Eastwood has only 12 hours to save a condemned man in true crime.
East meets West in a new version of the classic musical, The King and I.
And Ben Affleck's wedding plans are put on hold by Sandra Bullock and the forces of nature.
I'm looking at you.
I'm looking and I can see a reporter who's about to tell me he has a hunch.
I've been checking on some things.
Do you know my opinion of reporters who have hunches?
Clint Eastwood is a hot shot newspaper man who thinks a condemned prisoner is innocent
and James Woods is the editor who doesn't want his best reporter going off on another
wild goose chase.
And that's in a scene from True Crime, one of five new movies this week.
I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times and across the aisle for me is this week's guest
critic.
I'm Howie Mobchowicz, the film critic for Colorado Public Radio and I'm the director
of the Film Center at the University of Colorado at Denver.
Thanks for having me.
I'm Roger Ebert and a good friend of mine.
We've been talking about the movies together for a long time.
Okay, our first movie is True Crime, the 21st film directed by Clint Eastwood and one with
a mastery of tempo.
It's paced sort of like a newspaper reporter's day with a leisurely start and a deadline
finish.
Eastwood is assigned to write a story about a condemned man's last day.
While doing the research, he becomes convinced that the man is innocent.
When my nose tells me something stinks, I got to have faith in it just like you have
your faith in Jesus.
My nose is working well.
I know there's truth out there somewhere.
That's Isaiah Washington who is powerful as the condemned man.
Things are complicated back at the office where the city editor played by Dennis Leary
finds out Eastwood is having an affair with his wife.
I'm sorry, Bob.
I really am sorry.
I don't think you are.
If he's mad, think how Eastwood's own wife feels when she finds out she's played by Diane
Venora.
If this were a bullet, you'd be dead.
Eastwood hurries back and forth between fights at the newspaper and scenes of romantic crisis
and at the same time, gathers evidence to perhaps save the condemned man.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking down toward midnight.
I wanted to be there with the condoms.
I wanted to see my other girl grandma.
If we just had just a little bit more time.
That's Lisa Gay Hamilton as the condemned man's wife there.
True crime follows a time-honored movie formula in which the story sets up a deadline, then
the suspense builds as the deadline approaches.
But Eastwood is a master of construction here and I like the way he manipulates the audience
by throwing in those personal problems to interfere with the ongoing reporter's investigation.
I also like Eastwood himself, a movie star who completely understands how to use his
scream presence so that silence and pauses are permitted instead of the breakneck superficiality
of so many thrillers.
He also directs some scenes in this film in a really interesting way.
I love the stuff in the condemned man's cell.
I mean, Isaiah Washington is terrific.
Yes he is.
And Eastwood keeps the camera very steady, very still and plays it for the terrible emotion
that it has.
And I think that there are, I can't think of another capital punishment film which gives
the condemned man sort of a normal family life and allows him to think about that.
And he has his little daughter there who wants to draw the green pastures and his wife.
Yeah, it's nice.
And you know, Eastwood is a jazz music fan and I always think that he puts his movies
together with little riffs, you know, little improvisations instead of just making a machine
line script that, you know, kind of like one brick after the other as it goes toward the
obvious conclusion.
He has a little stuff over here with James Wood, something here with his wife, something
here with the woman he's having an affair with, something with a grandmother that he
runs into.
And so, as he, then he comes back again to the main theme.
It's almost musical.
Clint Eastwood is known as a great movie star but I think he really deserves a lot of credit
for being a very subtle and interesting filmmaker.
Our next film, Ravenous, starts in 1847 during the Mexican War.
An American officer named Boyd, played by Guy Pearce, is first given a medal for valor
and then suddenly banished to a remote outpost in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.
Just as he's getting used to his miserable new post, a stranger named Calhoun shows up
with a ghoulish story about an expedition that disintegrated into a major bout of cannibalism.
He said that when you ate the man, do you mind if I ask?
Did you feel at all physically changed?
