Monica Bellucci Page 3

In this outing, all four family members are dropped right in the middle of their respective crises: Dad (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) is rekindling an affair with an old girlfriend (played by Monica Bellucci, who could possibly blame him?), while Mom (Laura Morante) is tentatively dipping a toe into the world of acting. Sis Valentina (Nicoletta Romanoff) is the proto-teen who hates everything and dresses like a whore -- and she's trying to become a dancer on TV... and what good could come of that? Then there's brooding Paolo (Silvio Muccino, Gabriele's kid brother and a regular in his films), who can't score with the girls and seems on the verge of suicide from frame one.

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The Brotherhood of the Wolf has all of the makings of a great French epic. Dashing leading men including Vincent Cassel (The Crimson Rivers), voluptuous women such as Emilie Dequenne and Monica Bellucci, a promising storyline packed full of complex, daunting elements of suspense and mystery, and impressive production values clearly evident in costuming and set design. The problem is that this film is about as French in style and execution as McDonald's French fries.

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Lee's initial target for censure is the crooked corporate culture that fosters brazenly greedy and duplicitous companies such as Enron and Worldcom. Jack Armstrong (Anthony Mackie) is a vice president at a pharmaceutical company whose new HIV cure has been rejected by the FDA. When he discovers a conspiracy orchestrated by the corporation's arrogant, racist CEO (Woody Harrelson) and his ruthless Martha Stewart-ish boss (Ellen Barkin) to cook the books and keep employees and shareholders in the dark about the new drug's ineffectiveness, Jack rats out his superiors to the SEC, and the price for betraying "the family" is immediate dismissal. As luck would have it, though, a new money-making venture falls directly into his, ahem, lap - his ex-fiancé Fatima (Kerry Washington), who left him for another woman, now wants to pay him $10,000 to impregnate her and her Dominican girlfriend. Before long, Armstrong - in some sort of filthier version of the Patrick Dempsey '80s cult classic Loverboy - is occupying his time spreading his seed through NYC's upper-crust lesbian community (which includes Monica Bellucci as a Mafioso don's daughter) for wads of cash.

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The story is seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy named Renato (Giuseppe Sulfaro ), who is growing up in a small Sicilian village during the World War II. For a good three-fourths of the film, the local beauty Malèna (Monica Bellucci), the object of desire for the entire village, monotonously parades through streets and piazzas with cow-like indifference, followed by Renato and his gang of friends.

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The use of flashbacks is interesting and unique -- replaying scenes over and over with a different spin. And the film truly keeps you guessing, though it goes out of the way to make Hackman look guilty. But what's up with the nonsense ending?

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Now that the film is out, it finally can speak for itself. And as it turns out, some of the arguments are valid. Passion, which arduously depicts the final hours of Jesus Christ, contains brutal scenes of torture that linger for an eternity. And Gibson does limit his narrative to Jesus' conviction and crucifixion, with occasional fleeting reminders of significant events such as the last supper or the Sermon on the Mount.

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In 2003, no one needs to be told, because everyone fully knows what the Matrix is. The idea of the Matrix has entered the popular lexicon. Magazines, with utter seriousness, create polls asking whether readers think we are really living in the Matrix. And people say yes, apparently unable to realize that it is only a movie.

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Civil war is tearing Nigeria in two. Without warning, the country's president is overthrown by infidels, who assassinate the deposed leader along with his immediate family. Amidst the political upheaval, our government orders a U.S. Navy SEAL platoon led by Lt. A.K. Waters (Willis) to infiltrate the African jungles and extract Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci) and her assistants.

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There could be no one better than Terry Gilliam to direct a tongue-in-cheek supernatural thriller set in a world of fairytales.

Unfortunately, in "The Brothers Grimm" -- a movie with a Terry Gilliam look and feel but without a Terry Gilliam soul -- the eccentric genius behind "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "12 Monkeys" and "Brazil" seems to have had his spirit broken by studio mandates (like a hottie love interest) and commercial constraints (like a curtailed run time).

Set in French-occupied Germany during the early 19th century, the fable-warping story reinvents the the legendary Grimms as good-natured con artists, who only later became authors, immortalizing the likes of Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin and the Golden Goose by putting their own famous dark-candy spin on familiar folk tales. Here wily huckster Wilhelm (Matt Damon) and frustrated idealistic scholar Jakob (Heath Ledger) are traveling snake-oil salesmen, exploiting local superstitions, staging theatrical hauntings, then peddling their services as ghost busters.

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"Brotherhood of the Wolf" isn't a bad pre-Revolutionary French action-horror flick, per se. But everything that's wrong with it can be summed up by noting that if it had been made in English, it would have starred Christopher Lambert, that heavy-browed, stiff and oh-so-serious staple of glossy B-fantasy swordplay flicks like the "Highlander" series.

It's lavishly over-produced yet full of cheap cinematic artifice -- like gratuitous, unmotivated, absurdly dramatic slow motion and over-the-top sound effects. It takes itself very seriously for a movie with blinders on to its pronounced plot holes. It features ominous secret-society meetings of evil aristocrats who wear masks and velvet robes. And it has a hunky blond hero (Samuel Le Bihan) with period-inaccurate, rock star mullet hair, who sports war paint and twirls twin swords -- just because it looks cool -- during martial arts duels set in cathedral-like mossy forests.

Everything that's right with "Brotherhood of the Wolf" is harder to explain. Set in a dark French province beset by some stealthy supernatural beast that's goring villagers, the film is thick with atmospheric peril and mystery that seems to have hung in the vaporous air for ages.

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What could Spike Lee have been thinking?

Right on the heels of an unalloyed masterpiece, "25th Hour," the great American filmmaker delivers "She Hate Me," a bizarre, head-scratching hodgepodge of poorly executed bad ideas.

Many film buffs consider Lee a hit-and-miss director, but even his biggest failures ("Jungle Fever," "Summer of Sam," "Bamboozled") have had some kind of coherence, some alignment of angry, passionate ideas, painted with Lee's singular vision and voice.

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In the rose-colored military world of "Tears of the Sun," orders from superior officers are little more than suggestions and the mighty United States war machine always does the right and righteous thing.

When a team of Navy SEALS led by Bruce Willis is sent into the thickest jungles of war-torn Nigeria to extract a Western doctor (talented Italian beauty Monica Bellucci) from a missionary village, he's moved to break regulations and go back to rescue the civilians too. Otherwise they'll die at the hands of violent, ethnic-cleansing rapist rebels who are laying waste to the area and killing everyone in sight.

His commanding officer (Tom Skerritt) -- who spends all his time talking to Willis on a satellite phone, trying to hear over the roar of jet engines on an aircraft carrier flight deck -- barely shrugs his shoulders at Willis' insubordination. Even when Bellucci demands to tag along on a several-day trek through rebel territory to the nearest border, effectively scrubbing the soldiers' primary objective, the Navy higher-ups seem to take a laissez-faire attitude toward Willis and a civilian making up their own rules.

Continue reading: Tears Of The Sun Review