Snide witticisms aside, what we really while watching It Might Get Loud is, not so much the history of the guitar or the history of rock & roll per se, but the personal histories of how these three generations of guitar heroes (or anti-heroes if you will) have come to be who they are – both musically and in essence, since their lives revolve around such, personally. We watch as White pontificates on the old bluesmen that most influenced him (the youngest of the concocted trio is influenced by the oldest of influences) and the way their improv natures have had such a lasting impression on the music he writes and plays and the way he writes and plays such music. We watch as The Edge explains his fascination with the punk movement of the late seventies and in accordance with punk principles (most of them knowing only about three chords) how he can strum just a few chords and through the magic of modern technology sound like a Rock God. He even gives this admission with a sense of pride, as if he is both the Wizard behind that curtain and Toto unveiling himself to the world.

The highlight of It Might Get Loud though, is of course, that true Rock God, Jimmy Page. We watch in awe, along with White and The Edge, as Page tells of his early days in a skiffle band and his psychedelic days of the late sixties all the way up to his legendary recording sessions with Led Zeppelin. We watch in awe, again, as do both White and The Edge, as Page plays around on his guitar with the most nonchalant of ease. His musical doodles head & shoulders above anything the other tow could even dream of doing. The highlight of Page’s already highlight-filled section of the film, comes when we see the Guitar God, surrounded by a roomful of vinyl, playing air guitar to a record he giddily places on his turntable. Nothing can top that.

Unfortunately though, even with Page’s guitar antics and constant impish grin, Guggenheim’s film never delves as deep into the history of the guitar as it probably should. It is surely fun to watch Paige, and to a point White (snarky but brilliant at times!) and it is entertaining to watch the three work their way through a closing credits rendition of The Band’s The Weight, with Page refusing to sing for it and White not knowing the words (it’s Fanny you idiot! Take a load off Fanny!!) but the film never, as the title suggests it should, gets quite loud enough. But at least we have that image of a devilish looking Jimmy Page air-guitaring to old time rock & roll.

Now one should not put that much blame on Adams. Granted she is a young actress and she is competing for screen time with La Streep (poor Anne Hathaway was blown away by the power of La Streep in The Devil Wears Prada). Then again, she held her own – and then some – against the formidable actress just a year ago when they co-starred together (and actually had scenes together, unlike here) in Doubt. Portraying, the sad sack Powell (upon whose blog-turned-best seller about making every dish from Child’s epic master cookbook, this movie’s lesser half is based) schlepping around Brooklyn, whining that she has no life, is a dead end job if ever there was one. Meanwhile, over on the other side of the tracks (that being Paris of course) we have the aforementioned La Streep, one of the most enthralling, enticing and engrossing actresses of her day (of any day!) taking on the role of Julia Child (upon whose memoirs “My Life in France” the better half of this movie is based) who in her own right is one of the most enthralling, enticing and engrossing women to have ever broiled up a batch of Boof Bourguignon on national television. How can an actress compete? For that matter, how can a movie compare?

Granted, the food is quite enticing throughout (with the notable exception of a misguided attempt By Powell to make her way through Child’s aspic chapter – ughhh!) and one should definitely not go to this film hungry (as yours truly did), but in the end – no matter how appetizing much of it may be (well, except for those aspic attempts) and no matter how much we all love Meryl Streep (and who doesn’t – even in the worst of films? Well, maybe not Mamma Mia!, but hey…) – all we are left with are a few hunger pangs and half a movie to take home in a doggie bag. Bon Appetit…not!

Thing is, Year One, the mistake made by the otherwise suitable and crafty Harold Ramis, just simply does not work, and this was due to its casting: Micheal Cera and Jack Black, two huge stars, as what we expected. True comedy comes from the reversal of personas, and the totally, utterly, unexpectedness of the straight man (Cera) becoming the bumbling crap-eating boob hell-bent on starting what was hilariously known as the Muscle Tribe of Danger and Excellence!

But behold, none of this occurred.

So now we’re back to, well, square one (no pun intended): the same old lame comedy that some producer thought would work because the sensible caveman with a soft voice fails to score the girl until he saves the day, and the village stooge runs around spouting lame jokes and making funny faces.

Year One is where it should be at this point; concealed on a nice, shiny DVD packaged and ready to clog up space in your collection — because that’s where it will likely sit until perhaps the Second Coming.

The story follows the lives of con-men Stephen (Ruffalo) and Bloom (Brody) from their early days when they were kids to the height of their deceptive prowess. After their latest escapade Bloom decides that this isn’t the life for him. Years later, Stephen shows up with one last con for the duo to pull off.

While being repetitive nearing the end of the film, I found the story to be fresh and lively. The plots within the story seemed more convoluted than they actually were, and were easily followed, giving the viewer more freedom to experience the film. There were times, however, when I felt like the film needed a little more subtlety. While the narrator was needed and kept the story going at it’s brisk pace, I occasionally felt that the narrator gave away too much information. There were also a few quick flashbacks near the end of the film that were redundant.

The subtext of the film is hard to pinpoint, and I expect that I will be revisiting this film very soon. It’s difficult because The Brothers Bloom is at times subtle and at times very upfront about what’s going on. Thinking back, one of my favorite scenes is when Bloom, who has been struggling with his personal freedom (seemingly) steals an apple at random. It’s a defining moment for Bloom and for the theme of free will, which is ironic within the environment of the film.

While Bloom is the main character of the film, Mark Ruffalo is the talent that shines. Mixing Cary Grant with a dash of Paul Newman, Ruffalo exudes a roguish charm, topped off with a black fedora.

Robbie Coltrane shows up as a minor character, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt sneaks in with my favorite cameo of the year so far. The character of Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi), while mildly entertaining, is an unnecessary character that has very little bearing on the other characters…although she did bring explosives.

At the end of the day I have to ask myself, did I take much away from the film? I’m not sure. But it was one hell of a ride, and I look forward to watching it again.

In all sincerity, the Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida written, Sam Mendes directed Away We Go is not really a bad film. It has some genuinely funny moments throughout. Many of these are already shown in the trailer (which seemed to play before just about every damned movie I saw for the two months prior to the film’s release!) but they are funny nonetheless. As alluded to in my opening salvo, it is not the humour aspect of the film that is lacking but rather it is when Eggers & Vida and Mendes decide to emotionally manipulate their audience that the film plummets into a proverbial pit of maudlin excess. A self-indulgent rap of indie movie cliches. It’s almost as if the film were a two-headed bipolar beast without any real instincts to know which way to better go. And that is my being generous again.

Hey, we deserve a better script than this.

Mendes is a director that can be – and has been – a pretentious hipster doofus (American Beauty), an overly ambitious visual artist (Road to Perdition), a mistaken technical experimenter (Jarhead) and a daring would-be maestro (Revolutionary Road). With Away We Go, he has created what, by all accounts, appears to be nothing more than a mere distraction in what is otherwise a strongly well-manicured, if not somewhat stumbling at times, oeuvre. In the past, even when Mendes has failed as a director, his films have, at the very least, been born of hearty cinematic stock. Even in his most extreme cases of ridiculousness – the infamous plastic bag indulgence of the extremely over-rated American Beauty – Mendes manages to indulge also his cinematic senses. Here it seems as if Away We Go were merely a toss-off he made while having some free time between filming and post production of Revolutionary Road. I’m not sure if the dates coincide, but it surely seems that way to this critic.

Granted, Away We Go is well filmed – a visually striking panorama of road movies as it were – and therefore, even with his seeming nonchalant directorial attitude, does have delusions of cinema. And as (again) alluded to earlier, both Rudolph and Krasinski make the most of what they are given. Allison Janney and Maggie Gyllenhaal are also quite hilarious in their supporting roles as polar opposite mother figures. Unfortunately though, along comes the husband and wife team of Eggers and Vida (once called “the current literary equivalent of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston” by the San Fran Chronicle – there’s an ominous foreboding if ever there were one) and with them a sickeningly sweet solipsistic screenplay, via the snarkiest of highways. Nothing more can be done for the poor film at this point. Its course hath been cast.

On top of all this schmarmy hullabaloo, the soap-sudsy wrap-up ending (daring to go even further over the precipice of self-righteous indignation than ever before in the film and having an everything will work out if only you follow your heart Hallmark moment) acts as insult to injury.  Especially to those who the film was most aiming toward – the navel-gazing in-crowd slackers who drink way too much coffee and read way too much David Sedaris. A disappointing display in its unwieldy mediocrity (never terrible but never great either – that two-headed bipolar beast rearing its ugly heads once again) considering the potential the film had from the beginning. I suppose though, such audiences never even take notice. As for me, I just took it as just another unfortunate lump on the whopper saccharine headache I was already wearing from the first 80 minutes or so.

Telling the story of James, a twenty-twoish college student who, when confronted with his father’s layoff, is forced to take a job at a local decrepit old amusement park in order to get next semester’s tuition bankroll. This, of course, is where he will meet the girl of his supposed dreams. Filled with a stylish (and unstylish) array of cast-offs and misfits, all with their own typically indie-cinema quirkiness, Adventureland could easily have fallen into the realm of the ridiculous (possibly even the purgatory of straight-to-video). Instead, it is raised above such muck by a relatively well-adjusted cast of characters who manage to go beyond the fiddle faddle of typicality so prevalent in such movies (much like the mundane boorishness of the aforementioned Apatow universe. In short, the wry, acerbic crowd with which it is populated saves Mottola’s film, a by-the-book rom-com in most ways.

It is the laid back, but in his best panic-mode style, Gen X (or is it Y?) sarcastic witticisms of Jesse Eisenberg, as the strange kid in a strange land that get everything started. Following in the footsteps of his (admittedly similar) roles in The Education of Charlie Banks and the wonderfully lacerating The Squid and the Whale as well as the soon-to-be released Zombieland in hindsighted perspective, Eisenberg is once again the voice of manic, jaded reason and esoteric intelligentsia. The kid is simply a blast to watch and listen to as he acts out his role as the very antithesis of what Hollywood – and the middle American corn belt and minivan set who go along with it – think of as the ideal leading man. The kid is just too smart for that kind of thing. Quirky, sensitive and full of bitter, pop-culture-referenced angst, Eisenberg – and in turn James – is not what the mass-media hype-mongers want us to see in the movies and/or on TV, but what the rest of us see when we look in the mirror everyday.

Joining Eisenberg in this playground of dehumanizing absurdities that is their park of pathos, is his femme fatale in faded jeans and ringer t-shirt, Kristen Stewart as Em, the dark, brooding girl of his supposed dreams. Stewart plays the part of permanent malaise to near perfection. This may not be so much her acting prowess (one cannot see that she has any to speak of really) as her actually being a dark, brooding girl of (somebody’s?) dreams. Cute, and rather appealing on a basic college quad girl kinda way, but just as listless as attractive.  It’s as if she were one of those emotionally-lobotomized Russian mail-order brides who just lie there in order to please their men and get their green cards. In other words, the typical twenty-something of today.  I suppose as long as Stewart sticks to roles that play on her dark, heroin (or is it meth? – I’m saying meth!) chic dullness – aka, vampire’s blood interest, depressed small town slut, Joan Jett – then she should have a strong career ahead of her. Running the acting gamut from A to B (as Dorothy Parker would likely say) should not be that hard. Of course we are lucky that her role as Em falls squarely into that two-letter thespianic spectrum.  I suppose though, this is what the role is asking for from its portrayer.  Now if only we could get her to have an emotion that does not involve just a crooked smile and cynical eye roll.

Rounding out the cast is a group of actors as mish-mashed as the characters they portray. SNL buddies Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are on the characterizing best as the hilariously square management team of the park. The oft-maligned Ryan Reynolds plays the half-studly maintenance man who may very well be the long-lost, slightly less skeevy brother of Matthew McConaughey’s Wooderson from the contemporarily set Dazed and Confused. Martin Starr as Joel, the pipe-smoking class-centric oddball and soon-to-be best friend of James. You will also find Matt Bush as the in-serious-need-of-Ritalin Frigo (he is best known for being the thoughtless son who keeps catching the ire of his mom by throwing away all his unused minutes in those AT&T commercials). All in all, the cast (even the blase-for-blase-sake Stewart) pops with an almost ironic tone of self-awareness. A Freaks and Geeks of the amusement park set, I suppose you could say, all the while referencing not only another contemporarily set work (1981 this time) but also another Judd Apatow connection to boot.

Set in the seventies, and with a seventies aesthetic to it as well, Adventureland plays out as kitsch comedy tinged with a leering self-awareness by its always-on-the-nod-and-wink cast. It may not be perfect (but what is?) and it may play in typical rom-com territory when first explored, but Adventureland is fun once one decides to allude the surface schmaltz and go deeper into the belly of the proverbial beast. Perhaps though, it is just my nostalgic, somewhat romantic idealizing of the 1970’s of my childhood and the simple, but quite head-tilting fact that I actually grew up in an amusement park. Whatever the case may be, at least I had a fun ride. You didn’t think you would get away without a cheesy amusement park cliche did you? At least I didn’t call the movie the roller coaster ride of the summer.

