Mamma Mia!

I took three runs at MAMMA MIA! I was stuck in coach on a transpacific flight in one of those old 747s, the kind with one screen up near the front of the cabin of which you can only see about half. I actually wanted to see this movie because I like Greece, I like the cast, and I liked MURIEL'S WEDDING, which also pushed the Abba.

I made it about thirty seconds in the first musical number before I pulled my headphone jack out of the armrest. But everyone looked they were having such a good time, and the island looked so pretty, that I plugged back in for one of Meryl Streep's numbers, just so I could hear her sing. I think I lasted 45 seconds through "Dancing Queen." Yank.

Then Pierce Brosnan opened his mouth in what appeared to be agony. I plugged back in for his number. I lasted perhaps a full minute that time, but I was done.

MAMMA MIA! is like being dragged to your mom's kaffee klatch during spring break. It's like going along with your wife on a "lunch with the girls" so she can share a part of her life with you. It's like being forced to listen to your sister cry over her latest breakup as you, she, and a friend of hers drive down an interminable highway. If you're a guy, you don't belong. You know you don't belong. Everyone's trying to make you feel like you do belong, but everyone knows you just plain don't. Especially you.

So don't go along. If you're a man, this movie is worse than PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE. It's worse than STEALTH. It's worse than DEATH RACE 2000. Tell your mom to have fun at the kaffee klatch. Tell your wife you'll be having beer and wings with the guys. Tell your sister to drop you off anywhere and tell someone to send water.

Just don't subject yourself to this.

After The Sunset

AFTER THE SUNSET is like OCEAN'S TWELVE without everyone trying so hard to be cool.

It's a great premise - what happens after the brilliant jewel thieves pull of the ultimate heist and retire to the tropical island? Will they really be able to enjoy a life of lobster dinners and fruity drinks with umbrellas in them?

In this case, Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek play the thieves and Woody Harrelson is the FBI agent who just can't let them go. He follows them to the island just as a cruise ship displaying the world's most kickass diamond pulls in to port, determined to stick so close to the couple that they won't have enough room to breathe, much less try another heist.

And away you go from there, rolling into a brisk 90 minutes of jokes, cons, doublecrosses, and slamming-door farce. There is not a single beat in this film in this film that you won't see coming, in part because the film doesn't so much telegraph as broadcast its intentions. Nevertheless, the affair floats along on a tide of bonhomie, willing to bet that its audience will enjoy viewing a light, tropical, grownup fantasy as much as it seems its creators enjoyed staging it.

I rented AFTER THE SUNSET because I just loved the premise. How nice that it followed through.

Seraphim Falls

I grew up in the Mountain West. I know how to track, ride, and shoot, and I know that hypothermia can be deadlier than bullets. When SERAPHIM FALLS began in the Mountain West with characters who track, ride, shoot, and nearly succumb to hypothermia, it earned my immediate and total buy-in. When able stars Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson enacted the line, "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed," it pegged my Cool Meter. When Anjelica Huston, in a great bit of stunt casting, intoned, "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," I thought, 'Now, there's a western!"

The story begins in the High Sierra, where Neeson and his henchmen attack an unsuspecting Brosnan, who barely escapes with his life. Wait a minute - it's Liam Neeson! He's usually a good guy! And so's Brosnan! What's going on here? Those questions provide much of the film's dramatic tension, as we try to figure out what, exactly, is going on and why. But there's no time for that, at first. At first, it's all running and sliding and nearly drowning or bleeding to death or dying of the aforementioned hypothermia, in addition to my beloved riding, tracking, and shooting. Brosnan does career-best work as he gives us desperation, determination, and bafflement. His portrayal of a man at the edge of death brough to mind Jack London's "To Build a Fire," and I completely bought that he was just moments away from feeling warm all over and laying down to sleep.

Cinematographer John Toll does absolutely brilliant work here, as well. He brings to life the mountains, the desert, and places in between with such care and clarity that I could almost smell the pine tar and juniper berries. He creates the mythic West by taking much of the myth out of it, and he made me feel homesick for the first time in years.

SERAPHIM FALLS isn't a big movie. It's a revenge picture, and a chase picture, and a personal picture. But it's also very much a western, and it felt true to the West as I understand it. I'm glad I saw it.