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.