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.

NetherBeast Incorporated

Dilbert, with vampires. Either you're in or you're out.

Me, I'm in.

Steve Burns (yes, that Steve Burns), has a problem. His boss, Darrell Hammond, has just invited him into his office. Hammond tells Burns to take over a project from a recently deceased coworker. The coworker in question is sitting in a chair across from Hammond's desk, a stake through his heart. "Not only does his project need a little work, you see, but I had to kill him," declares Hammond. "He was a vampire." And away we go with a fun and creative take on the vampire mythos.

NETHERBEAST INCORPORATED's vampires don't wear flashy clothes, they don't brood in the moonlight, and they don't gaze with romantic longing at the nubile living. They're too busy working up PowerPoint presentations, dozing through meetings, and running the most mundane business imaginable. That's its hook, but the thing that sells it is Steve Burns, whose deadpan delivery and everyman approach to even the most horrifically outlandish situations kept me chuckling throughout the film's brisk 89 minute run time. This is a low-budget horror comedy that's light on the horror and heavy on the comedy, and a it's a sweet, simple, semi-gory good time.

It's perfect for Valentine's Day, or any romantic occasion. Try it with a nice red wine.

Coraline

Walking out of CORALINE, my 8-yr-old said, "That was a different kind of scary. It wasn't scary like monsters scary, where you only lose your life. It was a scary where you can lose your existence." My response: "Is that a good scary?"

Make no mistake: CORALINE is, indeed, scary, and not in a CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON kind of way. It's as much creeping fear as horror show, and its marvelous visuals serve a tale that can send chills down the spine of child and parent alike. For while my child saw a story about a little girl who fights for souls, I saw a cautionary tale about the dangers of addiction.

Addiction - wha?

There's this episode of "The Wire" in which Sydnor is about to go undercover as a junkie. Bubbles says to him, "What's that on your hand? Take that off." Sydnor replies, "That's my wedding ring!" Bubbles: "Weddin' ring? You married to the spike now. Your wife, your kids, your job, your home - you fed it all to the spike. That weddin' ring was first to go."

In CORALINE, Coraline discovers her spike. She goes to it again again, taking what she thinks it has to give her. She doesn't understand what it's really offering and, by the time she does, she's nearly trapped. When the worm turns and she finds out who's really in charge (spoiler: it's not her), it takes everything she's got, and much that she does not, to win a chance of getting free.

It's heavy stuff, but it's wrapped up in a delightfully told, scary and sophisticated movie that entertained two people separated by a 32-year age difference. It's also scary stuff, but it's a good scary. Take it from my eight-yr-old.

The Wackness

In THE WACKNESS, Ben Kingsley counsels young Josh Peck, "Don't trust anyone who doesn't listen to Dylan and who doesn't smoke weed."

I don't listen to Dylan. I don't smoke weed. I didn't trust Ben Kingsley, either.

This is a movie about people from a different universe, one in which the rules of society as I understand them don't exist. They ingest enormous amounts of drugs. They approach sex with damaging casualness. They speak in a foreign language and listen to music that's a mystery to me. In fact, there's not one single character in this film that I could relate to, one person who didn't feel like an example of a type, but rather a complete human being. I've seen movies about murderous, medieval Huns with whom I could relate more than I could anyone in THE WACKNESS.

This movie was an audience favorite at Sundance. CHUD's Devin Faraci loved it. I don't get the appeal, not at all. THE WACKNESS does part of what movies are supposed to do, in that it takes me to a different place and time, introduces me to different people, and puts me in their shoes. But the shoes didn't fit, and the film couldn't sell them to me.

Bummer.

Bottle Shock

Movies like BOTTLE SHOCK are the reason why I read Roger Ebert. I never saw an ad for the picture, didn’t read about it in any of my other wanderings, would never have known it xisted were it not for Ebert’s review.

I just plain loved it.

Here’s a movie about the 1976 Franco-American wine competition, a promotional event organized by one Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman, CDNW) with the expectation that the American wines would be thoroughly trounced. As it happened, the Americans won in both the white and red categories. The movie assumes you know this going in, and it bathes the entire proceeding, from Spurrier’s first inspiration for the event to the aftermath of the competition, in the warm glow of fond memory.

