SternReviews.com

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

2010-07-26T18:23:00.002-04:00

Grade: D+

Poorly adapted, sloppily directed and atrociously acted, this one is dead on arrival. Pun intended.

And, as you may recall, I’m a huge Twilight fan.

I found the first “Twilight” surprisingly good, the sequel “New Moon” entrancing, so why such a prominently downward spiral? Sadly, the answer is an easy one – the creative team got lazy with a sure fire franchise. No one said adapting beloved novels (especially a series) was easy. The “Harry Potter” films have suffered greatly under the weight of absolute fidelity to the novels, boorishly directed by some and overly stylized by others, they have run the gamut of cinematic experiences – hypnotic to tranquillizing.

“Eclipse” is deadly dull and goes nowhere fast.

It’s not grandly surprising that director David Slade wasn’t connected to the first two films, as it plods along from one uninteresting scene recreation to another. The storytelling is confused, the pace excruciating, the melodrama trickly sweet and thoroughly deadpan. Themes of sexism and abstinence-only (a longstanding and unresolved debate in my office) are here blatantly apparent and thoroughly mind numbing.

“I love you.” “I love you more.” “I will not kiss you until you ask me to.” “Kiss me, you fool.” “I want to have sex with you while I’m still me.” “Not until after the wedding, my love.”

You call this stuff human/vampire/werewolf romance? Scarlett and Rhett, they’re not.

What is surprising, and exceedingly shameful, is that composer Howard Shore has received a paycheck for ripping off his own breathtaking “Lord of the Rings” score, replete with soaring stanzas and dramatic melodies – it is painful to acknowledge while sitting in the theater I thought it D-rate Howard Shore before I actually discovered he was the composer. Interspersed with poorly selected pop songs only makes the film more disjointed. It is a relief that Shore cannot also be blamed for the appropriated Peter Jackson camera work, pull away shots of mountaintops and forest ranges simply screaming cinematic plagiarism. A snowcapped mountain finale scene is the stuff of a Universal Studio back lot tour. Flashbacks so gothic, mysterious and filled with pathos in the novels here become throwaway, confused and meaningless expositions. 100 minutes in, we finally get some action that is tensionless (despite Shore’s music telling us otherwise) rushed, and CGI’d to within an inch of its life.

Robert Pattinson, solid in the first films and terrific in the recent “Remember Me” broods. Then he broods. Then he broods some more for good measure. Why Bella chooses him over Jacob is anyone’s guess, as there isn’t a hint of attraction written into Melissa Rosenberg’s lethargic screenplay. Taylor Lautner doesn’t fare much better moving dexterously between puppy dog and seething – even I tired of his amazing (and overtly displayed) body in short order. Kristen Stewart is adequate if obviously embarrassed, Bryce Dallas Howard screamingly abominable as the red-headed villainess of the piece. The Cullen vampire clan is given absolutely nothing of interest to do and they all deliver admirably.

Get your shit together, guys – Novelist Stephanie Meyer may be no J.K. Rowling, but she still deserves better than this. Lord knows we Twilighters do.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1325004/

A Single Man

2010-07-24T11:46:00.004-04:00

Grade: A

An exquisite portrait of grief, Tom Ford has written and directed a breathless work of genuine beauty and emotional clarity.

As a gay man in the 1960s overcome with despair over the sudden loss of his partner of 16 years, Colin Firth is the very thing itself. His overwhelming loss is quietly devastating, a pain so utterly debilitating and so culturally unacknowledged that he emanates swallowed grief. The simple honesty of his portrayal feels very much like breathing under water, the palpable anguish every human who has experienced loss knows all too well while trying to maintain a dignified air of normality in the presence of others. Graceful memories come and go in fleeting moments, and Ford stunningly juxtaposes the dull colorlessness of grief with momentary bursts of vibrant life. The film’s cinematography captures the pulsating emotions of such loss as no other film that has come before.

Effectively a three person “day-in-the-life” novella, Julianne Moore is solid as the brash best friend internalizing dashed hopes of her own, a survivor of a seemingly loveless marriage and the heartbreak of an unrequited and never possible love. But it is Nicholas Hoult (known to many as Tony in BBC’s “Skins,” impressive here without even a hint of his Brit accent) who also astounds, overtly sensual yet also filled with aching tenderness toward his professor, and a longing that is at once brimming with sexuality and his own sense of wonderment and sadness – it is both Firth’s memories of his great love (Matthew Goode, in too few scenes together that with all speed beautifully telegraph the depth of their love for one another) and his scenes with Hoult that are especially surprising and effecting, two isolated men of different generations trying to find connection within each other.

Adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s novel, Ford has flooded his piece with poignant imagery – waking up in the morning and shrinking back into the recognition of who you are and the life you’re living, the smell of a beloved pet that trigger feelings of such unconditional love and affection, the devastating sexuality of a brief yet unfulfilled encounter. Living every day as though it may be your last, absorbing every moment, just how fleeting is love and life. Like a truly fine glass of port sipped in front of a roaring fireplace, this is a romantic work to be savored.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1315981/

Remember Me

2010-03-15T21:07:00.007-04:00

Grade: B+

Modest storytelling sometimes brings the most welcome surprises.

Robert Pattinson is a young man mourning the death of a beloved older brother and a family torn asunder. Emilie de Ravin is a young woman who as a girl watched her mother being murdered as an after-thought during a subway robbery. The walking wounded finding one another is often the stuff of cloying clichés and high melodrama, but it is also the stuff of simple empathy and ordinary grace. This is a deeply tender and embracing film.

Pattinson is especially fine fangless – tortured yet charming, soulful yet charismatic, outwardly calm but filled with twitchy passions just beneath the surface. It’s a quirky and yet subtle performance until it’s not, and we finally get to see years of barely repressed anger erupt. His relationship with a younger sister (the unaffected Ruby Jerins) is so natural and genuinely affectionate it rips at the heart strings, and provides the true center for the entire film.

And what a smile he has. Great smile.

There is little to surprise in the love relationship, but there is such easy chemistry between Pattinson and de Ravin it’s just nice watching them on screen together. The entire film has an organic energy to it, older brothers and their adoring siblings, the awkward first dates of even highly attractive individuals, divorced parents genuinely trying to place their children’s needs above their own, first time introductions to family, the oddly innocent albeit intentional cruelty of children.

Idiosyncratic humor helps immensely throughout.

The films significant flaws stick out like a sore thumb – a coolly absent Wall Street father (well played by Pierce Brosnan but with a weird accent) and a controlling police chief father (played by an overly erratic Chris Cooper) are far too by the book to be terribly compelling. There are also too many slaps heard round the world, emotionally violent eruptions that make sense in terms of character motivation but still manage to feel jarring and a touch Lifetime Movie Channel. The required best friend is downright irritating, with snappy and ill-advised dialogue that feels as though Bruce Vilanch was subcontracted to add some funniness to the proceedings. And we all know how hysterical his Academy Award intros are…

And yet it still quietly, almost imperceptively, moves, and then suddenly, unexpectedly, haunts.

The film’s last few minutes are genuinely shocking, likely to leave some desolate and others angry - a visceral reaction is assured. For me, they make the film so much greater than the sum of their parts, as we come to understand we are being told one small story among thousands, and are reminded that life should be treated with respect, value, and tenderness.

Unimportant moments, and how we choose to live them, truly matter.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1403981/

Avatar

2010-03-07T12:46:00.005-05:00

Grade C+

Director James Cameron has delivered one hell of a 2 1/2 hour visual roller coaster ride. As an amusement park ride, this one gets an A.

Sadly, I really wanted to see a movie.

It is a truism that the “Lord of the Rings” might as well be the only fantasy saga ever written, as everything else effectively flows from it. I begrudgingly admit that “Star Wars” is essentially Tolkien in space, and here Cameron has liberally plagiarized from both of these epics, most notably (but by no means exclusively) from “The Two Towers” and “Return of the Jedi.” Quite frankly, I’m a little surprised Peter Jackson and George Lucas haven’t joined forces in a law suit.

Let’s see – in “Star Wars,” Ben Kenobi tells Luke he must “feel the force flow through him.” In “Avatar,” we are told that life energy “flows through us.” The cloud city from “Empire Strikes Back?” Covered in moss but there. Grand Moff Tarkin style villain, replete with severe haircut? Check. Han Solo flying in to save Luke’s ass during the big final battle? Check. King Théoden dying in battle after a death scene with his daughter? Check. Trees with life energy? Ever heard of Ents? Anakin Skywalker reincarnated? You got it. Nature against technology? Ever heard of Ewoks? Getting trapped under a horse during battle? That would be “Return of the King.” Contacting Avatars from other villages to unite? Pillar lighting sequence in “Two Towers.” Avatars coming to the rescue from another village? Wow I loved Gandalf leading the charge at Helm’s Deep. City in the tress? Elven forest of Lothlórien.

Shall I go on?

For a movie that is so desperate to be visionary it stubbornly manages to be uniquely unoriginal.

And yet, for a good 90 minutes, the film is mesmerizing to watch, so long as you don’t remove your 3D glasses, at which point it just gets rather blurry. You can reach out and touch a whole truckload of cool stuff, and golf balls whiz at your face. It’s dazzlingly colorful and achingly beautiful. A technological wonderland. Then it’s repetitious. Still cool. Just way too long.

Bad people from Earth who have ecologically destroyed their own planet try to get rid of nature-loving Avatars to raid their planet’s resources. The good guys are the scientists trying to study the relationship between the planet and the beings who inhabit it. The bad guys are the military (who fight “terrorism with terrorism,” after all) and the miners who want to destroy all indigenous life that gets in the way of the black gold hiding under the planet’s surface. Stephen Lang is scarred and snarling, Giovanni Ribisi whiny and wimpy – I suspect they were both annoyed they didn’t get much 3D in the forest action. Sigourney Weaver is an icy head scientist, perhaps annoyed she doesn’t get to climb back into the same battle gear Cameron first had her wear in Aliens – the guy even steals from himself. Only Sam Worthington demonstrates any character development as a paraplegic (he could have had surgery to fix his injury but health care being what it is, he couldn’t afford it. Subtle.) living a full life in his Avatar body, treading the fine line between the studying and spying he supposedly signed up for. And, he’s hot. Will love conquer all? Uh, duh.

There are stunningly beautiful and heartfelt moments to be found, especially as we watch Avatars connecting and communing with the nature that surrounds them. Only here is the film not derivative of so many better films, and it is a life philosophy lesson to be humbly embraced.

In the end, a film must enthrall, interest and inspire once the glasses are taken off, and I would imagine sitting through this one in 2D would send one immediately into a dream state, one would hope in 3D again.

I saw the film yesterday, and I can barely remember it at all. It’s faded into the mists of Endor. I mean Pandora.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/

The Hurt Locker

2010-02-21T17:31:00.009-05:00

Grade: C+

Let’s all chip in and make a movie that takes place in Iraq - it’s a surefire beeline to the Oscars. Nominated for nine Academy Awards including Best Picture, and still I look forward to the Academy Awards every year.

The definition of insanity.

After about 15 minutes into this film, I stopped watching the movie and started counting the clichés. It’s an impressive list, if I must say so myself:

1. Maverick commander who everyone hates and contemplates killing but who ends up taking better care of his men than anyone anticipates.

2. Surprise attacks. And more surprise attacks. And more surprise attacks. Usually starting with someone being shot dead in surprise fashion.

3. Good guys being mistaken for bad guys.

4. Star cameos = death in one scene.

5. American commander letting Iraqi civilians die because he can.

6. Soldier removing his headset so he doesn’t have to follow instructions.

7. Ammo running out at the most inopportune moments.

8. The military therapist who’s never seen real action so can’t truly understand what the men go through. What do we think will happen to said doc when he finally joins his patient on a mission?

9. Jamming guns.

10. Pulsating, throbbing music, choppy camera editing.

11. Every other scene someone yelling “Put the mother fucking gun down!” Alternative: “Get down. Get the fuck down.”

12. “Days Left” in Bravo Company’s rotation flashing on the screen every 15 minutes or so.

13. Lines like, “If I’m gonna die, I wanna die comfortable.” Or “What’s the best way you go about disarming these things?” “The way you don’t die, sir.” Or “Kill that fucking asshole.” Or “He’s down. Good night. Thanks for playing.” Or “It’s real quiet. I don’t like it.” Or “You’re not good with people but you’re a hell of a warrior.” Or “I’m too old for this shit.”

14. Gun shells dropping to the ground in slow motion.

15. Finding a smoldering cigarette when entering an enemy layer, to signify they just left moments before.

16. Fight Club.

17. An officer befriending a little kid.

18. Carrying a dead child through the streets in Christlike fashion.

19. The call home to the wife. She picks up, somehow knowing it’s him. “Will?” “Will?” “Will?” Will hangs up, unable to speak.

20. Iraqis unable to speak English until a gun is put to their temples. Then they speak English.

21. “Apocalypse Now” fires raging in darkness scene.

22. Figuring out where the bad guys are hiding for no explicable reason whatsoever.

23. Music that sounds like a heartbeat.

24. Distraught soldier standing in the shower with all his clothes on.

25. The soldier unable to acclimate to home life.

The performances are universally solid, especially Jeremy Renner as an adrenaline addicted bomb expert. Everything else is merely adequate or expected. The film’s final moments are indeed painfully sad and haunting, but they deserve to be in a superior film. The fact that the story is based on a “fictional retelling” by a freelance journalist who wanted to tell of the “kinds of things that soldiers go through that you can't see on CNN” makes it all the more irritating for how false it all feels.

And the winner is…..I just know I’m gonna be pissed.

More movie info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887912/

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

2010-02-20T22:26:00.008-05:00

Grade: Non Applicable

Yes, I’m totally copping out. Call a cop.

As a young woman who has survived more physical, emotional and spiritual brutality than any human being should ever have to endure, Gabourey Sidibe is nothing short of absolutely brilliant.

As a mother who is one of the most severely, disturbingly damaged individuals one is ever likely to encounter, Mo’Nique is nothing short of absolutely brilliant. She damn well better win the Oscar.

As a teacher who gives a damn - heart, mind and soul - for her students, Paula Patton is brilliant. Her students are so jarringly, beautifully, endearingly portrayed I'm still not sure if they were actors or not.

And yes, as a social worker in way over-her-head but trying, trying, trying valiantly on behalf of her client, Mariah Carey is brilliant (so much so that I knew I knew her but couldn’t place where).

And the film is so bleak, dire and depressing I literally wanted to put a bullet into my brain.

Raped, brutalized, exploited by both father and mother, Precious is a character who will sear herself into your memory. Emotionally vacant, dead inside, much of the film is a flatline of utter despair and hopelessness. Glimpses into a fantasy life represent her only fleeting moments of relief, all too quickly dragged back into the reality of a sub-human but all too human existence. She is a survivor, she is a fighter, she is indomitable, but she is also rather doomed.

Have you broken out the flask yet? It gets worse.

As a mother who is broken beyond all repair, Mo’Nique portrays a woman almost animalistic (scratch the almost) in her craven need for her twisted and distorted definition of love. She is an inner child howling for someone to take care of her, but she is so cruel, evil and destructive that one’s unwilling sympathy merges with much greater contempt and the desire that someone please put her out of her misery. And ours.

There’s family dysfunction, and then there’s something so far beyond that Webster’s has yet to put a name to it.

It is impossible to grade this film because, as harrowing, real, moving and illuminating much of it may be, I simply refuse to take on the responsibility of recommending you sit through it. It would be like encouraging you to invade someone’s privacy.

Several years back, I attended an event for the Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence Project, where the “entertainment” was a woman who sang of the brutality perpetrated against her people:

I’m black, and you beat my body. I’m in chains, and you beat me down...

No one really knew whether to be moved or mortified. Personally, I chose the latter.

I’m reminded of the experience because, yes indeed, life is a bitch and then you die. I’m not sure just how much I want to be reminded how very much worse it is for others than it is for me. I guess I’m an awful human being that way.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

More More Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929632/

Inglourious Basterds

2010-02-15T15:28:00.003-05:00

Grade: B

I’m always put off by directors who desperately want to be noticed. Never mind the screenplay, the performances, or even those pesky little things called facts, I can’t help but think of Rudy Guiliani’s first Mayoral inauguration when his young son kept popping up from behind the podium, stepping on his Daddy’s lines and mugging for the camera as though begging, “look at me look at me look at me.”

Okay, little Quentin, we’re looking we’re looking.

In his masturbatory fantasia that bears no relation to actual WW II history, director Quentin Tarantino knows how to spin a fantastical yarn while photographing depictions of violence in all their obsessively blood spurting glory. He masterfully succeeds in treating every scene as a mini-opera, powerhouse vignettes that build tension and gravitas while never quite telegraphing how they will play out or ultimately fit into the scheme of the story. He is also a genuine auteur at inserting intensely modern sensibilities into another era, at once highly entertaining and intentionally jarring. He seems delighted at his ability to keep us off-balance, but also a little too self-impressed with how smart and offbeat he is by half.

Just to make sure we’re paying attention, Quentin underscores all his crescendos with a variety of musical stylings which include latin guitar strumming, eclectic pop music, and the ever-dreaded choral arrangements – everything and anything so long as it bears no resemblance to the film’s actual time period. While subtitles are most welcome and ingeniously utilized to fuck with us and his characters, his trademark use of superimposed captions have now become merely tiresome and distracting.

Brad Pitt, clearly having the time of his life, portrays a Tennessee good ole boy who runs a special ops unit of assorted Jewish-American oddballs who make their way into German-occupied France to kill (and scalp) Nazis. Their motivation is to kill (and scalp) Nazis. Never for a moment do we forget we are watching Brad Pitt having the time of his life. Killing and scalping Nazis. He also loves to brand the few and far between he allows to survive with swastikas on their foreheads. It’s all ghoulishly satisfying, but also lacking in any real depth or motivation.

(Spoiler Alert: If you want to see Adolph Hitler’s face blown to smithereens Brian DePalma style, this is the film for you. Forget about Eva and the bunker, pesky details about what actually occurred during WW II would get in the way of Tarantino’s reverie.)

Christopher Waltz stands out as a marginally nutty “Jew Hunter,” an insanely brilliant investigator, connivingly evil, but nevertheless deliciously fun to watch –a moral center is not the film’s strong suit. Mélanie Laurent glows as a Jew inexplicably permitted to survive as a youth who matures into a very vengeful young woman (kinda hard to blame her) and Diane Kruger delights in the glamorous role of a movie star gone rebel.

The film’s climax, the burning of a cinema filled to capacity with those pesky Nazi’s, is oddly anti-climactic. Think a poor man’s “Godfather.” Or just think of “Godfather III.” After two and a half hours, Tarantino has petered out.

It’s all highly intriguing, beautifully filmed, offbeat and undeniably entertaining. Yet ultimately, it is also frustratingly pointless.

And, um, what’s with the misspelling of the title? Pretentious much?

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361748/

Up

2010-02-08T19:37:00.004-05:00

Grade: A

PIXAR’S bestest everer.

Anyone who doesn’t absolutely adore this picture has a heart of stone covered in ice buried six feet under.

If Republicans, Democrats, Socialists and Tea Baggers were all made to watch this film together, we would have world peace, an end to global warming, universal health care, and an end to world hunger in no time.

We might even see Levi Johnston and Sarah Palin embrace one another.

Okay, maybe I overstep. But it really is that poignant and magical.

The stage is set with an opening montage that is one of the most moving portrayals of dreams unfulfilled in the name of life and love one is ever likely to see. Fellow childhood adventurers become husband and wife and, somewhere along the line, their lofty plans of travel and exploration never quite come to pass. Time simply runs out.

As an elderly man who believes he left a promise broken to the one he loved, the voice of Ed Asner provides the crusty but tender center of everything that follows. We would expect nothing else. Thanks to PIXAR’s miraculous animation, facial expressions are beyond extraordinary – grief, grumpiness, chagrin, world weariness, invigoration, joy and tenderness are as real as real can be. Like the thousands of muti-colored balloons that lift a man’s life and home into a world of adventure, the film captures a rainbow of emotions, and our hearts. Not since “Mary Poppins” opened her umbrella has whimsy taken such unabashed flight.

As the plump scout who needs to help the elderly in order to advance to his next troop level, Jordan Nagai is every bit a boy – overly enthusiastic and exuberant, clumsy, whiny, wide-eyed and filled with wonder, he is the product of a broken home and an abundant love of chocolate. How many of us were that chubby kid who couldn’t climb the rope in gym class? (I know my hand is raised.) “The wilderness isn’t quite what I expected,” he announces, “it’s wild.” This is one unintentionally funny kid.

And then there’s Christopher Plummer, Asner’s boyhood hero gone bad. Get these two guys on a stage together while there’s still time.

Moments of pure comic genius mix seamlessly with genuinely thrilling sequences that will have you nail biting and cheering. In the end, Asner comes to realize it was the normal, everyday and mundane moments in life that mattered the most all along. The true adventure is simply being with the one you love.

I cried with relish, and so will you – cross my heart.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/

Up in the Air

2010-02-06T21:58:00.007-05:00

Grade: A

Uncompromising.

There’s nothing more professionally agonizing than laying someone off from work. That said, I’ve discovered I’m quite good at it. Hidden talent, so to speak. I get through it by convincing myself they’d rather hear the news from someone who gives a shit than from someone who doesn’t. I also find a klonopin an hour before and many glasses of wine after also help. The hardest part is acknowledging – no matter how stressful, sad, or upsetting it may be, no matter how many sleepless nights it may take in preparation – it’s not about you. Not even a little.

George Clooney spends his life on airplanes. His life goal is to join the elite 10 million mile frequent flier club. His check-ins at airports and hotels is masterful. His methodology toward getting through security is a thing of beauty. He fires people for a living. From the sky he looks down on America, from Kansas City to Detroit, New York to San Francisco, Omaha to Miami, St. Louis to Las Vegas. The landscapes are all different, but the heartache he executes is universal. We are one America in a devastating economy. Disciplined, systematic, businesslike, almost ritualistic, he is neither unsympathetic nor heartless. Merely disconnected. Just the way he likes it.

Clooney is ideally cast as the charmer with a cynical veneer that ever so slowly begins to crumble. There are no sweeping revelatory moments, few grand gestures and none that result in a romantic Hollywood pay-off, simply a man who comes to realize his isolationist philosophy has resulted in a life empty and alone. Subtly heartbreaking, a Clooney smirk is suddenly transformed into quite the devastating thing.

Stylized, crisp, caustic and unapologetically cool, writer/director Jason Reitman unflinchingly delivers the non-feel-good film of the year. Often bitingly and brutally funny, with dialogue Mamet would kill for, not since “American Beauty” has a film captured the longing of a life and a culture so perilously off track.

As a love interest with a crackling cynicism all her own, Vera Farminga is completely appealing, thoroughly non-plussed, and happily non-committal. While the romance initially feels rushed and underdeveloped, the mushy middle of an otherwise completely baked cake, a sudden turn toward steely hardness catches one off guard and pierces Clooney’s thawing heart. And ours. Anna Kendrick plays the upstart up-and-comer with a plan to contain costs by firing people remotely, initially coldly pragmatic about the insult she plans to add to individual injury until she begins firing people herself – a traumatic scene in which she fires a company man via webcam becomes truly haunting when she finally and reluctantly crosses his name off a very long list of names to follow.

Small acts of tenderness play out in quietly dignified ways, desperation never quite percolates out from underneath the surface. Sentimentality be damned, the film bravely remains true to a man who lives thousands of feet above the earth, never really connected to himself or anyone around him. The tragedy is that he knows it and, while he helps others find redemption, he never quite finds it for himself.

“What’s the point?” a brother-in-law-to-be asks a stubbornly shut down Clooney. “There is no point,” he is told, “I guess life is just better when you have a co-pilot.”

A lesson too late learned.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1193138/

it's Complicated

2009-12-25T16:13:00.004-05:00

Grade: B+

If not for the many, many, many talents of Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin, this would have been a pat and predictable albeit marginally inviting romantic comedy about a 10-year divorcee who has an affair with her ex and the man who stands patiently on the sidelines.

But this has the many, many, many talents of Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin and, not unlike the road less traveled, it has made all the difference.

Always Meryl Streep and yet never Meryl Streep, this year she deserves two Oscar noms (and at least one Oscar) for both the delectable “Julie & Julia” and her performance here. It’s been a bumpy few years from my vantage point – ice-chomping her way through the dreadful remake of “Manchurian Candidate,” Jewing it off the deep end in “Prime” and “singing” her way through “Mama Mia,” but this year her nuance and heart are back in full form, and she’s positively glowing. It is a Martha Stewart life this woman lives post-divorce – the stunning chateau of a home she bought right after her marriage ends, the massive vegetable garden, cut flowers in every room, gorgeously well-centered children (and adorably well-centered son-in-law to be) giddily supportive movie star best friends and a blossoming (yet exceedingly cozy) business. It would all be too much fairy tale good fortune to be tolerated, yet Meryl makes us swallow hook, line and sinker – its Meryl Streep after all, living the life we all want for her and the one we imagine she lives anyway. Self-assured yet vulnerable, radiant yet body-conscious, joyful and yet longing, we all want to be a guest at her next dinner party. A moment of lighthearted rapture melds into “what the fuck am I doing” mortification, and it is Streep at her very best.

As the ex going through yet another mid-life crisis, Alec Baldwin is charismatic and sincere, pot-bellied and seductive, affectionate, comfortable, sad and hopeful, and he and Streep have natural chemistry together. As the man in waiting, Steve Martin goes for subtlety (why is it that broad comics like Martin and Robin Williams often give far better dramatic performances than comedic ones?) a man healing his own broken heart while gracefully seeking the love of another. Our allegiances tend to shift depending on who Streep is with at the time, a testament to the strength of some truly lovely performances.

Mary Kay Place, Rita Wilson and Alexandra Wentworth provide a nice sisterhood, and Caitlin Fitzgerald, Zoe Kazan, and Hunter Parrish (the final lead in “Spring Awakening,” who will always have a soft spot in my heart for being in the show’s last performance, one of the most special nights of my life) all appropriately attractive, carefree, clueless and supportive of their divorced parents, and all providing surprising honesty and pathos at the idea of a potential reconciliation. As the family outsider yet one of the family, John Krasinski almost got me to forgive some dreadful theater etiquette (yet another performance of “Spring Awakening,” where he and his gf wouldn’t stop talking and left before the curtain call - blasphemous. I finally asked them to “shut up” sometime during Act II) as the fiancé who sees all and says nothing – he steals more than one scene he’s in.

Genuinely funny, tender with only a sprinkling of sentimentality, and only occasionally predictable to a fault - the missed date, dinner waiting on the beautifully set table. The joint invariably getting discovered and everyone getting stoned, annoying if not for the fact that Streep and Martin are so damn hysterical. And is there anything that makes an audience go “awwww” more than the boy getting turned down for a date with the VIP pair of tickets cradled in his hands? Yet the film also has much to gently convey about feelings that are never extinguished, all the things that might have been, and the possibilities that exist just around the corner.

More movie info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230414/

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

2009-11-21T17:09:00.003-05:00

Grade: A-

Let’s get it out of the way – I’m one of them. I devoured all four of the books like cotton candy. I’m a Jacob more than an Edward – he’s way better for her and far less brooding. I see someone reading one of those smallish, thick black bound books on a subway and I really want to ask which one they’re on – I can feel the camaraderie.

I’m a 16 year old girl, so sue me.

Not since Lord Olivier’s windswept hair overlooked the cliffs in “Wuthering Heights” has romance been so alive and well in the cinema. Unlike other recent, more awkwardly translated book-to-film series (the “Harry Potter” movies comes to mind) the “Twilight” saga seems ideally suited for film. The tale is straightforward and linear yet epic and sweeping, the romance youthfully packed with guttural sensuality and intensity, every single character is sexier than the other, and every other scene practically begs for Hollywood enhancement. Part II of the saga does not disappoint – with a sumptuous score, lush cinematography, gorgeous cast and thrilling visuals fans of the novels will be enraptured, moved and even haunted by this very faithful and downright poetic retelling.

Non-fans will probably roll their eyes in how juvenile and melodramatic it all seems.

Whatevs.

Oh, right – for those of you not in the know (and who probably won’t see the film anyways) the plot involves a just turned 18 year old girl passionately in love with a cutie-patutie vampire. 2008’s “Sexiest Man Alive,” Robert Pattinson (if People Magazine says it, it has to be true) broods and broods and broods, looking as though he might cry at any moment but never shedding a blood tear. He decides early on it’s not safe to have him around, so disappears on his love, sending her into a spiral of nightmares, grief and despair (the passage of time is yet one of many, many subtle cinematic splendors the film has to offer). When she realizes only self-endangerment will make him appear to her (stunningly designed visions that fade into vapor) she’s on a risk-taking roll. Her best friend, the equally hunky Taylor Lautner (the audience literally gasped when his shirt first came off) is not amused by her antics, and can’t quite accept the gal of his dreams prefers a bloodsucker over him – although he has his own howling secret hiding in the closet (yet another thrilling series of special effects artwork). Following?

The story unfolds as a drama rather than action flick, and is far more achingly tender than one might expect (Billy Burke is especially successful in all too few scenes as a clueless but devoted dad). Anguish abounds, as does friendship, loyalty and protectiveness and – if the acting itself is mostly one note and occasionally a tad stilted (sorry, Taylor) – there is a soulfulness in the eyes that carries the day. If the penultimate climax feels more than a bit harried and rushed, the audience’s reaction to the film’s final moment is well worth moving things along at a fast clip.

For those of you wondering, Edward indeed gleams a bit better in the sunlight this time around as well.

If the names Bella, Edward and Jacob mean nothing to you, mayhap this is not the film for you. But, as someone who works at a pro-choice organization, I think my feminist credentials are pretty safe – I loves me some timeless teenage romance.

More movie info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259571/

2009-11-12T21:11:00.004-05:00

Grade: A-

A sophisticated innocent must choose between the glamorous and the mundane in this abundantly rich character study of social expectations and mores in 1961 suburban London. One’s cup runneth over with how stereotypical every single character potentially could be, but how deeply complex and rewarding they actually are.

Great writing meets great performances.

