I know what's going through your mind right now.
You're searching for meaning in all of this.
No one thing.
131 people died so you could finally understand the destiny for which you were born.
Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson are linked by their mysterious medical conditions in Unbreakable.
One of five new movies we'll be reviewing this week. I'm Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.
And I'm Richard Roper, columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.
Unbreakable is writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's follow-up to The Sixth Sense.
And once again, Bruce Willis plays an everyman trying to decipher a chilling and perhaps supernatural mystery.
David Dunn is an unhappily married security guard who is the sole survivor of a horrible chain-wreck.
In fact, he walks away completely unharmed.
This miraculous event attracts the attention of Jackson's Elijah Price, who owns a gallery specializing in comic book art.
I have something called osteogenesis imperfecta. It's a genetic disorder.
I don't make a particular protein very well and it makes my bones very low in density, very easy to break.
If there is someone like me in the world and I am at one end of the spectrum, couldn't there be someone else the opposite of me at the other end?
That Spencer Treat Clark is David's son, who comes to believe his father has the powers of a comic book superhero.
David himself starts to have some questions.
How hard do you remember me ever getting sick?
In the three years we lived in this house, in the old apartment, before Joseph was born, before we ever got married?
The underrated Robin Wright Penn is Audrey Dunn, a physical therapist who doesn't know her new patient has already made contact with her husband.
My husband was a star athlete in college and we were in an accident together.
Our car flipped on an icy road and we were both injured and he couldn't play football anymore.
If that hadn't happened we probably wouldn't have been together.
How so?
I think we should talk about your rehab.
There's an unsettling sense of tension permeating that scene like a pinprick to your senses.
Unbreakable moves at a deliberate pace and it doesn't offer the breathless jolts of the sixth sense, but Unbreakable is about more than a surprise payoff.
It's a unique, engaging thriller of the mind with superb performances by the lead actors and it's another major step for Shyamalan who's fast emerging as one of our formal storytellers.
You know what it really is? I really got absorbed in this movie and I love the low key ways, not always punching it up and shocking you and you know cats and things are not jumping out of the sides of the screen in order to give you phony thrills.
Not those cheap surprise shocks that we get in other movies.
There are times during this movie where you don't even really know where the mystery is. You just know there's something wrong and there's something going on and Bruce Willis plays a character who will be totally committed in a straight drama.
Exactly.
That's the thing about Shyamalan, his characters are real, they're not just puppets for a thriller.
And Bruce Willis is so good at playing that every man.
Yes he is.
It's interesting too, Samuel Jackson who's usually such a powerful physical presence playing a character who's actually trapped inside this medical condition he has and the by play between them, just terrific and the way the writing unfolds scene after scene really keeps us interested throughout.
What I was reminded by is the fiction of Stephen King, who has supernatural things percolating beneath the surface in some of his best books and yet you know, you said that, use that word pinprick, there's something going on.
We know it's something but we don't know what it is.
Okay our next movie is The Weeknd and it's about a couple who have two weekend guests and then they invite over a couple of neighbors and that makes six plus the memory of a man who died a year ago.
But you know, even with only seven characters basically it was 20 minutes before I figured out that the dead guy was the heroine's brother-in-law and not her late husband.
The movie stars Deborah Kara Unger and Jared Harris as a married couple whose guests are his brother's former lover and the former lover's new lover.
How do you like your hair?
Cut it.
Oh you look great.
I look great.
Thanks too mom.
So you're the reason that we haven't seen Lalo somewhere and here he's trying to convince us that he's been working on book number two.
That's David Conrad as the former lover and James DeVal as the new lover.
In another Weeknd house not far away, Jenna Rollins plays a much married woman of the world whose guests are her hostile daughter played by Brooke Shields and her date played by Gary Dorton.
Everyone thinks that all film people are hypocrites, especially me.
That's not true Nina. I'm very proud of everything you do.
Why is it that every time you pat me on the back mother it feels like there's a knife in your hand?
Shields fights with Dorton. He goes back to town and Rollins and Shields end up at dinner with the other four in a session of truth telling that looks like it could have been photographed for a magazine about elegant country living.
