Watch.
This week, Pierce Brosnan is back as 007, chasing a villain for whom the world is not
enough.
Affairs of the heart occupy the residence of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.
And Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci are haunted by sleepy howl.
The headless horseman rides again in sleepy howl with Johnny Depp as Constable Ichabod
Crane.
It's one of five new movies on the show this week.
And I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times.
And I'm Michaela Pereira of ZDTV's Internet Tonight.
Well thank you for having me back to the balcony.
Thank you for coming back to the balcony.
And now let's look at Sleepy Hollow and A Cut to the Chase, so to speak.
This is a surprisingly good movie, a thriller laced with lots of suspense and even more
sly humor as Johnny Depp creates a Nichabod Crane who is just a little bit of a coward
when it comes to headless horseman, as indeed who would not be.
The movie's been directed by Tim Burton, a master of special effects who adds to Beetlejuice,
Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Batman this creepy and atmospheric
retelling of the Washington Irving classic about a headless horseman who is beheading
victims in the small town of Sleepy Hollow.
I often do have to tell you there is no horseman.
There never was a horseman.
There never will be a horseman.
What is that?
My talisman, it protects me from the horseman.
You are magistrate and your head full of such nonsense.
Now tell me the name of-
Help me!
Assigned to investigate the case using his modern methods, Ichabod travels upstate and
meets with the town elders.
How much of your superiors explained to you, Constable?
Only that the three were slain in open ground, their heads found severed from their bodies.
Hmm, their heads were not found severed.
Their heads were not found at all.
Christina Ricci co-stars as the daughter of the town's leading citizen who finds herself
in sympathy with Ichabod.
It was your mother's.
Keep it close to your heart.
It is your protection against harm.
Sleepy Hollow is not just another horror movie, but a great looking film where the visuals
and the special effects all add to the atmosphere instead of simply calling attention to themselves.
And the suspense grows even more effective, I think, because Ichabod Crane is not an action
hero but a cerebral type who has a lot of theories but at one point simply locks himself
in his room and pulls his covers over his head.
I really had a good time at Sleepy Hollow.
I had a good time too initially though, Roger.
I really felt wrapped up in the suspense and it was spooky and it was scary and it was
gory to say very lightly.
However, about three quarters of the way through the movie, I felt like it fell flat on its
face.
I didn't really feel like it was taking me any further.
The suspense kind of dropped and I found it at that point not very appealing.
The problem with all stories like this is that they have to end.
Yes.
And there has to be an explanation.
And when you have a guy without a head riding around beheading the folks in Sleepy Hollow,
any explanation is going to be unsatisfactory.
And that's exactly what I felt happen.
This huge suspense, this huge story developing, developing, all of a sudden, oh no, we have
to end it and bang and I didn't feel that it carried through well.
Although I have to say Johnny Depp, fabulous and Christina Ricci was beautiful.
They're really good together and he does a real nice job of making Ichabod Crane not
as just kind of a straight arrow hero but a guy who has all kinds of theories and ideas
and he doesn't like to get blood on himself and he's kind of scared of things.
So I thought the revenge at the end of the headless horseman takes on the person who
I will not name.
We won't name.
Who steals his head.
That was wonderful irony.
But I have to say I was disappointed and I gave it somewhat of a reluctant thumbs down
because there were some complications in the story for me.
For example, his whole past, Ichabod Crane's past came into this story and I thought that
really muddied the story that we were focusing on which is the headless horseman.
That part wasn't necessary.
Right.
Well, we're going to change gears now and onto a different movie.
Our next film, 42 Up, is the latest installment of Michael Aptit's documentary series which
began in 1964 and follows the lives of 14 British school children from varying socioeconomic
backgrounds.
Starting when they were seven and every seven years following, Aptit visited his subjects
and produced a new film.
In 42 Up, the characters reach middle age and deal with careers, family and the various
challenges life brings.
Tony, for example, as a young man had other plans for his future.
Now married, he acknowledges the fact that it hasn't always been easy.
We've been to the edge of the cliff and looked over a couple of times and we've always seemed
to sort of go back.
We've sort of stayed the course.
Aptit chose people from different backgrounds.
Simon is the only black child of the group and was raised in a children's home.
I mean, it hurts me that he wasn't there, but at the same time, he wasn't there.
He wasn't there for me, he wasn't there for my mom, so I never really wanted to see him.
Only four of the children were girls.
Something Aptit reportedly regrets.
In this scene, three of them, Jackie, Lynn and Sue, talk about how their lives have gone.
We chose our own dots.
We were able to choose our own dots quite freely.
But we only had a limited choice anyway.
Truth be told, we didn't have the choice of private education because they could never
afford it anyway.
I mean, I wish I'd wanted something that bad that I had to go for it.