BOTTLE SHOCK is a “little guys against the world” picture with hints of “coming of age,” “romantic comedy,” and “slobs vs. snobs.” It’s laugh-out-loud funny, utterly charming, and delightful from beginning to end.

Thanks, Roger Ebert. Perhaps I should see this SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE of which you speak so highly.

MirrorMask

MIRRORMASK. Hmm.

Dave McKean’s unsettling ‘Sandman’ covers got me interested in this picture. What would an entire film made with McKean’s sensibility look like? Well, I’m here to tell you that it would look like a moving ‘Sandman’ cover.

Unfortunately, McKean’s vision is about all this film has going for it. MIRRORMASK is a rather conventional quest tale, set in a land very much like the Dreaming, that spends all of its time looking fantastical and spends very little time creating people we care about and giving them urgent, interesting things to do.

But hey, this is a PG movie and it’s essentially a kids’ story, so it must be ok to share with the little ones, right? Wrong. My youngest started crying about three minutes in, and I’m glad I saw the rest of the film alone. Many of McKean’s visions are nightmare-inducing, and I just don’t need to wake up to screaming children in the middle of the night.

So, there it is. Scary and rather dull, MIRRORMASK is a film I could have done without.

Traitor

TRAITOR is an excellent film.

Don Cheadle plays Samir, a Sudanese-American working his way up the ranks of a terrorist organization. He's the textbook terrorist candidate: an immigrant caught between two worlds, smart, capable, devout, and with military training. As played by Cheadle, he's also deeply conflicted. He's a man who wants to do the right thing, but the people telling him what is and is not right don't seem to be any more enlightened than he (I'm describing the character instead of the performance because, hey, it's Don Cheadle. You know he nails it.).

Guy Pearce, Jeff Daniels, and Neal McDonough are among the Americans working his case. Saïd Taghmaoui, Alyy Kahn, and Raad Rawi are the major players in his cell. Each of these fine actors sells their roles, but it's a testament to Cheadle's ability that he blows them off the screen without even trying. There's so much happening behind this guy's eyes that he's always the most interesting person in the room, no matter how skilled the other players.

The movie itself is well shot and scored, though not particularly dazzling. This is more a character piece than a virtuoso production, and its exploration of the kind of guy who can rig a suicide vest or sacrifice innocents makes an excellent counterpoint to the more hero-oriented GWOT thrillers we've been getting recently. What a pleasure to get inside the mind of a guy like Samir, a guy wrestling with big questions with important consequences. This one is worth seeing.

Naked Weapon

There's a movie out there called SO CLOSE. Corey Yuen directed it, and it stars Qi Shu, Wei Zhao, and Karen Mok. It's your basic "hot Chinese assassin" movie, and it's one of the best popcorn pictures there is. It has an interesting story; beautifully choreographed fight scenes; and Qi Shu, Wei Zhao, and Karen Mok. This movie does everything right: it's glossy, cheesy, and playful. It's the GONE WITH THE WIND of "hot Chinese assassin" movies.

And then there's NAKED WEAPON, released just two months after SO CLOSE. Directed by Siu-Tung Ching, it stars Maggie Q, Anya, and Jewel Lee. It's another "hot Chinese assassin" movie (Is this a bona fide subgenre? Perhaps I should investigate!), but it's downright terrible. NAKED WEAPON barely even has a story; its fight scenes practically define the word "lame;" and it stars Maggie Q, Anya, and Jewel Lee. If SO CLOSE is the GONE WITH THE WIND of "hot Chinese assassin" movies, this is the CANNONBALL RUN: uninspired, mechanical, and dull.
Here's the story: evil Madame M kidnaps 40 13-yr-old girls, dresses them up like Lara Croft, and puts them through five years of grueling training. Those who survive become the world's elite assassins, taking out the planet's hardest targets while bathing one another in longing gazes guaranteed to ignite the imaginations of 15-yr-old boys and bore the hell out of everyone else. But, of course, the FBI and CIA are hot on their tails, which is surprising: I had no idea that the PRC was so accomodating toward U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

