Saturday Night Fever

There’s this scene in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER in which Tony’s riding in a car with his crew. His friends are complaining about how the game is rigged, about how The Man is keeping them down, about how they’ll never get anywhere because no one will give them a break. Tony’s looking out the window. He’s thinking, “I know thee not, old man.”

OK, he’s probably not thinking those exact words, even if he did take Shakespeare in high school. But he’s thinking something very much like them. You see, Tony Manero is a young man on the cusp of going from Hal to Henry, from potential energy to energy in motion, from boy to man. He’s realizing something that his friends do not know and may never know: what’s worth having is worth working for, and what’s worth working for is too valuable to want someone to give it to you.

Tony’s basically a good boy. Ignored on the street, stuck in a dull job, living at home in a quasi-functional family, he’s nobody. He’s small time. But get him with his crew, and he’s a leader. Get him on the dance floor, and he’s a god. Tony rules Odyssey 2001, the disco where, every Saturday night, he burns through his week’s wages with unfettered joy. But even here, at the beginning of the movie, he’s different. He rehearses. He doesn’t pop or snort. He poses, but he’s essentially celibate (and potentially gay. I think one could make the case for it. I think the film’s “eye” is definitely gay. If you doubt me, notice how the camera caresses Tony’s body just before he awakens in his bed.). He’s in love with dance, with the way he feels when he’s lost in the moment, about the fact that finally, somewhere, he’s the best at something.

But working at a job that gives him just enough money to spend on Saturday night isn’t manhood. Being the big fish in a small pond isn’t manhood. Tony’s got to get out there, he’s got to earn his bones, he’s got to find his way. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is the story of how that realization goes from vague feeling to actionable reality. It works because we believe in Tony, flawed and limited though he may be. We understand that when he does that thing he loves, he really is special, amazing. He has something that’s worth working to cultivate, something that can lead to goals worth achieving, something too pure to be sullied by begging for handouts from The Man.

Sure, this movie has issues. There are subplots that go nowhere. Tony does things that are unforgivable. Some of the ADR is downright bad. But at its heart, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER communicates truths so universal that they speak across decades, taste, and fashion. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is about leaving behind childish things, and that’s a theme that speaks to me. Can you dig it? I knew thatcha could.

Soul Men

SOUL MEN asks the cinematic question, "Do you like hanging out with Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson?" If the answer is yes, you'll enjoy this paper thin road movie about two worst enemies and best friends reuniting for one last show. If the answer is no, you'll hate this paper thin road movie filled with crude humor, simplistic characterizations, and so much bad acting you'll bug your eyes out.

Me, I like hanging out with Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson. Mac does his Scammer with a Heart of Gold and Jackson his Angry Man schtick, but those schticks are so well worn because, hey, they work. Sure, the movie's crude and simplistic, but it made me laugh out loud, tap my foot to the music, and generally have a good time.

Destiny

Fritz Lang's DESTINY is an inventive, entertaining film that captured my imagination.

Somewhere in preindustrial Germany, a young couple sets out upon their life's journey. But Death takes the man away, and the woman will try anything to get him back. She confronts Death and begs for her husband, who responds, "I'm tired of being hated for doing God's will. I'll make you a deal: you get three chances to defeat me. If you succeed, I'll give you your husband back."

And thus the film takes us to palace of the Caliph, where a young Frenchman conspires with the sister of the Caliph to find true love's way. From there, it's on to Venice, where jealousy plays at rapiers with love. Finally, DESTINY takes us to mythic China, where the Emperor takes whom he wants, no matter whether she loves another.

DESTINY's framing device gives each of these tales an overarching urgency, but they'd work as well as stand alone short films. Lang cuts loose here, exploring film's ability to conjure palaces of the imagination, armies of magical miniatures, and the very gates of mortality as he tells the simple story of a woman trying to save the life of her one true love. This is a sumptuous film, full of lore, popular religion, and tales that could find a home in the _Arabian Nights_.

For many, Charlie Chaplin *is* silent film. That's fine, really - he served as my gateway to the era. For the person looking to explore silents outside the realm of comedy, DESTINY is a great place to start. It'll grab you early, it won't let go, and it'll make you glad you sat down with it.

Spring in a Smal Town

SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN is a quiet film, a sad film, a heartbreaking film about missed opportunities, the futility of secrecy, and the compromises of adulthood.

