Friday, December 26, 2003

BY BARRY PARIS, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

Is it true that the next -- and ultimate -- reality-based TV show is "Survivor XIII: Neville Island"?

If so, or even if not, here are the Top Ten Reasons for tearing yourself away from the tube, ejecting your derriere from the La-Z-Boy and driving to a place where they actually project real motion pictures on a big screen:

1. "THE STATION AGENT"

Best flick of the year, in my jaundiced view! Neither Greta Garbo nor Finbar McBride ever said, "I want to be alone." What they said was, "I want to be LET alone" -- a big difference. Peter Dinklage plays Finbar, born with dwarfism and thus the object of everyone's gawking attention. He's a railroad enthusiast who inherits an abandoned train depot in rural New Jersey and takes up residence there in an effort to escape the prying eyes of the world ... but finds just the opposite of solitude. Writer-director Tom McCarthy's feature debut is a treasure of emotional honesty, deadpan humor and wonderful performances. Dinklage is the first 4-and-a-half-foot leading man in film history, and he's terrific.

2. "RUSSIAN ARK"

This astonishing tour -- and tour de force -- of 300 years of Russian history is interwoven through 33 rooms of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg -- otherwise known as the Winter Palace. The most sensational facts about its making: It has a cast of 2,000, and director Alexander Sokurov shot it in one single, 96-minute take, without interruption, from start to finish -- as seamless as Christ's robe for which those Roman soldiers cast lots at the crucifixion. Appropriately enough. Because Russian history is a kind of collective crucifixion. As "big" subjects go, it doesn't get any bigger than this. Huge, unique, mesmerizing.

3. "CUCKOO"

All three main characters fit the title description, and nothing is more cuckoo than the life-and-death situation in which they find themselves -- or the fact that none of them can understand a word of what the others are saying. Russian director Alexander Rogozhkin's "Cuckoo" is a riveting allegory of that clash between humanity and insanity otherwise known as war in northern Finland, better known as Lapland, in September 1944: A pacifist Finn (Ville Haapasalo) and a belligerent Russian, both on the lam, end up being harbored by a Lapp reindeer farmer (Anni-Kristiina Juuso), who has problems of her own -- namely survival. They speak three different, mutually unintelligible languages. Rogozhkin -- and we -- have fine but ominous fun with the culture collisions in this mini-Tower of Babel.

4. "SPELLBOUND"

This fabulous documentary has no single hero or heroine -- but eight of them! They're finalists at the great American National Spelling Bee, and you fall in love with all of them. I'm especially wild about Harry (Altman), who loses. But this is the loveliest form of real childhood drama and suspense you could ever hope to see, and director Jeff Blitz handles the kids as well as the action splendidly.

5. "MYSTIC RIVER"

The ever-surprising Clint Eastwood presides over a harrowing -- but beautifully written and directed -- tale of three boyhood friends forced to cope with the then-and-now trauma of a violent crime. Based on Dennis Lehane's best seller, it could not have been performed more brilliantly by Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon.

6. "LOST IN TRANSLATION"

Bill Murray tugs at your heart strings as well as your funny bone as a has-been actor making too much money and too little love in Tokyo. Wonderful quirky and intelligent, under the helmsmanship -- or helmswomanship -- of director Sofia Coppola.

8. "COLD MOUNTAIN"

As seasonal blockbusters go, I'll take mine with humans rather than hobbits in the Civil instead of Middleterrestrial War. Jude Law and Nicole Kidman may not strike you as very Yankee (or Confederate), but they do a fine job of faking it in this sweeping romance, directed by Anthony Minghella, with a show-stealing supporting performance from Renee Zellweger.

7. "THE SINGING DETECTIVE"

Talk about the heartbreak of psoriasis. Crime novelist Dan Dark (Robert Downey Jr.), suffering from a hideous skin disease, is a latter-day elephant man, tangled up in the delirium of a faux film noir musical set in 1950s Los Angeles. Dark's seriocomic dilemma is punctuated by such lip-synched hits as "How Much Is that Doggy in the Window"! The script within a script, melding surreal comedy and psychodrama is overly ambitious but director Keith Gordon makes it wickedly playful and provocative -- adjectives that also characterize its star.

9. "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"

Beat 'em, bucs is the theory here. But buccaneers come in more than one form. Johnny Depp fits none of them as rakish Captain Jack Sparrow, who loses his ship to nemesis Geoffrey Rush. Talk about a skeleton crew. And talk about Johnny! He'd much rather be in the sack, yo-ho-hoing with a bottle of rum and Coke. Director Gore Verbinski has given him full reign to create a bizarre character with mincing mannerisms and mucho mascara -- a kind of campy Keith Richard of the high seas.

10. "The Girl from Paris"

Sandrine (Mathilde Seigner) is forsaking her high-tech computer post in Paris to take up agricultural studies and buy a farm. Equally shocking is where she's going to do it: high up in the Rhone Alps, a place that suits her need for isolation. There, worn-out Adrien (Michel Serrault) is reluctantly selling the dairy that has been in his family for generations. He's a bitter old goat with a flock of young ones -- and contempt for school-trained single women who think they can run a farm. The restrained realism of Christian Carion's direction requires no F/X -- just two luminous performances and a handful of animals.

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