House of Frankenstein

Clocking in at just over an hour, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN is a rather anemic finale to the Frankenstein films. It's a combination Dracula / Werewolf / Frankenstein movie, and it does a singularly clumsy job of weaving its threads into a coherent whole. If this is the best Universal could do with its monsters, the studio chose well in giving them a rest.

Dogtown and Z-Boys

DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS does everything a documentary is supposed to to. It involves us in a different time, in a different place, and with different people. It shows us a subculture we may not think we'll find interesting, then finds ways to interest us in it.

The movie chronicles the revolution in skateboarding that happened during the 1970s, when a group of Santa Monica kids applied their surfing skills to the nearly-dead sport. Their style was so new and so exciting that it inspired a whole subculture, though there's some question whether that did them any good at all. It's an interesting story, but the movie's success lies as much in the telling as it does in the story itself. Through a clever combination of archival footage, interviews, and musical cues, DOGTOWN keeps us involved and keeps us guessing.

I saw this one out of a sense of duty, after a friend recommended it time and time again. When next I see her, I'm going to thank her.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

What's not to love about PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST? It has fun characters, terrific monsters, plenty of swordplay, and great set-pieces galore. It's just plain a fun time at the movies.

Here's the setup: well, on second thought, who cares? Here's what you really need to know: all the principals are back, some cool new monsters get added to the mix, and the movie rocks along with just the right combination of action, humor, and character to keep you well entertained for its full 2+ hour running time.

Enjoy.

The Boondock Saints

THE BOONDOCK SAINTS begins well, then descends into drudgery.

Here's the premise: a pair of affable Irish-American twins gets in hot water with Boston's Russian mafia. Rather than sit around and wait to be killed, they go on the offensive. Much gunplay ensues.

My problem with the film can be summed up in the arc of a character played by Willem Dafoe. The character, an FBI agent, starts out smart and funny. He's several steps ahead of the hapless Boston PD, but not so brilliant that he can't be surprised. He's quirky, but he's believable, and he adds to the film. As the movie progresses, however, Dafoe's character becomes weirder and weirder, behaving so oddly at one crime scene that he yanked me right out of my state of suspended disbelief. Eventually, his character just became ridiculous, no longer fun to watch.

And so it is with THE BOONDOCK SAINTS. What begins as a funny, inventive take on the vigilante genre concludes as a workmanlike, blood-for-blood's sake, exercise in implausibility. Don't believe the hype.

Undisputed

I knew, going in, that UNDISPUTED was no masterpiece. It was billed as a B-movie, a straight-up shot of testosterone featuring Ving Rhames and Wesley Snipes squaring off in a boxing ring. Hey, I like B-movies, and I'll champion BLOODSPORT well into my dotage. UNDISPUTED seemed like just the thing for a late night with my old college roommate, a couple of beers, and a bag of chips.

Unfortunately, UNDISPUTED is an abject failure. Snipes's character, supposedly the epitome of Zen cool, only made me wonder why he wore that silly hat. Rhames, for his part, does a wonderful acting job, completely divesting himself of his natural charisma. The movie itself feels clunky and leaden, providing us with unnecessary flashbacks and interruptions, and culminating in a final bout that's partially obscured by the bars and barbed wire of the cage in which it's fought. I mean, really - who makes a boxing movie, then obscures half Big Fight's action?

If you're looking for a mindless, B-grade fight movie to watch with your buddies, rent BLOODSPORT again. UNDISPUTED is not your movie.

Bringing Out The Dead

BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is one of those films whose premise didn't capture my imagination, and I gave it a pass upon its initial release. Judging by its box office and "stickiness" in the collective imagination, I imagine many others felt the same way and made the same choice. It was my loss, and it's theirs, too.

BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is an imaginative picture, presenting the viewer with sounds and images that make one think, "I can't believe this is the same guy who did THE AGE OF INNOCENCE Here, Scorsese and his team take us into the mind of Nicholas Cage's burned-out paramedic, a guy who hasn't managed to save a life in six months and who, through a combination of insomnia, guilt, and alcohol, is rapidly coming apart. To accomplish this, the movie plays with time,
perception, and illusion; and it imbues the viewer with a sense of hopeless desperation borne of one man's crisis and the larger crisis of the neighborhood crumbling around him.

