How to Marry a Millionaire

HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE strikes a blow against the commodotization of women by telling a story about the commoditization of men. While some complain that the film is, in reality, arguing for the former, that notion is subverted by the film's infamous fashion show / Thai whorehouse sequence, in which the lone man in the room is so overwhelmed by the raw power of female sexuality that his only possible response is an emasculated retreat.

In the world of popular culture, women were (and are!) nothing more than the sum of their parts. In HOW TO MAM, the men become nothing more than the sum of their monthly paychecks. Gone are considerations of their intrinsic worth, their honor, or their intellect, or any of the uncountable (in)tangibles that make a man a man. In a bold move that would go unanswered until 1997's IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, women boil men down to the one thing about which the (What's the opposite of fairer - uglier? Harumph!) sex is most insecure - the size of their bank accounts. These women dare to express what every creature on the planet knows: it really all comes down to "What can you do for me?"

Some may argue that HOW TO MAM breaks down at the end, when Lauren Bacall winds up marrying a grease monkey, only to discover that he's a proficient exploiter of the workers of the world's petroleum industry. I say those people focus on the text, the sacrifice and reward, when they should be focusing on the subtext, the alpha female's ability to spot that member of the pack most likely to give her what she needs and to home in on that individual, consciously or no. The film's resolution both rewards that instictive ability while slyly acknowledging its women's understanding of the dynamic and the men's fatalistic acceptance of it.

In a world in which the strong eat the weak, HOW TO MAM reminds us just who is which, and what the stakes are. What a brilliantly subversive little picture.

And don't get me started on that overture.

Hellboy Revisited

I've been on a Hellboy kick lately, mostly because I'll reinforce pretty much anything that gets my kid to read. That said, I revisited Guilllermo del Toro's live-action HELLBOY film over the weekend. I enjoyed it much more this time around.

When I saw HELLBOY during its theatrical run, the comics were fresher in my mind. This, of course, led to constant comparisons between what I was seeing and what I'd read and, while I liked what I was seeing, it simply couldn't compare to my imagination. That, and there was no Lobster Johnson.

This time around, the comics have faded in memory and I was able to enjoy the film more on its own terms. The audience surrogate -character doesn't grate, the throwaway references don't feel underdone, and themes of Hellboy really carry through. You see, HELLBOY is all about choice: it's just the thing to appeal to believers in the Leibnizian monadic soul, like me. In the film, as in the comics, Hellboy was created to be the Antichrist and unleash cosmic, Lovecraftian horror upon the world. He was brought into the world by evil forces to do evil deeds, but gets an early exposure to the good guys. Ultimately, he chooses sides, and his self-determining choice defines him more than all the external factors that combine to force his hand.

This is great stuff, and HELLBOY delivers it in a package filled with slimy monsters, catchy one-liners, and a double helping of fun.

Still no Lobster Johnson, though. Perhaps in HELLBOY 2.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY is consistently amusing, occasionally hilarious, and always gorgeous.

Here's the setup: Arthur Dent's home is about to be destroyed, and there's nothing he can do to stop it. Sure, he lie down in front of the tractors positioned to destroy his house, but that won't stop the Vogon demolition fleet positioned to annihilate the Earth. Though it's a bad day for Earth, it's a great day for Arthur, however. His strange buddy, the one who doesn't quite fit in, turns out to be an alien. To make matters better, he's an alien who writes for _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, and he shows up just in time to help Arthur hitch a ride to, well, the galaxy.

The next 80 minutes or so bring us the horrors of Vogon poetry, a new definition of the technicolor yawn, the best extended riff on our sitting President I've yet to see in a motion picture, and the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Oh, and we find out who made the fjords. He won a prize.

Though the movie breaks down a bit during the second act, it pulls itself together admirably well and closes on a very strong note. I expected this movie to be reasonably amusing, but it wound up making my day. Have fun.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

PS While watching this movie, I couldn't help but compare it to I HEART HUCKABEES. IHH purported to be an existential comedy, but it was really a comedy about self-importance. THHGTTG is the real thing.

The Comedians of Comedy

Netflix is getting into the business of producing its own material, and one of its first products was THE COMEDIANS OF COMEDY. It's a documentary about the Comedians of Comedy tour, a show that unites a number of (unknown to me) comics and has them play nonstandard venues, such as rock clubs and town social halls.

The documentary's premise and the comedians' self image is one of cutting edge -itude, of people who refuse to sell out while they probe the limitations of their art form. In other words, they haven't hit it big and they say "fuck" a lot. I thought their sets were amusing, and I even chuckled once or twice, but there isn't an Eddie Izzard among them. Ah, well.

Grandma's Boy

Harold Lloyd's GRANDMA'S BOY is laugh-out-loud funny. Not "amusing, but I'm mostly watching it for its historical significance" funny, but no-kidding, laugh-out-loud funny.

Here's the setup: Lloyd's the town coward. He's competing with the town bully for the hand of a local lass, but will he rise above his fears and become the man she needs? Ok, it's not that exciting a setup, but it's all in the execution.

Lloyd executes as well as anybody. His film moves right along from one gag to the next, and his inherent likeability keeps us engaged throughout. The supporting characters are interesting and memorable, and the whole picture sets just the right tone of comic danger and conflict. What a treat!

The 5 Worst Films of 2005

I haven't had time to see a movie lately, so here's one from the archives:

5. CRASH
I don't require that the films I see have people like those I know in real life. I don't require that they have characters who speak like people I know in real life. I do, however, require that, unless the movies feature balrogs or wookies or toupeed actors screaming "Khaaaaaann!", they have people that could, conceivably, walk the earth.

4. STAR WARS III
Y'know, I just can't get into the STAR WARS prequels. Then again, my father couldn't get into STAR WARS. Time marches on.

3. WAR OF THE WORLDS
Imagine spending two hours watching the end of the world. Now imagine spending two hours watching the end of the world through the eyes of a guy you wish would just die, already. WAR OF THE WORLDS gave us spectacle without character. Without character, of course, we may as well be watching paint dry.

2. FANTASTIC FOUR
I didn't care about Ben Grimm. I didn't care about Victor Von Doom. I didn't care about Mr. Fantastic, Inviso-Girl, or the Human Torch. This movie should have spent less time CGI-ing incredible action sequences and more time CGI-ing a decent script.

1. MINDHUNTERS
This movie is so extraordinarily, aggressively bad that I suspect its creators personally hate each and every single one of us. MINDHUNTERS defies the laws of physics, chemistry, psychology, and the State of Nebraska in its attempt to bring us fun, dumb entertainment. I'll say this much: they got the dumb part right. P.S. I love Iceland and its wonderful, warm, and forgiving people.

Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster

GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER (1966) is a bright, funky, and painless monster movie featuring a danceoff, Duane Eddy - style jangling guitars, and a Godzilla monster with a handy screen in his throat for improved vision. It's high camp in a psychedelic mode, missing only cameos from Gidget and the Big Kahuna.

The titular sea monster is a giant lobster, and it must be one of the least scary monsters in the Godzilla pantheon. I understand why they named the movie after it, however. It's scarier than the giant buzzard Godzilla faces in the runup to the big fight, a fearsome battler that's easily dispatched with just one blast of the Big Guy's breath. Nevertheless, what's the point of going with a giant lobster if you're not going to have Godzilla boil it up for the big beach party / clambake? Ah, well. Another opportunity lost.

Anyway, GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER is just plain fun. If you like monsters and you like camp, you'll like this one.

Stalag 17

STALAG 17 is one of those pictures that I knew I was supposed to see, that I knew I was eventually going to see, and that, frankly, I was really looking forward to seeing. How did it fare? Not too well. STALAG 17 is a movie that, for me, lands in the "just ok" file.

STALAG 17 can't figure out what kind of movie it wants to be. Is it a psychological thriller? A buddy movie? A comedy? A critique of capitalism? I don't know. Neither, I suspect, did Billy Wilder, the fellow behind this picture.

There's a spy among the POWs in a German camp, and suspicion falls on Sgt. Sefton (William Holden), a selfish, unfeeling dealer who seems to know all the angles. Sounds great, right? As a study of suspicion and fear, I think it could have been. Problem is, as soon as it grabs us, the movie shifts its attention to Animal and Sugar Lips (Robert Strauss and Harvey Lembeck), a comic-relief pair of buddies who appear to be direct cinematic forebears of Timon and Pumbaa. These caricatures are so broadly drawn that they yank me out of the movie every time they're onscreen, and they're onscreen a lot. Just when I'm ready to submit, however, and play along with their little jokes, I'm confronted with the amazing self-centeredness of Sgt. Sefton, a man who cares only about the bigger, better deal. He sobers me right up every time. This constant whipsawing between various tones kept me off balance. Consequently, I couldn't immerse myself in the universe of the film.