Watchmen, Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the much-loved graphic novel of the same name, was released theatrically on Friday. Having not read the graphic novel, all I knew about the film going in was what I saw in the previews.

The opening credits sequence in Watchmen sucked me into the film, and I was hooked for the first thirty minutes. Through the historical montage, complete with living photographs and revisionist events, I felt like I had a decent grasp of the universe that Watchmen took place in. It’s a rare feat to accomplish this with such a sweeping story. That said, there were times when the multiple narratives felt disjointed and episodic. And while the film is largely about The Watchmen themselves, I would have liked to see more in regards to the societal look on things

There was also a lot of pop music that was included in the film, ranging from Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. The integration of the music with the visuals worked well for a while, but soon became more of a distraction than a complementation of the film.

Watchmen is an ensemble piece at heart, housing a horde of different characters, but the two that interested me the most were Rorschach, played perfectly by Jackie Earle Haley, and Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), who comes across as Clark Kent with Batman’s toys. In some ways I would consider him to be the main character of the film, although there wasn’t much of a resolution for him at the end of the film.

Billy Crudup also made an appearance in the film as Dr. Manhattan, the God-like character in the film. His personal dilemmas and choices were a much-needed intellectual boost in the film, resulting in a cool ending. And while the character of Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) wasn’t in the film nearly enough, what glimpses we saw of him were intriguing to say the least. I would love to read Watchmen if only to learn more about him.

Sadly, however, director Zack Snyder tends to put more emphasis on “graphic” than “novel”. Starting out as a serious, gritty epic, I was surprised at the change in tone partway through the film and Snyder’s self-referential winks and personal fetishes. (At least there weren’t any drugs in the film.)

I’m certainly not opposed to violence in film if the story calls for it and is used well. But to quote Alfred Hitchcock, “There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.” And on a similar note, Roger Ebert wrote in his review of The Winslow Boy that, “Sixty seconds of wondering if someone is about to kiss you is more entertaining than 60 minutes of kissing.” Whatever happened to suspense, subtlety, and the imagination? There are better ways to show violence in a film. And in the case of Rorschach’s back-story, some well-placed shadows would have been far more effective, stylistically and emotionally, and would have fit with his film noir presence.

As an extra tidbit, I noticed a similarity between 300 (Also directed by Snyder) and Watchmen. The former ends with Dilios telling the story of the 300 Spartans in the oral tradition of story telling, while Watchmen ends in a similar way, but with the written tradition. Perhaps Snyder’s next film will end with a typewriter…or maybe I’ve just been a communications major too long.

In any case, Watchmen, while having some interesting characters, cool visuals, and a promising story, fails to tell that story well. Instead of getting a developed character-driven epic about humanity, we’re left with an adolescent storyteller infatuated with gratuitous sex and violence. And we’re left wanting more.

Starting with teachers at a high school in Paris introducing themselves before the school year begins, director Laurent Cantet sets the mood and setting for the rest of the film. The Class rarely steps outside of the building, showing us what happens within the confines of the classroom.

The Class, based on François Bégaudeau’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, is about Bégaudeau (played by himself in the film) teaching French to a culturally diverse class in a Paris high school. It deals with important issues that pertain to teaching and interacting with people coming from different cultures and backgrounds. In several scenes Bégaudeau has to explain what certain words and idioms that he uses mean because the students aren’t familiar with them.

Stylistically, The Class falls into the cinéma vérité camp, adopting a distinctive documentary feel. The majority of the film takes place within the classroom, and is intimately filmed. It’s as if the camera is hovering around the classroom capturing spontaneous moments as they happen. Aside from meetings with the student boards and parents, there isn’t much background for the students given; what you see is what you get. There are a lot of close-ups in the film, reminding me of the style of director John Cassavetes.

François Bégaudeau (as François Marin) addresses the class

Staying during the closing credits, I had a short conversation with an older couple that were seated a few rows in front of me about the film. The husband is a teacher, and they were wondering what my take on the film was, and more importantly, Bégaudeau’s teaching method. We talked about the cultural problems that he had to deal with and how he genuinely wanted his students to succeed.

That said, however, I appreciate how the filmmakers didn’t make Bégaudeau out to be the perfect teacher. For example, he’s been teaching there for four years and should have more control over his classroom; the students run the class more than they should. The moments when he does connect with the students, however, are beautiful. I think he would be more at home in an organic setting rather than the traditional one that he’s currently in.

In some ways The Class can be compared to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Both films deal with a culture clash that takes place in an environment where people are forced into contact with each other. The Class succeeds in showing us what can happen when various cultures come together under the same roof. It raises a lot of questions about education, culture, and communication, leaving the viewer to struggle with the answers as the credits roll.

In other words, a delicate balance has to be struck: being scary in a kids’ movie is arguably a good thing, but be too scary, or — God forbid — violent or gory, and your movie will be doomed forever to the DVD collections of ironic hipsters. (Last year’s The Spiderwick Chronicles — an inexplicably PG-rated terror-fest with a body count well into the dozens (as well as, even more frighteningly, more than one Freddie Highmore) — is arguably on its way to this fate already.) If anyone understands this, though, it just might be stop-motion auteur Henry Selick. While he’s been relatively inactive as a director as of late, he directed 1993’s Tim Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas, as well as the similarly themed James and the Giant Peach. Ignoring Monkeybone (a colossal flop, circa 2001), he has a pretty good track record. His latest, Coraline, is no exception: it’s engaging (and frightening) from start to finish.

There’s probably good reason for this. As tricky as the creation of a children’s horror pic may be, it’s also got a built-in requisite that makes for far more effective terror: namely, subtlety. In other words, the eviscerations that have been part and parcel of horror since the late 1960s aren’t an option, so instead of disgusting people, you have to actually, y’know, scare them. (Spiderwick missed the memo on that one, and…well, you know.) Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the very first scene of Coraline, which comprises one of the most subversively violent images I’ve seen on screen in a long time: two hands made entirely of needles slice open and disembowel a child, then turn its skin inside out.

Oops, did I say child? No, of course it’s not a child — that would never get past the censors. It’s actually a doll, and its “bowels,” of course, are just cotton stuffing. But thanks to Selick’s camera — which remains in close-up on the doll, and never reveals the identity of the needleworker — it’s a decidedly unsettling image, one whose horror just barely registers in the back of your mind. The rest of the film plays out this way as well, never resorting to cheap jump scares or crashing, Psycho-style violins, but simply pretending to play nice, all the while all letting its horror slowly sink its (needle-shaped) claws into you — until it’s too late to get away.

Of course, this is appropriate for the material at hand as well, which is based on a bit of young adult fiction by British author Neil Gaiman. The plot concerns a young girl with an unusual name and the voice of Dakota Fanning (whose ubiquity of late is a bit strange, but isn’t nearly as obnoxious as Freddie Highmore’s — oops, there I go again) whose parents have dragged her along (as parents are wont to do) on a residential move to a creepy apartment complex. Upset with her newfound lack of friends, her parents’ same old lack of time, and pretty much everything else, she begins to imagine a better world — and then opens a mysterious spare door in the house and discovers that it does, in fact, exist. Her “other” parents have time to cook for her and play hide-and-seek, her “other” neighbors put on dazzling shows every night, and the “other” version of the annoying boy from next door doesn’t ever speak. And, unsettlingly, they all have buttons sewn on for eyes.

Everyone see where this is going?

Even if it’s a bit on the obvious side, though, Selick makes it work. Coraline’s initial dilemmas are easy to sympathize with — we’ve all been there at some point in our lives, I think — and it’s hard not to want her dream world to be real. Selick is such a master of his craft, though, that it’s quite obvious to the subconscious that there’s something evil at work here. Part of this is the use of stop-motion, which has an otherworldly jerkiness to it that gives everything a twisted subtext. The film is also in 3D, but Selick never uses the technique simply to impress or dazzle; rather, the effects are played up quite subtly at seemingly mundane moments (a four-poster bed here, a sewing kit there) to make the film unsettling on a gut level.

Unfortunately, Selick builds up the terror so flawlessly that the climax and denouement are a bit of a letdown — Coraline’s victory boils down to a videogame-style quest that’s over far too quickly to be compelling, and the last twenty minutes hew too closely to the book to be effective on the big screen — but this is really just testament to the flawlessness of the film’s first two acts. And even when the film stumbles narratively, it still manages to dazzle aurally, with the eccentrically disturbing score of French composer Bruno Coulais (not to mention an excellent song by creepy-but-kid-oriented band They Might Be Giants) and Selick’s always-impressive animation. The character models and motions at play here are the sort that can only be made by human hands, and the resulting art is so deeply affecting that it truly makes you wonder why, exactly, we’re all so infatuated with computer animation.

But in the end, what will stick with you here is simply how much truth there is to the central coming-of-age story. It’s quite easy, when you’re young, to imagine that the world exists for you and you alone; with such an outlook, it’s entirely understandable if you feel frustration with anyone and anything that fails to meet your needs and entertain you. Coraline learns here that the essence of maturity is, in some sense, coming to realize that when anything is good, true, or beautiful, it’s that way only because someone has worked excruciatingly hard to make it that way (with the corollary being, of course, that she has to do her fair share). Selick makes no effort to sugarcoat this, and in fact, the happy ending here is (intentionally) a bit of a letdown. Our heroine never manages to create anything quite as wonderful as the fantasy that she initially gets sucked into — a fact that is, of course, as it should be.

Like the best children’s entertainment, (last year’s City of Ember being a good example), Coraline refuses to feed kids easy answers, and is likely to leave you with a powerful sting of sadness and disillusionment. This, together with the more frightening parts, makes it hard to recommend for the youngest children, but older kids will find much to think about here — as will, I think, their parents.

Before its release, I lamented what a shame it would be if director Joe Wright’s new film The Soloist became a slimy sob story complete with incessant screaming at life’s hard knocks and a mopey climax.  The premise does sound rather conventional: Struggling news reporter meets homeless, mentally ill, musical genius and uses the press to bring the musician’s story to the public eye.

Well, The Soloist’s story made me sob, but not for the reasons I feared it might. The film tells the story of an oddly calculated friendship between two very different men, but it doesn’t pretend for an instant that doing your best to help a troubled person can cure mental illness or that music, however powerful, can cause a permanent turnaround for a wayward life.

On the contrary, The Soloist is one of the most mature films of its kind, tackling issues of mental illness, homelessness, and human responsibility with sensitivity and tact.  The true story of Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Lopez and cellist Nathaniel Ayers, the film is honest, true to itself, and never tries to be something it’s not.

Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Ayers

Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) first encounters Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) playing a two-stringed violin in a park beneath a looming statue of Ludwig Van Beethoven.  Ayers is disheveled, dragging a shopping cart full of all his earthly belongings, and wears a yellow visor emblazoned with the names of classical composers.  Lopez initiates conversation, but Nathaniel turns away, talking rapidly in his light voice about many things, but always mentioning Beethoven.  It’s always Beethoven with Nathaniel and it’s clear to Lopez that he isn’t entirely sane.

Lopez is fascinated by this chance encounter and due to a dearth of column subjects, composes a piece about his introduction to Nathaniel Ayers.  He gets him connected with the Lamp Community for the homeless in Los Angeles and eventually finds an apartment where Nathaniel can have private cello lessons and practice in relative peace.

En route to an orchestra rehearsal

But Nathaniel’s mental illness is ever-present.  When confronted with the complete silence of a new apartment, the voices in his head shout, scolding him and telling him that he is “of no consequence.”  A tasteful selection of flashbacks show the genesis of his affliction, from the early whisperings heard during his childhood in a grimy New York basement to the unbearable cacophony during his short stint at The Juilliard School.

Nathaniel wants Steve in his life one moment and wants him out the next.  His mind is in a state of constant indecision, but Lopez’s personal life follows much of the same path.  He’s in an on-and-off relationship with a co-worker that produced a child 20 years earlier and he’s caught in a cycle of selfishness that can’t seem to be stopped.

Foxx’s performance is volatile but subtle; he’s not begging for awards, but it is a very fine piece of acting, obviously crafted with much thought.  This delicacy momentarily makes even his afflicted character a joy to watch and it comes as a surprise when he explodes with rage at the beginning of the film’s final act.

