Finding Nemo

Grade: B

Permit me to be the first.

This is a charming, engaging, thoroughly entertaining installment from those wonderful folks at Disney/Pixar. It is not, however, the second coming of animated filmmaking.

Don’t get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie from cover to cover – the animation is state-of-the art terrific, the story funny, sweet, and occasionally very creative, the voices (especially from Albert Brooks and the wackily dynamite Ellen DeGeneres) picture perfect. Yet I couldn’t help but think how much more original, inventive and even daring “Monsters Inc.” was, and how the story here is pretty paint by numbers fare – overprotective father loses his independent craving son, and their journeys to self reliance and letting go to hold on – it’s really nice and sweetly sentimental, but let’s face it, it’s not as though this is a story we haven’t heard/seen/lived ourselves a thousand times before.

Still, nobody can make a film quite like Pixar can – not quite real, not quite animated, this is a filmmaking style that somehow manages to capture a very real, very human, three dimensional look and feel, discovering shadings of light, color, and design rarely seen in a movie for children. Sacrilege mayhap, but yes, this is a movie targeted toward children. While there is plenty here for adults as well, and the film works on multiple levels (brilliantly incorporating everything from 12-step to the movie “Psycho” into the mix), at its heart this is a simple (yes, even simplistic) story told mostly for younger eyes. As it should be.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0266543/

Capturing the Friedmans

Grade: A

A week later, and I’m still haunted by this excruciating and harrowing documentary.

Why eldest son David Friedman decided to venture into amateur filmmaking is a question a lifetime of analysis would likely fail to answer. An obsessive compulsive unable to put down his new toy even with his family in the throws of agony, a young man so tormented by his family torn asunder that he hides behind a camera lens, a naive idealist who believe he is merely documenting his family’s journey to absolution. This is less a true story of pedophilia and a questionable criminal justice system than a parable about dysfunctional family allegiance and idolization, misplaced venom and blame, victimization and profound denial.

A fairly typical Long Island family ecosystem.

Beloved father and teacher is arrested for sexually abusing countless young boys during his homespun computer classes. One of his three sons is arrested as well. The film is so beautifully crafted that his obvious guilt becomes his clear-cut innocence only to become a hugely ambiguous question mark. Having grown up on Long Island myself, the manipulations and over zealousness of a police force, investigations unit and district attorney who always seemed to spend most of their time investigating coffee at local diners rings palpably true. Hunger for an interesting case and some attention on the front page of “Newsday” coupled with an individual’s guilty and depraved past is a recipe for disaster, and here the two seemed to have merged to create the Long Island story of the 80’s.

There are no heroes here, only countless victims. Sons dragged into a father’s sickness, unloved mothers blamed for every ill her world can possibly conceive, middle class status that affords only storefront lawyers, children either abused by trusted adults or abused by the state. There is an overwhelming sadness that permeates the piece, a sense of dread that from the moment this couple said “I Do” their family was doomed.

Years later, son David is an agonized figure -- a clown at children’s parties for affluent New Yorkers most likely unaware of the family legacy. His pain emanates, his inability to face the truths of his life virtually pathological. Meanwhile, a tormented wife and mother seems to have found a semblance peace.

For a film of almost melodramatic consequence, there is much for every moviegoer to take to heart.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0342172/

The Matrix Reloaded

Grade: B

This one is quite the contradiction – a movie that is at once thrilling, intriguing and visually stunning at the same time that it is convoluted, long-winded, and takes itself way too seriously.

The concept is truly visionary – a world in which we are little more than food for machines, our energy sucked out of us while we live computer generated lives of oblivious fantasy. While it took more than a single viewing to comprehend what the heck was going on, the first “Matrix” delved into the philosophical construct of this world, and somewhat heavy-handedly managed to spook us into second guessing whether every moment of déjà vu was really a glitch in a computer system. It was also fun. Every generation or so, a film comes along that takes the art and technology of cinema into a new realm. The first film represented such a leap forward, and here it is developed and enhanced into some awesomely astonishing moments of moviemaking magic. This is truly a world we have never encountered before, as the filmmakers attempt something beautiful in its bleakness, intelligent in its conceit, and grandiloquent in its scale. Now, if we could only find a better screenwriter who knows how to tell a story without becoming sound bite preachy and taking hackneyed filmmaking shortcuts, and an editor who knows when atmospheric and weighty becomes repetitive and pretentious.

There are many among us who enjoy the concept of multiple viewings, backstory investigation, and the hours of fun derived from DVD extras. Yet these experiences should be enhancement opportunities and not mandatory prerequisites. Watching “Matrix Reloaded” is something akin to the wonderment in a baby’s eyes – mesmerized by the sound, color, intensity and movement of a world even if we don’t have a clue what’s going on in front of us. Much of this movie is frustratingly obtuse, filled with armchair philosophy that just doesn’t plumb the depths the concept longs for. (During one particular moment, after a rather superfluous character proclaims “One does not truly know someone until he has fought him,” my partner couldn’t resist the chance to vocalize, “so say Confucius.”) While the first film devised a chilling new way of perceiving the world in which we live, this one is far more a plot-driven action flick struggling to be something more important. Thoroughly entertaining, but far better had the creators either cut some of the portentous meaning and just given us the rollercoaster ride or, conversely, found a way to communicate to the non-gurus among us who long to understand without doing a research paper. A penultimate Deux Et Machine scene (aka “god out of the machine,” aka “writing cop-out when one has run out of inventive ways to tell a story”) toward the end of the film is a confusing and irritating mess instead of the heart stopping moment of revelation the filmmakers had intended. This layperson’s mind simply could not compute.