I really hope that my two want something and are hungry for it.
Well, 42 Up was my introduction to the series and I founded a profound examination of the
effects our origins have on our journey into adulthood.
Movement back and forth through time allowed me to witness each person's growth.
Serving as both the interviewer and occasional narrator, Aptit successfully takes confessional
filmmaking to a whole new level when it is both gritty and thought provoking.
I love this film.
Oh, I love it too.
And you know, I started on this series with 14 Up and I've been seeing these same people
every seven years.
And when 35 came up, I put this whole series on my list of the 10 greatest films of all
time because it's such a brilliant use of filmmaking to show you, as Wordworth said,
you know, that the child is father to the man.
You can see these seven year olds making statements that are totally true of themselves at the
age of 42.
And it's interesting to see that there is a bit of truth in that.
Just what philosophy, which the film is based on, give me the child at seven and I will
show you the man.
Except for the years 14 through 21, when you're having a bit of a struggle, you can definitely
see.
It's fascinating.
The one woman who at 21 is just completely down on the world, chain smoking, depressed,
and then the rest of her life, she's this successful superwoman.
And then Neil, Neil, the one that's like a soap opera because you follow Neil all along.
And he was really kind of the brightest 14 year old.
And beautiful too.
That's a beautiful child.
And then at 35, he's lost.
And now...
Don't tell them.
I won't.
But I was so relieved that he's still alive.
I'm very excited to see what's going to happen to this film.
Both 28 and 35 both won British Academy Awards and International Emmys.
And I think that this movie is definitely up there as well.
It's a great film.
Coming up later, Bond, James Bond.
And the world is not enough.
And coming up next, Austin, Jane Austen, and Mansfield Park.
Coming only to theaters.
Woody, where's Kidnapper?
What are we going to do, Buzz?
Use your head.
But I don't want to use my head.
This Thanksgiving, the toys are back in town.
And just trying to get home.
I need your guide, Bobby.
I'm a married spud.
Adam, look over here.
Oh, please.
Come on.
What the Cocaine look like?
And just time to go home.
Face quiz.
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You gotta go on Monday night, Bob.
I don't know who Bob is, nobody knew the name, except this one.
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Let's not dance like an angel alone Mr. Crawford.
What? A compliment?
The Great English Country Estate of Mansfield Park is the setting for the latest, and I think the best, adaptation of a Jane Austen novel.
It begins with the story of a poor girl named Fanny being bundled off to be raised in luxury on the estate of her aunt.
And then it makes that girl a writer and combines details of her life with the life of Jane Austen herself.
The result is a portrait of a strong-willed young woman caught up in a system that saw her basically as a matrimonial commodity.
Frances O'Connor plays a smart Fanny who knows her own mind.
Fanny, you have created sensations which my heart has never known before.
Please.
There is no one happiness in life to love and be loved.
Mr. Crawford, do not speak nonsense.
Fanny?
You are killing me.
No man dies of love but on stage, Mr. Crawford.
That's Alessandro Nivola as Henry who wants to marry into a rich family.
Fanny doesn't love him, but instead she loves her shy cousin Edmund who is scheduled to marry Henry's sister.
Edmund?
I think you should admit that you are in love with Fanny Price.
In those days, women were not expected to be writers, but Fanny finds a corner of the attic and pours out her soul in long letters to her sister.
The bride was elegantly dressed and the two bridesmaids were duly inferior.
Her mother stood with salts in her hand expecting to be agitated and her aunt trying to cry.
Marriage is indeed a maneuvering business.
Mansfield Park was directed and adapted by Patricia Rosema who wants us to understand how limited the world was for an Austin heroine.
Fanny's life is more or less confined to the house she lives in and it's clear to her that she must marry one of three men.
Her problem is that she doesn't love the man her uncle approves of, but her uncle doesn't think that's really her decision even to make.
More than any of the other recent Jane Austen movies, except maybe Persuasion, this one is about the struggle of a smart woman to have her own way in a world defined by men.
She's a wonderful role model for women, I think, and for young girls.
I loved what Rosema did with this interpretation though.
She sort of pushed the edges of Austen a little bit, creating characters that were much more multi-dimensional than some of the other characters.
The Crawfords were a little bit devious in their dealings.
And also she didn't shy away from the slave trading issue that was very big in 1802 during the abolitionist period and the Regency era.
I really liked that and what they did with the cinematography, seeing scenes of English countryside that we've seen so many times, but casting them in a new light was just tremendous.
The women of Jane Austen's generation didn't have some room to go in and write and they weren't professional writers.
They sat in the sitting room with everybody else because that's the only place with any light and heat and the whole world was going on around them.
They weren't even supposed to do anything except decorate the place and wait for some guy to pick them out and say, okay, you're my wife.
