Hilary & Gwyn disappoint; Tom thrills

Among the three big movies this week, both Hilary Duff’s and Gwyneth Paltrow’s projects fall short – one not as much as the other – while Tom Cruise’s Collateral turns out to be one must-see.

In A Cinderella Story, a modern retelling of the classic fairytale, soon-to-be-unseated tween queen Hilary Duff (after Mean Girls, a new boob job, and steamy poolside cuddling with current flame Wilmer Valderrama, longtime rival Lindsay Lohan deserves the title) plays Sam, a gawky, straight-A highschooler-slash-Princeton hopeful and the oft-clichéd antithesis of the cheerleaders and jocks that step all over her; that is, except for one: good guy Austin Ames, the most popular guy in school (played with robotic predictability by One Tree Hill heartthrob Chad Michael Murray). Sam, who now lives with her over-Botoxed stepmother (Jennifer Coolidge) and two obnoxious stepsisters after her father’s death, is forced to work in the family’s diner, leaving barely any time for schoolwork and a social life. She has, however, one confidant (that is, aside from her wimp of a best friend): a secret admirer who she chats with on her computer; and to my utter discontent, that admirer didn’t turn out to be a child-molesting perv but is – quelle surprise! – Austin Ames. They decide to finally reveal their identities to each other at the Halloween dance, but once Sam discovers her admirer is Austin, she runs off at midnight, accidentally leaving behind her cell phone. Anxious to know who his dream girl truly is, Austin begins his search for his Cinderella.

A significant lack of creativity and originality is A Cinderella Story’s main problem, and what makes it probably the worst of the recent multitude of tween-targeted comedies to explode from the backburners of Hollywood. Director Mark Rosman seems to make no effort whatsoever in infusing even the slightest bit of wit or danger into Leigh Dunlap’s stale, embarrassing screenplay, which is filled with jokes that aren’t remotely funny and moments that aren’t meant to generate hilarity yet are completely laughable.

Duff, who looks as if she’s trying her very best, gets nowhere with her character; the effervescence and innocence she displayed rather gracefully in last year’s The Lizzie McGuire Movie become irritating and generic artificial fluff. Coolidge, on the other hand, who was wonderful in the two Legally Blonde movies, gets the film’s only laughs as the evil stepmother. Yet even with her on board, Cinderella is a dull, colorless, rotten lump of cinematic cotton candy that’s sure to rot your teeth and brain.

Bottom Line: This bland Cinderella is in desperate need of a fairy godmother.

Grade: C

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Next up is Sylvia, a biopic of the great Sylvia Plath, played superbly by Gwyneth Paltrow. Primarily focusing on Plath’s tumultuous marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig), a relationship that faced adultery, pressure, and her emotional instability, it begins in 1956 when the couple meets, and concludes in 1963 when she kills herself at the age of 30.

Sylvia Plath’s life was a sad and extraordinary one, and yet director Christine Jeffs seems to be caught up with just the former. The film focuses on all the terrible times in Plath’s life that her achievements are overshadowed by the overwhelmingly glum mood. The narrative feels groggy and lazy, not reflective and deliberate as Jeffs presumably hoped it would be; that is, until the film’s final scenes: Plath’s suicide. The famous – or rather infamous – event, well-known because of how she killed herself (she turned up her oven’s gas taps and died after inhalation in her kitchen) is a heartbreaking, intensely portrayed sequence: Before committing the act, she kissed her sleeping children (who were in the same house) goodbye, left them milk and bread, and stuffed the cracks in their bedroom doors so they wouldn’t inhale the fumes.

Paltrow’s performance is an exquisitely nuanced portrait of a deeply distressed woman – a woman toeing the line between genius and insanity – and is her best performance since winning her Oscar for 1998’s Shakespeare in Love (I was bummed when she wasn’t nominated for Best Actress this year for the role). She brilliantly taps into Plath’s numerous emotional states, be it jealousy, anger, depression, loneliness, so forth. However, John Brownlow’s screenplay isn’t able to duplicate the emotional range Paltrow actually achieves; the plot doesn’t only lag, but the script is empty, devoid of any palpable emotion. We just have to be thankful Paltrow was able to see past this.

Gabriel Yared, who just recently filled Cold Mountain with his haunting music, creates Sylvia’s beautiful, rich score, and John Toon’s cinematography is excellent. However, all this, plus Paltrow’s tour de force acting, still don’t compensate to how the screenplay and narrative make Sylvia Plath’s extraordinary life hardly noteworthy. Instead of celebrating her life, they condemn it.

Bottom Line: A beautiful score, superb cinematography, and Gwyneth Paltrow’s outstanding performance can’t save Sylvia from its terrible screenplay that doesn’t give the poet justice.

Grade: B-

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Lastly, we have Collateral, Michael Mann’s LA thriller starring Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith. I’ll try not to give too much of this wonderfully constructed plot away, so here I go: Cruise, in a tight silver-gray suit, matching hair and a salt-and-pepper stubble, plays Vincent, a hired hitman who hops into the taxi of Max (Foxx), an aspiring limo service owner-slash-cabbie who is unaware of his passenger’s occupation. Vincent tells Max that he has five stops to make as he take cares of some "business" (I’m sure we all know what that means) and hires Max for the night. The cabbie reluctantly agrees to the $600 offer. However, through the night, as the body count rises, so does Max’s suspicion and anxiety. He realizes that he must try to prevent more of Vincent’s killings, and at the same time find a way to get out of there alive.

What’s amazing about Collateral is how realistic it feels; set almost completely in the LA night, director Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider) creates an environment so tangible and convincing that you’d think you were watching a documentary. The tone he sets is pitch-perfect: gritty yet visionary, intense yet hilarious. And this is what the film does with such skill; its balancing of action and thrills and comedy is so masterfully done.

But it’s Cruise and Foxx that make Collateral such a great film; both give killer performances, and their chemistry is so shockingly flawless that Tom Cruise didn’t complete Renée Zellweger in Jerry Maguire – he completes Jamie Foxx in Collateral. Glimmering with a menacing, almost scary smile, Cruise portrays Vincent so well you can’t take your eyes away from him: It feels so good to see Cruise play the villain, and he does it so well. He captures Vincent’s sociopathic elegance and eloquence that even though he’s one of the most ruthless people ever to be projected onto a screen, he’s still so damn likable. Then there’s Jamie Foxx: 2004 is his year, from his superb performance in Collateral to fall’s Ray, the Ray Charles biopic in which he plays the music legend that will hopefully lead to an Oscar nomination.

Collateral is more than an ordinary thriller. It’s an exercise of style and narrative pacing, a fascinating look into the mind of a killer, and a hilariously dark twist on the worn-out buddy cop movies. And those last 20 minutes… wow – talk about edge-of-your-seat, heart-pounding action.

Bottom Line: In Collateral, Michael Mann masterfully mixes gritty realism, deadpan humor, gripping action and brilliant performances to create an intensely riveting thriller that’s one of the best films of the year.

Grade: A-

To-Do List

Movies

• Watch Collateral.

• Watch Sylvia, though just for Gwyneth Paltrow’s excellent performance.

• Don’t watch A Cinderella Story.

CDs

• Listen to Autobiography by Ashlee Simpson. Jessica’s little sis doesn’t only have better pipes than Ms. Chicken of the Sea, but her edgier pop-rock image (Ashlee even dyed her hair to differentiate herself from her ditzy older sis) and meaty rasp complement this 12-song debut filled with the dangerously catchy ("Pieces of Me") and surprisingly honest ("Shadow").

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For comments, e-mail me at lanz_gryffindor@yahoo.com.