Give me back my son!

The Forgotten (2004)
Sony Pictures presents a Joseph Ruben film, starring Julianne Moore. Written by Gerald Di Pego. 96m. PG-13 for intense thematic material, some violence and brief language.

2 stars

It seems that screenwriter Gerald Di Pego is wholly unconcerned with mundane, day-to-day human interactions. Like a veritable Fox Mulder, he wants to believe in superpowers (“Phenomenon”), guardian angels (“Angel Eyes”) and now, extraterrestrials.

This predisposition to the otherworldly isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially for those of us still trying to cope with “The X-Files” being off the air. But there’s a lot of science fiction being written and filmed these days and most, like “The Forgotten,” aren’t truly memorable - excuse the pun.

This film’s unique catch isn’t its fascination with extraterrestrial control over a human population, but something much more grounded in reality: a mother’s strong affinity for her child.

It’s been 14 months since Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) lost her 9-year-old son, Sam, in a plane crash. While her husband, Jim (Anthony Edwards), has resorted to using work to distract himself, Telly has been crippled by the loss. She sees psychiatrist Dr. Munce (Gary Sinise) to little avail and her world is turned upside down when she starts inexplicably losing physical memories - photographs, videotapes, and a scrapbook - of Sam.

Adding to her nervous dementia is Jim, who has forgotten their offspring entirely. Instead of questioning her own sanity, Telly remains indignant that she had a son. Her feeling is further catalyzed by Ash Cornell (Dominic West), an ex-hockey player that is convinced his daughter, Lauren, also died on that same plane crash.

Together, the two work to investigate how anyone could have erased physical traces of their children. Their answers come in a very “X-Files” manner: opening up more questions than answers and with all signs pointing to some sort of alien involvement that can’t be explained with normal logic.

Oh sure, there’s the usual government meddling that is rife with menacing looking agents who can’t reveal anything they probably don’t even know. But “The Forgotten” is little concerned with its characters. Telly may well have been a single mother for the disservice they do to the character of Jim. And a curious New York City detective (Alfre Woodard) is given little to do as well, making her role seem - at more than one time - like a sacrificial lamb.

Thankfully, Di Pego avoids the pitfall of even lesser movies by keeping Telly and Ash’s relationship strictly platonic. As the very essence of non-sexuality, it wouldn’t have made sense for Telly to succumb to the temptations that this transference with Ash created. The 96 minute runtime reflects the relative tautness of this wannabe horror/thriller.

Perhaps the film’s greatest contribution is its ability to provide enough shocking moments to come with its own warning label. The stingers are unrelenting, from a brilliantly staged car accident audiences won’t see coming (even now that I’ve told you) to the lightning-quick summoning of individuals by the aliens. Audiences may get a chuckle out of the final confrontation, although it’s meant to frighten them. That is inevitably the way some of these scenes play out in movies, however.

I can’t in good conscience recommend people attend “The Forgotten” in the theaters, but I can give it the same recommendation that I gave “The Ring” - another horror/thriller with a couple of shocks: Put on the popcorn, invite a couple of friends over, turn off the lights and get lost for an hour and a half.

A swing and a whiff

Mr. 3000 (2004)
Buena Vista Pictures presents a Charles Stone III film, starring Bernie Mac. Written by Eric Champnella, Keith Mitchell and Howard Gould. 104m. PG-13 for sexual content and language.

1.5 stars

I always laughed at the idea of a person like Robert McKee, who could make a living by holding intensive three-day seminars that taught budding screenwriters the elements of a good story.

I used to laugh because I thought someone like McKee was inevitably teaching them to be homogeneous in their characters, linear constructions and tidy endings. Now I laugh because I look at a film like “Mr. 3000,” and wonder if I don’t have the qualifications myself to put together something formulaic. I haven’t attended any seminars, except the impromptu seminar of “terrible films I happen to see in late summer/early fall.”

“Mr. 3000” is trading stock in two markets. It’s obviously cognizant of the public’s new found adoration of the notoriously self-centered Barry Bonds, who is currently chasing baseball immortality by launching homeruns daily into McCovey Cove. The film is also essentially “Major League” with an African-American cast; it borrows so heavily I’m surprised the producers of the earlier film haven’t sought an injunction.

The hitch of the film is this: Stan Ross (Bernie Mac) announces his retirement on the day he slaps his 3,000th hit, which he figures certifies his immortality by placing him in the Baseball Hall of Fame. I guess he’s never heard of Pete Rose.

After he’s just four votes shy of reaching entry, the Hall of Fame’s oversight committee announces that Ross was unfairly credited twice for a May game made up in September due to a curfew ordinance. Thus, the man who has staked his reputation - including a strip mall of themed stores - on his 3,000 hits must return to collect the three necessary hits and re-retire. The problem? It’s now nine years since his last game, and the 47-year-old Ross can barely manage a “girl push-up.”

