Current Issue:

MYSTIC PIZZA **

How to train your dragon

Rated PG-13 • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Carmike Amelia Island, Carmike Fleming Island, Cinemark Tinseltown, Epic Theatre St. Augustine, Hollywood River City, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd.

Julia Roberts does a little soul-searching in “Eat Pray Love”

EAT PRAY LOVE

There’s something ridiculously and deeply sad about what “Eat Pray Love” reveals about the deprived lives American women lead. Yes, Julia Roberts’ confused, soul-searching writer is a wealthy woman with the financial wherewithal to take a year off and travel the world in order to find herself. This is a decadent luxury that is something I, like most folks, can scarcely imagine. But her deprivation is nothing that her money can cure, and something that many, many women can identify with: She denies herself — her “inner self” — and she wants to change that.

Magically, there’s very little sense of petulant privilege in “Eat Pray Love,” which almost seemed inevitable, given the scenario. Perhaps it’s because — the cost of globetrotting aside — Liz Gilbert neither seeks out nor finds herself through the spending of money or the acquisition of things. We see no “poor little rich girl” pouting here from Roberts, achingly poignant as a woman on a journey few women onscreen get to take. Better still, there’s no smug glow of affluent arrogance in how director Ryan Murphy follows her journey from Rome to an ashram in India and to Bali.

I haven’t read the memoir by the actual Elizabeth Gilbert, but I can guess why it’s been so popular: Many women see themselves in Gilbert’s life. Liz comes to realize that money, wealth and comfort mean nothing if a gal has given over her very life to pleasing men and accommodating their needs above her own. Liz finds herself edging close to a breakdown when she finally admits to herself that the comfortable life she has with sweet but screwy husband Stephen (Billy Crudup) isn’t enough. She then falls instantly into a new romance with the much-younger David Piccolo (James Franco), until she realizes that this love isn’t enough, either.

This is an absolutely astonishing place for a mainstream movie to go; to concede that having a man is not and cannot be the extent of a woman’s ambitions. And when Liz chucks her life in New York and heads to Italy, there’s a marvelous reveling in her loneliness as she wanders the streets of Rome and eats alone at sidewalk cafes. She makes new friends, but while she develops a warm camaraderie with them, she maintains her romantic distance in a way that is precisely the opposite of what we’ve been trained by Hollywood to expect. There’s an almost shocking moment when she’s saying goodnight to handsome young tutor Giovanni (Luca Argentero) who’s been teaching her Italian. They approach the door to her little rented house and it’s the point where, in any other movie, she’d be inviting him in or at least indulging in a long, sexy smooch. Instead, she just smiles and wishes him good evening. It’s a wonderfully refreshing moment.

There’s also an understanding of the constraints women put on themselves. Which is ironic, since Hollywood is a major culprit in propagating these self-imposed limits. Liz digs into a plate of pasta or noshes down on Napoli pizza with gusto, enjoying food and the sensuous pleasure of eating without guilt and without worrying about how “fat” it’s going to make her. Director Murphy doesn’t scold Liz for indulging, or even turn it into an act that is naughty — he just lets her be, to enjoy her newfound freedom. This is one of the places where a sad poignancy is most evident: Eating good food and enjoying it without guilt would seem to be such a simple thing, such a basic part of living a full life. But Liz hasn’t let herself do that.

This is hardly a perfect film. When Liz heads to the ashram in India, and is so miserable there, I wanted to smack her and tell her that the only reason she’s there at all is because this was some place that interested the actor boyfriend; if she had any authentic interest herself, we never learn about it.

The ashram isn’t a total bust for Liz: She meets Richard from Texas (Richard Jenkins), a pain in the ass who puts her self-pity into perspective and gives her the impetus to make new discoveries about herself. And then finally it’s on to Bali, where she finds new romance with Felipe (Javier Bardem.)

So, yeah, Liz’s journey does eventually come back to romance. But at least it no longer seems to be her only goal in life. It’s a step in the right direction for her, and for Hollywood.

MaryAnn Johanson

PESCE AL DENTE **

Rated R • AMC Orange Park, AMC Regency Square, Carmike Amelia Island, Carmike Fleming Island, Cinemark Tinseltown, Epic Theatre St. Augustine, Hollywood River City, Regal Avenues, Regal Beach Blvd.

