The Sum of All Fears

Grade: B+

Over 20 years ago, I sat in a theater watching "The China Syndrome" just a few days after the nuclear disaster occurred at Three-Mile Island. During the film, a scientist declares that a meltdown at a nuclear power plant could completely destroy an area the size of Pennsylvania. I will never forget the unified gasp from the audience.

While not nearly as compelling a movie, this one can't help but offer a similar chill, as though the filmmakers were prescient enough to see the future ahead of us.

This said, the movie manages to be a surprisingly fun and taught summer thriller, that never takes itself terribly seriously and even manages to bring some unexpected and welcome humor to the proceedings. Harrison Ford is sorely missed here as the series' protagonist, but Ben Affleck is pleasant enough even though he fails to provide any real gravitas to the proceedings. He brings a "gee golly" innocence to the role of Jack Ryan where there needs to be knowledge and authority -- his casting feels more like a studio trying to reinvigorate a franchise than any real attempt to properly cast the role. It's also a bit hard to believe that the United States could be stupid enough in this day and age to view the Russians as our number one enemy, and the film feels too much like a "cold war" throwback -- of course the real threat will come from a rogue terrorist group, everyone knows that, duh. Many of the actual action sequences also feel quite contrived, as though every 30 minutes or so the director felt the need to throw in a car crash or fist fight.

Happily though, the action is kept at a minimum and is instead replaced with an interesting and reasonably compelling story, easily sit-throughable with a bag of popcorn on a summer's day There is a great deal of modern techie stuff that is quite fun (A scene where hundreds of cell phones start ringing all at the same time is downright hysterical), and while the ending is never really in doubt, how we get there adds a nice twist to an oft told tale.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0164184/

Insomnia

Grade: B+

It’s 1AM. You’ve been in bed for three hours, but haven’t slept a minute. You look at the clock again and it’s 2:45AM. You get up, use the bathroom, lay down again. 4:02. One night is exhausting, two painful, three agonizing. Your days become a blurry haze of faces, sounds, unfulfilled expectations. If you can just make it through the day sleep will come tonight. Sometimes it does. Often it does not.

This is a mood piece, and Director Christopher Nolan’s brilliance here lies in his ability to capture the beat, the feel, the rhythm of insomnia. The pace is sluggish, deliberate, sometimes hazy. At the same time, however, the film is visually stunning, whether capturing snow capped landscapes, the chilly frost and fog by a lake house, the dead body slowly drifting downward into the murky waters.

A solid but fairly conventional screenplay tells a modest story, and there is little all that surprising here. The tale works, but it doesn’t especially enthrall. Plot twists are fairly standard, and there is a special cover-up conceit that feels more than a little forced. The film is so visually stylized that there is a danger of one leaving the theater thinking we have seen a far better film than the one that exists on screen. Yet, while the plot is somewhat lacking, there is some interesting moral ambiguity here, as we try to evaluate the intent, motives, and rationalizations of our characters. A strong cast, let by Al Pacino, Robin Williams (who can hold his own with the best dramatic talents) and Hillary Swank all capture the style of this Alaskan potboiler.

But the real question remains -- what on earth did insomniacs do before they invented digital clocks?

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0278504/

About A Boy

Grade: B+

Hugh Grant drops his standard smugly charming bit, and turns in a thoroughly winning and surprisingly tender performance. A man who lives life for nothing but his own empty gratification, our protagonist is caught off guard when he – slowly, surely, and believably – opens his heart to an offbeat and isolated teenager. The tale is nicely told from two perspectives – both the adult’s and the boy’s – and we grow to believe in and care about these two life misfits. Rarely relying on overt sentimentality, the screenplay instead actually trusts the audience to stick around for a while. Grant gives his finest performance – still charming and funny, an appropriate edge of hostility and cynicism, but with a warmth and vulnerability that makes us hope for him. Nicholas Houlf is equally terrific here – for the first time in a long while we get a child performance from someone who feels like he’s never been to Hollywood or “done lunch” with anyone. The nerd in all of us feels his pain and roots for him. This is no Tom Hanks/Melanie Griffith fairy tale where Mom marries the new Dad and all become one big happy family atop the Empire State Building. This one has the courage to actually redefine the meaning of what a family is.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0276751/

