LOS ANGELES – Movies are getting real for the holidays.
Along with such fictional folks as Santa, a Christmas grinch, a bottom-dweller named SpongeBob, a womanizer named Alfie and a romantic named Bridget, Hollywood’s festive season is packed with fact-based films.
Among the real-life figures:
* Eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator.”
* Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in “Kinsey,” starring Liam Neeson and directed by Bill Condon (“Gods and Monsters”).
* Singer Bobby Darin in “Beyond the Sea,” starring Kevin Spacey, who also directed.
* “Peter Pan” creator J.M. Barrie, portrayed by Johnny Depp in “Finding Neverland,” from director Marc Forster (“Monster’s Ball”).
* “Alexander,” with Colin Farrell as the legendary Greek ruler in Oliver Stone’s epic.
More contemporary real-life stories feature:
* Don Cheadle as a hotel manager who risks his life and family to shelter refugees displaced by the Rwandan genocide in “Hotel Rwanda.”
* Javier Bardem as a paralyzed Spaniard who fights for his right to die in “The Sea Inside,” directed by Alejandro Amenabar (“The Others”).
* Sean Penn as a 1970s business failure who plots to kill the president in “The Assassination of Richard Nixon.”
The holiday season kicks off today with “The Incredibles,” the latest cartoon collaboration between distributor Disney and the creative team at Pixar Animation.
Also on the animated front:
* “The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie,” the big-screen debut for the underwater guy from the Nickelodeon series.
* “The Polar Express,” featuring Tom Hanks in multiple roles for the adaptation of the best-selling picture book.
Director Robert Zemeckis said “The Polar Express” represents a breakthrough in computer-generated, performance-capture technology. Hanks and his co-stars performed on an empty soundstage, their movements and expressions recorded in minute detail by infrared cameras keyed to receptors all over their faces and bodies.
“It was unbelievably liberating,” Zemeckis said. “It allowed us to be unchained from the limits of conventional filmmaking. The actors just acted and didn’t have to deal with any of the technology or archaic kind of process we have to go through to shoot a movie.”
Hanks plays a young boy whisked by train to the North Pole, the rail conductor and Santa Claus, among other roles.
The season’s other holiday tale features Tim Allen, in “Christmas With the Kranks,” based on John Grisham’s “Skipping Christmas,” about a modern grinch who decides to forgo the yule festivities.
Allen, who starred in “The Santa Clause” and its sequel, said his character and his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) find themselves treated like lepers by friends and neighbors who cannot fathom why anyone would abandon the Christmas trappings.
The holiday season also includes:
* “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,” adapted from the children’s books, with Jim Carrey as a villain trying to swindle three orphans
* “Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera,” starring Gerard Butler as the disfigured fiend in Joel Schumacher’s musical adaptation.
* “Fat Albert,” a live-action and animation combo that updates Bill Cosby’s old TV cartoon.
* “Closer,” with Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen in a drama of passion and betrayal involving two couples.
* Adam Sandler in “Spanglish,” a culture-clash comedy centered on a family, their new Mexican maid and her daughter.
* The remake “Flight of the Phoenix,” with Dennis Quaid taking on James Stewart’s role as a pilot working with crash survivors to build a new plane from the old one’s wreckage.
* John Travolta and Scarlett Johansson in “A Love Song for Bobby Long,” about a woman who finds her inherited house inhabited by a couple of lost souls.
* “After the Sunset,” with Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek as retired thieves lured back into the game by an FBI agent (Woody Harrelson).
* “Bad Education,” from Pedro Almodovar (“All About My Mother”), a twisting reunion tale focused on two boys and the priest who ruined their romance.
* “The Dark,” starring Anna Paquin as a teen whose family moves to a house possessed by ancient evil.
* Kevin Bacon in a daring role as a child molester trying to turn his life around after prison in “The Woodsman.”
* “Bride and Prejudice,” from director Gurinder Chadha (“Bend It Like Beckham”), retelling Jane Austen’s nuptial tale as a Bollywood musical.
* “In Good Company,” with Dennis Quaid as a veteran ad man working for a new boss (Topher Grace) half his age.
* The boxing tale “Million Dollar Baby,” directed by Clint Eastwood, who also co-stars with Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank.
* “The Merchant of Venice,” with Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons in an update of Shakespeare’s tale of romance and vengeance.