It’s 1948. The Japanese are out of China and the Maoists have yet to consolidate their power. In the ruins of what was once a fine home live Liyan (Shi Yu) and Yuwen (Wei Wei), six years into a marriage marked more by duty and sadness than anything else. Liyan’s teenaged sister, Xiu (Zhang Hongmei) and family servant Huang (Cui Chaoming) round out the household. Liyan’s a broken man, his (mild) tuberculosis serving as a ready excuse to flee the crumbling world around him and take refuge in his garden. But Yuwen is very much alive, though she seeks to bury her vitality in her walks and her chores. Then, Zhichen (Li Wei), Liyan’s boyhood friend, appears after over a decade away. Zhichen and Yuwen grew up together. They are clearly, inescapably, forever in love.

That’s the first fifteen minutes.

But SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN isn’t just about love denied. It’s about the sacrifices, big and small, we make to get through the day, the week, the month, the year. It’s about the hidden gesture, about intuition, about how those who love us know us better than we think they do. It’s about all those little moments that make up a life, and the big ones that shape it. SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN is beautiful, not just in the portraits it creates, but in its compassion and understanding for its subjects. It’s an unforgettable film, one worth watching.

One Hundred Nights at the Movies

Recently, a friend challenged me to list my 100 "Essential" movies. Of course, there are no such thing as essential movies. The essential things are shelter, water, food, and physical security. However, here's a suggestion for one hundred movie nights. These films; a combination of classic, genre, foreign, and just plain good; will leave you with a reasonably good feel for the medium. Have fun!



The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
2001: A Space Odyssey
All About My Mother
An American in Paris // Shall We Dance (1937)
The Apartment
Apocalypse Now
Army of Darkness
Babette’s Feast
Beauty and the Beast (1946)
The Best Years of Our Lives
Big Trouble in Little China
The Bride of Frankenstein
Bullitt
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Casablanca
Children of Paradise
Chinatown
Citizen Kane
City Lights
A Clockwork Orange
Cool Hand Luke
The Crimson Pirate
Die Hard
Dr. No
Dr. Strangelove
Dracula (1931)
Drunken Master
Excalibur // The Fisher King
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fitzcarraldo
Full Metal Jacket
Galaxy Quest
The Godfather
Gojira
Gone With the Wind
The Grand Illusion
The Great Escape
Groundhog Day
Hard Boiled
Ikiru
Intolerance
It’s a Wonderful Life
Jaws
King Kong (1933)
Lawrence of Arabia
Letters from Iwo Jima
Lone Star
M
Manhunter
Mary Poppins
Metropolis
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Night of the Living Dead
Nosferatu
Oldboy
On the Waterfront
Once Upon a Time in the West
Pan’s Labyrinth
Papillon
Persona
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Point Blank
The Princess Bride
The Professional
Psycho
The Public Enemy
Pulp Fiction
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Rear Window
Ride the High Country
Rififi
Rocky
Roman Holiday
Scarface
Shaft (1971)
The Sheik
Somewhere in Time
The Son’s Room
Spider-Man 2
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Strangers on a Train // Out of the Past
Sunset Boulevard
Super Size Me // The Thin Man
The Terminator
The Thief of Bagdad
This is Spinal Tap
Throne of Blood
Tokyo Story
Triumph of the Will // Downfall
Truly Madly Deeply
Unforgiven
United 93
Waiting for Guffman
Wild Strawberries
Wings of Desire
The Wizard of Oz
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Yojimbo // A Fistful of Dollars

Shiri

You like gunfights? I like gunfights. You like foot chases? I like foot chases. You like double agents? Me too. How about bombs with those red countdown timers that go, "beep, beep, beep?" Oh, yeah. Kim chi? Can't stand the stuff, personally, but waddayagonnadoo.

SHIRI, a South Korean espionage thriller, has all of the above. It begins with a scary and brutal training montage showing just how the North's agents become so fearsome. Then it rolls into a foot chase, we get an assassination, and the heat is on. The bad guys are OLDBOY'S Min-Sik Choi and _Lost_'s Yunjin Kim, the good guys are Suk-Kyu Han and JSA's Kang-Ho Song. Je-gyu Kang's direction is professional, delivering solid execution of a well-worn story, and the whole thing makes for a great way to while away a couple of hours on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

I'm not going to bother with a plot introduction here, because you'll see this film's every beat coming from the opening credits. What makes this film a good time at the movies are the performances and the action sequences. Good actors play the bad guys, giving them personality and flair, even if the script doesn't provide much dimension. Good actors play the good guys, giving us people we can latch onto even though we know their fates as if we had written them ourselves. This matters because, as NAKED WEAPON shows, bad acting can sink this kind of venture in a heartbeat. The chases, gunfights, and various showdowns rise above their source material as well, providing adventure, a few surprises, and an awareness of physical space that leaves us thrilled while keeping us informed both of the geography of the engagements but their impact on the relationships established in the film.