Carey Mulligan is rather glorious as a 16 year old on the cusp of adulthood who follows the letter of the law as set down by an over-eager father – get perfect grades, cello as hobby, get into Oxford – while a rebellious and precocious streak percolates just beneath her surface. It’s no great plot surprise when she finds an older, more worldly man and his entourage undeniably alluring, but there is a pulsating pleasure far beyond her years, a joy in her corruption that is as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking. Parents are deceived with a twinkling eye, led down a garden path they so dearly want to be led down, a bit of charm and grace in lives far too static and stable.

As the corrupting influence, Peter Sarsgaard is a venomless villain – a crooked cad yet a captivating romantic, as trapped by circumstances of his own making as she is by her sex and class – his desire to be free, albeit pathetic and a tad pathological, is surprisingly multidimensional, sad and wanting.

The supporting cast is equally fine, especially Alfred Molina as a strict dullard of a dad who wants what’s best for his daughter in the confines of her limited possibilities – a scene it which he conveys without quite acknowledging his trust has been betrayed is so sadly tender it aches. Dominic Cooper is a coconspirator with a conscience (if only a touch of one) somewhat smarmy and willing to deceive but without relish. Rosamund Pike is effortless as an arm candy moll who has guiltlessly made her deal with the devil, and Olivia Williams is the grave teacher who cares, wound almost as severely as her hair but who sees the inevitable fall off a cliff with a single minded clarity of purpose.

There is an irresistible ease that permeates the film, the movie’s center deliriously culpable in her own seduction, less by the man of her infatuation than by all the hedonistic possibilities he represents – a life of music, fine dining, designer apparel and French cigarettes. When her principal (the always perfect Emma Thompson) effectively offers her a life of boredom, hard work, and ultimately the ability to teach or find work as a civil servant, we’re ready to run out the school house door faster than she is.

Nick Hornby has written a smart, crisp, understated screenplay that allows actors to plumb subtle depths of character and motivation, Director Lone Scherfig captures both the drab and repressive with the grand and carefree – somehow, she manages to make the torrential rain and dark clouds of London simultaneously sensual, playful, and yet at least somewhat foreboding.

In the end, innocence prolonged is perhaps more blissful than worldly experience. Perhaps, Paris is better experienced later in one’s life than earlier.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1174732/

Capitalism: A Love Story

2009-10-08T19:57:00.002-04:00

Grade: C+

By most accounts, I’m pretty left of center – gay marriage, abortion rights, gun control, the environment, health care, education. Heck, I don’t even believe in immigration restrictions, because as a country of immigrants I don’t think we have the right to deny anyone who wants to come here – fling the doors open, I say!

But even I’m starting to find Michael Moore sanctimonious.

His treatise is pretty straightforward – in this country the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and yet no one revolts because of a belief in the fantasy known as “The American Dream.” The film begins with footage from a bank robbery – subtlety is not Moore’s strong suit. More than 2 hours later, we have witnessed tortured home foreclosures, agonizing factory lay-offs, gruesomely underpaid airline pilots (which apparently explains why their planes are crashing) and wrongly imprisoned teenagers (the judge gets bought off to send them to a for-profit juvenile detention center). An outfit called “Condo Vultures,” helps flip foreclosed homes, banking institutions take out “dead peasant” life insurance on their employees for self-profit, and virtually every single individual working at the Treasury Department is a former employee of Goldman Sachs. Congress is complicit, Ronald Reagan was evil, George W. has three 6’s on the back of his head. We get it.

In what is now becoming the slightly tedious and repetitious “Moore Brand,” the oppressed are respectfully documented with moral outrage, the oppressors lampooned and villainized with chagrin and disgust, with more than a touch of Moore self- aggrandizement thrown in for good measure. “For 20 years I tried to warn Detroit this day was coming,” Moore pronounces as General Motors officially declares bankruptcy. Moore’s overabundant voiceovers are starting to sound snide rather than tongue-in-cheek – when he castigates those of us sitting in the movie theater to “hurry up already” because he can’t fight the fight alone anymore, his ego becomes a tad intolerable. Flashbacks to his earlier “Roger and Me,” turn the whole affair into a vanity project.

Moore is always at his best when allowing his subjects and their situations to speak for themselves. Victims of our money-grubbing society are often profoundly heartbreaking and the money-grubbers themselves often display just how disgusting they are with little help from Moore. He is at his worst when delving into borscht-belt level shtick – arriving on Wall Street with an armored car demanding banks return federal buyout money, visiting the National Archives to see if the Constitution mentions capitalism (apparently it has the words We, Union, and Welfare instead, a clear indication the founding fathers were socialists) or taping yellow “crime scene” tape around one banking institution after another. In between such antics, Moore inserts stock movie footage so that he can dub Jesus into refusing to heal a man because of a “pre-existing condition” or show a diabolical “watch the watch” hypnotist to represent how our last President used fear mongering to lull us all into complacency.

What was often brilliant in films like “Sicko” and "Fahrenheit 9/11” is now merely tired.

Scenes of workers uniting to demand back pay and neighbors coming together to help a family squat in their own foreclosed home do inspire, but there is nothing especially new here that Moore hasn’t ranted about before to greater effect.

“Capitalism is evil, and you cannot regulate evil – you must end it,” Moore extols. Glad he’s not biased or anything.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1232207/

(500) Days of Summer

2009-09-26T21:17:00.003-04:00

Grade: B+

I’ve discovered when I find myself sitting in a movie theater with my legs crossed, slumped in my seat, cheek resting on fist, watching the film on a slight slant, it usually means one of two things: either I’m bored out of my mind, or I’m having the pants charmed off of me. I can usually tell the difference by whether or not I’m smiling.

This one had me positively beaming.

500 days in a relationship as told from the perspective of a heartsick romantic. I really like her does she really like me? Friends, she wants to be friends? We like the same band, is there anything more cosmic? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, we just had sex! Casual, what the fuck does that mean? I am so happy, I am in so much pain, I am so confused, I am in love, this is the worst, this is the best thing ever. Told completely out of order, a relationship fades, blooms, ends, sparks and fizzles with such accurate and perceptive heart, humor, insecurity and heartache one can’t help but be utterly charmed and thoroughly touched.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is so adorable it hurts. Yes, he’s cute as all hell with puppy dog eyes and a smile to die for, but the full measure of his adorableness flows from a quirky, easy manner and soulful, affable sincerity – few have portrayed smitten with such unaffected and tender charisma. So dark, brooding and foreboding in an equally fine performance as a sexually abused and sexually compulsive gay man in 2004’s “Mysterious Skin,” Gordon-Levitt displays a bravura jolt of versatility. Even when the film veers into occasional shmultz, just try not to empathize – I dare you. This is an up-and-comer to watch.

Zooey Deschanel is eccentrically likeable if not completely ingratiating as the other romantic half who doesn’t believe in either love or relationships – until she does. Told entirely from his perspective, she has the difficult task of being somewhat one dimensional yet genuinely appealing and marginally sympathetic. It’s hard to like someone commitment phobic and emotionally unavailable, yet we can see why he rolls the dice, lays himself bare and vulnerable, and takes a chance on love despite all the blaring warning signals. Geoffrey Arend and Matthew Gray Gubler are fine sidekicks (although Arend goes off the diving board when playing drunk) Chloe Moretz genuinely funny as the younger sister with a foul mouth and advice well beyond her years.

The film is delightfully fresh and creative – our Romeo’s response to his “first time” with Zooey is “I’m a Pepper” hysterical, a split screen comparing his “expectations” vs. the “reality” at a party is downright torturous – we’ve all so been there it’s impossible not to cringe and commiserate.

People can really be unintentionally cruel. Heartbreak can be mindbendingly painful. And still we keep trying. Back to Day (1).

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1022603/

FAME

2009-09-25T17:53:00.009-04:00

Grade: C

As re-envisioned for the CW.

Remember how we all thought the TV series was a little tepid compared with the film? Here we’re talking milquetoast.

Updated around the fringes to include rap music, hand held video cameras and the occasional texting during class, it’s the same basic story as the original film sans any grit or personality. Harmless but bland, if the kids from "High School Musical" had kids with the kids from "90210," they would end up something like the kids from "Fame 2009." The white kids are all really, really white, the black kids sing hip hop but still seem even whiter than the white kids. The teachers are either prototypically hardass or trying to get their students in touch with their feelings, the parents all reduced to ranting on a theme (either pissed because their kid is going to the school and will never get a real job, or pissed because their kid wants to sing rather than play classical piano, or pissed because their kid started dating the boy from the wrong side of the tracks).

“Auditions,” “Freshman Year,” “Sophomore Year,” “Junior Year” and “Senior Year” still flash on the screen, but this time around are mostly differentiated by changing haircuts.

The young thespians range from serviceable to interchangeable, only Naturi Naughton distinguishes herself for a beautiful rendition of “Out Here on My Own” and “Fame,” which plays only during the closing credits. The only songs retained from the original film, they are also far and away the best. Inserted songs range from unmemorable rap or House music to a closing graduation number reminiscent of those annually penned and always drippy season finale numbers on “American Idol.” Teachers Bebe Neuwirth, Kelsey Grammer, Charles S. Dutton, Megan Mullaly and Principal Debbie Allen (promotion!) all dutifully raise their hands as present but add nothing, and Mullaly proves she can lip-synch as terribly – even worse in fact – as the newcomers.

The seedier aspects of the 1980 film have all been sharply dulled – instead of a topless Irene Cara crying her way through a videotaping pornographer questioning her professionalism, here a former student questions the professionalism of a female student for refusing to perform a make-out “scene” on video with him. CW. The romances have all been hormone deprived – instead of the heat and passion ignited in a painfully shy and awkward teenager by a tortured, angry nonconformist, here she ‘aint nearly as shy and he’s as happy as a clam and as cute as a button. CW. A student filmmaker gets involved in a scam so obvious there’s no way he could have maintained the C average required to stay in school, a docile wife finally stands up to her overbearing husband once she hears her daughter sing, and the fact that anyone is gay doesn’t even rate a mention much less a plotline. CW.

And yes, Debbie Allen is indeed heard saying, “You want fame? Well fame costs. And right here’s where you start paying – in sweat.”

Excuse me while I go watch “Gossip Girl.”

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016075/

District 9

2009-09-20T12:41:00.009-04:00

Grade: A-

Science Fiction, Action Thriller, Political Allegory, this gruesome, dank, violent, bleak, gory, horrifying film is a near masterpiece from Director/Screenwriter Neill Blompkamp.

I have never seen anything like it.

Told in CNN investigation and interview style, a spacecraft hovers frozen and immobile over Johannesburg, South Africa, until humans venture inside to discover the 1.8 million malnourished and bedraggled extraterrestrials trapped inside. Welcoming as we are to all immigrants, refugee camps soon become crime-ridden, war-lord infested slums until the cries of “not in my own backyard” (from the black community in Johannesburg no less) force a mass exodus hundreds of miles away from civilization.

And then the real fun begins.

Sharlto Copley is the antihero of all antiheros – a pumped-up doofus bureaucrat at a Halliburton-style company given the task of alien oversight and transfer. Pompous and driven by general incompetence, self-aggrandizement and ultimately his own desperate self-interest, he would not initially seem out of place in “Guffman” or “Spinal Tap.” Comical if not also so completely absent of a moral compass, his surprise plight manages to be goofily entertaining while never failing to remain grotesquely terrifying.

The “others” in the film, aliens derogatorily called “prawns” for their gill-like countenances and scalish features are brilliantly shot and slowly revealed. You will believe. The action is brisk, the humor is macabre, the tension soars, nails will be bitten. Not for the faint of heart, the movie is jarringly authentic, so much so that one initially might be fooled into suspecting a low budget forced such bravura creativity. But don’t be fooled – the film is both visionary and visually stunning, capturing an oppressive doom usually reserved for film versions of the apocalypse. One must presume the same fatalistic gloom hangs over the refugee camps at Darfur, or anywhere else our inhumanity casts such a massive gray shadow over a corner of the world. Yet the film makes no such sweeping political statements – it doesn’t need to. Cat food is a treasured commodity, as we are seen stuffing our faces at fast food lines mere moments later. Extraterrestrials fight to keep their homes, shacks made with tin, cardboard and bits of manmade and alien rubbish. Locals make great profit through the misery and degradation of the “less-thans.”

Only the occasional formulaic moments (the cell phone that never dies and inevitably gets traced sort of thing) and characters (villains straight out of a bad James Bond flick) intrude on an otherwise completely original and awe inspiring work. The film fairly begs for a sequel. Produced by Peter Jackson, who has previously demonstrated a penchant for the trilogy, one can only hope.

Final moments reveal the others take better care of their own than we do, blurry lines and all. Not since Kafka’s Metamorphosis has our species’ unique barbarism toward “differentness” been cast in such bold and blinding light. Deserving of classic status.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/

Taking Woodstock

2009-09-06T20:33:00.005-04:00

Grade: C

Like the rolling meadows that embody this now legendary concert happening, there are flashes of serenity and beauty to be found in Director Ang Lee’s latest, but that doesn’t prevent both the field and the film from becoming a muddy, garbage-strewn mess in the end.

Less about the actual event than an unfocused coming of age story, a closeted young man finds his independence and sexual freedom while trying to save his parent’s dilapidated motel from certain foreclosure. When a helicopter lands in his front yard and out pops concert promoter Michael Lang (an adorably twinkling and appropriately mellow Jonathan Groff – the only actor in the film who can say “far out” and make it sound genuine) there is little doubt parental objections will transition into financial glee, angry townspeople with break out nasty signage, and hippie quirkiness will abound in prototypical abundance.

It is more surprisingly hallucinogenic than dropping acid (so I’ve been told) to watch the usually adept Ang Lee so misdirect his actors – rarely has a cast of such exceptional talent been so poorly/oddly utilized. Imelda Staunton (who gave the finest performance of 2004 in the magnificent “Vera Drake”) chews everything in her path as a raving, mouth-foaming Jewish mother with a heart of pure stone and a secret in her own closet, and Henry Goodman (much maligned for his egregious firing by chickenshit producers from Broadway’s “The Producers” and one of the finest actors of his or any generation) is mostly reduced to muttering and shrugging as the beleaguered, stoop-shouldered husband who has put up with such an ungodly terror for 40 years. It is Tevye and Golde transported to upstate New York, and the characterizations are at best stereotypically uncomfortable. Emile Hirsch fares no better as the standardly agonized Vietnam Vet (replete with dirty long hair, foul mouth, flack jacket and flashbacks) who comes home to a world that doesn’t understand him, and poor Liev Schreiber is almost unendurable as a transgendered veteran who provides gun-toting security and transcendental wisdom impossible to decipher. In the lead role of the son treated like such neverending crap by his mother it’s impossible to understand his familial devotion, Demetri Martin does no harm. A lot of extraordinary talent must have signed on the dotted line on Ang Lee’s reputation without actually reading James Schamus’ ineptly plodding screenplay first, this much is clear.

Will the young innocent show up at a press conference stoned out of his mind? Will the angry townspeople refuse his patronage at the local diner? Will his parents eat the pot-laced brownies? Will the hippie performance artists who live in the barn decide to disrobe at the least possibly appropriate opportunity? Filled to overflowing with cliché-ridden plot contrivances, Lee has an awkward inability to capture the essence of the time or generation. Neither the personal story nor its backdrop have a great deal of passion or conviction behind them, which leaves the film to meander much like the throngs trying to find their way through blocked roads and drug-induced hazes to the damn concert. There is an earnest quality of love, peace and harmony flowing, but it feels piped in through tinny loudspeakers rather than enveloping us in its music. We’re sitting in the cheap seats. Only several quiet moments between father and son transcend and elevate the material to something with genuine heart. Lee’s overuse of splitscreens so quintessential in the award-winning documentary “Woodstock,” only remind us we are watching an off-key simulation.

Like, so not groovin to the beat, dude. I mean, it tries to be all trippin and far out, but it so just brought me down, man.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1127896/

Hairspray

2007-07-23T20:03:00.001-04:00

Grade: A-

At long last, a movie musical that actually embraces being a movie musical.

Don’t get me wrong. “Chicago” brilliantly concealed its genre (every time someone started to sing, it was all taking place in Roxie’s head, remember) and “Dreamgirls” was about a singing group after all, but “Hairspray” is the first movie musical since the likes of “Oliver” that has people literally dancing in the streets and singing their hearts out for no other reason than, well, it’ s M-U-S-I-C-A-L.

Infectious. You’ll be constitutionally unable not to laugh, grin, tap your feet and swish your hips. Based on the splashy Broadway musical based on the cult John Water’s movie classic, in 1962 Baltimore fat girls win the hearts of heartthrob twinks, integration succeeds because its time has come, and anyone standing in the way of progress is either fired, squashed or otherwise humiliated. Joyously earnest, heartwarmingly innocent and yet more than a little tongue-in-cheek twisted, Director Adam Shankman takes the uncomplicated and winning path of transferring the stage show to the screen sans medium-altering rethinking, mass plot restructuring, or heavy-handed gimmickry. Opening up its locales without shutting down its heart, this one is a welcome throwback to the old style movie musical when studios wanted people to believe Broadway was being transported right to their local movie theater.

John Travolta. In the original film Divine was a campy freaky goddess as the story’s matriarch, in the original musical Harvey Fierstein brought that singing voice that is like no other - for which we are eternally grateful, love him though we do. Travolta brings a rather odd, Baltimore-by-way-of the midwest accent and a much softer touch to the role of Edna Turnblad, a zaftig wife and mother who has let her poor self-image imprison her while the world outside has passed her by. When she finally frees herself and explodes onto the scene, only Tina Turner can compare in costume, exuberance and intensity. Just try not to clap your hands and hoot with pleasure, I just dare ya’.

Michelle Pfeiffer is obviously having a ball as a station manager with both racism and weightism in her heart, and though not quite as vocally robust as her stage predecessors, Queen Latifah still has soul to spare as the one-day-a-month hostess of the local station’s “Negro Day.” But James Marsden is the real surprise here as the station’s singing, swinging, tooth-beaming answer to Dick Clark. (Should you ever leave your wife, James…call me ;) Only Christopher Walken falls flat, as he is simply too weird to pass for a song and dance man – and that’s really saying something when your female dance partner is John Travolta.

Newcomers Nikki Blonsky, Elijah Kelley and Zac Efron (yeah, I love “High School Musical” too, but don’t even dare try and tell me he’s not a newcomer) give the more seasoned veterans a run for their money with strong pipes and personalities to match. Hitchcockian cameos by original film Director John Waters and stars Ricki Lake and Jerry Stiller add to the fun. The score by Marc Shaiman (who also manages himself a cameo) and Scott Wittman is a catchy, witty, period pastiche with a big belting Broadway heart thumping underneath – you will want the original soundtrack if you don’t already own the original cast album. Some of us will want both. (“Mama, I’m A Big Girl Now,” runs during the credits featuring the song stylings of Blonsky, Lake, and original Broadway star Marissa Jaret Winokur – even Harvey makes a cameo vocal appearance.)

It was just a few short years ago that the time of the movie musical was thought to be dead and buried. Happily, stopping people from singing and dancing onscreen is like, oh I don’t know, trying to stop the “motion of the ocean or the sun in the sky.” You simply can’t stop the beat.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0427327/

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

2007-07-17T19:22:00.001-04:00

Grade: B+

Harry Potter is growing up. And I’m not just saying that because I saw Daniel Radcliffe naked in “Equus.”

The books are progressively deeper and darker, and the movies are befittingly following suit. Relying less on special effects and more on human struggles and relationships (although computer generated wizardry is still plentiful and generally falls somewhere between satisfying and soaring, with a few claymation-like exceptions) in the last installment Harry finally met the Dark Lord face-to-face and now knows he must prepare himself for a great battle between good and evil. The world at large doesn’t believe him, the Ministry of Magic is undermining him, his protector isn’t speaking to him, and his friends don’t know how to help him. And then there are girl troubles. Adolescence is a bitch, and Radcliffe has imbued Harry with all the insecurities and uncertainties of a teenager who just happens to carry the fate of the world on his shoulders.

Pacing has always been an issue in both the books and the films, but while J.K. Rowling’s tales keep getting progressively longer, the films are mercifully getting tighter and shorter. While the first few films were little more than pallid books on tape, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” demonstrated what was possible with a little ingenuity and fearlessness. Director David Yates continues the upward trend, with both a willingness to cut and the ability to translate without transcribing. While it still takes a while for broomsticks to start flying and wands to start sparking, and little enchants or mystifies in quite the same way it did when we cracked the spine on the very first mesmerizing book, we now actually have people to care about replacing new worlds to discover. We see the transformation from childhood fancy into adult responsibility, and we empathize all the more because of it. Reminiscent of the same simple truths and basic motifs ever-present in “The Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars” sagas with a great deal of Merlyn thrown in for good measure, themes of friendship, betrayal, loyalty, courage and sacrifice gain resonance as the series grows into the climax that will have so many of us waiting outside of Barnes & Noble at 10 a.m. this coming Saturday morning (if not the midnight before).

A tendency toward the convoluted has also been an issue in both the books and films, as Rowling relishes meandering, stretching, segueing, and referring back to hundreds if not thousands of pages ago, usually depending on Albus Dumbledore to explain it all in the book’s final chapter. Her expositions always come at the end rather than the beginning, and like all the other films this one sometimes gets confusing to follow, difficult to hear and challenging to decipher, but so long as one can separate the gooduns from the baduns it’s easy enough to go for the ride whether or not it all makes linear sense. You know who to root for, and here that remains more than enough.

Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint are becoming thespians in their own right, Ralph Fiennes continues to be creepy and scary as all shit as Lord Voldemort, and Michael Gambon has finally come into his own as Hogwarts' noble Headmaster and Harry’s gentle guide. But the star of the show is Imelda Staunton, so sugary evil you can’t help but wish for the most excruciatingly delectable death possible. She’s so much fun to hate it’s more than a little sinful.

I for one will never forget being unemployed, downtrodden, and picking up an oddly named children’s book because Rosie O’Donnell ranted on and on about it one day during her morning talk show. I will also always remember devouring it (and the next one, and the next one, and the next one…) via an Iddy Biddy Book Light while my partner slept in our loft bed above, being transported from my own troubles into a world I could scarcely have imagined.

Some things you love because you love. And some things you will dearly miss when they finally come to an end.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0373889/

Spring Awakening

2007-06-27T18:51:00.000-04:00

Sexual expression and repression, abstinence only education, and the ramifications of illegal abortion may not be the stuff of most Tony Award-winning musicals, but this year’s “Spring Awakening” is no typical Broadway show.

Based on the play of the same name written by German playwright Frank Wedekind in 1891, the show tells of the sexual awakening of teenagers in a society that refuses to talk about sex. Banned repeatedly for nearly 100 years due to its subject matter, a performance of the play was shut down in New York City in 1917 by officials claming the material was pornographic. Only an injunction by the Supreme Court allowed the show to go on, but it closed after a single performance.

Parents shrink away from telling their children about sex, leaving teens to educate one another without the benefits of maturity and life experience. Birth control is neither discussed nor available. Fathers sexually assault daughters while mothers turn a blind eye, yet it is the children who feel guilty and ashamed. Young adults are seen but not heard, except by each other.

Almost unbearably exhilarating and quietly devastating, the musical version currently playing at the Eugene O’Neill Theater features a dynamic pop/rock score by Duncan Sheik (think “Barely Breathing”) and Steven Sater, explosive choreography by Bill T. Jones, and one of the most vocally and emotionally pitch-perfect companies of energizing performers – almost all of whom are in their late teens to early twenties – one is ever likely to see on a Broadway stage. Jonathan Groff is a star in the making, and it’s exciting to know you’re getting in on the ground floor of a remarkable career to come. As a charismatic and self-proclaimed atheist who “doesn’t believe in anything,” he is both boldly cavalier and youthfully vulnerable, with a voice that maneuvers comfortably between passionate baritone and sweet falsetto. Lea Michele (who has been with the show since its original workshop at the age of 14) poignantly sets the course for the entire show with a number entitled “Mama Who Bore Me,” a desperate plea for a greater understanding of her body and her emotions. And Tony-winner John Gallagher, Jr. rocks his heart and soul out as the teenager none of us want(ed) to be but many of us are(were) – gawky, isolated, confused, and terribly alone. Special props to Gideon Glick and Jonathan B. Wright, an endearing pair of star-crossed lovers who may very well be the first gay teenage characters to ever (passionately) kiss on a Broadway stage.

Still set in nineteenth century Germany replete with period costume and dialogue, the music, staging, sound and lighting design infuse the work with a modern sensibility. The ever-expanding lines of young adults waiting around the block each morning for student rush tickets and the emotional outpouring that occurs at the stage door after every performance attests to how relatable the story remains to modern audiences. Songs such as “The Bitch of Living,” “Touch Me,” “Don’t Do Sadness” and “Totally Fucked” (it’s my blog so I don’t have to use ***** if I don’t want to – my own act of adolescent rebellion) are veritable anthems to issues of teen alienation, burgeoning sexual need and confusion, and the erupting frustrations that come from being ignored, judged or dismissed – one of the richest scores in decades will make one laugh in recognition and deeply wrench the heart. Hand-held microphones, psychedelic lighting, and fellow audience members seated on the stage serve as constant reminders that our society has not advanced nearly as far as some may wish to believe.

An eruption of choreographed movement in the second act (a volcanic climax that manages to briefly blow the lid off all the repressed feelings that have come before) is the sort of theatrical lightning that will make you want to leap out of your seat and up onto the stage. Whether a teenager living the angst in the moment or an adult reliving the scars of adolescence, the show is uncanny in its ability to both bridge the centuries that exist between the original play and the current musical, and the age gaps that exist between audience members.

Sater’s book rushes headlong toward the finale in the last 15 minutes, which may be an indication that the creators didn’t envision audiences would remain transfixed by the material for longer than 2 hours and 20 minutes. This is their sole miscalculation, as Director Michael Mayer has constructed one of the most transformative and profoundly moving shows I have experienced in over thirty years of theater-going. “Spring Awakening” is a pulsating, bold and daring work that is a must see for all reproductive-rights supporters, the young of age and young of heart (say 13+ if you’re actually willing to engage your teen in thoughtful conversation after) and musical theater-lovers alike.

For more information about the show and to purchase tickets, click http://www.SpringAwakening.com/

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Evening

2007-06-27T12:11:00.000-04:00

Grade: D

Also known as that time of day when people take an Ambien and go to sleep.

A woman on her death bed reminisces about the weekend in her life that changed everything – her best friend’s wedding – while her annoying daughters wonder if her memories are real or morphine-induced. Through flashback and flash forward, screenwriter Michael Cunningham rehashes the technique he used in “The Hours,” this time to much, much lesser effect.

There is nothing more depressing than watching actors you admire greatly give uninteresting performances portraying uninteresting characters living uninteresting lives. Vanessa Redgrave lies in bed and gets teary-eyed muttering names like “Harris” and “Buddy” that her daughters have never heard of before. Natasha Richardson is the mother hen daughter who is so dull and wooden she’s barely believable as Redgrave’s daughter (yes, they are mother and daughter in real life.) Toni Collete is the brooding child, unsure of her current relationship and hoping her mother’s life experience will hold some clues to tell her what to do. Yawn. Eileen Atkins is reduced to playing a night nurse and Redgrave’s fantasy angel. Enough said.

Flash backward. Claire Danes is the younger version of Redgrave, a bohemian singer in desperate need of Marni Nixon (is there anything more irritating than crowds looking on adoringly at someone who can barely carry a tune?) Mamie Gummer (apparently Meryl Streep’s daughter, a factoid I was clued into when I whispered to my partner, “They did a good casting job, she looks just like a young Meryl.” Okay, so I’m an idiot) is the panicked but indomitable bride-to-be, committed to marry the man she can have because the man she loves isn’t all that interested. Hugh Dancy (Vanessa’s aforementioned Buddy) is the brother of Mamie and close friend of Claire’s (are you getting all this?) He gets drunk and very weepy. His sexuality is in question. All three seem to be infatuated with Patrick Wilson (Harris), child of the family housekeeper who rose above his status to become a doctor (this will be quite important, since he won’t be there when someone he loves needs him the most, and regret is a critical motif throughout.) As always, Wilson is gorgeous to look at but has virtually no screen presence, so everyone’s adoration of him seems questionable. Glenn Close is mother of the bride. She is also one of my favorite actors of all time. She is quite dreadful here. Overly made up, puffing on cigarettes like Norma Desmond and overacting a storm with facial expressions designed to hit the last row of Radio City.

And then Meryl Streep (Mamie later in life) arrives to visit a bedridden Vanessa Redgrave. We prepare for fireworks and revelations. We are given tedium. Literally nothing of interest happens between them. Meryl gets back in a cab and goes home.

Brothers get drunk and deliver touching but inappropriate toasts to the bride. Kids being kids take off all their clothes and jump off cliffs into the watery depths below – someone will not survive to the end of the movie. Former lovers meet on a street by accident years into the future, Barbra Streisand musses with Robert Redford’s hair and he takes a protest flyer from her. “See ya, Katie.” Only this time Patrick Wilson remembers the heavenly stars he named for Claire Danes, it’s raining and not outside the Plaza Hotel.

Nothing is quite impressed enough with itself to be truly pretentious, nothing emotional enough to be genuinely melodramatic. It’s all just a total flatline.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0765447/

Sicko

2007-06-24T10:21:00.000-04:00

Grade: A-

Michael Moore is an American hero.

Whether skewering corporate greed, making the case for stronger gun laws, or passionately condemning George Bush for the Iraq war, Moore is a national treasure and a whistle-blower of the first order.

Admittedly, it is often painfully frustrating to sit through a Michael Moore documentary since – the last time I checked – corporate greed continues to flourish, the NRA continues to own Congress, and John Kerry, well…don’t even get me started.

But Moore is an indignant laser beam of light, and his films make such passionate, irrefutable cases for change that one can’t help but hope the Capitol morons and White House evil-doers in our midst will finally get clued in and do some things that are actually in the best interest of the country.

As someone whose work is intimately connected to the inadequacies of health care, there is little in Moore’s latest expose that comes as much of a surprise. While impossible to depart Fahrenheit 9/11 without a knife-in-the-gut sense of moral outrage, here Moore further elucidates what most of us already know – HMOs are all about profit over health, socialized medicine is superior to our own system and anyone who says differently is either ignorant, blindly patriotic or lying for profit, and our elected officials do nothing to improve things because they are in the back pocket of the health care lobby. As in most of Moore’s movies, the Republicans may win the booby prize, but not even Democrats like Hillary Clinton come away unscathed – if anything, they are judged more harshly because they actually know better but remain silent. One cannot help but come away feeling utterly disgusted by the lack of leadership and stunning cowardice that permeates this season’s roster of Democratic Presidential hopefuls, who won’t go near the hot potato that is health care reform with a ten foot stethoscope.

