Untitled Document
Fans of television’s Sex and the City will be
pleasantly surprised by the big-screen continuation of the hit HBO series.
Writer/director Michael Patrick King delivers on the show’s brand of
humor, heartache, and haranguing, albeit in a much bigger and longer
fashion. More than three years have passed since the end of
the show. The film picks up accordingly, and the members of the
high-maintenance quartet have seen some big changes in their lives. Carrie
(Sarah Jessica Parker) has finally settled into a steady relationship with
Mr. Big (Chris Noth); Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) harps about the suffocating
nature of her marriage to Steve (David Eigenberg) and motherhood. Charlotte
(Kristin Davis) finally seems happy with Harry (Evan Handler) and her
adopted daughter. Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is in California, managing and
bedding her young hunk (Jason Lewis), but this monogamous situation has her
on edge, what with all the California hunks on constant display. Fans of the series would burn me in effigy if I were
to reveal any of the film’s surprises, but suffice it to say that
much of the drama that emerges revolves around the same themes that made
the series at once refreshing and, ultimately, tedious. Infidelity,
dissatisfaction, doubt, and the struggle to maintain some independence
within a relationship all rear their ugly heads. For me, the series was a hit-or-miss affair; I found
some episodes engaging and others trite. The film runs nearly
two-and-a-half hours, and I experienced both feelings, meaning that Carrie
and crew overstayed their welcome by nearly 45 minutes. Still, fans will
likely lap this film up and still be craving more, a sentiment I can
understand. The show was a pop-culture milestone, and those who followed it
religiously will always wonder what Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and
Samantha are up to. One look back to that fantasy world of upper-crust
Manhattan is more than enough for me, though. Among other new releases this week: • The Strangers — Reminiscent of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games and John
Carpenter’s Halloween, Bryan Bertino’s The
Strangers straddles the line between
exploitation fare and classic movie horror throughout its taut 90 minutes.
The setup is familiar, though supposedly based on a true story: A young
couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) find themselves terrorized by three
masked strangers in a remote home in the dead of night. Inexplicable
violence is part and parcel of the genre. What makes the film bearable is
the skill with which it’s executed. Bertino’s use of light and
dark, sound and silence steadily increases the tension, as does the work by
Tyler and Speedman. Effectively atmospheric and genuinely frightening at
times, the film only truly stumbles at the end as Bertino forgets that less
is always more in horror films.
• The Visitor — Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is just going through
the motions. The widower’s lost his passion for teaching and is
comfortable living his lonely life, content to shelter himself from any
further harm. However, when he finds squatters in his oft-empty Manhattan
apartment, something stirs in Walter that’s been dormant far too
long.
The couple he finds — Tarek and Zainab (Haaz Sleiman and Danai
Gurira) — are illegal aliens, and the inevitable trouble they face
because of their status allows writer/director Thomas McCarthy to shed a
harsh and powerful light on the immigrant paranoia that’s swept the
nation since 9/11. A great many things connect Walter and his new friends,
chief among them music, but it’s their desire to be able to live free
and be that binds them. The Visitor is a moving testament to a friendship that knows no
borders.
This article appears in May 22-28, 2008.