And then they could have power by trying to manipulate him.
And here's a woman who doesn't want to settle for that kind of a bargain.
She was an incredibly powerful woman.
And so by crossing Fanny with Jane Austen herself, you get the author and her heroine as part of the same spunky, brave young girl.
I think Austen would be really pleased because this was her most controversial novel.
And I think if she could have been around to see this work, I think she'd be very pleased.
Well, coming up next, here's Brosnan is 007 and John Cleese is his new colleague in The World Is Not Enough.
If you're cute, does that make him tall?
Don't miss the hit comedy Red, White and Tuna starring the original cast January 4th through 23rd only at the Denver Center Auditorium Theater.
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Wendy's hamburgers are hot and juicy. That's why they're the best hamburgers in the business.
What a spy! You have a name?
My name's Bob.
Ah yes, he certainly needs no introduction. 007 is back and is devilishly charming as ever.
The World Is Not Enough is the reasonably entertaining 19th installment of the Action Adventure series
about the secret agent with a license to kill.
Chris Brosnan returns for his third appearance as Bond,
whose task is to prevent international chaos and save the world's oil supply.
Of course, Bond can't save the world alone.
Here Desmond Llewellyn's Q, creator of Bond's high-tech gadgets, introduces us to a new face to the 007 series.
Hope's if you open the door.
And you might be, this is 007.
If you're Q, does that make him far?
Ah yes, the legendary 007 wit. Or at least half of it.
Always prey to the fair sex, Bond finds himself enchanted by oil baroness and ravishing ski bunny,
Electra King, played by Sophie Marceau.
You ski very well, Mr. Bond.
Seems you enjoy being chased.
Robert Carlyle of Full Monty fame is evil incarnate as the villain Renard,
a bad guy made worse by a bullet lodged in his head, rendering him impervious to pain.
No hard feelings, Mr. Bond.
But we're even.
Soon, you'll feel nothing at all.
Well, I give this movie a bit of a mixed review.
Indeed, all of what makes a good Bond movie are here.
The exotic women, the action scenes, and of course the bad guys.
What I did want was something new.
Granted, Bond is bending a little bit with the times.
He's got a female boss after all.
But I hope to see Michael Afton, yes, the same man who directed 42 Up, bring something new to Bond.
But my biggest complaint of all, the world is not enough, did not have enough John Cleese.
His introduction was likely just a teaser for future films,
but I felt his comedic genius should have been used more.
So only a marginal thumbs up from me, I'm afraid.
I'd like that a little more than you.
I know that Cleese has been signed for the next three movies.
He's the new Q.
And we say goodbye to Desmond Newelland, who was 85 years old.
But you know, I didn't want anything different because in a way Bond is a fact of nature.
I've been going to James Bond movies all of my life.
I've seen all 19 of them.
And I kind of expect them to follow the formula.
What I thought Afton brought to it was the steadying hand of probably the best director who has ever done a James Bond film
in terms of making it more of a story and not just a bunch of special effects sequences.
But why not just go out and rent the old ones and watch them again if you don't want something new?
I mean, really, I wanted to see something a little bit edgier, maybe something new, a new aspect.
It was nice to see some of the characters return.
Robbie Coltrane for the last one, loved him in the Cracker series.
He was great as Valentin.
I think this is probably Brosnan's last outing as James Bond.
And obviously the person who should play James Bond is Mel Gibson.
I disagree with you.
No, he should.
He should.
And maybe now with Cleese's cue and moving on with the new Bond, although I think Brosnan is very good here,
maybe they will get a little more edge.
The best thing though, Sophie Marceau, smolder.
She's a wonderful Bond woman.
Okay, our next movie won both the top prize and the Best Actress Award at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
And even people who disagreed that it was the best film could easily see why the jury honored Emily DeKin for her performance.
The movie is from Belgium, it's named Rosetta, and DeKin stars as a dirt poor teenage girl who lives with her alcoholic mother
and dreams of having a normal, ordinary life like anyone else.
For her, that means having a real job.
And when she's fired in an early scene, she explodes against her boss.
Why not? I'm doing my job well.
You're the only one who's been given a test.
Go change. Come back to my office.
No.
Go, I'm begging you.
Stop.
There's a young guy who likes her, but her self-esteem is too low for romance.
He works in a waffle stand and has exactly the kind of job Rosetta wants.
I could make a bag of Legos for my place.
I sell ten a day. That's more or less 15,000 francs a month.
She wants his job so badly indeed that she's almost ready to kill for it.
Give me your hand.
I'll tell you, I don't know when I've seen a more focused and painful performance than Emily DeKin gives here.
The movie was written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luke Dardin, brothers,
and they are concerned with one thing only,
survival for a young woman who just can't find a way to break into the economy no matter how hard she tries.