But I digress.

In typical Moore style, we meet a parade of individuals whose lives have been shattered by the health care system. But Moore’s brilliance lies in the fact that, rather than focusing on the 50 million Americans without health insurance, he chooses to focus on the 250 million of us poor suckers who do, and whose lives have been devastated regardless. Health care plans that deny coverage for life-saving treatments, as told to us by the survivors of those the system murdered. Hospitals refusing to treat children on the brink of death because they weren’t properly affiliated with the right insurance carrier. Bureaucrats whose sole job it is to find pre-existing conditions or a form with a misplaced checkmark that will enable companies to deny coverage. With his unique mixture of smartly manipulative pathos and often belly-laughing humor, the absurdity of it all will simultaneously chagrin and upset the hell out of you – it’s what Moore does better than anyone.

Sidetrips to Canada, England, France and, yes, even Cuba – socialized medicine nations all – can’t help but make you want to pack your bags and leave on a jet plane. A Canadian couple takes out health insurance because they’re coming to the U.S. for a single day and fear what might happen to them if they get hurt on our shores. An incredulous Brit giggles into the camera because she can’t quite comprehend the concept of paying to have her baby delivered. A cashier has been set up in a hospital not to collect payment but to reimburse patients for travel expenses, and a doctor is paid more money for every patient whose blood pressure he helps lower and every smoker he helps kick the habit. Every argument we’ve heard ad infinitum about the perils of socialized medicine Moore deftly flicks off his shoulder for the money-grubbing propaganda it is.

No Michael Moore film would be complete without some unnecessary schtickiness and some self-important overreaching. Over-acted 1950’s advertising footage that runs throughout the film gets very old very quickly, a 15-minute side trip comparing France’s daycare, college education system and vacation policies to ours is a detracting diversion that borders on America-bashing just for the fun of it, and an analysis about why American politicians like to keep our poorest citizens in a constant state of fear and disempowerment comes across as more than a little trite. Moore still over-inserts himself into the story (although somewhat less than in previous films) and – especially in a boat trip to Guantanamo Bay where accused terrorists are receiving better health care than many of our 9/11 heroes – Moore inserts comedic skits where the facts should be allowed to speak for themselves.

But, when one of those heroes begins to cry upon discovering that the nebulizers that help her breathe and cost her hundreds of uncovered dollars in the U.S. run about 5 cents a piece in Cuba, Moore yet again establishes himself as a truth-teller and advocate for our times.
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More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0386032/

Waitress

2007-06-20T12:07:00.000-04:00

Grade: B

I miss “Felicity.” It was a close call, but I always preferred Ben over Noel, whereas my partner preferred Noel over Ben. Just one of the many reasons our relationship works.

Keri Russell is lovely as a waitress with a magical pie-making touch. Stuck in a loveless and slightly menacing marriage, a positive result on a home pregnancy test simultaneously traps her and sets her free. Self-consciously quirky yet sweetly charming, this is the sort of movie that comes complete with sidekick waitresses – one with a goofy but lovable boyfriend in a bow tie and another with a big SECRET that the audience knows an hour before the characters do, a cantankerous and crusty diner owner with a heart of gold hidden just below the surface, and a fairy tale ending that’s never for a moment in any doubt.

Funny in a breezy, kind-hearted sort of way, dialogue is just a touch stilted and characters just ever-so-slightly caricatured, falling somewhere between the dark comic reality of an “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and the far more tame “Alice” TV sitcom version. Picture midway between Ellen Burstyn and Linda Lavin, and you kind of end up with Keri Russell – vulnerable, hopeful, resigned, sarcastic and spunky. Happily, no one tells anyone to “kiss my grits,” but there are moments that come perilously close.

As the Ob/Gyn love interest, Nathan Fillion provides little real chemistry with Russell, but rather a nice sense of friendship borne out of mutually quiet desperation. Jeremy Sisto gets the thankless task of playing a massively-insecure and borderline pathological husband, but somehow manages to make him just a bit more sympathetic and pathetic than the screenplay allows. The real relationship here rests between Russell and the wonderful Andy Griffith, an old grouch who understands the true meaning of a road not taken – their brief scenes together provide the film with its genuine heart.

As with all fairy tales, abortion is never an option, the husband smacks but never hits, and a Deus ex machine is waiting in the wings so our waitress can indeed live happily ever after.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0473308/

Blades of Glory

2007-04-22T20:57:00.000-04:00

Grade: F

On any given evening, I’m home watching “The Real World,” “Falcon Beach,” “Wildfire,” “The O.C.” (may it rest in peace), American Idol” and even “Dancing with the Stars.” (Go Apolo, go!)

So it says a great deal when something makes me feel so incredibly unclean and ashamed of myself. There’s trash, and then there’s trash you actually pay for. Think slinking out of a porn palace in broad daylight.

I know what you’re all thinking, and I humbly accept your derision. While I have never been to a Will Ferrell movie before (and vow that I never shall again) the choice was mine and mine alone, the buck stops here, I’m the Decider. If the man has a comedic bone in his body, it was certainly no where to be seen here – whether performing bombastically uncoordinated routines on ice, grabbing his crotch while slobbering over extra-bosomy groupies, intoxicatedly vomiting all over himself during a children’s show on ice…everything about him is utterly unfunny and mildly disgusting. If I really wanted to see a hairy and out-of-shape body for laughs, my bathroom mirror will suffice quite nicely, thank you very much.

There is much to satirize about the amateur figure skating universe – trust me on this, as I am a figure skating widow every Winter Olympic season. The appallingly garish costumes and lavishly inappropriate music selections, the stark black and white, overly produced featurettes on the competitors, the melodramatic commentary replete with life metaphors, the near sexual Svengalian relationships between coaches and their athletes, the overtly heterosexual comments escaping exceedingly homosexual mouths – it’s all hysterically ripe for the picking.

It is almost impressive that a movie spoofing the already absurdist subculture that is figure skating manages to be so exceedingly sophomoric and yet so stultifyingly uncreative, so grossly oversexed and yet so insufferably dull, so over-the-top slapstick and yet so completely devoid of laughter. What should have been as easy as landing your basic double axle ends up ass down on the ice, a wealth of shoddy writing, overblown overacting (drunken frat boys misbehaving at a kegger) and directorial laziness. It is the stereotypically bad SNL skit that would have been cut by Lorne Michaels long before it ever made air time. Watching a Zamboni machine for 90 straight minutes would have been more amusing.

Cameos by Scott Hamilton, Peggy Flemming, Dorothy Hamill and Sacha Cohen only goes to further illustrate why sports figures should never attempt to do movies (just ask Mitch Gaylord) actors should never attempt to figure skate (did any of these people even bother to take a lesson before filming began?) and agents really are money grubbing whores – it’s hard to imagine anyone even bothered to read the script before arriving on set.

An embarrassment of embarrassments.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0445934/

Zodiac

2007-03-18T19:33:00.000-04:00

Grade: A-

The most challenging mazes will have many more dead ends than successful exits.

The most authentic whodunits will have far more red herrings than solutions.

The most illuminating docudramas are roughly 50% docu and 50% drama.

In the late 1960s – early 1970’s, a serial killer in Northern California murdered somewhere between 5-37 people, depending on who one listens to – the police or the killer himself. The case remains open to this day.

By focusing as much on the era and the obsessions of the hunters as on the murders themselves, director David Fincher and screenwriter James Vanderbilt have constructed a complex, disquieting, utterly compelling portrait of a time of innocence undermined by real world events. In an age just skirting the brink of split second wire tapping, instantaneous information sharing and forensic DNA testing, here evidence is dated in magic marker and stored in floor to ceiling boxes, different jurisdictions mail critical information back and forth to each another sans fax machines, and newspapers actually weigh civic responsibility against getting the scoop on rival papers. Fincher captures time, place and mood with an unnerving accuracy that will give chills to those of us who were children of the period, an air of monotone calm betrayed by a sense of underlying panic at a rapidly changing society. Control is slowly, inexorably being stripped away, and men begin to fixate on a serial killer, consuming themselves with a desperate need to solve a mystery and make the world safe again.

Jake Gyllenhaal betrays a stunning physique and inherent charm with naturalistic geekdom, so good at being gawky and introverted one actually believes he is ridiculed by men and has trouble with the ladies. His fascination with unmasking the killer is reminiscent of Richard Dreyfuss’ turn in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” a quest for truth bordering on self-destructive madness. Mark Ruffalo grays right before our eyes as the detective on the case, constitutionally unable to find inner peace without first making an arrest. Robert Downey Jr. self-destructs as a crime reporter who delights in being threatened by the mystery man, his own self-importance escalating the more he himself becomes an element of the case.

Spanning a period of several years and bridging the gap between two decades, the film leads us down several garden pathways and into many darks alleys ending in brick walls. Instead of depending on bloody reenactments to get the heart pumping, the film creates genuine tension and terror in the overwhelming uncertainty of it all. Long after the murders have ceased and the books have been closed, a sense of dread continues to hover over the lives of these men. Meticulous in authenticity and detail, you will likely leave the theater surprised to re-enter the 21st century – at just over 2 hours and 35 minutes you may check your watch from time to time, not to ascertain how much time until it is all over, but rather how much time you still have left. Smokers may suddenly believe it is acceptable to light up in the movie theater. This film will envelope you.

The purported answers and all the questions that remain leave one in doubt as to whether or not the case was truly ever solved. The human desire to move on with a sense of finality leaves much motivation shrouded in doubt and shadow.

In the end, our craving need for absolutes and resolution remains the true mystery.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0443706/

Breach

2007-03-11T18:54:00.000-04:00

Grade: B+

Any movie that begins with footage of John Ashcroft can only get better.

This one does. Very quickly.

In 2001, FBI Agent Robert Hanssen pled guilty to 15 counts of espionage against the United States over a period of some 15 years. Shortly thereafter, Eric O’Neill – the cocky, young agent largely responsible for Hanssen’s arrest – resigned from the FBI.

Writer/director Billy Ray has carved himself a moviemaking niche by focusing on the real life stories of flawed individuals and their inevitable falls from grace. Shattered Glass was a breathtaking tale of journalistic fraud, a young reporter who fabricated countless articles and the editor who brought about his downfall. Ray has a striking ability to portray the underlying humanity within his characters, judging but never completely condemning.

Here, in an age of Über-patriotism where the tendency to lock ‘em up and throw away the key Texas cowboy style has permeated our culture, this is no small feat. Hanssen was a traitor, responsible for the loss of numerous lives and billions of dollars. Yet he was also a deeply religious man, devoted to family, desperate for recognition. None of this ultimately matters (as Ray’s very fine screenplay reminds us) but it makes for a fascinatingly rich and profoundly sad character study of a man of great conflict and contradiction. Chris Cooper is quite moving and complicated here, albeit a touch mannered and technical in his approach. He is a mass of contrast – pious and deviant, coldly intellectual yet emotionally driven. Ryan Phillippe is coming into his own, the twink replaced by a thespian, and he plays an up-and-comer with the appropriate mix of bravado and self-doubt. He comes to admire and pity the man he has been assigned to betray, and his polarized obligations to family legacy and family life are as much at the heart of this thriller as the covert operations. Kathleen Quinlan and Caroline Dhavernas are somewhat cardboard cutouts as the women in these men’s lives, one all too eager to bask in spiritual sanctimony while turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to her husband’s political and sexual perversions, the other a bit too quick to forget what her husband does for a living and the life she signed up for, but both serve as steady reminders of the toll people pay inhabiting and segmenting multiple lives.

But the star of the film, and any film (or play) she is in for that matter, is the incomparable Laura Linney, who turns an underwritten supporting player into the very soul of the story. As Phillippe’s superior, Linney is coolly calculating yet utterly compassionate, a woman who has subordinated her life and checked her ego in the service of a greater good. “I don’t even have a cat,” she tells us with chagrined acceptance. She is the truest patriot of all.

The film is well-paced and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto effectively uses broad shots to bring us into the sterile, fluorescent hallways of the FBI. If the occasional cat and mouse cliché or dramatic license sticks out like a sore thumb (O’Neill’s manipulation of Hanssen’s Catholic devotion seems at times particularly contrived) there is much more to be believed than dismissed. It is to Ray’s credit that one is never sure if the film is intended as drama or thriller – sober and unembellished, in a filmmaking age when it is impossible to know precisely what separates a film that declares “this is a true story” from a film “based on a true story” from a film “based on actual events,” it is indeed possible to find truth simply by telling it.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0401997/

Best of 2006

2007-02-22T08:22:00.000-05:00

10. Little Miss Sunshine
9. The Queen
8. Pan’s Labyrinth
7. Venus
6. Water
5. Dreamgirls
4. Volver
3. Babel
2. Half Nelson
1. United 93

Honorable Mention: Little Children; An Inconvenient Truth; The Devil Wears Prada; The Departed

Blood Diamond

2007-02-17T19:02:00.000-05:00

Grade: C+

Every once in a blue moon I feel guilty about not recommending a movie with so much talent, import and earnestness that I truly wish it were a better film.

But I won’t lose any sleep over it.

Diamond smuggling and civil unrest in the African nation of Sierra Leone form the backdrop of this action adventure, civics lesson melodrama. A father is ripped from his family by revolutionaries to work in a diamond mine; a debonair, swaggering, and disinterested mercenary trades guns to anyone with cash and diamonds to wealthy and evil conglomerates; a teenage boy is kidnapped and brainwashed into becoming the very thing that has torn his family asunder; and a female news reporter wants to make the world a better place.

Armed with this information, you now have an hour to write the screenplay. Take out your number two pencils and begin. Figure out the most pat and predictable answers to the following questions:

Does the mercenary have a story of a brutalized childhood that may explain his own heartlessness? Say, a raped and murdered mother and father strung up and killed in the family barn?
Will the reporter lecture us incessantly on the plight of civil unrest in Africa and American culpability?
Will the mercenary ultimately sacrifice all and demonstrate his hidden humanity and heart of gold?
Will the mercenary and reporter fall for one another?
Will the father find his family among millions of refugees scattered throughout the nation?
Will he rescue his son before all hope of reconciliation and redemption are lost?
Will the evil corporate conglomerate get away will their devilish doings?
Will there be African music sung by a boy’s choir in the background?
Will a black hand grasp out to a white hand to ensure no one falls off a mountain?
Will the native African get to tell his story in front of a room full of white people after receiving cheers and a standing ovation from the admiring crowd?
Will the reporter look on with tears in her eyes?

Okay then. Once you’ve finished your first draft, sprinkle in the kind of lines no human being has ever or will ever say to one another. Some suggestions might be:

“Some say the earth is so red because of all the blood that has been spilt upon it.”

“People back home wouldn’t buy a ring for their finger if they knew it cost someone a hand.”

“Sometimes I wonder if God will ever forgive us for what we’ve done to each other. Then I realize God left this place a long time ago.”

"You think I am a devil, but only because I have lived in hell."

“Go ahead and kill me. I am dead already.”

Leonardo DiCaprio is a fine and charismatic actor, and the time has come for people to take him seriously and stop thinking of him as just another pretty face (although he is that as well). He equips himself with an African accent quite nicely and, while a touch too Hollywood butch when shooting people in the head and trying to be menacing, he commands the screen with leading man presence and talent.

And, yes, he does take his shirt off. But only once.

Few do righteous indignation (you know, the sort where you start to cry ‘cause you’re so pissed off?) better than Djimon Hounsou, although a comedy might be a good next step in his career. There is virtually no chemistry whatsoever between DiCaprio and news reporter Jennifer Connelly, which of course doesn’t stop them from holding hands and making goo goo eyes at one another.

The film is long but nicely paced and beautifully filmed, the vistas are stunning and emotive, and many scenes of intense action are well interwoven with introspective and quieter moments. The story itself is quite compelling, our role in such international devastation quite maddening, but piousness and predictability ultimately win the day.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0450259/

Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno)

2007-02-11T12:50:00.000-05:00

Grade: A-

Macabre to the point of grotesque, fanciful to the point of cinematic magic, writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s tour de force story of a young girl’s physical and spiritual escape from fascism is both weighed down by the reality of a dark, evil world and uplifted by a realm of existence that may lie beyond the cruelty of humankind.

Ivana Baquero gives the most complex child performance of the year, her huge brown eyes as filled with pain and terror as they are by simplicity and wonder. As a girl brought by her pregnant mother to live with a heartless and masochistic stepfather/army commander during the oppressive dictatorship of 1944 Spain, her beloved collection of fairy tales provides a survival mechanism that may or may not exist only in her mind. The world she discovers is as frightening and ghoulish as the world in which she lives, but it also provides the porthole to a much better place. Maribel Verdu displays tenderness and fearlessness with equal measure as a member of the resistance movement residing right under the commander’s nose, and Sergi Lopez breaks down the caricature and delivers a man who relishes torture yet is equally concerned with his personal legacy.

Riveting, thrilling, challenging and audacious, Del Toro’s brilliance lies in his ability to paint surreal landscapes on multiple planes of reality. The brutality of the earth is likely to make one wince in horror and watch hypnotized through spread fingers, yet it is a world portrayed as if through the lens of a funhouse mirror – gunshots jolt yet never rip through flesh quite as realistically as expected, blood flows yet never as freely as one would anticipate. Conversely, his underworld is surprisingly fiendish and horrific, and not quite the fantastical escape imagined or prepared for. Our heroine may be retreating into the recesses of her stories, but she may also be in a karmic battle for her soul. Del Toro allows us to decide this for ourselves, providing a storytelling balance that makes us doubt and believe in both worlds simultaneously. As with all great works, one leaves the theater with a deeper understanding and appreciation for the beliefs, worldviews and personal truths we have brought with us into the theater in the first place. Different minds will no doubt view the film’s meaning and message in very different lights, and the screenplay is so skillful you may not realize another perspective even exists.

A breathtaking, vibrating score by Javier Navarrete thrills and chills to the bones, and bewitching cinematography by Guillermo Navarro uses dark, brooding tones to radiate light. Visual effects terrify in wonderment.

Freedom and oppression are concepts of the mind, body and spirit. Del Toro captivates and enthralls in his ability to ruminate and illuminate in each one of these dimensions.
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More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0457430/

Letters from Iwo Jima

2007-02-03T16:40:00.000-05:00

Grade: F/DWR*

Yes, you read correctly, so wipe your eyes, take a look at the grade again, and know I’m completely serious. It’s not that I loathe Clint Eastwood personally, it’s only that I find so many of his films so stultifyingly over-rated.

If you can accept the radical and revelatory notion that the Japanese are people too, give yourself a gold star. They have loved ones, hopes and dreams of their own. They want to live. They want to survive war. They do not want to die. If you prick them, they too indeed bleed.

Jesus H. we get it already.

Every character is a Hollywood war cliché, only this time in Japanese with appallingly stilted and melodramatic subtitles. Paul Haggis, screenwriter of last year’s equally excruciating, pretentious, cliché-ridden and over-lauded “Crash” wrote the story on which the screenplay is based here, which explains a great deal indeed. The all-knowing, compassionate and noble general who respects and regards his men, the sadistic platoon leader who hates his men and who hate him back, the former Olympian horse racer who now rides atop his gallant steed on the beaches of Iwo Jima (gee, do you think the horse is gonna’ make it to the end of the movie?) the young soldier who leaves his wife and unborn child to fight for his country (I swear to God, there’s even a scene where he speaks into the mother’s belly and promises a safe return) the quiet, new recruit with a secret and a story of his own (not to worry, we find out in flashback he crapped out of the military academy for refusing to shoot a family’s dog).

Some of this stuff you just can’t make up.

Every hackneyed scene has been done ad infinitum since the days of “Birth of a Nation,” from comrades reading aloud syrupy letters from home (always containing a mention of how the farm animals are doing) unlikely conversations between soldiers on opposing sides (“I spent a great deal of time in California when I was younger,” the Japanese commander tenderly tells a fallen American. “Where are you from?” You just know the answer can only be Iowa, Oklahoma, or Kansas – wounded soldiers are never from Miami) to walkie-talkie communications going dead at pivotal moments to blinded leaders telling their men to bravely soldier on before committing suicide.

And then there’s that dialogue. Taglines about the “evil enemy approaching,” speeches straight out of “Henry V” and the Battle of Agincourt, diatribes about how the enemy’s key weakness is he will “risk the lives of many to save the life of one” intermingle with specifically Japanese mottos about “dying with honor” and seeing each other in the afterlife. It’s all drecky Hollywood screenwriting at its most painful, flowing embarrassingly out of the mouths of actors heroically trying to take it all in stride.

The film has an appropriate black, white and gray palate, with flashes of red (the circle on the Japanese flag and lots of splashing blood on walls and people’s faces, just to make clear war is hell) flagrantly stolen from Steven Spielberg’s girl in the red coat in “Schindler’s List.” Nicely computer-generated battle scenes are flagrantly stolen from the opening of Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan.” The film ends with a flash forward to today, flagrantly stolen from Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" and/or "Schindler's List."

Happily, there is no child flying over the moon on a bicycle.

The score (perhaps thankfully) makes no attempt to capture anything remotely ethnic, but instead has ominous piano-tinkling tones better served in a mystery whodunit. If one is fortunate enough to see the film in stereo, bullets will indeed fly all around you.

As my partner so eloquently stated about six hours into this 2 hour and 21 minute deadly dull extravaganza, and I quote:

“Dreamgirls got fucked.”

*For those unfamiliar with this particular designation, DWR (which stands for "Danger, Will Robinson") is used to indicate pretentious, self-congratulatory, holier-than-thou or otherwise self-important dreck that nevertheless manages to garner significant critical praise. I am considering changing this designation to IEFS for "Is Ebert Fu#king Serious?"

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0498380/

Venus

2007-02-01T22:07:00.000-05:00

Grade: A-

GIVE THE MAN A BLOODY OSCAR ALREADY!

It is to weep how fine a thespian Peter O’Toole is. It would be untrue to say this is the finest in a truly illustrious career, equally unfair to suggest attention must be paid to a fading star in the twilight of his career. As an aged actor with the body of an old man and the heart of a 20 year old, O’Toole is humble, foulmouthed, tender, rip-roaring, charismatic, raunchy and terribly vulnerable. He remains one of the finest working actors of our time, and a star in a class by himself.

Anyone who has ever suffered the indignity of a prostate exam knows there comes a time in one’s life when outside frailty no longer matches internal youth. It is a shock to one’s system to realize not everyone sees us for the juvenile, insecure, sexual, playful beings we remain all of our lives, and O’Toole displaces the frustrated curmudgeonly attitude of assorted mates with his own brand of chagrined acknowledgement and flippant acceptance. The soul of the film lies between O’Toole and the equally wonderful Leslie Phillips, lifelong chums who literally and figuratively dance their way through life together. One suspects a one-sided love even greater than mere friendship, but the film is so rich in its subtlety and grace that the gentle affection between these two men only shines more brightly because of it. One feels blessed to have the chance to watch O’Toole and Vanessa Redgrave finally onscreen together, a marriage ended long ago one presumes via a mixture of ego and immaturity, but a love that stands the test of time and infidelity.

As the young “Venus” who steals O’Toole’s attention, Jodie Whittaker matches O’Toole’s star power with brazen aplomb. The relationship is a complex mixture of ardor, fondness, lasciviousness and mutual manipulation, two individuals who use one another but actually appear to see one another as well. There are scenes likely to make one squirm in relative discomfort, but the screenplay is so beautifully crafted the fine lines into lewdness and lechery are treaded yet never crossed. They bring out the worst in each other to be sure, but also a glimmer of their best.

Would that the gods could grant Mr. O’Toole another 74 years. Still, one suspects his career is very, very far from nearing its finale.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0489327/

The Last King of Scotland

2007-01-27T18:25:00.000-05:00

Grade: C+

A young, idealistic, beautifully blue-eyed Scottish doctor spins a globe to decide his fate, his finger landing on the country of Uganda. We all know this is how Doctor Dolittle ends up leaving London for Seastar Island in search of the Great Pink Sea Snail, but there’s something entirely fabricated that runs like a thread throughout this tale of a man’s journey into the heart of darkness that is Idi Amin Dada.

The catchphrase “Inspired by Actual Events and Individuals” should forever be sticken from movie-making lexicon – you just know you’re in for an inauthentic experience.

James McAvoy is quite fine as fictionalized doctor Nicholas Garrigan, who arrives in Uganda with unbridled enthusiasm, youthful albeit recklessly raging hormones, and wide-eyed gullibility. Thrust via implausible circumstance (which makes sense, since his character never actually existed) into the services of a newly placed and awe-inspiring dictator, a somewhat movie-of-the-week screenplay leads us through his personal journey of adoration and self-aggrandizement, building sense of doubt, fear and betrayal, and ultimate recognition that he has given himself over to your basic paranoid schizophrenic nutcase. While the very real Idi Amin slaughters hundreds of thousands of his people off-screen, the fictionalized good doctor deals smugly with fictionalized priggish Brits who all try to warn him what he’s gotten himself into, gets himself into a fictionalized affair with one of his boss’s wives who proceeds to get fictionally pregnant and in need of a fictionalized abortion, and plots a fictionalized assassination attempt. While McAvoy reacts to it all with a genuine sense of gravitas and dread, the inherent melodrama of this central figure’s make-believe story stretches the telling of a very important cautionary tale beyond respectability. When even the famed airport raid on Entebbe is misappropriated as a backdrop to an action subplot out of a Bruce Willis movie, Director Kevin Macdonald and screenwriters Jeremy Brock and Giles Fodel (based on his novel of the same name) lose all moral authority.

Forest Whitaker gives a toweringly lifelike supporting performance as the one man who seems to have actually existed here – the evil, bi-polar, twisted dictator himself. He simultaneously exudes charm, paranoia, intelligence, and menace, and seems genuinely devastated to be blowing the heads off of and torturing all those who have “betrayed” him. He’s clearly just misunderstood, the poor guy, and Whitaker twitchingly captures the delusional and tragic swagger of a mass-murdering despot.

The time has come for filmmakers to stop inserting false white protagonists to represent the “outside onlooker” that they believe film-going audiences need to find identification. Just tell us stories from the inside looking out, and trust us to do the rest.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0455590/

Notes On a Scandal

2007-01-18T21:11:00.000-05:00

Grade: B

The lesbian as psychopath stereotype is alive and well in this wickedly voyeuristic tale of a stalker teacher’s obsession with a younger educator. Think “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane” and you’re getting warm.

One half expects Dame Judi Dench to tell everyone to “fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night” or even mayhap to break out the wire hangers. It’s a grand dame performance – cool, bitchy, calculating, quirky, and great great fun to watch. The story lacks any genuine intrigue, Richard Eyre’s direction is dully straightforward, co-star Cate Blanchett is rarely more than serviceable, and the score by Philip Glass is downright obnoxious (violins frantically screeching) but Dench is Dench is Dench, and when she’s on screen (which is virtually the entire breezy 91 minutes) little else matters.

The joke about lesbians and second dates is applicable here, as in an instant Dench sets her sights on a married woman with children in tow. Friendship begets infatuation begets Glenn Close and bunny rabbits and, while it’s never particularly menacing, Dench makes it thoroughly riveting. Gestures of peripheral kindness are misinterpreted as sweeping declarations of dedication, inappropriate affairs are manipulated into indebtedness, even the death of a beloved kitty becomes a calculated ace in the hole when all else seems to fail. It’s all more than a little homophobic, but Dench is so deliciously kooky it’s hard to take much offense. Her nastily pointed voiceovers alone are worth the price of admission – dry, scathing and venomously judgmental in their commentary.

When – no small thanks to Dench’s machinations – everyone else’s lives start to crumble, there is little doubt who will end up on top of all the carnage.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0465551/

Babel

2007-01-15T18:59:00.000-05:00

Grade: A-

Skip the pretentious “Syriana,” the over-hyped “Children of Men,” and the excruciating “Crash.”

If you’re seeking a subtle, intelligent, emotional, and gripping film about racism, immigration, weaponry, international politics and how these elements collide to both devastate and ennoble our planet, this is the one to see.

A flawless ensemble of superstars and unknowns alike tell four disparate stories spread across the globe in Mexico, Morocco, San Diego and Tokyo. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu brilliantly interweaves time, place and meaning, leaving us only slightly off-balance as the pieces slowly, smartly and inexorably come together. A poor Moroccan family acquires a rifle to ward off predators preying on their sheep, and a yarn of unintentional gun violence, traumatized families, displaced grief, innocent babes and illegal caregivers, the consequence of carelessness, the humanity of the individual and the inhumanity of our borders slowly and thrillingly unfolds.

Brad Pitt turns in a career-defining performance as a husband and father trying to keep it all together amidst personal grief and jarring happenstance. A man truly in the wrong place at the wrong time, Pitt disappears into himself – gray, ashen, weathered both by the Moroccan sun and the tragic circumstances of his life. This boy can act.

Adriana Barraza is glorious as an illegal nanny who temps the fates simply by daring to have her own life while caring for children unceremoniously dumped into her charge by emotionally and physically absent parents. Rinko Kikuchi pains as an over-sexualized teenager unable to process her own overwhelming grief, Mustapha Rachidi humanizes a family and community our xenophobic nation consistently seeks to dehumanize amidst our fantasy of moral supremacy, and Mohamed Akhzam quietly moves as a healing hand amidst the politics of an injured American on foreign soil.

A single, indiscriminate gunshot will have ramifications for all their lives, and Iñárritu passionately yet understatedly makes the personal political. In a world where no one knows how to communicate with one another, where culture and language are unrelenting obstacles to our interconnectedness, the individual seems far less important than media headlines and governmental spin-doctoring. The film delicately provides a road map for how far astray we have gone and where hope remains for our redemption, without proselytizing ad nauseum or dumbing down the storytelling. If the camera lingers too lovingly on specific moments of ethnic diversity, and if one of the storylines never quite folds into the whole as organically as one would wish, the film remains a finely balanced work of condemnation and idealism nevertheless.

In the book of Genesis, we learn that the Tower of Babel was built by all of humanity to reach the heavens, and that God destroyed the tower and changed the one language of humankind into many different languages to ensure such an attempt could never happen again.