In a gesture of mutual self-exploitation, Ross returns to the Milwaukee Brewers, who are experiencing slumping attendance and a dwindling returns in the race for last place. His persona brings the new energy - and new crowds - to Miller Park, much to the delight of a delightfully slimy general manager (Chris Noth).

Perhaps more than any other sport, baseball has changed remarkably in the last nine years - undergoing a shift in divisions, the addition of a wild card spot, expansion, an alleged “juiced ball,” the BALCO investigation, and the threat of contraction. So Ross not only returns to a team that switched from the American League to the National, but also experiences a new training regimen which includes non-traditional forms, like Pilates.

The story’s forward linear movement would be quite droll if Ross only quietly collected his three hits and then left the team. Instead, Ross manages to inspire the team’s best player (Brian J. White), whose brazen arrogance is a reflection of the hitman’s own persona.

In one of the more mind-boggling turn of events, Ross also reignites a romance with ESPN correspondent Maureen Simmons (Angela Bassett). Here the screenwriters try and cut a corner, but audiences won’t buy it. They’ve played Ross as frustratingly single-minded individual, but then expect him to drop the idiosyncrasy when it fits the storyline. The result is a half-baked romance with no real chemistry. Instead, two characters play through the trials and tribulations of past histories, infidelities and bruised ego like automatons.

Ross’ life is so pitiful, one can actually pinpoint the moment in which he hits rock bottom. But, as Chunk Palahniuk once wrote, “It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.” For Ross, that’s the painful moment when he offers to pay for sex and then is taunted by a man dressed in a giant hot dog uniform.

Unsurprisingly, Ross’ reverse course of altruism starts paying off at the plate until, of course, the screenwriters see fit to return him to his natural self-absorbed state. Then, with the game on the line and one bat at left, Ross steps to the plate to reach the 3,000 hit milestone. Think of the aging Jake Taylor’s final at-bat in “Major League” and I’m certain you’ll be able to ascertain before attending this movie what will ultimately happen.

This flip-flopping of the movie’s anti-hero will leave audiences cold. While the idea of playing a brazen sportsman for laughs had potential - a sort of “Cobb” in reverse - it’s execution is dead on arrival. Bernie Mac is better served as a role player if he’s to be pigeonholed in this straight-shooting, “my way or the highway” archetype.

Borrowing mastery to make calamity

Wicker Park (2004)
MGM Pictures presents a Paul McGuigan film, starring Josh Hartnett and Matthew Lillard. Written by Brandon Boyce. Inspired by the film “L’Appartement” by Gilles Mimouni. 115m. Rated PG-13 for sexuality and language.

1.5 stars

If I can be blunt about it, “Wicker Park” is about a misunderstanding that could have been cleared up with one phone call. While we forgave films from the 1930s and 40s that thrived in the “simple misunderstanding” sub-genre, audiences nowadays are more frustrated than entertained by such a plot convention.

To add salt to the wound, “Wicker Park” is adept at constantly reminding us of films that are thematically more engaging. The film is a stew of Alfred Hitchcock’s best work - “Rear Window,” “North by Northwest” and “Vertigo” all apply - along with dashes, I’ve heard, of “Single White Female” and this film’s original source material, the 1996 French effort, “L’Appartement.”

Josh Hartnett plays Matthew, a twenty-something obsessed with a woman he’s only seen on playback at the camcorder store near Chicago’s Wicker Park where he is employed. The tape was supplied, we learn later, by an actress, Alex (Rose Byrne), obsessed about Matthew. In a chance turn of events, Matthew’s obsession is actually Alex’s neighbor, Lisa (Diane Kruger).

Matthew and Lisa have a brief, but serious, relationship that abruptly ends for reasons I won’t reveal here. In a “one-in-a-billion” plot twist that completes this vaguely incestuous pool, Alex is dating Matthew’s friend, Luke (Matthew Lillard), when the camcorder-salesman-turned executive returns from New York two years after his fling with Lisa.

There’s certainly more to discover in “Wicker Park” than I’ve actually told you. But as each plot point unraveled, I felt more frustrated that the movie propagated unthinkable serendipity, but couldn’t convince its characters to do the simplest of actions to clear up misapprehensions.

While some have suggested the movie should have been set in an age before cell phones made contact instantaneous and immediately accessible, I’ll take that notion one step further. Perhaps this movie should have been set in the time before correspondence existed, when guttural chest thumping was first being decoded by the female species.

The near incomprehensible facts are that while Matthew professes love for Lisa, he doesn’t think to track her down when she leaves Chicago. And while Lisa expresses undying admiration for Matthew, she isn’t persistent enough to find him either.

And what do we do with Alex, who the movie unfairly pegs as a “psycho” because of her fixation with Matthew causes her to act selfishly? Isn’t Matthew - who follows Lisa at a short distance for hours at a time - just as deranged as his predator? The movie doesn’t seem to think so, granting Matthew a free pass because he found a way to make obsession cute and stylish.

