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The Fighting Temptations" (2 STARS Rated PG-13) runs for nearly two hours and of that, nearly thirty minutes is dedicated to performances of gospel standards and pop hits from the likes of Beyonce Knowles, Melba Moore, the O’Jays, Angie Stone, Shirley Caesar and others while the other ninety go towards the story. If those ratios had been reversed, I might have been able to recommend this fairly draggy, aggressively heartwarming film. Here, Cuba Gooding Jr. stars as a down-on-his-luck buppie who is summoned to his small Deep South hometown when his aunt dies. In her will, she leaves him some much-needed money on the provision that he rebuild the local church’s gospel choir (which previously booted out his mother for singing "that R&B sex music" in a nearby club). Of course, the group he amasses is a rag-tag bunch of misfits (including, inexplicably, Rue McClanahan) but they eventually pull together after our hero brings in a few ringers, such as a trio of rapping prisoners (who do a very funny riff on "Down By the Riverside") and a sexy local singer (Knowles).

As a movie, "The Fighting Temptations" is pretty bad-it drags on forever (it takes nearly a half-hour for the plot to finally kick in) and filled with overwrought performances and idiotic dialogue (including a bit where Gooding tries to defend Knowles’ shady past with "Mary Magdalene was a ho!") and Jonathan Lynn’s direction is so haphazard that he can’t even give an electrifying presence like Beyonce Knowles a proper introduction. (Frankly, the funniest thing on display here is the amount of times that Pepsi shill Knowles is seen drinking a Coke.) As a record of some impressive musical performances, though, the film is pretty good (even if the visual style for the musical numbers is direct from the John Landis school of plunking the camera in the middle of the room and never moving it an inch) but there simply aren’t enough songs to warrant a recommendation. They used to advertise musicals by saying "See the Film-Buy the Soundtrack!"; with "The Fighting Temptations", you can easily skip the first part and proceed directly to the second.

1/2 In "Secondhand Lions", Haley Joel Osment plays Walter, a serious-minded young lad sent by his monstrous, gold-digging mother (Kyra Sedgwick) to spend the summer living with a pair of recently reappeared great-uncles (Robert Duvall and Michael Caine). Of course, Mom isn’t interested in renewing family ties-she has heard rumors that the two old coots, who have been gone for over forty years, are sitting on a fortune and she hopes that Walter can ferret it out. Of course, the grumpy old men (who pass the time firing shotguns at traveling salesmen) don’t want nothing to do with the kid and Walter feels the same towards them. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that by the end of the summer, they will have learned to bond with each other. You might be surprised to learn that the path to bonding includes such elements as evil relatives, an evil boyfriend of Mom’s (Nicky Katt), flashbacks to the uncles’ days in the French Foreign Legion and an aging lion living out back in the cornfield.

I can’t really recommend "Secondhand Lions"-a lot of the material (especially the stuff about the relatives and the boyfriend) is overly cartoonish (and occasionally misogynistic to boot-the only female in the film not portrayed as an ogre is the one who fights like a guy and who never says a on-screen word) the heart-tugging moments lay it on way too thick (when we finally hear Duvall’s much-discussed "Real Man" speech, it sounds like it consists entirely of movie poster tag-lines) and the present-day epilogue is startlingly unbelievable. (Without going into detail, I simply can’t believe that a.) only a couple of people would be at that location and b.) that they would be so lackadaisical considering what they are standing in front of.) However, I found myself enjoying a lot of the film more than I ordinarily would have and that is simply because of the sheer star power and charm of Duvall and Caine. Both have, of course, done better work in the past (the past year alone has seen Caine’s stunning turn in "The Quiet American" and Duvall’s strong performance in "Open Range") but they are clearly having a blast and if all you want is to see a couple of old legends going through their paces (like the people who would go to see Blaze Starr doing her strip act in her later years), I suppose you could do worse than this film.

DEMONLOVER

In the kinky, high-tech "breathtaking vision of our spectacle-driven modern global society" (according to the press kit) "Demonlover" (3 STARS Unrated-adults only), Connie Nielsen stars as Diane, an executive with the VolfGroup conglomerate who is assigned to aid in the acquisition of TokyoAnime, a software company that produces hi-tech 3-D hentai anime. (Without going into too much detail, hentai is the kind of ultra-pornographic Japanimation that involves, to give one example, young women in schoolgirl outfits being sexually assaulted via alien tentacle.) What should be an ordinary merger quickly spins out of control for Diane as she becomes trapped in a ever-expanding nightmare including corporate espionage, an interactive torture Web site (which may actually involve real violence) and a group of shady characters like a double-crossing assistant (Chloe Sevigny) and a weird American executive (Gina Gershon).