So you've got your chases and your stunts and your fights and your sublimated lesbianism and your budding romance and all that crap, but none of it goes anywhere, none of it makes any sense, and none of it passes for entertainment. Charisma vacuum Maggie Q is no Qi Shu, and proves herself utterly incapable of anchoring a movie; even a cheesy popcorner like this one's trying to be. Siu-Tung Ching doesn't know how to make wirework look good, he doesn't know how to choreograph gravity-based effects, and he's even more in love with the windblown look than the guys who made KRRISH. Plus, he's a moron. How do you put Pei-pei Cheng in your picture and not give her a good fight?

NAKED WEAPON may -may- appeal to the aforementioned 15-yr-old boys, but I wouldn't even recommend it to one of them. If you've got a fever, and the only thing that'll cure it is a "hot Chinese assassin" movie, rent SO CLOSE. It's superior in every way. As for NAKED WEAPON, give it a pass. Watching this movie is like having your spine ripped out: you won't feel a thing.

Burn After Reading

BURN AFTER READING is a comedy with two funny lines. J.K. Simmons gets both of them. And he's only in the movie for ten minutes, tops.

The film, a misanthropic screwball comedy, is so heavy on misanthropy and so light on comedy that I spent more time marveling at the train wrecks piling before me than sustaining any kind of comic mood. Its as if everyone involved was told they were making a tragedy, with the exception of Simmons and his minion David (Sledge Hammer!) Rasche.

Many folks liked this picture, but I don't get it. How can you laugh when you're busy feeling bad for everyone onscreen?

Sunrise: A Tale of Two Humans

Emotionally captivating, visually wonderful, and technically marvelous, F.W. Murnau's SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS is a fitting swan song for the silent era.

Released in 1927, the same year THE JAZZ SINGER heralded the dawn of the talkies, SUNRISE proved that you don't need words to expound upon the human condition. The film tells the story of a marriage in crisis: the man, once happy at home, has fallen in love with another woman; one with expensive tastes. He's been selling the livestock to finance the affair, and now his mistress is really putting the screws to him. "Why," she asks, "doesn't your wife have an 'accident'? Then you could sell the farm and we could move to the city." It's a tempting offer. I'm not going to tell you if he takes her up on it or not.

What I will tell you, however, is that Murnau's touch is never more assured. He helps his actors and actresses sell their roles and, in the process, plays the human heart like a master. We laugh, we cry, we bite our nails, we're wholly lost in the story of these people and wholly vested in their fates. From perfectly timed comic touches like the reactions of a very proper gentlemen to the wardrobe malfunctions of the hapless woman standing beside him to scenes filled with a dark foreboding as rich as any in cinema, this is a film that knows how to work its audience.

Murnau supplements the cast's efforts through an extraordinary collaboration with cinematographers Charles Rosher and Karl Struss, men who figured out how to make their camera glide through space, use multiple exposures to create heightened realities, and even pull off some kind of trick that looks just like a modern green screen. These men's collective eye for composition and technical expertise combine to create a world sometimes simple, sometimes extraordinarily dazzling, and ever interesting. There's always something happening in every corner of the frame in SUNRISE, and I look forward to teasing out more details in subsequent viewings.

No kidding, folks: this movie has everything. It's a flat-out masterpiece, and well deserving of its Academy Awards (Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production; Best Cinematographer; Best Actress in a Leading Role). What a gem.

Into the Wild

I was vaguely aware of Chris McCandless (aka Alexander Supertramp) before I viewed INTO THE WILD. I knew that Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air, wrote a book about him. I thought the guy was basically a spoiled kid who thought he could just tramp off into the Alaskan bush with no preparation and got himself killed.

But you know what I just wrote about MONSTER? About how film can take us into worlds we didn’t know existed, into people we’d never understand otherwise? INTO THE WILD does this, taking us into McCandless’s world and into the heart of a fatally idealistic, romantic young man who wanted only what idealistic and romantic young men have always wanted: to find adventure and find the truth.