Trying out the new cello

The moments when the film soars are the ones that invoke pleasantly arranged classical music, but don’t worry: These invocations of Beethoven and Bach will not grate on the ears of classical music lovers who have grown tired of hearing the same classical pieces unendingly repeated in film after film.  You’ll find no tinkly “Fur Elise” or droning “Moonlight Sonata” in this film.  You will, however, find a moment like this: Lopez and Ayers are standing on the sidewalk of a busy Los Angeles underpass; Lopez has just brought him a donated cello. Nathaniel begins to play the cello part of a Beethoven symphony.  The sounds of the street are cancelled out and we hear only the cello; we see only his fingers on the strings, his eyes glazed with passionate intensity.   Without immediate notice, the orchestra slips into the soundtrack to accompany the soloist and the passion tucked away in the dark for so long is finally pushed into the magnificent light of day.

As if the spiritual intensity of this moment weren’t enough, the camera quickly pulls away from the two men and, in one swift and blissful move, soars into the sky above Los Angeles.  In an instant, we’ve been transported into Nathaniel’s psyche as his soul soars above the confines of his illness and into the clouds.  It is a moment of pure, unadulterated grace.

Joe Wright has a knack for moments like this. His directorial vision breathes needed life into Susannah Grant’s mediocre screenplay.  The sound design and editing style at times feels like an experimental film, a brave move for a major studio release.  But Wright isn’t pretentious—he’s imbued the subject matter with pathos and poise enough that his creativity doesn’t seem stilted.

The film gets distracted with ham-fisted politics when the characters don’t take the forefront, but the politics don’t hinder us from seeing that both Steve and Nathaniel constantly hold in view the possibility of new, better life.  Neither of them achieves this completely by the film’s end; it remains a dim possibility either because of political red tape or the shame of unwise personal choices.

But the darkness doesn’t have to abide … and this elegiac, somber film more than proves the matchless worth of a steadfast spirit of hope.

Carrie Preston plays Marian, an author who is struggling with her latest novel about two man-children (No, this is not a Will Ferrel movie) who live together in a landlocked boat in the middle of nowhere, surviving on cereal and milk.

Faced with writer’s block, Marian goes to Preston (Austin Pendelton) for help. Encouraged by her mentor, Marian attempts to off her main character. What she doesn’t realize, however, is that Humkin has other plans in mind, and literally leaps into our world.

Marian confides in Preston

I hesitate to say too much about the iconoclastic story for fear that it would take away from experiencing it for yourself. It’s a mixed bag of emotions, and first time director Kirt Gunn (also the writer) handles it delicately. It reminded me of Stranger Than Fiction and Adaptation, but only in plot. Kirt’s story is unique, fresh, and well worth watching.

At times grandiose and overacted, the decidedly idiosyncratic story has a peculiar blend of fiction and reality that works surprisingly well. The title of this film is very apt, and wonderfully absent from the film. It’s a title that makes sense in retrospect, which is a credit to the film.

The range of acting talent on display in Lovely by Surprise is, in my mind, the film’s greatest component. Carrie Preston, Austin Pendelton, and Reg Rogers perform admirably. I would love to see more from them. Michael Chernus brought a great amount of charisma to his performances as Humkin, and a What About Bob? quality to the character.

It’s a great little film with a lot of heart.

Lovely by Surprise comes out on DVD July 7th, 2009.

No really, am I wrong?

Yeah, that guy? TOTALLY not into you.

Of course, if this is the case, then it (obviously) begs the question: what would yonic (i.e. gynocentric) literature look like? I’m probably not the best person to ask, since I possess a debilitating disease known as “maleness,” but it’s not hard to posit a few thoughts on such a question: a yonic story should be “global” rather than linear, emphasizing character and relationship over goal and obstacle, and put an emphasis on its totality instead of its components (e.g., beginning, middle, end) and on its environment rather its utility. (Yes, most of that was just postmodern doublespeak. Glad you enjoyed it.) Other people could certainly add to this, but I think it’s a good start.

And now here’s the kicker: I don’t know if any story embodies this exactly, but the new film He’s Just Not That Into You is a pretty good step in that direction.

I’m just as surprised as you are. I walked in fully expecting to see yet another formulaic romantic comedy, but instead I was treated to the greatness that could be, if Hollywood made “chick flicks” that, y’know, really “got” what it means to be a “chick.” For the first third, the film is a thrilling experiment, throwing storytelling conventions to the wind as it plays “six degrees of separation” with its characters, jumping from one moment of romantic and sexual awkwardness to the next — phallocentric conception of “story” be damned. After a conceptual beginning that circles the globe in an attempt to foster universal sisterhood (it doesn’t work as well as it should, but hey, at least they try) we’re introduced to Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin), who is finishing a bad date that she thinks was good; following this, her date Conor (Kevin Connolly) immediately calls his old flame Anna (Scarlett Johansson), who is busy checking out at the supermarket, where she meets the married (and very attractive) Ben (Bradley Cooper), who is having trouble with his marriage to Janine (Jennifer Connoly), who works with the perennially unlucky-in-love Mary (Drew Barrymore).

These guys aren't into you, either.

I could go on with this for quite some time — He’s Just Not That Into You is the film that the phrase “ensemble cast” was invented for. It’s the sort of concept that’s impossible to sell to a producer (“It’s about a bunch of women who are having trouble with their personal relationships” “Yeah, but what’s it about?” “Uh — what I just said” “Yeah, but what’s the catch? Is it set in Vegas? Do they make a pact to get laid by prom night? Are there lots of fart jokes?” “Um, no…if you would just read my script — ” “Yeah, yeah, we’ll have one of the interns do it. Don’t call us, we’ll call you!”), which is why it probably never would have gotten made, if it weren’t for its cynical use of the title of an already-popular book.

The book, of course, is of the extremely frothy “self-help” variety. Written by a couple of alumni from the Sex and the City writing team (and using a line of dialogue from the series as its title), the book lists a number of ways to tell if a guy is “just not that that into you” — he doesn’t call you, he won’t marry you, he’s sleeping with someone else (um, girls — if you really need a book to tell you this, please get help immediately) — then unnecessarily expands each one into an entire chapter, in order to justify the $30 price tag. The movie pays lip service to the book by using some of its chapter titles as epigraphs for each section of the film (each one is punctuated by a mock interview with random people on the street — an obvious nod to When Harry Met Sally, but also an intriguing way to keep the focus of the film less linear and more “global”), but aside from that has relatively little to do with it. We are, after all, talking about a fictional film based on a nonfiction book, and screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein take this as license to do more or less whatever they want, weaving numerous intricate threads together to create something different and surprising (something that, at its best, calls to mind a good Shakespearean comedy — not that you should quote me out of context on that, or anything).

They're all just NOT THAT INTO YOU. Get over it and buy my book.

Unfortunately, I’m obliged to tell you that the majority of the film never quite lives up to the thrill of its first half-hour. Part of me wanted the “six degrees” game to continue for the rest of the running time, with new, interconnecting stories being introduced throughout all of its six reels (shades of Tales from the Far Side, only less weird); sadly, this was not to be. Once the movie introduces its five (or so) major threads, it seems rather content to follow them to their conclusions and call it a day. Even more egregiously (or at least arguably so), the filmmakers appear to have bowed to studio pressure and tacked on happy endings for most of the stories. Yes, that means that most of our plucky heroines do, in fact, find guys that are Just That Into Them. Whether this is the mother of all ironies or simply proof that Sex and the City-era self-help actually works is up to you; clearly, though, He’s Just Not That Into You never really lives up to its initial feminist promise, either in form or in content.

Still, I have to give credit where credit is due: this is a film that takes some serious risks, incorporating a complex, relationship-oriented storyline that — frankly — most men won’t be able to follow (nor are they likely to bother trying), does its best to aspire to a yonic model of art-making, and proves once and for all that “estrogen-drenched sisterhood movie” doesn’t have to refer to bargain-basement Lifetime fare. It’s not a resounding success, but it’s a thrilling experiment that’s definitely worth a look.

See this movie. It may not always be pleasant, but you will not regret it.

Dr. Andrew Bagby

On November 5, 2001, Dr. Andrew Bagby was shot five times in a western Pennsylvania parking lot. The prime suspect for the murder was his ex-girlfriend Dr. Shirley Turner. After the crime, Turner immediately abandoned the scene for her home in Canada where she eventually announced that she was pregnant with Andrew Bagby’s son – a boy she would name Zachary.

Dear Zachary is made by one of Andrew Bagby’s oldest and closest friends, documentary filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, as a visual letter to little Zachary. “[The movie] is not just my search for what was left of your dad,” Keunne says, “but it might be the only way you could one day go back in time, see, and get to know him.

A film like this could only be made out of love and the amount of interviews that Keune has gathered is astonishing. As he compiles information in his travels, we get to see the mounting number of MiniDV tapes shot over five years of searching. Spliced into these interviews is a lifetime of photos and VHS home movies along with beautiful, grainy 16mm footage. Some may criticize the non-professional quality of the interview footage, but these critics completely miss the purpose of the film.

Dear Zachary is not made for art’s sake. It has not been made to win awards (which it surely will) or to be placed on your DVD shelf next to the best works of the Maysles or Errol Morris. Something tells me that Kurt Kuenne would feel just as accomplished if the only person to ever see the film was Zachary himself. Lucky for us, we get to see it too.

Dr. Shirley Turner

Because Dear Zachary is a film made in the midst of an event and not afterward, it takes a surprising turn when Dr. Shirley Turner is released on bail in Canada and given custody of Zachary while awaiting extradition to the United States. From then on, it is the story of Zachary’s grandparents, David & Kathleen Bagby, and their anguished efforts to snatch Zachary from the hands of the woman who killed their son.

The emotional punches of the subject matter work hand-in-hand with plenty of stylistic flourishes. Though the form of the documentary is the standard weaving of many threads to form a whole story, the frenetic pacing sets Dear Zachary apart from plenty of its documentary counterparts. Many moments in the film are likely to make audiences scream from information overload, but that is the point. It can make one feel crazy – and this is where empathy for the people in this story begins.

Kurt Kuenne (left) and Andrew Bagby (right) as kids

When Kuenne begins speaking to little Zachary via narration about his father while showing images of the deceased, I was reminded of the last moments of Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso when the grown-up filmmaker returns to the movie studio from his Italian hometown with a film canister from his mentor in tow. All those memories spliced together into one complete and powerful whole experience. The ending of Cinema Paradiso can make even the strongest person cry, but Dear Zachary has even more power.

When all the information about Andrew Bagby’s murder and the trial that ensued is revealed, the film changes from a passionate memoir to a cry for justice. Although bail reform is the primary concern, Dear Zachary sparks thoughts about how a legal system can be so concerned with semantics and fancy words that they fail to realize the humanity of people who have been wronged. There is no consideration of how the Bagby family must feel while having to share baby Zachary with his mother – the known murderer of his father.

Where is justice? Where is the law? Where is God? There have been no answers for the Bagbys, so they are now doing the only thing that gives them peace: starting a crusade for Canadian bail reform so that other people may experience the justice they were denied. It is nothing less than breathtaking how benevolence and grace can work to replace anger and part the clouds of utter darkness.

A few evenings ago, some close friends of mine were in a car accident. There was no major tragedy, but in the moments I spent in the emergency room waiting for news, everything but that moment seemed to disappear. It didn’t matter who won the recent Presidential election or what I thought of the movie I just saw; my focus was on them, their families, and their future.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father is so visceral and emotionally exhausting that it had this same effect on me. Accolades are sure to be spent on the film – words like “staggering”, “breathtaking,” or “phenomenal” – and all of them would be true, but in many ways they are all sorely inadequate. Kurt Kuenne’s film is not only the truest of all “home movies” coupled with a rallying cry for civil justice, but it is one of the strongest signs of friendship and love that cinema has ever seen or will see in the future. It is a landmark film that I will never, ever forget.

The makers of Molly Hartley certainly knew the ground they were tilling as well. A fervently religious high school girl (Shanna Collins) with the last name of White bears a striking resemblance to Sissy Spacek in DePalma’s Carrie. In one scene a theater appears to be having a Roman Polanski revival (side-note: I would totally live in Molly Hartley’s school district if the local cinema had that kind of programming on a regular basis). The problem with all the references is twofold: firstly, the filmmakers let the symbols stand in for character development; secondly, it’s a constant reminder that you have a shelf full of DVDs at home that cover the same thematic ground, and probably better.

Craft time with the Hartley family! Dibs on the googly eyes!

Most of the scares are so mild that it’s hard to tell if Molly Hartley (Haley Bennett) is over- or underreacting to the odd occurrences that go on around her. Recent films like The Ring and The Sixth Sense have shown us that a PG-13 horror movie can have some real teeth to it, but here, first time director Mickey Liddell relies mostly on cheap jump scares and spooky disembodied whispering. I can’t help but think that maybe if he had gone back and watched some of the movies he makes reference to that Molly Hartly could have been a very effective little horror flick. Instead, it plays out more like Halloween night on One Tree Hill.

