Directed by Terry Gilliam

Written by Ehren Kruger

Starring: Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Lena Headey and Peter Stormare

118 min.

Don’t expect the obligatory studio-damning follow-up documentary. For a change, over the top (and frequently over budget) director Terry Gilliam received final cut.

His first completed film since 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gilliam reportedly tinkered for two years while Miramax repeatedly shuffled opening dates. In wide release at last, The Brothers Grimm is a visually dazzling Byzantine blockbuster of a thrill ride aimed at adult minds. Finally, a contemporary fantasy film that shuns the Hollywood notion that action and adventure must solely be geared toward 14-year-old boys. Given their similarities and dark underlying preoccupations, chances are Walt Disney is applauding inside his cryogenic chamber.

There are three types of people in this world: those who do not believe in magic beans, those who do and the Studio Heads who capitalize on those who do. Not unlike their contemporary Hollywood counterparts, 19th century hucksters Wilhelm (Matt Damon) and Jacob Grimm (Heath Ledger) track local villages selling counterfeit action tales (with great advance word of mouth) that climax with a bundle of slick special effects. They weave tales of nonexistent monsters then offer to exterminate them for a hefty fee. Business is booming until the curse of a 300-year-old queen (Monica Belucci) turns out to be the real deal.

Not since Warner Bros. animator Tex Avery’s screwball classic Little Red Walking Hood, in which Cinderella telephones Red from the Three Bears’ house to alert her of the Big Bad Wolf’s pending arrival, has a film taken such delight in mixing and matching fairy tales. Cindy, Red, Snow White, Rapunzel, you name them and they’re in the pages of horror writer Ehren Kruger’s (Arlington Road, the Americanized The Ring and its sequel) gets-better-as-it-progresses screenplay.

Damon and Ledger, with an emphasis on the quirky latter, bring a suitable second-rate ’30s comedy team sensibility to the caterwauling siblings. Shemp and Larry minus Moe, but it works. Gilliam regular Jonathan Pryce’s evil Officer Delatombe deliciously delivers some of the film’s funniest lines. Favoring spectacle, Gilliam wisely tunes down a romantic subplot involving adventuress Lena Headey.

It’s Cavaldi, Peter Stormare’s larger than life and stronger than dirt henchman, that triumphs over all albeit the art direction. Even with spotty digital sound at the Fashion Valley preview screening, every syllable of Stormare’s craftily fractured French rang through.

With the exception of a Pillsbury Mudboy, the computer generated effects remain firmly anchored in their fantasy universe. This is especially noteworthy when you consider the film cost a mere $75 million to complete, almost a third of the price tags attached to either Revenge of the Silt or Bore of the World. A master of scenic invention as a means of storytelling, Gilliam along with production designer Guy Dyas flood their magic forest with menacing surrealist details, including muscular trees with relocating roots. Alternating scenes are designed around Gilliam’s customary flair for wild shifts in tone, light and color.

To hell with Spielberg and Lucas. This summer’s intelligent adventure begins, continues and ends with Terry Gilliam’s best film since Brazil.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Directed by Chan-wook Park

Written by Jae-sun Lee, Mu-yeong Lee, Yong-jong Lee and Chan-wook Park

Korean with English subtitles

Starring: Shin Ha-Kyun, Du-na Bae, Son Kang-ho

121 min. in CinemaScope

Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun), a young deaf mute, is fired from his factory job for spending too much time away caring for a sister battling kidney failure. A black market cash-for-kidney scheme leaves Ryu without either. Joined by his leftist girlfriend Youngmin (Du-na Bae), the two decide to raise organ money by ransoming off the four-year-old daughter of Ryu’s former employer. And that’s just the first 18 minutes! There’s six more reels of multiple vengeance, murder, torture, suicide, electrocution and Baskin-Robbins’ 32nd flavor, kidney. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

Completed a year before 2003’s Korean box office sensation Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is the second Chan-wook Park film to play San Diego this year. According to the press notes, this was Korea’s first “hard-core, hardboiled crime drama.” As the title implies, there is a sense of irony at work, but don’t expect any tension-easing guffaws to dwindle the intensity; no edge-softening or sticky sentiment will act as a monkey wrench in this dark psychological thriller.