SHIRI. It's exciting. It's engaging. Lots of stuff goes boom. It'll even tug your heartstrings. Like I said, it's a great way to while away a couple of hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Aguirre: The Wrath of God

If Werner Herzog had been born millenia ago, he'd have been a desert mystic, a prophet telling those with an ear to listen that all is vanity. He's of our time, of course, and his is a different medium than the Wisdom Scroll. AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD, a dark and beautiful meditation on the futility of ambition, sinks deeply into our psyche and lingers there, compelling us to ponder Ecclesiastic insights even as we dwell in memories of the stark and beautiful jungle of Herzog's film.

"All the rivers run into the sea," says _Ecclesiastes_, "yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again." AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD, takes place upon the eternal, unnamed river. It is 1560, and Pisarro's expedition to find the legendary golden city of El Dorado teeters on failure. Exhausted and running out of options, Pisarro directs a small party to scout down the river which has already claimed one raft full of men. The party's orders? Find El Dorado, or civilization, or both. It never occurs to him that, by definition, El Dorado is civilization. He puts a trusted man in charge. He appoints, as second in command, Don Lope de Aguirre. He sends a priest, a noble, soldiers, and slaves. If they don't return in a week, Pisarro will call off the expedition and leave without them.

The men set off, afire with ambition. But the jungle, the river, is implacable. The sun bakes the men in their steel helmets. Poison-tipped darts shoot from unseen assailants on the riverbanks. The men find a village, its denizens cannibals. The fire of ambition consumes Aguirre all the more, goading him toward treason, murder, and insanity. And the sun beats down, and the birds whistle and caw, and the rodents and the monkeys claim all that vanity holds dear.

Herzog views the tale with the dispassion of the river. He extends no quarter, not even with the indigenous interpreter who laments, "I used to be a prince. Men used to be forbidden to look upon me. Now I am in chains." The royal enslaver is now slave, and all is vanity. Klaus Kinski, as Aguirre, is all the madness of human endeavour in one man. The church is the servant of the powerful and the river gives no quarter. This is life, Herzog seems to say. This is vanity.

Twilight

If you're a fan of the _Twilight_ books, you're gonna love this movie. If you haven't read 'em, you're going to be like me, asking the women in the room, "Why did she do that? What's going on with that guy?" "Why do they care about this?"

See, it isn't that TWILIGHT left me on the outside because I'm not a member of its target demographic. TWILIGHT left me on the outside because it assumed I've read the book. Since I haven't, I couldn't understand why the heroine seemed so bummed out: she had a father who loved her, lived in a cool house, and made friends easily. Further, I couldn't understand what she saw in the mousse-haired vampire with whom she's paired in biology class. Werewolf Guy seemed cool, and he could rebuild an engine. Jock Guy seemed nice enough, and he wasn't a threat to drink her blood by the pale moonlight. I mean, really, why would any woman want to be with a man who spends more time on his hair than she does?

There are many more questions that TWILIGHT fails to answer. For example: why are its vampires dressed so fashionably? I've only been around for 40 years, and I've already lost interest in fashion: give me khakis and an oxford on the East Coast, jeans and a T on the West, and I'm good to go. After a century, you'd think that TWILIGHT's undead would have roughly the same fashion sense as the far more entertaining vampires of NETHERBEAST INCORPORATED. At the very least, they could get jobs, a la NETHERBEAST. I mean, really, I know that vampires are damned, but an eternity of high school biology seems like cruel and unusual punishment even for the eternally forsaken.

But, hey, if thinly veiled parables about the excruciation of celibacy are your bag, or if you happen to own stock in a grooming products company, you might enjoy TWILIGHT. Two out of three of the adults in my room did.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

I'm the only member of my family who didn't like MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA. My ambulatory kids danced along with the lion at the climax. My wife and sister in law nodded along happily. I sat there, bored at a commercial venture with as much heart as a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

Here's the setup: a bunch of anthropomorphic animals rehash the hit song from the first movie, then get on a barely functioning airplane for their trip to New York City. The plane goes down in an African game preserve, where the Mustafah ripoff is being challenged by the Scar ripoff. It's up to our favorite beasts to save the day, find self-realization, and sing and dance.