I seem to remember something like that.
A certain virility.
That's Robert Carlisle as the mysterious Calhoun.
Soon we start to wonder if he may be more than a victim.
He was licking me!
Rike!
Yes!
Rike?
We bandaged Taffer's worms.
Mr. Calhoun?
Yes.
You come outside.
When Boyd and another soldier named Rike, played by Neil McDonough, find the bodies,
it begins to seem that Calhoun was the cook as well as the bottle washer.
How many did he say was in the party?
Six, right?
Why?
It's a trap!
Yet another complication is that Calhoun's taste for his fellow human beings has a Native
American twist.
He's become a wienergo and Boyd's new commanding officer, played by Jeffrey Jones, falls victim.
So you're gonna kill me?
No.
No.
It's lonely being a cannibal.
Tough making friends.
Things get even more jumbled.
There's some reincarnation, some stuff about manifest destiny, and pretty soon, as they
say, the movie doesn't know whether to scratch its watch or wind its butt.
Ravenous piles horror on top of comedy, on top of westerns, but it's tame and it looks
more like an ad for slime than anything else.
There is about a minute of good campy humor towards the end, but other than that, I think
the film's main virtue is that it's sometimes filmed too dark to see.
George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead are much better pictures.
They've got real horror and real humor, they offer some fascinating social comment, and
they leave you shaking.
Ravenous left me flat.
I loved Ravenous.
I loved the way that Antonia Byrd, the director of this film, made it look so cold and wet
and dark.
I didn't mind the dark.
I loved the fact that in the movies you can see darkness.
It's not all kind of daylight like on television.
And I like the fact that these people are involved in this kind of cross-fertilization
of a cannibalism movie and a vampirism movie.
And I also like the comedy that Jeffrey Jones' character is, the commanding officer, who's
kind of like the genial host at the, you know, kind of the horrible feast.
I just didn't think that she knew what she was doing with this film or knew where she
wanted it to go.
And there's stuff in it that makes me think that there's a certain kind of ambition that
the film never supports.
You may remember when the Native American character says something about, well, you
people eat the body of your lord every Sunday.
I thought this movie doesn't have the stuff to pull off that kind of thinking.
Well, I mean, that's something a Native American might say because he would look at this and
say, gee, what's the difference, you know?
I just don't think that this movie has the heft to pull that off.
I thought the use of the locations, and by the way, it was shot in Europe.
But I just felt like, you know, I've seen the movie twice.
I saw it at Sundance.
I saw it again.
I felt as if I was there in that really dark, dismal, wet, depressing forest with these
people.
What's the stuff in it?
I felt that I was stuck in a horror movie I'd seen too many times already.
OK.
Later in the show, Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck are unlikely traveling companions
in Forces of Nature.
I haven't known you that long, but I think something may be wrong with you.
Coming up next, the new animated version of The King and I.
Air crisps, classic junk food taste and nothing else.
Now the light crispy crunch of air crisps comes in a classic junk food taste.
Ooh.
Sour cream and onion.
You know, new sour cream and onion potato air crisps.
They're irresistible.
Who called this meeting?
I'm out of here.
I'm out of here.
This time of year, you tend to spend a little more time indoors.
So this makes the sailor winter a perfect time to add some fresh new looks to your home.
The southwestern sofa from Southern has upholstered bunk feet as only $4.99, the love seat $4.79,
and the chair $3.59.
American furniture warehouse can warm up any house, so shop the sailor winter and find
out why.
Elevator to lobby.
Bye, George.
Contacts, $320.
Treadmill, $800.
Wonder bra, $26.
Facelift, $3,000.
Being happy with who you are, priceless.
There are some things money can't buy.
For everything else, there's MasterCard.
Happily accepted.
Most everywhere.
What are you doing?
I'm whistling.
That's what I do when I'm afraid.
I whistle a happy tune.
