In Brief

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

ROLL BOUNCE
PG-13, 112 minutes


Whether it’s Patrick Swayze wielding a whip in “Skatetown USA,” Olivia Newton John roller-skating to Mount Olympus in “Xanadu,” or Linda Blair shaking her nylon-covered thing in “Roller Boogie,” roller-disco movies are not kind to careers. So it was with great awe that I heard the news that Bow Wow (the artist formerly known as Lil’ Bow Wow) had chosen to make his first teen movie a roller-disco flick. Disco was dead long before Bow Wow was even a gleam in his daddy’s eye, yet here he is headlining this shaggy slice of summer loving.


Set in 1978, this sultry sizzler may wind up with the dubious distinction of being the best roller-disco movie ever made. Bow Wow plays Xavier Smith, a righteous skater with a dead mom. When his ghetto roller rink gets shuttered, he and his crew hit the glitter paradise of Sugartown, a skating Shangri-La where the moves are tight and the chicks are white. It’s ruled by the despot, Sweetness (Wesley Jonathan, in a performance that would have been the summer’s funniest had it come out a few days earlier), a swanky skater who rocks his Jim Kelly ‘fro to devastating effect. Of course, the Southside few and the Sweetness crew eventually bump heads, and the only way to settle their differences is a skate-off.


The director is Malcolm D. Lee, the auteur behind “Undercover Brother,” which was another reason to expect Bow Wow to wave his career bye-bye. But you can’t hate on this movie: It’s got a wall-to-wall disco soundtrack, a funk-tastic sense of style, and actors totally committed to rocking the Jordache jeans, Farrah flips, and other fashion disasters of the era. It’s a sweet ’70s surprise that should have arrived in the summer, just when we needed it most.


– Grady Hendrix


INTO THE FIRE
unrated, 93 minutes


“Into the Fire” is all about the self: It’s self-important, self-congratulatory, and self-satisfied. Directed, written, and produced by Michael Phelan, a former personal assistant to some Hollywood types, this flick will test your mettle. Can you watch a movie that proclaims, “Faith is where we place our hearts” without feeling a little piece of yourself die?


The movie is a response to September 11, 2001 (or, as the director calls it, “September’s 11th Day, 2001”). It tracks the healing journeys of a traumatized NYC Harbor cop, Walter (Sean Patrick Flanery); a feisty grandma whose son died in the twin towers, June (JoBeth Williams); and a music teacher who is surrounded by helpful and obsequious black people, Catrina (Melinda Kanakaredes, “Providence”).


These three characters are so im pacted with grief that they look like they’re constantly on the verge of disintegrating into tears. They don’t so much speak to one another as engage in therapy sessions in a nigh-incomprehensible babble of self-actualization (“The way things are makes them true,” goes a particularly ripe example). At one point, a small child asks Mr. Flanery, “Are you my butterfly?” Later he answers, “I don’t know if I’m your butterfly, but you might be mine.” Isn’t there a law against this kind of thing?


“Into the Fire” wants desperately to be taken seriously, but the final result is risible. The sight of Mr. Flanery’s pale, naked buttocks vanishing into the cold waters off Coney Island after he apologizes to a photo of his mother, while Ms. Kanakaredes dolefully saws on her cello and a little girl cries out for her daddy in her sleep, is existentially harrowing, but not in the way the director intended.


– Grady Hendrix


DORIAN BLUES
unrated, 88 minutes


Just what the world needs: another thuddingly obvious gay coming-of-age movie with a “Wonder Years” voiceover.


Dorian (Michael McMillian) is a teenager living in a community-theater version of New York where high school is a row of lockers in an empty hall and apartments are shot in what look to be suburban bedrooms. His hunky brother, Nicky (Lea Coco), his retiring mom, and his angry dad are all just obstacles to be overcome as he discovers he’s gay, tries to become straight, accepts his gayness, and enrolls at NYU. No problem in “Dorian Blues” is so great that a wry montage set to bouncy music can’t solve it.