When we talk about youth unemployment, sometimes I think we're almost suggesting that those kids could get jobs if they really wanted to.
But this film from Belgium is just as relevant in North America as it is there.
It's about how it can be almost impossible to get your foot on the first rung of the ladder.
Rosetta is a powerful film with a great performance.
I agree with you. It's a very powerful film.
The one thing that's kept me from liking it initially, I do get a very enthusiastic thumbs up, was the handheld camera.
It was shot on handheld camera, and I caution viewers who are disturbed by that format.
You have to hang on and wait through it because it is so rewarding.
The film is beautiful and she is so focused.
I love the way DeKin keeps her Rosetta on the point of boiling.
You never know when she's going to burst.
You can see the Dardenne brothers' influence from documentary. There's very little dialogue in the movie.
But her passion and her power and her focus and obsession speaks much stronger than words ever would.
This movie is so true in the way that it follows her rather than some kind of story formula.
We're going to sit there and we're going to think, oh, she'll fall in love with this guy, or she'll get a job in the waffle stand,
or somehow everything will end happily for her.
And, you know, in herself, her anger and her sense of rejection are so strong that maybe it just can't work out that well,
that easily for her, and we get really involved in her own struggle.
And even though you can't compare Sleepy Hollow with this movie, they handle the ending well, and I'm happy with that.
Okay, okay. It has a more satisfactory ending than Sleepy Hollow, although Sleepy Hollow is perhaps...
A different movie.
A different movie, you bet. When we come back, a stunning new video version of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.
["Saving Private Ryan Theme Song"]
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Roger Ebert and the movie's video pick of the week is brought to you by Nestle Raisinettes at the movie's OY at Home Raisinettes.
My video pick this week is a superb new video transfer of Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg's masterful 1998 war epic.
Now, Spielberg is known for his attention to technical detail, in fact, his obsession.
And he made the video industry wait a long time while he tinkered with this video version until he thought he had it just right.
The film opens with what has already become one of the most famous sequences in movie history,
the landing of allied troops on Omaha Beach, which was the beginning of the campaign to recapture Europe from the Nazis.
Tom Hanks stars as a captain whose men are assigned to bring back a Private Ryan for political reasons.
Private Ryan is played by Matt Damon and he's a little surprised to be saved.
It doesn't make any sense, sir. Why? Why do I deserve to go? Why not any of these guys? They all fought just as hard as me.
It's a powerful film, a big, expensive epic that never seems to stumble and the new video version includes a documentary on the making of the film,
a message from the director, two of the coming attractions, trailers and other reference material.
It's available on tape, DVD and laser disc and it's my video pick of the week.
DVD, the picture is twice as sharp as VHS. The sound is infinitely clearer. The selection is astounding.
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In feature films, the production assistant gets stuff where it needs to be. A dozen glaze, a dozen chocolate.
So my car is pretty much my office. In eight days I drove about a thousand miles.
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The tough guy in three E's.
Shut the window or shut up. You shut your window.
The queen in four B's.
You heard me.
Taco Bell.
And the trouble that brought them together.
Give me the money.
From director Joel Schumacher.
I never thought I'd see Walter Koons with drag.
Academy Award winner Robert De Niro.
You're never gonna be a woman.
Philip Seymour Hoffman.
When channeling Jesse Hound.
Flawless.
Rated R.
Starts Wednesday, November 24th at theaters everywhere.
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Now let's take another look at the movies we reviewed on this week's show.
A split decision for Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow.
I thought it was a surprisingly good thriller, but Michaela thought it started strong and then lost its way.
It is rated R for gore.
Two enthusiastic thumbs up though for 42 Up, Michael Afton's latest chapter in the longest running documentary film series.
And two more big thumbs up for Mansfield Park, a passionate adaptation of Jane Austen's novel.
Two thumbs up for the new James Bond adventure, The World Is Not Enough.
Although Michaela wished there had been more new stuff.
And finally two thumbs up with great admiration for Rosetta, the grand prize winner this year at Cannes.
Well I'm definitely gonna go home and get all my friends that are stuck on this real world television series on MTV interested in Michael Afton's 42 Up series.
This latest installment is excellent and I think it will rekindle the interest in the whole series.
I hope so. And you know it's only gonna play in a few big cities as a film, but then it will go to cable TV and it will go to video and everybody will get a chance to see it.
That's right.
Thanks a lot for being here.
Well thank you for having me.
Okay, remember you can hear our reviews, both Michaela's and mine, on the web at ebert-movies.com, part of Go Network, and you can read my print reviews at suntimes.com.
Next week more big holiday movies including Arnold Schwarzenegger's new thriller, End of Days.
And the sequel, Toy Story 2, with the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen.
That's next week and until then the balcony is closed.