Sean Penn wrote and directed INTO THE WILD with a sure control of technical detail and an eye for character. As McCandless (Emile Hirsch, quite fine in the underrated SPEED RACER) travels America, the film wraps us in beautiful foreboding and the love of good people. It leads us to care about the young man at its center without allowing us to forget the damage he’s doing to those he left behind. It shows us that, by the time McCandless made it to Alaska, he actually was marginally prepared to be there. And it takes us on his journey with care and tenderness.

This is a beautiful film, with beautiful images, music, and performances. It’s a thoughtful film, a film that cares about ideas and emotions in a real, personal way. It’s a riveting film, one that keeps us fully engaged though we know how it will end. And it’s a great film, the kind we recommend to our friends. See it soon.

Monster

MONSTER, the Aileen Wournos story, takes us into an alien world and shows us what it’s like to live there. That’s the world of Wournos, a person who grew up in what, to many of us, is an alternate universe. Wournos doesn’t live in a place where people are basically good and things generally work out for the best. Rather, she lives in a world where people are vile and things generally fall apart. And while MONSTER never lets Wournos off the hook for her actions, it does leave us with an understanding of where she’s coming from.

Aileen Wournous was a street hooker who became a murderess, killing her customers and stealing their cars and cash. The film shows us why, and it’s a portrait of incredible sadness. As the film begins, Wournos (played by Charlize Theron) is in despair, on the verge of suicide. And then something totally unexpected happens: she falls in love, and she dares to hope. But in Wournos’s world, hope is a false promise. When the money runs out and the rope begins to fray, she’s gotta come up with something. And here’s where the movie breaks our heart, because when you’re Aileen Wournos, the list of somethings you can come up with is tragically limited.

The film has its flaws: Wournos occasionally says things that sound more like the voice of a writer than that of the character. Theron’s performance sometimes jars, as occasionally she belies her physical transformation with vocal ticks that remind us who it us under all that makeup and costuming. But these, frankly, are nitpicks. MONSTER is a very, very good picture, and well worth seeing. I’m sorry I waited so long.

Chopper

CHOPPER reminds me of SEXY BEAST. But imagine the Ben Kingsley character as the protagonist.

Here, Eric Bana plays a guy street-named Chopper. He’s a violent and charming sociopath whose ability to destroy the lives of everyone around him is eclipsed only by his self-absorption. The film, based loosely on the eponymous Australian criminal, is misnamed, however. It should have been named BANA, because its real focus is the ability of its lead actor.

This is the picture that broke Bana out, and for good reason. His Chopper is wheedling, arrogant, dangerous, needy, unpredictable, charming, streetwise but stupid, and extremely violent. Like Kingsley in SEXY BEAST, his every moment creates tension, both in the characters on the screen and the people watching. But as the protagonist of this film, Bana has to keep the tension going almost all the time. It’s amazing.

Well, here I am in my fourth paragraph, and I still haven’t mentioned the story, really. Fact is, I can hardly remember it, for the story is not Chopper’s draw: the performance is. Wow.

Die Nibelungen

Fritz Lang’s THE NIBELUNGEN, clocking in at over five hours long, is an ambitious work that had a huge impact in its day. Unfortunately, it hasn’t aged well. I slogged through the saga with one eye on the screen and one on the clock, never believing in anything or anyone I saw onscreen.

The film begins with Siegfried, a blacksmith’s apprentice who forges a blade so keen that his master declares he has nothing more to teach the young hero. Taking the sword and setting out to find his fortune, he slays a dragon, finds an invisibility cloak, and captures the treasure hoard of the dwarves. This is the best part of the picture, with a magnificently realized dragon puppet that’s over eighty feet long, great craft on Siegfried’s part, and a transfiguration effect that must have take days days to create.