Holden's Sgt. Sefton is a selfish, nasty, cruel, totally unlikeable and totally unsympathetic son of a bitch. That we care about him anyway is a testament to the amazing performance on display here. As we see him go from self-imposed isolation to group-imposed isolation, we see just how much of his disdain is a front, hiding his desperate need for respect. When he finally makes his play, we cheer him on, even though we know he has a lot more in common with Ken Lay than with any of us. Holden's performance is 100% gold, I tell ya, and it redeems the whole picture.

Turtles Can Fly

In Bahman Ghobadi's TURTLES CAN FLY, the writer/director introduces us to a world that we generally know only in the abstract: the world of young Kurdish orphans in particular, and the world of refugees in general. We have much to learn in that world and, though it wasn't a pleasant journey, I'm grateful for my time there.

TURTLES CAN FLY centers on Satellite, a thirteen-year-old boy who's going to wind up a millionaire if he doesn't get himself killed first. Satellite is gifted with both technical and business sense, he's a natural and effective leader, and he's personally brave (He also happens to be full of shit half of the time, but that's part of his charm.). This boy basically runs his small Kurdish town on the Iraq/Turkey border, and he seems content in his alpha male status - that is, until a mysterious family enters the picture. This family could be from anywhere where war and brutality are long-term facts of life; there are no adults, just a teenaged boy whose arms appear to have been lost to a mine, a teenaged girl with the maturity of the profoundly traumatized, and the blind toddler who needs them to survive. The boy seems like an alpha male in his own right, the girl holds a profound attraction for Satellite, and the toddler, well, the toddler will touch them all in ways they couldn't possibly predict.

TURTLES CAN FLY is a harsh movie, but it isn't the harshness of cruelty or exploitation. It's the knowledge that life is incredibly hard for most people on the planet, and that the modern concept of childhood is the gentle province of the rich and secure. These kids have lived through things that would make the COME AND SEE's Florya put a gun in his mouth, and they adapt - as real kids do. Their realism and everyday courage makes it all the more touching when one of them cracks under the strain, because we've come to see them not as others separated by geography, ethnicity, or age, but as ourselves if our luck hadn't been so cosmically good.

To say I enjoyed this movie wouldn't be quite right. I'm glad I saw it, however, as it does what the best movies do. It took me to a time and place with which I'd been unfamiliar and made them real. It told me a story that perhaps I didn't want to hear, but that I needed to hear, and it did so with artistry and urgency. TURTLES CAN FLY is an excellent motion picture.

Brotherhood of the Wolf

Although I was all set to love BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF, the picture had me checking my watch well before the end of its excruciatingly long 144-minute running time.

BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF is a monster/martial arts/drawing room movie in which a chevalier from the court of Louis XV (Complete with Mohawk sidekick! In stores soon!) comes to the provinces to hunt a mysterious creature that's killing off the peasants. It starts off well enough, with a fun Jaws tribute that's quickly followed by a good martial arts set piece with the solid, if somewhat vacant, Mark Dacascos.

Things go south, however, once the chevalier meets the noble gentry and gets down to the business of solving the mystery. Unfortunately, this happens pretty early in the first act. The primary love interest can't hold a candle to the secondary love interest, leaving the viewer seriously doubting the chevalier's judgment. The Big Villain is telegraphed so early that there's no surprise later on. The Creature, which works fine as long as it stays in the shadows, is so clearly a CGI creation that it yanked me right out of the movie; and The Evil Posse is completely ridiculous -- I pitied these people for being born 210 years too early for Thunderdome. They get a couple of big battles against the heroes and, though they give it their all, I couldn't help but think, "They're no Crazy 88s."

This movie needed a more ruthless editor. Slo-mo-ing a victim in mid-turn as she faces the Beast? Cut it. Some guy picking up a pitcher, pouring a beverage, quick-closeup on the beverage, then back to the guy? Cut it. Just tell me what he has to say. Long scene of the chevalier practicing his quick-draw, only to have him never call upon that skill later in the picture? Cut it. Long scenes designed to show off the mystic nature of the Indian dude? Cut it: let's get this picture moving!

As I said, I wanted to like BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF. Too bad - it could've been so much better.

Kill Bill, Vol. 1

I loved every frame of KILL BILL.

This movie has everything: fast swords, fast cars, and so many gallons of Kensington Gore that my audience laughed in awe, dismay, and bemusement at the sheer absurdity of the production.

Here's the story: Uma Thurman is a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS), sort of a Fox Force Five gone horribly wrong. When, on her wedding day, the DiVAS strongly object to the union, Uma winds up single, angry, and out for revenge.

KILL BILL turns on three hinges: charisma, music, and fight choreography. I've never been an Uma Thurman fan before. I didn't really buy her in PULP FICTION, she helped (temporarily) kill the BATMAN franchise, and, frankly, I don't find her particularly attractive. But I'm an Uma Thurman fan now. Thurman owns every minute she's onscreen, and I never dreamed she had the athletic ability or the acting range she displays here. Lucy Liu was another revelation. Though she'd never sparked my interest before, her O-Ren Ishii is easily the coolest bad guy I've seen all year. Her character's unique management style makes DeNiro's Al Capone look like a cheap thug. Finally, there's Sonny Chiba in a role Mifune would've played had this movie been made 20 years back. Chiba, as the master swordsmith who gives Uma her blade, exudes a calm command that makes me want to see this guy in action.

Music has been a big part of all of Tarantino's movies, and this is no exception. KILL BILL's music is infectious, and by the time Tomoyasu Hotei's "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" came blaring out of the theater's speakers, I was literally bopping in my seat. I've only done that once before, and that was for the KILL BILL trailer. I'm buying a copy of this soundtrack.

In a movie like this, the fights are the big enchilada. KILL BILL doesn't let you down. The fights are brutal, visceral experiences that look like they hurt. A lot. Combatants get tired. When they're cut, they bleed. Done differently, these (really quite long) fights could be grueling experiences for the audience, but Tarantino goes so ridiculously over the top that, instead of flinching, we're dazzled. The film's biggest production number, the battle at the House of Blue Leaves, begins with a wink to MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL that's so gratuitous you can't help but shake your head and laugh. In Tarantino's world, a 125-lb woman with the right katana can slice through bone as if it were butter. By the time the battle ends with an homage to Thomas Harris, you know you've gone so far over the top that you're on a different planet.

Some people don't dig the Tarantino vibe. That's cool. If, however, you can accept that there's an airline that'll allow you to bring your katana into the cabin with you, that the police wouldn't think to post a lookout for the world's most identifiable vehicle, or that the yakuza thinks that guns are for sissies, then this is the movie for you.

Batman Begins

BATMAN BEGINS in a nutshell:

End of Act 1: Wow! This is as good as big summer blockbusters get!

End of Act 2: Boy, they sure did hire a lot of great actors for supporting roles. Why did the process fail in the casting of Murphy and Holmes, who can't sell their roles? They're a negative, but I'm still enjoying the movie.

End of Act 3: Ugh; two solid thirds hurt by a final third that's just loud and ridiculous. And this movie could have been great.

Bits I liked, overall: Bale, Hauer, Caine, Freeman, Wilkinson, Oldman.
Bits I disliked, overall: Murphy, Holmes. The editing of the fight scenes (Why hire the Equilibrium guy if you aren't going to show us what he can do?). The downgrading of Sgt. Gordon to a goofball.

Verdict: Eh, it was ok.

Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron

HELLBOY ANIMATED: BLOOD AND IRON just isn't as much fun as SWORD OF STORMS.

B&I puts the Hellboy gang in a haunted house that's just been purchased by a Richard Branson -esque character. Before you know it, they're in the middle of a vampire and ghost story that's too gory for the kids and too familiar for the adults. Tack on a third act that recreates and truncates the Hellboy-Hecate storyline from the comics, but doesn't feel organic to the vampire/ghost story, and you have a wholly unsatisfying experience.

Color me underwhelmed.

An Inconvenient Truth

If you like watching people preach to the converted, you'll love AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. Al Gore, at his pedantic, self-satisfied best, delivers his well-honed global warming presentation to an audience that hangs on his every word. Gore's presentation combines data, images, and even a Matt Groening video in its efforts to convince -well, by the looks of things, people who need no convincing. He uses straw man arguments to dismiss "critics" (You can practically see the quotation marks he puts around the word.), he milks the current administration for easy laughs (not that that's hard to do), and he generally plays to his base.