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

Grade: B

Let’s face it – the 20th Century Fox music begins, that big green “Lucasfilm Ltd.” logo hits the screen, and John Williams’ stunning symphony begins – and I’m 14 years old all over again. I didn’t just love these films growing up – they literally defined my adolescence. I saw “Star Wars” (long before it was Episode IV -- “A New Hope”) 47 (or was it 49?) times the summer and fall I was 14, I lectured friends that “the severing of a son’s hand by his father in ‘Empire Strikes Back’ was every bit as climactic as the Death Star battle in ‘Star Wars,’ and stood on line for countless hours the first day of “Return of the Jedi,” all the while listening to fellow fanatics (or “Star Warriors” as we were called by the fan club at the time) arguing over whether or not a Jedi could ever take “revenge” (as “Revenge of the Jedi” was the original title of Episode 6, until George Lucas was barraged with letters from outraged fans). I won’t even begin to discuss the devastating crush I had on Mark Hamill. Like I said, these films defined my adolescence.

So, it is difficult to know how to fairly judge this or any other recent installment of the saga. Any “Star Wars” film, even a mediocre one, is, well, a “Star Wars” film for cryin’ out loud. It’s virtually impossible not to be at least somewhat reverential. And while this one doesn’t even come close to the status of the first trilogy (or middle trilogy, depending upon your age and how geekily you look at things), it at least comes far closer to the mythology that we longed for in its predecessor. We meet Luke’s Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru for the first time, we see the origin of the plans for the Death Star, and we hear the first strains of Darth Vader’s theme music. Without giving anything away here, the last 15 minutes of this movie truly reminds us of the heart pounding, tear inducing, overwhelming sensation of those first movies, and it is a thrill not to be missed.

Unfortunately, the end of the film is also a reminder of how much we adored those original characters, how much the philosophy of “the force” instructed many of our own belief systems, and how flat and uninspiring their predecessors are in comparison. The dialogue here is quite dreadful, and all too often made worse by some stunningly bad acting. The plot is much more interesting than “The Phantom Menace,” but also more plodding and confusing. It’s a long haul of exposition, and much too much slow going for long stretches.

The film’s greatest weakness, however, is the total lack of nuance in its character development. Anakin Skywalker is so darn brooding, arrogant, and antagonistic toward Obi-Wan from his first moment on screen, he might as well just put on the black costume and start breathing heavily from the get go. While an episode dealing with Anakin’s Mom in the middle of the film attempts to explain a critical shift in his being, it is simply too contrived and comes too late – he’s already such an unlikable brat it’s hard to illicit much sympathy. Far better had we been afforded the chance to actually care about him, making it all the more painful when we see him slip away to the dark side in Episode 3. While much of the foreshadowing provides the film’s greatest thrills, there is also much that is groan inducing as well. “Why do I think you’re going to be the death of me,” Obi-Wan asks his young protégé, who Anakin refers to as “like a father to me” so many times even Oedipus would get annoyed.

And yet again, those damn computer generated graphics that remove any sense of weight or reality from the proceedings just don’t help at all, especially when animated characters are superimposed into scenes with real actors. Give me Yoda the puppet over Yoda the cartoon any day of the week.

Still, there is much to admire here. Ewan McGregor does a nice job providing us with a sense of the Alec Guiness that is to come, and the movie has a much more fitting darker, more ominous tone than the kiddyland “Phantom Menace.” When Yoda declares that “The Clone War has begun,” it is indeed a moment that manages to take our breath away. “Star Wars” is truly our myth, no different from “The Illiad” and “The Odyssey” of another age. These films are so important to who many of us are, that judgment and analysis and criticism both can’t be helped and is also ultimately meaningless. Is this film as good as the first three? Of course not. Is it still “Star Wars? Uh huh. Will I see this one again? I’m embarrassed to respond. Will I run like mad to see the next one? Like the total fanatic I am.