What did I tell you?
What did she tell you?
That all of the men that I find attractive are either gay like these two or Tony or married like Don.
The Jenna Rollins character is more authentic than the rest at least guzzling red wine and sabotaging the dinner party with charm and mischief.
But what about those flashbacks? Do they really mean Deborah Kara Unger wanted to have an affair with her gay brother-in-law or not?
And does her husband have sex with Brooke Shields or not?
I left the movie with a lot of questions and the problem was I didn't really care about the answers to any of them.
You're so right. You mentioned like the first 20 minutes. I was trying to figure maybe when this comes out on DVD they'll have a chart and they can explain all the relationships here.
I keep thinking when I was watching this I kept thinking about this Kevin Bacon starring role in the movie called The Big Picture.
Remember that Christopher Guest directed it and the character of Kevin Bacon was a director who was forced into directing this really bad pretentious film about a bunch of people who get together for a weekend at a country house.
This is that bad movie brought to life unfortunately and it just doesn't go anywhere.
You're trying to keep track of who likes who and who's mad at who and I never trust a movie where people are walking around always quoting literary figures.
It's because they don't have anything interesting to say themselves.
You know there seems to be some kind of an unwritten law that gay characters get together for weekends at country houses.
I've seen about four movies and there's always one guy who's dying of AIDS.
It was so refreshing to see that movie a couple of weeks ago The Broken Hearts Club where gay people are gay and they have lives that don't evolve going out to the country and having these sad conversations with the loon sweeping across the lake and the wind and the trees and everybody weeping about what happened last year.
Let them be a little bit more unpredictable I think is one of the problems I have with this movie along with a lot of others including just its general awkwardness and clunkiness.
Yes very self aware kind of a movie.
Okay coming up later in the show Glenn Close has canines on her criminal mind in 102 Dalmatians.
Coming up next passion and revenge fuel the epic saga of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
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Buying a house it's probably the biggest investment you'll ever make.
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How about a man who stole his best friend's identity to buy a Cadillac?
Or a woman who stole more than a hundred thousand dollars from her employer?
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Our next movie is Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and I don't think I've seen a more beautiful and exciting film all year.
I know I haven't witnessed such a spectacular fusion of exotic romance, light comedy, deep philosophy and blazing fight scenes that leave the viewer breathless and giddy.
Michelle Yeoh plays a veteran warrior who pursues the intruder who has stolen a sword used by China's greatest fighter.
There's also a flashback sequence explaining the romance between a girl from a noble family and an outlaw.
That's Zhang Ziyi as Jian and she has a riveting presence as a defiant ingenue and an amazing fighter.
One of the many delights in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is the equal opportunity element of the fight scenes.
Three of the five principal warriors are women including the chief villain.
But nobody can touch the great Chao Yun Fat as a legendary master who wants to retire to domestic tranquility as soon as he settles one last score.
Now we get a lot of familiar plot threads like that but in director Ang Lee's hands these threads weave a colorful tapestry that ranks among the most thrilling films of the year.
I loved it too and Ang Lee is a great director who usually deals in much different kind of material like the ice storm.
Here he's not trying to transcend the martial arts genre, he's not trying to transform it, he's trying to perfect it.
He stays within the traditions of this kind of film and just makes a really great one.
One of the things I like is how frank he is about when he's using the special effects trickery.
In a lot of these movies they have people doing stunts that are impossible but they try to make them look real.
They don't try to make them look real and there's a fight here in the treetops that is absolutely visually exhilarating.
This was based on the fourth novel in a five part series of books and it kind of plays like that, like a sweeping winds of war type miniseries with all these melodramatic romances.
It was a great flashback to the romance of the young girl and this outlaw warrior.
So there's all this melodrama but then it's interspersed with amazing fight sequences.
Amazing is the word for it. You know a lot of people probably don't think of themselves as being candidates for a martial arts film.
They just look at the ads in the paper and they think, well that's martial arts, I don't want to see that.
If you ever wanted to see one, this might be the one to see because it is really well made.
It is just great. Okay coming up next, London goes to the dogs in 102 Dalmatians.