But nothing funny happens. The film celebrates a subculture (New York and New Yorkers) that doesn't capture my imagination (Maybe if my crash pad wasn't so close to the J Train). The whole thing feels like a rote recycling of successful elements from the first film, with no chances taken and every element audience-tested.

I don't hate this movie. It's not interesting enough to engender hate. I just plan to be out of the room the next time my kids spin this one up.

Outsourced

OUTSOURCED is a slight, yet charming, romantic comedy about a driven Seattle call center manager sent to India to train his own replacement. It's the story of how the guy goes native, and it works because, gosh darn it, everyone in it is so nice that we can't help but wish them the best.

Josh Hamilton plays Todd, your basic yuppie who comes to Mombai to teach the Indians how to deal with Americans. I'm not familiar with Mr. Hamilton, but his IMDB resume indicates that he's had a long and steady career in things I've never seen. He's an agreeable fellow who manages his character's transitions well. Ayesha Dharker, who was in an episode of "Dr. Who" and ATTACK OF THE CLONES so you know she's ok, plays the bright and ambitious call center worker, and she does what she can with a role that asks her to be all that is good about India. Throw in assorted nice Indian folks, a meanie of a senior American executive who isn't really all that threatening, and you have a culture clash movie that doesn't ask all that much of you, and that wants nothing more than to show you a good time for an hour and a half.

This is a movie to fold laundry by, or recover from surgery to. It has a light touch, a beautiful palette, and a nice sense of what it is and what it's trying to do. One could do a lot worse.

My Name is Bruce

Ok, let's get this straight from the get-go: MY NAME IS BRUCE is not a good movie. It's cheaply made, poorly performed, and kinda lame.

I liked it.

Here's the setup: Guan Di, the Chinese god of war and tofu, is on the rampage in a small Oregon town that wants to be a small Tennessee town. Then the local misfit kid, who worships Bruce Campbell, comes up with a plan: bonk the washed-up bit player over the head, bundle him into the trunk of the Special, and spirit him to said small town to save the day the Bruce Campbell way. Er, the Bruce Campbell way consists of hitting on the kid's mom and running away when things get dicey with ol' Guan Di.

So what we've got is an hour and a half of Bruce Campbell making fun of himself, his fanbase, and the genre in which he has risen to some kind of prominence. Your enjoyment of the film will hinge on one thing: how much do you like Bruce Campbell? I like Bruce Campbell a lot: he reminds me of my Best Man. For me, an hour and a half of Bruce mugging his way through a silly little B movie is like an hour and a half of hanging out with my friend Joe, and that's an hour and a half I'm always willing to spend. My wife likes Joe, too: she laughed all the way through MY NAME IS BRUCE, but that could've been the post c-section percoset doing its thing.

When it comes to some movies, a picture doesn't have to be "good" to be good. MY NAME IS BRUCE is a fine example of this very thing. Enjoy it with a plate of ribs, a cold beer, some percoset, and a little tofu.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Christina Barcelona

Sorry, I just don’t care about anybody in VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA.

Look, I’ve got a wife, two jobs, three kids, a dog, a house, and the very real possibility of an airline furlough on the horizon. I find it difficult to get lost in the problems of wealthy young people with worthless educations and too many options.

The feckless rich girl must leave the wealthy artist’s household because of her restlessness? Frak you.

The wealthy artist is locked in a destructive relationship with the crazy lady? Frak you.

The aimless rich girl must choose between the wealthy artist and the wealthy banker? Frak you and enjoy his bonus check.

I mean, hey, I’m all for the glamorous rich. I love it when they dance around in Fred Astaire movies or banter with Groucho. But I just don’t have time for the sun-drenched parasites in this movie.

Next.

RocknRolla

ROCK N ROLLA is a great time at the movies.

Like LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, ROCKNROLLA is a British thug drama, though drama may be the wrong word. This isn’t a film about the human condition, and it isn’t a film about real people with real problems. It’s a game, a Rube Goldberg device, a chance to set up a bunch of characters in impossible situations and see how everything works itself out. And while that kind of movie can be a grinding bore of plot machination, ROCK N ROLLA hums like a finely tuned engine.

Why? I’ll chalk it up to two things: witty and well-written dialogue, and propulsive direction and editing. The dialogue seems like the kind of stuff that I’d enjoy reading as much as seeing performed, though the performances (by “The Wire”’s Idris Elba, Gerard Butler, Thandie Newton, and Tom Wilkinson, among others, do it credit. The direction and editing, which combine for the look of the film, are alive with energy and excitement, like the kind of storyteller
who’s so caught in the moment that the words tumble out of him at nearly the speed of thought.