But soon enough, Siegfried is in the hall of the Burgundian Kings, the titular Nibelungen. And here’s where the picture gets nasty. From here on out, the film is a feast of misogyny, racism, and general repudiation of Judaeo-Christian values. There’s deceit and counter deceit, blood revenge, cruel realpolitik, and an ultimate affirmation of the heroic woman only in terms of her cold-hearted cruelty. There’s a significant portion among the Huns that makes this proud people out as barely a step above lowland gorillas. But most importantly, and unforgivably, there’s nothing here to hang on to: the characters aren’t inherently fascinating, the pageantry isn’t particularly dazzling, and the whole thing feels rather flat.

At least, that’s how it seems to me, the modern viewer. The film made such a splash during its initial release that Goebbels asked Lang to make propaganda films for the Nazi political effort (showing great judgment, the director promptly fled to America). But while I can put myself into the mind of a person who enjoyed INTOLERANCE and THE IDLE CLASS, I can’t see the appeal of this one. It’s coming from a place too alien to me.

Encounters at the End of the World

I've had some time to cogitate on ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, and I appreciate it even more now than I did right after I saw it.

ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD begins with a jaw-droppingly beautiful shot of scuba divers under the Antarctic Ice, segues into a silly visual of a monkey riding on a goat, and gets us thinking with an interview with one of the many denizens of Antarctica's McMurdo Station. And the film just goes from there, weaving a tapestry of people, stories, projects, and visuals in its portrait of a little place at the end of the world where the smart, hardworking, and adventurous come to explore the world and mankind's potential.

In the process, it gives us a film that pushes all our buttons: it's beautiful, enlightening, and thought provoking, and it lingers in our consciousness long after the credits end. It makes me regret that I made my "Best of 2008" list before I saw it: this film would surely rank at #1.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

There is such a thing as competitive vintage video gaming. There are adults, people with businesses and families, who spend enormous amounts of time pursuing world records in games like Frogger, Q*Bert, Joust, Space Invaders, and Donkey Kong. These people have their own subculture, and their subculture has an evil king. THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS is a documentary about a hapless schmuck who decides that there's gotta be something he can succeed in, makes becoming the Donkey Kong champion that one thing, blunders into this subculture, and takes on the king.

It's phenomenal.

THE KING OF KONG has everything one could want in a movie: heroes, villains, partisans on both sides, romantic tension, and a structure so perfect one wonders if parts of it were scripted. As Steve Wiebe pursues his quest to finally win at something, we get wrapped up in it with him even as we see the toll it takes on his family. As Billy Mitchell and his minions try one ploy after another to protect his title, we boo and hiss even as we marvel at the fact that such an obvious slimeball can actually succeed in the wider world. Who knew that watching a pixellated plumber climb up a ladder could generate so much drama?

WALL-E

Pixar is in an interesting place. When we sit down for a Pixar film, we expect beauty and thought and humor. We expect to be dazzled, and anything short of that disappoints us.

Fear not. WALL-E is dazzling - it entranced my 2-yr old, my 8-yr old, my wife, and me. But it's also disturbing.

One of the film's sequences follows an obese person in a floating chair, gorging on visual media and wasting time discussing inanities such as what he thought of some movie or tv show he'd recently seen. It's all part of the film's message about consumerism, physical and virtual, and I couldn't help but see it as a shot at me.

You see, I'm a guy who likes to spend his time thinking about entertainments. I find watching movies and writing little snippets about them to be recreational, certainly moreso than the mind-numbing tedium that is fishing or planting stuff. And I do that writing on a nifty little computer, while sitting on a comfy couch. Granted, I'm fit, but I'm pretty sure that Jack LaLanne could kick my ass, and he was born in 1914. In other words, I'm almost exactly the kind of guy at whome WALL-E is taking a shot.

Which is fine. Good art has the power to confront, and I resolve that confrontation by noting that this isn't *all* I do, but that I also spend a considerable amount of my time doing actual jobs that actually make people's lives better here in the real world. But while I accept that film's thesis that a passive life is a live half-lived, I take issue with the agrarian utopianism it presents as an alternative. While the agrarian utopia has long held a place in the western imagination, anyone who has spent considerable time around farmers can report that they aren't the healthiest people on Earth. They live a hard life, the kind of life that looks great when you're stuck in a cubicle writing code, but the kind many would trade in a minute.

