The Fountain
Some people hate this movie. It happens these days when the ambitions of a filmmaker, in this case Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream), rise above the level of Big Mama's House 2. Hugh Jackman plays a medical researcher trying to stop a brain tumor from killing his wife (the lovely Rachel Weisz). But wait. Jackman is also playing a sixteenth-century Spanish explorer on assignment from Queen Isabel (Weisz again) to find the healing Tree of Life. And that's him, hairless, as a twenty-sixth-century astronaut. In telling a tale of love across time, Aronofsky is sometimes guilty of creating arty, pretentious psychobabble. But in visual terms, he's trying to expose his own raw, romantic heart. Folly? Maybe. But a risk worth taking.