It appears even God is guilty of profound and sadly irrevocable errors in judgment.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0449467/

Children of Men

2007-01-08T08:32:00.000-05:00

Grade: C+

The feel good hit of the season it ain’t.

Never-endingly dark, bleak, oppressive and brooding, this wouldn’t in and of itself present a problem (some of my favorite films, not to mention favorite people, share many of these same qualities) if the film weren’t also rather dull, sometimes self-important and ultimately pretty pointless.

We are 20 years into the future, the youngest living human being has died at the age of 18, and a state of national mourning has ensued Princess Diana style. You see, for some much theorized but ultimately inexplicable reason, the world has gone barren and only the United Kingdom has been left standing (the cheeky bastards). Anyone trying to immigrate into the country in search of luxuries like food and shelter are locked in cages where they rave and mutter to one another in a diversity of foreign tongues (although the most prominent language seems to be German, and Holocaust imagery – burning bodies, ominous checkpoints and hooded firing squad lines – abound, implying a culture that has become the evil it abhors). The British government is bad bad bad for keeping people out and taking away everyone else’s individual rights, one supposes because it would be to difficult to bash the United States since it no longer exists or George Bush since he’s no longer President. This is the future after all, and any current political commentary is purely coincidental.

In the middle of it all, a pregnant woman appears (how this happens we’re never really sure) and madcap mayhem ensues. The resistance movement wants her (to what end we’re never really sure) the government can never ever know about her (for what reason we’re never really sure) and a boat of freedom adrift in very foggy waters offers her safety and serenity (what this represents we’re never really sure of, either). Throw in some well-placed Christ-like imagery, do-it-yourself suicide kits, lots of machine gunfire and an awful lot of gray shading and you have an apocalyptic vision to be proud of.

Clive Owen is appropriately dreary and empathetic in one of the more underwritten leading roles of the year, a former activist turned bereft cynic forced by an ex-flame (played like wallpaper by Julianne Moore) to reactivate his heroic leanings. The always welcome Michael Caine does hippy throwback exceedingly well, and Clare-Hope Ashitey definitely has spunk as a pregnant woman all of humanity wants a piece of.

Director Alfonso Cuarón gets the imagery just right, simultaneously futuristic and retro, a vision of the war we all currently imagine in Iraq consuming the entire planet. Unfortunately, destruction, bedlam and an overall sense of catastrophic dread do not an engaging or cohesive story make, and a much anticipated payoff never arrives. A brief scene of eloquent clarity and import – warring factions only momentarily ceasing fire in astonished recognition of human life – never quite finds its way to the rest of the movie.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0206634/

Dreamgirls

2006-12-22T14:03:00.000-05:00

Grade: A-

Only twice in my entire theatre-going lifetime have I witnessed a performer receive a standing ovation in the middle of a show. The first and most memorable was Jennifer Holliday, during her final week of performances in “Dreamgirls,” belting out “And I Am Telling You, I’m Not Going.” It would be more than a decade before I would be a part of such an amazing moment again.

May God and gay men all across this nation forgive me, but Jennifer Hudson’s rendition is even better. Simultaneously gut-wrenching and exhilarating, you will want to stand up and cheer in a movie theater. As Effie White, a diva with a voice of the gods reduced to singing backup, her entire performance is a brash, vulnerable powerhouse. A star is indeed born, and so too, I suspect, is an Oscar winner.

As James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and Little Richard all rolled into one, Eddie Murphy is nothing short of a revelation as R&B star James “Thunder” Early, a man with explosive soul forced into the straight-jacket of pop music conformity. Every moment he is on screen your mind will be hard pressed to process just how talented Murphy is, whether blowing the lid off the place as a performer onstage or quietly disintegrating as a man offstage. A resigned moment of defeated desperation will quite simply break your heart, and Murphy should bring home a “Golden Child” of his own to bookend Hudson’s. Together they represent this year’s breakout performances.

“Loosely” based on the story of Diana Ross and the Supremes (I am also “loosely” a Democrat and my partner is “loosely” a homosexual) screenwriter/director Bill Condon had much to live up to – the legacy of Michael Bennett’s now legendary original – and he has delivered the goods. The film is sleek, glossy, thrilling, heartfelt and wildly entertaining. From the first rhythmic beat fans of the Broadway musical and original cast album know all too well, we’re putty in his hands. Toes will tap, heads will bop, shoulders will shimmy – who says this white boy from Long Island ain’t got no soul? At a too-short two hours, the film glides by on its high-octane energy – no slow build-up here, the film starts with a pow, steps on the gas, pumps up the volume and quick-cuts its way to a Big Hollywood, slightly hokey, but eminently satisfying finale. In a spot-on attempt to capture the mod style of the 60’s music industry, Condon can be forgiven his excesses, although his desire to encapsulate the black experience (replete with burnt out buildings, street rioting, and stray commentary on the Vietnam war) is a touch heavy-handed and slightly awkward. Some additional plot-points not in the original storyline add a sprinkling of gravitas and big old-fashioned movie musical payoff . Several new takes on some old lyrics (including a beautiful moment during “Hard to Say Good-Bye,” where Deena Jones redirects her love and caring in a decidedly unexpected direction) add new layers and meaning.

In the Diana Ross role, Beyoncé Knowles surprises with a knock-out voice and glamorous look filled with understated warmth and depth underneath, Jamie Foxx holds his own as her oily Svengali and Danny Glover provides the film some much needed heart and humanity underneath all its sheen. Cameos by the likes of Broadway veterans Loretta Devine (one of the original “Dreams”), Hinton Battle and Ken Page delight. Several new songs (usually an Oscar-grubbing distraction in most stage-to-screen endeavors, including “Chicago’s” most recently unnecessary “I Move On”) effectively underscore and enhance some genuine character development, and provide the opportunity to hear even more from Hudson, Murphy and Knowles, especially in the longingly hopeful “Patience” and the defiantly personal “Listen.”

Except for some flawed lip-synching and uninventive “fade to black” scene changes, Condon’s only real transgression – and it is not a small one – lies in the songs he has cut (the outrageously funny tirade “Ain’t No Party,” and the equally tender “I Miss You Old Friend” are nowhere to be found) the songs he has edited (“Steppin’ to the Bad Side,” “One Night Only,” and “I Am Changing” – the best song in the entire score – are sacrilegiously pared down ) and the songs where he has interspersed dialogue to move the action along at breakneck pace (even the title song is cut away from for a moment of distracting banter). His edits hurt my heart and should mildly outrage enthusiasts, but his blatant adoration for the material should one day allow me to forgive him his trespasses.

In recent interviews, Condon has talked about the enormous pressure he was under to get the film version right. Recognizing that gay men everywhere would have his head on a platter if he blew it, he further acknowledged his own boyfriend probably wouldn’t ever speak to him again as well.

His boyfriend should not only speak to him, he should give Bill exactly what Condon has given “Dreamgirls” – a dozen long-stemmed roses, and a heart shaped box of chocolate wrapped in a big old red bow.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0443489/

Running With Scissors

2006-11-22T09:50:00.000-05:00

Grade: D-

How screenwriter/director Ryan Murphy was permitted to turn Augusten Burroughs’ delightfully wacky, subversive, laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly haunting memoir into such a dire, dreary, overwrought, disjointed disappointment is anyone’s guess, but James Frey is getting the last laugh that his book deal with Warner Brothers was so unceremoniously cancelled.

A gay son dealing with an absent father who escapes a prescription drug addicted wife who subsequently turns her son into a second husband is truly (I have mountains of self-help books and cashed therapy checks to prove it) the story of my life, but not a moment of this forced, heightened, tiresome and very unfunny melodrama rings true. In episodically tedious and lifeless fashion, Annette Bening is either 1) drug-induced, speech slurring comatose; 2) ranting like a shrilly bombastic lunatic; or 3) literally dripping with tears as Augusten’s mentally ill, pathologically needy and unsympathetically harsh and judgmental mother. It’s an emotionally packed performance to be sure, but one that belongs in another movie entirely – a better one. Brian Cox is a non-entity in the role of an unethical loony-tune psychiatrist who prescribes medication like candy and needs more help than he could possibly dole out to others, Jill Clayburgh dowdy and little else as his long suffering wife, and Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes make one question if they have any acting ability whatsoever as one of the psychiatrist’s freakishly screechy daughters and her schizophrenic, pedophile, adopted brother – one is embarrassed by and for them simultaneously. Joseph Cross brings a modicum of dignity to the author’s flat alter-ego, but only Alec Baldwin manages to rise above the vacuous and unpleasant material as a man forced to choose between his child and his own sanity.

Unlike the inspirationally irreverent book, which managed to tell a story of survival against the backdrop of almost unimaginable lunacy and darkness, the film misfires virtually every tragically comic and hysterically dramatic moment. The book is an embarrassment of demented riches – people snacking on dog kibble, electric shock experimentation, masturbation rooms, kitty executions and excrement analysis to name but a few. But when presented in such an unimaginatively straight and somber manner, it all feels so unbelievable and manufactured one can’t help but question how much of Burroughs’ story is the stuff of teenage fantasy and exaggeration, the ultimate disservice to an author whose work has always rung so absurdistly true.

In one of the film’s more telling moments, virtually every character is shown simultaneously screaming in torment. Would that they had allowed such behavior in a movie theater.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0439289/

The Departed

2006-11-19T19:17:00.000-05:00

Grade: B+

“Goodfellas” meets “Prince of the City” meets “Hamlet” in Martin Scorsese’s latest cat and mouse cop and mobster thriller.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon are equally fine (and charismatic) as two undercover operatives on completely different sides of the gangster fire wall. One a police academy graduate corrupted in his youth by a mob boss (a solidly predictable Jack Nicholson), the other a police academy graduate paying through the nose for the bad name of his family. Both terrified of being caught, Damon pays with impotence while DiCaprio pops sedatives. One the emotional introvert and one the emotional extrovert, one the charmer and one the tormented, they are both so exceptional the only minor frustration is they don’t share enough screen time together.

Scorsese is back in his well-worn element, always welcome if unavoidably derivative. Few do mobsters and crooked cops better than Scorsese and, unlike his recent films, he directs with an assured yet unembellished style. If Damon’s trajectory is a touch too reminiscent of Ray Liotta’s in “Goodfellas,” and if Nicholson gives Joe Pesci a run for his depravedly nutcase money, this tale of two moles consistently crisscrossing each other and always a hair’s breath away from discovery is a thrillingly fun ride. Blood ghoulishly gushes from ever pore (Brian DePalma would be proud), inert bodies fall artfully from very tall buildings, people get abruptly and unpredictably blown to smithereens, while still others rally themselves “Scarface” style. And did I mention all that blood? Red is the only color on Scorsese’s palette this time around, and a sense of rich, dark humor permeates.

Martin Sheen is downright unpresidential but effectively parental as the head of a Special Investigations Unit, Mark Wahlberg one-note as a hot-headed second banana and Alec Baldwin a little too stereotypically cop-on-the-beat to be of interest. Scorsese’s setup is simultaneously overpacked and underdeveloped, and the saga is self-importantly stretched over 2½ deliberately paced hours. Note to all future Mafioso-inclined screenwriters: the use of Opera metaphor is a grandiose cliché that is always unwelcome and seldom effective. But the film is also full of both subtle and jarring surprises, rich character interaction and nuance, and double-identity intrigue and pathos.

Scene: Damon uses a dead cop’s cell phone to track his nemesis. DiCaprio hesitatingly answers. Long moments pass. One waits for the other to identify himself. The silence is palpable and painful. Scorsese is in his filmmaking glory, and so, more than occasionally in this meticulously crafted potboiler, are we.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0407887/

Volver (To Return)

2006-11-12T12:25:00.000-05:00

Grade: A-

I’ve always been on the fence about Pedro Almodóvar. My review of Bad Education called him “eminently and simultaneously feverish, quirky, daring, maddening, flamboyant, ecstatic, uneven, fearless, choppy, pretentious and thrilling.” When reviewing Talk to Her, I admitted “While I have enjoyed many of his films, I have also found many of his characters so multi-ambiguous, so not of this or any world I can believe in, that they are rather difficult to fully embrace.”

I’m no longer ambivalent. Se adoro Almodóvar.

In a stroke of unmitigated, outrageous genius, the film opens with scores of women lovingly and conscientiously ministering to…the tombstones of their loved ones. This uproarious stroke of bravado sets the stage for a mystically madcap melodrama of murder, death, disease, corpses, ghosts and, above all, familia. Few other directors could fill such a dark tale with such grace, laughter, pathos and lighter-than-air whimsy.

Am I the last to discover Penelope Cruz has so much charisma and gravitas? Usually made of cardboard delivering lines in English without recognition or soul, in her native tongue she is ablaze with fiery independence, dogged determination and steely vulnerability. As a woman trying to protect her child, mother her sister, provide for her family and keep family secrets hidden – while all the while a dead body turns to ice in her backroom industrial freezer – Cruz keeps it all in control while her heart palpitates barely beneath the surface.

Not a weak female in the bunch, three generations of women advise, defend, chide, support, judge, hug, depend on, and even haunt one another. Set against the backdrops of Madrid and La Mancha, tragedy fueled with humor, disbelief mixed with resilience, hardship peppered with vivaciousness and mysticism entwined with reality all seem the naturally unbalanced way of life. Replacing gender-bending with gender-appreciation this time around, Almodóvar revels in these women, who never shrink, shirk or otherwise retreat from the most outrageously colorful challenges, circumstances and responsibilities. As a stubbornly spirited spectral figure, Carmen Maura is a matriarch to be reckoned with, unwilling to depart this world until amends have been made, explanations have been proffered, her children have been healed and her life has been fully lived. Yohana Cobo has clearly inherited the family cojones as a teenager who responds to attempted sexual assault with a knife in the chest, and Lola Duenas is a comic delight as a rather melancholy and ever put-upon younger sister.

There is an ever-present sense of abundant joy in this tale of revenge and reconciliation. Some things are stumbled upon, much is uncovered, by the end all will be revealed, and Almodóvar appears almost as devoted to his wonderful cast of characters are they are to one another.

A kind-hearted, audacious, spirited and spiritual delight.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0441909/

Shut Up & Sing

2006-10-29T21:13:00.000-05:00

Grade: B

Three years ago, I didn’t know who the hell the Dixie Chicks were. This past summer, I went to see them perform at Madison Square Garden.

Gee, I wonder how that happened?

Standing on a London stage within days of the Iraqi invasion, lead singer Natalie Maines told the assembled crowd the singing group was “ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas,” referring to George W. and his relationship to their home state. Free speech took a beating – record sales plummeted, country-western radio stations boycotted their music, cd’s were burned and death threats were issued. The Dixie Chicks made a virtually unprecedented move – and refused to apologize.

Charting the last several rocky years of their career, this adequate if uninspired documentary displays the Chicks in all their strident, chagrined, disbelieving, naïve yet principled glory. Far from politically sophisticated or media savvy operatives, a gut reaction to an appalling war lands them in hot water which they are neither expecting nor prepared to contend with. Unwittingly turned into poster girls for un-Americanism overnight, they heroically stand tall and together when most would point fingers and shrink away.

Ignorant hicks and nose-picking nationalists (sorry, no other characterization accurately describes) stand outside stadiums and concert halls with misspelled signs and misplaced patriotism. Tour sponsors panic, right-wing television pundits publicly masturbate, shameful fans desert in droves…and the Dixie Chicks write an album in response that is so heartfelt, dignified, raw and moving it literally redefines their careers and launches an entirely new fan base. Just for the record, these are extraordinarily talented singers, musicians and songwriters, and Natalie Maines has one of the purest voices one is likely to ever hear – yes, she also has a big mouth and a “take no prisoners” attitude, but when she mutters “What a fucking idiot” while watching the President attempting to show the group some sympathy while nevertheless supporting the boycotts, she displays a piss and vinegar bravado that is hysterically funny and outrageously endearing.

The film inexplicably goes back and forth in time to no real effect, becomes tedious when showing off the various husbands and cherub children scampering all over the place, and veers into Pennebaker territory while charting writing and recording sessions. Recent footage of escalating casualties and Bush’s falling approval ratings also try just a tad too hard to suggest Chick prescience. Still, the unfaltering sisterhood and stalwart support that exists between these three women is impressive, formidable and touching.

The film ends at the “scene of the crime” – the same London theater where an offhanded comment sent Americans into an internationally embarrassing hissy-fit – with an act of “censorship be damned” defiance that is awesomely impressive indeed.

At the concert I attended last summer, some guy in the crowd received enthusiastic cheers when he displayed a sign that stated “I’m Gay But I Still Love Chicks.” Me too.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0811136/

Marie Antoinette

2006-10-15T15:28:00.000-04:00

Grade: C+

Some boys take a beautiful girl,
And hide her away from the rest of the world.
I wanna be the one to walk in the sun.
Oh, girls, They wanna have fu-un.
Oh, girls, Just wanna have fun

Director Sofia Coppola translates an historical period piece into a tale of adolescent angst, insecurity and self-gratification, demonstrating that film directors can be every bit as self-indulgent as teenagers. The vistas are stunning, the pageantry glamorous, the royal courts resplendent, yet there’s something inexplicably strange, unconvincing and off-kilter about it all.

Versailles makes for quite the decadent landscape. Marie Antoinette, married at fourteen to secure a relationship between Austria and France, is initially chagrined but quickly mortified by her isolated life of minute-by-minute control, ceremony and observation. Court hierarchy determines which lady will dress her with which piece of clothing. The royal couple eats every bite of food as per protocol and in front of an audience. The newlywed’s wedding night is a thing of prayer, procession and participation by the court. Coppola’s conceit is that teenagers of one generation are just like teenagers of any other generation, and that a royal court must have been a straightjacket for anyone longing to be a free spirit. Mildly intriguing, occasionally whimsical and often filled with conventional scenes shot from fresh perspectives, the film nevertheless overwhelms its spin with heavy-handed flourishes and jarring weirdnesses. Blaring rock music repeatedly jolts one out of time and place (there go those rabble-rousing, misunderstood kids again) historical reference is barely alluded to and never integrated (why are the townspeople showing up at the palace with torches and pitchforks, again?) and the passage of time barely exists (the film spans 24 years but might as well span 24 months). The fact that Marie likes to spend money and live high on the hog, and a cute spin on the “let them eat cake” line she may never have actually delivered fails to elucidate how quickly she seems to spiral from being loved by everyone to being despised by royals and peasants alike.

Kirsten Dunst is initially charming, ultimately one-note, and truth-be-told a bit in-over-her-head playing our heroine from the ages of 14-38 yet always looking in her twenties and never adding much variety to her portrayal – Antoinette’s motivations never appear more than an inch deep, and Dunst fails to dig far enough beneath the surface to convince us otherwise. She is surrounded by a motley crew of the most oddly-cast actors, from Jason Schwartzman as a nebbishy Louis XVI to Rip Torn as a country-western Louis the XV to Saturday Night Live’s Molly Shannon (who mercifully doesn’t shove her fingers under her armpits and smell them) as a Lady of the Court. All of them look and sound like they’re playing dress up, and the acting is uniformly off, deadpan, and of the wrong time and place. Coppola doesn’t even bother trying for anything sounding remotely French, yet accents run the gamut regardless.

The film is not without its humor and its graces (especially in the first half as Kirsten is introduced to the elegantly confining world of the court) and Coppola’s cinematic eye shows off Versailles in all its glorious debauchery. But sadly, I walked into the film knowing very little about Maria Antonia Josefa Joanna von Habsburg-Lothringen – Marie Antoinette for short – and walked out a couple of long hours later none the wiser.

But damn Cyndi Lauper would be so proud.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0422720/

The Queen

2006-10-13T08:30:00.000-04:00

Grade: B+

Queen Elizabeth II portrays herself in this docudrama tracing the Royal Family’s response in the days following the death of Princess Diana.

That’s how good Helen Mirren is.

Stoic, wry, tenacious, rigid, Mirren is the thing itself – a woman of a certain time, a life of obligation, ceremony, formality and seclusion, caught completely off guard by a public expecting personal emotion and public grief. And all for a woman they never really knew, and the Royals didn’t especially like. She expects more of her people – the stiff upper lift persona the world has come to know – and is betrayed by a modernism she doesn’t purport to embrace or understand. Sympathetic in her naiveté, unlikable and unapologetic in her aloofness, release of emotion is so pinched it’s virtually indiscernible, any display of anguish confined in her eyes.

Michael Sheen is a Tony Blair man of the people, frustrated by the Queen’s miscalculations and downwardly spiraling poll numbers, but unabashed in his admiration for the genuine leadership, dignity and sense of history and survival she comports. He is a brilliant political animal, surrounded by gleefully opportunistic carnivores (including his wife, played by a deliciously disrespectful Helen McCrory) struggling to plug the dike of popular discontent until the crown gets its act together. Alex Jennings’ Prince Charles seems genuinely overwhelmed by sadness when the news arrives, a mortal among wax figures, but transparently calculating in his attempts to gauge the people for personal and political gain. James Cromwell and Sylvia Syms are equally hard as nails as Prince Philip and the Queen Mother, so unsympathetic, aristocratic and annoyed by all the folderol they make Elizabeth more human by mere comparison.

Filmmaker Stephen Frears has an impeccable knack for showing the anguished vulnerability behind the brick façade (who will ever forget Glenn Close’s single tear in his “Dangerous Liaisons”), a sophisticated skill in abundance here. He interweaves real footage seamlessly and to great effect, reminding us of a state of national mourning the likes of which weren’t to be seen again until 9/11 (perhaps inexplicable and incomparable, but the footage of lit candles, displays of public crying and oceans of flowers speaks for itself). While the film is a bit too staid and mannered for its own good, when Elizabeth finally walks among her people it is a bond that is remarkably symbiotic and quietly moving. Subject and Ruler are forged together in a way those of us from a republic couldn’t possibly begin to understand and appreciate, but we are given a rare glimpse into a relationship of derision and adoration that has lasted the ages.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0436697/

Little Children

2006-10-05T09:34:00.000-04:00

Grade: B+

The Director of In the Bedroom delivers yet another film flawlessly acted and filled with human insight, yet flawed by a screenplay that tries to encompass too much about too many things and winds up just a touch too filled with a sense of its own self-importance.

Tennessee Williams would blush from the suburban sultriness of it all. Amidst the jealously judgmental whisperings of the other moms, two strangers meet in a playground and find their own merry-go-round in one another. Kate Winslet takes one's breath away as a woman in a sexually regressive and emotionally vacuous marriage who feels equally numb toward her own child, Patrick Wilson is distractingly sexy as a stay at home dad who would probably prefer the role of child than parent. Throw in a sex offender returning home after a prison stint and an ex-cop suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and you get the R-rated version of Wisteria Lane, replete with punchy voiceovers telling us what people are thinking and feeling at the most intimate and inappropriate of moments.

Cold even when its steamy, distant yet compelling, broodingly funny and hysterically dark, the audience is kept at arm’s length as individual passions and proclivities sweat from every pore and childlike needs and emotions bubble over – one can almost hear the inner child screaming “I want it, I want it, I want it” under the cool mature exteriors. All this while the adults push their children on swings, suggestively lounge with their children at the community pool, and horde craving moments together during nap time. Every grownup suffers from one form of arrested development or another – basic immaturity and an inability to fulfill adult responsibilities, isolated detachment from one’s child, parental dependency, porn addiction and sexual deviance all find representation. Director/Screenwriter Todd Field fails to connect all the dots, and disparate storylines never form a cohesive or convincing whole, but the acting is so fine, the longing so universal, and the canvas so ambitious one is riveted and entertained by this passion play regardless.

Winslet gives the best performance of her career as a suffocating woman who chooses to leave her career to stay with her child, then spends her days longing for the husband she detests to return home at the end of the day. Wilson is simply too good looking to be such a good actor, but he suffuses his character with boyish sex-appeal and charming immaturity while never letting us forget he is very much an adult trying to fake his way through a very adult world. Jackie Earle Haley disappears inside his tormented pedophile, as disgustingly creepy as he is innocently pitiable. Everyone’s internalized insecurity manifests itself in indignant outrage, a general metaphor for life, relationships, and Congress. In the end, we’re all children waiting for someone to find us with our hand in the cookie jar.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0404203/

Little Miss Sunshine

2006-09-14T08:43:00.000-04:00

Grade: B+

A jammed clutch, stuck horn, faulty door, some farcical missteps and unresolved storylines only occasionally undermine this quirky, funny and often quite touching indie about an oddball family crammed a little too close for comfort while traveling together across country in a dilapidated van.

The family bickers and bitches incessantly. They belittle one another and don’t particularly like each other very much. Anger, resentment, contempt, judgment and misery are never far beneath the surface. Getting through a chicken in a bucket take-out dinner seems a nightly uphill ritual. Yet they are a family, and their unspoken commitment to each other is palpable, and their love for one another expresses itself in the most unexpected, comical, goofball, sensitive and forceful ways. When the youngest gets the “runner up” opportunity to compete in a beauty contest, the family’s coming together is less a plot convention than a natural extension of who they are to one another, warts and all.

What’s good here is quite wonderful, including a superb ensemble cast and a perceptive understanding about the nature of family. Toni Collete is the matriarchal glue, simultaneously sympathetic and exasperated by the collection of walking wounded in her midst, Greg Kinnear annoyingly bravado as a failed loser trying to teach others how to win. Steve Carrell is introspectively dignified as a man whose recent suicide attempt doesn’t prevent him from being one of the sanest members of the household, Alan Arkin tender and outrageous as a potty mouthed, drug snorting senior citizen, and Paul Dano refuses to speak but manages some of the funniest one-liners ever written on a spiral pad – he also expresses some long-repressed anguish and frustration with a modern day howl worthy of “King Lear.” At the center is Abigail Breslin, a child actor who never for a second irritates, can’t help but ingratiate, and exudes a natural energy that makes us feel like we’re watching a super 8 home movie even when the insanity jumps the shark or the shtickiness drives over the cliff.

The plot veers into some “National Lampoon’s Vacation” territory that belittles the story’s more authentic moments (buzzards, anyone?), a few scenes border on the implausible (a jilted man bumping into his obsession by happenstance) or the immaterial (a business venture gone asunder ending in meaningless confrontation), and the film stops rather than ends, leaving important storylines hanging without closure. But what is funny is very funny, what feels real feels very real, and a very small movie has a very big heart.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0449059/

Water

2006-07-16T12:57:00.000-04:00

Grade: A-

Poetic storytelling of a cruelly unpoetic way of life. Political upheaval, religious dogma and financial expedience all merge in this plight of widows made virtual untouchables in filmmaker Deepa Mehta’s tale of 1930’s India. Cinematic, romantic and lyrical in the telling, it is a story nonetheless imbued with sexist brutality and anguished realism.

Sacred scrolls thousands of years old provide the rationale for families (wishing one less mouth to feed) to damn their widowed relations to lives of isolation, degradation, prostitution and poverty. Following the path of an eight year old widowed by a husband she may never have even met, we enter a monastical world of quiet humility and imposed shame, silenced longing and repressed desire, pathological control and terrorized subjugation. In a world of only the most minimalist pleasures, an aged woman clings to memories of a single day with sweets in her life, a forbidden puppy provides warmth and camaraderie between comrades, a treasured parrot provides a speck of humanity to a misery of a mother hen. The clash between antiquated oppression and new enlightenment is ignited by a “little man in a loin cloth,” who sparks idealism in those affluent enough to renounce their way of life and dismissive hostility from those who know no other way.

Seema Biswas leads a moving cast as a widow torn by conflicted perceptions of religious obligation and societal manipulation. Spiritual devotion and piety does not stop her from questioning the ethics and morality behind her lot in life, and it is at once an elegant and humble performance. Sarala plays the central child widow with incredulous defiance, and John Abraham is charismatic as a lothario who believes he can rescue a woman from her fate only to seal it instead.

Though occasionally melodramatic and slowly paced around the fringes, there is a quiet pathos in Mehta’s telling that adds sweep and weight to these women’s lives, incorporating the political upheaval of the times and the shining light of the Mahatma without overpowering the simplicity of the story. The grace of offering water to a new widow after her long journey, the holy experience of communal bathing in the river and the separation between the haves and have-nots this body of water represents engulf the film with both austerity and grandeur. Final moments sear hope and despair in equal measure.

Lest anyone leave the theater with a holier-than-thou sensibility as we discover this barbaric tradition continues to this day, it bears remembering that even in this country individuals are denied the right to pursue love and life because of the bastardizing of religion and financial protectionism. Everywhere it seems, persecution and intolerance is bathed and baptized in the name of God.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0240200/

Superman Returns

2006-07-07T09:50:00.000-04:00

Grade: D+

He should have stayed away.

And the critics who raved about this film should have gone all the way back to Krypton with him. They truly belong in outer space.

John Williams’ majestic theme begins, the laser blue titles start soaring across the screen, and the heart begins to fly. You’ve been warned, the opening credits are the most exhilarating part of the movie.

Reverential to the point of mind-numbing, derivative to the point of thievery, this is a disappointingly dull, unimaginative, awkward, plodding soap opera of a comic book. Bryan Singer (of “X-Men” fame, until he left one clunker – “X-Men: The Last Stand” – to make this even bigger clunker) clearly has overwhelming affection for the man of steel, so much so that he dissed Superman’s III (remember Richard Pryor?) and IV: The Quest for Peace (did anyone actually see this movie?) and begins his film shortly after the second in the series ended. His bravado is so bold and daring one wonders how no one bothered to tell him he didn’t have an original screenplay.

Admittedly, I was never a huge fan of the original films – the first one spent what felt to this 15 year old (ever the critic) like f o r e v e r trapped in exposition until we finally got to see the guy in the leotard take flight, but Christopher Reeve had a tongue in cheek charisma (completely lacking in Brandon Routh’s lookalike but there the comparison ends performance), Gene Hackman was a giddily evil Lex Luthor (completely lacking in Kevin Spacey’s also has a bald head but otherwise coldly bland, occasionally screechy performance) and the entire film at least found the goofy, larger than life whimsy in it all (completely lacking in this heavy-handedly serious dissertation on how dearly the world needs a Superhero in these frightening and uncertain times). 9/11 imagery abounds, as shot after shot of the southern tip of Manhattan permeates and a man falling from a skyscraper (arms and legs flailing) is saved by Superman just before splattering on the pavement. We get it, Bryan, we get it.

