The Leopard (1963)

Action-horror. Starring Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr and
Jared Harris. Directed by Alexander Witt. (R. 90 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.
).

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You can tell a lot about a zombie movie by the quality of the undead.
There are filmmakers who take the rotting flesh and exploding brains seriously
(the recent “Dawn of the Dead” remake is a good example), and there are
directors who pour oatmeal on the heads of a few dozen extras, instruct them
to stagger toward the camera and move on to their next project.

“Resident Evil: Apocalypse” belongs in the latter category,
providing zombies that are somehow less convincing than the ones from Michael
Jackson’s “Thriller” video. With a horrible script and only semi-interesting
characters, the movie will be particularly frustrating for fans of the
Resident Evil video game franchise - which is a much better product than its
big-screen counterpart. In case you’ve forgotten - or are trying to forget - a
two-minute summary of the first “Resident Evil” movie is provided in the
sequel.

“Resident Evil: Apocalypse” continues with the grotesque horde taking
over the urban population of Raccoon City, which once again looks a lot like
Toronto.

“Resident Evil” survivor Alice (Milla Jovovich), who was genetically
perfected by a team of scientists to be the ultimate fighting machine, joins
forces with a few police officers and citizens trying to escape the
quarantined and soon-to-be-nuked metropolis.

Science fiction fans won’t be surprised by the second-rate feel of the
movie. “Resident Evil: Apocalypse” was written by Paul W.S. Anderson, director
of “Alien vs. Predator” and the first “Resident Evil.” Anderson, who was
genetically perfected by a team of scientists to create bad movies that make
money anyway, nearly outdoes himself here, writing a script that includes a
scene featuring zombie hookers.

Alexander Witt takes over directorial duties, but he employs all of
Anderson’s classic techniques, including using the David Letterman monkey-cam
to film all the action scenes (quick-cut editing is a lot cheaper than hiring
a bunch of good fight choreographers). The money he saved certainly didn’t go
to the main zombie villain, who appears to be a big guy in a rubber suit.

The budget problems would be forgivable if the movie were a little more
compelling. While the best comic book movies make concessions to the real
world (the X-Men wear leather, not ridiculous- looking spandex costumes), the
makers of “Resident Evil” expect us to believe that a big corporation could
watch an entire city’s inhabitants turn into flesh-consuming spawns of evil,
and then succeed in covering the disaster up. Doesn’t anyone have a camera
phone?

“Resident Evil: Apocalypse” would make a lot more sense if it carried a PG-
13 rating. The action looks cheap, but there’s plenty of it, and along with
the zombie dogs and scantily clad protagonists, Witt and Anderson do succeed
in making a lot of things blow up. It’s just too bad that almost nothing in
the movie seems original. The “Thriller” video may have featured hokey dancing
zombies, but at least someone was making an effort.

Advisory: This film contains violence, gore and nudity.

- Peter Hartlaub

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‘Warriors of Heaven and Earth’

Action-adventure. Starring Jiang Wen, Vicky Zhao Wei. Written and
directed by He Ping. In Mandarin with English subtitles. (R. 114 minutes. At
the Galaxy.).

There’s a wonderful fight between two swordsmen near the beginning of the
new Chinese adventure epic “Warriors of Heaven and Earth,” taking place in,
around and through a wooden cabin - a scene so exhilarating and so much fun
that it’s almost shocking how monotonous the movie eventually becomes. Writer-
director He Ping brings an agreeably old-fashioned style to this tale of two
rival swordsmen who put aside their differences to escort a caravan, which
includes a general’s daughter and a monk with a valuable Buddhist artifact,
safely to the emperor. But the problem is that he chose to direct this silly
story with an air of ominous importance usually reserved for Holocaust epics,
so reverential is his leaden camera, when he really needed to just lighten up.
Even “Gone With the Wind” had its fun at times.

It’s filled with sword fights that eventually become repetitive, and the
best reason to see the film is to admire the David Lean-like Gobi desert
landscapes of cinematographer Zhao Fei, whose distinguished work includes
Zhang Yimou’s “Raise the Red Lantern” and three Woody Allen films, including
“Sweet and Lowdown.”

The charismatic Jiang Wen (”Red Sorghum”) is renegade Chinese general Li,
who has a death sentence hanging over his head because he refused an order to
execute women and children after winning a battle in Western China against
invading Turkish armies. The Japanese-born emissary Lai Xi (Nakai Kiichi) is
sent to execute Li, but the caravan needs escorting, and they agree that
they’ll fight to the death after they complete their mission.