If nothing else, High School Musical 3: Senior Year is the first film in the series that actually features a high school musical (long-time fans will remember that the first was concerned only with the audition for the title event, and that the second actually featured neither a high school nor a musical). That may not be high praise, but I think it’s a pretty good metaphor: number three isn’t perfect, but I think you could make the case that it gets more things right than either of the previous two films did. It won’t change the minds of any of the HSM-haters, but it’s likely to be the least offensive to them. And if nothing else, it provides a pretty good glimpse into what could have been, had Disney given the original’s book and libretto the respect they deserved.

Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale), being as frickin' hilarious as ever

The main difference here, of course, is the decision to go with a theatrical release, which allows for a considerably larger budget (roughly three times that of the first and twice that of the second). It’s clear the money wasn’t wasted: say what you will about it, but this movie looks fantastic. From the cinematic camerawork to the elaborate sets to the astonishing choreography (which looks much better on a full-size screen), this is arguably the first High School Musical that presents a truly professional veneer. Given where it’s coming from, it’s really hard to ask for more.

On the one hand, I say that to be balanced; I know that while I love High School Musical with every fiber of my being, there are countless people out there who would rather [insert preferred method of torture here] than watch yet another installment. On the other, I say it because the idea of making sequels to High School Musical was probably a bad one to begin with. The first one succeeded almost despite itself — there was nothing particularly original about a musical about the production of a musical, or about a teen comedy that revolved around clique boundaries, or about the generic teen pop songs that populated its soundtrack. It was a production that simply made the most of what it had — the talented cast and director Kenny Ortega (known primarily for choreographing Xanadu and Dirty Dancing, in addition to working on Ally McBeal and Gilmore Girls) simply threw every ounce of energy and conviction they could into the production, and the result was a certain type of pop alchemy. It was a gem — a little bit of sweet fluff, impossible to analyze and impossible to argue with. To attempt a sequel to such a pleasantly saccharine fairytale was the cinematic equivalent of following dessert with more dessert (with the guarantee that the second one would be leftovers, of course).

I doubt Disney gave the prospect even that much thought, though — after all, the first installment made them piles and piles of cash (and rightfully so), so a franchise was pretty much a foregone conclusion in terms of Hollywood thinking. It came as no surprise, then, that the second film in the series showed much of this strain. The story was almost self-consciously inconsequential, the songs were bland Mouse Factory radio hits, and the whole thing played more like a music video than a musical. It wasn’t necessarily bad, so much as it proved that the original HSM formula could only stretch so far (namely, about an hour and a half).

It's all singing, all dancing, all the time!

The new film mostly corrects for this, first by returning to the setting of the original, and second by attempting to develop its characters into real people. The comic melodrama of the first two films has been mostly replaced by serious talk about the kids’ impending graduation and big questions about The Future (if the second installment tried a bit too hard to be superfluous, this new one probably tries a bit too hard to be serious). In other words, if the first film taught kids to Believe in Yourself, and the second one taught kids to Be True to Your Heart, number three teaches them to Get Off Your Butt and Get a Job.

There are moments when the angst gets in the way of the fun, but it really was the right decision — especially since the newly fleshed out characters play much better on the big screen than their previous incarnations would have. This new ambition makes for a much more interesting concoction (call it some vegetables with your dessert) than another rehash of the first film would have — and it’s an ambition that’s not limited to the drama.

This scene made me cry. Geez, I wish I wasn't such a girl.

Put simply, everything about this film screams ambition. You can say what you want about the saccharine songs, but the choreography here is nothing short of astonishing. The larger budget has obviously allowed for a lot more polish, and everything looks perfect. Highlights include “The Boys are Back,” a number that features Troy (Zac Efron) and Chad (Corbin Bleu) breakdancing and sword-fighting through a junkyard and “I Want It All,” a surreal, Fosse-inspired number performed by the inimitable Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale, who’s just as scenery-chewingly awesome as ever) and Ryan (Lucas Grabeel, still my favorite character). As with other films in the series, the songs here are something of a mixed bag — the finale (titled, cleverly, “High School Musical”) is as instantly forgettable as the finales from the previous two films (why they can’t come up with a showstopper for these things is beyond me), but they have finally crafted a memorable love theme for lead characters Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) and Troy (the hauntingly beautiful waltz “Can I Have This Dance”) — but, on the bright side, the music is finally given the screentime it deserves (in other words, the contrived dialogue has taken a backseat to the song and dance).

But again, as with the first film, the magic isn’t so much the material as it is the exuberance that the cast and crew pours into it — an exuberance that High School Musical 3 possesses in spades. Everything here, from the singing to the sets to the costumes to the physical comedy, is as good as or better than it’s ever been in the series. It may not be a perfect film, but it is an impressive piece of work — one that has to be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated, and this might be your only chance to do so.

In other words, it’s dessert time again. I hope you kept your fork.

Changeling is one of those films that critics hate to write about — the sort that delivers exactly what it promises, and nothing more. Based on a true story that was tangential to the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, the film makes no pretenses of being anything other than a relatively faithful recreation of the events; it looks at nothing much deeper than you’d expect it to, and makes no effort to delve into the psyches of its characters; on the other hand, the story itself is fascinating enough that it manages to hold your attention pretty well for a couple of hours. It goes out recommended, but don’t expect to hear about it much come Oscar time.

A creepy kid? This must be an early twenty-first century thriller!

The story is set in 1928 and concerns Los Angeles single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), whose son (Gattlin Griffith) disappears one fateful day; several weeks later, the LAPD produces a child claiming to be hers (Devon Conti). When she insists that this new child isn’t her son, the corrupt chief of police (Colm Feore) has her put in a mental hospital rather than admit his mistake.

So, needless to say, the story itself is good enough that it would make for a great psycho-political thriller, even were it made badly. Fortunately, it’s not made badly. Clint Eastwood is as good a director as ever here, and the lighting, camerawork and editing all serve the story well. Jolie is very well-suited to her role here as a reluctantly strong mother (even if she hams it up a bit more than she should), and John Malkovich puts in an excellent turn as an enigmatic Presbyterian minister-cum-political activist (a positive portrayal of a pastor in an Oscar-bait film? how did that happen?).

The weakness here really lies with the script, which, to borrow a phrase from Scott Tobias’s review of Oliver Stone’s W., “passes by two or three dozen better movies along the way.” This is really the first realistic film for screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski, who’s perhaps best-known for creating and writing nearly all of the episodes for Babylon 5 (in addition to a long list of superhero comics and some horror novels), and he’s clearly having a little trouble shifting out of “genre” writing mode.

Uh yeah -- 1920's fashions really were this awesome. And people are nostalgic for the 1980's??? Excuse me!?

Of course, I’m not trying to denigrate genre films at all; it’s just that good writing for a drama like this requires different things than good writing for a sci-fi series. Straczynski is clearly more concerned with the mechanics of what happened than he is with their reasons for happening or their full implications. The end result is that the most fascinating aspects of the story, like Collins’s time in a mental institution and her son’s murderer, are stereotyped and glossed over.

We all already know that the mental institutions of the early twentieth century did little to fix or even diagnose mental disorders (and were often major culprits in cultural witch-hunts); why beat that dead horse further? Similarly, the murderer here, Gordon Northcott, is arguably the most interesting character in the story, but he’s treated like a mere plotpoint. I can understand wanting to keep him mysterious and sinister, but does that really mean relegating him to placeholder status?

The ultimate problem here is that Changeling is a film that can’t decide what its themes are. If it’s a film about political corruption, there’s just not much there — the reasons for the corruption are never looked at, and the solutions are never considered (even if a handful of officials never run for reelection). Furthermore, its themes of motherhood and feminism often clash more than they should. It’s not that it has to be this way, of course, but the film’s attempts to put the lie to the claim that women are the “weaker sex” are muddled by its determination to show Collins’s mental anguish over her son’s disappearance and her (temporary) helplessness at the hands of the government’s abuse.

With some restructuring, Changeling could have been a masterpiece; as it is, it’s just an above average thriller that happens to be more fascinating than it should, thanks to its subject matter. It’s somewhat akin to reading a decent “true crime” story — it’s compelling for the sole reason that it actually happened, but part of you knows you’d be bored if it had been presented as fiction.

Full disclosure: I take my faith fairly seriously, which places me squarely in the demographic that Bill Maher is attacking in his new documentary, Religulous. Given that, reviewing this film could be akin to a member of the Bush administration reviewing Fahrenheit 9/11 or an Orthodox Jew reviewing The Passion of the Christ. Read the following with a salt shaker close by.

Larry Charles looks every bit as crazy as some of the people Bill Maher interviews.

Maher traipses about the globe, hand in hand with director Larry Charles (hot off of ambushing the crazies in Borat), in an attempt to figure out what makes people of faith tick. Christianity gets the largest whipping from the Politically Incorrect host, but Mormonism, Judaism, and Islam incur a few lashings as well. In terms of tone and structure, Religulous blends equal parts Borat and Michael Moore, and much like the ballcapped Michiganite, Maher’s disdain for his subject matter is palpable from the outset. But really, that’s no surprise for anyone possessing a fraction of gray matter and a cursory knowledge of pop culture; you know exactly what you’ll be getting from Maher and he is more than happy to dish it out.

It can’t be denied that the guy is funny, nor that he possesses a razor wit and a quick intelligence. I laughed more than I expected to, especially when he went after the more corrupt of his interviewees (Maher might not make that distinction, but I do). Taking “Doctor” Jeremiah Cummings of the Amazing Life World Outreach to task for the $$$$s worth of suit, shoes, and bling he brought with him to the interview almost elicited an “AMEN!” from me. Maher splits the bullseye when he points out how explicit Jesus was about the rich, and watching Cummings pitifully backpedal feels like righteous karmic comeuppance (you know, if I believed in that stuff). Unless you’re so offended that your blood is boiling out of your eyeballs, you’ll find something to laugh at here, and it’s unlikely that the highly-offendable are going to accidentally stumble into this one.

It’s a bit more sad, however, when Maher takes common people to task, like the congregants of the Trucker’s Chapel, the owner of an overpriced religious novelties shop, or the unsuspecting sightseers at the Holy Land Experience. Each quietly owns their faith for reasons beyond intellectual certitude, and none of them are equipped to meet Maher’s barrage. The resulting spectacle looks quite a bit worse than candy stealing from babies. Additionally, Maher is playing with a stacked deck, known here as the almighty Editor.

Bill interviews the Son of God himself. Not Jesus' finest moment.

Gutter crawling reality television comes close, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen more duplicitous or abusive editing before. Moore is the posterboy for corrupt editing tactics, but in his case he only removes the inconvenient bits; Maher takes it a step further by adding snarky subtitles and juxtaposing random clips during interviews, ripping a page right out of the Seth McFarlane comedy manual. This results in some very funny material, but all of it is of the mock-the-idiot variety. Cutting from an ex-gay counselor insisting that there is no gay gene straight to a scientist saying, “There IS a gay gene,” and back again doesn’t make the subject look like a fool so much as it reveals Maher’s disdain for the intelligence of his audience. No matter how absurd the person in question is, Maher has to constantly stick his face in front of the camera and go, “See? SEE? Isn’t religion cuhhhhraaaaazy?” He doesn’t think you’re smart enough to make up your own mind, and the editing constantly reinforces that notion.

If Maher had kept the film firmly grounded in the humorous, I would have little to complain about. Even the sneer-down-your-nose editing wouldn’t grate nearly as much (Maher is a comedian after all), but he wants to have his cake and eat it too. Religulous is bookended with righteous brow-furrowing declarations and manifestos, which quickly rot whatever value the film might have had. He begins by stating that the point of his journey is to understand the disconnect he sees in those who embrace the absurd (it’s not; he just wants to make fun of them), and he ends with a bombastic rallying cry to eradicate religion (in his eyes the source of untold suffering and evil; never mind that atheists like Lenin and Mao Zedong possess a body count that easily rivals their spiritual counterparts). In particular, the closing call to arms is a shocking miscalculation, similar to the one Chaplin made at the end of The Great Dictator. Rather than allowing the humor and “craziness” of his subjects to speak for themselves, Maher insists on issuing his own personal fatwa against organized religion. Since he spent the entirety of the film mocking his victims and eschewing any attempt at meaningful discourse, his sudden role-reversal from comedian to revolutionary sabotages the few valid points he made and the genuine laughter he managed to elicit. We came to laugh, not to be preached at, Mr. Maher. That belongs in a pulpit on Sunday morning, not in a movie theater on Friday night.

Earlier this year the atheists ranted and raved over the intellectual dishonesty in the pro-Creationism Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Richard Dawkins had a field day on his blog). For all their ideological differences, Religulous and Expelled share an awful lot of similarities. He might not find it funny, but I’m sure Bill Maher can appreciate the irony in that.

