Midnight in Paris

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love Paris, and those who have never been. Woody Allen loves Paris, and Midnight in Paris is his song.

Owen Wilson plays Gil, a Hollywood writer who gets paid decent money to crank out stuff like Cheaper by The Dozen 2, but really wants to create serious literature. He's in Paris with his odious fiancée and her odious parents. He wants to move there, as any reasonable person would, and she's horrified by the idea.  {IMPORTANT NOTE: If your significant other can't see her/himself living in Paris, run.  Run as fast as you can.}  But here's the twist: he doesn't just want to live in Paris: he wants to live in the Paris of the imagination of a college-prep high schooler. This is a man who has read A Moveable Feast so many times that he wills himself a seat at the table. Literally. The Fitzgeralds are delightful. Hemingway introduces him to Stein, who likes his work. He's ecstatic, and that's even before Marion Cotillard shows up. Suddenly, Odious Fiancée seems very far away, indeed.

And now we're in the love letter to a city, a time, and the very idea of cities and times and possibilities that may, just may, lie within our grasp. It's capital R Romantic stuff, and Woody makes it sing. Though the film has a jarring propensity to name-check just about everyone in A Moveable Feast, we forgive it because it's so earnest, so Romantic, so in love with its time and its people and its possibilities, and so beautiful. Paris, past and present, looks absolutely charming.   It glimmers in the rain and it holds manifold and wonderful possibilities.  Its denizens look like just the sorts of a people an imaginative man would hope to meet.

Me - I love Paris. I love the way city lights look when reflected on wet cobblestones. I love possibilities. And I love my wife's dog-eared copy of A Moveable Feast.  Midnight in Paris hit me right between the eyes. If you love Paris, I bet it'll work for you, too.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

Y’know, I like Keanu Reeves. The guy’s a terrible actor, but he chooses such fun, interesting projects that he generates enough goodwill to overcome his handicaps. THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, in which Reeves plays an alien inhabiting a manufactured human body, makes a virtue of its star’s woodenness while serving up a giant helping of marvelously stupid entertainment.

Here’s the setup: an alien (Reeves) and its giant robotic henchman have come to Earth to tell us that we have two options: stop destroying our environment or die at the hands of aliens who have never seen Star Trek and, thus, are unaware that the galaxy is choc a bloc with habitable planets. It’s aided in this by the formerly beautiful but now disturbingly anorexic Jennifer Connelly, an American scientist called in to consult the U.S. Government and provide some kind of outlandishly miscegenetic love interest.

The movie never overcomes the first question to occur to the viewer: why doesn’t the alien, who appears to be compassionate, offer to teach mankind how to, say, make a paint-on photovoltaic paste that’s as cheap to produce as paint, or show us other ways to stay an advanced civilization while cleaning up the environment? Why must the only two options be regression to a 17th-century energy paradigm or mass murder? For that matter, why do none of the humans think to say, “Show us how” instead of “Give us another chance to figure it out on our own.” I mean, c’mon, clearly the alien is the emissary of a postindustrial civilization: somewhere along the way, its people must have figured this stuff out. And those are just the questions raised by the premise. Wait until we get into the details. When the alien is asked what its real form is and it replies, “Telling you would only frighten you,” why does the film think that compelling its audience to imagine that Yog Soggoth works for Greenpeace does anything to generate any emotions other than fear, distrust, and revulsion? When, at the end, the alien does us a favor by not destroying the world but, instead, instantly shutting down every electrical and mechanical invention created after, say, 1870, do the moviemakers think this is a hopeful note? Have they not seen Mad Max? Can’t they imagine the horror produced by all those planes falling out of the sky, all those medical devices ceasing to function, all those pumps and valves and heating and cooling devices and various other things on which we rely to keep us alive just up and quitting? How are coal miners supposed to get out of their holes now that the elevators are down? How many submariners are going to die cold, dark, and alone? And good luck dealing with the mass starvation brought on the by the instantaneous destruction of the global food production and distribution system. You know what? On second thought, maybe the people in this movie were on to something when they chose not to ask the alien for advice. The answer, apparently, would have been, “Death. Death to all. Destroy all that you hold dear while madness fills your soul and you quake in fear before the Elder Gods.”

Thanks, but no thanks, Soggoth, you patchouli oil - smelling galacto-hippie. Go panhandle for the whales on some other planet.

Bee Movie

BEE MOVIE is an abject failure.

Well, at least as far as I'm concerned. My 8-yr-old watched it twice. Just when I start to think I'm giving that kid a proper education.

Here's a movie with offputting animation, a dull story, and precisely zero funny lines. OK, there's one, but it was a lawyer joke that I couldn't even laugh at for fear my wife would slap an injunction on my butt. It's about a bee who gets a tryout with his hive's elite pollen gatherers, then goes on to become something of an insectoid César Chávez. Oh, and he also falls in love with a human woman, played by Renée Zellweger. Now, if there's one actress on Earth who can sell a woman falling in love with a bee, it's Zellweger. But I still couldn't buy it.

BEE MOVIE does have one thing going for it, and that's Ray Liotta. But not even he can smear enough honey on this picture to make it sweet. Pass this one by.

Nine Lives

NINE LIVES is an ambitious picture. It's a series of twelve sometimes-connected vignettes, each of which centers on a turning point in a character's life. It tries something new, and for that I give it credit. Sadly, it fails.

The characters in NINE LIVES all speak like the same writer is creating their dialogue. The movie's various cast members act their hearts out, but their performances feel more like acting class exercises then real people. After reading Ebert's glowing review of the picture, I was all ready to settle down for a great experience. Unfortunately, NINE LIVES didn't deliver that for me.

The Waterboy

THE WATERBOY, a vintage Adam Sandler comedy from his “inappropriately aggressive man-child” phase, is an underdog sports comedy that has the titular water boy fired from LSU and sent to work at Louisiana’s last-place football college. Soon, he discovers a talent for sacking quarterbacks and makes the team, despite the fact that he seems to have an IQ of roughly 50. This movie works because it will do anything, absolutely anything, for a laugh. Think watching Fairuza Balk bite the heads off a baby ‘gator on a stick is funny? It’s in there! Think ‘70s fashion and hairstyles are funny? They’re in there! Think guys with crazy eyes and silly voices are funny? Well, you get the point.

Some of THE WATERBOY’s gags are funny, but most aren’t. However, seeing as how there’s roughly a gag a minute in this picture, you’re sure to find a several that’ll make you chuckle and, hopefully, one or two that will make you laugh out loud. That ain’t bad.