Armed only with his mysterious mental connection to the feral minds of studio executives, the Movie Guru reveals just how good or bad this week's new releases will be:

Brother Bear (G)
Disney's newest animated feature follows the adventures of Kenai (voiced by Joaquin Phoenix), a bear-hunting human changed into a bear by the Great Spirits. He finds a fellow lost soul and traveller in bear cub Coda, who wants to find his mom at the annual Salmon Run. This flick's humorous sidekicks are two moose named Rutt and Tuke (voiced by Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis a.k.a. Bob and Doug McKenzie of SCTV).
Prediction: Breathtaking animation meets funny moose and heartwarming story. But then there are songs by Phil Collins. Three outta four ain't bad, eh?

In the Cut (R)
Director Jane Campion (The Piano, Portrait of a Lady) adapts Susanna Moore's sensual noir thriller. Creative writing teacher Frannie (Meg Ryan) gets wrapped up in a murder investigation led by smoldering detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo). As their physical relationship intensifies, she learns about her desires and finds her life escalating into dangerous terrain.
Prediction: This role, originally intended for Nicole Kidman, is a stretch for Ryan, and she's being praised for her decidedly non-cutesy performance. But the movie overall gets bashed for its lack of a cohesive story.

Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (R)
When simple sweetheart Dek (Rhys Ifans) proposes to his live-in girlfriend Shirley (Shirley Henderson) on national TV, her no-good ex (and the father of her 12-year-old daughter Marlene) Jimmy (Robert Carlyle) returns to town to reclaim his woman and trounce the milquetoast man who wants her hand. Director Shane Meadows alludes to the American Western in telling this British love story.
Prediction: Predictable? Yeah, maybe. But wacky British love stories are almost always better than wacky American love stories. And it'll be fun to root for Robert Carlyle as the charming baddie.

Artists on Film

Biopics almost never work well. Frequently, even the best feel like forced outlines that never quite congeal into a real film. Frida, (R, 2002), the Julie Taymor/Salma Hayek collaboration that netted a couple of Oscar nods for costume and score as well as a nomination for Hayek, falls into this category, full of rich images and seductive characters but short on true substance.

It's hard to know where the fault lies. Taymor creates some expressionistic bridges between the acts of the film, and they capture both the feel of Frida Kahlo's work as well as the culture it sprang from. Hayek is lovely and stretches her range remarkably, proving that she is certainly more than a pretty face—although one may quibble that even with the monobrow, Hayek is still too luminous to capture Kahlo's more handsome features. Alfred Molina, as Diego Rivera, almost steals the canvas from Hayek. His performance is cocksure and kind by turns, and you suddenly understand why the real Kahlo kept returning to Rivera despite his wandering hands.

What doesn't come off nearly as well is the treatment of Kahlo and Rivera's politics. Their heated discussions about Trotsky and Lenin seem forced, tacked on simply because no story of Kahlo would be complete without them, but Taymor never manages to integrate this into the film itself. The same thing happens with Kahlo's peccadilloes with French chanteuses and photographers. We are treated to the camera drooling over every last one of Hayek's sensual curves, but her motivations remain unclear. While Frida is worth checking out just for the lush visuals and rich performances, it never quite makes it past those and becomes its own work of art.

Perhaps the one biopic that proves it can be done is Ed Harris' Pollock (R, 2000). Harris, who both directs and stars in this investigation into the life of the modern paint-splattered artist, manages to avoid most of the pitfalls, combining Pollack's work and the inevitable facts of his life in ways that make the plot still feel new and undiscovered. When held up against the light of films that aren't constrained by the real life actions of their subjects, Pollock still has its pale spots. But what shines through does so vividly and with heart.

—Adrienne Martini

October 30, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 44
© 2003 Metro Pulse