Winter Light

WINTER LIGHT is the kind of movie that convinces people who've never seen a Bergman film to never see another one.

It's quiet, it's slow, and it's 83 minutes of people thinking and talking, and sometimes the reverse. It's also quite beautiful, in a starkly Scandinavian way, as it grapples with the existential crises that mark Europe's transition to a post-Christian society.

"Eloi Eloi, lama sabachthani?" thrums like a heartbeat through this film's every scene. Gunnar Bjornstrand is a Lutheran minister who died when his wife passed four years prior. He's still giving communion, he's still counseling parishoners, and he's in a relationship with a local schoolteacher; but his heart just isn't in it. His faith had grown fragile during his ministry in the Spanish Civil War, and the loss of his wife was the final blow.

Today, we'd diagnose him with clinical depression, prescribe him something to get his chemistry back on track, and encourage him to aerobicize. That wouldn't make for compelling drama. WINTER LIGHT takes his spiritual unmooring and reflects it in the lives of what few parishioners still bother to show up for services. It gives us not just a man, but an entire culture going through the painful process of breaking away from a millenium of faith and trying to find its way in a new world without apparent answers.

This film provides fertile ground for meditation. Like most Bergman films, I think it will rattle around in my brain for quite some time.

Inherit the Wind

Here's what I like about INHERIT THE WIND: it's a courtroom drama that doesn't waste too much time with the setup. It introduces the players and the case and -bam- before you know it, Spencer Tracy and Frederick March are objecting, counterarguing, and acting their butts off for the entertainment of one and all. INHERIT THE WIND is pugnacious; it's agressive; it's funny; and it works. From supporting actors like Dick York, Norman Fell, and Harry Morgan to the surprise (for me) costar Gene Kelly, from the most perceptive observation to the most overblown speech, this is big-time Hollywood Issue-Moviemaking at its best.

INHERIT THE WIND fictionalizes the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Tracy is a fictional analogue of Darrow, March of Bryan, and Kelly of H.L. Mencken, the Baltimore reporter who brought Darrow onboard to argue the case. While its arguments seem superficial and some of its characterizations rather broad, one can't deny the film's earnestness, competence, and ability to entertain.

I laughed, I thought, and I thanked God I don't live in Kansas. INHERIT THE WIND may not be quite as deep as it thinks it is, but it's deep enough to make for a pleasant Sunday evening's viewing.

Enchanted

The line has been used before, but I'm not above petty larceny. ENCHANTED is enchanting.

Everything about this movie, from casting to costumes to color palette to CGI, is perfect. So perfect, in fact, that even little boys can groove on it. Adams, Marsden, Sarandon, and Spall (the faery contingent) play their parts with delightful servings of innocence or evil or both. Dempsey, Menzel, and Covey (the New York contingent) manage to be both grounded and hopeful. Even the choice of narrator is spot on: Julie Andrews, the woman Adams (if she's lucky) might get to be when she grows up. There's danger, but no real sense of danger, the production numbers are absolutely top notch, and everyone seems to be having a good time.

What's not to love?

Audition

AUDITION is like a very special special episode of "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," one in which Bill Bixby's new romance spirals into a hellish nightmare of torture, hallucination, madness, and death. Hey, it's Takeshi Miike: what do you expect?

AUDITION begins like a somber "starting over" tale. A man loses his wife, then is left to raise his boy as best he can. After about a decade, his son's constant encouragement to find another wife finally wears him down and he hatches a plan to audition potential mates, hoping to find that diamond in the rough. He finds something that gleams, but it could be the tip of a blade. It's good setup for a movie, and Miike plays it well, investing us in his Bixby and taking his time to build the tension in the latter half of the film. If I have one gripe about AUDITION, it's the movie's overreliance on filters to set moods and create atmosphere. It's a good thing I'm not colorblind - if I had trouble seeing blue, I'd have missed half the movie.

This is a quibble, however. AUDITION is sweet, scary, horrifying, and satisfying. I wish Bill Bixby was still around for a remake.

Two for the Weekend

THE SANDLOT is lazily written, horribly acted, altogether miserable, and a laugh riot if you happen to be a five-year-old boy. It's a story about some Boomer kid in the early '60s who moves to the San Fernando Valley and falls in, improbably enough, with a pack of Babe Ruth worshippers. It was like something a guy who grew up in New York would imagine growing up in California to be. This movie made my soul bleed.


MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, on the other hand, was surprisingly successful. As a reasonably cynical Washingtonian, I didn't expect to be taken in by Capra's paean to Americana; nevertheless, I bought it hook, line, and sinker. I think the movie sold me in a scene in which Mr. Smith has a brief conversation with a senior senator's daughter. Instead of focusing on Smith, the camera focuses on his hat. It shifts from left hand to right, gets dropped again and again, and does more to tell me its owner's state of mind than would an extreme closeup. Some movies are great because people generally think they're great. Some are great because they really are. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, thankfully, is the latter.

Strangers on a Train

Wow, what a terrific movie.

I knew very little about STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. Sure, I'd read the
basic setup, but I thought it was about two very evil men one-upping
each other for an hour and a half.

Boy, was I surprised, and not just about the characters. I was
surprised by the film's ability to deliver such clever
characterizations while never slowing down the action. I was
surprised by the sharp, perceptive performances. I was surprised by
plotting and framing that ratcheted the tension up and up and up,
delivering a payoff that surely ranks among the best climactic
sequences in the history of film.

I just plain loved STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. But I wouldn't give it the
time of day if it wandered up and said hello.

The Memory of a Killer

It's an old story: someone doublecrosses an assassin, and before long the bodies start piling up. You've got your good guys and bad guys trying to find the killer, and you've got your principled hit man working his way to the top, exacting revenge for the doublecross and bringing down The Man. THE MEMORY OF A KILLER, a Belgian picture from 2003, hews to this template, and it works as a character study and a police procedural. The character in question, Angelo Ledda, is a contract killer with early-stage Alzheimer's. The police procedural revolves around the detectives on his trail; and the genre-standard close calls, tantalizing clues, and conflicted detectives all play their parts seamlessly. It's a fine movie, but it's hampered by a head-scratchingly poor aesthetic choice.

TMK uses quick-cuts, flashing lights, and disorientation to indicate lapses in Ledda's cognition, but they do more than that. They annoy the the viewer. Additionally, it uses the hurry-up technique of cutting parts of footsteps and intermediate body language out of everyday events. I suspect that this is supposed to lend a sense of urgency to the proceedings, but it just gave the impression that the filmmaker's weren't sufficiently interested in the characters to let us settle in with them.

Don't get me wrong. THE MEMORY OF A KILLER (The Alzheimer's Case, in the original language), is a perfectly fine movie. But these choices relegate it to the second tier. Too bad.

The Bourne Ultimatum

A short time back, a friend of mine opined that THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM was essentially the same movie as THE BOURNE SUPREMACY. While I agree that ULTIMATUM was nearly a remake of SUPREMACY, I didn't mind. I liked SUPREMACY, so more of that jump-cut action was fine with me.

The thing I like about the Bourne movies is that they make hard stuff look hard. The fights look like real, brutal fights for survival, not staged dances. There is no graceful parkour: running across rooftops is hard, and dangerous. People breathe heavily when they've been running or fighting, and actions have resonance. This is not a world of easy death or winking nihilism. This is a world in which real actions have real consequences, and I always enjoy visiting it.

Damon, Allen, and Strathairn are all top notch, and the filmmakers cared enough to get serious talents such as Paddy Considine, Albert Finney, and Scott Glenn for some of the smaller supporting roles. Yeah, the story doesn't go very far and the film doesn't resonate all that much, but it's a fun ride while it lasts.

Happy Feet

HAPPY FEET is an animated movie about a tap-dancing penguin who teaches the other penguins in his flock how to dance along with their already excellent, if derivative, singing.

Compare this to SURF'S UP, an animated movie about a surfing penguin who travels to a tropical island to compete in a surfing competition.

Why compare the two? Because for some reason, animated surfing penguins are more interesting and exciting than animated dancing penguins. I don't know why. I find live-action surfing movies to be remarkably dull (and I surf), but I can watch Astair and Kelly movies all day long. All the excitement of dance vanishes when it's animated, however, even if I know that someone, somewhere, actually did those tap routines so they could get recorded and animated.

So if HAPPY FEET's big draw is the dance numbers, and the dance numbers are flat, what else has it got? Well it has excellent singing (Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, and Nicole Kidman all lend their voices), and yet another tiresome performance from Robin Williams, who is at a point in his career in which he just has to scale things back a little. But those singing performances are hampered by the fact that they're all covers of popular songs, which subtracts from the spell the movie is ostensibly trying to cast.