A British schoolteacher named Anna whistles bravely in the face of a fire-breathing dragon
that you may not remember from the Broadway original as she sails toward the kingdom of
Siam in a new animated version of The King and I.
She's been hired by the king to instruct the royal children in the Rogers and Hammerstein
musical classic that's been given the usual cartoon treatment, including animals and sidekicks
and dragons.
Arriving in Siam, she finds a king very much dedicated to tradition and not much impressed
by her independent ideas.
I want my house.
The house I was promised, Your Majesty.
You teach in palace, you live in palace.
Of course, love will eventually grow between the teacher and the king and also between
the crown prince and a humble servant girl.
Both loves are forbidden.
Are you a soldier?
I...
You don't know what you are?
I serve the king.
That makes two of us.
Two servants.
One advantage of animating a Broadway classic is that the hit songs are already on board.
Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.
Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me.
There's no rule that says all animated films have to be aimed at children, but Hollywood
acts like there is and that leads to problems with The King and I.
I don't think kids are going to identify with the two love stories that defy barriers of
class and race, and adults aren't going to need the dragons, the pet monkey, and the running
gag about how Master Little is always getting his teeth knocked out.
So I didn't think it worked.
I don't think it works either and I don't know why they think that they have to take
all the stuff and all the grit out of the original.
I have an eight year old and when she was four she watched The King and I, the film
with Yul Brynner, and she loved it.
They were sort of drawing the film.
They were drawing the original sets.
They drew Yul Brynner's leg muscles.
I think that I'm perfectly happy just watching the movie.
You know, I sometimes think that Hollywood doesn't have any respect for the intelligence
of children and I've watched a lot of movies with young kids and one thing I notice is
it doesn't bother them if they don't understand everything because there's so much in the
world they don't understand.
Kids are used to not understanding stuff and so challenge them a little bit.
The original movie is about grace and understanding and the effort it takes for two very difficult
people to understand each other and there's something wonderful about the time it takes
and this just clutters everything up with frenzy and a shoot out and I think what a
waste, you know.
Let the kids see something beautiful and paced.
You're absolutely right.
Kids want to see things happen.
Okay, coming up next on the way to his wedding, Ben Affleck collides with Sandra Bullock
in Forces of Nature.
You are a god.
Little things make a big difference.
Be careful of those little things.
Little things make a big difference.
Buckle up those little things.
Give a little love.
Take a little time.
Kids need car seats.
Use them every time.
Seven News.
Seats for kids.
Little things make a big difference.
Denver, Colorado.
Home of the Rocky Mountains, the Wild West and the Denver Mattress Company.
Every day the Denver Mattress Company is busy building the best mattresses in the world.
Or that's what Bob thinks.
You see, Bob runs the Denver Mattress Factory.
My Bob makes his bed every day.
Golly, I'm so impressed.
Bob and the folks at Denver Mattress think about company a lot, so you don't lose sleep over it.
This is what dreams are made of.
It may not be rocket science, but it does involve technology, testing and a host of quality standards.
How does it feel?
I'll let you know in 30 minutes.
At Denver Mattress we make our beds ourselves.
We make them easy to buy and of course we always make them affordable.
It's like my boss said, you made your bed, now you've got to lie in it.
Rest easier, we'll make it comfortable.
Miss, thank you.
Little jumpy for a rebel, aren't you?
Ben Affleck is Ben Holmes, a young man in New York on his way to his wedding in Savannah in our next film, Forces of Nature.
But getting to the altar won't be easy, largely because of his seat mate, Sarah Lewis, played by Sandra Bullock.
To help this romantic comedy along, the takeoff is aborted and Ben and Sarah then go the long confused route to Savannah.
Sarah is something of a bad girl, while Ben, who writes cover blurbs for books, is a good boy.
And their journey is really about Ben trying to discover if he wants to get married or if he wants to run off with the impetuous Bullock.
Her first plan is for them to carpool with a total stranger.
We don't even know the notes.
He's Vic.