This is fine, particularly if you're his base, but then the movie can't help but get us into Gore's personal life, or at least whichever aspects of his personal life he chooses to exploit for the purposes of the film. There are plenty of shots of Apple board member Gore working with determination at his Apple computer, looking pensively into his Apple computer, and just generally promoting the Apple brand. There's Gore sitting down with "cutting edge," as he describes them, (fully vetted) representatives of the PRC, home of some of the world's most polluted cities, talking about their solutions. There's Gore navigating the backstage labyrinth, causing me to hope, for just a moment, that he'd stop and ask someone for directions. Oh, it was horrible.

If I had to boil AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH down to just one word, that word would be "Insufferable." I went into this movie feeling neutral about Gore and generally sympathetic toward his cause. I came out of it actively disliking the man and neutral toward his cause. This film's success is a mystery to me.

Shortbus

SHORTBUS plants its flag in the first ten minutes. This is a movie about sexuality, discovery, and human relationships, and it takes the sexuality part of that equation very seriously. In the first ten minutes, we meet the film's main characters as they participate in various sex acts, and the film is pretty much as graphic as can be. These people aren't simulating their sex acts: SHORTBUS isn't pornography, but the only difference between these parts of the movie and pornography is attitude. If you're ok with that, and you're willing to go along for the ride, you're in for an excellent picture. If not, well, I understand.

Sometimes, I'll write that I respect a film more than I like it. This usually happens with pictures whose reach exceeds their grasp: I appreciate the reach, even if things didn't quite work out. SHORTBUS is a film that I both respect and like: it innovates, it tries new things, it seeks to push the boundaries of its art form, and it succeeds. Additionally, it succeeds in crafting a number of compelling, interweaving storylines that catch us up in the lives of its people and, perhaps, teach us a little about ourselves.

SHORTBUS sold me early on. In that first ten minutes, two of the people we view are in the throes of energetic, creative, loving sex. When compared with the emptiness that infuses the other vignettes, these people are doing all right. As they bask in the afterglow, the woman (Sook-Yin Lee) says, "I feel sorry for people who don't have what we have." The woman, a sex therapist, goes on to confide the problem of one of her clients: the woman has been faking her orgasms. "I told her to keep on doing it," the therapist goes on. "It's a valid method of buying time for the relationship." The man's (Raphael Baker) expression goes from one of contentment to intense insecurity. "Is she talking about herself?" he seems to be thinking. It was a deft touch, and extraordinarily well played, and it's when I knew that SHORTBUS wasn't going to be some exploitative artistic wankery. It was going to be a movie about real emotions and real relationships, and it was going to approach them from a mature viewpoint.

Plenty of movies explore relationships, and some do it well. What sets SHORTBUS apart is its approach to sexuality. This movie takes a real chance in depicting actual sex in the way that it does. It's one thing to cut to an exterior shot of the train entering a tunnel; it's quite another to stay in the railway car; warts, excretions, and all. By taking a chance on the audience's toleration of unusual movie experiences, the film gets to explore actual human sexuality in interesting, layered, and thought-provoking ways. As is the case with any excellent movie, all the elements of SHORTBUS work together to give the audience greater understanding of the characters and advance the narrative. It's a gimmick, I suppose, but no more a gimmick than using stuffed animals and cellophane to explore the subconscious.

This is one of those movies you can't watch on the Metro and you can't watch until the kids are deeply asleep. If you can make the time, and if you're willing to overcome the discomfort the film may make you feel, SHORTBUS is well worth the effort.

The World's Fastest Indian

In THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN, Anthony Hopkins plays an eccentric Kiwi engineering genius. He lives in a shack and tinkers with his motorcycle, and he eventually decides to head to the U.S., where he plans to take his bike the Bonneville Salt Flats for the speed trials. Once in the U.S., he meets a variety of colorful and harmless characters, makes some friends, sets some records, and generally has a delightful time.

And that's the problem with THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN: it's basically a movie about a nice fellow having a delightful time. There's no real conflict (at least nothing that can't be cleared up in no time), no real character development, no real anything. Now, I like Anthony Hopkins, but not enough to justify a whole movie without a compelling dramatic throughline.

What a disappointment.

The Science of Sleep

I respected THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP more than I liked it. Michel Gondry's film takes real chances, both narratively and visually, and it dares to deviate from formulas. Unfortunately, it does so in service to a story that I didn't find compelling.

I thought Gael Garcia Bernal's character was insane and potentially dangerous. Consequently, I did not root for him to get together with Charlotte Gainsbourg's Stephanie. Rather, I rooted for Stephanie to get as far away as she could as quickly as she could. Such is not the path to audience immersion in what is, of a sort, a love story.

Nevertheless, I respected Gondry's willingness to shift in and out of conscious experience almost at whim, and his faith in the audience's ability to follow along. I enjoyed the animation and the sensibilities of the fantasy world. I bought the performances and agree with Dash in his assertion that Bernal is developing into a "performer of admirable range."

Respecting a film isn't the same as liking it, however. You can't always have it all.

Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut

The worst thing about DONNIE DARKO is the plot. Unfortunately, plotting is what the director's cut is all about.

In its original form, DONNIE DARKO is so impenetrable that it inspires its audiences to think of it almost as a tone poem while they try to piece together the clues scattered throughout its narrative. This worked for me, as I drew more from the film's evocation of adolescence than I did its confusing storyline.

The director's cut, on the other hand, adds a few scenes and some intertitles that take this strange meditation on puberty and turns it into a rather humdrum science fiction piece about time travel. The intertitles have an added, unpleasant effect: by demonstrating that Donnie is not psychotic, they eliminate the sole source of the original version's dramatic tension.

Directors commonly moan when studio "suits" come in and demand changes to their vision. In this case, the suits were right.

The Call of Cthulhu

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn. --HP Lovecraft

A couple of years ago, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society scraped together $50,000 and set out to film THE CALL OF CTHULHU, an inherently unfilmable story and a central tale in Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos. The movie, made to look like a poorly preserved print of a 1920s silent picture, is wildly, wonderfully, weirdly successful. I loved, loved, loved THE CALL OF CTHULHU.

Here's the setup: a lunatic hands a bundle of papers to his psychiatrist, pleading with the doctor to burn these files on Cthulu. Why is this patient insane? What is Cthulu? Strap yourselves in for a great forty minutes of finding out, gang, because THE CALL OF CTHULHU is imaginative, audacious, and scary fun.

The movie overcomes its budgetary limitations by embracing them. Can't afford to fly the crew out to an island to shoot a key scene? Build a cardboard island that looks like something out of the THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. Can't afford a CGI monster? Nothing's scarier than papier mache and stop-motion, if executed with confidence. Need a ship for your climax at sea? Hey, a cheap model and some painted sheets will do just fine - it is black and white, after all, and sometimes graininess can be an asset.

Speaking of graininess, the movie is created in something called mythoscope. It's a just-plain-great idea, and it makes the picture really look like something that's been sitting in a warehouse for 80 years. There are hairs in projection frame, spotting and strobing, and the kind of inconsistencies in print quality that are familiar to any silent film aficionado. The process gives the whole thing a wonderful sense of antiquity and lends immediacy to the proceedings onscreen.

$50,000, a warehouse, and audacity. Apparently, that's all it takes to make a terrific picture these days. Good for the folks at HPLHS!

The Innocents

THE INNOCENTS rises or falls on Deborah Kerr's performance. Her role requires earnestness, thoughtfulness, conviction, courage, and perhaps a touch of madness. If she can pull it off, the movie is a winner. Unfortunately, she can't.

Kerr harrumphs, goggles, and screams her way through the picture. She so distanced me from the action that my greatest fear was that she'd tire of chewing the scenery, chew her way through my screen, and go for my throat. The movie looks great; its children are perfect; it sounds wonderful; and it has a snappy script. If only they'd hired a better actress, they could've had a classic on their hands.

Wilde

WILDE is a well done movie, but it's painful to watch.