My 7-yr-old liked HAPPY FEET, but I think it's no SURF'S UP. Give me surfing penguins over dancing penguins any day of the week.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

MR. MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM is a charming film that did not deserve its quick death at the box office.

Mr. Magorium (Dustin Hoffman, appropriating an inexplicable speech impediment) is over two hundred years old and owns the magical toy shop in an unnamed metropolis which I assume to be New York. I say "the" magical toy shop because, really, how many could there be? The toy shop is a wonderful creation, full of life and fun and impossible possibilities, the kind of place that adults think kids would love to hang out in (My experience as the father of two boys is that kids would much prefer to hang out in a big yard, armed with water guns. But then again, I don't live in New York City.). Its manager, Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman, who has either grown into a downright elfin woman or has an eating problem), has worked there for nearly her entire young life and is beginning to feel that it's time to move on. And then there's Eric, the nine-year-old who can't seem to make friends but can sculpt a beautiful Abraham Lincoln out of, you guessed it, Lincoln logs. They're a happy, self-made family, but then everything begins to change. Mr. Magorium feels that it's time for him to move on, but Molly doesn't feel ready to move up. And then Mutant the Accountant (Jason Bateman, who has been note-perfect in everything, lately) shows up to straighten out the books. But how do you straighten out the books of a magical shop?

OK, so there's your story, but MAGORIUM isn't so much about intricately plotted story as it is about sweetness, and fabulous art direction, costuming, and set design. It's about the way a very small child can feel when standing before a wall of huggable stuffed animals, and it's about choosing wonder and joy. It's a lovable picture, and I loved the heck out of it.

I watch a lot of kids' movies and I wade through a lot of dross. MR. MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM is a charming delight and a welcome change. Even if you don't have kids, this one's worth a rental.

The Game Plan

THE GAME PLAN is your basic "kid teaches parent(s) how to be adult" movie. The Rock stars as the parent, Madison Pettis stars as the kid, and Rosalyn Sanchez stands around and looks pretty. Oh, and Kyra Sedgewick is in there. She plays the deus ex machina.

Johnson's charismatic and fun. All the charisma and fun in the world, however, can't salvage a script that gives us a little monster, rather than an adorable little girl, to root for. Madison Pettis's Peyton (Yes, it's a girl's name in this world.) is so obnoxious, so overbearing, so bratty that, rather than wish for her to find her own happily ever after, I wanted The Rock to give her a good spanking.

On the up side, the unnaturally beautiful Rosalyn Sanchez is very good at standing around and looking pretty, so there's that. But that's about all this movie has going for it. Even if you have a young girl who'd fit this film's target demographic, avoid THE GAME PLAN.

Horton Hears a Who!

HORTON HEARS A WHO! is a beautifully animated, well voiced, faithful retelling of the Dr. Seuss classic. I nearly fell asleep.

Don't get me wrong. My kids loved it. Many of the people in the theater applauded when the credits rolled. It's just that I've read that story so many times that it holds no mysteries for me.

Ah, well.

Sunshine

There's a lot to like about SUNSHINE. It sports dazzling visuals, arresting sound design, and a fun twist on the reliable science fiction premise of things going wrong on a spaceship far from home. The twist, of course, is that this spaceship is on a mission that takes it dangerously close to the sun, and the star's radiation is so dangerous that it borders on tangible.

Often, a film like this will pit the feeling humanists against the cold-hearted military types. I thought SUNSHINE was going down this road, so imagine how surprised and delighted I was when the military types turned out to be right time and again. Another common pitfall of this kind of picture is a disregard for physics, and I thought that SUNSHINE handled this particularly well in the third act, when time and space get ginchy.

Unfortunately, however, physics is about the only thing right about the third act. When the movie twists, its as if the filmmakers lost faith in the inherent fascination of their premise and decided to go, instead, with a bogeyman. And then they present the bogeyman horribly, with inexplicable fuzzy-cam and at least one victim shot so amateurish that I couldn't believe it made the final cut.

Even with the disappointing close, however, I still recommend SUNSHINE. It looks great, sounds great, and is a good time at the movies for most of its run. You could do worse.

Live Free or Die Hard

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD is the best "Die Hard" movie since the original.

Yeah, I read all the bellyaching about this being "Die Hard in Name Only." Y'know what? I don't care. I don't care about the sanctity of the John McLane character. I don't care about the formulae used in previous outings. Just tell me a story. And while you're at it, blow some stuff up.