Oh, he's Vic. Great. He's Vic. He's Vic. He chops us up, you know, leaves us in the woods.
Well, see, that's why I asked that you come along, technically.
But of course, the longer Ben dollies with Sarah, the more things in Savannah begin to fall apart.
What I don't understand is how, in this day and age of ATMs, telephones and the Internet and Voyager 2, could it take two days, two days, to get from New York to Savannah?
Sarah was once a stripper, and in one of the best sequences in the movie, she tries to raise some money.
I think this is one of these places where everyone would much rather see you dance than see me dance.
Get your hands off of my man.
There are some things I really like about Forces of Nature.
It's modest, it's understated, and it doesn't let events get so outlandish that they blow away the story.
It's also a film with a generous spirit, and director Bronwyn Hughes filmed that scene in the gay bar without a single stereotyped character.
You don't see that very often, and I think she's done a good job with this picture. So thumbs up from me.
Boy, my thumb was down on this, and I just didn't believe it enough to care about it.
I felt that there was so much contrivance in this journey.
They have a plane crash, and then they go to a train, and then they go to an automobile, like the old Steve Martin and John Candy picture, and I didn't feel any chemistry between the two of them.
Ben Affleck's character was so standoffish and so cold, there wasn't any charisma.
In a certain way, I agree with you, and I think that this film is contrived, but that sweetness really gets to me.
And I think that the film, you know, we don't see that very often, and the film has that kind of generous spirit and a kind of acceptance of eccentricity, which for me carries it a long way.
I have a kind of a confession to make, and that is that I like Sandra Bullock in Speed, and then I really fell in love with her and while you were sleeping.
And I felt that she was so magical and so special. I even like Speed, too, which she doesn't even like, but we don't need to get into that.
But when I'm looking at this film, I'm thinking, what happened to that magic? And it's all buried in contrivance.
I didn't believe that anyone could possibly have all of these adventures. It was just like story conference episodes following each other.
You know, I think that contrivance is part of this form, right? Neither of us minded the contrivance in It Happened One Night, which is the ancestor of this film.
And I love the world that they go through. I think it's a fascinating world that they go through.
Even though, you know, it may be jammed up, but there are interesting little takes on life in the world somehow between New York and Savannah.
Life in these picturesque United States. Okay, next movie. And our next movie is named The Harmonists.
It's about a vocal group that became very popular in Germany in the years when Nazism was coming to power.
They were named the Comedian Harmonists. They were inspired by a black American singing group named The Revelers.
And they did light comedy and intricate five-part harmony. As the film opens in 1927, the group's founder holds auditions.
And before long, they're using their special talents to give the impression that it's a big success.
They have five singers and a piano player. But the way the Nazis count it, three of the group are Jewish and three are not.
When Harry, the founder, falls in love with the Gentile, they experience the ugly rise of anti-Semitism.
The Harmonists are popular even with some members of the Nazi hierarchy, but eventually there's opposition to their public performances.
The movie reflects how daily life was changed in countless ways as Germany moved against the Jews who had made such an important contribution to the country's society and culture.
I like The Harmonists even though it left me feeling a little empty at the end because there's no big moral statement, just sadness and loss and anticlimax, and The Harmonists become a footnote.
This film kind of falls into the big argument that's going on now about Life is Beautiful, which is how do you film the Holocaust?
Must you show in every single film how profoundly horrifying it was? This film is in a certain way kind of nervy because it takes a rather trivial subject in some ways
and shows that life in Germany before things really got awful was rather light and beautiful.
For instance, it's much unlike Cabaret, which shows that everything is corrupt and in this world things are sort of peppy and sweet and it's kind of an interesting take on it.
There's that moment when they're all in New York and Harry doesn't want to go back. The other five are not so sure.
One guy says, well, my mother is there, and eventually they all get on the ship and go back to Germany because they can't believe that things were ever going to get that bad.
And then at the end, I did like the epilogue where it turns out that one of these guys eventually became the oldest cantor in California.
