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Unbreakable
This is
M. Night Shayamalan
's follow-up to his incredible
Sixth Sense
. Once again Bruce Willis is in the starring role,
and this time his Die Hard 3 co-star Samuel L. Jackson shares the
limelight.
Willis plays the sole survivor of a train horrific crash. Jackson, a comic-book collector, tracks Willis down and tries to help him discover the reason that he survived unharmed while everyone else died. As with Sixth Sense there is a shocking twist in the end.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
This is another offering from
Ang Lee
[Ride With The Devil], which cleared up at the Golden Globes and was
nominated for the Academy Awards.
It is set in China several centuries ago,
in a mystical age which gives Lee the excuse to use mystical effects.
There are two main plots. The first one centres around two forty-something veteran warriors, the former Bond Girl Michelle Yeoh and her comrade Chow Yun-Fat [best known for gunplay in John Woo films]. She is the widow of his best friend, and their unspoken love must be unfulfilled.
Chow meets with Yeoh and entrusts her with a sword that she must take to a nobleman they know in the city. After it is delivered it is stolen by a wire-fighting ninja-clad figure. Also, it appears that a female bandit called Jade Fox is in town.
The second plot concerns a younger pair of lovers. It includes a flashback in the desert that is reminiscent of The English Patient [but in a good way].
Despite the experience and expertise of the cast and their doubles, Lee has used [and IMHO over-used] wire-fu. At one point characters literally walk on water! To this reviewer, such activity is incredibly distracting.
The ending? Well, it is incredibly ambiguous. But apparently there is a sequel in the works [the film was based on one book out of a series of about 4, it seems], so all's well that ends well. And things couldn't better be.
Little Nicky
The film starts with Adam Sandler's pal Jon Lovitz as a horny peeping tom
who is murdered and goes to Hell.
This indicates a couple of things that follow.
First is that the film needs as many names and stars as possible,
because it has no plot to speak of. Another cameo occurs later on,
when Sandler's other pal Rob Schneider [
Demolition Man, Judge Dredd
] has a couple of lines as a bystander.
The other irritating factor about the film?
Its disturbing Christian morality about Hell and sin. Yuk!
Harvey Keitel is the King of Hell, while Rodney Dangerfield plays his father [the retired founder of Hell]. He has to decide on the succession, which of his three sons will replace him. They are the American Adam Sandler, the Welsh Rhys Ifan [Notting Hill] and the token Black guy. Keitel wisely turns all three down, so the Welshie and the African-American seal up the gates of Hell and go to rule Earth instead. As a result Keitel starts to fade away. Only Nicky can travel to Earth, capture his brothers and save their father.
On Earth, Nicky's only helpers are a talking dog, a gay flatmate and a couple of heavy-metal satanist stereotypes. While on Earth, Nicky meets and falls in love with Patricia Arquette. Reese Witherspoon also pops up as a babelicious valley-girl angel.
Ifan's plot is to make the people of NYC become hedonists, to abandon themselves to a life of pleasure [or so-called sin], and then damn themselves into his power. In other words, the plot is conventional and moralistic. Also, the acting is dreadful and ... well, so is everything else.