The film doesn’t end as a cliffhanger, surprising as there are several far more appropriate moments to end on. Rather, it stops at a moment so arbitrary it feels as though a dart was thrown at a storyboard to determine where to separate Part 2 from Part 3 (which opens in November).

Whereas the creative team behind “X-Men 2” relaxed enough to allow its audience to find their own way to the film’s message, the filmmakers of “Matrix 2” are so darn puritanical only true believers are permitted access. While I look forward to seeing how it all comes to an end, I just hope I don’t have to take a seminar, pass an entrance exam, and go though a hazing to figure it all out when it does. I never promised to become a fraternity brother.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0234215/

The Barbarian Invasions (Invasions barbares, Les )

Grade: B+

A not terribly original concept – a dying man has a bedside reunion with his ex-wife, battalion of friends, paramours and estranged son to reflect on life, death, love, and romance – is given such a sparkling screenplay and wonderful company of actors that it feels imminently original, full of great humor, and is quite moving indeed.

This is not a film with overly dramatic pathos and flourishes. Instead, it depends on an unspoken yet palpable history of pained and joyful relationships, lost opportunities, unspoken caring, a genuine lust for life and overwhelming affection among people. Although technically a sequel, one need not have seen its predecessor, “Decline of the American Empire,” to feel the decades of familial love and camaraderie, as well as unresolved angst and anger. These are people who have long ago learned to accept and even rejoice in one another’s flaws and foibles, and who stand at the ready to help a father and son at last understand, mayhap even appreciate one another.

Tears are not jerked, as the emotion here comes from a place of genuine honesty and real circumstance. There is a quiet richness to the work that fills one with warmth, empathy and fondness for all concerned. A lovely work.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0338135/

The Trip

Gay Boys: B-
Everyone Else: C-

This is one of those movies that makes it clear just how few LGBT themed movies there are out there, and just how desperate many of us are for good ones. So many of us watch “Queer As Folk” every week on Showtime, not because it’s brilliant television (in fact it’s a pretty low-rate, soft-core soap opera) but because it’s ours. “The Trip” is fairly dreadfully acted, can’t quite decide if it’s a send-up or sincere, with some of the worst wigs one will ever encounter on film. Yet it is also oddly sweet, campily funny in a horrifyingly stereotyped sort of way, and even somewhat touching like a Lifetime for Women (and gay men) movie.

Two men meet in the 70’s, one an out activist, the other a closeted conservative. Of course they fall in love, stay together for years until the anti-gay book written years earlier by the one-time closet-case is suddenly released, and, well, you get the rest.

There’s nothing much else to say here – we gay boys need something to see at The Quad as a community – it’s what we do.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0250067/

X2: X-Men United

Grade: B+

A gay positive allegory starring such acting luminaries as Patrick Steward and Ian McKellen and such eye candy as Hugh Jackman, James Marsden and newcomer Shawn Ashmore – what’s NOT to love?

I’ve always found most comic book-to-film translations off the mark somehow. They’re either way too pious and sincere (“Superman”), way too dark, moody and heavy-handed (“Batman”), or just plain way too animated (“Spiderman”). But both “X-Men” movies have managed just the right blend of real world reality with tongue in cheek fun. The message of the piece is serious indeed, but happily nobody takes it all that seriously. McKellen plays a villain with hammy relish (wouldn’t a battle between Magneto and Gandalf be a panic? Is there any metal in Gandalf’s staff?), and Stewart does one heck of a mutant, wheelchair bound Jean Luc Picard. These guys are having fun, as are an entire cast of actors getting to live out childhood fantasies involving everything from powers over ice, fire, and weather to the ability to read people’s minds and shoot laser beams out of their eyes. Did people actually get paid to be in this movie?

The plot here is all a bit of a rolling mishmash, revolving around a corrupt military leader’s attempt to avenge the fact that his own son was born into the mutant race, something Daddy just ‘aint happy about. The plot is a mixture of time worn action formula (planes that won’t lift off just at the precise moment you need them to the most, not unlike the Millennium Falcon’s hyperspace issues) ingenious thrills and chills (how one character escapes from prison is just this side of brilliant) and plain old entertaining goofiness (Alan Cumming as a German, religious zealot, head to toe blue and tattooed circus mutant is simply priceless). The special effects are all first-rate, and the movie breezes by at over two hours in length.

And then, at its heart, is an amazing message about how society treats its outsiders. A despairing mother asks her son if he’s ever “just tried not to be a mutant?” How many of us smile knowingly at where that question derives from.

With a wink and a nod there are several passing references to T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King.” Indeed, Director Bryan Singer and company have given us an updated, slick King Arthur and his Nights of the Round Table for a new generation.

Bring plenty of popcorn.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0290334/