As an addendum to its blatant hypocrisy, “Wicker Park” contains plot holes as big enough to drive a Mac truck through. I don’t know if the original source material contained the same errors in logic, so I’m not certain where to place the blame. But riddle me this: If Alex were using Luke to meet her desires for Matthew, but didn’t know Luke and Matthew were friends, how was Alex prescient in her motive? Certainly the movie isn’t suggesting she overcame infinite odds in selecting the one friend Matthew has in all of Chicago.

Not all of “Wicker Park” is an absolute waste, as the look of the film - with its split-screens and fragmented frames - nicely accentuates the disjointed feeling of the plot. The movie also shifts in time seamlessly and offers no intertile or lengthy character discourse about the temporal changes from scene to scene. In this way, it respects its audience enough to let it get confused, but then use the puzzle pieces to discover the final mold.

But like standing in the real Wicker Park in the Windy City’s wintertime, the drawbacks of this film far outweigh the potential. “Wicker Park” may have cribbed from the best, but it produced some of the worst plot contrivances seen this year.

Killing without impunity

Paparazzi (2004)
20th Century Fox presents a Paul Abascal film, starring Cole Hauser and Robin Tunney. Written by Forrest Smith. 85m. PG-13 for intense violent sequences, sexual content and language.

1 star

I remember a late afternoon in September 1997 when I was almost retching in front of my television.

Actor George Clooney was making a statement to reporters decrying the ethics of tabloid journalism in light of the Princess Diana death. He was saying, “Princess Di is dead, and who should we see about that? The driver of the car? The paparazzi? Or the magazines and papers who purchase these pictures and make bounty hunters out of photographers? The same magazines, television shows, and papers that use their pages, creating the news, causing altercations and then filming them.”

Nodding their heads in an approving fashion were those poor harassed individuals with multi-million dollar homes, Vendi bags and gold Rolexes.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, those celebrities with multi-million dollar banks accounts started withdrawing those funds for a puff piece that could only truly be enjoyed by those who are under the delusion that people who make a living off their photographs deserve to die. “Paparazzi” is the movie in question.

In the film, Bo Laramie (Cole Hauser) is an actor whose star explodes after he’s in a “Lethal Weapon”-type movie. Bo knows acting, but he doesn’t know how to deal with the new found attention he’s receiving. After nosy photographer Rex Harper (Tom Sizemore, in a truly creepy performance) shows up at little Zach Laramie’s (Blake Michael Bryan) soccer game, Bo throws a right cross into Harper’s face.

In the regular world, that’s assault. For celebrities, that’s a sentence of anger management classes.

Harper and his cronies - the slimy Leonard Clark (Tom Hollander), the sleazy Wendell Stokes (Daniel Baldwin) and the grimy Kevin Rosner (Kevin Gage) - aren’t satisfied with merely simple harassment. Instead, they stage a rundown in which they box Laramie’s family truck inside their three cars until another car comes and sideswipes the Laramie rig. Then they get out and take pictures.

It’s supposed to be a scene reminiscent of the way the Princess of Wales died - except for the part about the intoxicated driver, the high speeds and the tunnel divider.

Instead, it’s overblown, easily excitable and extremely irritating. This Mel Gibson produced movie has all the makings of a revenge piece: not just Laramie revenging his accident, but Gibson financing a film that is supposed to make paparazzi look like monsters so he can definitively prove to the world that celebrities should be left alone.

Some who know me will remember I voiced displeasure about what Gibson would do with the hundreds of millions of dollars that audiences - myself included - gave him for “The Passion of the Christ.”

I told people he was going to try and rewrite history. I didn’t know it would be this way.

With his wife missing a spleen and his child in a coma, Laramie doesn’t know how to get back at those meddling paparazzi - who are made out to be the devils incarnate. In fact, Harper says after he’s assaulted, “I'm gonna destroy your life and eat your soul.” Yuck.

Laramie’s revenge is to murder, all the way being wink-wink-nudge-nudged by the local police detective (Dennis Farina). Oh sure, he has enough evidence to convict Laramie of murder, but the detective feels sorry for the celebrity. Laramie was only defending his family, right? What’s a little murder between friends?

At the end of the movie, when the paparazzi are taking pictures at the premiere of another Laramie blockbuster, I couldn’t help but think of George Clooney. Love them or hate them, the photographers have a job to do. Clooney’s rant about restricting the media resonated with paparazzi covering the premiere of then new Clooney blockbuster, “The Peacemaker.”
As Clooney saddled down the red carpet, the paparazzi responded in a way anyone would do if someone tried publicly to get them fired.

No one snapped a single shot.

“Paparazzi” was made by a bunch of celebrities who have forgotten that the media attention have long excited people into spending their well-earned money and bankrolling their lavish lifestyles. The movie plays out like sour grapes from pots who are desperately trying to call the kettles black.

They might be reminded of what Clooney felt that night at “The Peacemaker” premiere.

Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.