Naturally, they become very respectful of each other’s skills and
character, so there’s not much tension here, even though the movie pretends
there is. In fact, there’s not much tension at all in “Warriors of Heaven and
Earth,” so predictable is its standard-issue plot.

In fact, it bears a strong resemblance to a China-set Korean epic from
2001, “Musa: The Warrior,” in which Zhang Ziyi was a princess being escorted
to safety. Another disappointment is the misuse of the engaging Hong Kong star
Vicky Zhao Wei (”Shaolin Soccer”), a delightful screen presence who is wasted
here, even though her character narrates the story.

Admittedly, “Warriors of Heaven and Earth” is eminently watchable, with
enough majestic vistas and heroic derring-do to get by. It could have been so
much more.

Advisory: Violent battle scenes and sword fights.

- G. Allen Johnson

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‘Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye’

Documentary. With Isabelle Huppert, Arthur Miller, Elliott Erwitt, Josef
Koudelka and Ferdinand Scianna. Directed and written by Heinz Bütler. In
French with spoken English translation. (Not rated. 72 minutes. At the Roxie)..

“You can’t force things,” photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson says at one
point in Heinz Bütler’s documentary portrait of him. The director must have
taken this advice to heart, for his film moves leisurely from conversations
with the late master, who died at 95 in early August, to brief interviews with
such illustrious admirers as Arthur Miller, Isabelle Huppert - whom Cartier-
Bresson photographed - and publisher Robert Delpire. The amount of time
Cartier- Bresson spends on camera represents a documentary triumph of sorts.
He shied away from the camera so successfully that many viewers will be
surprised to find that in his 90s he resembled both Jean Renoir, who gave him
one of his first jobs, and the late philosopher Richard Wollheim.

We see Cartier-Bresson paging through published versions of his pictures
and through loose prints. He stops to comment now and then, expressing
satisfaction more often than providing revelations.

In one exceptional case, he explains the three men standing on a pedestal
looking over the Berlin Wall. “They’re trying to see a curtain at a window,”
Cartier-Bresson says, “a signal from a relative.”

Few films on any subject linger on still photographs as this one does. No
zooms, no jump cuts, just full-frame views of black and white prints. Most
last for at least 10 seconds, echoing Cartier-Bresson’s statement that “taking
a picture means holding your breath.”

But does anyone still need to be persuaded of Cartier-Bresson’s
greatness? The famous faces Bütler interviewed add to our sense of the
photographer’s accomplishment only when they supply personal details. Miller
gives a little background to a famous portrait of Marilyn Monroe on the set of
“The Misfits.” Huppert says that to have Cartier-Bresson photograph her was to
learn something new of herself.

The photographer himself speaks uncomplainingly of certain craft
difficulties and journalistic hazards, but a viewer of the film misses any
sense of what distinguishes a great Cartier-Bresson picture from a good one,
never mind a bad one.

And the photographer himself cannot have been happy with the short shrift
the documentary gives to drawing, which occupied him through most of his last
decades.

- Kenneth Baker

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‘THX 1138: The George Lucas Director’s Cut’

Science fiction drama. Starring Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Don
Pedro Colley and Maggie McOmie. Directed by George Lucas. (R. 88 minutes. At
the Metreon.).

“THX 1138″ always was a misunderstood effort. When George Lucas’ big-
screen directorial debut was released in 1971, it was frequently double billed
with bad horror films, even though it had more in common with thoughtprovoking
classics such as “1984.”

More than three decades later, mainstream audiences spoiled on special
effects spectaculars including Lucas’ own “Star Wars” films are probably even
less likely to “get” the low-budget movie. But this new, highly polished
upgrade is a nice gift for science fiction fans, lacing an all-but-hopeless
vision of the future with strains of humanity and even some subtle humor.

Robert Duvall is THX 1138, who works in a factory that builds the
seemingly lobotomized underground society’s automated police force. He is the
everyman worker drone, until his mate (Maggie McOmie) cuts out his sedation
pills and he’s launched on a journey toward individuality.

The late Donald Pleasence stands out as SEN, a jumpy prisoner who joins
THX’s jailbreak. The budget for the picture was originally set at $777,777,
about half of which appears to have gone toward white paint. As much as the
movie’s themes are dark, it’s a feature bathed in bright light.

“THX 1138″ was the first project for Francis Ford Coppola’s American
Zoetrope studio, and the movie stays mostly underground and close to home. The
real showcase is Lucas’ still-percolating talent, which is apparent throughout
the film. For a movie that will never in a thousand reissues appeal to the
masses (several in the audience walked out of the San Francisco preview
screening), the script by Lucas and co-screenwriter Walter Murch brings a lot
of humor and inventiveness to the genre. There’s no cantina scene or “Luke,
I’m your father” moments, but the holographic television stations,
productivity-happy public address system (”Let us be thankful we have commerce!
Buy more! Buy more now!”) and the movie’s stark prison-with-no-walls are
almost as memorable.