The science fiction/horror genre has often served as a launching pad for story tellers who wish to explore grand themes and still deliver an exciting story. In the late 50’s Rod Serling perfected this balancing act of thrilling, funny, heartbreaking stories mixed with social commentary and personal reflection. In The Twilight Zone television series, Serling worked with top notch writers to craft stories that would entertain viewers week after week, while still delivering a powerful message, all in 30 minutes. My guess is that Fernando Meirelles, director of Blindness, has never seen an episode of The Twilight Zone.

The main conceit of the film is that an infection of unknown origin begins causing an odd “white” blindness among the citizens of an unnamed metropolitan city. Through a chain of events we are introduced to a cast of characters who all seem to be loosely connected. Note that none of the characters are given actual names; we only come to know them for what they represent: doctor, wife, child, thief, whore, victim. Before long the government decides the best course of action is to round up all those infected and ship them off to an abandoned asylum. When the containment crew comes for the doctor (Mark Ruffalo), his wife (Julianne Moore) rashly decides to feign blindness to stay close to her husband. Once inside the asylum-turned-internment-camp Doctor’s Wife uses her gift of sight to help the afflicted, without revealing that she is, in fact, sighted.

From a storytelling perspective the blindness is, of course, not the point. It’s a metaphor and a plot device used to disorient the characters and get them into the asylum, which can now be shown as a microcosm of society. This represents my main problem with the film. Everything in it is used to serve the allegory. The story, which should be first and foremost, is left out in the rain. Every movie tells you how to watch it. It does this by creating a world that is unlike our own but still has it’s own logic that we can recognize and follow. Not in Meirelles film though. Characters operate inconsistently, acting only to make a statement rather than according to any logic. This carelessness with story rots the movie from the inside out.

Which is a pity, because as an example of the technical side of the cinematic craft it is amazing. The techniques used to draw us first into the unnamed city and then into the world of the blind are incredibly effective. Disorienting and sometimes beautiful, the cinematography is also cunning. It works in service to the world that it creates. Bathed in ugly washed out earthtones for long stretches it imprisions us as viewers, then shocks us with the brilliant orange of a flame, or the deep blue blacks of a night sky. DP Cesar Charlone clearly understands his art. It could have been truly stunning if set to work for a better movie.

According to Mary Poppins “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Rod Serling understood that, it’s too bad he’s not around today. He would have known to add the sweetness that this film needs. Because as it sits now Blindness is a tough pill to swallow.

Josh Ickes, who had a positive reaction to the film, has posted a 2nd Opinion here.

Am I the only one who can still see that “politics” is almost the same word as “policy”? Am I the only one that remembers that the people you vote into your government actually end up, y’know, governing? Does anyone care anymore about being actively involved in our democracy? Or are we all just too busy laughing at the people who belong to different cliques than us?

Unfortunately, I saw Oliver Stone’s biography of president George II the Friday night it came out, with a theater that was nearly packed (I noticed that the previous showing was actually sold out). It is far from being a great film, but even if it wasn’t, it’s possible I would have hated the experience anyway, for one simple reason: people would not stop laughing. It was like clockwork: every two minutes people cracked up. Did those people live through the same 2000s I did? Have they witnessed the same Iraq War that I did? More than 12,000 U.S. casualties and more than 150,000 Iraqis dead? This is funny to people?

It’s highly possible that W. is intended as a comedy. But if that’s the case, then Stone forgot to bring the jokes. The best he can do here is trot out some old, worn-out “Bushisms” like “misunderestimated” and “Is our children learning?” Even if they weren’t so tired and old, though, they’d still fall flat within the film, because Stone insists on ripping them out of their context. For instance, “misunderestimating,” which Bush actually used to describe those who questioned his leadership abilities when he was on the 2000 campaign trail, is now applied to Saddam Hussein (“He has always misunderestimated me”). Wait, what? That doesn’t even make sense. Forget the punch line; I’m still waiting for the set up.

Perhaps it’s the context in which I saw it, but the truly obnoxious thing about W. is that it feels like nothing more than an excuse to laugh at dorky people. Republicans are dorky! Ha ha, get it? Well yes, Republicans do, in fact, tend to be dorky (anyone who’s watched a recent presidential debate can tell you that John McCain is no match for Barack Obama’s nearly unimpeachable coolness). And you’re right, Mr. Stone: by the law of the playground, their profound dorkiness means that we should ridicule them and refuse to associate with them. Well-argued, sir.

I am no fan of president Bush. I would tend to agree with most that the War in Iraq was a mistake (or at least terribly mishandled), and the president’s insistence on desperately clinging to Reaganomics even as the economy burned around him is troubling, at best. I, like most Americans, have been struggling to understand the guy since he appeared on the national political scene in 2000 — what makes him tick? This is another hugely missed opportunity for Stone, though — he refuses to bring any new perspective to the table. His take on Bush is the same caricature we’ve been getting in the media for the last decade: he’s a poor, befuddled fool, unable to understand or control the forces around him, born into an unfair advantage and deceived by blind religious faith. This may, for all I know, be an accurate enough portrayal of the man, but Stone here is the storyteller, and could have portrayed the events and characters any way he wanted to. For one reason or another, he’s chosen the angle that’s by far the least fresh and the least interesting, and as a result, W. is simply a dull and insulting film.

Stone is not by any means a great thinker. He has never been a director with much nuance. He’s always seen the world in stark black and white, on a good day (on a bad day, it’s all kind of the same muddled shade of gray). The guy makes films with a sledgehammer, and W. is no exception. He’s filled his cinematic canvas with malapropisms to remind us that BUSH IS DUMB, and with ministers in ugly suits and silver belt buckles to remind us that CHRISTIANITY IS BAD. The truly unfortunate thing here, though, is that he’s using that sledgehammer to criticize those who govern with sledgehammers. He wants to take Bush to task for failing to see nuance in the world, even as he ignores nuance himself. He and Bush are essentially kindred spirits in this respect, but the irony is completely lost on him.

I should take a second to acknowledge that W. is not a total failure, particularly for the actors. Josh Brolin does an astounding impression of the president — his sneer, his laugh, and everything else are all completely intact. Richard Dreyfuss completely disappears into the character of Dick Cheney. Toby Jones plays Karl Rove as some sort of smarmy Oompa-Loompa — perhaps not entirely true-to-life, but I’ll give him credit for creativity. (The only real exception here is Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice — she portrays her as some sort of crazy-cat-lady. Whose idea was that?) Aside from that, Stone’s look at the thinking that led up to the Iraq War is somewhat enlightening — it’s hard to say how accurate it is, but it’s a surprisingly deep analysis.

This is the exception to the rule, though, and for the most part, W. disappoints and offends — not for what it says so much as for what it doesn’t say. A film that could have brought a fresh perspective on the president and a serious look at his policy turns out to be about nothing at all; it’s simply yet another excuse to laugh at him for those who would have belonged to different cliques than he did in high school. History will certainly remember our time as a dark day for democracy: the day that we decided to laugh at buffoons of our own design, rather than solve problems.

Despite joining PPA (Period Pictures Anonymous), Knightley succumbs to the siren call of the 4ft hairdo.

The Duchess is a period piece on overdrive, the sort of film destined for costume design and art direction accolades but not much else. Knightley steps into the titular role of Georgiania Cavendish, flesh ‘n blood Duchess of Devonshire, who was a trend-setting fashion icon as well as an ardent political campaigner (a good century before the fairer sex began the suffrage movement) around the turn of the 18th century. Those aspects, as well as her voracious gambling addiction, would have made for intriguing entertainment, especially in the context of Georgian England, but alas, they are treated as footnotes to her (tedious) marital difficulties.

Post Henry VIII, especially in light of the seemingly endless adaptations (Showtime’s The Tudors is currently milking Henry and his wives), narratives about the pursuit of a male heir and the ensuing drama when a wife or wives cannot produce one are trite and, quite frankly, dull. Are the royalty and their reproductive misfortunes the only compelling subjects from the period? Did the peasantry have no intriguing stories to tell? What about a vaguely interesting blacksmith? But no, more Wombs and Woes for us. Granted, Georgiana Cavendish’s marriage to the emotionally infantile Duke of Devonshire (played sharply by Ralph Fiennes) included a few abnormal twists (a lifelong menage a trois with her best friend), but for the majority of the film it’s business as usual. After the third “Give me a son!” rant and the fourth depressed-and-staring-out-the-window scene, you’ll be ready to tighten one of those horrendous corsets around your own neck.

For lovers of fashion and opulent design, The Duchess is certainly a treat for the eyes. Expense and talent were not spared; the picture looks marvelous. Otherwise, pass. Knightley and a heroic effort from Fiennes are not enough to elevate the story out of the seen-it-all-before muck.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I snap your neck? My bad, guess my pinkie slipped. Just call me Mr. Butter Fingers.

Mr. Neeson plays Bryan Mills, an ex-CIA spook who’s hanging up his guns and gadgets in order to reconnect with his daughter (Lost’s Maggie Grace, pulling off a much too believable teenage ditz). She’s desperate to go on a cross-Europe tour but needs daddy-o’s permission, which he begrudgingly gives. Wouldn’t ya know it, first thing she does is get nipped by a gang of Armenian Albanian human traffickers, and Mills sets off in bloody hot pursuit. Any additional plot points are inconsequential and besides, they’re quickly buried underneath the body count.

There is a moment in the film that encapsulates the thrill that Taken offers, a moment so deliciously realized that even the marketing team couldn’t pass it up (the trailer includes the scene verbatim, and the entire line adorns the poster). Mills’ daughter contacts him by phone when masked men enter her apartment, and after she is taken, he has one chance to speak to her kidnapper: “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career; skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.” This is a one-note role for Neeson, who’s done much richer work before (Kinsey, Rob Roy, Schindler’s List), but he sells the conviction of that one line so fully that it is impossible to look away. Taken, in a nutshell, is that one line and the fulfillment of its promise. Watch the trailer. If you get chills as Neeson calmly delivers his ultimatum, then run to the theater; you will not be disappointed.

Liam Neeson dresses to impress during extended torture sessions.

With so much wrongness in the world, both global and the kind we experience personally, we ache for justice to be served (clichéd but true). Sometimes we’re satisfied: corporate criminals jailed, ruthless dictators overthrown, serial killers executed. But more often, we’re left wanting. “Life isn’t fair” isn’t a saying for nothing. Injustice is, sadly, the status quo and not the exception.

Which is why, despite all its flaws, Taken appeals so deeply. After the day’s tragic avalanche of internet headlines and bobble-headed pundits and evening news zingers (”Child found decapitated! More at 11!”), you just want to see Evil receive its righteous comeuppance. Liam Neeson going Rambo on a bunch of make-believe strawmen isn’t realistic, nor does it effect any kind of real change, but it is intensely gratifying. Not a cure for your woes, but a nice nightcap to soothe them. Can one ask for much more from one’s entertainments?

The trend to which I refer, of course, is the iPod (as implied by the word “playlist” in the title). No doubt, the idea for the film took hold when one of the writers was admiring his own iTunes library and noticed that the total running time came to several days. From there it was only a small step further: What if a couple of New York teens of the “I like music!” variety stayed up all night swapping songs from their iPods, mixes, and albums, and then fell in love? The answer turns out to be “Nothing interesting would happen” — but then, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ve pretty much given you the whole premise, but I may as well flesh it out a bit, for those of you looking for justification (you’re not likely to find any). Michael Cera plays Nick, the bassist for a local band, who recently broke up with his girlfriend Tris (Alexis Dziena, Fool’s Gold) and has been attempting to ease his pain by sending her CD mixes (all titled The Road to Closure, Vol. [x]). She never listens to them, but her friend Norah (Dennings) often takes them, and has found that Nick (whom she’s never met) has excellent taste in music. When she goes to see his band perform, they bump into each other, and end up spending the rest of the night together, hanging out all over the New York club scene.

The problem with all this is that it never really feels like two people staying up together in a single night. On the one hand, the pace is far too lackadaisical; it just doesn’t possess enough of an immediacy to feel like a few continuous hours. On the other hand, the writers just haven’t come up with a compelling reason for the two characters to stay up all night; it feels as if they got set on the premise and then struggled — and failed — to think of an impetus for it.

They’ve attempted to remedy this by adding a couple of MacGuffins to the plot. The first is a friend of Norah’s (played by Ari Graynor) who gets drunk and runs off; the second is a popular band called Where’s Fluffy?, whose shtick apparently consists of never telling anyone at which venue they’re actually going to play on any given night (you’d think that would serve to thin out their fanbase, but apparently not). The problem with the friend is that they find her halfway through the film; the problem with Where’s Fluffy? is that there’s absolutely nothing interesting about the band (and yes, the scene cuts out as soon as their show begins). In other words, the cast’s problems aren’t compelling, so we can’t possibly care about them.