And, man of man, has the stage been set for one hell of a bridge to our childhood memories.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0121765/

Unfaithful

Grade: A

Both Diane Lane and Richard Gere deserve Academy Award nominations, at the very least, for their extraordinarily courageous performances in this very complex and adult film. This is not a comfortable sit -- far from it. We are voyeurs sitting in the movie theater, and it is an invasion of privacy that is gripping, sexual, tense, moving and enormously disturbing. This is a film about passion – a passionate need for marriage and stability, of sexual desire and craving, of explosive and uncontrollable anger, of quiet and tormented desperation. Set against the backdrop of lives so real we can feel them – the commute from suburbia to the city, the panicked frustration searching for a taxi cab, the havoc of a windswept NYC street – this film is brilliantly written, directed, acted and filmed, with an attention to detail that is both intricate and very specific. Diane Lane gives the performance of a lifetime here, as we see the guilt, fear, exaltation and release -- often at the same moment -- of her turbulent affair juxtaposed against her seemingly stable marriage. She literally trembles with need, and our attention must be paid. Gere is almost her equal here, as the contented and suddenly tormented husband – he has been hit head on by a steamroller, and his reaction is frightening, painful, and so real it’s almost like rubbernecking at a deadly traffic accident. Where “In the Bedroom” failed to convince in it’s final act, this one succeeds powerfully. It is the difference between an act of premeditation and explosive passion – and Lane and Gere’s commitment to the work delivers. Life is so amazingly fragile here, and can be forever fractured in an instant of choices and reaction. Try though we may, we can never take back what has already happened.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0250797/

Spider-Man

Grade: B-

No matter how hard they try, the tone of most superhero movies is never quite right, and the screenplay never quite works. Too dark, too campy, too self-important – few have been able to concoct just the right combination. This one does has a lot going for it. Tobey McGuire is picture perfect in the lead role of the dorky Peter Parker turned Spiderman. He is perhaps the first film superhero who is never less than true flesh and blood, which lends itself beautifully to the brilliant choice of remaining true to the original cartoon and placing the action squarely in a very real NYC rather than in a mystical metropolis. We grew up in the same kind of neighborhoods as Peter Parker, we know the streets Spiderman flies over, and the film does a nice job of creating a sense of reality within an unreal situation that other movies of the same ilk have sorely lacked. Unfortunately, the screenplay itself can’t seem to decide what to do with these real people, and the result is more than a little confused. The central “good vs. evil” story is not particularly interesting or well-told, and poor Willam Dafoe looks downright ridiculous in an embarrassing “Green Goblin” costume, all the while doing a Jack Nicholson impression as a schizophrenic villain. Many of the rescue sequences are terribly contrived (there is even a scene where Parker’s wannabe girlfriend takes ten steps away from him only to be suddenly accosted for no apparent reason by four – count em, four – hoodlums. P-u-l-e-a-s-e. Even New York isn’t that bad). The film tries so hard to do it all -- develop deep characters, tell a love story, and give us the action we asked for in the first place -- that the dialogue is stilted, the love story canned and corny, and the action underdeveloped. The special effects are sometimes wanting as well, with many of the shots, especially of our superhero “webbing” it from building to building, often looking animated and unconvincing. And is it just me, or did I see the Wicked Witch of the West on her broomstick in one of the film’s climaxes, trail of smoke and all? The film is often far too tedious and violent in places for children. For adults, it’s just often tedious. This said, McGuire is warm and surprisingly touching -- there’s something about a nerd making good that can’t help but touch and thrill the heart of fellow nerds everywhere. Even those of us who write film reviews for no apparent reason.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0145487/