Jeez. Looking over the last couple of paragraphs, it seems like a wrote an nigh-incomprehensible mishmash of ideas. Perhaps it's time to go for a run.

Strictly Ballroom

Oh, how I love STRICTLY BALLROOM. 

I don't love this movie for its innovative storyline. I don't love this movie for its powerhouse performances. I don't love this movie for its groundbreaking technical innovations. I love this movie because this movie is so in love with movies that I can't help but fall in love with it. 

STRICTLY BALLROOM loves everything about movies. It loves classic, David v. Goliath setups wrapped around love stories. It loves big, broad, physical perfomances, the kind where the mousy girl from the back row lets her hair down, takes her glasses off, and blows everyone away. It loves those filters that turn every point of light into a star. It loves bright costumes, big dance numbers, and villains getting their comeuppance. 

And that love is infectious. It creates a film so joyful that my wife and I laughed all the way through it, riding a crest of goodwill the film created early and carried through to the closing number. What a great movie. 

Swordsman II

SWORDSMAN II is a milestone in my family. It's the first subtitled film that my 8-yr-old has sat for all the way through. It's also the first film featuring transgendered characters, quasi-lesbian romance, and bondage he's sat through. That wasn't really part of the game plan, but I guess it had to come sooner or later.

An hour after finishing SWORDSMAN II, I'm still not entirely sure what it's about. Jet Li is a Drunken Master -ish leader of a group of wuxia warriors on their way to some holy mountain, where they plan to renounce Kung Fu and live as - I don't know - peaceful mountain people until they run out of food or money or both. One of the warriors, a woman who refers to Li as "brother," is clearly hot for him. I hope he wasn't really her brother, or I'll have even more splainin to do when my wife gets home. Anyway, they're on their way to meet some hot chick whose equally hot henchwoman calls her "chief," and with whom she engages in some amusing tongueplay.

Then ninjas show up. With scorpions. But Hot Chief Chick and her minions unleash their snakes upon them and rocks them like a hurricane.

There's more: soon, a transgendered warlord (warlady?) shows up, back by her band of ronin. That's right: a transgendered warperson with samurai henchmen. "Really," I felt like saying to this movie, "you had me at ninjas and scorpions." But there's a twist (Oh, of course there is!): the warperson is married to a lady who's wondering why her husband hasn't slept with her in six months. And why he's wearing makeup. And taking up embroidery. And having the likes of Jet Li show up at her doorstep, drunk and horny, in the middle of the night.

Wait, what? What's Jet Li doing with this dudelette, when he's got these other two chicks (one with snakes) all over him? Well, it's complicated, but it has to do with the warperson's brother, whom she's been keeping chained in a dungeon for (coincidentally) six months.

Just as SWORDSMAN II really started to creep me out, however, it rolled into a huge wirework battle. While, sadly, the battle lacked scorpions or snakes, it featured plenty of needlepoint, swordplay, and needlepoint swordplay. Not to mention of the winnowing of the love quadrangle (which is always awkward, I don't care who you are) to a more manageable triangle. Bondage guy gets his mitts on warperson, which is satisfying if that's your thing, and Li is left with serious questions about his sexuality, which (it appears) his totally submissive quasi-sister will be more than happy to help him work though.

In other words, SWORDSMAN II makes for lovely family viewing. I'm reasonably confident that my kid didn't catch any of that, but instead saw an entirely different movie, one about a heroic clan fighting an evil warlady and relearning lessons about the futility of the martial life.

Thank God. I don't have time for that much splainin.

What I Thought About What I Saw: 2008

I rarely see films in theaters, so I often miss out on the year-end Prestige Pictures. That said, here are the top and bottom ten from among the films I did see before the year ran through.

THE BEST

1. Forgetting Sarah Marshall

This is the film I keep returning to in my mental "greatest hits" archive. Funny, sweet, and all-around wonderful, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL is the 2008 film I'll be happy to see again and again.

2. Hellboy 2

Noone does "dazzling flights of the imagination" like Del Toro, and HELLBOY 2's amazing visuals and marvelous leaps of imagination stands as yet another fine addition to the man's catalog. If for no other reason, see this film to see a man whose head is a castle. It's magnificent.