Every single thing about this movie works. Cage works at his full potential, the supporting cast is first-rate, the music reinforces and strengthens the narrative, the photography is terrific, and the whole experience is like seeing a master conductor at work. BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is a technical and emotional success. Bravo.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

It's virtually impossible to get my child to sit still for a documentary, but he sat still for THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL. There's something fascinating about a guy whose entire life revolves around these little, displaced creatures.

PARROTS is about a flock of birds that somehow got loose in San Francisco and have managed to create a self-sustaining, er, flock in an environment that many folks think is too inhospitable for them. It's also about the guy who cares for them, sort've an SF version of The Dude who, almost by accident, has turned himself into one of the world's authorities on parrot behavior. You see, explains an ornithologist at the San Francisco Zoo, it's virtually impossible to observe parrots in the jungle, so The SF Dude is in a unique position to add to the world's body of knowledge on this particular subject.

It's interesting stuff, and it doesn't fall prey to the temptation to anthropomorphize the birds. They are what they are, and the SF Dude appreciates them for that. Through him, we come to do the same. It worked for my boy, and it worked for me.

Under the Roofs of Paris

René Clair's UNDER THE ROOFS OF PARIS (1930) is a lovely picture with one element so disturbing that I wonder if it was anachronistic even at the time of its release.

ROOFS, an early foray into the world of talkies, looks and feels like a silent movie for much of its running time. In fact, recording with the new technology was so cumbersome that Clair chose to use dialogue only when absolutely necessary, creating a hybrid of the two styles. It works, and it brings us the best of both worlds: the physical lyricism of a silent picture combined with the naturalism of a talkie.

But how's the movie? It's delightful. It paints a loving portrait of lower-class Paris, filling it with denizens kind and criminal, and its lead character, Albert, is a pleasant and agreeable guy. Here's the setup: Albert's a sheet-music salesman who conducts street-corner singalongs, selling copies of the music to anyone who might want to join in. He falls in love with Pola, a Romanian immigrant who's involved with a local thug. Complications ensue.

The disturbing element is the character of Pola. She's a cypher, a trophy, nothing more. She falls right in with whichever man claims her at the moment, seeming to let herself be carried along by fate. Was this the feminine ideal of the time?

That reservation aside, 'Under the Rooftops of Paris' is a good time, both for its place in cinema history and its light, loving touch. I enjoyed the heck out of it.

Faust

I think I would have enjoyed looking at stills from FAUST more than I did watching the actual movie.

F.W. Murnau made FAUST in 1926, four years after NOSFERATU. It's aesthetic has more in common with 1920's THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, however. Buildings lean one upon the next in menacing fashion, light and shadow play to highlight real people in unreal settings, and the whole proceedings looks, well, fabulous. The problem is, I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Really, I couldn't. I was well-rested when I sat down for FAUST but I fell asleep twice - count it, twice - while watching. The pacing was painfully slow, the hero too vapid to believe, and the villain, well, Klaus Maria Brandauer's 1981 portrayal walks all over Emil Jannings's Mephistopholes. [Note: Brandauer played an actor playing the role of Mephistopheles in the 1981 film of the same name. The scenes of Brandauers character in, well, character are dazzling.]

I should've just googled some screencaps.

Bullitt

I started BULLITT a little worried. Lalo Schifrin's opening music was so jarring and so dated that I didn't know if I could handle two hours of it.

Fortunately, the music tapered off from there and I was able to enjoy a solid procedural with a few very strong elements.

First is the movie's sense of reality. There's a lot of silence, a lot of ambient noise, and a lot of the pauses that make up such a huge part of our day. Second is McQueen, who was every bit as cool as he's cracked up to be. Third is the famous car chase, a sequence so good that it had me grinning like a monkey. And fourth is the climactic sequence at San Francisco International Airport, a pursuit among men who actually behave like real people, not Olympic athletes.

BULLITT's a treat.

PS Robert Vaughn, who plays one of Bullitt's adversaries, is now doing commercials for some personal injury lawyer. Maybe he has grandkids to put through college.

Finding Neverland

FINDING NEVERLAND is a charming picture. It has a striking visual vocabulary, Kate Winslet is luminous, Julie Christie gets a turn, and Johnnie Depp absolutely nails his accent (He sounds just like one of the hobbits in the LOTR commentary - either Boyd or Monaghan, I don't recall which).