So here I am, four paragraphs in (if you count the lede), and I have yet to say what the movie is actually about. You know what? It doesn’t matter what the movie’s about, any more than it matters what a good storyteller’s tale is actually about. What matters is that it’s a tale from a good storyteller.

That’s enough for me.

Selling Sex in Heaven

SELLING SEX IN HEAVEN won Best Documentary at the 2006 Big Bear Lake International Film Festival. Must have been a pretty thin field.

The documentary, which originally aired on Canadian Television, is a horrorshow about sex tourism in the Philippines. As such, it follows your typical horrorshow format of introducing us to someone who lives in its milieu, then using that person’s story to take us deeper into its horrible world. By the time the film climaxes with a look into a casa, or brothel catering to Filipinos, we’re looking at a ghastly example of modern slavery and man’s inhumanity to man.

This could be, should be, powerful stuff, but SELLING SEX IN HEAVEN weakens itself by taking the viewpoint of two young Canadian interns who have come to the P.I. to change the world. When it shows us some dehumanizing facet of the sex trade, such as the mandatory weekly gynecological examinations (“For the protection of the customers, not the girls,” states the clinic’s director), it doesn’t let the scene speak for itself. Instead, it goes strait to one of the two callow young Canadians: “Ooh, all those speculums look nasty,” says one. Ok, cornfed, I’m sorry that the veil of your innocence is being lifted, but your disillusionment does not make for compelling cinema.

SELLING SEX IN HEAVEN makes another critical mistake: by misstating the facts surrounding the U.S. withdrawal from the Philippines, it calls the integrity of its research into question. The film states that the U.S. maintained a huge military presence in the Philippines for years, and that the local sex trade sprang up around it. Accurate, so far. But then, it strongly implies that the U.S. pulled out of the P.I. as a direct result of the devastating eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, which significantly damaged the facilities at Clark AFB, at the time the Air Force’s largest installation in the Pacific. The reality is significantly different. First, the government of the Philippines told the U.S. to leave the islands. Second, the U.S. submitted to the will of its host country and began its withdrawal. Third, Pinatubo blew after the withdrawal was already underway. There is no correlation between Pinatubo and the U.S. withdrawal from the Philippines, and the film’s misrepresentation led me to wonder what else it might be misrepresenting.

So here’s a film that’s supposed to document the plight of some of humanity’s most vulnerable people, but turns out to be about how two nice Canadian girls learn that the world is not a nice place. Not only does the picture miss its own point, it does so while losing credibility by botching a fact pattern that’s a matter of public record. It’s too bad, because the story of the oppressed and exploited women of the Filipino sex trade is one worth telling. If only SELLING SEX IN HEAVEN was a better storyteller.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

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

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

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

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

Australia

If you don’t like AUSTRALIA, you don’t like movies. Here’s a movie that just screams “Movie!”, with a big story, big sets, big score, big villains, and big heroes. It has cattle drives, sunsets, air assaults, magic, and even an angelic choir. Baz Luhrmann’s motto is “A life lived in fear is a life half lived,” and here he shows that he isn’t afraid to throw everything he loves about motion pictures on the screen.

Ok, but I recently slagged off on Ed Harris’s APPALOOSA for throwing everything it loves about Westerns on the screen, decrying its lack of focus and dragging pace. What’s so different about AUSTRALIA?

Everything Baz Luhrmann touches is deep fried awesome on a stick, that’s what. When tightly wound duchess Nicole Kidman first alights on the Continent, who’s the governor eyeing her through a telescope? The dad from STRICTLY BALLROOM, that’s who. Whose is the second voice we hear? None other than that of Barry Fife, that’s who. Who’s the villain? Bryan Brown. Who’s the evil henchman? Frakkin’ Faramir. And who’s the scruffy drover who Kidman pegs as unworthy to scrape the mud off her boots? Well, it’s Wolverine. And if you’ve ever seen a movie, you know it won’t be long before the Duke’s out of the picture, Kidman lets her hair down, and we’re off to the races.

And it’s a grand race, particularly if you’re willing to delight in Luhrmann’s swooning passion for all things film. AUSTRALIA looks great, it sounds great, and it’s a great time at the movies. Enjoy.

