filmland / By Charlie Myers

‘El Shining’: ¡Muy bueno!

Plus: Technically competent thriller and high school flicks

(Feb. 28, 2008) Previews

Laura Linney didn’t win an Oscar for The Savages, which opens at long last locally on Friday, Feb. 29, losing out to French actress Marion Cotillard, but Philip Seymour Hoffman won a Best Actor Spirit Award for the film, and the film took Best Screenplay for Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills) at the Spirits as well. With two of the best actors working in film today, I don’t see how The Savages can be anything but fine. Hoffman is college prof Jon Savage who discovers from his somewhat estranged sister Wendy (Linney) that their father Lenny (Philip Bosco) is losing it and decisions need to be made. It turns out that Lenny may never have been much of a Dad. It’s a Charlie pick of the week. Rated R for some sexuality and language. 123 m. At the Minor.

Vantage Point

GALLERY >

The only other opening locally is sports comedy Semi-Pro, a film that should make all those people out there who loved Fool’s Gold happy. Starring Will Ferrell and Woody Harrelson, the film, set in the ‘70s, is about a basketball team owner (Ferrell) who wants to merge his ABA team with the NBA. Since a few of my brain cells have recently reawakened, I may have to see the film to kill them off again. Or, this may be a weekend to curl up with a DVD, and I have recommendations for you (see below). Rated R for language and some sexual content. 100 m. At the Broadway, Fortuna and Mill Creek.

Special note: Two films that never played locally were released on DVD on February 19: Ang Lee’s *Lust, Caution (rated NC-17) and **M*argot at the Wedding, featuring Nicole Kidman, Jack Black and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Either should be worth a rental.

Reviews

VANTAGE POINT:Vantage Point represents the peak of what commercial Hollywood filmmaking seems to aspire to these days, although the current nominees for Best Film would seem to belie that assertion.

The film, directed by Pete Travis in his feature debut, is a slick recounting, from eight different points of view, of a terrorist attack in Salamanca, Spain, during a gathering of world leaders including the U.S. president (William Hurt). Telling the same story from varied points-of-view is not new, the most famous example probably being Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon.

But in Rashomon,which tells the story of a possible rape from the points of view of the victim, the alleged attacker and several witnesses, the different versions do not agree and the story is dependent upon the psychology of the narrator and the extent of his/her involvement in the incident. In Vantage Point, by contrast, the eight versions agree exactly on the sequence and the facts of the attack; each narrator simply adds a bit more information. The device, then, seems more like a gimmick that tries to sex up the standard action thriller, which is what this film is.

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