I didn't laugh, and I didn't cry, but I did enjoy it through and through. There are worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

The Big Red One: Reconstructed Edition

There was a time in the early '80s when The Movie Channel showed THE BIG RED ONE and STAR WARS on a seemingly endless loop. Some programmer couldn't get enough Mark Hamill, I suppose. As a fledgling movie nut, I watched them over and over again.

Today, I can't sit through STAR WARS. Though I was worried the same might happen when I fired up the reconstructed edition of THE BIG RED ONE such was not the case. In fact, I was riveted. The Reconstructed Edition is better than the original, and the DVD issue is a knockout.

The picture is crystal-clear in all but a few parts, and the sound is awesome. In fact, it gave my home system a real workout. I could hear the clattering of shell casings behind me as artillery landed all around, I could identify different weapons by their sonic signatures, and I was afraid the neighbors might call the police, fearing a major war had broken out in my basement.

The performances are phenomenal, with Mark Hamill giving an eye-opening performance that lends weight to the complaint that George Lucas doesn't know how to handle actors. Lee Marvin is, of course, Lee Marvin, and there isn't a moment I don't completely buy his character. My only question was how a sergeant this good never got rockers for his chevrons. The remaining cast is equally solid, with only one moment taking me out of the film (when the colonel stands up on Omaha Beach, it just seemed too theatrical).

And the story, of course, feels real in a way few movies can match. I can see this movie getting compared to SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but I think it has more in common with BLACK DOWN DOWN. Like BLACK HAWK DOWN, It's a movie about real soldiers, and about the things they do, and about the situations they get themselves into. More than any pyrotechnics - fest can be, it's a movie about the War.

Team America: World Police

I'd pay real money to see a Broadway play written by Matt Stone & Trey Parker. With songs like "America! F*(@ Yeah! (Bummer Remix)," "Montage," "Blame Canada," & "Cartman's Mom is a Big Fat B!$%," these guys are building a songbook to rival Johnnie Mercer.

I wouldn't advise paying real money to see 'Team America: World Police,' however. Despite some amusing scenes, the movie doesn't add up to a particularly satisfying experience. It isn't that I don't like its skewering of action movie conventions or American politics; it's just that I felt like the movie was laughing at me as much as it was with me. Ah, well.

Alfie (2004); Panic Room

Alfie:

All buildup, no resolution. Jude Law's smile can carry a photograph, but not an entire film.

Panic Room:

A solid thriller. Jody Foster & Forrest Whitaker are always a pleasure to watch, and Howard Shore's score does a fine job of amping up the tension. I'd read a lot about Fincher's direction, but I found it more novel than distracting.

Requiem for a Dream

I'm still wrapping my head around 'Requiem for a Dream.' It wasn't a pleasant experience, to be sure. The movie deals with addiction, and it's not a pretty subject. There's a whole lot of pain on display here, and it's presented in such a compelling, artful manner that it drew me in entirely.

Probably the strangest thing about my experience with the film was the Jennifer Connely element. Earlier today, I was in a place that was screening 'Labyrinth' in the background. 'Labyrinth,' of course, stars Connely in her early adolescence. Going from that presentation to that of her as a junkie in an accelerating downward spiral is quite a transition!

This is just a quick note, of course. For an excellent full review of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, I suggest heading over to Cinescene for Ed Owens's comments.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA so fully informs THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA that a "required prerequisite" notice should have been posted on theater doors. This is not to say that THREE BURIALS steals from GARCIA - not at all; but it shares GARCIA's sense of place, its unblinking observation of the human condition, and (with variations) its most important prop. It's the kind of movie Peckinpah might have made if Peckinpah still believed in redemption.

Tommy Lee Jones, who directs from a script by Guilllermo Arriaga, plays a foreman on a South Texas ranch. He hires Julio Cedillo (Estrada) and comes first to respect him, then befriend him. When Barry Pepper's high-strung INS agent mistakenly shoots the young cowboy and the incident is swept under the rug, Jones takes action in the only way that makes sense to him. What follows is a Western by people who "get" Westerns. The cowboys here don't pose silently for aesthetic effect, a la BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. They keep their mouths shut because you don't flap your yap in the desert. The landscape is integral to the tale, but 3B isn't about gawking at the horizon. This movie gets personal in the way only film can - it puts you right into the hearts of its characters - not by having them tell you how they feel, but by making you feel the same way.