Along with this year’s delirious It’s All Gone, Pete Tong, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance continues to explore new ways of filming deafness. Instead of muffled audio every time we adopt Ryu’s point of view – a favored Hollywood approach – Park amplifies his handicap through heightened ambient noise. Downstairs they fight, upstairs they screw, and a sitcom across the hall provides an accompanying laugh track. Spared the annoying din of the thin-walled apartment dwelling, Ryu is equally oblivious to his sister’s sickbed cries. They don’t go unnoticed when four neighbor boys, believing the groans to be of a sexual nature, line up for a circle-jerk.

The film employs a subtle use of green and orange to shade both story and character. Ryu’s green hair meshes with the factory’s neon hues, making him little more than a part of the environment. Moving from green to orange, Park maps the father’s path to pay the ransom as skillfully as Hansel dispensing breadcrumbs. The relationship between the young hostage, wearing an orange outer-coat, and her kidnapper with a spring-green dye-job are mirrored by a televised fox and frog cartoon.

When a filmmaker chooses to strap on an anamorphic lens, one hopes the decision was premeditated. On the basis of only two films, Park has proven to be a master of widescreen. Note the way he composes a scene around a dresser when we first encounter Ryu and Youngmin in bed together. More than arty playfulness, the scene presents a couple separated by something so vast and insurmountable that they barely fit in the small space that life (and the frame) affords them.

Given the current political climate, audiences are reluctant to drop $10 on a tale embroidered with despair. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance has a cinematic vision backing it up. Here is your reward for enduring (or ignoring) this summer’s wretched TV knockoffs, jock comedies, and loveable penguins that somehow migrated from the Discovery Channel to local multiplexes.

Rating: 4 stars

Directed by Marcos Siega

Written by Brent Goldberg and Brent Wagner

Story by Nick Cannon

Starring: Nick Cannon, Roselyn Sanchez, Shawn Ashmore and Kelly Hu

95 min. in CinemaScope

Whenever the conversation turns to “CSI” or whatever primetime offering is currently in vogue, I quickly flag the waitress for a check. As Fran Liebowitz said, “If you’re gonna watch TV, watch TV,” and the last network television show I followed with any regularity was a Saturday morning hangover cure called “Saved by the Bell.” Not that the worst film is better than anything on television, it’s just that after watching three movies in one day, the last thing I need in my home is more visual stimulation. The line between commercial filmmaking and think-free storytelling with commercial interruptions is less conspicuous than ever, as studios bait their hooks with product inspired by, derived from and/or best suited for the small screen.

Tracy Stokes (Nick Cannon) is a third generation beat cop assigned bike duty. Only after a stolen goods deal goes bad and a pedestrian-dispersing, empty cardboard box tossing (no fruit cart?) chase ensues does newbie Tracy produce a gun. Youthful enough to pass for a high school student, under-qualified Tracy goes undercover to infiltrate an auto theft ring at a ritzy private academy. Rest assured that no new wrinkles or surprises will brighten this ancient premise. There are well-heeled punks to deal with (Shawn Ashmore and Angelo Spizzirri), a soft-hearted father substitute (Cheech Marin), a gorgeous Spanish teacher to romance (Roselyn Sanchez), and a stock authoritarian figure (Hugh Bonneville) to battle.

Being one of the few visible African-Americans at a predominantly white school, Tracy predictably demonstrates an ability to shoot hoops and later paintballs and bullets. Brace yourself: Underclassman’s running time is action-padded with a basketball game, Ski-Doo water chase, paintball contest, and even a rugby match!

Everyone on board actually bought into this vanity piece. The success of Drumline made the 24-year-old Nick Cannon a Miramax star of tomorrow. He currently has six films (including the hotly anticipated, untitled Nick Cannon project) in various stages of production, all slated for a 2005-06 release. With a name like Nick Cannon, you’d half expect a Mickey Spillane dick or a jarhead fighting alongside Sgt. Fury. Instead we have a spindly, baby-faced pup whose first-time story outline is as clownish as his onscreen persona.

Rating: 0 stars