We return time after time to the desolate “Fortress of Solitude,” hear Marlon Brando’s voice-overs, Clark and Lois take “Can You Read My Mind” flight all over again, Lex Luther pulls out the Kryptonite, until it becomes achingly clear all Singer has in his own bag of tricks is a geeky fondness for the movie of his youth, and a big bag of money someone gave him to recreate it. The stuff of dork dreams to be sure (I’m ready when you are, Mr. Lucas) but not all that entertaining for the rest of us.

The convoluted plot revolves around Lex stealing some of Superman’s crystals to create a landmass that will submerge the good old US of A, with a subplot involving the paternity of Lois Lane’s sickly kid. Neither is terribly compelling, but the latter literally dissolves into a hospital bed side confession whispered into a comatose ear – will oh will the heart monitor begin to perk up? Pure drivel. At 2 hours and 37 minutes, one keeps waiting (and waiting) (and waiting) for the payoff that never comes. Special effects range the gamut from occasionally thrilling to unusually pedestrian. Kate Bosworth is a miscast Lois Lane, Frank Langella is given nothing to do as Perry White (even his “Great Caesar’s Ghost” feels awkwardly inserted), James Marsden is most sympathetic in what is usually the least sympathetic “soon to be dumped” boyfriend role, and Parker Posey irritates beyond all explanation as Lex’s girl toy. But the greatest sin of all, especially for all of us who remember the “you’ll believe a man can fly” tagline of the original – you don’t. Routh looks so completely rubbery, animated and computer generated he, like the rest of the movie, remains stubbornly earthbound.

More Move Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0348150/

The Devil Wears Prada

2006-07-04T19:14:00.000-04:00

Grade: B+

It is a great relief that no one I know suffers under the oppression of a boss who is demanding, arrogant, immature, moody, petulant, patronizing, needy, unappreciative or self-aggrandizing in any way, yet mysteriously the cult of the terrible boss is alive and well and – thanks to the divine Meryl Streep – a resplendent and gloriously bitchy thing to behold.

The boss who never says please or thank you. The boss who loathes voice mail. The boss we despise to distraction yet consistently apologize for. Smile a broad toothy smile at during the day and rail against to distraction when home at night. The boss who turns us into an addict for their abuse. There really oughta be a 12-step program.

Ms. Streep, who has recently been overacting up a storm in such unnecessary works as “The Manchurian Candidate” and “Prime,” here deserves an Oscar for devouring the scenery while never undermining her humanity. Able to induce chagrined waves of fear, knowing chuckles of recognition and pangs of sympathy with the mere lift of an eyebrow, tilt of a head or curl of a lip, she is a megalomaniacal tyrant with a heart of, well, stone who we nevertheless love to hate and can’t help but care for at least a little. It is a towering comedic performance, emblazoned with over-quaffed white hair and rather appalling designer eyewear. Make-up off it is also jaw-droppingly dramatic and vulnerable, and one cannot imagine another soul alive but Streep walking the “Norma Desmond” precipice without for a moment careening over the edge.

Meryl is the reason to see the film, but there are indeed other pleasures. Anne Hathaway is a plucky straightman to Streep’s top banana, and if her personal life is a bit too contrived to hold much interest, her descent up the ladder of success is entirely credible. Stanley Tucci may find himself with a nomination of his own as Streep’s flamboyantly arresting #2 guy, knowing how to manipulate the fray while never quite managing to rise above it – melancholic yet solid, not completely likable yet thoroughly sympathetic. As ace Fashionista assistant, Emily Blunt is harsh and hateful, neither friend nor colleague, yet sullenly captures the pathetic and comic longing of someone willing to sell their soul in the name of career and designer wear. While neither Adrian Grenier nor Simon Baker display much in the way of acting ability beyond puppy dog eyes and conniving smiles, they are both exceedingly pretty to look at, although Baker’s eyebrows are genuinely bushy to the point of distraction.

Director David Frankel returns to his HBO roots, directing with a slick, quick and clean “Sex in the City” meets “Entourage” sheen, making even the most jaded New Yorker appreciate the gloss and glamour of their surroundings. While the screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna (based on the blockbuster book by Lauren Weisberger) is unoriginal around the edges and mildly jarring (if utterly anticipated) in its speedily upbeat resolution, its core is tart, smart and sure to induce mortified enthusiastic nods of “been there, done that.”

Sorry, no fashion allusions in this review – my fave designers are Eddie du Bauer and Monsieur Gap, footware provided by New Balance – de la Renta, Versace and Prada mean less than nothing to moi.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0458352/

A Prairie Home Companion

2006-06-19T21:19:00.000-04:00

Grade: C+

Robert Altman strikes a folksy thud in this tale of an ole-fashioned radio show’s final performance.

No one can cast and photograph like Altman, and backstage dressing rooms come alive amidst the tarnished glamour and multiple make-up mirrors of a broadcast facing retirement and a theater facing dismantlement. A tight-knit and eccentric company of radio performers brings kooky yet ultimately tiring charm to the proceedings, on-air performances lackluster when juxtaposed against the real life nuttiness behind the curtain. While one never forgets the star kilowatts at play, sisters Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin delight in an overtalking frenzy of remembrances, riffing off one another with giddy abandon, and John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson are a salty pair of singing cowboys, grungy, foul and funny in equal measures. Kevin Kline is stuck in Mickey Spillane dialogue and klutzy pratfalls that quickly become irritatingly tedious, and Lindsay Lohan has the personality of peeling wallpaper next to such effortless veterans. Garrison Keillor, playing, well, Garrison Keillor, is so other-worldly strange one spends much of the movie wondering if he’s truly this weird in real life.

Once the initial charm wears thin, there ain’t all that much of an actual story to tell. Altman attempts to infuse the piece with a treatise on the nature of death, none of which gels with the frothier tale of a time gone by and friends about to be separated by unemployment. Virginia Madsen is somewhat appallingly misplaced as an “angel of death” figure who mysteriously skulks around the theater, touching people (physically and spiritually) and taking them away to the hereafter. Tommy Lee Jones is a cardboard cutout as the meannie station owner utterly devoid of sentimentality and stoically disinterested in preserving a lost era.

When the performers are jabbering good-naturedly backstage or singing goofy songs with carefree pleasure on stage, there is a sweet twinkle that whiles away the hours. But, as someone who usually loves the interlocking multi-dimensions of Altman’s work (his last two films both made my top ten lists) this is a mildly bemusing, lightly pretentious, somewhat unfinished and unfocused throwaway.

Like an oldie but a goodie radio show one remembers from yesteryear, the nostalgic expectation is far more powerful than the actual wattage of the transmission. Bidding a fond farewell doesn’t seem tragic so much as somewhat overdue.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0420087/

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-06-19T08:49:00.000-04:00

Grade: B+

Hell, he’s got my vote again.

Flagrantly self-promoting yet simultaneously humble and humbling. Al Gore, the “man who used to be the next President of the United States” goes out on the road, crisscrossing the nation and multiple continents to deliver a slideshow presentation on global warming. Frightening, enlightening, irreverent yet deadly serious, disbelievers will be compelled to accept the indisputable truth – global warming is real, is devastating our planet, is our fault, and we’re not doing a damn thing to stop it. Yet even those of us who have known it all along have much to learn, and Gore provides the facts with startling starkness and dramatic intensity. Illuminating, surprisingly riveting and also percolating with charm, passion and self-deprecating humor, one learns as much about the person as about the environment. The commitment and intelligence of the man provides a small glimmer of hope when juxtaposed against the evil, ignorance and avarice of money-grubbing politicians and businessmen and the multi-generational apathy of earth’s citizens.

In an age where there is an ideological war of religion over science, where our elected officials have become masters of distortion, manipulation and triangulation, Gore holds our feet to the fire. Lucid, thoughtful, alarming yet somehow invigorating, this is not only a compelling film, it is an important one that everyone should feel obligated to see.

Roughly 1/3 of the documentary is biographical, and here one can’t help but feel we are watching a promotional video at the next Democratic National Convention (I half expected Gore to declare that he still believed in “a place called Hope”). While one may believe his dedication to the environment is related to a shift in life perspective caused by the near-death of his son and that he grew up on a farm where he had a difficult time separating “fun from work,” it all feels somewhat produced and disingenuous when set against the gripping integrity of his presentation. Only a segment involving his father’s tobacco crops and the loss of his beloved sister to lung cancer rings both real and relevant. Still, Gore now comes across as an elder statesmen, brimming with untainted wisdom, low-key and likable, refreshingly wonky. An antidote of sorts for cynical times.

And then the film ends, the screen begins flashing a list of things all Americans can do as individuals to make things better – and 95% of the audience runs for the exit signs. My cynicism returns.

See this movie, stay until the bitter end, and make a commitment to actually do something.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0497116/

X-Men: The Last Stand

2006-05-30T08:27:00.000-04:00

Grade: C+

The Matrix Revolutions, The Godfather Part III, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Superman III (remember, the one with Richard Pryor?). Yes, even Return of the Jedi.

Trilogy-itis.

Far too aware of its own tongue-in-cheekiness, too self-conscious of its anti-homophobia battle cry, too much a franchise longing for its creator, this third in the series feels long in the fang and short on transconfiguration. The most intelligent and intriguing of the superhero genre, political and social commentary freely intermingles with scrumptious malevolence and live action heroics, as mutants with uniquely individualized powers battle prejudice and one another to determine the fate of the species. This time around, a “cure” has been discovered, pitting mostly well-meaning but clueless humans against supremacist reactionaries against moderate “why can’t we all just get along” triangulators seeking a better world and a place at the table.

Disappointingly, everyone involved seems rather burdened with the enterprise, from the screenwriters who borrow copiously from other sci-fi conventions (a “Star Trek” holodeck opens the proceedings) to a special effects department heavily relying on yesterday’s innovations (slow-mo “Matrix” photography permeates) to actors who seem genuinely disinterested and mildly embarrassed by it all this time around. Hugh Jackman is dreadfully scowling it in as the man who would be wolf, Halle Berry can’t quite seem to believe she has a gold statue on the mantle and still has to honor a pre-Oscar contract, and even Sir Ian strikes one as a tad above it all, making trucks, bridges and assorted weaponry magnetically move with the grandiloquent flick of a wrist, yet falling back on his fascist “Richard III” characterization for histrionic locution and eye-twitching, cheek-dropping facial expression. Only first-timer Kelsey Grammer seems to be having any fun at all, while everyone else seems marginally irritated by especially early make-up calls.

Originator Bryan Singer (who left the series to make the latest “Superman” incarnation) seemed to truly believe in the substance and significance of this world, while his heirs seem blatantly more concerned with cash cows than mutant-inspired allegory. Some dazzling visuals and a whimsically insightful worldview this time around fails to surmount truncated and poorly connected storylines, platitudes pontificated, relationships uncharted, and generally indifferent and lackadaisical filmmaking.

If, like me, you’re a fan who simply can’t resist, be sure to stay through the closing credits for a “trilogy into a quartet” coda.

As Sophia Coppola knows all too well, the third time around is far too often not the charm but the curse.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0376994/

The Da Vinci Code

2006-05-21T13:33:00.000-04:00

Grade: B-

It may just be that the 40,000,000 of us who read and reveled in the book didn’t really have the right to expect any better.

A rip-roaring, barn-storming page-turner, the Dan Brown novel had at its center an enigmatically charismatic protagonist, plot puzzles spanning multiple languages and numerous centuries, indecipherably deciphered anagrams, inflammatory artistic, spiritual and historical interpretations delivered in pose-striking soliloquy, character schizophrenia and sleight-of-hand, identity traumas and leaps of faith galore. Not unlike the cryptex (a cylindrical device invented by Leonardo Da Vinci for transporting secure messages) that features so prominently, it would have taken the filmmaking equivalent of Alan Turing to 1) wet nurse a screenplay adaptation intricate enough to satiate the mind, faithful enough to satisfy the diehards and ingenious enough to actually make sense; 2) find the delicate balance between spoken declarations and descriptive visual imagery; 3) cast and direct the perfect stable of actors able to ignite the scenery without actually chewing on it; 4) find the right composer to score the mystery/thriller with giddy intensity rather than reverential pomposity; and, 5) make it all lift off the page like Da Vinci’s helicopter and soar across the screen like Da Vinci’s hang glider.

Nine out of ten directors couldn’t have truly pulled it off (as we’ve learned with most of the “Harry Potter” translations) so one must ask if it’s fair to blame Ron Howard for not being the one in ten. Admit it, we all heard about this project with something akin to incredulous hope.

Workmanlike yet still entertaining, over-long yet never labored, Howard has respectably and respectfully recreated the book for film, faithful if never divine. Relying on his dependable bag of tricks, letters and numbers pop off the screen three-dimensionally a la “A Beautiful Mind” and overexposed and choppy black and white photography a la “Cinderella Man” provides clarity in exposition and flashback. A violin-pulsating score by Hans Zimmer too often reveals our hearts should be palpitating instead of placid, and editing by Daniel Hanley and Mike Hall too often disorients instead of elucidates. Any combustible controversies about the hidden nature of certain religious sects or the relationship between history, faith and dogma fizzle under confusing hyperbole and overstuffed plotlines. One lone Arthurian moment in the film’s finale briefly touches the heart and makes one long for the film that might have been.

Dull and flat performances (Tom Hanks and the usually luminescent Audrey Tautou) intermingle with broadly bombastic heavily accented ones (Paul Bettany and Alfred Molina) making for an odd mixture of bored bemusing fascination. Then Sir Ian McKellen enters the fare, and with a twinkle in his eye and a very welcome flair inserts some genuine fun and personality into the proceedings. He seems the only one able to add some gravitas without taking it all too seriously, and the film sags severely under the weight of his absence.

As someone who read the novel and still found it all rather difficult to follow, anyone thinking they will understand the fame and infamy of the book by attending the movie is likely to be disappointed.

The trade paperback is available for less than the price of a ticket.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0382625/

United 93

2006-04-29T19:09:00.000-04:00

Grade: A

Yes. It’s too soon. Much too soon.

It is also the most powerful story of humanity and heroism in the face of fear and evil put on film since “Schindler’s List.”

Expect the heart to pound harder while walking to the theater. Expect a queasiness in the stomach that is unlikely to go away. Expect to be mildly appalled when trailers for this summer’s action flicks flash on the screen in light of the film you’re about to see. Expect your partner to tell you “you’re breathing too loudly” as the film gets underway.

Expect to be profoundly changed.

Gripping and excruciating, audacious and agonizing, inspirational and gut wrenching. Writer/director Paul Greengrass has painstakingly designed a masterful work, a docudrama that is breathlessly dramatic yet never manipulative, intimately revealing yet never disrespectful, unbearably disturbing without ever exploiting imagery, distorting the facts or casting severe fingers of blame.

Mass air-traffic confusion create pangs of empathy that ultimately give way to frustrated mortification as we witness a crippling system-wide breakdown in control, communication and action on the ground. In the air, one can feel the ambivalence, adrenaline and self-righteous indignation pumping through terrorist arteries, all too quickly supplanted by terrifying chaos, heart-stopping panic, palpable fear and outrage. We never get to know the brave souls who fought back, anymore than they would have known each other when they became instantly and inexorably united by circumstance. The stories of their individual lives would come later, making their grace, humanity and resolve in the moment all the more remarkable in the face of being utter and complete strangers. There is no need to create a national fiction about what may or may not have happened on that plane. No need to wave the flag for their lives to have meaning or gravitas. Their courage and dignity speaks for itself. 81 minutes. The flight was in the air for 81 minutes.

With nary a hint of opportunity for character development, it is all the more stunning that real life re-enactors intermingle so seamlessly with actors both on the ground and on the plane. Christian Clemenson, Peter Hermann, Cheyenne Jackson (an openly-gay Broadway leading man playing openly-gay Mark Bingham, something one rarely sees in Hollywood – Cheyenne continues to be a personal hero, it must be said) and the entire cast sear their stunned terror and awe-inspiring spirit into one’s memory. Great credit must also be given to Lewis Alsamari, Jamie Harding, Omar Berdouni, and Khalid Abdalla for their bravery in presenting terrorists not as raging caricatures but as frail, frightened, and mournfully misguided human beings.

Cinematography by Barry Ackroyd is nothing short of miraculous in its ability to recreate moments of flight and confinement sprinkled with subtle historical references that never come close to the gratuitous, and film editing by Clare Douglas & Christopher Rouse and a sparingly placed score by John Powell will have one digging nails into armrests and wishing for a bullet to bite down on.

When passengers begin to make farewell phone calls that have so scorched themselves into our national psyche, it is mayhap the most painful and humbling few moments one is ever likely to experience on film.

Sometimes, “too soon” is a worthy price to pay.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0475276/

Eleven Met Out (Strákarnir okkar)

2006-03-28T22:21:00.000-05:00

Grade: C+

Endearing but not terribly engaging, this tale of an out gay Islandic soccer player proves once and for all that gay sports figures have just as much right to be dull as their heterosexual counterparts.

Björn Hlynur Haraldsson strikes a handsome figure both in and out of full soccer regalia, but brings a blandness of personality that represents the film’s overall sense of itself. Neither broad enough nor sophisticated enough to generate much unforced laughter and neither insightful enough nor poignant enough to illicit much genuine pathos, the film manages to be sweet, well-meaning, occasionally pleasing if overall bland and uneventful. Gay Dads and Straight Moms both manage to be sexually inappropriate and selfishly self-absorbed around their kids, immediate and unqualified acceptance from some goes hand-in-hand with outrageous yet hard-to-take-seriously bouts of homophobia from others, lots of soccer players take their clothes off and there is mercifully little time ever spent on a soccer field.

Uncreatively filmed and a bit disjointed in storytelling, Iceland appears in a constant state of torrential downpour – not unlike this progressive-hearted and good-natured independent, the sun rarely ever shines terribly brightly.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0427906/

Half Nelson

2006-03-26T16:28:00.000-05:00

Grade: A-

Standing behind his opponent, the wrestler wraps one arm under the opponent's armpit and places the hand behind the victim's head. The attacker then pulls back with that side of his body while pushing forward with the hand, bending the victim's shoulder back and pressing the chin against the chest.

A wrestling move that often paralyzes the opponent’s ability to move.

Ryan Gosling joins the ranks of one of the best we’ve got as an inner-city history teacher and functioning drug addict. Blood shot eyes and the occasionally coke-induced bloody nose doesn’t initially detract from his excellence as a teacher and never denies his compassion as a human being. When a favorite student discovers him in a highly compromised position, a story of lives knocked precipitously off track and potentially over the side of a cliff slowly and realistically unfolds. A student and mentor inexorably intertwined, this is a battle of real world survival in the face of serious character flaws and devastating odds. Passionate and charmed days of teaching and learning are seamlessly woven with latch-key afternoons, questionable friendships and alliances, troubled relationships and lonely isolation, uncontrollable and unquenchable nights of partying and Visine mornings.

As shown through Gosling’s kind yet tortured eyes and Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s stark yet surprisingly gentle and often funny screenplay, addiction on maintenance is both desperate and demoralizing, a vice grip even the most honorable soul is powerless to break free of. A former recovering girlfriend adds to one’s sense of quietly personal devastation, a sidetrip to parentland as per usual telegraphs where the damage began.

Newcomer Shareeka Epps glows as a teenager whose mentor falls dramatically from grace and denies her seriously needed security and balance. While the relationship teeters on the edge of appropriateness, it is a friendship built on genuine connection and understanding, good-humored affection and mutually-panicked concern. The fact that adults and children often switch roles here only underlines just how childlike and primal the emotions of all us walking wounded truly are. Hope and hopelessness find their ways to the surface in equal and unexpected measure, as the various roles that drugs play in both these lives intersect in inevitable, uncompromising, empathetic and honest ways.

One wishes for a slightly accelerated pace, and the scenes between Gosling and Epps so crackle with tenderness, humor and power one can’t help but desire even greater definition, but the film’s decency, confidence and intimacy make a somewhat ambiguous finale – as with most fine works – something to be discussed and felt for days.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0468489/

Hate Crime

2006-03-19T13:20:00.000-05:00

Grade: F

The real hate crime is being made to sit through this movie. I know, I know, that was way too easy.

Mind-numbingly manipulative, absurdly amateurish and preposterously pretentious, if not for its homosexual characters this one would be a shoo-in for next year’s Academy Award for Best Picture.

An idyllic gay couple – Robby and Trey – live an idyllic life in an idyllic suburb. They make love. They jog. They walk their little pug dog in the nearby park. They plan their commitment ceremony. They discuss adoption.

A Bible-thumping, homo-hating, closet case moves in next store. The music swells.

Robby and Trey play baseball in the backyard with their loving and adoring nephew, leaving the bat behind at day’s end. The camera focuses on the bat. The music swells.

The couple gets into a tiff about adoption, as all us gays and lesbians across the nation apparently do on a regular basis. Trey takes the dog for a “time out” walk in the nearby park. The music swells. He calls Robbie two minutes later on his cell phone to make amends, because we gays and lesbians also can’t stand to be mad at each other for more than two minutes. The music swells. Another call comes in, and Robbie puts Trey on tragic hold. The music swells. By the time the call is reconnected, it will be too late. The cell phone is seen majestically laying on the ground.

The music REALLY swells.

Writer/director Tommy Stovall has created a soporific gay/greek fantasy/tragedy filled to excruciating overflow with allegorical prototypes and summer stock situations – the pimped out black detective who accuses the victim’s partner of committing the crime, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, barely suppressing the word “faggot” desperately wanting to escape his lips; the fanatical preacher who spouts “gays are infecting the earth” rhetoric and has a website that includes its own “God Hates Fags” subsection; the loving and salty-talkin’ neighbor who thinks of the gay couple as “her own sons” and who has a dark secret of her own involving an abusive second husband and an act of retribution; the adoring and accepting mother willing to punch out anyone who dares suggest gays are bad; the evil, face scrunched, buttoned-to-the-collar son of a preacher with nudie pictures of men in the “private” section of his home computer.

The hate crime happens in the early evening, yet the inefficient suburban police don’t pick up the bloody bat from the park grounds until sometime the following morning, then blame the victim for a lack of evidence. The surviving partner returns home after his betrothed spasmodically dies in the hospital (no mere flatline will do) to find the wedding rings in the mail and a message about the wedding invitations on the answering machine – you just know one of those rings will end up on his dead partner’s finger. We discover the satanic next-door-neighbor has a hate crimes rap sheet.

Just when it seems as though we have reached the ultimate saturation point and there cannot possibly be one more overwrought cliché or inane bit of dialogue crammed into the Stovall songbook, a pocket tape recorder produces a secret conversation, a telephoto camera lens takes clandestine pictures of lurid activities, homes are broken into and church services are crashed.

When the protagonist joins forces with mother-in-law and neighbor-like-a-mother to hatch a plan of revenge and retaliation, the film makes the leap from banal and juvenile to masturbatory and gratuitous. When the flashbacks begin, and we see the bat smashing upside the victim’s head in graphic detail, this reviewer did something he hasn’t done in some 35+ years of filmgoing – I walked out of the movie theater. While it is theoretically possible (in some alternate universe) that the final 15-20 minutes contain some “Citizen Kane” brilliance or “Sixth Sense” revelation, ninety minutes of puerile storytelling and the offensive denigration of such important subject matter were simply too much to stomach. I give standing outside in the freezing cold waiting for my partner to finish the movie a C+ in comparison. Catching the flu would have proved a worthy trade.

The acting is uniformly atrocious, the film score unbearably punctuating, and the seats exceedingly uncomfortable. Run, don’t walk…

to your nearest computer, go online, and contribute the cost of your movies ticket(s), popcorn, Twizzlers, soda, transportation, babysitting and all other incidental costs to Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth’s Anti-Violence Project at www.ligaly.org or to the New York City Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project at www.avp.org.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0415833/

Memoirs of a Geisha

2006-02-05T11:15:00.000-05:00

Grade: D

Like a Haiku written by an American 3rd Grader, director Rob Marshall has taken something foreign, mysterious and exotic and transformed it into something lifeless, melodramatic, glossy, predictable and, worst of all things, excruciatingly dull.

If he wanted to make a film about something Japanese, why didn’t he try Stephen Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures” instead? We know he can direct good movie musicals.

The book saved my life – anyone spending a week with their mother in a Floridian retirement community knows that a good book spells the difference between survival and suicide. American-born (we’re talking Chattanooga, Tennessee, folks) author Arthur Golden infused his novel with a passion borne of all things Japanese – a degree in Japanese art, a Master’s in Japanese history, and time actually spent in the Orient. The tale felt authentically Japanese, even if the author was not.

“Chicago” made Rob Marshall an overnight wunderkind who Hollywood was willing to give the pick of the litter to and throw mega million dollar financing at. But, not unlike a director named Michael Cimino who sank a studio, one lauded film and a keen visual eye does not an auteur make. Like this film, “Heavens Gate” looked beautiful too. It also starred an actress from another country (in that case, France) whose English was so dreadful no one but the director could understand her.

Somehow, Marshall was given carte blanche to cast actors (most of whom hail from places other than Japan) speaking garbled English by rote, who don’t seem to fully understand the (bad) dialogue they’re being asked to speak. The result is a series of distancing, deadpan and dreary deliveries lacking in any personality, depth or pathos. Michelle Yeoh brings grace and dignity to the role of a mentor Geisha, but the rest of the cast runs the gamut from bland to overwrought to indecipherable. Screenwriter Robin Swicord has turned a kimono into sack cloth, taking a sensual and sumptuous story and replacing it with a confused plotline, stilted scenes, embarrassingly affected voice-overs and vapid dialogue – one is sometimes relieved not to be able to understand pronouncements like “when one has already bitten into a plum, who else would want to taste it?” A score by John Williams is another heavy-handed Hollywood cliché, filled with shakuhachi flutes and koto harps but utterly lacking in organic or original flavor.

The film is an empty vessel, yet is indeed a beauty to behold. Dion Beebe’s cinematography is the single element that keeps the Hari Kari sword at bay, replete with Japanese villages, Jane Austen cliffs and colorful pageantry. Yet Marshall’s Geisha choreography is a bad Broadway version of a kabuki pantomime.

Truth be told, one doubts whether a film so steeped in a specific essence and tradition should have been attempted by anyone other than a Japanese director filmed in the country and language of its origin and presented with English subtitles. Then one remembers who wrote the transcendent book in the first place, and the blame crushes like a sumo wrestler on the shoulders of Rob Marshall.

too much all that jazz
Rob’s “Memoirs of a Geisha”
bomb dropped on Japan

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0397535/

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

2006-01-22T14:36:00.000-05:00

Grade: B+

It is at least somewhat fitting that, close friends and mutual admirers that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were, this first cinematic translation of the Lewis children’s classic should look remarkably similar to Peter Jackson’s version of “Lord of the Rings.” Mutantesque villains stomp the ground in preparation for the kill, a ragtag group traverse snowcapped mountain ranges together, cameras swoop overhead to capture the largess of battle, and humankind is yet again savior of all the land.

But this one has talking animals, an ice Queen, and children instead of hobbits.

Not unlike the “Harry Potter” series, the film suffers a touch from too literal a page by page translation – the whimsy lies in the C.S. Lewis tale itself and less in any creative conceit added by the screenwriter. Too long, violent and intense for young children, cynical adults should stay away as well. If the concept of two married otters bickering with each other is just too much to handle, this may not be the experience for you. For all its epic battles and Christ-like resurrection references, this remains a children’s story for the kid in us all.

Four siblings, brought to the countryside to escape the ravages of WWII London, find a magical land in a wardrobe closet – it was either that or watch sexy women strike nudie poses at Judi Dench’s place. They also learn lessons of loyalty, leadership, and redemption. Four first rate child actors (Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell) some solid voice-over work from the likes of Liam Neeson (Aslan, the Lion) and Rupert Everett (the Fox) and some genuinely glorious computer effects fill the screen with blazing color and fantasy. James McAvoy plays a faun with genuine adorableness, and Jim Broadbent delivers a delicious cameo as an adult who believes. Disappointingly, Tilda Swinton is a storybook villain of a Queen here, a one note spear in the center of the film’s heart. If the film drags, which it does, it is because there is no real threat felt or outcome questioned.

Still, a gentle and innocent heart saves the day, as brothers and sisters valiantly and energetically learn to protect one another and fight for the nature that surrounds them. Director Andrew Adamson uses imaginative and occasionally thrilling imagery to wondrous effect, and replaces Peter Jackson’s dark grays and ominous tones with blazing light and bursting Technicolor. Blood and gore is more often referenced rather than displayed, as humans, animals and various other-wordly inventions turn a harsh winter into a hopeful summer. It is surprisingly moving to see children, torn from their home and forced to adapt to both real and fantastical new surroundings, restore order and balance to the only world they can.

Check your inner curmudgeon at the door, or you simply don’t stand a chance.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0363771/

Mrs. Henderson Presents

2006-01-17T09:06:00.000-05:00

Grade: C

212-555-7896. 212-555-8879. 222-555-5433. 222-555-9932. 212-555-1167. 212-555-3546
212-555-4872.

Dame Judi Dench reading from a telephone book would indeed be preferable to phoned-in sentiment and irritatingly old-fashioned storytelling.

I adore Judi Dench. I adore London. I adore theatre. What’s wrong with this picture?

In this “based on a true story” story, a widow decides to buy a theater in pre-WWII London. She hires Bob Hoskins to manage the place. She wants the women to strike nudie tableaus on stage for reasons to be cloyingly explained later. Dench and Hoskins bicker for no explicable reason but with gusto, which they enjoy far more than we do. Their relationship is all rather contrived and by rote, and for two great thespians they have surprisingly little chemistry together.

What is intended as a risqué, bawdy, jovial and yet quietly moving confection of “the show must go on” patriotism and showmanship is instead a drearily dull warhorse, delivered with a neverending wink and a nod at just how cheeky and naughty everyone is being. Dench is ever the grand dame, larger than life yet vulnerably smaller in shadow, and as always her mere presence lifts the material and creates an air of enchanted elegance. But the screenplay is disjointed and episodic, the characters underwritten conventions, and there is nothing particularly interesting or energetic to inspire or beguile – even the stage numbers themselves carry a lack of creativity and an air of mothballed tedium about them. Attempting to recreate war torn London, Dench is relegated to standing on a rooftop overlooking a miniature city replete with burning model buildings and itty bitty searchlights, and literally standing on soapboxes to deliver “let’s do it for the boys” orations. A melodramatic episode involving a chorus girl from the countryside, some protection-less sex with a soldier boy, and a London blitz is such an embarrassing chestnut it’s unintentionally laughable.