Have you ever had a friend who fell in love with the worst possible person in the world? Have you seen that friend's life spiral downward and downward, while all you can do is sit on the sidelines and lament? WILDE is like that. The movie follows Oscar Wilde from a time shortly before he realizes his homosexuality through the apogee of his fame and into his precipitous decline. It's a sad, desperate story, made all the more so because the Oscar Wilde we see here is so damn likeable, in spite of his neglect for his family and his poor choice in lovers.
. . .
A question: I have a co-worker who wrote her thesis on Oscar Wilde. Is this movie accurate enough for me to engage her in semi-informed manner on her area of interest?
. . .
Oscar Wilde note #1: Back when I was substitute teaching in a college English Department, I covered a freshman class whose assignment had been _The Importance of Being Earnest_. When I asked them what they thought of the play, I got all these answers about its commentary on the social and political issues of its day. My response: "Yeah ... but did you think it was funny?" The students were dumbfounded.

Oscar Wilde note #2: I read "The Selfish Giant," which is referenced in the film, to my boy a couple of months ago. When I finished, he asked me why I was crying. "It's just so beautiful," I replied. What a perfect little story.

Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms

HELLBOY ANIMATED: SWORD OF STORMS is much better than I thought it would be. I only rented the thing out of loyalty to the characters, and I expected a cheap, direct-to-DVD knockoff. What a pleasant surprise to find an involving story, solid animation, excellent voice acting, and an all-around great experience.

If you're already a Hellboy fan, read no further and be assured that you'll enjoy a film that hews to the style of the comics. If you aren't familiar with the character, here's a bit of background. In the waning days of WWII, Hitler's occult advisor tries the last-ditch tactic of summonig a demon from Hell to aid in the fight. When American forces break through at the culmination of the ceremony, they find cutest li'l baby demon you ever did see. They name him Hellboy, raise him to be a good guy, and put him to work in the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, or BPRD (Motto: Things really do go bump in the night. We're the ones who bump back.). Hellboy's a gruff manchild, still living in the equivalent of his parents' basement, and his solution to most problems involves significant amounts of blunt force trauma. He's a great character. He's nearly indestructible, so he can face the most horrific of creatures with little more than a deadpan, "Oh, crap." He carries his massive upper torso and Fist of Clobberin' around on spindly little goat legs and delicate hooves, making him simultaneously imposing and amusing. And he hangs out with a gill man and a firestarter. What's not to like?

In HASS, the BPRD sends Hellboy to Japan to investigate the theft of a legendary sword. Before he knows it, the demon gets sucked into the Japanese equivalent of Faerie, where he must undertake a quest that gives him and us, the audience, a tour through some of the scarier tales of Japanese folklore. As Hellboy uses the amazing power of blunt force trauma to survive in this world, his pals in the BPRD must deal with the real-world repercussions of his actions and figure a way to get him back.

It's a solid setup, and one that goes right for a variety of reasons. First, HASS, as do the comics, boasts a love for folklore and an ability to introduce the audience to new legends with a light and entertaining touch. Second, the animation style resembles Hellboy creator Mike Mignola's comics, creating a continuity with the printed page and inviting us into the greater world of the character. Third, the voice acting (largely by the cast of the not-as-good live action HELLBOY movie) sells the picture. Genre stalwart Ron Perlman voices Hellboy as I always imagined the character; Selma Blair does fine, if necessarily whiny, work as Liz the firestarter; and Doug Jones gives Abe Sapien, the gill man, a different and successful spin than did live-action voice actor David Hyde Pierce.

HASS is fun. It's funny, scary, and thoroughly entertaining, and it provides a wonderful introduction to the world of Japanese folklore. What more could you want?

Stranger Than Fiction

STRANGER THAN FICTION is like a cream puff. It looks like there's some food there, but once you sink your teeth in, you find little to chew on.

The movie begins promisingly. Will Ferrell begins his day to the charming narration of Emma Thompson's voice and with attractive computer graphics surrounding him and illustrating his mind and world. The hook comes early, as Ferrell hears the narrator's voice and, appropriately, freaks out.

The rest of the movie concerns Ferrell's growing realization that he's a character in a story and his reactions to that realization. STRANGER THAN FICTION handles the concept as well as did Neil Gaiman's 1602 and better than Stephen King's last "Gunslinger" novel, helping us believe in a world in which a character can both believe he is in a story and interact with his creator in a meaningful way. It's by turns comic and tragic, and it achieves a compelling sense of sadness and grace. STRANGER THAN FICTION captured my imagination and touched my heart. While watching it, I loved it.

But you know how some movies get better with time? This is not one of them. STRANGER THAN FICTION's resolution is unsatisfying and its lessons trite. Its love story feels unnatural and its people heightened to unreality. It just plain breaks down upon further analysis.

It's too bad, really. That was one delicious-looking cream puff.

Mad Monster Party

MAD MONSTER PARTY (1967) is a stop-motion picture picture with a vaudevillian's philosophy: if you don't like the current joke, don't worry - there's another coming right on its heels.

Here's the setup: Dr. Frankenstein is having all the best monsters (Dracula, the Wolf Man, Phyllis Diller) over to the castle for a bash. Like any good party, this one is a hotbed of machiavellian maneuvering, cynical doublecrossing, and animated-skeleton rock bands ripping off the Beatles.

It's cute, it's inventive, & my kid loves it as much as I did when I was five. What more could you ask for?

Crank

Last fall, I was faced with a dilemma. I had one night at an airbase in Rota, Spain, and CRANK was showing at the base theater. I generally like Jason Statham movies, and I wanted to see this one. I’d been to Rota many times before and felt that the city had little new to offer. Nevertheless, it was Spain and I did know that CRANK would show up on Netflix after a while. Ultimately, I chose to go out. Even if Rota was a familiar city, after all, it was Spain.

I chose well, for, as it turns out, I am not CRANK’s target demographic. In fact, this film was made with such laserlike focus that anyone who is not a male between the ages of fifteen and seventeen is not CRANK’s target demographic. CRANK is pure adolescent male fantasy with a Nietszchian disregard for anything like the bounds of societal restraint. In the world of CRANK, every car goes fast, every gun makes a big loud bang, every normal person is either a target or an obstacle, and every woman is merely a vagina transportation system. This movie scorns everyone and everything, except for men with power, and it gets tiresome quite quickly.

I have no problem with Crank’s premise: a hit man has been injected with a compound that will kill him if his heartbeat gets too low, so he needs to keep the adrenalin flowing just to stay alive – now he’s got to keep his heart racing long enough to exact revenge. It’s a great idea, and Jason Statham is a great choice for such a role in such a movie. It’s the execution that bothers me: the fight choreography is pedestrian and the editing indecipherable; the only noninterchangeable female character is an insufferable idiot whose only redeeming trait is her nonstop sexual availability; and the postproduction work is so intrusive that not only did it keep reminding me that I was watching a movie, it kept reminding me that I was watching a bad movie.

If CRANK had trusted its premise, had trusted its star, had trusted in the moviegoer’s recognition that women are, in fact, human beings, it could have been a fun action picture. But then, what do I know? I’m not a male between fifteen and seventeen. I am so glad I went out in Rota.

The Lives of Others

THE LIVES OF OTHERS is a drab, claustrophobic, paranoiac movie. It's the kind of movie in which hope seems like a luxury and humanity is something to be hidden. In other words, THE LIVES OF OTHERS is East German to the core.

Here's the setup: a coldhearted Stasi officer volunteers to conduct surveillance on an East Berlin playwright whom he loathes at first sight. The playwright seems too smug, too politically connected, too comfortable in the arms of his beautiful paramour - there must be something wrong with the man, and the officer is certain he will find it. In fact, the officer finds much more than he bargained for, and the result is both heartening and devastating.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS is not a beautiful film. It looks cold, as if the whole thing were shot under bad flourescent lights. Its people do not have the benefit of postproduction digital airbrushing - they appear before us, stretchmarks and all, pale and sometimes very scared. Its food looks horrid; its homes, hotels, and bars dreary; and its parties tinged with desperation. In fact, it looks like the East Germany I imagined from childhood stories of relatives who smuggled foodstuffs and coffee through to unfortunate friends who found themselves on the wrong side of a line drawn at Potsdam. Not only does the movie recall the physical expressions of the East German experience, it recalls the psychological ones, as well. No matter how large one's country is, it's too small if one may not leave. And how does one live if even the unthinking remarks of one's own child can result in a knock on the door? In these aspects, THE LIVES OF OTHERS is unrelenting and more than a bit depressing.

But that unrelenting gaze and that depression earns the payoff of the film, when the smallest twitch of a facial muscle means the difference between despair and redemption. Like weeds pushing through pavement, humanity kept finding ways in East Germany, and it finds ways here, too. Those ways sometimes backfire, and they often end in tears: this, too, is East German. But they're there, and they make 137 minutes spent watching the lives of others well worthwhile.

