items tagged with Lasse Hallstrom

DEAR JOHN

Since no one's been pressing a gun to my head, I haven't read Nicholas Sparks' Dear John, which concerns a pair of star-crossed lovers whose romance is derailed by the young man's Army tenure. I have, however, seen director Lasse Hallström's screen version, which apparently follows the novel's blueprint faithfully (albeit with an altered ending), so permit me a question: Does Sparks have absolutely no shame?

THE HOAX

Offhand, I can think of no performer less well-suited to play a desperate, talkative, Jewish novelist than Richard Gere. Yet in Lasse Hallström's The Hoax, Gere is asked to portray exactly that - real-life author Clifford Irving, who, in 1971, received a $1-million advance for concocting a fictional autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes - and the perceived miscasting turns out to be the movie's subtlest masterstroke.

GLORY ROAD

Is it just a coincidence, or do you think there’s an annual meeting wherein Disney shareholders tell the studio’s executives, “Bring us this year’s feel-good, triumph-of-the-underdog sports flick, and if you can find one that’s more formulaic, clichéd, and shameless than last year’s, all the better!” A couple of years back, we endured Kurt Russell guiding a bunch of interchangeable skaters to Olympic victory in the hockey drama Miracle, and my head is still reeling from the moribund sentimentality – and beyond-obnoxious miniature caddie – of The Greatest Game Ever Played, which managed to make golf look about five times less exciting than the sport’s reputation would suggest.

MURDERBALL

I’ve seen a lot of sublimely satisfying documentaries this year, but none with the scope and passion of Murderball. Like last year’s brilliant Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, the film’s title and ostensible subject matter – quadriplegic rugby – are probably enough to frighten off the audiences who would love it the most, which I pray won’t happen; Murderball, currently playing at the Brew & View Rocket, is, thus far, the most invigorating, fascinating, surprising, and deeply human movie of 2005.

SNATCH

First, the bad news: Guy Ritchie’s latest crime thriller, Snatch, is nearly a carbon copy of his sizzling 1998 debut film, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. The good news: Who cares? Those who like their thrills fast, bloody, twisty, and awfully funny will be in B-movie paradise here; we’re only three weeks into January, and we already have a movie that’s more enjoyable than 90 percent of what was released last year.