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My client actually has an aversion to fur.
Get it away from me. Just this side of barking mad.
So you won't be wanting this then?
Corella DeVille has been brainwashed into becoming a dog lover in the opening scenes of 102 Dalmatians,
a sequel to the 1996 live-action remake of Disney's 1961 animated film.
Glint, close as Corella, still looks like a cross between Vampirella and Alvira, but she's turned over a new leaf now.
She stops wearing furs, she adopts a puppy and tells her parole officer that her dog napping days are far behind her.
The officer is a Dalmatian lover who has her doubts.
I don't want to be sensitive about her lack of, um...
Oh!
S-P-O-T-S.
Oh, is that normal at her age?
Well, like everything else about her.
It is a bit...odd.
That's Alice Evans as the dog-loving parole officer, and a lot of the action of Al's cute little oddball who doesn't have any spots.
Gerald Depardieu co-stars as Monsieur Le Pelt, a French designer of fur coats.
The coats...from poopies.
Ah, not just any poopies.
Coop-es with...
102 Dalmatians is a saga that has more or less reached the end of the line.
I'm not convinced this movie was necessary.
The dogs get some exciting scenes, the puppies are cute, there's a lively little poodle, but the live action plot this time is sort of like the previous film.
Cruella hasn't really changed her spots, dogs are threatened, and animal lovers prevail.
You are so right about this. It wasn't necessary. They made it because the first one made a lot of money.
So they just sort of remade the first one, and they really go to this tortured plot device where she's, oh, she's good, but now she's...
We know she's going to be Cruella DeVille for it to even be a movie again, but you do feel sorry for her at the end because she's not evil and mean enough from the start.
So there's no payoff when she finally gets her comeuppance because the little doggies and the macaw and everybody else, they're all smarter than Cruella DeVille.
You've got to have a great cheesy villain in a movie like this to enjoy it when she gets splattered with all this stuff at the end.
And it's not really her thought that she changes because it all has to do with this Pavlovian brainwashing.
You know, instead of remaking the movie, I think they could rethink the character. Cruella DeVille, I think, could be moved back into animation.
How about an animated version of Sunset Boulevard with Cruella DeVille as Norma Desmond or something like that?
How about Cruella in Love? Maybe they can do that. Even that would be more interesting. Just a thought.
All right, our next movie is very different. It's called Quills, and it's a powerful feast of shocking images and subversive ideas.
It's directed by Phil Kaufman, who made the right stuff and the unbearable lightness of being.
This time out, Oscar winner Jeffrey Rush stars as the Marquis de Sade, strutting and twirling with mad glee while also revealing the darkest demons and some surprising bravery inside.
The Marquis, the notoriously sex-obsessed author of Post-Revolutionary France, has been jailed in an asylum in Sharrington,
but he remains a storyteller as when he works his leering charm on a ripe laundress played by Kate Winslet.
A terrible evil tick.
Officially so, but it comes with a price.
A kiss for each page.
Must I administer them directly or might I blow them?
The price, my coquette, is every bit as firm as I am.
After the Marquis has been stripped of his writing materials, even the clothes he was using as a literary canvas, he still creates.
The need to write supersedes his need to breathe as he defies Michael Caine, a sadistic doctor bent on silencing him.
Don't tell me you've come to read my trousers.
Oh please, though, Kate Winslet's pants. What'll it be? Fifty lashes? A knight on the ramp?
I won't sully my hands with him.
Nor will you. That's the first rule of politics, isn't it?
The man who orders the execution never drops the blade.
Quills is a searing indictment of censorship and religious hypocrisy, but it also presents the argument that works of fiction can light the fuse for horrific violence in the real world.
The Marquis is far from being a hero. He manipulates humans like chess pieces, and his dirty-fingered work isn't exactly Shakespearean in scope and insight, but at least he's honest about who he is.
Rush delivers a daring, exhaustive, and memorable performance in this disturbing and thought-provoking work.
Quills should not be missed.
You know, I was really amazed by this film because it takes so many chances and it gets away with him.
Here is the most controversial author in history, and there are two views of him.