Really, none of this would have come as a surprise to me if I had thought about the premise for more than a couple of seconds. The teen set, at which this movie is solidly aimed, might want to buy into these comforting lies, but the fact is that your personal taste in music is one of the most irrelevant things in the universe (and I’ll gladly admit that my taste in movies is just as unimportant). Similarity of musical preference isn’t the sort of foundation that makes for a lasting or meaningful relationship, even (perhaps especially) if it does result in multi-orgasmic sex in a recording studio the first night you meet. (Oops, was that a spoiler?) But if you’re still wondering if you’ll enjoy this movie, I have the perfect way to know for sure: are you the sort of person who still sits around patting yourself on the back for how eclectic your iPod is? If so, run (don’t walk!) to the multiplex.

Estonia is one of the three Baltic States in Northern Europe, bordered to the south by Latvia and to the east by the Russian Federation. In 1918 they declared independence from the Russian Empire and tasted freedom for over 20 years. Then, in 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed between Germany and Russia, effectively dividing Europe between the Nazis and the communists. The freedom Estonia had enjoyed for two decades evaporated as 90,000 Soviet troops marched across the border and into their tiny nation. When Hitler betrayed Stalin and marched on Russia, Estonia changed hands a second time, a mere pawn to be toyed with by its powerful neighbors. When Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at Yalta in 1945, the two western leaders were assured that Estonia would receive its independence back after the war, but once the Nazis were ground into the dust, that promise was never kept. The Red Army quickly marched back into Estonia, subjugating it once and for all. World War II decimated the tiny country; a full 25% of its population was wiped out.

Told through extensive archival footage and intimate interviews with the people who lived through the events, The Singing Revolution chronicles how the Soviets attempted to eradicate every shred of Estonian culture and national identity through an intense process of Russification, and how they ultimately failed because of a song. Every 5 years the Estonians would come together for a massive choral celebration, with over 20,000 singers on stage at once. The Soviets milked the festival for every ounce of propaganda that they could, forcing songs about socialism and Stalin (and later Lenin) into the program. The Estonians reluctantly obliged, but would rebel at the end of the program, proudly belting out their unofficial national anthem. As one interviewee says, when 25,000 people get it into their heads to sing a song, there is nothing you can do to stop them.

Unfortunately, the middle section of the film drags considerably. As stirring as the initial images are, once you’ve seen your fourth archival montage of Estonian folk singing, you begin to check your watch. The problem seems to be that directors James and Maureen Castle Tusty feel an unnecessary responsibility to document every step of the Estonians fight for independence. As noble as that intention is, the film bogs down when we’re given the play-by-play of every significant singing demonstration and protest. The tedium is further compounded by the relative staleness of some of the interviews. For all the atrocities and triumphs that these people have endured, I do not think I saw one of them shed a tear. While I’ll chalk that up to cultural pragmatism, it makes for dull, matter-of-fact interviews. Even at a short 94 minutes, it is about 10 minutes too long.

In spite of this, the final act is emotionally stunning in the way that all great human drama is. Through patient and peaceful means, Estonia slowly asserted its independence one day at a time, and in 1991 they finally achieved it. That they did so without a single violent protest, without any loss of life, is simply mind-boggling. If someone were to have told me that a revolution could be achieved non-violently through singing, I would have laughed at their idealism, but the proof is right there on screen. Shame on my cynicism.

Given the present global climate, with China occupying Tibet in the exact same fashion as the Soviets occupied Estonia, The Singing Revolution is more relevant than ever. Not only is it a chilling reminder of the fragility and preciousness of freedom, it is also a call to action. Estonia is finally free, but Tibet and other nations like it are not. That something as simple as a song could bring about lasting change is a direct challenge to anyone who excuses themselves on the basis that they’re “too tiny to make a difference.”

I hope I don’t take my freedom for granted as often now. It is a luxury that other people do not possess.

Full disclosure: my film vocabulary is conspicuously lacking in Woody Allen. I can count the number of his films I’ve seen on one hand, although he’s made nearly 1 a year since he debuted in 1966 with What’s Up, Tiger Lily? That leaves me either 1) woefully inadequate to discuss his latest film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, or 2) perfectly suited since I’m not weighed down with Allen baggage, desperately hoping for another Annie Hall. I’ll go with the latter. If nothing else, we film critics love our egos.

Rebecca Hall gives one of the best performances in the film, her name is in the title, and she is not even featured on the poster. What gives?

Woody’s been on a bit of a ‘serious’ kick lately, delving into murder and revenge with Match Point and Cassandra’s Dream rather than the idiosyncratic romances he built his career upon. Vicky Cristina Barcelona, then, is a return to form, filled with nuanced characters, marvelous performances, and sparkling dialogue about love, lust, and everything in between. Rebecca Hall is the Vicky and Scarlett Johansson is the Cristina of the title and, surprise surprise, they’re spending the summer in Barcelona. Sipping wine one night in a beautiful Spanish café, they are approached by Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem in a distinct departure from his Oscar-winning Anton Chigurh), a sensuous and heavy-lidded artiste who would like to take them to Oviedo for the weekend where they can admire the sculptures, drink fabulous wine, and “make love.” Vicky, engaged to be married, is suitably shocked by Antonio’s frankness, while Cristina, ever the free-spirit, is enchanted. The film would be somewhat dull if Vicky had gotten her way, so off the three of them go, setting in motion a labyrinthine quagmire of romantic entanglements.

Apart from the relational mischief (which is a quagmire in more ways than one), Vicky Cristina Barcelona stands as a beautiful love letter to Spain. The palette is composed of warm hues of yellow and red and orange, the Mediterranean countryside is lush and inviting, matters of art and music and love are discussed on every corner, and everyone is drinking wine, all the time. The cinematography, production design, art direction, and costume design were all handled by Spaniards, and the score is filled with Spanish guitar and other native tunes, all of which lend the film a tangible authenticity.

Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson share a beatnik moment.

As a creative and romantic at heart, it was difficult to pull myself away from the seductive web that the film wove around me. You can almost feel the warm Mediterranean breeze. You can almost taste the wine upon your tongue. Oh to be in Spain where the rat race is not as ratty and rampant materialism is not as rampant, where life moves at a slower pace, and where stress is an exception rather than the rule. Granted, there are pros and cons to all walks of life, American and European, but when it comes to anxiety and worry and tension, we workaholics have them beat, hands down. Allen masterfully taps into the languid flow of Spanish life and makes you desperately want to buy a one-way ticket to Barcelona.

When it comes to the story, however, Vicky Cristina Barcelona becomes a much less focused affair. Vicky is ostentatiously portrayed as prudish and stuffy, and it is apparent at the outset that Juan will eventually break down her defenses. Marrying soon after her sensual one-night tryst, she fails to get Juan out of her head and constantly wonders if she should “follow her heart.” An older confidant, Judy (Patricia Clarkson), is locked within a loveless marriage herself, foreshadowing Vicky’s eventual fate. Doug, Vicky’s husband, is staid, predictable, and fully American, everything Juan Antonio is not. Cristina, in the meantime, falls in love with Juan and he with her, until the passionate artist’s equally passionate ex-wife, Maria Elena (played with fire and brimstone by Penélope Cruz), enters the picture, creating a tense love triangle that eventually gives way to a sultry ménage à trois.

Penelope Cruz as Maria Elena.

Does it sound complicated? It is, and that is one aspect of love that, at least, Allen gets right. But beyond that, what exactly is he saying here? On the one hand, a common mantra is that “once love is fulfilled, it’s never romantic again,” so true romance can only be found in unrequited passion between two people who can never be together (i.e., Vicky and Juan). On the other hand, true love can exist as long as that “missing ingredient” is discovered, which Juan insists was always absent in his relationship with Maria Elena. When Cristina enters the picture, everything works beautifully, so the “missing ingredient” for the two passionate Spaniards was another woman (does this say more about love or about Allen’s masculine wish fulfillment? Why couldn’t another man be the missing ingredient? Is Javier Bardem kissing another dude not as sexy as Johansson and Cruz getting it on?). On the third hand (work with me here), Allen seems to be implying that in order to be truly happy you need to find the courage to do what is best for yourself, even if that means wounding those who love you. At the end of the film, those who lacked the strength to “follow their heart” are thoroughly miserable.

Allen has loaded his cinematic shotgun up with various ruminations on love, made sure enough explosive personalities were in the chamber, and then blasted the result all over the film. In the production notes he’s quoted as saying “there are probably things in the final film that are in spite of what I hoped to say—they may even contradict what I had on my mind, which is not that deep.” Vicky Cristina Barcelona is muddy, narratively dissatisfying, and all over the place thematically, which is apparently what he had in mind. I can fully appreciate that he has kicked the formulaic Hollywood romance to the curb and created something wholly different, but it’s disappointing that he had so little of worth to actually say.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is beautifully shot, impeccably written, and superbly acted. If aesthetics are enough for you, by all means embrace this film immediately, but if you like a bit more truth with your romance, look elsewhere. Allen may have composed a love letter to Spain, but he didn’t bother to send one to the heart.

Subtlety is overrated. Now hear me out. I’m not saying that we should burn every Bergman or obliterate every Ozu. I do believe, however, that oftentimes something worth doing is worth overdoing. What better time do overdo something than when it’s going to be projected on a thirty foot high screen?

Admittedly, the counter argument holds a lot of water as well. Much of what we, as the viewing public, are presented with is unsubtle to the point of being painful. I would like to posit however that a lack of nuance is not nearly as painful as a lack of artistry.

Now to move this argument from the abstract to the concrete with Guy Ritchie. (Note: For conveniences sake we will be removing Swept Away as a point of discussion. I’m sure this angers no one.) Here is an auteur who has reliably been about as subtle as an overused simile. Even the titles of his films are gleefully over the top, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch,  Revolver, RocknRolla. Titles that conjure greasy images of sex, drugs, and yes, even rock and roll, before the first frame of film is even projected. He is obvious, yet not artless. His movies throb and pulsate with palpable style, delivered with a sure hand by someone who knows the bloody, visceral thrill that celluloid can create.

Even though all his characters seem to have grown up within the same neighborhood, there is a logical progression to the films themselves. A maturing of ideas, if not necessarily of content. His foul mouthed protagonists have begun to strive for some sort of depth in his last couple of outings. The dénouement of Revolver in particular plays out like a philosophical discussion held at gunpoint. While RocknRolla never attempts to dissect kabbalah teachings, Gerard Butler’s character of One Two is certainly a more complex man than Snatch’s Turkish.

But, honestly character complexity isn’t the reason you buy a ticket to a Guy Ritchie movie. The plot twists and turns back upon itself like some unholy union of Syd Field and Oroborous. Coincedence and misunderstandings abound. There are so many fake outs and double crosses that the whole affair simply has to be explained via voice-over. Jean-Luc Godard famously said “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” RocknRolla is well stocked with firearms, Thandie Newton is definitely a dame to die for, and kiss, kiss, bang, bang, sounds damn good with a cockney accent.

I’m always the first to jump up and defend the genre, but after seeing Notorious — a retelling of the life of hip-hop emcee Chris Wallace/Biggie Smalls/Notorious B.I.G./whatever else — I’m seriously thinking about defecting to his camp. The movie was a blow-by-blow revue of every complaint he has. We see Biggie grow up, rise to fame, and fall victim to a world he never made. We see what a darn nice guy he was, and we see his many romantic and sexual exploits, none of which actually go anywhere. And of course, it’s all filled with lots of boobs, just to give it a hip-hop edge.

In other words, if you’re in the target demographic for the film, you know who you are — and you’re probably already running for the door. The rest of you can stay here, and I’ll explain why this just isn’t a very good film.

Let me start off by admitting that I’m decidedly not in the target demographic for it. I count myself as an appreciator of hip-hop (despite the fact that my whiteness knows no bounds), but 90’s gangsta rap is a subgenre I’ll probably never appreciate. There’s a reason for that, and it’s the same reason I’ll never appreciate hair metal, or emo, or honky-tonk: it’s simply a genre that’s about projecting an image first, and making music second. When N.W.A. pioneered the style in the 80’s, it was a powerful combination of phat beats and acute social commentary, but by the mid-90’s it had degenerated into mindless thug posturing and glorification of a lifestyle that really should only exist as a last resort (and ideally, not even then). In other words, even without the amorality, it was bland and repetitive. I’m not going to say that Biggie’s music was the worst of this, but he definitely helped push it in that direction by projecting the image of a larger-than-life thug from the streets. If that’s the sort of thing you like, I can’t tell you not to like it, but when the image is so big that it overwhelms the music, that’s when my brain checks out.