So that there is, you know, life goes on in a true way for some lucky survivors. But you're right, it's not real heavy and serious. It's about a time before things got totally dark.
But what I really like in this film is the last shot of the film itself before that epilogue in which you see the train going off across green fields.
And of course the train is one of the central terrible images of the Holocaust. So you know what's coming. And it's there in an image that I think really gets to that.
Okay, when we come back, my video pick of the week, a great animated film for adults.
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There's no stopping me because nature made me.
When we were reviewing The King and I, we talked about animated films for adults and people have been telling me for a long time about my video pick this week, which is a Japanese animated film named Grave of the Fireflies.
Don't miss this one, they've told me. It's special. I've got an email. I've had people come to me in video stores. Well, I finally watched it this week and they were right.
This is one of the most powerful films I've seen. Can an animated film shake you emotionally? You bet it can. The movie takes place during World War II in the city of Kobe, where a 14 year old boy and his four year old sister are left orphaned after an air raid.
The desolation stretches out on all sides of them.
Two children try moving in with a neighbor, but supplies are scarce and eventually they're living on their own scrounging for food.
Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Asao Takahata, comes out of the Japanese tradition of animation for adults. It's beautifully drawn, it's powerfully written. One critic called it the Schindler's List of Animation.
Can you give her medicine or a shot?
I don't want a shot.
Please, doctor, help her.
Give her medicine? All this child needs is some food.
She needs food.
How can I help you?
Where am I supposed to get food?
Grave of the Fireflies is available on tape and DVD. You can get it either subtitled or dubbed into English. It's my video pick of the week.
Once there was an adorable prince who loved to frolic and play, but one day he fell under a strange spell. Frolicing was suddenly uncool. To reverse the spell, his parents took him to a most magical place, and it worked.
The boy forgot to act cool and had the time of his life with his happy family. Of course, he later broke their hearts by going to college out of state, but that's another tale. Call 1407W Disney and make your dream come true.
Where are my socks? If I don't get those socks, I'm out of business.
Did you check all your stocks?
There's no socks in my stocks.
Check down by the docks.
I'm at the docks? There's no socks.
I've checked every box. There's no box full of socks.
Forget about socks. I just saw a fox. We got locks. We got trucks.
Not frocks, not locks, not locks, just socks.
You have got your clocks?
Supply chain problems? IBM has Internet solutions.
Sure, we must go.
The seven everyday hero award honoring Coloradans who make a difference.
Millie, Helen, and Effie are three extraordinary foster grandparents. Dedicated to giving back, they've nurtured children at Denver's Hope Center for a collective 30 years.
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If you know someone who stands up for what's right, call us at this number. Then Fridays at 10, we'll honor a new seven everyday hero.
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Now let's take another look at the movies we reviewed this week. We both admire Clint Eastwood's true crime, especially for the way he winds up the suspense as a condemned man's time runs out.
We split on ravenous. I like this darkly atmospheric Western about cannibalism and vampirism, but how he thought it was too confused and didn't have much of a point.
We both dislike the King and I, an animated version that isn't sure if it's pitched to kids or adults.
We split on forces of nature. I found it to be pointless and meandering with Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck as an unconvincing odd couple, but how he, however, liked enough things about their journey to recommend the movie marginally.
And we both like the Harmonist, a musical biopic that becomes an interesting historical footnote to the rise of Nazism.
So the one we like the best is Clint Eastwood's true crime.
I think Clint Eastwood is one of the most interesting directors in this country now.
Okay, in April I'll be holding a festival at the University of Illinois devoted to overlooked films. You can get info about it on the web at ebertfest.com.
And of course you can hear our reviews on the web at cisco-ebert.com, part of the Go network.
Next week, more new movies including EdTV starring Matthew McConaughey and Jenna Elfman in the story of a man who lives his life on television.
Thanks a lot, Howie, for being here this week.
Thanks for having me, Roger. And until next week, the balcony is closed.