In the one view, he's this perverted, degraded, depraved monster, and that's kind of correct.
Yes.
And then there's another view in which he's this brave man who continues to try to create his art in the face of this enormous suffering, almost as much suffering as he inflicted on his poor victims, and that view is correct, too.
And Phil Kaufman, I think, is fascinated by the fact that this man who is not a nice man is at the same time kind of heroic in terms of his human spirit, which will not be silenced.
So the audience is asked to kind of balance these two views instead of being given some kind of simplistic solution.
Yeah, he is both of those things. It's sort of like a Larry Flint is today, where it's like, well, what he does kind of frightens me, but I'm even more disturbed that people would try to silence this, and that's even a worse thing to do,
and they do a wonderful job of mixing both of those elements into the character.
And Jeffrey Rush really pushes as far as he can on this character. I mean, he creates a man who is essentially mad. We see him really suffering on the screen, and we're convinced. We don't think of him as an actor at all.
He's so good at performance.
90% of the film actors out there, even the really good ones, probably wouldn't even try to tackle that part.
What about Michael Caine?
He's also really good here and shows you that there are people even worse than the marquee walking around in that time.
Okay, when we come back, my video pick this week is Becoming an American Thanksgiving Tradition.
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Bill?
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Hershey's Pot of Gold. It's that good.
Ebert and Roper in the movie's video pick of the week is brought to you by Nestle Raisinettes at the movies, or at home, Raisinettes.
The video pick is Planes, Trains and Automobiles, the 1987 comedy starring Steve Martin and John Candy as two businessmen who want to get home for Thanksgiving more than anything else in the world and end up stranded in the middle of nowhere.
The movie has become a Thanksgiving tradition in a lot of families because of its slapstick humor and also because of its heartwarming undertones.
Martin and Candy are opposites, a fastidiously aloof businessman and a friendly human haystack. Fate throws them together.
Look, I don't want to be rude, but I'm not much of a conversationalist. I'd pretty like to finish this article. A friend of mine wrote it, so.
Don't let me stand in your way, please, don't let me stand in your way. The last thing I want to be remembered as is an annoying blabbermouth.
You know, nothing grinds my gears worse than some chowder head who doesn't know when to keep a big trap shut.
Here's the movie's most famous scene after they have to share a bed in the motel.
Where's your other hand?
Between two pillows.
Those aren't pillows.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
See that Bears game last week?
Yeah, hell of a game, hell of a game.
I like Planes, Trains and Automobiles when it came out, but over the years I've had to admit that like was not a strong enough word for my opinion about this movie in its own way.
This is a great movie, not just as a comedy, but also for the way Martin and Candy are true to human nature and for the way that director-writer John Hughes somehow makes the movie much more emotionally affecting than it really has any right to be.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles is on tapes and DVD and it's my video pick of the week.
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Now let's take another look at the movies we reviewed on this week's show. Two thumbs up for the riveting supernatural thriller Unbreakable. But two thumbs down for The Weeknd, it was tedious and awkward.
Two big thumbs up for the exhilarating martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it opens in two weeks. But two thumbs down for 102 Dalmatians, that's one Dalmatian too many.
And finally, two thumbs up for Quills with a great performance by Jeffrey Rush. So even though I don't recommend 102 Dalmatians, I still think if you're going to take your kids to a movie, go to 102 Dalmatians over the Grinch.
I agree with that and also Unbreakable is a good movie, although not for the kids. Now we want to announce the Ebert and Roper Floating Film Festival with onboard movies and discussion sessions with Richard and myself.
We'll be sailing February 1st through the 4th from Port Canaveral aboard the Disney Wonder of the Disney Cruise Lines visiting the Bahamas and Castaway Key, the Disney private island.
For information call your travel agent or 1-800-945-3806 or visit our website Ebert-Roper-Movies.com where you can also hear reviews of this week's movies.
Next week, a special show about the exploding popularity of the DVD format. We're going to focus on all the bonus features, extra scenes and hidden surprises on a lot of DVDs.
And we're calling this show Bells and Whistles. That's next week and until then the balcony is closed.