And, it is frankly offensive in 2005 for filmmakers to believe the representation of a fey gay eunuch is still acceptable. Dench is a widow, Hoskins is married, all of the chorus girls seem to have stage door Johnny’s aplenty, yet the one gay character seems exotically locked in a closet somewhere until it’s time for him to go onstage and perform with the lovely ladies.

Like the rest of the film, it’s all a throwback to a dated, mustier, one-dimensional time.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0413015/

Best of 2005

2006-01-07T19:31:00.000-05:00

10. Paradise Now
9. Munich
8. In Her Shoes
7. The Squid and the Whale
6. Capote
5. A History of Violence
4. Match Point
3. Junebug
2. Murderball
1. Brokeback Mountain

Honorable Mentions: Batman Begins; Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith; Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire

Caché (Hidden)

2006-01-07T10:45:00.000-05:00

First 116 Minutes: A
Last Minute: F
Final Grade: B-

Like a flavored dose of castor oil, some critics will tell you this French avant garde mystery is good for your film-going health.

Me, it tasted delicious going down, but I left with a bit of a stomach ache.

From the opening long shot, you know you’re in brilliant hands as film credits find a boldly original way of filling the screen. The long shot holds, minute after minute, and one is forced to closely observe, analyze, breathe, and wait. Many such long shots appear throughout writer/director Michael Haneke’s atmospheric piece, building tension, creepiness and suspense…until he pulls a Jeanine Pirro and loses a page from his script. The last one.

A tediously pro-forma but pleasantly married couple begin receiving surveillance video tapes of the outside of their home. Who is sending them and why they are being sent is a mystery that slowly begins to unfold as more and different tapes arrive and subtle clues appear. Childhood infractions and anguished secrets are uncovered, trustless relationships unravel, and the film quietly leads to a devastating revelation that never quite takes place. Nicely acted by Daniel Auteuil and the ever-incandescent Juliette Binoche, the film has a coolly voyeuristic flavor and several intensely startling moments that cause the heart to leap and hands to flitter over one’s eyes. It is a thrilling, percolating ride that ends with a confusing whimper rather than an anticipated bang. A final (and much talked about) “Where’s Waldo” scene is a blurry, overpopulated long shot where one is likely to either 1) not see what the director intended us to see, or 2) have perfect enough vision to actually see the director’s final dénouement, yet still leave the theater as confused as someone who hadn’t.

Left to our own devices to extrapolate and theorize whodunit, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle assembled look more and more like a Pablo Picasso than an Alfred Hitchcock.

The impact of unresolved and unacknowledged guilt on one’s life is a weighty theme, and Haneke brings all his considerable talents to build a moody and challenging piece intentionally designed to leave us uncomfortable and in doubt. This does not, however, completely let him off the hook for failing to know how to conclude his own story. Too much, in fact, remains “Hidden.”

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0387898/

Match Point

2006-01-03T18:56:00.000-05:00

Grade: A

In his most audacious, challenging, confident film in many, many years – let me be the first to admit that Woody Allen played me like a finely tuned instrument. Not since Scott Joplin music played while Robert Redford and Paul Newman strummed their noses at one another have I felt so gloriously duped and so wondrously manipulated.

A former pro-tennis player ingratiates himself into the lives of an upper class British family. As played by the gorgeously charming and boyishly vulnerable Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, his odd mixture of humility, graciousness, ambition, admirable independence and sexual aggressiveness keeps one forever off-balance, unsure whether he is likable, manipulative, or merely the lucky beneficiary of timing and good fortune. An accidental meeting at what will soon become his fiancé’s family estate slowly develops into a torrid love affair, and the tennis player attempts to have it all and then some by burying himself deeper and deeper into a web of deceptions, denial, self-inflicted angst and weaknesses inflamed. And still, Woody Allen is so bloody brilliant we are not sure exactly how we feel about this man.

Sharp, controlled and sophisticated, the film’s first 90 minutes deconstruct a man slowly but inevitably entranced by a life of luxury while simultaneously captivated by toe-curling (yes, my toes indeed curled sitting in the theater) passion and sexuality. As sensitively portrayed respectively by Emily Mortimer and Scarlett Johansson, wife and mistress are both far too strong, smart, and world-wise to allow themselves to fall into differing yet mutually untenable situations with the same man, yet their falls make perfect, inexorable, human sense. And still, Allen is so bloody brilliant we are not sure exactly how we feel about this man.

And then, as sometimes happens in a movie theater, my heart began to sink with dread as the film started to veer off a precipice, taking a (not to be revealed) plot turn that left me feeling angry, let-down and utterly betrayed that such an ingenious and involving screenplay could make such a trashy and bogus misstep. How could Allen have flummoxed a return volley so badly in the film’s final act? Malaise quickly set in and a premature dismissal began.

I don’t know that I have ever been so stunningly toyed with in a movie theater before.

Playing me for every last note, breathlessly surprising me at turn after turn after turn, a story of adultery, internal conflict and human frailty utilizes the very plot point I despised to transform the film into a grand aria about the nature of fortune, fate, and luck. And still, even in the end, Allen is so bloody brilliant we are not sure exactly how we feel about this man. The point, set, and match is quickly won, and one leaves the theater having been in the presence of one of our true masters.

Ingeniously devious, devilish and smart, Allen makes cinematic love to London with the same keen eye he has used for decades to capture New York – a visual involving a ring, a railing and the River Thames is the single finest screen moment of the year.

As a longtime fan somewhat bereft at his recent descent into mediocrity and repetition, it is absolutely captivating to watch Woody Allen at the height of his powers once again.

More movie info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0416320/

Munich

2006-01-01T11:26:00.000-05:00

Grade: A-

The perfect companion piece to “Paradise Now” about Palestinian terrorists, this is a dignified journey into the heart and mind of a Sabra (native born Israeli).

Eleven Israeli athletes are murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The world momentarily mourns, the Games continue, and a nation plans its retribution. Prime Minister Golde Meir (a masterful Lynn Cohen) sends covert assassins on an eye-for-an-eye killing spree throughout Europe, a pilgrimage to shoot and, wherever possible, make bigger headlines by blowing up eleven leaders who helped plan, support and carry out the barbarism of Munich. Separated from the terrorists they kill by a profound unwillingness to slaughter the innocent (often placing their own lives in peril) five men nonetheless battle fear, retaliation and personal conscience.

Steven Spielberg powerfully captures the essence of a people religious in foundation, persecuted for generations, and surrounded on all borders by enemies. “Never again” flows through the blood of an honorable nation willing to modulate principle and morality in the uncompromising defense of a Jewish homeland. As embodied in an eye-piercing performance by the flawless and charismatic Eric Bana, Israel has idealistic national fervor, a devout sense of family and heritage, and a kill-or-be-killed executioner instinct. Bana, like his country, also feels every pull of the trigger, every fiery explosion and every drop of blood spilled in a way that will never be shaken and becomes a part of his very fabric. The power, responsibility and impact of abandonment – of one nation for another (America is particularly taken to task for its protectionist bent) a mother for her son (forever ensuring that “Israel would become his true parent”) a father for his family, and a nation for its patriot – is an ever-present theme. What it is to be a Jew, and what it is to be an Israeli is constantly examined, scrutinized, and questioned.

Some of the year’s finest lighting design and film exposure techniques provide the film with its taut espionage thriller mood and, if a screenplay by Tony Kushner sometimes veers into Hollywood gloss (including a fervent yet improbable conversation between an Israeli and a PLO operative, and a “James Bond” femme fatale plotline) and away from clarity (informants are too often murkily explained and dialogue occasionally suffers under mumbling and the on again off again use of subtitles) the storyline is more often compelling, equal-handed and multi-layered. Neither Spielberg nor Kushner allow Israel off scot-free in its culpability, and we are constantly made to question whether violent actions are appropriate or incendiary. The film is graphically, intentionally, unapologetically bloody, and a final panoramic view chills and touches one’s heart over the violence yet to come.

“We should defend ourselves. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” a villager in Tsarist Russia once proclaimed. “Very good,” responded Tevye the Diaryman, a Jew of a different age. “That way the whole world will be blind and toothless.”

If only it were quite so unambiguous.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0408306/

Paradise Now

2005-12-29T08:04:00.000-05:00

Grade: B+

A dignified journey into the heart and mind of a terrorist.

Two best friends raised in a Palestinian refugee camp are called upon to offer up their lives and become martyrs for the cause. Small of budget and occasionally overflowing with polemics about whether or not acts of terrorism are the last but only remaining resort of a beleaguered people or merely the advancement of an alibi for one’s enemies, the film is joltingly nonviolent and soberly reserved. Less about Middle Eastern politics and religious fanaticism and more about individual despair, watching how victims can also become victimizers in the name of statehood, security and solidarity forces us to relocate our perspectives if not redraw our borders from where they stood before.

Kais Nashef brings tortured soulful dignity as a young man denied and devoid of option, opportunity or hope. Fearful of death and loathing of life, his basic decency stands in striking contradiction to our perceptions of those willing to strap bombs around their torsos and murder the innocent. As a friend with less sophisticated inner turmoil, Ali Suliman desires a blaze of glory and eternal loyalty to a friend. A scene in which he stands ill at ease with a machine gun while videotaping his denunciation of Israeli policies and a farewell to his family is filled with sadness, frustration, and surprising humor.

Part thriller and greater part human tragedy, the film inserts enough revelations and plot-twists to intrigue and surprise, but without the air of suffocating self-importance or mass convolution so prevalent in the film “Syriana.” Both films extrapolate on national culpability in the making of terrorists, yet this one manages the deed with far more subtlety and significantly less pretentiousness. While characters hem and haw too often, reversing and recommitting themselves to the barbaric task at hand, filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad has personalized without defending, and created empathy for the unforgivable.

In the end, we are reminded that the true casualties of war and occupation are not flags, but people.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0445620/

King Kong

2005-12-18T17:44:00.000-05:00

Grade: C

‘Twas Peter killed the beast.

Anyone who knows me knows that I consider “The Lord of the Rings” saga the single greatest cinematic achievement in my lifetime. I now live in fear Peter Jackson will become a one trick pony.

In what is effectively three long hours of big-budget blue screen animation, actors melodramatically emote and a really big ape bats its eyes and beats its chest. In between, dinosaurs rampage, disfigured bats fly, oversized creepy crawly arthropods slither, and Jackson tries to gross us out for no other purpose than to gross us out. In this he succeeds. Occasionally enthralling effects (NYC in the 1930s is especially dazzling) are overwhelmed with two-dimensional computer generated wallpaper, as actors row rowboats on non-existent waves, race in between animated gargantuan gorilla legs, strike poses and look alternately shocked/scared/sad at various items Jackson will paint in later. What Jackson probably intended as a (decidedly campy) homage to a classic style of soundstage filmmaking instead looks and feels flat, artificial and often rather cartoonish. Jackson also falls back on some rather familiar set design and camera technique, as though some LoTR models were still hanging around and just calling out to be reconstituted (the home of Skull Island’s human inhabitants is strikingly reminiscent of regions Sam and Frodo were known to tread). Slow motion photography, an elvish choir, and a Gollum-like fall from the Empire State only add to an overall sense of smoke and mirror duplication.

Naomi Watts helps create a credible chimp/chick relationship, Andy Serkis does worthy double duty as a pirate-like longshoreman and the “motion capture” movement behind Kong, Jamie Bell (forever trapped as “Billy Elliot”) is as sweet and soulful as ever, although Adrien Brody is a miscast hero and Jack Black’s acting technique as the film’s impresario is rather dubious at best. Relationships and storylines seem to build and literally die on the jungle vine (alive, alive, oops dead, alive, dead, dead, alive, sorry wrong, he’s dead) and for some inexplicably wrongheaded reason Jackson and fellow screenwriters Fran Walsh (a.k.a. Mrs. Jackson) and Phillipa Boyens have excised all explanation for Kong climbing the Empire State Building in the first place. Home, folks, he wants to go home. Sorta’ like how I felt about an hour in.

Tedious, plodding and surprisingly soulless, bland and unmoving, a kitchen sink and a pretty sunrise does not an awe-inspiring epic make.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0360717/

Transamerica

2005-12-15T19:47:00.000-05:00

Grade: B-

You’re likely to spend the first 20 minutes debating whether he’s attractive enough to pass for a woman. Then you’ll remember you’re watching Felicity Huffman. Her choices of voice, posture, and mannerism are so extraordinary, one utterly believes she has been forced to live most of her life as a man, and is only now learning how to be a woman.

If only the screenplay were quite so believable.

On the brink of a sex-change operation a male-to-female transsexual discovers she may be a father. What begins as a forced encounter to get the teen out of jail and her therapist off her back turns into a cross-country road trip of discovery and cliché-ridden situations. Kids are molested by their stepfathers, cars are stolen by innocent looking hitchhikers, and lonely bachelors open up their homes and fall “Tootsie-style” for the woman with the penis. Kevin Zegers is also quite good (and exceedingly adorable) as an over-sexualized yet vulnerable youth, but neither father nor son seem quite as dimly naive as the screenplay necessitates. Even after attending a rather farcical trannie party (which apparently spring up in every western town on a regular basis) this street kid/drug using/male prostitute can’t quite figure out for himself his traveling companion may not be everything that she seems, and is repeatedly (and vitriolically) taken aback by revelations he should have deduced for himself ages ago. Huffman comports herself with a world-weary savvy and wise-cracking wit, yet is easily conned by used car salesmen, indigent parents and cocaine-snorting teenagers alike. A side trip and speedy reconciliation with a non-Jewish Jewish mother, doltishly good-natured father and estranged sister feels completely contrived, false and predictable.

While emotional responses rarely seem to honestly match characters and situations, there is genuine sweetness between traveling companions, the film has a kind and compassionate heart that isn’t afraid to take risks, and Huffman gives one of the year’s best performances.

It’s a good time for sexual and gender identity in the movies.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0407265/

Syriana

2005-12-13T20:36:00.000-05:00

Grade: C

The title is as cryptic as the storyline.

Before writer/director Stephen Gaghan should be able to use his apparent doctorates in socio-economics, geo-global political philosophy and covert operations in Saudi Arabian territories, he really should get a B.A. in screenwriting first.

There is an engrossing, illuminating commentary in all this, but it is securely blindfolded, wrapped in lead and buried in concrete.

George Clooney, Steve Soderbergh and company have an axe to grind that is all well and good. American greed and self-interest is responsible for international instability and the indoctrination of terrorists. Fair enough. Sadly, American sanctimony and left-wing megalomania is often responsible for self-involved, indecipherable moviemaking as well. From Washington, D.C. to Langley, Virginia to Geneva, Switzerland to Beirut, Lebanon to Princeton, New Jersey to various spots in Baghdad and Iran (in the film’s first 15 minutes no less) a scoreboard would still make it impossible to follow how dozens of characters intersect with dozens of other characters in dozens of locales sprinkled throughout the planet. CIA agents, former CIA agents, oil magnates, Saudi princes and kings, economic advisers, poor Pakistani immigrants, corporate lawyers, Department of Justice operatives, terrorists for hire, and various fathers, wives and children of the above are ALL major players in this over-saturated screenplay. And, just when the earth becomes too small for Gaghan’s world, satellites manage to enter into the picture as well.

In the 1970’s, a long list of movie stars in a single film almost always spelled disaster – “The Poseidon Adventure,” “The Towering Inferno,” “Airport ‘75, ‘77 and ‘79.” In the 2000’s a long list of movie stars has started to spell another type of disaster, one that occurs when an insular group of people is so self-obsessed with making a point they forget the need to let others in on the joke. George Clooney, Christopher Plummer, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, Matt Damon (who really needs to break free of the Clooney rat pack) William Hurt and Amanda Peet all do fine work with underwritten roles, and the film has a sleek look, a smart edge and a sophisticated feel, but it is simply impossible to follow and maddening to decipher. A conspiracy piled on top of a conspiracy piled on top of a conspiracy piled on top of a conspiracy, speed reading subtitles, good bad guys and bad good guys and good good guys and bad bad guys and my eyes start to glaze over. Throw in graphic scenes of torture (that I still don’t understand the reason for) dead children (‘cause even businessmen have a home life) and a heartstring ending in the midst of fundamentalist kamikazes and American-instructed assassination and I really need a nap.

I have a respectable I.Q. I graduated college. I make a decent living and even write in my spare time. Don’t make me feel like an idiot ‘cause you can’t get your shit together and tell a comprehensible story. Wanting to say something important and actually saying something important are two very different things.

{Note: According to the official website, “Syriana” is “a very real term used by Washington think-tanks to describe a hypothetical reshaping of the middle east.” The fact that the filmmakers never even bother to let us in on this little secret is yet another example of their impenetrable elitism.}

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0365737/

The Producers

2005-12-13T08:37:00.000-05:00

Grade: D

There are two rules to successfully translate a Broadway musical to film.

Rule #1: Never let the original Broadway Director direct the screen version of the show.

Rule #2: NEVER LET THE ORIGINAL BROADWAY DIRECTOR DIRECT THE SCREEN VERSION OF THE SHOW!

Having Broadway tickets to see Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in “The Producers” when the show first opened was like having Willy Wonka’s golden ticket in your hand. Lane was delivering one of the most massive star turns Broadway had seen in years, Mel Brooks had written a major league, convulsively hysterical hit, and Susan Stroman directed and choreographed with originality, excitement and flair. The show deserved the raves and the record number of Tony Awards. I’ve seen it four times. Great, great show.

Then the creative team became chicken shits.

First they fired London star Henry Goodman during his previews (who was going to be quite good in the role, receiving a deserved standing ovation the performance I attended) for daring to recreate the part in his own image after Lane departed. They replaced him instead with an understudy willing to give a weaker carbon copy version of Lane’s performance. Terrified of taking a misstep and ruining the cash cow franchise, creativity quickly gave way to $ signs. When Lane and Broderick came back for a second limited run in the show for major bucks, even they were playing with it rather than playing in it. To quote Max Bialystock, “Lord I want that money!”

And then someone had the asinine, fool-hearty idea of allowing Stroman to direct the film version of her own success. Why they didn’t just set a few cameras on the stage of the St. James Theater I’ll never know. Utterly lacking in a single moment of spontaneity, creativity or spark, this pointless endeavor is the oddest translation of a Broadway musical one is ever likely to see. Without the slightest recognition of working in a new medium, every performance is geared to the last row of the balcony, every scene a moment by moment recreation – sans magic or inspiration – of the original Broadway production. Every broad facial tic, every abrasively loud inflection, every overly-shticky double take is an attempt to ensure those without a touring company coming to town will still be able to lay claim to seeing the Broadway show. Filmed in a bland, colorless, flat, old-fashioned movie musical style, Stroman completely mistakes opening up the material to street locales and fantasy segments for freshness, innovation or personality. Then, to add insult to injury (and I admit to feeling somewhat personally violated) they neuter the material of much of the raunchy, politically incorrect, offensive humor that made it all so bitingly, irresistibly funny in the first place.

Nathan Lane (love him though I do) is far too broad for the big screen, but it is Matthew Broderick that is the genuine disaster here – his whiny, one note caricature was always a tad too irritating on the stage, but on film one truly wants to slap the crap out of him. Other original cast members Roger Bart and Gary Beach (gloriously funny in his Tony-winning role as a flamboyantly gay Adolf Hitler) are also embarrassingly gigantic, and movie stars Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell add nothing but weaker singing voices than their original counterparts. Broadway vets the likes of Andrea Martin, Debra Monk, John Barrowman, Karen Ziemba and Richard Kind are all afforded cameos by the director. A gift certificate to Tower Records would have been a much kinder present.

When the curtain rises on the classic “Springtime for Hitler” number, the camera pans the crowd and – as in the classic original film version – the audience is stunned with mouths agape. I know exactly how they feel.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0395251/

Brokeback Mountain

2005-12-10T10:19:00.000-05:00

Grade: A

A love poem.

Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are my heroes. Inspiring not because they are two bankable heterosexual stars playing gay, but because they both bring an integrity, rawness and bravery of performance that should forever inform how actors choose their roles and decide to play them.

This is a groundbreaking work.

Director Ang Lee has captured the intimate, unadorned essence of Annie Proulx’s beautiful short story and transformed it into a work of simplicity and majesty. Filled with heartbreaking tenderness, sadness and rage, “the love that dare not speak its name” wears its quiet heart and deeply felt silences courageously on its sleeve. Two ranch hands meet against the ravishing vistas of Wyoming. Their animal lust for one another blends with the cold, harsh, secluded nature that surrounds them, until they leave the wilderness and force themselves into expected lives of conformity and resignation. Yet they cannot let go of one another. Lust becomes love. Through a period of some 20 years, their ache for one another never wanes, never wavers or diminishes, and it is a thing of wrenching beauty to behold. Against the backdrop of Rodrigo Prieto’s eloquent cinematography, this is a love story never before seen on a major Hollywood screen. It gives one a heartfelt sense of arrival and hope.

Ledger and Gyllenhaal have electric chemistry together. Most is unexpressed, muted and silent, yet there is a need in their connection that seems at once bottomless, delicate, unbridled and explosive. Much of their time both together and apart is wordless, yet it is a silence that fills the screen with love, longing, loneliness and despair – their extraordinary performances bring a simplicity and honesty that are profound in their soulfulness. Michelle Williams is incredibly moving as a wife who loves her husband yet is equally trapped in his denial, and Kate Mara is touching as a daughter longing to share in a father’s life and come to know a man isolated in his repression. Gustavo Santaolalla’s haunting score pierces the psyche, and screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry (who has mastered the reserved western sensibility in his novels) here know how to convey so much with so little. No one articulates innermost feelings with language – not lovers, husbands & wives, children & parents – but volumes are spoken through their eyes, through their vulnerabilities, and through their pain.

It should be lost on no one that, a year after this story was first published, a young man named Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered against the ravishing vistas of Wyoming.

Stunning. Visually, audaciously, emotionally stunning.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0388795/

Pride and Prejudice

2005-12-08T19:22:00.000-05:00

Grade: B

You would have to be an illiterate philistine never to have read the novel or seen one among the multitudes of available versions of this Jane Austen classic.

Just call me a philistine. And a former British Lit major no less.

Having no prior experience with this prototypical romance, there is much to be enchanted if not terribly surprised by. From the moment our star-crossed lovers appear on screen and all others disappear from sight, there is a sense of melodramatic inevitability about it all, albeit filled with delightful panoramas, quick witted humor, and kind-hearted courtship.

Like a runaway locomotive, this film has a story to tell, and by God it’s going to tell it quickly. Unlike the most recent 1995 five-hour made-for-TV version, this one has a “need for speed” Tom Cruise would admire, and every scene of someone standing elegantly on a cliff (hair and dress blowing resplendently in the wind) is matched by dozens of here now, never heard from again characters and more exposition than one’s 20/20 hearing can hope to hold on to. Still, falling in love for no particular reason isn’t exactly rocket science, and watching two highly attractive people swipe at, challenge, fancy and ultimately swoon for one another can be beguiling if not taken too seriously. Keira Knightly glows on screen with a smile that lights her way and, while utterly too long melancholic for his (or our) own good, Matthew MacFadyen still cuts quite the swath as a leading romantic figure. While one can’t help but feel whiplashed by a relationship so truncated only cupid’s arrow could justify the passionate attraction, it’s still all rather jolly to see how this chess piece quickly captures that chess piece making way for another chess piece to move into its place and explain away check, check, and ultimate checkmate. One must assume, however, that Ms. Austen did it all with a bit more graceful unfolding and lingering emoting.

Brenda Blethyn is rather annoyingly one-note as a matchmaking mother, and Judy Dench is classic Judi Dench in a throwaway (but ever-entertaining) cameo. Yet Donald Sutherland is the best thing about this movie as a dignified, harried, somewhat chagrined father. Not since Tevye the dairyman has a patriarch had to contend with such a shrilly meddlesome wife and five daughters in search of five husbands. A scene in which he displays the joy at a daughter finding true love is a subtle crescendo of paternal emotion, and yet again provides certitude that Sutherland is one of the true greats.

Beautifully shot, acted with committed (if inexplicable) motivation, and bound to be a favorite among high-schoolers everywhere looking for the abridged version at test time. As for me, I have already added the five hour version to my Netflix queue.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0414387/

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2005-12-06T19:59:00.000-05:00

Grade: A-

The spirits have been kind that I have lived to see this day. That I have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous derision for my negative takes on the first three installments, accused of having no heart, no imagination and no whimsy in my soul when – truth be told – it is the first three “Harry Potter” movies that lacked heart, imagination, and whimsy.

Partially because of a richer, more complex story to be told, partially because of a maturing cadre of young actors and juicier roles for more accomplished ones, and partially because of a director fearless enough to take the heart and plot of a book without treating it like a sacred scroll, this “Harry Potter” – finally, at long last – is pure magic. Finally, finally J.K. Rowling’s world has come to vibrant, personal life on the big screen. The wand has been waved.

Striking in its dark tones, sarcastic and playful wit, burgeoning sexuality, genuinely moving pathos and frightening storytelling, Director Mike Newell has conducted an eerie, weighty opera filled with grand themes of friendship and betrayal, loyalty, lust and loss. No longer the “gee-gosh” boy apprentice, Daniel Radcliffe displays thespian chops as the threat against his life grows and he begins to own responsibility for a world unwittingly in his care. If the giggles continue to be too forced, his anger and terror percolate and his tears move – make the next bunch ASAP as one would now loathe to see an installment without him in the lead. Under the care and feeding of Michael Gambon, Albus Dumbledore has now become flesh and blood, prone to outbursts of fear, anger and sadness as much as all-knowing staid bravado – a eulogy delivered near film’s end is filled with genuine sentiment and defiance. Ralph Fiennes is, well, Ralph Fiennes, and knows how to make one hell of an impact with limited screen time. His dark Lord is one part pure evil, one part oily smarm, one part giddy showman – make no mistake, the threat he represents feels unnervingly real.

Intricate without being confused, Newell knows how to use imagery to convey moments heretofore difficult to visualize from Rowling’s descriptions, yet never allows special effects to overwhelm storytelling. He brings his own artistic vision to the piece, enhancing rather than merely replicating a world born in words. The visuals are the best they’ve been to date, thrilling and mesmerizing, yet feel far more organic and less computer generated than earlier attempts. After three strikes in a row, screenwriter Steven Kloves has finally figured out where to enhance, where to let be, where to re-imagine and, most importantly, where to pull out a pair of bewitched scissors – one is glad the rules of Quidditch rather than those of baseball apply here.

But, at its heart, this is a tale of youthful innocence coming into its own, of seeing the world as less mystical and more ghoulish, less pure and more fraught with shading and shadow, a world where life, death, and spirit are inexorably, painfully, blessedly linked.

At 157 minutes, this one puts the last 454 to shame.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0330373/

Rent

2005-11-23T21:00:00.000-05:00

Grade: B+

In 1996, “Rent” transferred from a small home downtown to Broadway, winning the Tony for Best Musical and becoming something of a phenomenon – partially because of a solid and original score, partially because of a driving and exciting energy, partially because of a NYC zeitgeist, and partially because of the dramatically premature death of composer/lyricist Jonathan Larson literally hours before the show opened off-Broadway.

Then the anti-“Rent” backlash began. Naysayers started denouncing it as loud, theater queens started trashing it as crass, and critics – many of whom weren’t all that fond of it in the first place – criticized it as being over-hyped. The lines were drawn, with “Rentheads” on one side and iconoclasts on the other. How one feels about the film version will likely depend on which side of the aisle one sits on.

Me, I’m a fan. I find the pulse raw and invigorating, the story moving and operatic, and the music often quite wonderful.

Director Chris Columbus’ adaptation is more workmanlike than visionary. Part Alphabet City travelogue and occasional music video, Columbus keeps the story of a group of friends at the height of the AIDS epidemic personal, intimate, and unembellished. Mixing a modern pop/rock score with the old-fashioned approach of people bursting into song and dance in crowded streets is surprisingly effective in its ability to represent New York City’s harsh, isolating yet vibrant personality, not unlike the thousands of New Yorkers who close out the world around them with Ipods and headsets. Much of the original cast has returned for the film, and some performances suffer from over-knowing the material, a dull sheen surrounding the zillionth performance. Yet Adam Pascal (Hot Hot Hot), Jessie L. Martin, Idina Menzel and newcomer Rosario Dawson provide sweetly emotive, often beautifully sung, and deeply involving performances. While Columbus fails to find his editing stride to replace excised recitative and scene changes are often choppy cuts or sloppy fadeouts, montages help fill in weak expositions and close-ups help explain song lyrics and emotions lost on the stage. Some attempts to open scenes up are quite effective (most notably a memorial service not unlike the hundreds of such services people attended in the 80’s and 90’s) and some misplaced and klutzy (most notably a commitment ceremony that seems more a 2005 political commentary than anything relating to the story’s time, place, and characters). The passage of time is quietly represented in simple yet profoundly moving ways.

What the play “Angels in America” did to galvanize the stage around HIV/AIDS, “Rent” has done as a musical. It was, and remains, a touching and important work.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0294870/

Walk the Line

2005-11-23T20:51:00.000-05:00

Grade: B-

Joaquin Phoenix inhabits the skin, spirit and soul of the "man in black" in a film that – no matter how accurate the story – still adheres to a tired, tedious, cliché-ridden formula.

Show me a happy childhood and I'll show you someone you've never heard of before. The rags to riches story simply must begin with the brutal death of a more-beloved sibling and a cold, distant, isolating parent. Alcohol, drugs, and a bad withdrawal from chemical dependency must all feature prominently. Since no one stumbles onto stardom and success in a vacuum, there must be relationships with other stars (usually portrayed by B-rate actors) established at the outset of one's career. Ray Charles met Quincy Jones outside a dumpy bar in Seattle; Johnny Cash spies Elvis Presley (portrayed by WB alumni Tyler Hilton) outside a dumpy recording studio in Nashville.

While closely based on truth every step of the way, a little originality – no matter how utterly fabricated – would be most welcome. Dark and brooding, there is a dull joylessness in the burdensome predictability of the story.