Unfortunately, Biggie’s image was so big it overwhelmed not only his music, but also this film. The character presented here will be nothing new to fans, or for that matter, to anyone who’s ever seen a movie set on the streets. Biggie’s a good guy in a bad world, he loves his woman, and he only turns to crime because his single momma can’t support him. He can’t help but rhyme, ‘cause it’s all he has. Then he hits it big, and the cloying stereotypes give way to plain ol’ big-shot noxiousness: womanizing, drug abuse, etc. Ugh.

From what I know, this is all fairly accurate, but interesting it’s not. In fact, all I could think while watching the film was, Do famous musicians really all have the same life? Do they really all have trouble staying faithful to their wives and girlfriends? Do so many people really find this story interesting, the sixth, seventh, eight time? Do you have to be a drug-abusing womanizer to make good music?

There’s one moment in the film that shines a bit of light on this: Tupac Shakur (played by Anthony Mackie) relates a story of meeting a boy who tells him that he’s his hero. “I shouldn’t be your hero!” he says. “Dr. King should be your hero! Malcom X should be your hero!” True enough, but that’s about as deep as the movie goes, before it turns around and heaps more hero-worship on ol’ Biggie. There’s probably a good reason for that: producers for the film include Biggie’s mom Voletta Wallace, and his friend and mentor Sean “Diddy” Combs, in addition to a number of other friends and colleagues. In other words, nobody involved in the production wanted to think of Notorious as anything other than a hero, martyr or friend. There’s no way I’m going to hold that against them, but it simply doesn’t make for an interesting film. If no event is ever allowed to mean anything other than “Biggie was awesome!” then the movie just can’t go anywhere.

And it really doesn’t. I have to give director George Tillman (Soul Food, Men of Honor) a bit of credit here for giving the visuals the glossy sheen of a rap video, but the pleasures start and end there. In the end, you’re not likely to enjoy Notorious much if you’re not already a fan. And even if you are, you’ll likely still be longing for a treatment of the man’s life with a bit more depth and resonance.

I should’ve thought twice because The Wrestler is a beautiful and simple story about a sad (yet empathetic) character.  There’s plenty of grit, of course, but there’s more quiet power in this film than in any of 2008’s big Awards Season picks.  And given Mickey Rourke’s spectacular comeback performance, it should easily win audience approval as well as critical accolades.

Mickey Rourke as Randy The Ram

Rourke plays Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a big-time professional wrestling star during the 80s who, as the opening credits show, had manifold successes and a nice amount of money to play with.  But that’s all in the past.  Randy is a has-been now – a muscle-bound second-rate athlete writhing under the weight of past successes.  He’s now moonlighting at highly staged wrestling matches in high school gymnasiums and spends evenings relaxing at a local strip joint.  There’s little money to be had and his landlord has locked him out of his trailerpark home.  He’s a scarred man, highly medicated, dirt poor, and miserable.

After participating in an unruly match involving a staple gun and barbed wire, Randy, exhausted, goes backstage to his locker and has a near-fatal heart attack.  He’s rushed to the hospital and his doctor later alerts him that his body can no longer withstand the abuse that comes hand-in-hand with his profession.  “Hell, I’m a professional wrestler!”, Randy says.  The doctor’s response: “That’s not a good idea.”

Tomei as Cassidy

With wrestling behind him for a while, Randy tries his best to establish relationship with a sympathetic stripper named Cassidy.  “I can’t leave with customers”, she says, but soon enough she begins to see that Randy’s current needs aren’t sexual and that his world is just as painful and fake as hers.   A flicker of romance?  Perhaps, but Cassidy is most helpful in helping Randy try to repair a bitter relationship with his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) who has been estranged from him for years.

Randy “The Ram” is one of the most sympathetic movie characters is recent memory mostly because Aronofosky doesn’t deny his audience any chance of getting to know Randy intimately.  Direction aside, there are many moments completely dependent on Mickey Rourke’s acting ability and The Wrestler is a compelling one-man show for him.  This is his movie and he deserves every bit of praise he’s been getting.  There’s a world of emotion flowing through Randy’s broken body and it’s just as easy to cringe in pain with him as he intentionally slices his face at a match as it is to smile and laugh when he’s relegated to scooping potato salad at a grocery store deli counter for extra cash.

Both Robert D. Siegel’s screenplay and Aronofsky’s direction are restrained and minimalist.  The script is quick and caring, but offers plenty of room for improvisation. The brutal wrestling matches never feel like they’ve been staged for the purposes of the film. The sound design is remarkable as well, often turning our attention to the pulsating ring of Randy’s hearing aid or the sounds of a screaming crowd echoing in the most unlikely of situations.

Indeed, Aronofsky’s direction is seamless and near perfect.  He has become all but invisible behind the camera for the purposes of this film and there is rarely a scene where he shows too much, lingers too long, or overstates a point.  The Wrestler may lack the ambitious goals of his previous films (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain), but this is a smaller picture – the simple story of a man who has destroyed himself in so many ways for so long that he finally decides to search for redemption.  In Aronofsky’s hands, it’s undeniably fresh, too.

Aronofsky directs Rourke

There’s a really transcendent moment when the final image of the film moves like clockwork into the words of Bruce Springsteen’s song “The Wrestler”, written specifically for the film.  Springsteen has channeled the themes of the film so well with his lyrics that it’s as if the song is an extension of Siegel’s screenplay.  “Have you ever seen a scarecrow filled with nothing but dust and wheat? / If you’ve ever seen that scarecrow then you’ve seen me.” Springsteen’s is the best summation one could possibly give of Randy “The Ram” and his song makes the film feel complete.

Come the end, we leave Randy when he’s at his apex – at the place where he belongs and has found a home.  Whether this is the best place for him to be is unsaid, but the empathy felt for his character is something rare.  We’ve examined and felt his wounds, learning that the ones that hurt the most are rarely physically wounded.  We care about his life and his future.  Where both of those will lead after the credits roll is anyone’s guess.

I was a little wary stepping into a screening of Brideshead Revisited. These British-movies-based-on-British-novels (Pride and Prejudice et. al.) tend to be, in my experience, mere “fan service”—little more than visual imaginings of the novel, intended primarily (or even exclusively) for fans of the novel (sort of like a more-literate take on our recent spate of comic book films stateside)—and I had barely even heard of Evelyn Waugh’s classic tome Brideshead Revisited. (I’m really not sure how that happened, as I possess a bachelor’s degree in English—perhaps because my literature professors always tended toward either extremely old British fiction, or extremely recent American fiction written by “diverse” authors, neither of which describes Brideshead at all. Regardless, it appears that I’m a Philistine. Consider this my formal apology to the literacy police.) Walking out, I felt roughly the same way.

The question, of course, is whether my personal experience should count as an asset or a liability in reviewing the film, and I guess the choice on that matter is up to you. On the one hand, I brought a clean slate to the film and was (theoretically) able to judge it on its own merit, without any of the bias that would have come from reading the original novel (or, for that matter, viewing the 1980s BBC serial); on the other, I’m pretty much the last person fans of the novel will want to hear from, as I can tell you next to nothing about how closely the film hews to the text or whether it does it any sort of justice. Even with that out of the way, though, I still have very little to say about this film. Is it good? Sure. Is it great? Well…no.

I found Brideshead moderately engaging throughout, with scenes and story arcs that gripped me for a while—but as often as not, I found my mind wandering—counting ceiling tiles and such. When it finished, I felt somewhat satisfied, but the next day I had all but forgotten everything that had transpired onscreen. Summarily, you could say that Brideshead is a fairly average film—neither spectacular nor terrible, and should please fans of the book who aren’t expecting an exhaustive transliteration.

Having given myself a crash course in the novel (I love you, Wikipedia!), I think I can safely say that the movie plays up the novel’s homoerotic themes, and plays down its Catholic ones. This should surprise no one; this is the difference between the 1940s and the 2000s. The story concerns Charles Ryder, a working-class young man who attends Oxford in the 1930s, is romanced by an aristocratic student named Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), and becomes involved with his family, later on beginning an affair with his sister Julia (Hayley Atwell, Cassandra’s Dream). All the while he feels God pulling him away from his atheism and toward the Catholic faith—but of course, we only glimpse that here.

It shouldn’t be a big surprise that the movie emphasizes the sex at the expense of the religion; there are very real limitations to the respective media of book and film. Books are made of words, and thus emphasize thought—philosophy, introspection; movies, on the other hand, are made of photographs, and by nature emphasize physicality and action. One character’s romance with God can be fascinating to read about, but is impossible to capture on film. Meanwhile, romantic moments on the human level—tender kisses, brushes of the cheek, longing glances—are intensified in power when recorded by a camera (this is true of many of the moments between Charles and Sebastian, and later between Charles and Julia).

That being said, Brideshead Revisited still does a decent job of communicating Charles’ stumbling progress toward theism. If you’ve been wondering why I gave the film a three-and-a-half-star rating despite my lack of enthusiasm, here’s the only reason: the cinematography. Under the camera of cinematographer Jess Hall (Hot Fuzz, Son of Rambow), every sequence in the film says more than what is on the surface. The icons that overrun Brideshead (the Catholic Flyte family’s estate) are equal parts menacing and inviting, and certain moments, like Julia’s dying father making the sign of the cross, are astonishing in their resonance. And try as I might, I can’t get the last sequence (which, for the sake of the “SPOILER ALERT!” crowd, I’ll avoid describing here) out of my head.

All that said, the choice is ultimately yours on this one. I wouldn’t know, but I’m going to hazard a guess that it’s far worse that BBC’s adaptation in terms of plot, character, and dialogue, but far better than it in terms of lighting, cinematography, and atmosphere (for some reason, Auntie Beeb seems unable to hire gaffers and cinematographers). If nothing else, it made me want to read the book—and in many ways, that’s the highest praise you can give a literary adaptation.

Swing Vote is the cinematic equivalent of a servile politician. He has nothing new to bring to the table, nothing to say that really inspires the American people, and hardly any real platform to speak of—but he just really wants your vote, will do anything to get it, and heck, he’s just a darn nice guy. What more could you want? Well, substance, maybe, but if so, you’re clearly looking in the wrong country. Swing Vote is undeniably a fun piece of fluff, but those looking for real, meaningful discussion should remain cloistered at the local arthouse.

The (painfully high-concept) plot of Swing Vote unfolds almost exactly as you might imagine it was pitched to the studio execs: Kevin Costner plays Earnest “Bud” Johnson, a divorced blue collar slob who lives in trailer with his precocious daughter Molly (Madeline Carroll) in the backwater town of Texico, New Mexico. Molly has been assigned to write an essay for school on her experience of going to vote with her father, who, as you might imagine, isn’t interested in the upcoming presidential election at all. No problem—Molly forges his signature and registers him; then, when he fails to show up at the polls, she sneaks in and votes for him. But the computers fail at a moment that could only happen in Hollywood—and Bud’s fraudulent vote is not counted.

When it becomes clear just how close this presidential race is—it’s come down to New Mexico, and, in fact, Bud’s own Curry County, which is exactly tied—it’s decided that Bud will be allowed to recast his ballot. And when words gets out about the situation, Texico becomes a media circus, as reporters, lobbyists and politicians all mob Bud, trying to find out what makes him tick—and how to get his vote.

From there, the film hits exactly every beat you expect it to, but somehow it manages to be a lot of fun—a fact that owes primarily to the excellent cast they’ve assembled here. It’s beyond me why so many A-list (or at least high-B-list) actors signed on for such bland, broad material, but Kevin Costner and his co-producer Jim Wilson managed to cast the roles almost perfectly: Kelsey Grammer as the good-natured but dimwitted Republican incumbent, Dennis Hopper as the weasely but well-meaning Democratic hopeful, and Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada, The Hoax) and Nathan Lane as their respective campaign managers. The only real misstep here is a rather bland Paula Patton as a local news anchor, but fortunately, George Lopez shows up as her manager, brightening things up a bit.

The cast manages to sell the gags, which have a surprising amount of depth (even a slapstick scene where a drunken Bud walks into a “Vote Today!” sign had me laughing for an embarrassingly long time). Grammer and Tucci’s comic timing are impeccable as always, and Lane owns his character well, but the real surprise here is child actress Carroll, who literally carries the entire film, both in terms of plot and in terms of charisma. As the foil to Costner’s (very well-done) man-child, Carroll’s girl-adult becomes the hero of the film (though key scenes prove that she’s just as fallible as her dad), and she displays an acting ability that’s beyond her years. Here’s hoping she’ll make producers forget about Freddie Highmore.