* Renee Zellweger returning in “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason,” with Britain’s favorite lonelyheart wondering if her happy ending from “Bridget Jones’s Diary” is what she wanted, after all.
* “Ocean’s Twelve,” reuniting George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon and the rest of the “Ocean’s Eleven” gang.
* Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller in “Meet the Fockers,” their follow-up to “Meet the Parents.”
* “Blade: Trinity,” with Wesley Snipes returning for his third time out as the vampire hunter, squaring off against Dracula.
* “Seed of Chucky,” resurrecting the killer doll of the “Child’s Play” horror flicks.
The season brings notable reunions between actors and filmmakers, including “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,” from filmmaker Wes Anderson and featuring his “The Royal Tenenbaums” co-stars Bill Murray, Anjelica Huston and Owen Wilson. Murray plays an oceanographer tracking a shark that ate his partner. Cate Blanchett co-stars.
“A Very Long Engagement” reteams director Jean-Pierre Jeunet with his “Amelie” star Audrey Tautou in a whimsical drama about a woman who refuses to give up hope that her missing fiance survived the trenches of World War I.
The sumptuous martial-arts epic “House of Flying Daggers” from director Zhang Yimou (“Hero”) stars his frequent leading lady, Zhang Ziyi, as a ninth century rebel caught in a tragic love triangle with the two men who love her.
Nicolas Cage and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who previously collaborated on “The Rock,” “Con Air” and “Gone in Sixty,” reunite for “National Treasure.” Cage plays an adventurer competing with a bad guy to steal the Declaration of Independence, which bears a map in invisible ink leading to a fortune hidden by the founding fathers.
What’s ‘Alfie’ all about?
* Jude Law is no Michael Caine in this pointless remake of a 1960s British movie.
By Robert Horton
Herald Movie Critic
Michael Caine, young and light and full of charm, became a star in 1966 with the release of “Alfie.” That tale of a womanizing cad introduced Caine and Swinging London to much of the world.
It’s hard to imagine a good reason to remake this movie in 2004, and even less reason if you A) set the movie in Manhattan, and B) cast Jude Law in the lead role.
Jude Law is a fine actor, and he created smashing characters in “A.I.” and “Cold Mountain” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” But he creates characters; he doesn’t exude personality, the way Michael Caine does. (I acknowledge that he does have the looks, however, to play a man irresistible to women.)
Setting this Englishman in New York City seems a completely irrelevant choice, except as an appeal to the American audience. But here he is, Alfie Elkins, a limousine driver prone to shagging his female clients and pretty much any other woman that comes into view.
Alfie glides through the movie, bedding his best friend’s girlfriend (Nia Long), eluding the clutches of a semi-regular companion (Marisa Tomei), and moving up in the world by romancing an older, wealthy free spirit (Susan Sarandon, with a tattoo on her cleavage).
Like the original film, it’s a mix of comedy and serious stuff. If memory serves, a sequence involving an unexpected pregnancy and an abortion clinic is given shorter shrift in the remake.
All along the way, Alfie keeps getting lectures, from his ladies, his friend (Omar Epps), and from complete strangers he meets in the men’s room. He gets lectured by Mick Jagger, too; Jagger, that emblem of Swinging London sexual permissiveness, sings three new songs on the soundtrack, which intrude at key moments to remind Alfie of his hollow lifestyle.
Indeed, “Alfie” manages to make a life devoted to hedonistic pleasure seem dreary. Manhattan looks tacky, too, thus negating any positives the locale change might have had. (The film was largely shot in England, thoroughly confusing the issue.)
The only chemistry Alfie has with any of his girls is with a somewhat unstable “Christmas miracle” played by Sienna Miller. Sarandon, naturally, brings some sauce to her role, but like everybody else in this movie she’s playing a cartoon.
“Alife” is directed and co-written by Charles Shyer, who hasn’t gotten any better since the days of “Father of the Bride.” The comedy is ill-timed, and the device of having Alfie speak directly to the camera (held over from the Caine film) never quite flows.
And the theme song? You remember: “What’s it all about, Alfie?” That Burt Bacharach-Hal David tune sneaks into the end credits (sung by Joss Stone), and by then this movie is a lost cause.
Jude Law stars in “Alfie.”
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