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TOON IN:
An animated gem from Japan
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Posted Sunday, Dec. 30, 2002; 2.02 p.m.
GMT
 >>> SPIRITED AWAY,
Hayao Miyazaki, Japan
A lonely girl wanders into a bathhouse run by ghosts in this vigorous delight from the master of Eastern animation (pictured above). Tyrannical queens, boy-dragons and a fabulously stinky river god populate the finest example of traditional cartoonery since Aladdin. It's sweet, scary and, like any good ghost story, perfectly haunting.
 >>> DIVINE INTERVENTION,
Elia Suleiman, Palestine
You were expecting maybe a suicide bomber pursued by a hand-held camera? Not from Suleiman, who brings a cool, Europeanized wit to these vignettes of life in an occupied land where the Israelis control everything but the locals' absurdist sense of humor. A chic young Arab woman performs Ninja moves that confound and defeat on an Israeli platoon. A helium balloon with Yasser Arafat's face on it floats across a checkpoint; do the soldiers shoot it down? Divine Intervention is the rare minimalist film that is as funny as it is elegantly spare. But just try keeping up with the explosive changes in tone. Farce mixes with fatalism — and fatalities. This is, after all, Palestine.
 >>> THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS,
Peter Jackson, New Zealand
The Fellowship of the Ring seems like a stroll in the Middle Earth woods next to this episode of the Tolkien trilogy. Part 2, focusing on the siege of Rohan, is every frame a war movie, with eerie reverbs of the West's current fear of spectral terrorists. But the film's real battle is within Frodo the Hobbit as he comes close to surrendering himself to the sick glow of the One Ring. Spectacle, romance, wizardly film craft — The Two Towers is about three-fifths of everything movies can do.
 >>> THE QUIET AMERICAN,
Phillip Noyce, Australia-Vietnam
A cynic with a suitcase, Graham Greene roamed the world in search of human perfidy. He found plenty in Vietnam in the early '50s, where Americans and Europeans argued over who would get to ruin this beautiful country. Noyce is alert to all the nuances — as is Michael Caine, a weary revenger defending his right to a lovely Saigon mistress. The movie twins nicely with another fine Noyce effort, Rabbit-Proof Fence, a true story about Aboriginal girls stolen from their families by the Australian government to be raised and "civilized" by whites. With crisp authority and deft artistry, both films speak sternly to would-be colonizers: Hands off! These people aren't yours.
 >>> LES DIABLES,
Christophe Ruggia, France
Joseph, 12, and his autistic sister Chloé, 11, are two of society's castaways: raised in an orphanage, treated roughly, but daring to dream that they may some day find the home Chloé is convinced was once hers. They are abandoned, separated, reunited, doomed. All very sad and instructive — and only half the story, because Joseph cares for Chloé in a way he is a bit too young to realize. Protective, possessive, raptly devoted to her, he pours out all the tenderness he has bottled up. Where else would he lavish it? Where else would he get it? And is he too myopic to see where it will lead? Taut, dark and handsomely made, Les Diables is really about the bliss and pain of unconditional love at any age. And in the harrowingly expressive face of Vincent Rottiers, a 13-year-old who had never acted before, the movie finds a perfect vessel for that love.
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