ambulatory domicile is accepted by the populace as part of the regular way of doing things. Because, unlike the Muggles-vs.-Hogwarts crowd, the inhabitants of Miyazaki's enchanted universe understand that spirits are as much a part of everyday life as the fishmongers and soldiers and airplanes crowding the confines of the movie frame in set-piece scenes of spectacular detail.
And curses happen, many of them cast by Madame Suliman (Blythe Danner), resident magician and foreign-policy meddler in service to the king. A surfeit of mishaps and catastrophes accrue, requiring bravery along with a very Asian sense of acceptance. Unlikely alliances are made, primarily among squatters in the moving castle itself, as old Sophie's competence and unflappability work their own kind of domestic magic; even a barkless dog has his day, providing sweet diversionary canine silliness during times of darkest heroic crisis.
As "Howl's Moving Castle" makes ravishingly clear, coming into one's own is the most heroic -- and magical -- experience of all.
EW Grade: A-
'The Honeymooners'
Reviewed by Scott Brown
Less than five minutes into "The Honeymooners" -- an adaptation of the classic TV show as loose as Jackie Gleason's trousers on Art Carney -- the movie announces its collapse.
''I'll take you to the moon,'' coos soon-to-be-wed NYC bus driver Ralph Kramden (Cedric the Entertainer) to his intended, Alice Gibson (Gabrielle Union -- looking way too young for him).
The pop-eyed marital violence of the series is reduced to a cuddly come-on that reveals the craven synthesis behind this whole venture. It's downright creepy to promise Alice the moon, when we all remember her original mode of transport. The filmmakers have made that matter moot: They keep their cutesy Ralph and his child bride safely separated. (So ... why remake this, again?) Instead, the story hopscotches among various sketches, er, schemes hatched by Ralph and Norton (Mike Epps). Epps has a nicely beaten charm to him -- among the leads, he alone looks like he knows what a trip to the moon costs.
EW Grade: C-
'The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D'
Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum
For any other 7-year-old who invents a story about a boy who's half-Jawsy and a girl who flings molten matter from her fingertips, Crayola would be medium enough to tell the tale. But Racer Max Rodriguez isn't any other 7-year-old: His antic father, Robert Rodriguez, is a home-basement sorcerer.
Bringing his boy's doodles to life and adding the toothless adult advice never to give up on one's dreams, Racer Max's dad has created "The Adventures of SharkBoy and LavaGirl in 3-D," a strenuously merry, digitally produced folly that cavorts weakly like a parent over-involved in his kid's playtime.
Actually, Papa Rodriguez -- also known as the director of "Sin City" and the more effortlessly charming "Spy Kids" series -- would be quick to point out that "SharkBoy" is a family project, with kin popping up all over the credits.
Indeed, that amateur quality is the look the movie is after. Adult actors David Arquette, Kristin Davis, and George Lopez bluster like big sillies, but they don't stop Max (Cayden Boyd) from joining his mutant pals (boy-named Taylor Lautner as the one with the shark skills, girl-named Taylor Dooley as the other with the volcanic talents) as they scamper around on the planet Drool.
Cardboard 3-D glasses add a retro touch, never mind that 10 digital-effects companies shared the high-tech workload, including Rodriguez's own Troublemaker Studios. Like choral singing and travel photography, this adventure is more fun for participants than it is for spectators.
EW Grade: C-
'High Tension'
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman
To steal a bit from "Real Time With Bill Maher," here's a New Rule: No more Chainsaw rip-offs. Enough already -- we get it. If you're a sexed-up young thing taking a road trip into the country, beware of the creepy backwoods farm guy! He's going to bind you in a room or stow you in his decrepit old rustmobile and attack you with an appliance. And don't even think of asking the convenience-store clerk for help -- he'll turn out to be buddies with the backwoods creep.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," while a great horror film, has spawned an entire genre of slice-and-dice redneck Guignol that no longer holds a whisper of dread or surprise. In the French thriller "High Tension," which is the latest reshuffling of "Chainsaw" tropes, the victims are two young women stuck in a country house with a big, fat, grunting brute who's got a thing for decapitation. (The one scary moment: A barely attached head talks.) There's a laughable cheat of a Big Twist, in which the sicko and the girl who looks like Lori Petty turn out to be closer than you thought, but even a blood feast this squalid can't get away with chain-sawing all logic.
EW Grade: C-
'Deep Blue'
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman
Now that Leni Riefenstahl is gone, will we ever get to see the underwater footage she spent her last decades filming? If not, we can surely make do with "Deep Blue."
This life-of-the-ocean doc may have the wide-eyed whimsy of a grade-school science film (Pierce Brosnan narrates it in creamy cosmic tones), but it's full of splendidly shot wonders: ravenous whales, coral tentacles that unfurl like spaghetti, a leafy ''plant'' that turns out to have eyes.
Descending into the sea's blackest depths, the movie finds transparent skeletal creatures that light up with electro-color flashes, like psychedelic Christmas ornaments. These iridescent oddities are pure science fiction, and they gave the grade-schooler in me a good ''Whoa!''
EW Grade: B+
'5x2'
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman
I'll leave it to greater metaphysicians than I to divine why backward storytelling has come into vogue, but its appeal is no mystery: To unfold a relationship in reverse chronology is to mirror how our memory works.
Francois Ozon's "5X2" opens with an attractive 40ish couple (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Stephane Freiss) signing divorce papers, then heading off to a hotel room for a goodbye shag that turns ugly. The film then proceeds to move, in reverse order, through four more episodes: dinner party, childbirth, wedding night, first spark of love.
Ozon stages each scene so assuredly, with such a fluid sense of motive and desire, that I assumed we'd witness how even the best of intentions, from each party, could strand a marriage on the rocks. But no. The story "5X2" tells is this: The wife is vibrant, the husband a shifty cold fish. Feminist sanctimony, it turns out, looks much the same forward and backward.
EW Grade: B-
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