FILM

(Rating is on scale of 1 stars to 5 stars)

By Cole Smithey

From Hell (Two stars)
Director twins the Hughes Brothers ("Dead Presidents") have made a Jack the Ripper horror movie, set in 1888, with more laughs than scares. Deficient performances from Johnny Depp and Heather Graham further weaken the film’s rambling sense of bland suspense and gore fulfilling tension. The Hughes brothers orchestrate clinical cinematic formality around a Jack the Ripper tale in which Depp plays Inspector Fred Abberline, an opium addicted police inspector attempting to stop the serial killer before more prostitutes are slain. Depp plays the character so low-key that you wonder if it isn’t real opium that he’s smoking. Graham is severely miscast as Mary Kelly a starving British prostitute with a wandering accent.On-screen at Elmwood Plaza 8 and Celebration Cinema.

Bandits (Three Stars)
Barry Levinson ("Diner," "Rainman") might seem an unlikely director to helm a bank heist comedy in which a couple of escaped prisoners become outlaw heroes. But the key word here is comedy. Pratfalls, snappy dialogue and snazzy character work (especially by Billy Bob Thornton) make "Bandits" a laugh-out-loud movie that even manages to pull out a surprise ending. Also starring Bruce Willis and Cate Blanchett. On-screen at Elmwood Plaza 8, Meridian Outer 6, Celebration Cinema.

Corky Romano (One Star)
"Corky Romano" is a forced poke at male sexual ambiguity as expressed through a family of mobsters, including their fey black sheep sibling Corky (Chris Kattan - "Monkey Bone"). Corky is a yellow, pink, and turquoise kind of a guy working as a veterinarian assistant when his previously distanced crime embroiled father and three brothers send him inside the FBI as an ace undercover man to steal incriminating evidence against them. Nothing near hilarity ensues. On-screen at Meridian Outer 6, Lansing Mall 6, Celebration Cinema.

Don’t Say a Word (One Star)
"Fatal Attraction," "Falling Down" and "The Game" have conspired to pigeonhole Michael Douglas as the actor most likely to get bulldozed beyond the breaking point of violence. But "Don’t Say A Word" finds Douglas being nudged into snapping by kidnappers demanding that his psychiatrist character Dr. Nathan Conrad extract a cryptic code from Elisabeth Burrows (Brittany Murphy), a not-so-insane psychiatric patient, to recover his 8-year-old daughter. The plot never crystallizes because there’s never any doubt about how it will end. On-screen at Elmwood Plaza 8, Meridian Outer 6, Celebration Cinema.
Training Day (Four Stars)

Training Day is a brilliantly written and directed urban blood bath set in Los Angeles’ mean streets of drug dealers, gangbangers and undercover detectives. Denzel Washington is brutally cruel as a corrupt narcotics detective taking advantage of rookie officer Ethan Hawke on his first day of training for an elite detective squad. Director Antoine Fuqua ("The Replacement Killers") builds the film’s tension to a series of gut wrenching crescendos. Both Washington and Hawke turn in commanding performances. On-screen at Meridian Outer 6, Lansing Mall 6, Celebration Cinema.

Zoolander (1.75 Stars) By Erin Schwartz
Ben Stiller stars as Derek Zoolander, the world’s most famous male model. Will Farrell stars as a clowned-out designer who tires to hypnotize Zoolander to kill the prime minister of Malaysia. Although this movie could be watched, snickered at out of stupidity, and thrown away with other unnecessary memories, there is an intelligent message. It re-states how unrealistic and psychologically corrupt the lives of models can be. And it shows we may not recognize the drastic extremes we live at as human beings. On-screen at Elmwood Plaza 8, Meridian Outer 6, Celebration Cinema.