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TIP OF THE WEEK
Windtalkers

Ray Pride

"Windtalkers," the new World War II epic from John Woo, is a broadscale depiction of hand-to-hand combat but also mano-a-mano conflict. (Yes, the love of man for his fellow man once more. If your best friend can't kill you, why die?) Nicolas Cage plays a damaged soldier whose survivor guilt drives him back to the front, where he's assigned responsibility for the life of another soldier, a Navajo-speaking private (Adam Beach)— one among a crew of "windtalkers" whose radio transmissions in the difficult language keep the Japanese from intercepting messages. The movie starts in Paradise (John Ford's Monument Valley) then descends into one of the more hellish battle scenes ever, shot documentary-style with multiple cameras in order to choreograph the sort of spatial authenticity at which Woo excels. The script is as direct as those in any of his Hong Kong films, with less sentimentality: There's a startling moment when nurse-heartthrob Frances O'Connor toasts his departure with a curt "To war!" Cage's expression is priceless, an exemplar of the depths under Woo's telegraphese.

"Windtalkers" opens June 14.

(2002-06-13)

Also by Ray Pride

TIP OF THE WEEK
Roberto Rossellini's groundbreaking gem of neorealism, shot at the end of World War II, began as a documentary about a priest in the Resistance, and became a portrait of how the Resistance survived the turmoil of everyday life during the war.
(2002-06-06)

SHUT THE HELL UP!
Consider the city. It is glory. Man's gift to himself. But it revenges. It cries out at all hours, a machine bleating its distress as it's torn stem to stern. Our stress is its stress, returned tenfold. It lives, thrives, dies, aloud. Those goddamn buses! Are they designed to sound that way, like beasts being torn from a primordial swamp?
(2002-06-06)

TIP OF THE WEEK
Ultra-prolific Chicago filmmaker Fotopoulos recently had a retrospective of his work at Anthology Film Archives in New York, a set of screenings at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and his feature work will soon be on video from Facets.
(2002-05-30)

MORAL FEAR
In the compelling, heartfelt adaptation of Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears," terrorists do something awful on American soil. Seen the commercials? Despite director Robinson's protestations, the studio wants you to know what happens.
(2002-05-30)

MOVIE LOVE
(2002-05-30)

TIP OF THE WEEK
(2002-05-23)

TOUGH "ENOUGH"
(2002-05-23)

SUMMER FILM PREVIEW 2002: June
(2002-05-23)

SUMMER FILM PREVIEW 2002: July
(2002-05-23)

SUMMER FILM PREVIEW 2002: August
(2002-05-23)

OEDIPUS WRECKS
(2002-05-16)

TIP OF THE WEEK
(2002-05-09)



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