After Warner Bros. studios famously hated the film and brought in its own
editors, Lucas restored the scenes to the correct order and added about five
minutes. But it’s hard to tell where.

“THX 1138: The Director’s Cut” doesn’t feature the all-consuming visual
overhauls of the “Star Wars” trilogy special editions. And whatever special
effects were added blend in nicely with the clunky green-screen computers and
poor-resolution video monitors, which Lucas appears to have left firmly in
1971.

With science fiction now associated with big budgets and heavy action,
“THX 1138″ will probably be even less of a mainstream crowd pleaser than it
was three decades ago. But at least this time the movie will be seen as its
creators intended - in a director’s cut that polishes the artist’s bleak
vision without losing the feeling of great things to come.

Advisory: This film contains nudity, violence and dark adult themes.

- Peter Hartlaub

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‘The Leopard’

Drama. Starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon. Directed
by Luchino Visconti. In Italian with English subtitles. (Not rated. 185
minutes. At the Castro)..

“Not many directors have had such a total belief in style,” Martin
Scorsese said of Luchino Visconti in “My Voyage to Italy,” his documentary on
Italian cinema. “He worked through total artifice as a way to the truth.”

There is no better example of Visconti’s skill on display than the
concluding passage of “The Leopard,” a nearly hourlong ballroom sequence that
says everything about the passing of an era and the total reorganization of
Italian society through a series of looks, expressions and movement that is
deep, rich and emotional.

The original 1963 Italian film was 205 minutes; a 185-minute version, the
most complete in existence, was meticulously restored for its DVD release by
the Criterion Collection, and the glorious wide-screen 35mm print struck from
that restoration opens today at the Castro.

Based on a 1958 book by Giuseppe Lampedusa, which is still one of the
best-selling books in Italian publishing history, “The Leopard” tells the
story of a Sicilian count, Prince Don Fabrizio Salina (Burt Lancaster), who
realizes his way of life is doomed during the outbreak of revolution in the
1860s that would unite the Italian provinces into one country (the
“Risorgimento,” literally, the resurgence), and begins planning for a way
for his family to survive.

He adopts his nephew Tancredi’s credo, which is: “For things to stay the
same, everything must change.” Part of that change is marrying off the
pragmatic and ambitious Tancredi (Alain Delon) to Angelica (Claudia
Cardinale), the beautiful daughter of a local official (Paolo Stoppa) whose
newfound wealth and importance is a direct result of the new order.

Lancaster was imposed on Visconti by the American co-producer, 20th
Century Fox. Although he spoke in his own voice in the butchered American
English-language version, which is about 25 minutes shorter, the Italian
dubbing in Visconti’s version doesn’t seem strange. European co-productions
at that time often had a mix of international personalities (Delon, of
course, is French), and post-synched dubbing was the norm. Lancaster lends
such a charismatic presence, and he conveys so much through his expressions,
that the film doesn’t feel compromised, and it is one of his best
performances.

The formal style of “The Leopard” is deceiving in that in 1963, with
the European New Wave in full force with stylistically adventurous films
like “La Dolce Vita,” “Jules and Jim” and “Woman in the Dunes,” it looked
old school. But make no mistake; “The Leopard” is just as subversive.

Visconti (1906-76) was born into aristocracy - his full name was Count
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, and he came from one of Europe’s oldest
families. But in his 30s he became a Marxist, and until the end of his life
was a member of the Communist Party. He was inspired to be a filmmaker when,
while in Paris, he fell into a job as an assistant to Jean Renoir on two
films, including “The Lower Depths” (1936), and his ideology was in full
force in one of the key films in the post-World War II Neorealist movement,
“La Terra Trema.”

But it was with “Senso” that Visconti first explored the Risorgimento,
and began his foray into excessive style through costumes, set design and
music. “The Leopard” is the culmination of that style - and through it, he
can convey the culture of the aristocracy and feel empathy for it (after all,
he is of it), yet at the same time realize (through his Marxist beliefs)
that change is/was necessary. It is politically insightful without being
preachy. The feeling at the end of this masterpiece - a profound meditation
on mortality, really - is so pitch-perfect and conveys so many complexities at
a very simple level that “The Leopard” has become one of the greatest of all
epics.