GARCIA shares this film's versimilitude, and it covers much of the same ground, but there's a crucial difference: where GARCIA is about a man trying to believe in himself, 3B is about one who never thinks to stop believing, perhaps with tragic consequences. Nevertheless, the latter and the former exist in very much the same world. I'll leave it for you to decide which ending you prefer.

Conspiracy

In January of 1942, General Reynhard Heynrich convened the Wannsee Conference to force various factions within Hitler's government & military to buy in to the Final Solution. CONSPIRACY is drawn from the minutes of that Conference, is of both historical, psychological, and artistic interest as a reasonably accurate depiction of the Conference as a study in management, group dynamics, and power of peer pressure.

Kenneth Branagh stars as General Heynrich, the "Blonde Beast" who was the #2 man at the SS. By turns charming, threatening, officious, and chummy, he uses every tool at hand to ensure the compliance of the men around the table. Stanley Tucci plays Heynrich's right-hand man, Adolf Eichmann, as a cold, hyperorganized, and imposing figure. Only a lieutenant-colonel at the time, Eichmann's competence and obvious closeness to his boss lend him an authority far beyond his rank. There are a number of excellent performances in this movie, but these two guys deserve their above-the-title billing. They're absolutely fascinating, and absolutely terrifying, and the movie does an oustanding job of showing us how, together, they maneuver and manipulate the balky group of men around the table into assistance with one of history's greatest crimes.

As history, as case study, or as art, CONSPIRACY is time well spent.

Magnolia

Well, I finally got around to seeing 'Magnolia.' The movie comes in for a lot of hate, but I don't get it. It struck me as a moving investigation of the lies we tell ourselves , the lies we tell others, and the consequences of those lies. While I found the ending and the famous storm to be a rather arbitrary way of bringing closure to stories still very much in progress, I'm happy with the picture overall.

In Good Company

IN GOOD COMPANY, starring Topher Grace, Dennis Quaid, and Scarlet Johansson. It's a movie about young people trying to find their places in life, older people trying to protect theirs, and the difficult interplay of generations in a culture that values vigor over wisdom.

This doesn't sound like the setup for a very fun movie, does it? Have no fear: the picture was made by the Weitz brothers, the guys who did the surprisingly funny AMERICAN PIE and the surprisingly good ABOUT A BOY. Paul Weitz, who wrote and directed the movie, deftly handles the dynamics of family and office, and he manages to balance the laugh-out-loud moments with the tear-jerkers. He's aided in this by Johansson, who's rapidly becoming the most interesting actress of her generation; Grace, who comes across as the most likeable guy in the world even when he's playing the corporate shark; and Quaid, who's at the top of his game as a man who feels his life is falling apart at the very moment when it should all be coming together.

Regarding Dennis Quaid, he's one of those guys who has been in movies as long as I've been paying serious attention to them. He's a reliable actor, but I never paid him much notice. Now, as he approaches his fifties, he's maturing into a comfortable presence, the kind of guy with whom I'm happy to sit down for an hour and half. He broke my hearT in FREQUENCY, blew me away in TRAFFIC, carried THE ROOKIE, and really shines in IN GOOD COMPANY. There's this scene in which he's just helped his daughter (Johannson) move into her dorm room. As he hugs her goodbye, the range of emotions playing across his face was so evocative that I exclaimed, "Now that's acting!" (Ok, I exclaimed it in my internal monologue, but still.) The guy doesn't have a perfect eye for scripts (THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, COLD CREEK MANOR), but he does good work. Watching his work here is a real treat, and I hope he continues to act well into his eighties.

IN GOOD COMPANY came and went without making much of a splash, but it's worth the rental. It's not every day you come across a story well told and well played.

Snatch; National Treasure

Hyperkinetic and fun, 'Snatch' tells the intertwining stories of midlevel thug, an unlicensed boxing promoter, a pawnbroker with a lousy mind for crime, some diamond thieves, and one unintelligible gypsy.