LIVE FREE tells me a story. And it blows lots of stuff up. The scenario is actually one that folks in government worry about a lot: an orchestrated cyber attack on the US that locks up our transportation, shuts down our financial networks, and eliminates communication. Granted, LIVE FREE embellishes the magnititude and drama of such a scenario, but it also features a guy shooting down a helicopter with a car. Not in a car - with a car. So that more than makes up for it. While this is happening, McClane must "get the guy to the place," a reliable quest formula well in keeping with storytelling tradition. Speaking of storytelling traditions, this film departs from previous "Die Hard" movies in that John McLean has gone from the modernist, vulnerable American hero model to the near-invincible Northern European version. He's Beowulf with male pattern baldness, and that's ok. Did I mention that he shoots down another helicopter with hydrant water? There's also some stuff in there about reconciling with his daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, an actress with a long career ahead of her) and helping the Guy He's Got to Get to the Place find his inner hero. Oh, and he leaps from a collapsing structure onto a moving Joint Strike Fighter and essentially surfs the thing all the way to the deck. Awesome.

LIVE FREE seamlessly combines CGI with practical stunts. It has well-choreographed fights and action set-pieces. Justin Long does his schtick, but it hasn't worn out yet. Timothy Olyphant, while no Alan Rickman, makes for a fine villain. The whole zips right along, and, even at 130 minutes, I never once looked at my watch. If you like stuff blowing up real good, and you like the Northern European heroic tradition, and you like the idea of a guy finishing off a deadly villain by crashing an SUV into her in a an elevator shaft, this movie is for you.

It was for me.

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA is the best of the mid-'70s, Showa series of Godzilla films. It was made to commemorate the 20th anniversary of GOJIRA and, though it was directed by the same Jun Fukuda who made the embarrassing GODZILLA VS. MEGALON, it delivers a solid story, fun and creative new monsters, and a knock down, drag out final battle in which something is actually at stake. Sure, it defies the laws of mathematics (1-1≠1), but that's ok. It's just nice to see the big grey guy return to form.

IN GVM, jumpsuit-clad aliens, cleverly disguised as Japanese people, plot to conquer the Earth by first neutralizing Godzilla, then inundating us with bad animation (Oh, my God! They've already won! They're here already! You're next! You're next, You're next!). Ok, so I made up that last part. Work with me here - I'm trying to review that which is essentially unreviewable. Still, they plan to take over the world, they need to fight Godzilla, and they build a giant robotic Godzilla, a mechagodzilla, if you will, to take him on. Now Godzilla may be a match for the entire Japanese military, but there's something a rocket fired from a mechagodzilla finger that makes it do things that a rocket fired from an everyday, human-operated rocket launcher can't do. In fact, it represents so much danger that the film must make time for an elaborate subplot that introduces King Caesar, a monster whose design is not, thankfully, as redundant as his name. King Caesar (or King King, perhaps, in the translation) is basically an anthropomorphic lion god with a particular affinity for monarchy. When the descendant of an ancient Japanese emperor calls upon him, he rises from hibernation and joins the battle.

The battle has pop, and it intercuts well with the efforts of the human cast to confront the aliens directly. The monster suits are, generally speaking, in great shape, and the whole thing feels like an actual movie. In fact, I enjoyed viewing it, which is something I haven't been able to write about a Godzilla movie for quite some time. If I had to watch another Showa Godzilla picture, this would be the one.

That's not faint praise.

In The Valley of Elah

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH had me right up until the very last shot.

For most of the film's running time, it's a reasonably effective portrait of a man dealing with the most devastating news imaginable: the death of the youngest and last of his children. When the man, a former Army detective played by Tommy Lee Jones, travels to his son's Army Fort to find out what happened, he learns that his son was the victim of a gruesome murder. Jason Patric (who was absolutely brilliant in RUSH - Netflix it today!) is the Army investigator assigned to the case, and Charlize Theron is the local deputy. Between them, Jones doesn't know if he's getting help or the runaround. But he's got to hold it together and try to figure things out.

So ELAH runs as a devastating portrait and a fascinating mystery. But Paul Haggis, who wrote both this and the execrable CRASH, wouldn't know finess if it shat in his Wheaties. By the end, he takes the film to bombastic ground, though Jones's performance holds the picture together. At the very end, however, Haggis includes a moment so hamhanded, so ridiculous that it spoils the whole thing.