- G. Allen Johnson

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‘Ju-On’

Horror thriller. Starring Megumi Okina, Misaki Ito, Yui Ichikawa, Misa
Uehara and Yuya Ozeki. Directed and written by Takashi Shimizu. (R. 92 minutes.
Japanese with English subtitles. At Berkeley’s Act One & Two, and the Rafael
Film Center.).

If moviegoers are to believe Sam Raimi (he being the director of “Spider-
Man” and “Spider-Man 2″), “Ju-On” is one of the scariest movies in cinematic
history. To quote Raimi, “Ju-On” is “the most frightening film I’ve ever seen,
leaving you no time to catch your breath.”

Really? Could Raimi’s praise have anything to do with the fact he has a
vested interest in the movie’s success - that Raimi is the executive producer
of a new American version of this Japanese cult film? Both the new and old
versions are directed by Takashi Shimizu, so maybe Raimi was just being nice
to Shimizu when he offered his adulation. Bluntly speaking, “Ju-On” is
anything but frightening. Ridiculous. Unbelievable. Unintentionally funny. It
might as well be a parody of a horror film.

Here’s the story line: A young, beautiful home-care worker named Rika
(Megumi Okina) visits a patient’s home in suburban Tokyo. The house is
disheveled and the patient traumatized, and when Rika notices a child’s hand
pressing against a door, she investigates - going upstairs and (against a
backdrop of scary music) discovering a black cat that seems to turn into a
young boy. This boy (Yuya Ozeki) has white powder all over his face,
signifying that he’s among the living dead. Is the house haunted? Was the boy
part of a family that was killed there a few years earlier? Rika is scared but
curious. And for the next 90 minutes, we see a phalanx of other people - from
police officers to a daughter of the patient - also visit the home, and also
come away puzzled. Or dead.

The problem is a curse that takes the form of a dead woman who crawls and
hovers and looms large whenever there’s a need for a scary transition.

One reason, perhaps, that “Ju-On” became such a big hit in Japan: The
film takes place in isolated corridors and streets, often at night. There’s
even a series of daytime shots of walkways empty of any people. This feeling
of aloneness is unusual in a small country whose capital city has more than 12
million residents. American audiences may not be as intrigued by this aspect
of “Ju-On,” but that doesn’t leave much else to recommend.Apparently, part of the dead woman’s curse is making sure her victims freeze
up upon sight of her. They don’t run away. They don’t block her path with
chairs. They don’t use their cell phones to call the authorities. It’s enough
to make you scream at the screen.

Advisory: This film has some disturbing images.

- Jonathan Curiel

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‘Bulgarian Lovers’

Comedy-drama. Starring Fernando Guillen Cuervo, Dritan Biba. (Not rated.
101 minutes. Spanish with English subtitles. At the Lumiere.).

The latest sport for bourgeois middle-aged attorney Daniel (Fernando
Guillen Cuervo) and his circle of affluent gay friends is prowling Madrid’s
gay bars in search of impoverished immigrant guys - who are themselves looking
for money or someone to “fix their papers.”

“It was the turn of the millennium,” Daniel tells us in voice-over as he
roams a nightclub with a video camera in search of the night’s hunk. “Suddenly
there was an invasion of multicolored boys looking for a better life in our
country. Looking for someone to help them out of their helplessness.”

Daniel strikes gold one night when he gives a light - then dinner, then a
home - to Kyril (Dritan Biba), a sexually magnetic 23-year-old Bulgarian, who
proves to be a tiger in the sack.

But the hunter gets captured by the game in this sly, stylishly cynical
dark farce, based on Eduardo Mendicutti’s novel and directed by gay Spanish
director Eloy de la Iglesias, making his return to filmmaking after a 15-year
absence.

Virile Kyril also has a Bulgarian girlfriend, and Daniel willingly and
somewhat masochistically becomes subsumed by his imported rent boy - his wry
asides to the viewer make it clear that he considers being used a reasonable
trade-off for passion. (Best line: After Daniel proclaims his love by
declaring, “I’d give my life for you,” Kyril replies, “I’d also give your life
for me.”)

De la Iglesias digs into the juicy themes of immigrant survival and the
economies of sex relationships, and plays in stylish Almodovar mode - with
fluid sexuality, multiple layers of deceit and plentiful (and spectacular)
male nudity.

“Bulgarian Lovers” is well acted, and its Faustian dynamic of mutual
exploitation would be absorbing enough, but as Kyril draws Daniel into ever
shadier situations, the film loses its tone and devolves into absurd political
farce.

Advisory: Sexual situations, drug use and male frontal nudity.

- Joe Brown