It's cheeky, it's unpredictable, and it's great, anarchic fun. I liked it. I didn't love it, but I liked it.

'National Treasure' is pretty much everything you want in a big-budget action movie. It has lots o' 'splosions, plenty of gunfire, a pretty girl, a car chase, and Nic Cage even swings like Tarzan at one point. It could've used some pirates and some ninjas, but I won't had that against it. 'National Treasure' is also fun, and just the thing for sitting around with your buddies, a pizza, and some beer.

I do, however, have two problems with 'National Treasure': first, I'm tired of seeing Sean Bean play the villain. I mean, I'm happy that this guy's getting work and paying his mortgage, but this is the "Sharp's Rifles" guy, for pete's sake! Somebody cast him in a hero role, already! Second, 'National Treasure' takes a a 'Quiz Show' approach to history. It thinks of history as a collection of interesting trivia, not a dramatic interplay of ideas, spread out over generations. Any history is good history, I suppose, but I'll take the slow development of the Human Race over factoids about who cast the Liberty Bell any time.

Cool Hand Luke

I've managed to make it through 37 years thinking of COOL HAND LUKE only as "the movie where Paul Newman eats a lot of eggs." Since I'm not a particularly big fan of eggs, I never bothered to watch the picture before today.

My loss.

COOL HAND LUKE is, basically, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST on a chain gang. It's a movie about a guy who just can't conform, a guy who seems decent enough, but whose inability to work with or around authority figures fixes his fate before he ever leaves the home. This guy is an unrepentant square peg, and he's stuck in a world dedicated to grinding everyone down to the same shape.

(In my line of work, we fire guys like that as fast as possible because they're an unending stream of headaches. Yeah, yeah, you're an individual - I get it. Now can you do the job we're paying you to do?)

Thing is, I love ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, and I loved COOL HAND LUKE. In addition to spotlighting a virtuoso Newman performance, the movie gives us a real sense of time and place. From its somnolent Lalo Schiffren score to Conrad Hall's photography, we're immersed in the slow, almost eternal rythms of the rural south. The men work, and sleep, and carouse, and pass the time, and create a perfect backdrop for Newman's portrayal of a man who goes from rebel to hero to cynic. In a sense, he's doing even more than that, however. He begins the film as an emotional adolescent, progresses through manhood, and ends with the weariness of age. In the space of just a few short minutes, Newman gives us the human comedy on a chain gang. It's powerful stuff, and it's worth watching.

But I'm still not a big fan of eggs.

The Chronicles of Riddick

(Mild Spoilers)

Here's the problem with THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: by the end of PITCH BLACK, RIDDICK's titular character has reconnected with humanity.

TCR tells us that the guy was never human to begin with, thus negating the point of the first film. Additionally, for a guy who is supposed to be an antihero, Riddick does the right thing again and again and again. How do you root for the bastard when the bastard is, in fact, a cuddly teddy bear?

In TCR, Vin takes on a group called the Necromongers, who are basically the Borg without Alice Krige. Lots of stuff blows up, we learn that Vin is a master of gymkata, and the good guys, ultimately, win, sorta.

I liked PITCH BLACK and I was all set to like the sequel, but this just didn't do it for me. Bummer.

Kinsey

Liam Neeson stars in 'Kinsey,' but Laura Linney walks away with the picture.

Linney plays Clara, a character who goes from bright young grad student to steady grandmother, and whose life transitions we accept every step of the way.

Don't get me wrong: Neeson is a fine Professor Kinsey, and at no point did I not buy him in the character. It's just that while his character had a more dramatic life than Linney's, hers had a richer inner life.

The movie itself is full of surprises. First, the supporting cast is absolutely first rate. I mean, look at this slate: Timothy Hutton, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris O'Donnel, Heather Goldenhersh (who plays a minor part well, as she did in 'The Merchant of Venice'), John Lithgow, Tim Curry (who doesn't ham it up, for a change), Oliver Platt, Dylan Baker, and Veronica Cartwright, among others. Second, I absolutely expected Curry to twirl his moustache and collude with Kinsey's boss to make life tough on our protagonist: didn't happen. Third, the movie deftly handles its own subject matter, finding an adult footing without veering into sensationalism.

Well done, Mr. Condon. I look forward to seeing your next film.