Just Another Love Story

JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY is one helluva thriller.

No, it's not one of those movies where cats jump out of closets or knives make a sshhhhkkktt sound when they're pulled from a block. It's a movie with a supertight screenplay, spot on performances, and a score that makes notice its beauty without pulling you out of the film.

I hesitate to write much about the screenplay, other than to say that though it was written in Denmark and produced in 2007, it would have felt right at home in the Hollywood of the '40s and '50s. It's good noir, as good as you're likely to find, with dangerous women, crafty villains, and men who should now better.

Rebecka Hemse plays Julia, a good girl gone bad, with just the right combination of vulnerability and danger. Nikolaj Lie Kaas is Sebastian, nothing but trouble and charm. And Anders W. Berthelsen is the crucial element so many noirs, the sap. It helps that I hadn't seen these actors before, but not for a moment did I not believe them or believe in their challenges.

"Ok," you're thinking. "I've never heard of this movie and you've given me nothing to help me decide whether or not to queue it up." Problem is, I really don't want to tell you anything about it other than to say that if you liked OUT OF THE PAST, if you liked DOUBLE INDEMNITY, if you liked STRANGERS ON A TRAIN; then you're gonna like JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY. Take a chance, give it a spin, tell me what you think.

I can't wait to hear.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

First, a note about the trailer for 2012: not even Chiwetel Ejiofor's name on the poster will put my butt in a seat for that one. Second, a note about the following comments: I assume that, by now, you know who the established characters are. Consequently, I'll not try to bring you up to speed.
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE begins with Harry Potter, bloody and exhausted, facing a media onslaught in the aftermath of the battle of the Ministry of Magic. Professor Dumbledore puts his arm around the boy, shepherds him away.

And then we're off, swooping through London with the Death Eaters, in a dazzling and frightening sequence that sets our hearts to racing even as it defines the stakes of the coming war between the forces of Voldemort and Dumbledore.

Back to Harry now, on a personal level as he navigates the currents of late adolescence and learns that, yes, he's pretty good at flirting, too. But Dumbledore appears and there's work to do.

The rest of the film is about a number of things, the story not least among them (Um, Spoiler Alert: Voldemort's up to something and it's up to Harry and friends to stop him.). And that's fine - it's a perfectly good story. But what makes the film worth watching, what makes it race right by, is the way it's also about finding oneself both in big and small ways, about the immediate pain of adolescence and the continuing process of growing into onesself.

Of course, there are a number of movies that address similar themes, and many do it well. What makes HPHBP unique is that it's a Harry Potter movie, a movie that lets us wander around fiction's most marvelous real estate and dazzles us with magic that ranges from mundane to whimsical to downright epic. Additionally, it lets us wander around with a group of actors we've come to think of as our own nieces and nephews; cute kids who are growing up all too fast, even as they make us proud. It supports these young actors with brilliant adults, including at least one who Can Do No Wrong. And it revels in its composition, unafraid to make the fantastical fantastic.

For these reasons and many more, HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE is a flat-out great time at the movies. This one is worth catching on the big screen.

W.

W bounced on and off my Netflix queue a number of times. I knew that Oliver Stone is a major director, but I didn't particularly care to sit for a two-hour tomatofest directed at our 43rd president

Yep, I expected a hatchet job, and some blademarks are clearly visible: Dick Cheney's Strangelove moment in the War Room, the mannequin that stood in for Condi Rice. But the movie got at what I perceive to be the fundamental nature of its subject: a good man out of his depth. Josh Brolin was phenomenal, making us believe in his character at every step in his journey, and taking all those Bushisms and weaving them into the natural language of a guy whose brain often outpaces his mouth.

While watching the film, I wondered why it needed to be made in 2008. I think there's a difference between a sitting president and and an alumnus, no matter how recent. As the Obama team has learned with the lack of traction of its "blame Bush" public strategy, unless the last guy in the job was a towering figure, he may as well be Jim Garfield. W was urgent during 43's presidency because then, he formed a member of our perceived "circle," those people in our daily lives who have the greatest impact on us. Now, he's like a member of that circle who has since moved away. He's a person in whom we're still interested, but that interest lacks the immediacy it once had.

Immediacy aside, W is still a film worth watching. It's a take on a man and a time by a master filmmaker with a surprising point of view. It looks great, most of the supporting cast is terrific, and it was over before I knew it.