What makes the film worthy is a transforming performance by Joaquin Phoenix (who I've never cared for truth be told) who communicates a talent and vulnerability that transcends worn and weary material. He delivers the most treadmill dialogue with a depth of sincerity and weight that makes one believe it comes from demons deep within. He also demonstrates that any actor lip synching their way through the portrayal of a real-life personality is merely delivering half a performance – here Phoenix delivers a lifetime of dusty roads and defiant insecurity through his vocal chords. And, yes, he really does an amazing job of sounding like Cash without bordering on impersonation.

As the long-patient, long-suffering non-girlfriend, Reese Witherspoon imbues June Carter with spunk (Lou Grant would hate her) and strength – she is a smart, confident career woman with a low-tolerance for bullshit. Deviating refreshingly from the proto-typical woman-behind-the-man, she is not keeping any home fires burning.

Now, can we please find a music star who was born into wealth, adored by everyone he knew, hated booze and pills, skipped, whistled and smiled incessantly, was happily married and died in his nineties?

Would that be boring, or what?

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0358273/

Jarhead

2005-11-14T21:09:00.000-05:00

Grade: B

War is hell, whether or not you actually get to pull the trigger.

In an age where battle is waged from thousands of feet above the clouds, with bombs meticulously dropped on unseen victims and the romantic image of man-to-man combat largely a thing of the past, our troops nonetheless continue their old-school training –running mile after mile to rhythmic drills, hazing one another with abundant cruelty and camaraderie, firing at human cutouts and crawling through the mud underneath barbed wire netting with live ammo flying overhead. They prepare for a type of war that is out of fashion, attending screenings of “Apocalypse Now,” enraptured by the glory they presume will one day be theirs.

Director Sam Mendes juxtaposes the propaganda of basic training with the reality of modern day warfare. Thousands of troops spend months in the desert waiting for Operation Desert Storm to begin. Trained in combat, they are ill-prepared to wait. Days become weeks become months. They wait. Unable to use the skills they have so arduously prepared for, hydrating becomes a drilled task, they wait.

The film is cordoned into three distinct sections – boot camp, waiting, engagement. The former and the latter we have seen in dozens of other war movies, Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” among the more notable. Yet it is in the waiting – the tedious, frustrating, psychologically charged waiting – where the film tells its own unique story. Soldiers shoot at nothing, drill for nothing, and struggle to remain sane. We never come to know or care about these people, although Jake Gyllenhaal (with the body of a Greek god) and Peter Sarsgaard imbue a sense of dignity into underwritten roles, two marksmen without a target to mark.

The film casts no perspective on the rightness or wrongness of this or our current engagement, focusing instead on soldiers carrying out their responsibilities – from the mundane to the insane – with a mixture of fear, tedium, and inevitability. Mendes, as per usual, fills the screen with stunning visuals of oil fields ablaze, bomb detritus blowing into the faces of stunned soldiers, and desert sands blackened with the remains of charred no-name casualties of war. When machine guns finally launch a torrent of rapid fire, it is an explosive masturbatory release without objective or purpose, a metaphor for the role of soldiers in a different age.

A homecoming after the war is forced and pretentious, a Vietnam Vet of another time attempting to bond with soldiers of an entirely different ilk and experience. The film ends on a holier than thou note that betrays the simplicity of soldiers trying to make sense of their role in a world that has outlasted their usefulness.

What irony, flashing 15 years forward, that we are back in the same region fighting the kind of war these soldiers were originally trained for, and losing.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0418763/

Prime

2005-10-30T10:02:00.000-05:00

My Partner With the TRUE love of his life

Grade: D-

Oy vey iz mir.

Let’s cut to the chase – Meryl Streep is the finest actor of her generation (please note: my partner is already furious with me for using the qualifier “of her generation.” “Who’s better outside her generation?” he hollers at me. This gives one a sense of how many nights I may end up sleeping on the sofa for maintaining my honesty and integrity with this review). Considering her many contributions to the arts, she is most certainly allowed a rotten egg every once in a while.

But I shouldn’t have to pay to smell it.

In what is essentially a supporting role, Streep plays an upper-west side Jewish therapist who quickly discovers one of her patients is having a passionate romance with her much younger son. Her voice is nasal and whiny, her glasses geeky chic, and she has numerous oversized beaded objects hanging around her neck. Her performance is distracting at best, more often downright annoying in its broad “oh my gawd” shtickiness. But the more important question is how Streep could have read this genuinely schlocky screenplay and considered signing on to the project in the first place.

The woman in love is a successful, smart, beautiful thirtysomething. The man is an unemployed, immature artist in his twenties who still lives with his grandparents. Good sex may be a great reason for a fun weekend, but there is nothing to suggest what she could possibly see in him for the long term, and certainly nothing to explain why “he gives me more of what I need than anyone else ever has.” Uma Thurman is fine in a thankless/thinkless role, Bryan Greenberg has a nice chest, pouty puppy dog eyes, and virtually no apparent acting ability whatsoever. The relationship is an unconvincing rehash filled with “how many times have we seen this before” moments (The working woman walking in on the ne’r-do-well, beer guzzling lout of a boyfriend who has turned her apartment into a pithole. The painstruck Romeo who gets drunk and sleeps with his girlfriend’s work associate during a brief breakup – hmmm, do you think she’ll find out about the infidelity once they get back together again? The first date that culminates with him jumping the fence of a gated park so they can have a NYC moment on a bench surrounded by trees and grass, lest you think these outdoorsey moments only happen in London romances) and mind numbing dialogue (Him referring to her favorite painting as “luminous” – has anyone ever really used this word before? – later mounting her while offering his sperm as his “gift” because she wants to have a baby are personal favorite moments).

The only thing more ludicrous than the relationship between boy and girl is the relationship between patient and shrink. Stretching all reason and credibility, Streep has convinced herself it is more than ethical to continue working with the woman who is fornicating “on every surface of my apartment” with her son. The conceit has broad comic possibilities, but watching Streep cringe while listening to Thurman talk openly about Greenberg’s “beautiful” penis (“it’s so cute I wanted to knit it a hat”) makes us cringe even more at the stilted wordplay. There is also inherent humor in watching a therapist play out a double standard between her patient and her child, yet there is no continuity of personality or belief system that explains her giggly encouraging a client to get their groove on while becoming grief-stricken because her own offspring dares to date outside of the faith. The humor is arbitrary and flat, and more serious moments don’t hold water. Three actors are performing in three different movies, and there is no sense that they know one another much less care about each another. Supporting caricatures make matter worse, with shticky Jewish grandparents cutting off each other’s sentences and covering their entire home in plasticwrap, and a best friend who breaks up with women by smashing cream pies in their faces – simply the lamest and most misplaced sight gag to appear on film in years.

Especially on the heels of the luminous (see, I can use that word in a sentence too) “In Her Shoes,” which presents a Jewish family in all its eccentric, multi-dimensional, tender glory, this one comes off as crass, phony, and – the greatest sin of all – terribly unfunny.

Strictly for the Borscht belt crowd.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0387514/

In Her Shoes

2005-10-23T18:32:00.000-04:00

Grade: A-

A sweet, sincere, precious and – most importantly – honest screenplay combines with first rate performances across the board for one of the best family dramas of the year.

I know my rep – the heartless curmudgeon iconoclast who can’t just go with the flow when movie romance or familial angst is in the air and allow his heartstrings to be strung. The dirty little secret is, when done well, my absolute favorite type of film is the family drama. Most of the time, however, offerings include made for TV melodrama, cliché-ridden phoniness and treacly romantic syrup.

What a pleasure it is when the Real McCoy presents itself.

Cameron Diaz (who knew?) and Toni Collette shine as sisters who hate and resent each other with every fiber of their being, yet love, care and depend on each other so much they can’t stand being separated. One is an underachieving, manipulative, self-absorbed, drunken failure, the other an overachieving, self-conscious, unhappy success. Both lost a mother to mental illness, yet the slim difference in their ages dramatically impacts memory, perception, and the results of such a profound loss on their lives. Witty, charming, sad and tender in equal measure, internalized battles waged from lives of feeling less than – not smart enough, too overweight, not as attractive as, not as beloved in the dysfunctional family hierarchy – play out in ways that any member of any family can identify and personalize.

Shirley MacLaine yet again proves her metal as a fine character actor, here the grandmother cut out of the lives of her family by a father/son-in-law (the equally fine Ken Howard) mourning the loss of his wife, trying to protect his daughters, and struggling to cast off deeply ingrained feelings of personal guilt and blame. Family dissolutions and reunions are portrayed with surprising perceptiveness and veracity, as it is not the facts themselves that differ in the telling but only what they represent to the people telling them. Anyone who has every been to a retirement community south of Jacksonville will recognize the perfection with which director Curtis Hanson depicts this specific way of life, from the shuffle board landscapes to the gossiping biddies and lounging cronies to the pink (yellow in my mother’s community) stucco exteriors everywhere one ganders. But the film goes deeper, capturing the interdependence, loyalty and heart of those with a lifetime of different experience brought together by location, circumstance and need in their waning years.

Mark Feuerstein is adorable and genuine as a Jewish lawyer love interest, Candice Azzara vulnerably hateful as a controlling Jewish stepmother, and Francine Beers delights as a motorized cart-driving Jewish Golden Girl – need it be said this is also a very ethnically-imbued movie? Susannah Grant has written a screenplay filled with real people, situations and flavors we are familiar with without stooping to one-note caricature or tired cliché. If the film is a touch too long and a budding romance blooms a bit too quickly, this is a film of much tenderness and uplifting pleasure. A gem in the rough of similar fare.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0388125/

Good Night, and Good Luck.

2005-10-16T14:12:00.000-04:00

Grade: B-

David Strathairn deserves high ratings for his portrayal of TV Newsman Edward R. Murrow, in a film that is beautiful to look at but too stoic and antiseptic for its subject matter.

McCarthyism is in full cold war swing and a chill hangs over the nation. News researchers are terrified that any moment someone will discover the “meeting” a distant relative attended 20 years earlier and their careers will evaporate. Station owners fear the loss of corporate sponsorship and news anchors avoid hard news and walk on eggshells. The Iraqi war marches on, soldiers return in body bags, the President’s incompetence remains unchecked and still reporters don’t report. Then a storm called Katrina devastates Louisiana, and finally the media stands up and takes notice…

That’s another story altogether, yet writer/director/actor George Clooney has not chosen to tell this allegory in this time by mere accident. Sandwiched between a famed speech Morrow delivered on the responsibility of television journalism in a free society, rest assured this film has an important indictment to deliver and a specific ax to grind.

If only the tale itself were a bit more interestingly told.

Wisely allowing Senator Joseph McCarthy to portray Senator Joseph McCarthy, real news footage presents one of our greatest villains in all his oily glory. Shot in stunning black and white, the film matches the footage and catches an era of chain smoking, typewriters clacking and pre-Teleprompter cue cards. The tipping point is reached, and Murrow joins Producer Fred Friendly (George Clooney in an unembellished performance) on a crusade to bring McCarthy to his knees. Nervous executives step aside, the military threatens, Murrow inhales deeply from his cigarette, the countdown to airtime begins, and Friendly literally taps his co-conspirator’s knee with a pen to start speaking. A war between good and evil men finally begins.

The story is a powerful one, yet is told in such a straightforward docudrama style that time stretches and pathos is lacking. Quiet heroes doing their jobs against a monolithic danger is the stuff of Greek drama, yet here attention to detail overwhelms effective storytelling. The film captures a black and white feel of staid innocence in a time of Machiavellian Technicolor, and Strathairn perfectly captures an iconic American figure without caricature, but the story runs its now renowned course without much in the way of context, shading or new enlightenment. Except for the occasional background blues number (sung to perfection by Dianne Reeves) there is no score, adding to the somber, straight-laced and unemotive tone. A side story involving a married couple – no doubt meant to represent a time of fear, suspicion and living in shadow – proves misplaced and rather meaningless.

Still, the telling is important in and of itself, and Clooney is a heartfelt troubadour with a nice cinematic eye and a competent if not compelling storyteller. Gravitas without gravy.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0433383/

Breakfast on Pluto

2005-10-02T21:10:00.000-04:00

Grade: F

Or at least that’s where writer/director Neil Jordan is from.

The film follows the exploits of one Patrick “Kitty” Brady, a transgendered male to female. As portrayed by Cillian Murphy, in what can only be described as a drug-induced performance,
Kitty dons wig and one outrageous outfit after another, raises his voice an octave and is insufferably weird for over two hours.

Ecstacy? Crystal Meth? Cocaine?

Your guess is as good as mine, but his eyes are so vacant, his voice so giggly and mumbled, and his performance so non-existent that someone must have been doing something involving a bong on that sound stage. In 37 – count ‘em – 37 chapters that flash on the screen, one more disjointed, meaningless, confused, banal, unfunny, freaky, insufferable and excruciating than the last, Kitty searches for the mother who abandoned her, dresses in a Pocahontas getup and joins a militant rock band, hides rifles from the IRA, becomes a call girl, becomes a magician’s assistant, works as a character in a children’s theme park, gets blown up in a discothèque, takes her friend to an abortion clinic, and is brutally interrogated by the police for a week and then doesn’t want to leave. There is no through line through any of this, nothing that makes the story cohesive or comprehensible, nothing that makes the protagonist interesting, sympathetic, likable or even watchable. We learn absolutely nothing about her beyond a penchant for dresses and make-up, nothing about her relationships to family, friends or assorted oddballs that makes any sense or provides any clarity. Violence erupts at inexplicable moments that are completely detached from anything else going on in the story. Liam Neeson and Stephen Rea repay some old debts in the form of bored cameos.

The film wants so badly to be a quirky John Irving novel brought to life, filled with unique characters and bizarre scenarios. Instead it is an unfinished, unfocused, amateurish and incomprehensible work by a masturbatory filmmaker, perhaps trying to regain some former glory from the last time he had a woman drop her drawers and surprise everyone with a penis in “The Crying Game.”

I spent much of this film calculating the number of seats to my right and left, trying to analyze just how many people I would have to disturb if I made a run for it.

They probably would have appreciated the diversion.

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411195/

Separate Lies

2005-10-01T22:31:00.000-04:00

Grade: C

British melodrama is a bit of an oxymoron.

A seemingly random incident rips apart the lives of a seemingly happily married couple. Tom Wilkinson rises far above the drab material in this mannered, monochromatic romantic mystery/domestic drama/tear-jerker that tries to be far too adult for its own good. The elements are all laboriously there – the clandestine meetings and sexual rendezvous, mysterious deaths and Camille-like illnesses, umbrella farewells and sun drenched hellos – in a pro forma way that reminds one of #172 in some interchangeable author’s Harlequin romance series. Poor Tom looks longingly into a restaurant where he has a perfect view of the star-crossed lovers breaking his heart, fade to prototypical rain against the windowpane. People howl into handkerchiefs, a sure sign that the story couldn’t even induce the actors to produce real tears. Serving platters are smashed to convey smoldering frustration – just like Sissy Spacek did when she was mad at poor Tom in “In the Bedroom.” This guy induces much china breaking for some unknown reason.

The pieces all fit together neatly and uninterestingly, piano music crescendos whenever one is expected to feel a heightened sense of tragic emotion that never really occurs. Emily Watson and Rupert Everett are so completely monotone in inflection and performance they belong together, although what passion actually ignites between these two dullards is anyone’s guess. Surprising revelations are neither surprising nor revelatory, yet through it all Wilkinson imbues quietly pained dignity, Dudley Doright goodness and upper crust fussbudget stuffiness into an underwritten role (think Anthony Hopkins in “Remains of the Day,” the sort of film this one aspires to). The fact that we care at all is a testament to a huge talent surmounting writer/director Julian Fellowes’ recycled screenplay.

These are exceedingly flat, skin-deep, boring people. A nap, anyone?

More Movie Info: http://chevy.imdb.com/title/tt0369053/

Capote

2005-09-29T21:52:00.000-04:00

Grade: A

As far as I’m concerned, Philip Seymour Hoffman has already won this year’s Academy Award. Message to the Academy: Nothing this year has even come close.

A family of four are brutally murdered on the plains of Kansas. Socialite/writer Truman Capote reads about the story in the New York Times and decides he must infiltrate the small town and write an article on the killings, which will ultimately become his groundbreaking non-fiction novel “In Cold Blood.” The tormented/tormenting existence of a megalomaniac unfolds. People are dead and it’s all about him. The town is in terrified mourning and it’s all about him. Two men are captured, jailed and tried for murder, and it’s all about him. Even as they face the hangman’s noose, it is still all about him. Hoffman is an astonishment. Not only does he capture the affectations of an iconic American figure – the voice, mannerisms, and comportment are freakily spot-on – but he finds the essence of a seriously flawed, desperately needy, intensely brilliant man.

Director Bennett Miller and screenwriter Dan Futterman have fashioned a film that lives up to the performance of its star. Instead of the formulaic cradle-to-grave biopic, by focusing on a brief period in the writer’s life we actually learn far more about him. The craven need to be the center of every party. The blazing, poetic, Herculean talent. The pathetically unquenchable hunger for adoration and approval born of a childhood of neglect and abandonment. The charmingly acerbic wit. The absolute inability to offer praise or support to anyone else in the room. The disarming humility. The pathological manipulating. The gay man dearly wanting his partner’s affection. The ability to believe his own bullshit until it becomes his own innermost truth. The profound pain and emanating sadness.

The full contradiction of a legend in his own time and mind.

As Capote is drawn slowly and inevitably into the tapestry of this true crime, he becomes the puppet-master of other people’s destinies, yet lacks any sense of self-awareness that would enable him to take control of his own. Clifton Collins Jr. creates genuine empathy as one of the convicts Capote becomes enamored by and kindred to, and we are caught off guard as the details behind the fateful night are revealed. Catherine Keener provides a moral compass as Nell Harper Lee, author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” research assistant and friend to Capote, somehow managing to love him when he is utterly unable to love himself. Miller captures a time and place of Americana, from the wide open spaces of Kansas to the cigarette-filled rooms of NYC. Capote – the man and the film – firmly plant their feet in the heart and spirit of both these places. As Capote says of his relationship to a killer, “It’s as if we were raised in the same house. I walked out the front. He walked out the back.”

For anyone seeking a better understanding of what made the biopic “Ray” such an unrelentingly cliché ridden piece of garbage, “Capote” is a film that will explain all by comparison. It is a film that truly reveals a man’s soul.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0379725/

The Squid and the Whale

2005-09-27T17:30:00.000-04:00

Grade: A-

It’s been 28 years since my parents got divorced, and this film still triggered the shit out of me.

The things parents do to their children.

In this tragically hysterical family dramady, Laura Linney (when, oh when, will the Oscar finally be hers?) separates from husband Jeff Daniels. She struggles to let go of past ills and move forward with a shred of dignity, he bitterly clings to a fantasy while attempting to shred the past to pieces. Young actors Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline are superb as siblings suffering not only from the ramifications of the breakup itself, but from the manipulations, neediness and immaturity of their parents. Sides are chosen, villains and victims manufactured, allegiances wooed. Tennis and ping pong provide the perfect metaphors for two kids shuttled indiscriminately between an insufferably arrogant and self-obsessed father and a long-suffering but far from pure mother, more concerned with using their children as pawns on the separation battlefield than instilling any sense of unity or stability in their children’s lives. What information these parents choose to disclose (or not disclose) to their kids about one another’s faults, foibles and infidelities says more about their own moral strengths and failings than it does about the soon to be ex-spouses they seek to defame in their children’s eyes.

The ramifications of their behavior on their children is immediate, often terribly disturbing, and dead-on accurate. Acting out is boldly (and with surprising wit) represented in flashes of misplaced anger and blame, alcohol abuse, anti-social behavior and inappropriate sexuality. Brothers search for their own “every man for himself” life rafts while still maintaining an “us against the world” support system. It is all simultaneously anger-inducing, painfully sad – and outrageously funny.

Writer/director Noah Baumbach has fashioned an intensely personal and semi-autobiographical work that finds universality in the dirty linens families experience when relationships fall apart and parents look to their children to fill their emotional needs. The film has a low-budget look and harried feel that only adds to the overall realism. If Billy Baldwin is simply too dopey to be even marginally appealing or believable as a would be romantic interest, the rest of the cast provides some of the finest ensemble work of the year.

Children of divorce be warned – this one could put you right back into therapy.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0367089/

A History of Violence

2005-09-25T16:33:00.000-04:00

Grade: A

I have never shed tears from the sheer emotional tension of a movie before.

Viggo Mortensen gives a tour de force as a small town hero forced to deal with the ramifications of his heroism on his life and family. All may or may not be as it seems.

A level of intensity not often felt in a movie theater, exploding with graphic violence and unbalancing uncertainty, the film also succeeds as a taut, intimate family drama. Relationships change in an instant, unquestioned perceptions strangle and wither, and long repressed personality traits rush to the surface. Not since “Unfaithful” has a film so brilliantly captured the impact of blood and betrayal on adoration and stability.

Whatever else you do in the theater, it is critical to remember to breathe.

Mortensen fills the screen with gentle innocence and familial love until his family and the world he has created for himself are threatened. His performance carries a subdued edge of schizophrenia, eyes pulsating and heart quietly shredding. Maria Bello demands empathy as the supportive wife stunned by a life in question, and Ashton Holmes breaks the heart as a teenage son full of meek tenderness and surprising strengths. William Hurt deliciously nibbles the scenery and Ed Harris percolates villainy. The score by the impeccable Howard Shore drives the heart to beat even faster, yet it is moments without music that jar one the most.

Which acts of violence in the film make us cheer, make us uncomfortable, or make us flinch provide much fodder to question if there are circumstances where brutality becomes acceptable. Not for the faint of heart or weak of knees, director David Cronenberg has designed a thriller that thrills and a drama that resonates with unexpected and often unlikely wit, truth, insight and compassion.

Like most brilliant works, what fascinates most is what will happen to these people after the final credits roll.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0399146/

Côte d'Azur (Crustacés et coquillages)

2005-09-25T16:17:00.000-04:00

Grade: B

Who knew vacations on the French Riviera included so much sex, romance, cruising, and adultery? Not to mention neverending masturbation in the shower.

A family inherits a villa on the Côte d'Azur. A French/Shakespearian pastoral farce set by the water rather than in the woods, the tale is filled with mistaken identities, forbidden fruit, comic faux pas, fleeting sadness and woe, and far more permanent light-hearted joys and carnal pleasures. Parents determine their son is gay, bursting with tolerance and hoping he will open up to them about his secret – while holding tightly to secrets of their own. Children take illicit pleasure in tormenting their parents however and whenever possible. Crushes and long-standing longings abound. Sexuality is sometimes ambiguous, occasionally hidden, yet flows freely and comfortably. The women are beautiful, the men virile, the landscape stunning, and the teenagers adorable. Sea, sand and skin is everywhere one turns. What’s not to like?

And, as with all of Shakespeare’s comedies, we end our story with much singing, dancing, and festive merriment.

As for me, I’ll be spending next summer on the French Rivera.

More movie info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0428430/

Proof

2005-09-18T19:14:00.000-04:00

Grade: B+

Mathematical genius may not seem the stuff of great drama, but subjugating one’s life to that of a needy parent + angst-driven sibling rivalry + the tightrope of budding romance x instability and insanity most assuredly is.

A young woman may have inherited her father’s predilection toward both brilliance and mental illness. This paralyzing fear cocoons her from the rest of the world – her family relationships, educational advancement, and romantic entanglements are bathed in a fragile terror masked in denial and hostility. Playwright David Auburn has beautifully calibrated his Pulitzer Prize winning play to work for the screen (only an impromptu eulogy strikes a contrived theatrical note in an otherwise naturalistic and soft-spoken text) and director John Madden has smoothly opened up the action beyond the original one-set play, juxtaposing and alternating time and place through editing rather than stage convention. While one longs for the performance original star Mary-Louise Parker might have brought to the screen, Gwyneth Paltrow convincingly replaces manic energy with tortured stillness. If the voice is occasionally shrill and the demeanor too blandly catatonic, her immobilizing dread permeates the screen. Hope Davis is a tad too much the one note obsessive compulsive controlling bitch of an older sister, but Jake Gyllenhaal adds much welcome sex appeal and tender earnestness as a math student equally smitten by his professor’s daughter and his professor’s equations. As for Anthony Hopkins, as per usual any phonebook will do.

While lacking the rhythm and music of math formulas spoken aloud so intrinsic to the play, and suffering a fraction by a pivotal question too early and unequivocally answered (which on stage was not resolved until the thrilling final moments) this intelligent tale of filial responsibility, internalized fears and accomplishments too oft left unspoken and the delicate nature of relationships is articulate, crisp, smart and affecting.

Which is saying a lot coming from someone who never got past algebra.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0377107/

Everything Is Illuminated

2005-09-18T19:09:00.000-04:00

Grade: B

Elijah Wood travels to Ukraine to thank an unknown woman in a photograph for saving his grandfather’s life during World War II. What follows is a sweet yet modest tale of the keepsakes that are waiting for us, calling out to be discovered in our lives.

A small and surreal experience, Wood is accompanied on his travels by a hip hop Ukrainian translator and the young man’s grandfather, who long ago opened a sightseeing company targeting Jews most likely searching for relatives in burial grounds scattered throughout the region. An eccentric trio, Wood views the world through obscenely large pop bottle glasses, eyes wide wide open, collecting seemingly gratuitous items in plastic bags for no immediately apparent reason. The grandfather travels with a rabid seeing eye dog even though there is nothing wrong with his vision. English is translated poorly and comically, as the merry band of misfits travel the countryside in search of a small village that seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

First time screenwriter/director Liev Schreiber (one of the finest stage actors around) lovingly but self-consciously unveils his story, painstakingly ensuring every shot imagined in his mind is visualized on screen. The film has an overall muted feel – laughs are warm rather than robust, horrors told are sorrowfully tender rather than heartbreakingly anguished. Color occasionally bursts forth amidst earth tones, but the journey itself rarely ignites intense passion or pathos. Not unlike a long, long drive on a vacant highway, there is something both quietly hypnotic yet ultimately tiring about the sojourn. The pilgrimage (based on a novel of the same name) feels considerably abridged, a quick jaunt lacking in regional vistas, winding roads and side trails. One is touched by its kind and quirky soul, but left wanting for the saga burning to be told within.

A story about choices one must make to survive, leaving pieces of ourselves behind to announce to the world we have lived, the things we choose not to see and the inescapability of our past, the smallness and sameness of the world in which we live. The film’s themes remind one of the superior “Sophie’s Choice,” a story far more willing to mine the depths of emotion that tortured guilt may inspire.

Illuminating, but lacking incandescence.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0404030/

The Constant Gardener

2005-09-05T17:23:00.000-04:00

Grade: B

Exceptional performances and impressive visual style enhance a rich and intriguing yet somewhat confusing and rambling screenplay. Director Fernando Meirelles boldly employs a gritty National Geographic palette filled with grainy mud tones and overexposed cold metallic grays, in a film that suffers from an equally muddy plot and coldly detaching filmmaking style.

Not that we don’t care, however, because we do. Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz are charismatic and involving as a diplomat and his wife stationed in a poverty-stricken region of Northern Kenya, their passion for one another overtaken by her passion for the indigenous people and her need to protect and defend them from harm. His quest to discover the truth about her death (which we learn of in the film’s first moments) and uncover the essence of her life, proves both a murder mystery and a subtle journey of one man’s turmoil, understanding and appreciation for the woman he loves.

That the mystery uncovered never seems all that surprising in an age of corrupt government, profit over humanity, and poverty manipulated by opportunism – especially against the backdrop of recent events last week in Louisiana – may say more about one’s personal cynicism than any specific fault of the filmmaker. Yet the unfolding of events are not as compelling as they should be, and are too often undermined with standard espionage elements (the book on which the film is based was written by spy maven John le Carré, after all) which include car chases, thugs waiting behind closed doors, hidden correspondence, shocking evidence delivered in terrified whisper, and youthful computer whizzes at hand to break security codes and uncover secret information. Too many pivotal characters are offhandedly introduced, often too late and too conveniently, although some smart touches and nuanced clues are admittedly intermingled with the clichéd ones.

But it is the private, personal journey of the man that compels, and Fiennes finds anguish and awe in equal measure. His adoration for his wife slowly evolves into a profound sense of respect, as we watch a good man become an even better one. If the film had lost 20 minutes and focused more confidently on an emotional journey rather than a suspenseful one, a good film would have been an even better one as well.

More Movie Info: http://chevy.imdb.com/title/tt0387131/

Mad Hot Ballroom

2005-09-05T17:12:00.000-04:00

Grade: B+

You’d have to be the Child Catcher from “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” not to be charmed by the sweet gentleness and tender humor of these kids and their teachers.

Equal parts unassuming documentary and transparent public service announcement on the importance of the arts in our schools, the film is at its best simply observing kids being kids – in the classroom, in competition, and with each other. Through learning ballroom dance in four boroughs throughout New York City (what’s up with Staten Island?) kids also learn the value of practice and dedication, proper etiquette and behavior, teamwork and self-esteem. They also talk and giggle about the opposite sex, show utter mortification at having to make real eye-contact with their partners, cheer unabashedly when they succeed, cry and gripe openly in the face of defeat, compliment and support one another, and ultimately learn how to take things in stride. It is that time in one’s life when every dream is possible, when winning the chance to compete is assuredly the first step toward a lifelong career. Watching the intense desire of some teachers to win the big trophy and listening to these kids size up their opponents and make off-handed philosophical comments (“I judge girls by their inner beauty and outer beauty, but mostly by their inner”) is ingratiating and often very funny. One kid’s comments on gay marriage are simply priceless.

We don’t learn very much about these kids as individuals outside of the classroom (unlike the far more thoughtful “Spellbound” of a few years ago) and statements about how dance has saved some of them from almost certain criminality are more than a little heavy-handed. The film also focuses so heavily on one specific team it becomes impossible to assess how they compare with others, forcing us to root for one team and one team only. And it would have been nice had the likes of Broadway legend Ann Reinking been acknowledged for the non-theater queens who probably didn’t realize some rather important judges were in the house. But to see the joyous pride in the eyes of so many parents, the love and care these teachers carry with them into their makeshift ballrooms, and to know these kids have been given a gift they will carry with them for the rest of their lives goes a long way to make one smile and warm one’s heart.