The Illusionist

Movies like THE ILLUSIONIST are why I keep watching movies. This is a beautiful film, lit in shades of gold, that sometimes even recalls the kinetescopes of times past. It tells a fundamentally wonderful (as in, "full of wonder") and romantic story, and it sets that story in an inviting Austria that fires the imagination.

Here's the setup: a lowborn boy in imperial Austria-Hungary meets a young duchess from whom he is separated by class. Since Hollywood Law dictates that childhood attraction = one true love, the boy sets out to seek his fortune and, upon his return to Vienna as a celebrated illusionist, perhaps find a way to see his dear duchess again.

Edward Norton plays the titular illusionist with just the right mix of mystery and cleverness. Even when his character is doing foolish things, we in the audience think, "How can a guy that smart be that dumb?" There's something about his character that interests us, engages us, and makes us care about his journey. More engagingly, there's something about his character that makes us believe in his profound love for Jessica Biel's Duchess Sophie. Prior to seeing THE ILLUSIONIST, I'd never found Biel remotely interesting. Here, however, I saw her as a woman for whom a man could go to the ends of the Earth -if that's not illusion, I don't know what is.

Paul Giamatti gives an excellent performance as Chief Inspector Uhl, the audience surrogate and, as in an illusionist's trick (done for money ... or candy), the hinge on which the story turns. While all the actors do fine work at assaying just the hint of a German accent, I particularly appreciated Giamatti's fine work with the slightly hard "H"es and guttural "R"s of his speech.

Rufus Sewell, as the villainous Crown Prince Leopold, gives another solid performance in villainy. Further, he imbues his role with enough subtlety to invite reconsideration as the credits roll. Having said that, I'm rather tired of seeing Sewell play the villain. He was a terrific hero in DARK CITY - why doesn't someone let him be the good guy again?

THE ILLUSIONIST has more going for it than just its performances. Philip Glass's score reflects and magnifies the actions and emotions on screen, and the practical elements of the production (sets, backgrounds, and costumes) create an immersive and attractive environment. I particularly enjoyed Norton's workshop - how I'd love to spend a weekend in there!

Perhaps the thing I loved most about this film was its sense of wonder and hope. I loved that it showed us how some illusions worked without divulging the secrets of others. I loved its portrayel of Interregnum Vienna. I loved that it made me believe in and respect its people. I just plain loved it. Movies like this are worth plowing through the dross.

Idiocracy

IDIOCRACY is a one-joke movie. It's a pretty good joke, and I know this because watched IDIOCRACY in three parts, as dictated by the events of my day. Each time I started (or returned to) the movie, I laughed out loud the first two or three times I got the joke. Then, however, I settled in and hummed along, reasonably amused and a little uncomfortable, until the next interruption (or the end of the film). When you tell the same joke over and over, that's about the most you can hope for.

Here's the joke: the main characters are surrounded by stupefyingly idiotic people. That makes for funny situations at first, but eventually we viewers come to accept the stupidity and move on. If humor lies in the gap between observation and apprehension, IDIOCRACY makes the gap so small that there's no room for a belly laugh.

Here's the setup: Owen Wilson and Maya Rudolph, two extraordinarily average people, are sent into the far future. Once there, they discover that Will Durant was right - the future does belong to the fertile. America's smartest people have underreproduced, while the dullards have multiplied like - well, in creator Mike Judge's estimate - dullards. People of the future are so dumb, so boorish, so easily led, that they dismiss as "faggy" any speech that makes even the most remote sense. They water their crops with sports drinks because they've been told that plants need electrolytes, then wonder why nothing will grow when it's routinely doused with sugar and salted water. They're so dumb that IDIOCRACY has no internal logic because the systems needed to keep this civilization limping along could not have been designed or maintained by this civilization's own members, nor could this civilization have protected itself from smarter, hungrier, more aggressive civilizations. But we're not supposed to pay attention to any of that. We're supposed to laugh down our noses at the inflated stereotypes that Judge trots out before us, even as we meditate on the decline of our own civilization. And we do laugh, at least at first, but then the joke gets old.

While viewing IDIOCRACY, I felt a growing unease. I'm wrapped pretty tightly in the cocoon of my particular class - so much so that I have very little contact with the class that Judge sees taking over world. Is it possible that people who could be the seeds of IDIOCRACY's comic exaggerations actually exist in any significant numbers? Is America really a "Divorce Court" and "Jerry Springer" kind of place? While watching the film, I couldn't decide whether Judge cruelly misrepresents lower-middle America or I am out of touch.

Regardless, I could decide this: IDIOCRACY can be a pretty funny movie, depending on how you watch it. I recommend short, controlled bursts.

Chungking Express

You know those movies in which everyone in town seems to connect with everyone else? The kind which depict a city as a fabric, with everyone's stories woven together? CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994) is not one of those movies. CHUNGKING EXPRESS is a movie about disconnectedness, about the isolation we can feel in the unlikeliest of places.

The movie doesn't have a unified narrative, and it isn't all tied together with freak meteorological events. Think of it, instead, as variations on a theme of loneliness. In the first variation, RETURNER's Takeshi Kaneshiro plays Number 223, a not-particularly-effective Hong Kong police officer. He's working through a difficult breakup, and the woman ( Brigitte Lin) he needs may be the worst possible woman for him. In the second, Tony Leung plays Number 633, another officer in similar circumstances. He meets Faye Wong, and I suspect that she's trouble in her own way.

The details of their stories aren't particularly important. What is important is the ways in which they try to order their lives, and how, even though they're sometimes only .01 centimeters apart, they may never connect. I suspect that, somewhere in China, there lives the girl who broke Wong Kar Wai's heart. We need to thank her, because his variations on a theme of loneliness are a beautiful thing, finding connections deeper than those any freak storm can create.

Speedy

Harold Lloyd's last silent picture, 1928's SPEEDY, is an enjoyable romp through a New York City that we'll never see again. From Penn Station to Yankee Stadium to Times Square to Coney Island, SPEEDY crafts an adventure both fascinating and funny.

In SPEEDY, Lloyd's a well-meaning chap who can't seem to hold a job for very long. That's ok, because he's a resourceful sort and he can be counted on to come through when the chips are down. The first half of the film has him bouncing from job to job but, once he finds himself in the second half, he enlists all his powers and all his friends in service to rescuing his father's business.

SPEEDY works because Lloyd is such an agreeable fellow, and because he makes full use of New York City in the film. It's practically a travelogue for another time, and it even features a brief role for the Babe himself, Babe Ruth as a man who absolutely has to get to Yankee Stadium on time.

SPEEDY didn't make me fall off the couch, but I found it funny, warm, and good use of time. Enjoy.

Solaris

A real exchange that occurred while viewing SOLARIS:

My Wife: "This is like a really long episode of Battlestar Galactica."
Me: "But dull."

I've decided that George Clooney is a major talent whose career is worth following. Consequently, I've been seeing some of his films that didn't particularly appeal to me, and SOLARIS numbers among them.

Here's the setup: Clooney is a grieving widow who is called to visit a space station and investigate the strange goings on there. The strangest thing about this station, I think, is that it's lit almost entirely in blue. Other than that, there's some stuff about alien dopplegangers who may be the personification of that which we love the most. Then again, they may not.

Frankly, I didn't care. SOLARIS is so portentious, so plodding, so, well, dull that I was just waiting for it to end.

Sure, Clooney is a major talent. But maybe that doesn't mean I have to see *all* of his movies.

The Kid from Left Field

1953's THE KID FROM LEFT FIELD is a sweet picture with a tough heart, a family drama that actually has something for everyone in the family, and an opportunity to see some familiar faces in a forgotten picture.

THE KID FROM LEFT FIELD plays out the old boyhood dream: a boy gets to put on a Major League uniform and play with the men. Unlike ROOKIE OF THE YEAR or ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD, however, this kid doesn't realize the dream through medical oddity or divine intervention. He realizes it because he has brains, moxie, and a father who loves him. See, here's the deal: the Bisons suck. They can't hit, they can't field, and they're poorly managed, unlike the more interesting sandlot team that plays across the street. Said team, managed by young Christie Cooper (Billie Chapin), plays like a team and has the benefit of a tough but fair manager who knows what he's doing. Said manager's father, who's a peanut vendor in the big leage park across the way, once played ball himself and knows the game better than anyone in the Bisons organization. Only he's washed up, see, and nobody's going to follow the peanut vendor.

