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AUGUST... Collateral 8.3.4 At the Movies August 2004 Collateral. Kabuki; 7:30pm. See Mediasharx review here. ***** The Village; UA Metro; PG13; 1:15pm; Friday 8.6.4; matinee $7. This movie is stupid. Hello! M. Night Shyamalan made The Sixth Sense. This movie is entertaining, no more. It's like an episode of The Twilight Zone stretched into two hours. It gets by on it's gimmick, good performances by a decent cast, top-notch cinematography. It is not a masterpiece. Next, Shyamalan makes Unbreakable -- silly nonsense, with Shyamalan's trademark twist, this movie is dull and inane. But not nearly as awful as Shyamalan's next film: Signs. My review of this film is here. Now is The Village. Absolutely retarded. There are several twists, one semi-works, the rest do not. The movie is laughable in so many ways. Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard's daughter) is rather enthralling, I look forward to her future work. Meanwhile, Adrien Brody plays The Village idiot -- I think for laughs; with Joaquin Phoenix, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleeson, Celia Weston, Judy Greer. ***** Sun August 8: Jason and the Argonauts (1963) 3:35*, 7:30*/The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) 5:50, 9:45. JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS: A rousing fantasy-adventure derived from the Greek legend of the Golden Fleece, Jason and the Argonauts boasts Harryhausen's most spectacular creature effects, from the bronze giant and winged harpies to the seven-headed hydra and the rampaging skeleton warriors. ÝWith beautiful location photography by Wilkie Cooper and a stirring score by Bernard Herrmann, this Harryhausen classic still stands tall. ÝCast: Todd Armstrong, Nancy Kovack, Honor Blackman, Niall McGinnis, Nigel Green. Writer: Beverly Cross. Director: Don Chaffey. (UK/US 1963) 104 min. ***** FRIDAY-THURSDAY AUGUST 13-19: LA DOLCE VITA: Daily: 1:00, 4:30, 8:00: One of the key works of modern cinema, La Dolce Vita looks ever more prescient. A brilliantly conceived epic fable about a gossip columnist, Marcello Rubini (Mastroianni), adrift in Rome's high life, it introduced the term "paparazzi" into the vocabulary and depicted, with a judicious mixture of satire and compassion, the world of celebrity. La Dolce Vita is also one of the triumphs of have-it-both-ways filmmaking: Fellini reveals the emptiness, boredom and destructiveness of the Via Veneto existence while at the same time making it highly glamorous and seductive. Once a Roman journalist himself, Fellini understands well how corrupting simple access to the rich and powerful can be. The suave, handsome Rubini understandably attracts a compulsively promiscuous heiress (Anouk Aimee) as well as a Hollywood sex goddess (Anita Ekberg), who possesses an exuberant, beguiling childlike innocence; she's, of all things, a kittenish amazon of a woman. With its shimmering beguilingly familiar Nino Rota score, Otello Martelli's ravishingly lighted black-and-white cinematography and its endless processions of the foolish, the grotesque, the jaded, and the merely young and beautiful, La Dolce Vita is truly unforgettable. -- Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times. Directed by Federico Fellini. With Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimee, and Alain Cluny. In Italian with English subtitles. (1960) 174m. ***** Hero; UA Vogue; 4:15pm; Tuesday, August 31, 2004; Matinee $7.
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