Cadillac Records

CADILLAC RECORDS is your basic music biography, but the twist here is that it’s the biography of a company, Chess Records, rather than an individual. The film centers on two men, Muddy Waters and Leonard Chess. Muddy is the natural blues man, a gifted musician with no head for business, while Leonard is the natural promoter, a gifted businessman with an ear for quality commercial music. When Muddy plays Leonard’s club, Leonard knows he has lightning in a bottle: all he needs to do is record it. And record it he does, founding Chess Records and signing, in addition to Waters, people like Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Etta James, and Willie Dixon. Everything’s champagne and Cadillacs, at least for a while, but anyone who has seen an episode of “Behind the Music” knows how things will go from there.

Sure, CADILLAC RECORDS has a familiar arc, but it has a few things to recommend it. First, there’s the music: if you don’t like the blues, there’s something deeply wrong with you. Second, there are the performances: what’s not to like about a cast with people like Jeffrey Wright, Adrien Brody, Gabrielle Union, Mos Def, and the duly beringed Beyonce Knowles? Not to mention this other guy, this guy who comes out of nowhere, Eamonn Walker as Howlin’ Wolf, a force of nature who blows everyone off the screen just by walking into a room. Third, and perhaps most importantly, there’s the history: there is no rhythm and blues, there is no rock and roll, there is no soul, there is no hip hop without Chess Records.

So, hey, if you like good music and you enjoy seeing excellent performers do their thing and you want to learn some history, CADILLAC RECORDS is for you. Think of it as reading a particularly engaging biography, and enjoy.

Slumdog Millionaire

Ok, so I’m the last guy in the world to have seen SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. I liked it, and I don’t get the backlash.

The film has an interesting structure, both deviating from and underscoring the standard three-act format. It tells its story in flashback, using the protagonist’s run on the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” to give him reason to recall and reflect upon the events of his life. This framework gives filmmaker Danny Boyle freedom to tell his story in near-vignettes, leaving out much connective tissue and sticking to the read meat of his story. While doing so, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE keeps us moored in the three-act structure by casting different people to play his lead characters during the different periods of their lives that serve as the acts of the narrative. It’s cool, it’s neat, it’s fun, and it gives our analytic selves something to enjoy while our emotional selves get lost in a story of love desperately trying to find a way.

Some folks say that SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is manipulative. You know what? Fine. So’s a good song. I got caught up in the ride; I fell in love along with the characters; I rooted for them every step of the way. I’m a happy customer.

Belle de Jour

BELLE DE JOUR is one of those movies I fired up out of a sense of duty. It’s been around out there, hovering on the edge of my consciousness, for years. I figured it was time I finally buckled down and saw it.

Belle de Jour is Catherine DeNeuve’s hooker name. She’s a Parisienne, comfortably situated in the upper middle class, who feels that something is missing in her life, in her marriage with the reliable but new-agey husband she probably thought was a safe bet at the time. When a lascivious friend tells her that some women find part-time work in some of Paris’s more discreet brothels, she’s horrified, and aroused, and curious. And soon, she’s Belle de Jour.

But, of course, that isn’t the end of the movie. Over the next hour or so, the film explores the consequences of her choice, its effects on her psychologically and physically, and the dangers that can arise when one traffics with those who traffic in flesh. It does so carefully, and in a manner that leads us to believe in the people we’re seeing and invest in Belle’s journey. I believed in DeNeuve’s character, her motivations and needs. I wanted to see what became of her, and I still do. I may have begun BELLE DE JOUR with a sense of duty, but I finished with one of satisfaction. This is a fine movie.

Appaloosa

I was all ready to like APPALOOSA. It starred Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger, and Jeremy Irons in a throwback Western that promised vistas, gunfights, and romance. But the opening voiceover sounded like it was written in a self-actualization seminar, clobbering the Western mood before it could even get rolling.

Once past the voiceover, APPALOOSA tries to be the Bollywood production of Westerns. It throws in everything it can think of, from scheming ranchers to jailhouse watches to raiding injuns to barfights to showdowns on Main Street. Hell, I'm surprised they didn't throw a production number in there. Thing is, there's so much going on that it detracts from the major throughline. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure what the major throughline is.

There's a good movie buried somewhere in APPALOOSA, but writer/director/star Ed Harris wasn't willing to kill his babies to find it. Too bad. We could have been spared the film's maddening "tell me, show me, then tell me again because I must be an idiot" narrative style in favor of "show me and let me figure it out." Here's one Western that could've used a man of few words.