REVIEWS IN A HURRY For October 2005 Restoration (1995, 118, R) **1/2 – Directed by Michael Hoffman, starring Robert Downey Jr., Sam Neill, and David Thewlis.  You remember the Restoration, don’t you, when Charles II brought the monarchy back to Britain and everyone pretended that whole Oliver Cromwell thing never happened?  “Restoration” uses this period as a backdrop for a Schmuck Who Turns Into a Nice Guy story, which, like almost all movies of the genre, is a lot of fun with the schmuck but stumbles when he becomes a nice guy.  Pacino was a decent human being for ten minutes, tops, in “Scent of a Woman.”  “Restoration” begins very well, all color, pomp, and buffoonery, as a physician tired of death and suffering is swept up by the crown and becomes the court doctor, where his basic duties are to look after the dogs and get laid.  Robert Downey Jr. is a delightful surprise as an Amadeus-type, pitted against Sam Neill’s deceptively sensuous snake-king.  Downey runs around naked, titters, looks confused, and falls asleep sitting up, drunk out of his mind.  The doctor is eventually married off to one of the king’s mistresses (Polly Walker) and given an estate, because he’s made such a fool of himself.  It’s when Downey’s doctor begins to see the error of his ways and take the long, high road to spiritual “restoration” that “Restoration” loses its way.  We stumble from one disaster to another—disease, miscarriage, plague—rather aimlessly, connected by disjointed narration and soppy music.  And just when we think it’s all over, London catches on fire.  All the while, during his personal rebirth, Downey strikes various Christ poses, feeding the hungry, comforting the lonely, curing the sick, etc.  Yes, yes, I’m a churl for bemoaning what is ultimately such a positive and admirable transition, but “Restoration” is such a lightheartedly good time until, like Oliver Cromwell, it finds its dreary conscience.  David Thewlis plays Downey’s Jiminy Cricket, Quaker-style, and Hugh Grant has a terrific cameo as a sleazebag painter in true Hugh Grant style (listen to how he says “King!”).  The director is Michael Hoffman, whom it can be said really knows how to use all the wigs, palaces, gowns, and funny hats to great effect (the movie probably racked up Oscar nominations for cinematography, art direction, etc.).  He makes the early 1600s lively and accessible.  There’s a great bit involving what, I guess, can be called a Renaissance gas mask, which, birdlike though it may be, ends up looking very spooky indeed. Run Lola Run (Lola Rente) (1999, 80 min, R) ***1/2 – Directed & written by Tom Twyker, starring Franka Potente und Moritz Bleibtrau.  A celebration of the sheer joy of putting bodies in motion.  “Run Lola Run” is, yes, a glorified music video, but what a video, all about a woman running, loud trance music, violent editing, and everything going really, really fast.  For every 30 over-edited junk food action movies, there’s one movie like this that does it well.  Franka Potente is determined, athletic, and callipygian as an orange-haired German punk who discovers that her boyfriend has about 25 minutes to get a giant bag of loot, or gangsters will kill him.  The movie shows three different versions of how she tries to get the money, usually involving her cold banker father, the same happenstance pedestrians, the guard at the bank, a grocery store, etc.  A matter of seconds wasted in one reality make all the difference in the next.  Director Twyker mixes long takes with short takes, slow-motion with hyper-editing, even throwing in splashes of animation.  Atheists will see the movie as an illustration of the randomness of life, while theists will see “Run Lola Run” as a God’s eye view of how everything fits together.  The movie supports this anti-intellectual ambivalence—one recalls Aldous Huxley saying “the great end of life is not thought, but action”—with a quick introduction in which all the numerous characters, extras, and bystanders are milling about in a strange white nowhereland.  They ask deep-sounding questions, then discard the questions and their answers in favor of the only answer that really matters:  the size of the ball, and how long the game is.  “Run Lola Run” is a splendid game.
			Sahara (2005,124 min, PG13) *** - Directed by Breck Eisner, starring Matthew McConaghey, Steve Zahn, Penelope Cruz, and William H. Macy.  Breathtakingly mindless action romp propelled almost entirely by the goofy enthusiasm of McConaghey, Zahn, and the four-eyeds they bring along with them.  McConaghey and Zahn play ex-Navy SEALS turned treasure hunters and, in the tradition of so many action movies, they bicker like old marrieds through situations that the rest of us would be lucky enough to speak at all during, let alone not soil ourselves.  When they finally blow up the bad guy at the end, they aren’t just relieved, they scream in manic delight as if this were all a video game.  Director Breck Eisner (son of evil genius Michael) is fully in the swing of things and the movie plays like a one-up contest, with each setpiece trying to be more outlandishly implausible—or at least more pulpy—than the one that went in front of it.  McConaghey plays Dirk Pitt, a name that means he’d better be an action hero or a porn star, and he’s the creation of Clive Cussler.  Cussler probably took all this nonsense seriously and one can imagine the dreary airport novel he wrote about it.  The plot, by the way, involves an African warlord, a missing Confederate ironclad, gold, a plague, the World Health Organization, sneaking through caves, and a secret ultra-modern compound hidden in the desert.  I guess 007 was busy.  The solution to most problems is fisticuffs on the edge of something very high off the ground.  The biggest surprise for a movie called “Sahara” is that no one gets sand in his eyes.  Penelope Cruz shows up as a WHO doctor, first with glasses on and her hair tied in a bun, so we just know she needs a good man to loosen her up.  Despite 40 or 50 producers and writers, “Sahara” survives with its spirit in tact.  One can even imagine this spirit being carried by a toothily-grinning McConaghey, running desperately from an imploding backlot. Sirens (1994, 98 min R) ** - Directed & written by John Duigan, starring Hugh Grant, Tara Fitzgerald, and Sam Neill.  Yawn-inducing arthouse flick about how the religiously repressed are wrong all the time and the sexually-liberated hedonists are right all the time.  An Anglican minister (Hugh Grant) and his wife (Fitzgerald) visit a smug and superior Australian painter (Sam Neill) who lives in the outback with a harem.  “Minister’s wife” is, as always, read “unsatisfied.”  Maybe it’s my puritan streak showing, or maybe it’s just that movies that put all the answers in the hands of one party that condescends and is fashionably victimized by everyone around them (read “the audience”) bore the shit out of me.  “Sirens” adds little to the sex-and-religion debate; in fact, it mostly seems trite.  Still, this is an art movie, so there’s some good nudity, involving Tara Fitzgerald and Portia di Rossi, in support of the theory that every woman is only 4 wine coolers from becoming a lesbian. Spellbound (2003, 97 min, G) *** - Documentary directed by Jeffrey Blitz.   Probably the most entertaining and intriguing aspect of this documentary about national spelling bee finalists is that we get to peek at the real lives of brainy pre-teens all over America.  Gawky doesn’t even begin to describe them, but they’re so fresh, awkward, and human, that they make about 90% of fictional teenagers look dull and fakey by comparison.  Most movie kids exist in New York, LA, or some part of Vancouver intended to look like New York or LA, but real junior high schoolers come from places like farms and ghettoes, and even have views on stuff.  Oh yeah, and their trials and tribulations as they are picked off, one-by-one, in the spelling bee is as intense as it is darkly humorous.