"Demonlover" doesn’t make a lick of sense (at times, it suggests what "Videodrome" might have been like without the lucid plotting)-at times, especially during the increasingly inscrutable second half, it is absolutely incomprehensible-and I have no idea what writer-director Oliver Assayas was attempting to say (unless it is the old saw about the dangers of letting technology outrun morality; if that is indeed the point, then don’t stop the presses.) And yet, while I frequently had no idea what was going on at any given moment (even the brief summary above was made possible only through my voluminous notes and the invaluable press kit synopsis), I can’t say that I was ever bored while watching it. Nielsen, Gershon and Sevigny are all beautiful, charismatic actresses and while their roles may be caricatures, they inhabit them with a lot of wit and energy (and Nielsen and Gershon also get to engage in what may be the best on-screen catfight since Teri Hatcher and Charlize Theron tussled in "2 Days in the Valley") and Assayas always keeps things moving along at a brisk clip. The film definitely isn’t for everyone but those in the mood for a sleek, stylish, occasionally perverse head-scratcher should definitely give it a look.

THE HIRED HAND 3 1/2

1/2 After the success of "Easy Rider" shocked Hollywood in 1969, Universal Studios attempted to cash in on what seemed to be a new market by commissioning a series of low-budget films to be produced by a group of emerging filmmakers-the program fell apart within a couple of years when the crop of pictures (including such later cult classics as Monte Hellman’s "Two-Lane Blacktop" and Dennis Hopper’s ultra-weird "The Last Movie") yielded not a single hit. One of the lesser-known films of that bunch, Peter Fonda’s low-key western "The Hired Hand" (3 1/2 STARS Rated PG) also amassed a small cult following over the years (partially because of its obscurity) and it is now getting a small theatrical re-release before its DVD debut next month. The lightly plotted film stars Fonda as a cowboy who abandoned his wife Hannah (Verna Bloom) and child seven years earlier to roam the land with partner Arch (the invaluable Warren Oates). Disillusioned by what he has seen on the increasingly violent frontier, he returns home and tries to reestablish ties with Hannah until his past winds up catching up with him.

While not the most expressive actor, as a director, Fonda demonstrates a keen ability here for getting fine performances (especially from Bloom and Oates) and the visual look is simply spectacular (The film was shot by Vilmos Zsigmond just before his work on "McCabe and Mrs. Miller made him a world-renowned cinematographer).With its western trappings and its emphasis on character over incident, it isn’t too surprising why the film was ignored in 1971. However, those are exactly the elements that allow "The Hired Hand" to feel like a living, breathing film instead of like a refugee from a time capsule-quite honestly, I would give this film the nod over the now-dated "Easy Rider" any day of the week

After having devoted his last few movies to making feature-length homages to "Big Deal on Madonna Street" ("Small Time Crooks"), Bob Hope ("The Curse of the Jade Scorpion") and, inexplicably, the Troma Pictures ‘classic’ "Terror Firmer"("Hollywood Ending", in which he replaced all the blood, vomit and fecal matter with Tea Leoni-which is, at best, a lateral move), Woody Allen has finally decided to make a film based on one of his own masterpieces, his beloved "Annie Hall". His new film, "Anything Else" (2 STARS Rated R) follows the template pretty closely as it follows a fairly disastrous relationship between Jerry (Jason Biggs), a slightly neurotic comedy writer, and Amanda (Christina Ricci),an extremely neurotic would-be actress. The only problem is that in "Annie Hall", enough of Annie’s good qualities came through so that we understood why Alvy Singer would willingly put up with her flaws. This time, though, Amanda is painted as such a monstrously selfish and whiny shrew (who, of course, sleeps with everyone in the tri-state area but Jerry) that we can’t understand why Jerry doesn’t just shove her head in the garbage disposal-unless it is because of her brave fashion choice to never wear a bra.

This wouldn’t be a problem if Allen somehow managed to make Jerry’s myopia amusing to watch but there is relatively little comic inspiration here. A lot of the jokes are retreads of familiar bits (he even stoops to attempting to redo the famous coke-sniffing joke from "Annie Hall") and even the seemingly sure-fire scenes (including Allen himself, playing Jerry’s increasingly crazed mentor, on a visit to a gun store and Danny DeVito playing an agent who takes the news of a firing quite badly) never quite come off. Even stranger is the fact that while Allen is trying to write for younger people, he seems to have no idea what they are like-in his mind, the younger generations never watch TV or read current fiction and immediately rush out to buy Diana Krall records! There are a few funny lines here and there (including a great one-liner about "The Exterminating Angel") but I am guessing that the most amusing thing about this film will be to catch the opening-night screening at the local mall theater just to watch the reactions of the kids-lured by the "TRL" appearances of Biggs and Ricci and the Woody-free ads-as they discover that instead of "American Pie 4", they are sitting through the kind of film where dialogue like "There was something compelling about your apathy" is meant to be a laugh line. Forget apathy, they are going to tear the joint to pieces.