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH. Turn it off with about five minutes to go, and you'll find it a fine film. Stick to the credits, however, and you'll throw your shoe at the screen. Bah.

Zoom: Academy for Superheroes

ZOOM: ACADEMY FOR SUPERHEROES is a bitter, cynical movie by and about bitter, cynical people.

It stars Tim Allen as a bitter, cynical former superhero who is kidnapped by bitter, cynical U.S. government operatives and forced to train four unlikeable white kids with superpowers. Do Allen and the kids bond, learn to harness their powers, and both show up the gov’t and overcome the world-threatening villain? C’mon – was this movie made by bitter, cynical people? Of course they do. That’s the formula.

That’s not to say that formulae are bad, as long as they’re executed well. ZOOM is not executed well. Its jokes are lame. Its villains are lame. Its heroes are super lame. Even its special effects, which should be a no-brainer with a major studio film, are lame. This is the movie that gets wrong everything that SKY HIGH got right. Don’t even bother.

Godzilla vs. Gigan

GODZILLA VS. GIGAN is one of the weaker entries in the late '60s - early '70s Godzilla ouvre (Yes, I just used the word ouvre in a review of a Godzilla movie. Sue me.). The monster costumes look worn, the story is boring, and even King Ghidorah can't bring a sense of fun or adventure to the proceedings.

How weak is it? I repeatedly checked my watch during the climactic battle, which seemed like it went on forever. If there's one thing a Godzilla movie is supposed to be about, it's the climactic battle. If a picture can't even sell this one crucial element, it is well and truly lost.

What's the story? I saw this picture a couple of days ago, and already I can barely remember it. Something about aliens taking over the world using Gigan and King Ghidorah, and Godzilla getting in there and saving the day. But the movie just doesn't sell it. The acting is ghastly, the production values low, and the whole thing a general embarrassment.

If you're a Godzilla completist, go ahead and knock yourself out with GODZILLA VS. GIGAN. Otherwise, steer well clear. This thing is a monstrous failure.

Stardust

I just plain adored STARDUST.

It's a Maguffin chase / coming of age story in the world of faerie, but with a twist. The Maguffin is a fallen star; but in this world, fallen stars walk, talk, and look an awful lot like Claire Danes. Where do I sign? The comer of age is a young man (Charlie Cox), who crosses into Faerie to retrieve said star as a token of his love for one Sienna Miller, the prettiest girl in town. But he's not the only one who wants her. There's Michelle Pfeiffer as a refreshingly old-school, ruthless witch who wants to cut out her heart and eat it. And there's Mark Strong as a son of the king: he wants to cut out Claire's heart [i]and[/i] steal her jewelry. And what about the pirate with the familiar-looking mole on his cheek? What's he up to, anyway?

So here's a movie that gives us a number of different threads, managing lightly to skip among them without getting tangled in them. Its villains are menacing without being terrifying, its love interests are well and truly lovable, and it manages to gain and maintain and sweet, lighthearted, wonderful tone from beginning to end.

It's no secret that I'm a sucker for writer Neil Gaiman's artistic viewpoint, and he doesn't disappoint with STARDUST. In a week in which I've been hammered with two dreary movies masquerading as adventures, what a delight to find an adventure as joyful, as imaginative, as lovely as STARDUST. What a winner.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (POTC 3, henceforth) isn't very good. It wants to be an exciting, family-friendly adventure, but it begins with the hanging of a child. Now, I now that to somebody in Studio City, nothing says "entertainment" like the twitching feet of a dying juvenile. But I hate to break it to you, buddy: you hamstrung yourself very early on. The stakes are too high here, the villains too villainous, the deaths too real for POTC 3 to be fun. Yet this is a POTC movie, not NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, so it's not like you were going to sell it as a drama.

Early pall aside, POTC 3 makes no sense. It would have us believe that Pax Brittania was a bad thing, that the world is much better off with pirates disrupting the global economy than with trading vessels being able to ply the seas, and that the life of a felon is somehow noble. The earlier POTC movies at least kept the pirates morally ambiguous - here, they're good guys who do a little raping and pillaging in their spare time.

And yet, POTC 3 does have some things to recommend it. The performances are great fun, with Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy chewing the scenery with gusto comparable to Johnny Depp. The special effects are magnificent, and the set design is out of this world.

If only the movie hadn't gone so dark so early, it might have swept me away. Alas.