“Piranha 3-D” ushers the drive-in movie horror flick into the 21st Century

PIRANHA 3-D

At one point in “Piranha 3-D,” Christopher

Lloyd sums up the movie’s plot and the audience’s expectation in two short sentences: “The piranha hunt in packs. The first bite draws blood, blood draws the pack.”

What else is a movie about primeval killer fish going to be about? Well, as it turns out, director Alexandre Aja has more up his sleeve than the previews might have indicated. In short order, “Piranha 3-D” is really about the following: teeth, tits, butts and dicks — pretty much in that order.

To his credit, Aja is up front (so to speak) with his product. Rather than court the safer PG-13 rating, which would have ensured a much bigger opening weekend, the filmmakers thoroughly embraced the more limited “R,” jettisoning any kind of aesthetic restraints in the process. Everything hangs out in the movie, deliberately and unpretentiously, making it a guilty pleasure of excess for genre fans as well as the occasional voyeur.

The original “Piranha” (1978) was scripted by John Sayles and directed by Joe Dante (“Gremlins” and “The Howling”) under the auspices of Roger Corman, and remains a gem of the B-movie genre. “Piranha, Part Two: The Spawning” (1981) is notable only for the fact that it signaled James Cameron’s first feature film foray as director. Cameron himself is reported to have said that his “movie gets better halfway through when seen at the drive-in with a six pack of beer.”

“Piranha 3-D” is a fish of a wholly different type. Borrowing liberally from “Jaws” as well as Dante’s film, the new movie takes place at a lake resort during spring break, thus enabling boozy, half-naked teens (actually twenty-somethings playing teens) to fall prey to ravenous prehistoric fish.

Just how did those creatures (the fish, not the partying teens) get there, you might well ask. The film’s opening sequence, featuring a cameo from original “Jaws” survivor Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper, shows how. An earthquake opens a fissure underneath scenic Lake Victoria to a huge underwater canyon where the beasties have been breeding and cannibalizing for eons. Now released, they can sate themselves on tastier things.

Elisabeth Shue plays the town sheriff, Julie Forester; Steven R. McQueen plays her son Jake. Jake has the hots for Kelly (Jessica Szohr), but he’s supposed to be babysitting his two younger siblings rather than partying with the other brainless (and soon-to-be gobbled-up) teens. However, the festivities are unexpectedly enriched by the arrival of seedy filmmaker Derrick Jones (an over-the-top Jerry O’Connell) who brings his version of “Girls Gone Wild” to the proceedings. Accompanied by two “starlets” Danni (Kelly Brook) and Crystal (Riley Steele), the soft-porn huckster also scouts out the local talent, ending up with both Jake and Kelly on the boat, and eventually Jake’s little brother and sister as well.

Soon everyone’s piranha bait. But not before director Aja treats us to ample three-dimensional nudity from Danni and Crystal in a long underwater montage that recalls (perhaps intentionally) a similar kind of courtship from an earlier 3-D venture, the original “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954). Needless to say, things were far more chaste back then — no bikinis even.

When the piranhas start to chow down, Aja turns up the gore without minimizing the boobs. The mastication of the fish is gleefully presented in all manner of culinary degrees while sticking to the standard formula of horror films: It’s generally the bad girls and guys who get what they deserve for taking their clothes off and being rude.

The most graphic and original retribution is reserved for the biggest scumbag of all, the soft-porn wannabe, who loses his penis to

the undiscriminating beasties. As he moans, the camera cuts to the dismembered organ floating to the bottom before it’s eagerly swallowed by a passing piranha, which then — demonstrating taste after all — promptly spits it out. All of this in 3-D.

Though it’s not high art, Aja’s in-your-face approach is not without its merits. Having wedded gore and suspense in equal measure in “High Tension” and his remake of “The Hills Have Eyes,” Aja lets loose in “Piranha 3-D” and has fun with the genre. Most fans will, too. “Piranha 3-D” is great cinematic junk food that fans of horror-comedy can surely sink their teeth into.

Pat McLeod

About Us | Distribution | Employment | Contact Us

ph (904)260-9770 | fax (904)260-9773