With films like "Jude", "The Claim" and "Welcome to Sarajevo", director Michael Winterbottom has clearly demonstrated a taste for depressing subject matter but with "In The World," he manages to outdo even himself. Shot in a rough, hand-held fashion to provide a convincingly documentary-like feel, the film follows two young Afghan refugees (non-professionals Jamal Udin Torabi and Enayat Ullah) as they repeatedly try to smuggle themselves into London for the promise of a brighter future with increasingly grim results. While the film, written by Tony Grisoni, doesn’t really say anything new or startling, it is fascinating in the way that it depicts the harrowing conditions that people will willingly place themselves in on the off-chance of making a better life.

After nearly 20 years of being consigned to television screens, either in a horribly cropped cable/videocassette edition or an even uglier early DVD transfer, Brian De Palma’s 1983 gangster epic "Scarface" is back where it belongs-on the big screen (though only in a few cities and only to publicize the upcoming special edition DVD). And while the past two decades have seen dozens of movies about mobsters and drugs (many of which have used the film as a touchstone), it still has the power to shock, repulse and thrill even the most jaded of audiences. At the time of its original release, many criticized the film for its various excesses-such as the bloodshed, De Palma’s visual style, the foul-mouthed Oliver Stone screenplay and, most of all, the scenery-chewing performance by Al Pacino-without realizing that grotesque excess-what can happen to a person with too much money, too many drugs and too much ambition-was exactly what the film was all about. (Actually, next to such films as "Bad Boys 2", "Scarface" comes off as almost elegant and restrained by comparison.)

Seen today, there is a lot more to the film than what may have originally met the eye. Sure, Pacino’s performance is highly stylized, but no more so than the performance that Paul Muni gave in the lead in the 1932 Howard Hawks original. Furthermore, while neither Stone nor De Palma have ever been known for their female characters (unfairly, in the case of the latter), Michelle Pfeiffer (whose work here saved her career after the failure of "Grease 2") turns in exemplary work as the jaded-beyond-her-years moll who hoes where the money and drugs go (and the scene in which she excoriates Pacino for his swearing is one of the funniest things she has ever done). And while it doesn’t have the immediate impact of his greatest personal projects (including "Dressed to Kill", "Blow Out" and "Femme Fatale"), "Scarface" is, with the possible exception of "Carrie", the best of his work-for-hire films. Working on what was, at the time, the largest canvas of his career, De Palma came up with some of the greatest set-pieces of his career including the infamous chainsaw torture scene (in which, like the shower scene in "Psycho" the violence is all created in the mind through editing as there is never a moment where blade and flesh meet), the bit where Pacino sticks his entire face in a mountain of cocaine and the black-comedy finale in which Pacino, his blood-flow slowed by the drugs in his system, endures a hail of bullets and still manages to keep on ticking even as he is being torn to shreds. Sure, sure, go out and get the DVD but if you are living near a city where "Scarface" is playing theatrically, a trip to see it is absolutely essential.

1/2 Generally, when a film is suddenly plopped into theaters without any publicity or press screenings, it means that it is a dog that the studio has zero confidence in. (Recent examples include such klunkers as "The Order", "Marci X" and "My Boss’s Daughter".) While "No Good Deed" (3 1/2 STARS Rated R) was similarly dumped by its distributor, I went in hoping that the combination of director Bob Rafelson (the man behind the 1970’s classics "Five Easy Pieces" and "The King of Marvin Gardens" as well as the recent gem "Blood and Wine") and reliable actors such as Samuel L. Jackson, Stellan Skarsgard and my future bride Milla Jovovich would result in at least a watchable bad movie. Actually, this is a twisty little gem, based on Dashiell Hammett’s "The House on Turk Street", that deserves a lot better than its distributor, MAC Releasing, saw fit to give it. Jackson plays a auto-theft cop who agrees to help a neighbor find her missing daughter. His search abruptly (and quite inadvertently) lands him in the middle of a plot involving a sleazy crook (Skarsgard), a slinky dame with a heart of...something (Jovovich), a hot-headed young punk (Doug Hutchinson), a weird old couple (Joss Ackland and Grace Zabriskie) and a lot of money.

To say any more would ruin a lot of the surprises, but I can say that Rafelson tells his story with a lot of energy and humor (even including one priceless reference to his own days as one of the creators of The Monkees). Jackson is strong in what is one of his more restrained (in more ways than one) performances and Jovovich, whose character is a Russian piano prodigy who became a moll after the Soviet Union collapsed, is perfect as a character so heart-stoppingly sexy and crafty that she can twirl even the most jaded cop (or movie critic) around her little finger without batting an eyelash. By the time you read this, "No Good Deed" may have already disappeared from theaters but if it is still playing, simply ignore the lousy ads (that almost seem crafted to keep people away) and you will enjoy one of the smarter and more entertaining caper films to come around in recent years.

Copyright © 2003 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.