3. Kung Fu Panda

The most beautiful film of the year, KUNG FU PANDA is filled with images so gorgeous they've adorned my desktop for months. I can't wait to see this one again on Blu-Ray.

4. Leatherheads

What a pleasure enjoy two hours of snappy dialogue delivered by sharp, charismatic performers. This movie came out of nowhere to take me by very pleasant surprise.

5. Speed Racer

Come to think of it, I think I did see the Star Child appear during that final race.

6. The Dark Knight

Everything people have been saying about Ledger's performance is true. His Joker is haunting and queasily funny and absolutely unforgettable.

7. In Bruges

A dark, sad comedy about honor and loss and redemption and responsibility. I finally get the hype about Colin Farrell.

8. Cloverfield

Ok, so it made two of the guys I went with throw up. Or maybe that was just the pre-film tequila shots. Whatever the reason, CLOVERFIELD made that which is old new again.  It did so by making it very scary, the way it was when it was old.

9. Iron Man

In the words of Jim Beaver, I'd watch Robert Downey, Jr. sand his baseboards. He's got his charisma dialed up to 11 in this one, and Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow dial it right up with him. What a fun time at the movies.

10. You Don't Mess with the Zohan

I laughed all the way through this silly, over the top comedy. I expected it rough and raucous, but was pleasantly surprised by silky smooth.

THE WORST

10. Bangkok Dangerous

Great location work and immersion in one of the world's most inviting cultures can't save a by-the-numbers crime show about a guy with bad hair extensions and the cipher who loves him.

9. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Up yours. My treasure is a golden idol on a pressure sensitive pedestal.

8. Incredible Hulk

This movie felt too knowing, too cynical, too not-fun. Give me Josh Lucas in freeze frame fireball any day of the week.

7. Star Wars: Clone Wars

If I wanted to watch the pilot for some cartoon aimed at my kid, I'd tune into Cartoon Network.

6. Horton Hears a Who

This film adds absolutely nothing to the book, leaving audience members who already know the volume absolutely nowhere to go.

5. The Forbidden Kingdom

A moderately bad wuxia picture killed by its framing story and a black hole of a leading character. At least Yifei Liu is very good at standing around and looking pretty.

4. Death Race

How do you make a movie called DEATH RACE, then fail to show your audience who's racing, who's dying, and why?

3. Space Chimps

I don't know how to work "chimp" into "sucked," so I'll quote my original review: it's chimpdiculous.

2. The Foot Fist Way

It took me two attempts to get through this hateful movie that finds comedy in humiliation. I shouldn't have made the effort.

1. Mamma Mia

MAMMA MIA's a great big party, but I wasn't invited. I made four attempts to get through this one, and couldn't last more than a few minutes each time. It's as if it was made by and for people from another planet.

Transsiberian

You know what makes TRANSSIBERIAN such a good thriller? It's a thriller about decisions.

Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson decide to take the Transsiberian rail line across Northern Asia rather than just fly. Kata Mara and Eduardo Noriega decide to take the train for reasons of their own, as does Ben Kingsley. And then paths start crossing and recrossing and people make decisions that seem right at the time and before you know it there's blood and hash and suspicion and paranoia everywhere you look. It's a train wreck.

And it's a train wreck that keeps surprising us, that keeps us guessing, that delights in winding us up as much as we delight in the winding.

This is excellent stuff, and Emily Mortimer deserves much of the credit for its success. Cowriter and director Brad Anderson had intended to cast Samantha Morton in the lead role, but that (fine) actress suffered an accident and had to bug out at the last minute. What luck that Mortimer was available and willing to step in, because
she displays a range so complete that she takes us on a psychology journey that's dazzling in its scope without once letting us see the craft behind the artistry.

Buying this film's protagonist makes the thriller possible, because we root for her every step of the way. When the movie turns up the heat on her, it turns it up on us. And when it finally backs off, well then, whammo. The best is yet to come.