Through luck and a cross-generational meet-cute with 23-yr-old Anne Bancroft, Christie gets a chance to meet the Bisons' owner. Here's where the brains and moxie part comes in, as he talks his way into a job as the team's bat boy. Before you know it, Christie is receiving his father's baseball wisdom, mixing it with his own, and supplanting the team's worthless manager. Along the way, he tries to resurrect the lagging careers of Lloyd Bridges and newcomer Fess Parker (with mixed results), tries to cupid for Bancroft and Bridges (with mixed results), and turn his team around. It's a dream come true!

It's not all pennants and cheers, however. The father, "Pop" Cooper (Dan Dailey) has serious confidence issues, and maybe even a mild drinking problem. There's a real sense of desperation to the guy, like he's just this far from poverty and he's doing everything he can to keep his son and himself afloat. Bridges knows his legs are going and his time is running out, and he has some hard decisions to make. The kid, well, he's just a kid. How long can he actually hold up under the pressure of managing a Major League ballclub? I was particularly impressed by this aspect of the movie. When these storylines resolve themselves, those resolutions feel earned. I felt like I hadn't just watched these people go through the motions of an entertaining family picture - I felt like I'd been on a journey with them.

Regarding the performances, Bancroft and Bridges are utterly charming (and incredibly snappy dressers, to boot), Parker turns in some fine comic relief by playing it close, and Cooper and Dailey convincingly play a father and son who, rain or shine, are committed to making a go of things.

This may well be the best movie I hadn't heard of in quite some time.

Seven Up / 7 Plus Seven

With the highly lauded release of the latest iteration in Michael Apted's "Up" series, 49 UP, generating attention around the world, I figured it was time that I invested some hours into this remarkable project.

SEVEN UP and 7 PLUS SEVEN represent the first two editions in the documentary series that revisits a group of British kids at regular intervals and monitors their progress. These first two documentary films were not, sadly, particularly interesting. (This just in: bright-eyed children often turn into sullen adolescents.) While watching them, I felt like I was laying the groundwork for the good things that are heralded to come: kind of like plowing through the first several chapters of a Victorian novel in the knowledge that things will speed up and come together as the story goes on.

So ... not an auspicious beginning to the series, but I have high hopes. We'll see what 21 UP has to tell us.

Narc

Joe Carnahan's NARC is a very well acted, rather overdirected, and ultimately satisfying procedural.

In NARC, Jason Patric returns to a character that seems right out of his criminally underappreciated RUSH. Det. Sgt. Nick Tellis is a cop in rough shape. He used to be an undercover narcotics officer, but he accidentally hit a pregnant woman in a gunfight and he's barely hanging on the paycheck from his administrative leave. Oh, and he may have been a drug addict, to boot. Tellis is given a chance to return to active duty to solve the murder of another undercover narc, and he's teamed with the always unpredictable (and possibly psychotic) Ray Liotta.

The story has its usual twists and turns, betrayals and redemptions. What makes it stand out are the subtle, finely tuned performances of Patric and Liotta. We come to believe in these guys and their journeys, and the actors bring a much needed reality to a film that might otherwise succumb to its love of blue filters, jump cuts, and dazzling feats of editing.

This movie has some strong positives and some mild negatives. Overall, I'd say it's worth the rental.

For Your Consideration

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION reunites the wonderful team that brought us WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, BEST IN SHOW, and A MIGHTY WIND for their weakest outing to date.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION follows the lives of the cast, crew, and miscellaneous fellow travellers associated with the sure-to-tank "Home For Purim," a disastrous collision of Tennessee Williams and anachronistic modern Judaism. Things are looking grim for all involved until rumours about possible Oscar nominations start flying on the internet. Then it's the race to sell out just as fast as possible, cowritten by a guy who starred in AMERICAN PIE 5: THE NAKED MILE.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION has several laughs, notably from the brilliant Jane Lynch as a Mary Hart -like entertainment anchorwoman, but its pessimistic and ultimately sad outlook on Hollywood and its people outweighs the levity of its subject matter and closes us on such a sad, sad note that we forget we're supposed to be watching a comedy.

Nanny McPhee

I absolutely adored Emma Thompson's NANNY MCPHEE.

The film takes a reliable formula, a nanny shows up and squares away an intractable household, and works magic with it. Emma Thompson is marvelous as the titular nanny, Colin Firth turns in fine work as the hapless widowed father, Kelly MacDonald is utterly luminous as the scullery maid with a fairy-tale ending in store for her, and brilliant actors Angela Lansbury, Derek Jacobi, and the young Thomas Sangster prove that there's no such thing as a small role.

NANNY MCPHEE looks great, with a palette that reminds both that we're watching a fairy tale and that, in this world, everything will turn out fine. Its Thompson - penned dialogue sparkles, Patrick Doyle's score perfectly complements the action, and the film's ending is remarkably satisfying. This film does everything it sets out to do, and it does it with uninetrrupted excellence. Watch this one with the kids, or watch it alone - regardless, everyone in the room is guaranteed to have a good time.

While I'm writing about one of her works, allow me to take a moment to appreciate the remarkable career of Emma Thompson. When I first noticed her in HENRY V, she was just another beauty. From there, she went on to DEAD AGAIN, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, and HOWARD'S END, just to name a few. She took home a BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Oscar for Sense and Sensibility, and her career hasn't slowed down since. She effortlessly moves from small pieces like THE WINTER GUEST to blockbusters like the HARRY POTTER series without missing a beat, and she's consistently smart, affecting, and wonderful in everything she does.

What a marvelous talent.

Highlander: Endgame

I remember how we began, with HIGHLANDER. It was the days before the internet, and I walked into the theater solely on the strength of Sean Connery's name on the poster. You surprised me. You dazzled me. You found a special place in my heart.

But you changed. In HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING, I didn't even recognize you. Everything you had told me about yourself turned out to be a lie, and you treated me like the dirt under your shoes. So I walked away.

I was done with you. I didn't need you in my life. But then you came around, full of promise, with HIGHLANDER III: THE SORCERER. It wasn't like the first time, and our trust had been broken, but at least it seemed like you were making an effort. Finally, though, I realized you were an empty shell - all promise and no delivery. We were finished. Through. I had my own path to tread.

Why, oh why, did I allow myself to fall into the same trap when you came back around with HIGHLANDER IV: ENDGAME? I knew what I was getting into, but I couldn't resist. My heart kept going back to those wonderful early days, even as my mind told me that no good could come of you. I should have listened. Once you had me committed again, you didn't even try to act like a real movie. You were nothing more than an "extra special episode with special guest Christopher Lambert." Your production values were strictly cable tv - and one of the high-numbered channels, to boot. Your heroes were lame, and your villains even lamer. Your story was pointless, your fight choreography uninteresting, and your climax an invalidation of your own wobbly mythos. That's it. I'm done with you, and for good this time. Don't come around, because I respect myself now and I've got no time for you.

What? IMDB tells me that HIGHLANDER: THE SOURCE is in post-production? Well, maybe just this once. What's the harm?

Assault on Precinct 13

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 is aggressively mediocre.

The film hits every mark, goes through all the motions, like it's trying very hard. Hard as it may try, however, it simply cannot muster the tension it's trying to achieve. We know who the traitor is the minute we see him. We know who's going to die, and pretty much in what order. We know exactly how the hero's arc will play out, and we even know how the antihero's arc will play out.

As the hero, Ethan Hawke shows us nothing we haven't seen before. As the antihero, Lawrence Fishburne is convincingly portrays a one-note actor. As the various targets trapped inside the titular precinct house with our anti/heroic duo, Monica Bello, Drea de Matteo, John Leguizamo, Brian Dennehy, and "I've seen that guy before" guy Matt Craven all show up, do their jobs, and go home.

While not a terrible film, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 has little to recommend it. It may be just thing to have on in the background while doing chores, but I wouldn't sit down for it again.

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

There's a moment at the beginning of the endgame of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS (1998) in which all the pieces are assembled on the board, but the interlocking stories and plots are jumbled together and everything appears to be headed for total chaos. Watching it, I thought, "How the hell is this guy (writer / director Guy Ritchie) going to pull this off?"

He pulls it off with dash, flair, humor, and not a little bit of gratuitous violence. The same could be said of the entire film. LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS is a fun, vibrant picture that isn't afraid to tell a raucous story raucously. Ritchie clearly enjoys writing dialogue that, if not entirely natural, is a pleasure to hear. Additionally, the guy knows how to craft a story that's inherently violent without giving it any real sense of danger. His characters and situations are so outlandish that they feel like characters and situations, not like real people, and that adds to the movie's sense of fun.

LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS could have gone wrong in any number of ways. Fortunately, Ritchie avoids them and delivers an energetic, amusing picture.

What a pleasant surprise.

PS There's a whole other side to this movie, the investigation of which was inconsistent with the upbeat tone of my remarks. LS&TSB does some interesting things with the nature of class, cleverly delineating various levels of "us-ness" and "them-ness." This is the kind of movie that could take you from a fun time at the theater to a fun time over coffee later, as you consider how calculated the film is, and how complicit you are, in its presentation of class and ethnicity.

The Descent

I'm not claustrophobic. I know this because at one point in my military training I was put in a situation designed to induce extreme claustrophobia. I was snug as could be and could have stayed there all night. At least, I thought I wasn't claustrophobic. THE DESCENT has made me reconsider.

THE DESCENT has a solid horror framework: a group of friends go somewhere and promptly start dying. In this particular case, the friends go spelunking, a pastime which never particularly appealed to me but never particularly repelled me, either. While watching the first third of THE DESCENT, the one in which the group penetrates more deeply into the cave network in which nasty things are sure to happen, I felt uncomfortable, then confined, then outright claustrophobic. The filmmakers do such a fine job of closing in more and more tightly on both their characters and audience that, by the time a member of the party gets stuck in a tiny passageway, it was all I could do to breathe. I could feel the oppressive weight of the earth above me, and I yearned for daylight. Later in the film, when the nasties show up, THE DESCENT becomes your basic bug-hunt movie, which is fine. Still later, when the protagonist goes Spacek, the movie takes some unexpected and creative turns which pay off well. But that first third - oh man - I've never seen anything like it.

Neil Marshall, who earlier directed personal favorite DOG SOLDIERS, again populates his film with characters we know and respect. He doesn't waste our time with too much exposition, and he doesn't go for all the easy character beats we expect. Instead, he gives us the chance to get to know these people based on what they do, not say. It's sound, economical film-making, and it works.

What a treat.

Rookie of the Year

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR is the kind of innocuous kids' movie that dreams small dreams: it only wants to entertain young baseball fans without inflicting too much pain on their parents.

It succeeds, I suppose. It entertained my young baseball fan and didn't inflict too much pain on me, but that doesn't make it a good movie. Its star, a kid (at the time) named Thomas Ian Griffith, knows two expressions: happy and dumfounded and sad and dumbfounded. Its action is ridiculous, it story paper-thin, and its adult-themed jokes too risque.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR isn't a failure because it sets its sights so low. If you don't have a young baseball fan in the house, however, don't bother.

Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story

I hated every frame of BLACKBALLED: THE BOBBY DUKES STORY. In fact, I couldn't get through it. When the movie hit 45 minutes without eliciting even the faintest trace of the beginning of the uptick of a grin, I ejected the thing, put it in its envelope, and dropped it in the mail.

BLACKBALLED is the kind of movie that hates its characters, hates its subject matter, and hates you, the viewer. The movie's about a disgraced paintball champion who returns to his old stomping grounds a decade after his shaming event. His friends loathe him and his enemies loathe him. I find nothing funny in loathing and found nothing funny here.

BLACKBALLED looks and sounds cheap. Its characters don't work. Nothing about it is funny. Someone should have shot it through the heart.

Pusher

If LAYER CAKE is a movie about a genius trying to survive in a world of morons, then PUSHER (1996) is a movie about a moron trying to survive in a world of morons.

The movie follows Frank, a guy on one of the lower levels of the multi-level marketing scheme known as the Danish narcotics trade, through what may well be the last week of his life. PUSHER uses the industry-standard pattern of high life and decline, but it does so with two important deviations: it's shot with an improvisational style, using ambient light and (mostly, it seems) handheld cameras; and it doesn't give us anyone to root for. Frank is an idiotic scumbag surrounded by idiotic scumbags, and the succession of lousy decisions to which the movie bears witness does nothing to endear us to him or anyone else.

So, why bother with PUSHER? First, it puts us viewers right in Frank's increasingly uncomfortable shoes, and it takes us places where glamorous crime movies never go. Second, it manages to make us root for Frank, even as we despise him. It slowly ratchets up the tension until we find ourselves fully invested in his predicament, and its payoff is both unexpected and perfect.

That said, watching PUSHER was not a particularly pleasant experience. I respect this movie, but I don't necessarily like it. There's a PUSHER II and III out there, but I think I've spent about all the time with these people that I'm willing to spend.

All About My Mother

I fired up ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER solely to check the Almodovar box. I didn't know anything about the picture going in, and that may be the best way to approach the piece.

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER is a gorgeous picture, the kind of movie that had me watching with one finger on the "pause" button, just so I could admire the composition of certain shots. The care in the film's design reflects the care that went into crafting its characters on both the page and the screen. Cecilia Roth, playing the film's protagonist, anchors its interweaving stories and tragedies with a grounded, present authority and conducts us on a journey that's well worth the price of admission.

What a pleasant surprise.

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas

I am not the target audience for SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS. I've read _1001 Arabian Nights_. I've been to Syracuse. I'm familiar with Greek mythology. And I like Harryhausen movies.

I couldn't get on board with this movie, primarily because its Sinbad has so little in common with every other version of the character with which I'm familiar. There were more hangups, of course: its maguffin wasn't compelling, its geography was sketchy, and its creation of a fantasy world didn't jibe with the names it gave elements of that world. Why even call your protagonist Sinbad when he bears no resemblance to the Sinbad of legend? Why call your city Syracuse if it isn't going to look anything remotely like Syracuse? Why establish a round world in the film's very first scene, only to make a flat world a major plot point near the end? The list of nits I picked is practically endless, and they conspired to keep me from getting involved in the picture. The only bright spot in the whole production, in fact, is Michelle Pfeiffer's voice work as Eris, goddess of chaos: it's dangerous, seductive, and loads of fun. She isn't enough to keep the production afloat, however. Someone should've scuttled SINBAD back in the story development phase.

PS My wife enjoyed the artwork and our boy absolutely loved it, so your mileage may vary.

Eros

Wong Kar Wai. Steven Soderbergh. Michelangelo Antonioni. Three short films on Eros. How could it possibly go wrong?

Wrong it goes.

Here's the problem: the first film, Wong Kar Wai's "The Hand," is so much better than the other two that most of the movie is a letdown. In "The Hand," Gong Li plays an aging courtesan who enthralls and possesses the young tailor (Chang Chen, from THREE TIMES) sent to design and create her gowns. Li is so intriguing, so commanding, so sad, so pathetic, that she overshadows every other woman in the tryptich. When we should be thinking about the Dream Girl of Soderbergh's "Equilibrium" or the dancing nudes of Antonioni's "The Dangerous Thread of Things," we're thinking about Li and Chen and Christopher Doyle's beautiful cinematography.

Unfortunately, this means that EROS is a mixed bag. TiVo it for the first chapter, but feel free to skip the following two.

Jet Li's Fearless

Fearless is a towering masterpiece and a brilliantly fitting end to Jet Li's wuxia-film career. It's thoughtful, beautiful, exciting, and heartbreaking. It makes me want to be a better man.

By now, most of us are familiar with the Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey and they way that journey informs the Western storytelling tradition. Jet Li's Fearless takes on a different kind of journey, the Buddha's Journey, and it breaks and re-forms our hearts along the way.

In the Buddha's Journey, the privileged young man comes to see the emptiness of that privilege. He either wills himself or is shocked out of his mental and emotional space, and he embarks on a spiritual quest for enlightenment. For most men, that enlightenment never comes and the quest becomes its own spiritual vehicle. The Buddha, however, gets it in the most profound way imaginable. If he returns, he may try to share part of what he's seen with his fellows. He may even succeed.

Fearless begins with Huo Yan Jia (Li) at a tournament in the waning days of the Qing Empire. Li, the embodiment of Buddhist self-possession and peace, easily bests three Champions of the Western World. As the last challenger, a Japanese fighter, enters the ring, we flash back to Huo as an impetuous and Wu Shu - obsessed child. From there, the film takes on the journey that leads to this ring and beyond. It's beautiful work, beautifully done, and it does more to illustrate my limited knowledge of Buddhist thought than any other film I've ever seen.