There isn’t a single surprise, twist, or unexpected event in this movie. Things move painlessly toward their predetermined conclusion, but this film leaves one question in its wake: Why does two thirds of gay cinema consist of the same, by-the-numbers coming-out story?


According to the mission statement of GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), “when stereotypes pollute the well of cultural acceptance – we become vulnerable to anti-gay forces.” If that’s true, then “Dorian Blues” is a big vulnerability: This movie is nothing but stereotypes. There’s the sensitive gay teen, the abusive alcoholic dad, the repressed mom who delivers eleventh hour life lessons, the concerned therapist, the hooker with the heart of gold, the wisecracking Jewish lesbian, and even a shot of the Statue of Liberty. There’s also the homicidal leather queen who tries to kill our hero while heavy metal blares on the soundtrack, and the unshaven social worker with a rumpled shirt drinking a fifth of whiskey out of a brown paper bag at his desk. Someone should call GLAAD.


– Grady Hendrix


DIRTY LOVE
R, 91 minutes


The return of Jenny McCarthy, the goofball Playboy Playmate and one-time MTV personality, will be celebrated by anyone waiting for 1990s retro to kick in. In “Dirty Love,” a film she wrote and stars in, Ms. McCarthy takes her self-mockery into the realm of gross-out comedy, with body work by “Sex and the City” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”


Some will accuse the B-list actress of seeking attention through debasement. As our recently dumped hero, Rebecca explores all such opportunities. But it’s no messier – or worse – than the epidemic of male-centered gross-out and semi-ironic teen naughtiness that also erupted in the 1990s.


Ms. McCarthy rolls out the usual host of post-P.C. gags (e.g., Carmen Elektra as a white person who “acts black”), but this is the Jenny show, take it or leave it. The final product is mediocre and stupid, but the good-natured Ms. McCarthy can be appealingly daffy.


The episodic plot follows Rebecca as she seeks out conquests in an effort to forget (and tweak) her jerk ex-boyfriend. The cliche of a smitten friend (Eddie Kaye Thomas) reassures us that the spectacle will end happily. Until that discovery of true love, it’s Ms. McCarthy in an impassioned caricature of public shame: desperate horniness, vomit, exposed breasts (“They’re just globs of fat!”), and menstrual mortification.


“Dirty Love” aims for a you-go-girl wallow in the long drunken nightmare of the post-breakup period. It’s more interesting for the moments of absurdity that Ms. McCarthy wrests forth through sheer will. The opening scene, in which she staggers on a sidewalk repeating “Oh my God!” in alternating tones of disbelief and dementia, is within spitting distance of a Will Ferrell freakout. And it’s only fair to mention her studious expansion of the gross-out arsenal: an exaggerated slapstick scramble for maxipads that leaves the supermarket floor looking like an abattoir.


– Nicolas Rapold


OCCUPATION : DREAMLAND
unrated, 78 minutes


“Occupation: Dreamland” is an Iraq documentary that is less about the war and more about the soldiers who are fighting it. Filmmakers Garrett Scott and Ian Olds have tried to capture the daily lives of soldiers in a squad of the Army’s 82nd Airborne as they patrol Fallujah during the winter of 2004 – just months before the military took the city from insurgents the following spring.


As Fallujah falls apart around them, the soldiers – who resemble a sort of armed fraternity – make jokes, discuss their feelings about the war, and grow frustrated with the rapidly disintegrating order that necessitated the spring assault on the city. Lieutenant Matthew Bacik leads his men through sporadic firefights but spends most of his time trying to manage community relations with an increasingly hostile populace. He expresses frustrations but also talks about the strategic importance of Iraq and the wider war. The soldiers’ feelings about the war are not as simple as “for” or “against” – they express reservations and endorsements of different aspects of the conflict, and always for different reasons.


As spring draws closer – and Fallujah becomes impossible to patrol – even the most stalwart believers in the mission become frustrated with their situation.


– Stephen Spruiell


The New York Sun

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