The Tall T

Actor, writer, and all-around great guy Jim Beaver turned me on to THE TALL T. After seeing the film, I found that I couldn't add much to his comments, so I asked if I could reprint his review. Being the all-around great guy that he is, Jim gave me the go ahead. So, here's Jim Beaver on THE TALL T:

My third favorite Western is, like SEVEN MEN FROM NOW, a Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott collaboration: THE TALL T. It's from an Elmore Leonard story and while it's an apparently simple good guys/bad guys movie, it resonates with me wonderfully.

Scott is the protagonist, of course, minding his own business as a rancher. He has a delightful bantering relationship with a stage driver played by Arthur Hunnicutt (Oscar-nominated a few years earlier for THE BIG SKY). It seems sort of leisurely until Richard Boone and his two dim-but-dangerous cohorts show up and commit what must have been (and even now still is) a shocking act of violence. Also caught in the whirlpool thus created are Maureen O'Sullivan, playing her age (or greater) as the plain(!) daughter of the local rich guy, and John Hubbard as the cad who married her for her money.

Burt Kennedy's script is tight, with wonderful dialog lifted straight from Leonard's story. (About O'Sullivan, Hunnicutt says, "She was scheduled to be an old maid, till Willard come along." A bad guy talks about about a pretty girl he once knew: "She was wild as mountain scenery." Another heavy is asked his age. His answer: "I don't know. Young, mostly.") The complexity (surprising in a 78-minute movie) comes mostly from the relationship between good guy Scott and bad guy Boone. Boone is drawn to Scott, almost yearning to have someone of Scott's intelligence and breeding in his life, instead of the scum he travels with. It's a fascinating angle on the white hat/black hat tradition.

THE TALL T has only been available infrequently on TV till lately, or in lousy 16mm prints. But Sony is releasing all the Columbia Boetticher/Scott films (of the seven films of the collaboration, only WESTBOUND and SEVEN MEN FROM NOW were for other studios) sometime soon. It's about time. THE TALL T is a small film, with nothing resoundingly profound about it, but I think it's one of the best Westerns ever made.

The Dark Knight

I went into THE DARK KNIGHT skeptically, wondering whether the ballyhoo surrounding Ledger's performance was justified or sentimental. It was justified.

The Joker, as written in this film, is a high wire character. The actor who plays him will either fail or succeed spectacularly, and Ledger succeeds. His Joker is terrifying and sad and sickly funny and wholly compelling, the Joker by which other incarnations of the character will be judged. As for Batman and Gordon and Dent and Dawes, well, they're all fine, but the fact is that I can barely remember them. That Joker, though, he gives me the shivers. And not in a good way. From voice to mannerisms to makeup to worldview, he's a complete character, one who espouses chaos while wreaking it through meticulous planning; one whose backstory shifts and morphs with each retelling; one you can't put your finger on, but who stays with you.

Wow, what a performance. What a movie. I look forward to seeing THE DARK KNIGHT again.

Hancock

What if Superman had poor social skills?

What if he had no social skills? What if he was a drunk, an outcast? What would a world like that look like?

Well, I don't know what that kind of world would look like, but I know that that kind of pitch looks like: a winner. Cast Will Smith as the Superman manque, and now we're talking sure-fire winner. HANCOCK works because Smith is the kind of movie star we love even when he's playing the jerk: the kind of guy we know will come around in the end. And who better to bring him around than Jason Bateman, perhaps the world's finest straight man, and Bateman's "Arrested Development" costar Charlize Theron?

Granted, this is not the kind of movie that'll change your life, but HANCOCK doesn't aspire to be. It aims for big, pulpy entertainment in the "Astro City" vein, and it hits its mark. Good work, Mr. Berg.

Tropic Thunder

I didn't so much as smile at any point in TROPIC THUNDER's run time. The whole enterprise felt like a labored, inside baseball comedy for the kind of people who laugh really hard at blooper reels. At no time did I feel like any of the characters were, on any level, actual people, and the child actor who played the villain was such a one-note performer that I found him to be quite distracting.

This film, a film that appeared to want to deflate vanities, felt like a vanity project. I don't ever need to see it again.