The film itself looks beautiful. Fearless chooses a heightened aesthetic. Its world looks like our world, only cleaner and fresher and somehow more wonderful. In other words, it's the world of story. It's a world in which wire-fu lives alongside the drudgery of planting rice in paddy day after day after day. It's a world that's infused with beauty, and one in which unspeakable things happen to people who deserve only wonder and joy. Even if the whole "Buddha's Journey" thing doesn't appeal to you, even if you could care less about wuxia films, this picture is worth seeing for the joy of looking at it alone.

The action, well, it's wonderful. Choreographer Yuen Wo Ping pulls out all the stops here, letting us see and feel the variations in the fighting styles onscreen and seamlessly blending wire work with practical stunts. The film's fights (or later, competitions) breathe with an organic life of their own, and they're filled with surprises both delightful and heartbreaking. Some of the action beats in Fearless made me laugh - others brought tears to my eyes. From a choreography and dance perspective alone, this thing is phenomenal.

Finally, Fearless is a heartbreaking movie. Having grown up in rural America, I'm not much for bucolic reawakenings. Nevertheless, Fearless made me cry just by showing me a bunch of farmers pausing to stretch their backs in the middle of a hard day of planting. This is a movie that explores a life badly lived, then turns and gives us one lived well. We see this life lived well, and we see the effect it has on the people it touches. It makes me want to live my life better, to touch those around me in a more positive way.

What a wonderful, brilliant movie. In a year filled with outstanding films, Fearless is one of the very best.

Gojira

Takashi Shimura had a wonderful 1954. First, he starred as Kambei Shimada in The Seven Samurai, one of the greatest films ever made. Then he starred in another Toho production, the original Gojira. The latter film would later be recut and renamed Godzilla for an American audience, and that version (the one with Raymond Burr) would be the only Godzilla the American audience would know for quite some time.

What a shame, and what a blesssing that Sony chose to release the original version in a new U.S. DVD. Gojira is my favorite Godzilla movie, more than making up for its clunky effects and sometimes hamfisted acting with a genuinely scary and thought-provoking tale that recalls and reflects the Japanese sensibility in the wake of WWII.

Two events overshadow Gojira: the nuclear bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fire bombing of Tokyo. While Godzilla is, obviously, a radioactive monster awakened by nuclear testing in the Pacific Islands, his destructive rampage invokes the horror of the fire-bombing, an event that (if I remember my 1993 reading of Kurosawa's _Something Like an Autobiography_ correctly) gutted Toho Studios and personally affected the lives of those who worked there. Consequently, Gojira pulls no punches. The monster's rampage isn't cute, or played for action beats. It's horrific, people die, and those who survive the onslaught must deal with the effects of radiation poisoning afterward.

Takashi Shimura anchors this film. Surrounded by overacting young stars and giant latex monsters, Shimura brings a level of maturity and gravity to the situation that makes us believe in both it and him. The actor plays things straight, and paleontologist / wise man character keeps the proceedings anchored in reality when they could very easily descend into camp.

Gojiira. It's the first. It's the best. It's not to be missed. What were the odds that one man could star in two classics in the same year?

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

I read Robert Hilton's _Good-Bye, Mr. Chips_ about two years ago. I loved it so much that I didn't bother to seek out the film, feeling that I'd already experienced the story. I did myself a disservice by waiting so long.

Sam Wood's 1939 version of the story, starring Robert Donat and Greer Garson, is wonderful. Donat plays Mr. Chips over roughly a 60-year span, taking the character from fresh-faced young teacher to wise old dean without putting a single foot wrong. It's a masterful performance, the kind of thing that makes us realize just how powerful and wonderful an art form drama is. Greer Garson, in her first film role, plays a supporting character that breathes life into both Chips and the movie. Though she doesn't get much screen time, her presence energizes the whole proceedings - she's wonderful to watch.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips follows its titular character through the chapters of his life as a professor at a English Boy's School, the kind of institution that has become part of the British cultural landscape. On his first day, he lets the boys roll right over him, but it isn't long before those selfsame boys come to respect him and send their best wishes, along with their own boys, back to him. This isn't the saccharine stuff of a Dead Poets' Society, however. Chips is a real guy, a product of his time and place, as are his charges. He never really breaks out until he meets Garson on - well, I'll let you discover that element for yourself. The film is told in episodes, lifting moments from the Professor's life, and closes in the way we would all hope a life well lived would close. With grace, joy, and hope.

I just plain loved this movie. Had I seen it as a younger man, it may have inspired me to go into teaching. Who knows? Perhaps it still might.

The Coast Guard

THE COAST GUARD is a Korean picture by Kim Ki Duk, the guy who made 3-IRON. Since I love 3-IRON, I was all set to love this picture, as well. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.

South Korea is one of the few countries on Earth that actively patrols its beaches. Since the Korean War cease-fire, North Korea has consistently sent spies and saboteurs south to either do a quick hit-and-run or blend into society and await the call to action. There have been no confirmed infiltrations since 2000, but South Korean soldiers on coast guard duty continue to patrol, and they continue to have authorization to shoot anyone who they see on the beach at night. THE COAST GUARD is about one such soldier, a particularly gung-ho career man who shoots (and grenades) a man he thinks is an infiltrator, but who is actually just a drunk kid having sex on the beach. The soldier comes unglued, the kid's paramour goes insane, and things go downhill from there.

It's a good movie; a perfectly fine movie; but I've seen post-traumatic stress disorder movies before and I've seen military unit falling apart movies before. THE COAST GUARD doesn't add anything new to those concepts, and the print on the DVD is muddy and old. THE COAST GUARD doesn't give one much food for thought and it doesn't dazzle the eye, so we're left with a particularly good Movie of the Week.

As I said, it's a fine movie. But it's no 3-IRON.

The Son's Room

Sometimes, all a guy wants to do is watch an American picture where lots of stuff blows up real good.

That's the mood I was in when I reluctantly fired up THE SON'S ROOM (2001), Nanni Moretti's film about a family and the pain it endures when one of its members drowns in a scuba mishap. It wasn't long, however, before thoughts of explosions left my mind as I became deeply involved with this family, their grief, and their attempts to cope with it.

THE SON'S ROOM succeeds, in part, because it doesn't rush to tragedy. It gives us a good half hour to get to know these people; to develop an attachment to Andrea, the doomed teenager; and to develop a genuine affinity for Giovanni, the father and psychoanalyst who begins to suspect that his professional gods are as false as the Catholic one he left behind long ago. When Andrea dies offscreen, we empathize with his surviving family members, and we're ready to travel with them on the next phase of their journey.

What do I like most about this movie? It doesn't feature "Solsbury Hill," for one thing. For another, it offers no overblown dramatic scenes in which the characters shout their feelings at one another. For yet another, it offers no trite conclusion, or even an obvious message. A page is turned, and that's all, and that seems appropriate.

I was in the mood for an action picture, but I got something better: an involving picture. I care about these people, and I want to know what happens next in their lives. Perhaps they'll write.

Rocky

So you say you want to be entertained? Well, ROCKY wants to entertain you. This 1981 Bollywood production has romance, deception, loss, redemption, motorcycle stunts, fistfights, heroes, villains, motherly love, and even a disco dance-off that you will never forget. The problem is that it isn't very good.

Here's the movie in a nutshell. Rocky's dad is a union organizer who's killed by the Indian Snidely Whiplash, who proceeds to sexually assault his mother while the boy, 6ish, tries to stop him. A family friend arrives just in time to save the day, but the boy is so traumatized that he's now an amnesiac. The local doctor believes that the boy should be separated from his mother, and the family friend steps in to adopt him. Fast forward 15-or-so years, and young Rocky's all grown up, still in the dark about his early childhood. He doesn't know it yet, but he has a karmic score to settle: over the next couple of hours, he must avenge his father, get the girl, and sing and dance his way into our hearts.

There's a problem, however. ROCKY's titular character is played by Sanjay Dutt, an actor so lacking in presence, range, and athletic ability that I couldn't decide which was more unbelievable: his acting, his dancing, or his stunt work. The supporting cast is fine, but it can't save a production that hinges on our acceptance of the entirely unremarkable Dutt as a charismatic leader, fearsome fighter, and dance machine.

As for the production, well, it's late-disco-era Bollywood, so stand by for some amusing sets and costumes. The transfer doesn't help, as the DVD producers seemed to work from the most scratched, discolorized, and generally battered print they could find. I guess it's better than nothing, if you're a Sanjay Dutt completist.

As I said, ROCKY wants to entertain you. Though it pulls out all the stops, sadly, it fails.