Reviews

Film

The Lookout

Directed by Scott Frank, Stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Isla Fisher.

First-time director Scott Frank is a renowned story teller and has written scripts for the big guns. Minority Report (starring Tom Cruise), Get Shorty (John Travolta) and Out of Sight (George Clooney) - nominated for an Oscar in 1998 - were all box office successes.

This year he directs one of his own tales about a promising high school athlete (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) whose life is shattered after a car accident. Chris takes a cleaning job at a bank but gets caught up in a robbery. Gordon-Levitt, who has that Heath Ledger vulnerability thing going, teams up with veteran Jeff Danels, who plays the blind roommate. A bank robbery is the punch line to this solid film, but Daniels steals most of the scenes. The barren Kansas winter landscape adds to the suspenseful mood. Patrick Whiteley

The Illusionist

Director Neil Burger, Stars Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Jessica Biel

Ed Norton burst onto the big screen in Primal Fear (1996) in spectacular fashion, earning an Academy Award nomination for his first real acting performance. Top notch films such as American History X (1998) and Fight Club (1999) followed but then Ed wandered off with a series of hits and misses. Last year's Painted Veil, which was shot in China, was one of those misses, however, The Illusionist, also made in 2006, was more of a hit.

The story is set in the turn-of-the century when magic shows sold out theaters and Norton plays a magician who fights a prince for the hand of his childhood sweetheart. He is pitted against fellow Academy Award nominee Paul Giamatti, who does the prince's bidding. The Vienna backdrop is beautiful, and the producers, who won Oscars for Crash and Sideways, conjure an entertaining show. PW

Sunshine

Director Danny Doyle, Stars Cliff Curtis, Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh

Any movie driven by Trainspotting director Danny Doyle will grab the attention of many, and Sunshine will not disappoint those who enjoyed Doyle's drug-riddled Scottish tragic comedy. In Trainspotting, Shallow Grave and The Beach, Doyle focused on the warts-and-all politics played out among various groups of people, and Sunshine follows suit.

This time the players in this sci-fi suspense flick are on a rescue mission to save the sun and crammed in a space ship. Think of Big Brother on acid. The crew aboard the Icarus II have a bomb, which will restore the dying sun to its natural state, but the closer the ship gets to that big ball of fire, the more people die. Things gets very weird at the end as the crew lose their minds, which is a major point of the film - a study of our sanity in extreme circumstances. PW

(China Daily 08/30/2007 page20)