More Movie Info: http://chevy.imdb.com/title/tt0438205/

Broken Flowers

2005-08-28T11:09:00.000-04:00

Grade: D+/DWR*

For a full fifty percent of this movie, absolutely
N O T H I N G happens. If you blink, you won’t miss a damn thing. If you look at your watch – as I did quite often – you won’t miss a damn thing. My partner went to the bathroom – he didn’t miss a damn thing.

Bill Murray sits on his sofa. The TV screen is blank. The stereo plays. He looks at a vase of pink flowers. They have started to droop since the last time he sat on the couch and stared at them. He looks at his glass of champagne. He looks at the stereo. He looks out the window. The scene fades to black.

Bill Murray is driving. He looks at his Mapquest directions. He looks in the rearview mirror. He drives some more. He turns a bend. He looks at the landscape. He picks some flowers, gets back in the car, drives some more. He asks for directions, sees a deer, drives some more and…

I wonder what color we’re going to pick when we buy new towels at Bed, Bath & Beyond. I still can’t believe our laundry service stained our towels with bleach. Maybe we can stop off at Tower Records to buy some of Lifehouse’s older cd’s…

Wow, must have zoned out for a minute there. Focus, gotta’ focus.

Bill Murray stands on his hotel veranda. He looks at the rain. He looks at the traffic. He looks at the traffic in the rain. Fade to black and…

Bill Murray waits in a doctor’s office. He looks at the books on the table. He looks at the receptionist. He looks at the wall hangings. He looks back at the receptionist. He sits. He waits.

I am really in the mood for some good diner food for dinner tonight. Like a turkey triple decker and a side of fries. I’ll have to work out again first though, or…

Oops, wait, did I miss anything? Relief – he’s still sitting in the reception area.

Most of this movie is Bill Murray sitting on a sofa, on an airplane, or in a rental car. During the rest of the movie, he visits a series of old flings after having received an anonymous letter on pink stationary telling him he is the father of a 19-year-old son. Each reunion is its own separate, partitioned, distinct void in time. Sharon Stone drinks white zinfandel (a clear sign of a lowlife – I know this, since I love white zinfandel) and has a slutty daughter named Lolita. Frances Conroy is sterile and vacant, makes dinner in geometric shapes (the chicken is a square, the rice in a circle). Jessica Lange is an “animal communicator,” flaky and one with her animals. Tilda Swinton is trailer trash with gap-toothed husband prone to violent outbreaks. The fifth is six feet under – no, not Frances Conroy. None of these women emanate any personality. We learn nothing about them. We learn nothing about Bill Murray. He brings them all pink flowers. He has a vacant scene with them. He drives. He gets on a plane. He has self-indulgent dreams about them during the flight. He looks at young men and ponders if he is their father. He drives some more. He is often shot from behind. This is supposed to carry some weighty import. It does not. Don’t count on a resolution. You won’t get one.

Filled with dramatic pauses and stilted dialogue, Bill Murray is nonetheless a very talented actor who manages to create a modicum of interest and sympathy when there is no particular reason for any. A role that calls upon a little more energy on his part would be helpful -- one “Lost in Translation” performance is plenty, especially when it’s in a far better film.

What some may call existentialism I call masturbation. One can only hope Director Jim Jarmusch had fun playing with himself.

As my partner said while leaving the movie, “It’s very rare a movie is so off-putting that halfway through you vow never to see anything by its director ever again.”

As for me, I strongly recommend bringing lots of No-Doze and coffee into the movie theater. No worries if you need to use the restroom – you won’t miss a damn thing.

*For those unfamiliar with this particular designation, DWR (which stands for “Danger, Will Robinson”) is used to indicate pretentious, self-congratulatory, holier-than-thou or otherwise self-important dreck that nevertheless manages to garner significant critical praise. I am considering changing this designation to IEFS for “Is Ebert Fu#king Serious?”

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0412019/

Murderball

2005-08-19T09:43:00.000-04:00

Grade: A

All the clichés about inspiration in the face of adversity don't begin to do justice to this wonderful documentary.

Don't be fooled – merely set against the backdrop of wheelchair rugby (formerly called Murderball until it became clear the name was off-putting to prospective sponsors) – athletic prowess and accomplishment barely scratch the surface of a film about a team of paraplegics whose individual stories and personalities are at once diverse, tragic, occasionally obnoxious and irritating, profoundly moving and spiritually uplifting.

As I said, the clichés don't do it justice.

No subject is verboten – from accident descriptions, to sexual function issues ("I got a modified doggie style I kind of perfected," extols one of the players) to cutthroat competition, to misplaced national fever, to pained memories of "phantom lives," to family strife having more to do with emotional than physical disability. A wife toasts her husband at their anniversary dinner, he toasts victory for his team. Graphic infomercials about adjusting to one's sex life in the face of disability, complete with monotone doctor devoid of all personality. Wheelchair bound fathers learn how to demonstrate pride in their able-bodied sons, able-bodied fathers learn how to demonstrate pride in their wheelchair-bound sons, best friends find the power of communication in the face of crippling guilt, newbies learn acceptance through the generous empathetic spirit of others, and teammates play terribly funny practical jokes on one another.

Surprisingly soft-spoken in the face of almost animalistic athletic intensity, there is a no-holds barred quality throughout that is both refreshing and bare. There is no pity apparent on screen – assh&les prior to injury remain assh&les after, players show team spirit and pettiness in equal measure, physical challenge spawns as many gifts as it does obstacles. Filmed from multiple camera angles that emphasize the genuine speed, intensity and power of these men – gladiators in their chariots as it were – who wins what seems far less important (to us, if not to them) than who these people are. Trophies come in all shapes and sizes.

When an injured motorcycle enthusiast returns home after a year in rehab, he looks around his now wheelchair-accessible bathroom and says with introspective simplicity, “this sucks.” His mother and girlfriend momentarily mistake reflection on his forever altered life for displeasure in their handiwork. It is one of many such instances of gut-level, transforming honesty. Final moments involving a timid young war veteran are heartbreaking in their tenderness and decency.

To the very last, this one is full of surprises. Do not miss this movie – it will both humble and elevate you to a different place.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0436613/

Junebug

2005-08-15T08:39:00.000-04:00

Grade: A-

Rarely does a film strike such resonant chords without hitting a single sour or false note.

A family golden boy takes a side trip home to his southern roots after a multiyear absence. He has recreated himself in the big city, yet remains fixed in his family's perceptions and expectations. Despite the old adage, one can go home again, usually lapsing into comfortable old roles and responsibilities for good measure. His well-traveled, cosmopolitan bride is bemusedly charmed yet eminently surprised at how little she knows about her husband. Widely embraced by some arms and narrowly judged by others, she is quickly absorbed into familial love and pettiness.

Languidly paced, dripping with atmosphere, like 100% cotton on a sweltering summer day this is a film that breathes through its pores, taking frequent, quiet pauses and offbeat excursions that allow us to soak in the environs and reflect on the meaning of family in our own lives. Slapstick stereotypes of small town southern life here are replaced with great affection and grace. There is much to recommend this way of life, where humor, simplicity and sentiment flow naturally in equal measure. Saturday nights at fellowship dinners, checkered tablecloths and pot luck food with the saran wrap just barely exposed enough to permit the plastic tongs. Naps on den couches amidst fits of pique drifting down from the rooms above. Much cigarette smoking. Hidden resentments between neighbors juxtaposed with a heartfelt sense of community and caring largely unfelt in the big city.

And a whole heap of unresolved, unspoken yet firmly established family resentments, disappointments, faith and love.

Rarely since "Ordinary People" has the stillness in people's lives been so powerfully reflected - the yard, the rooms, the landscapes all seem to have their own stories to tell. An exquisite cast creates a quirky, complex yet often subdued family. Neither the country nor the city folk have a monopoly on values here, but the importance of family varies, shades, and distorts though multiple perspectives and circumstances. Sexuality explodes on the screen between newlyweds Alessandro Nivola and Embeth Davidtz, still learning to communicate verbally as well as they do in the bedroom. A wearied depth of understanding that comes only from well worn time emanates from overbearing mother Celia Weston and understated father Scott Wilson. And the sparkling Amy Adams gives heartwarming new meaning to the cockeyed optimist, a young woman intent on seeing the positive in everyone, including Ben McKenzie as an uncommunicatively pained husband who wants to show how much he cares yet can only crack a genuine smile in the unlikeliest of places.

If some links in the chain are found wanting, and a side story involving a savant artist feels a bit awkward and misplaced, novice director Phil Morrison and writer Angus MacLachlan have nonetheless created a subtle wonder that provides just enough information and undercurrent without giving the farm away. The audience becomes the unwritten final character. A funny, sweet, and surprisingly eloquent experience.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0418773/

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory

2005-08-13T16:31:00.000-04:00

This one is destined to become a classic for children of all ages. Bubbling over with whimsy and fancy, eye-popping visuals, sweetness, charm, and just the right measure of sadistic cynicism, a confection it is indeed. Add the glorious score, bound to be co-opted by recording artists for decades, and a central performance by the bewitching Gene Wilder....

Oh, oops, wait a minute. Wrong movie. Sorry if you just ran to fandango your movie tickets.

The only question one has for the slightly arrogant Tim Burton is, well...

WHY?

This deadly dull and drearily plodding remake is effectively a scene by scene redo, with some animated special effects, occasional moments of pure disgusting grossness, and an oedipal-like father/son thing going that is neither convincing nor compelling. At the heart of it all is an inexplicably strange Johnny Depp, a twistedly maniacal puppy dog who is just trying way too hard for primo bizarreness. As always. Burton adds the occasional warped spark to his set design, but there is nothing to recommend this cold yawner over the sparkling original.

"Who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it with dew? Cover it with chocolate and a miracle or two, the candyman, the candyman can." Now that's whimsy.

Don't fu%k with my childhood fellas' unless you've got a really good reason.

Grade: A (Willy)
Grade: C (Charlie)

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0367594/

Cinderella Man

2005-07-24T18:20:00.000-04:00

Grade: D+/DWR*

Critics must have been terrified that Russell Crowe was gonna' hunt them down and beat the living crap out of them, because that's the only explanation for the generous reviews this earnestly unoriginal biopic has been receiving.

Please don't tell him where I live.

Round One: A little Depression-era boy steals a salami to help feed his family. His father, Russell Crowe, makes him return the cold cuts to the local butcher, head hung low in shame. The family starves.

Kill me now.

Round Two: It's still the Depression, the electricity is turned off, Russell Crowe can see his own breath, and within hours the children start coughing. Can pneumonia be far away?

Round Three: Half starved and about to go into the boxing ring, a utensil-less Russell Crowe begins eating a bowl of hash like a dog, just as a reporter rounds the corner to spot him. "Long time no see, Jimmy," the pugilist-peeking sportswriter intones.

Round Four: We're in the boxing ring, and Russell Crowe begins to have flashes of his wife, children and "Past Due" notices. Suddenly, he comes to life and begins boxing like a champion.

Round Five: Russell Crowe's best friend gets trampled by a police horse in a Hooverville shantytown. He asks Crowe to inform the wife he'll be home a tad late as the stretcher comes to take him away. Quickly cut to pine box, big hole in the ground, number 62998 stamped on the pauper's grave. The music swells.

Round Six: A beaten man, Russell Crowe pleads with his wife Renee Zellweger - both replete with embarrassing Irish/New Yawk accents - "Babe, let me go back in the ring. At least there I know who's hitting me."

Round Seven: A coach is stunned that Russell Crowe is thrashing his champion fighter. "You beat the guy easy last time," he admonishes. "He ain't the same guy," the beaten prizefighter responds with mystical awe.

Round Eight: Renee actually says to Russell (I am so not making this up) "You are everybody's hope, you are your children's hero, and you are the champion of my heart, James J. Braddock."

Round Nine: Andrew Stern is in the restroom trying not to vomit.

Round Ten: Sylvestor Stallone sues for story infringement.

Round Eleven: Martin Scorsese sues for directorial infringement. His "Raging Bull" cameraman, Michael Chapman, sues for cinematography infringement. His "Raging Bull" editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, beats the crap out of Ron Howard with her Academy Award.

Round Twelve: Cinderella, Prince Charming, and the Evil Stepsisters sue for title infringement.

It's all dreadfully syrupy and sanctimonious. Crowe gives mock sincerity a bad name. Paul Giamatti is one-note irritating doing his best Burgess Meredith impression, sans cigar stub. Broadway's "The Music Man" himself, Craig Bierko causes major trouble in River City with one of the year's most scenery-chewing performances as the gorilla champion to beat, forced to deliver lines like, "Has your wife been dreaming about me?" as his psyche-out technique in the ring.

Director Ron Howard bores to tears with his formulaic, drawn out, cliché-ridden, derivative, but oh-so-well-meaning paean to the godlike protagonist no one's ever heard of before. Apparently, not only was fighter James Braddock an important boxer with a heart of gold and a patriotic song in his heart, but for some unknown reason we are also told he helped build the Verrazano Bridge as well. What this has to do with anything I'm not sure. Did he practice his punches on the suspension cables like Rocky Balboa beat up on the frozen carcasses in the meat locker?

Give this movie a one way ticket straight to Palookaville.

*For those unfamiliar with this particular designation, DWR (which stands for "Danger, Will Robinson") is used to indicate pretentious, self-congratulatory, holier-than-thou or otherwise self-important dreck that nevertheless manages to garner significant critical praise. I am considering changing this designation to IEFS for "Is Ebert Fu#king Serious?"

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0352248/

Batman Begins

2005-07-18T20:19:00.000-04:00

Grade: A-

Note to Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher - wanna make a good "Batman" movie? Then make the caped crusader a human being first. It took five tries and Director Christopher Nolan, but someone finally got it right.

Christian Bale, who (be still my heart) will forever remain at the very top of my laminated list, brings charisma, humanity and more than a touch of nobility to a superhero who has heretofore been a brooding and one-dimensional cipher. He is a man whose course has been set through the decency of others - his parents, his childhood friend, his butler turned father figure - a man challenged to rise up to the examples and expectations of those around him. His sense of grief, vengefulness, shame, and paralyzing fear make him all the more heroic for confronting his human frailties and flying beyond and above them.

Director Nolan has worked with screenwriter David S. Goyer to create a story that is more folklore than formula. From a childhood fall down a deep well infested with bats to brutal prison encampments to snow capped, zen encrusted mountain tops to a gotham of chillingly ingenious design, their Batman is the stuff forged of saga and legend. It is also a humdinger of an action adventure flick, replete with rooftop car chases, shadowy violence, and a villain I for one never saw coming. If there are moments that come perilously close to "Kung Fu" level mumbo jumbo and Capraesque goody goodness, there is also far more genuine emotion and pathos than one has a reasonable right to expect. A mesmerizing set design is enhanced by a creative sound design that allows eerie, cavelike echoes to reverberant throughout the theater. Nice stylistic touches introduce us to the famed bat spotlight, a relationship with "backup" bats forged through fear surmounted, and mayhap an early meeting of the lad who will one day become sidekick Robin.

Uniformly multi-dimensional performances from a fine cast of veterans the likes of Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Tom Wilkinson and Morgan Freeman keep the story well grounded and never veering too far into the realm of comic book fantasy. But it is Bale that soars above all others who haveworn the flamboyant cape and driven the flame-spewing car before him, and that makes this "Batman" dark yet never dull.

Since this one is a prequel, any chance we can call a do-over for all the clunker predecessors?

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0372784/

Happy Endings

2005-07-17T21:42:00.000-04:00

Grade: C+

What begins as smart, witty, hip, urbane, and erotic quickly degenerates into something trying way too hard to be smart, witty, hip, urbane, and erotic.

Writer/director Don Roos intertwines the stories of some ten assorted people. They are at various times gay, straight, confused, neurotic, lonely, gullible, manipulative, vindictive, and despicable. Few if any are terribly likable. Pieces of information about all of the characters flash on the screen, at first charming snapshots and snippets into their histories and futures that soon reveal the storyteller has way too many characters and way too much information on hand to tell in a single sitting. Some stories are far more intriguing and surprising than others, yet the patchwork interweaving becomes tedious, dizzying and long-winded.

The acting is solid, especially from Lisa Kudrow as a despairing abortion counselor, pro-choice for others but questioning some of her own, Tom Arnold as a far too naïve mogul with a kind heart and the word sucker firmly imprinted on his forehead, and Jason Ritter as a gay boy in denial and with moptop, both circa 1980. There is a mean-spirited and hostile sophistication at play, a wink wink sense of humor at how flawed, unpleasant and pathetic everyone is. Straight men are vacuous morons, gay men are emotionally weak and impotent, women are cold and conniving, all variations on a theme Roos utilized to greater (and more concise) amusement in "The Opposite of Sex." Here any pretense of tenderness is replaced with acidity - everyone bribes, lies and cheats on everyone else, gay men have more sex with women than they do with each another, and nobody seems to have ever heard of birth control. The film is so self-consciously impressed with its own slickness and style that it becomes far too precious with far too few chuckles for its own good. At two hours, the filmmaker desperately needs six fewer protagonists and 30 fewer minutes.

Happy some of the endings may be - so say the written flashes of explanation and resolution on the screen - but there are definitely far too many of them.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0361693/

War of the Worlds

2005-07-17T21:41:00.000-04:00

Grade: B

Steven Spielberg emphasizes good old fashioned American family dysfunction and the magic of CGI over a more universal story of unity and cooperation in the face of global extermination.
How simplistically isolationist of him.

The film is at its best watching Tom Cruise (whose character would be popping anti-anxiety medication if Cruise would only let him) attempting to protect the children he barely knows in the face of sudden, unanticipated, unrelenting and paralyzing fear. The terror the trio feels is matched only by the mutual antagonism they have toward one another, and their relationships expand and contract in remarkably believable fashion. Dakota Fanning is surprisingly un-irritating as she transforms from wise-beyond-her-years to a shrieking, screaming, crying, comatose little girl who just wants her mommy. Justin Chatwin is also fine as the bratty Ipod enraptured teenager who won't do his homework and would happily choose incineration over spending another moment with his dad given half an opportunity. Tim Robbins detracts as a shell shocked basket case encountered along the way, and Gene Barry (star of the classic original) makes a nice cameo that will be missed if you dare blink.

Taught, harrowing and relentless, the film makes only passing reference to terrorism and exploits the occasional 9/11 imagery to manipulative effect, yet never bothers to explore the more subtle aspects of a society under constant fear of attack. Mob scene mentality, "have you seen this person" photo collages, and Cruise covered with dust of the vaporized is about as high-minded and philosophical as the film gets. Computer generated effects rule the day, and they are often frightening and pulse increasing if also stubbornly two-dimensional. As Spielberg has demonstrated in such masterworks as "Jaws" and "Close Encounters," less is indeed more. Yet here we are shown far too much, and as threatening and gargantuan as it all looks, it nonetheless diminishes rather than enhances a genuine sense of dread and fear. It is the stuff of nightmares, yet we are too often impressed with the art design instead of being haunted by the realism. One can't help but lookfor dinosaurs to make a special guest appearance, especially during an overly long basement hideout sequence derivative of Spielberg's velociraptor sequence in "Jurassic Park."

Through focusing completely on one nuclear family's journey, we lose any sense of the worldwide battle so forcefully indicated in the original 1950's screen version, a struggle of all humankind to save the planet from certain annihilation. Beyond the three main characters, everyone else lies somewhere between cartoon and stereotype (from a dopey auto mechanic named Manny to a neighborhood kid with street smarts and a goofy afro to the wealthy and kindhearted stepfather who all too easily makes Cruise look shabby and self-centered in contrast). Plot points are too often contrived or convenient (why is there always a running car filled to the brim with gasoline and a bunch of hand grenades just when you need 'em?) A sappy, Hollywood ending betrays the dark and uncompromising gloom and reality the piece initially aspires to, and the epilogue feels tacked on, a story ender rather than the spiritual and metaphysical revelation one expects H.G. Wells had originally intended.

This "War of the Worlds" does not live up to its title. "Aliens vs. Bayonne, N.J.?" Maybe.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0407304/

Heights

2005-07-17T08:30:00.000-04:00

Grade: B+

We know there's a rooftop accessible to us in our apartment building. We've lived there for almost four years. We've never ventured up there. We're New Yorkers, not explorers. Our apartment is our oasis against the insanity. We don't know the names of a single neighbor. We walk among the millions, talking on cell phones in order to live in our own insular world among the anonymous and annoying throngs. Yet the City of New York is a very, very small world. We bump into friends, point out acquaintances, gawk at theater actors and dodge the damn tourists. Every New Yorker is two degrees of separation from every other New Yorker.

In 24 hours, the lives of five New Yorkers are forever altered. They know one another well, but maybe not as well as they think. They've never met one another before, yet are unwittingly and unknowingly connected nonetheless. Confessions will be made, lies will be told, emotions will be uncovered and avoided. Affairs of the heart, betrayals in the bedroom, longings unfulfilled.
People will venture onto the rooftops they never knew existed before.

Glenn Close is a grand dame of the theater, both larger and smaller than life depending on which side of the performance she stands. Ostentatious and vibrant, suddenly old and vulnerable. Elizabeth Banks is trapped within the life that exists inside her apartment walls, without even recognizing how much she longs for escape into the wider world. James Marsden hides behind his engagement, living the revisionist life of denial an anonymous city affords him. Jesse Bradford lives in the same apartment building, knows one, meets another, changes the life of the one he's never met. The taxi cab rides, the subway stations, the Broadway Theaters (major points for any film that uses a house that actually looks like it exists within the theater district), the claustrophobic apartments, the rooftop vistas - the story, tone, and setting are all quintessential New York. Sharply written and nicely acted, some self-conscious editing and section titling, the lack of a mood capturing film score, and the occasionally clichéd plot misstep makes for an intellectually rather than emotionally involving experience. There is an inherent coldness in filmmaking style at work, appropriate to the environs yet nevertheless distancing from our characters. There is also perhaps a glimmer or two of hope that appears rather disingenuous, even if desired.

Yet one also cannot escape the many truths and observations about the lives we lead, the perspectives we share, and the games we play, only in New York. Truth be told, only in Manhattan.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0382073/

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

2005-06-12T16:18:00.000-04:00

Grade: C+

Brad Pitt, meet Angelina Jolie. Angelina, Brad. Oh, you two have met already? Huh, there are even rumors you um, know each other biblically?

You'd never know it from the utter lack of chemistry the two of you share on screen.

A couple find their lives together tedious, cold, repetitive, down in the doldrums -not unlike how we feel watching them. They seek marriage counseling, where they trade risqué and nasty quips, downplaying their lack of a sex life. (Honey, if these two ain't having a whole lot o' sex, there truly isn't a whole lot o' hope for the rest of us.) Secretly, they are hitman and hitwoman, respectively - she hides weaponry in the oven and he looks studly smoldering. They suddenly find themselves contracted to take each other out - hitperson-wise, not date-wise - and find sex and romance anew while beating the crap out of each other. There's a lot of sexual innuendo and pithy "I want to kill you and make you all bloody, honey" dialogue. Brad says something bitter, Angelina says something bitchy, and they kiss really really dispassionately hard. There's also a lot of shoot-em-up, knife wielding, bomb exploding, jujitsu, car crashing action, slickly directed but generally as ho hum and derivative as the latest James Bond incarnation.

Pitt and Jolie act (such as it is) at each other rather than with each other, and the entire film has a distant, processed feel as though they were never really in the same room together. The "ain't marriage grandly awful" knife twisting has its momentary amusements, but the film feels generally disjointed and unconvincing. The "Lion in Winter" this is not. Character development is non-existent, as we are meant to be interested in Brad and Angelina for no other reason than they are Brad and Angelina. Vince Vaughn phones in an irritating performance as Pitt's cohort who runs a spy operation but still lives with his Mommy, and Adam Brody (of "The O.C." fame) is eminently miscast as the hitee who sets the action in motion (did I mention Director Doug Liman also happens to be Executive Producer of "The O.C."? Hmmmmm.)

The theater air conditioning was just fine for a sweltering summer day. The film itself was dull and uninvolving, but sometimes coolness is enough - airwise I mean. And no, Brad never takes his shirt off. In an action/animal lust picture no less. Talk about not really getting your money's worth.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0356910/

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

2005-05-19T20:47:00.000-04:00

Grade: A-

September, 1977

Dear Mr. Lucas,

I am 14 years old, and I have just seen "Star Wars" for the 47th time. Twice a week for the last few months, I have taken the bus to the Hicksville Twin South movie theater on Long Island to sit through the movie two times in a row. Some people think I'm crazy and make fun of me, wearing "May the Force Be With You" t-shirts, owning the toys and knowing all the trivia, but I don't care very much. When I'm sitting in the darkened theater, listening to people laugh and cheer over and over again, knowing what scene is coming after what scene is coming after what scene, I'm so happy I completely forget how completely unhappy I am. "Star Wars" is magical, and fills me with a joy I can't even begin to describe. I know I will love it for the rest of my life - it means more to me than words can even say. I just can't wait for you to make more movies that will make me feel this way again. I am your #1 fan.

May, 2005

Dear George,

I don't know what took you so long, but I'm so incredibly happy the magic is back.

Today, I stood on line for three hours outside the Ziegfeld movie theater. Passersby in suits and ties on their way to work thought we were all crazy, and camera crews were poking fun at us for ditching work today, but I don't care very much. We all know it's been a while since that indefinable joy you filled our hearts with so many years ago. "Phantom Menace" didn't have all that much of it. "Attack of the Clones" showed some of that old spark when Master Yoda whipped out his lightsaber western style, but overall the film was still way too whiny and labored.

But today, Mr. Lucas, you made me feel like a kid again.

Okay, okay - some of the subplots are really unnecessary, love stories have never been your strong suit, Anakin's transformation tothe dark side could have used a tad more exposition, Natalie Portman stinks, and nobody really cares all that much about tying up loose ends from the last two episodes. We're all there to see the genesis of Darth Vader and how you manage to build a bridge to that first glorious movie. And what a thrilling, chilling, theatrical, moving climax of a bridge it is. None of the other five movies will ever quite be the same.

The special effects are still dazzling, yet somehow much of the computerized slickness of the last two movies feels replaced by the three dimensional models, airplane glue and genuine sense of imagination that made us fall in love with "Star Wars" in the first place. Lightsabers still flare and buzz in abundance, yet somehow we are returned to the simplicity and grace of that first duel between Obi Wan and Darth aboard the Death Star. The storyline still entwines sweeping romanticism and spiritual fervor with high camp, yet somehow genuine heart, infectious humor and overwhelming poignancy have replaced cockiness and over-inflated showmanship. The first strains of Luke's and Leia's theme music catch in our throats and bring tears to our eyes.

No longer the simple personification of evil, you have transformed Darth Vader into one of the great tragic figures in film history. The incarnate pleasure of the one who lures him to the dark side is matched only by the despair felt by those who have lost their friend, lover, brother. We will never forget he was once a man deeply, torturously in love. We will never forget he has been mummified alive in a black tomb for his sins. We will never forget he was once a Jedi.

The questions are answered, characters are reintroduced, the chess pieces are in place, and the saga is at last complete. In the film's very final moments, we are transported back to the desert planet where it all began, a world of two suns.

And I am 14 years old.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0121766/

Crash

2005-05-16T08:41:00.000-04:00

Grade: D/DWR*

Get out your stenography machines, tape recorders, note pads and #2 pencils, 'cause this film has one hell of a lecture to give:

White people hate and distrust blacks, Mexicans, Asians, and Middle Easterners. Black people hate and distrust whites, Mexicans, Asians, Middle Easterners. Black people apparently also hate and distrust other black people. Middle Easterners hate everybody else as well, but seem to have specific issues with Latino men, reasons undisclosed.

Let's not even begin to talk about boat people from Thailand, who manage a cameo.

Apparently, everyone also loves to pontificate openly and constantly about how much they can't stand one another. "Why does it always have to be a black guy committing crimes?" "We're changing the locks tomorrow before the [Latino] locksmith returns to his hood and hands the keys over to his homies." The phrase "you people" floats on the air from hatemonger to hatemonger. If one deleted every race-related pronouncement, polemic, diatribe, commentary, speech or invective from one of the most affected screenplays of the year, ten minutes of manipulative melodrama might be left standing. As it is, the film is a neverendingly self-righteous clusterf#ck, a public service announcement about intolerance as seen through the eyes of racist police officers ("just wait 'til you've been on the job as long as I have"), politically correct (but internally bigoted) district attorneys, more outwardly bigoted wives of district attorneys, dark skinned carjackers, light skinned assimilationist television directors (and their even lighter skinned able-to-pass for white wives), naive blond/blue-eyed apple pie rookie cops, Middle Eastern bodega owners, and tattooed Latinos with cherubic baby daughters questioning "how far bullets go?"

Of course, racists also have redeemable hearts of gold, crack-ho black women have crime fighting sons, and baby faced idealists can still blow people away with the pull of a trigger, just to demonstrate ad naseum how complicated and complex the issue of race really is. In case one misses any of the overall cultural importance to any of this, Eastern musicmore appropriate to "Gandhi" cloyingly plays in the background. Coincidences border on the preposterous, as people fortuitously bump and rebump into one another with astonishing happenstance.

Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, Brendan Fraser, Ryan Phillipe, and Sandra Bullock among others work valiantly to imbue their characters with a speck of real humanity, and first time film director Paul Haggis has a nice cinematic eye. Sadly, screenwriter Paul Haggis has a stultifying case of declamatory diarrhea. The fact that this is the same person who wrote last year's magnificent "Million Dollar Baby" does not grant him license to preach the "gospel according to Paul." Think Aaron Sorkin's post 9/11 "West Wing" episode.

Hollywood still has much to say about bigotry and race - the need has never been greater because the discussion is far more subtle and complex than ever before. We are a nation bathed in fear, a country desperate to point fingers of blame. While this film painfully believes it is saying something bursting with import, and we are meant to recognize the antipathy and hypocrisy for what it is, a few intriguing flourishes and smart plot twists cannot camouflage a stereotypical throwback to cowboys and Indians, blackface and Scarface.

"I couldn't bare to see them take away your dignity" a wife tells her husband after he is compelled to apologize to a cop who has just felt her up in front of him.

He should try sitting through this movie.

*For those unfamiliar with this particular designation, DWR (which stands for "Danger, Will Robinson") is used to indicate pretentious, self-congratulatory, holier-than-thou or otherwise self-important dreck that nevertheless manages to garner significant critical praise. I am considering changing this designation to IEFS for "Is Ebert Fu#king Serious?"

More Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375679/