Juno

You know how, when you go see a Shakespeare play, you spend the first five or ten minutes just trying to figure out what everyone's saying; then your brain clicks into Elizabethan mode and the dialogue becomes clear as daylight? Same thing happens with "Juno."

Fifteen year old Juno speaks in the deeply idiomatic parlance of adolescence, a language so particular to time and place that it's nearly a foreign tongue to everyone not of it. Once we attune to that parlance, however, we find her dealing with some of the most serious issues a young person can face with a healthy mixture of style, brains, and staggering immaturity. In other words, she's a reasonably together teenager, one I'd be happy to call my daughter.

Yes, this is a "teenage pregnancy" movie, but it's a sharp teenage pregnancy movie, one willing to style the teenager in question as (within the range of a 15-yr-old) mistress of her own destiny. Further, it's willing to play with our conceptions of its characters, finding sympathy in some unexpected places and blinding selfishness in others, and charting those journeys in unique and interesting ways.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody is being heralded as the next big thing. I don't know if that's the case, but I do know that she's written a sharp, funny, good movie with "Juno." After five or ten minutes, I could even figure out what everyone was saying.

The Kingdom

THE KINGDOM, a mystery / cultural thriller set in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, follows an FBI team that receives permission from the Saudi royal family to assist in investigating a terrorist attack on Westerners living in a company compound. Complications ensue, and we’re on our way to great investigation of the clash of Muslim and Western culture. That is, until director Peter Berg decides that we in the audience are idiots who won’t sit still for a good story unless a kickass gun battle breaks out.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the United Arab Emirates, but I’ll admit to a bit of cultural prejudice. While I’ve never been treated with anything other than friendliness and respect, I never walk down the street without maintaining a complete scan of my environment and I never walk down back alleys. And that’s the UAE, where Saudis come to party. THE KINGDOM takes the sense of unease a Westerner can feel in a Gulf State and dials it up to eleven, perfectly capturing that sense of alertness, that sense of feeling like a somewhat unwelcome guest who’ll be tolerated nonetheless.

And then it throws the achievement away with a professional but pedestrian climactic battle that, seemingly, comes out of nowhere. Here we are plumbing the subtleties of the Arab mind and having a fine time doing it, then it’s all RPGs and bubblegum philosophy about turning the other cheek. Ah, well.

Two observations that I couldn’t manage to work into the body of the review: #1, Danny Elfman’s score is phenomenal. #2, Danny Huston’s “slimy guy” schtick is getting old. C’mon, Danny, you were great in THE PROPOSITION! Choose more roles that show off your range!