Even while Swing Vote manages to entertain, however, it still manages to disappoint. It feels like a rehash of a rehash of Capra (specifically, Ivan Reitman’s Dave, right down to the talking head cameos)—an unsure attempt to recapture the Italian auteur’s effortlessly naïve and idealistic take on Americana. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that Swing Vote wants to avoid offending, even as it uses “hot-button” (read: irresolvable) issues like abortion and gay marriage as plot points—but in acknowledging them at all, all it succeeds in doing is highlighting its own lack of teeth. There are moments of bite—a delightfully offensive anti-abortion campaign ad that features exploding children—but for the most part, this is a film that’s content to trot out the same old Democrat/Republican gags we’ve been hearing since before Watergate.

Therein lies the real issue: at some level, Swing Vote wants to be a message movie, and it eventually (after the laughs are over) mounts its soapbox to remind Americans that Every Vote Counts!—but it’s plagued by a conundrum that even it doesn’t know how to get around. Bud has only two choices: the Democrat or the Republican, and they’ve both been shown to be not all that different. Swing Vote wants us to believe that deep down, all of us—even our generic, weasely politicians—are the same Americans, but that it somehow still matters who’s in the Oval Office. If you’re doubting that this is the same sort of issue-avoiding drivel you get from CNN every election year, pay attention to the climactic debate: as soon as the actual debate begins, we cut to the next scene. I guess you could say that this story is not really about politics; it’s about Bud reclaiming his life and identity—but any way you look at it, Swing Vote is a movie that wants people to feel, not think.

All that said, it’s still not a bad film, and would make for a great family outing—call it a primer on the electoral process. It’s rated PG-13 “for language,” but if the MPAA knew what they were doing, they would have bumped it down to a PG. The language comes almost exclusively from Bud—it’s absolutely necessary for showing the kind of character he is—and Molly is the one who calls him out on it repeatedly (“Stop using ‘Jesus’ as a cuss word—he’s a billion people’s savior, you know!”). With or without the kids, though, Swing Vote is an enjoyable flick with an impeccable sense of humor. Just lower your expectations, check your brain at the door, and let the cast work its magic.

Everyone knows his name. He’s an American staple – as common a household name as Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson. Generations have grown up with his films, whether they be the many he has starred in or the ones he has directed in the last 30 years. He’s not only a staple of American cinema, but American culture in general. There’s a funny thing about Eastwood, though: he never quite stays the same. He was introduced to many through the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone and from there he created the violent persona of Insp. “Dirty” Harry Callahan. No rules for Dirty Harry; just results. Years later, Eastwood would direct a western himself in which he would reinvent himself.

This film was the rightful Oscar-winner Unforgiven, a film many consider to be his masterpiece. The character of William Munny was a new persona for Eastwood – a weary, worldly, much wiser man, desperately trying to make up for a past of reckless violence. By his fan’s estimation, Eastwood has been an old man since Unforgiven, but his newest film Gran Torino proves him to be truly ancient. The film could be his swan song and there is nothing wrong with that. But this is a swan song that is sung (quite literally) all wrong.

Clint Eastwood as Walt Kowalski

In Gran Torino, Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a recently widowed Korean war vet living on a street that has recently seen an increase in Asian population. Ol’ Walt doesn’t like this. Not one bit. And when one of the new neighbor boys tries to steal his most prized possession – a 1972 Gran Torino – as part of a gang initiation, Walt’s temper flares like none other. Through the help of some loving and thankful neighbors, Walt’s anger eventually morphs into a desire to reform the young boy. The old man, in turn, befriends his new neighbors and does his darndest to help rid the neighborhood of gang infestation. A noble act, for sure.

While playing Walt, Eastwood’s usual harsh intones turn into a growl and he rarely moves his teeth as he snarls through racial slurs, consciously witty insults, and the film’s main stinging line, “Get off my lawn!” Gran Torino is above all a character piece about Kowalski and Eastwood plays him with a gruff perfection that suits the character to a tee. The film shows the growth of Walt’s soul and how he learns to accept the new while simultaneously coming to terms with the old being dead and gone.

Imminent threat? You wish.

It’s just a shame that everything about the film other than Eastwood the Actor has to be so bad. The script is an almost entirely laughable string of hackneyed racial, sexual, and political platitudes and it doesn’t help that Eastwood has surrounded himself by such profoundly inexperienced actors. Most of them lack any kind of emotion and sound and look clueless for the entire run time garnering no sympathy for their characters or any emotional resonance whatsoever for the film as a whole. Especially bad are the young male actors chosen to play the Asian gang. Complete with tank-tops, f-bombs, low-rise pants, plenty of swagger, and molester mustaches, the only threat they pose as they walk down the streets of Walt Kowalski’s neighborhood is that of being cliché. They succeed marvelously and the way in which they do nicely summarizes much of Gran Torino.

Eastwood’s past personas and Walt Kowalski are all adept at dispatching violence, but Kowalski’s attitude is decidedly more … Zen? Yes, I think that’s the word. Because of his harrowing experiences during the war, Walt finds it much more fulfilling to aim a gun comprised of his forefinger and thumb than to brandish a real firearm. He’d rather cut people’s haughty personalities down with colorful verbal abuse than slash their bodies with a switchblade. That is not to say that Walt couldn’t easily take part is some old-fashioned butt-kicking – he’s just above it all now. Years of living have taught him that a man does have to know his limitations.

Honorable sentiment. Bittersweet for Eastwood, I’m sure. I just wish some of the passion and emotion he clearly feels about his long and varied career would have been communicated without a harvest of worn-out truisms and stock phrases. We can only hope that this isn’t Eastwood’s wave goodbye to the film industry because the man is a bona fide legend and far capable of so much more than Gran Torino.

All the more surprising, then, when Howard clears the golden cobwebs out of his head and switches on the light. The transformation is subtle and unexpected, but around the 40 minute mark the pretty-please pandering dissipates and you’re (suddenly) watching riveting cinema.

But that first 40 minutes? Painfully miscalculated. To color in the backstory, Howard employs a pseudo-documentary approach, intercutting dramatic scenes with “spontaneous” interviews, allowing him to disguise his penchant for heavy-handedness (albeit poorly). In case you weren’t clear that Big Important Things were afoot, the actors remind you: “Did you know that Big Important Things are afoot?”. Why rely on Frank Langella’s performance alone to convey Nixon’s despondency as he stares out the window when you can have Kevin Bacon (playing Jack Brennan, Nixon’s right-hander) helpfully narrating, “I remember his face, staring out the window…” Thank you, Ron Howard. I hadn’t caught that. Also, please move your tuba away from my ear.

Face/Off (minus Travolta and Cage)

This faux-doc affectation is Howard’s cardinal sin (perhaps the blame for this can be laid at screenwriter Peter Morgan’s feet, who adapts from his own stage play), and one for which he barely makes restitution. But when he pushes the politics (both past and current) to the side and removes the in-your-face interviews; when he boils the picture down to its core conflict – two men drawing rhetorical swords against one another – and ceases to ram the bigger picture down your throat; and when he allows Martin Michael Sheen and Langella’s performances to breathe on their own, Frost/Nixon becomes a thing of beauty.

Langella (Superman Returns) astounds as Nixon, incorporating Tricky Dick’s signature mannerisms into a performance that avoids parody and achieves subtlety. Initially arrogant and self-righteous, Langella’s fallen president gives way to defensiveness, desperation and finally brokenness beneath Frost’s pointed questioning. Martin Sheen (The Queen) does well as the British talk show host-cum-inquisitor, but has less to work with than Langella (Frost’s financial troubles pale next to Nixon’s fierce need for redemption). Both, however, shine in the final face-off over Watergate.

Frank Langella as Tricky Dick.

The entire film has been building towards this showdown, and despite his earlier missteps, Howard accomplishes the one thing he needed to: he palpably recreates the pin-dropping tension that must have been felt by the 45 million people who tuned in to watch the original broadcast. As James Reston, Jr. (one of Frost’s investigators, played by Sam Rockwell) puts it, it was “the trial he had never had.” The scene is relentless, cathartic, stunning, but most of all, moving. Despite his failures, watching one man’s legacy dwindle to ash, the good devoured by the bad, is tragic. Langella performs magnificently.

Frost/Nixon is flawed in the way Oscar-bait films invariably are, but Howard nevertheless manages to steer the clunker towards a great story, well acted. It rewards more often than disappoints, and while it won’t be “for your consideration” the way Howard wants it to be, it is worth considering.

“Well, it wasn’t as bad as Step Brothers.”

Pineapple Express is the worst kind of film a critic must write about. It succeeds admirably at its implied goals, entertains well enough, and doesn’t fail in miserable ways. You enjoy yourself while watching it, but when you leave the theater it flits out of your mind like toilet paper in the wind. As you sit down to pound out a review, you realize you can’t remember anything about it, so you pull your little notepad out that you scribble random thoughts on during screenings, looking for inspiration, only to discover you wrote nothing. The film engendered no thoughts of significant worth, either negative or positive, at least no thoughts that compelled you to record them for later use. You are, in a word, ambivalent. And now you have to write about your ambivalence in an entertaining and fair manner, when all you want to do is go into the other room and watch the latest episode of The Wire.

Sigh.

So, where was I? Oh yes. Pineapple Express was, at the very least, not as bad as Step Brothers, that other Judd Apatow production with man-children in arrested development that came out last week. Here you’ve just got stoned man-children, and it is, if you can believe it, an improvement. Dale Denton (Seth Rogan, from every other Judd Apatow film, ever) and Saul Silver (James Franco, Spider-Man) are infinitely more pleasant to be around than Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly). Also, Pineapple Express features one less scrotum than Step Brothers does, an improvement that cannot be overemphasized.

Weed buddies are so cute, aren\'t they?

Dale, a process server who carries around a trunk full of disguises so he can ambush those hoping to avoid subpoenas, smokes dope with passionate zest and Saul, a scruffy space-case who is in a perpetual state of high-ness, sells it to him. Being a valued customer and all, Saul gives Dale a sampling of the rarest of rare weed, Pineapple Express, which Dale then proceeds to smoke outside a house where a murder is taking place. Fleeing in panic, he drops the exotic doobie which, of course, is traced back to Saul and himself, forcing them both to go on the lam in order not to get smoked (thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week).

I’ve never smoked dope before, but popular culture and common sense tells me that it likely involves a group of persons sitting around, lazing back, and having absurd conversations that stretch on for interminable lengths of time about rainbows and Venezuelan politics and the origins of Voltron. That, in a nutshell, describes Pineapple Express. I found myself constantly getting bored with how long some of the dialogue dragged on until I realized it was simulating the pot experience, and then I was still bored, albeit a bit more understanding of what the film was trying to accomplish.

Yes, that's Seth Rogan in his tighty whiteys. Just be thankful the barndoor is closed, if you get my drift.

But does the film live up to the “stoner action comedy” pseudo-genre label it’s been crowned with? It does, in fact, fulfill that promise to the tee. Including the aforementioned weed-ish conversations, it’s also chock full of ludicrous action set pieces and grisly-ha-ha violence, as well as some terribly funny sight gags (the best of which are in the trailer). Of special note is James Franco’s performance, who proves that he has much more in him than his previous output would suggest (Flyboys, Annapolis, and other films best left forgotten). Saul receives all the best lines and Franco deftly uses them to steal every scene he’s in. Fingers crossed that his upcoming performance in Milk finally puts him on the map.

Not of special note is director David Gordon Green, the indie auteur behind such arthouse favorites as George Washington, All the Real Girls, and Undertow. Although there are brief glimpses of his very personal aesthetic here (Dale and Saul’s wooded leapfrogging montage, the vintage 70s hodge-podgey set design, and some conspicuous slow-mo all ring faint bells), he fails to leave any kind of significant stamp upon the film. That may be the point, since comedies are all about the yuks and rarely about the director’s style, but it’s disappointing to see Pineapple Express swallow up all of the eccentric quirks that make David Gordon Green such a unique filmmaker.

Will you enjoy Pineapple Express? Probably. Is it worth paying some nine-odd dollars for it? That depends on the level of twinkle that enters your eye when you hear the words “stoner action comedy.” I’d like to insert some kind of witty weed reference here to tie everything up, but my ambivalence is winning out. So instead I’ll just say that Pineapple Express isn’t as dope as it could have been and leave it at that (hardy har har, I’m on fire today).

Two days after seeing The Wackness, I’m still trying to figure out what I disliked so much about it. Some suggestions…

1. The fact that I’ve already seen the whole premise — drug dealing high school kid falls for the daughter of an authority figure who has more than his own share of vices and addictions — played out this year in the far-superior Charlie Bartlett, which managed to be a lot more fun, meaningful (even if a bit overly-earnest), and genuinely honest, despite an almost total lack of “indie cred”;

Thought bubbles...in a live-action film? Deep.
2. The fact that it’s still too soon, guys (!!!), for 90’s nostalgia, and even if Definitely, Maybe managed to pull it off without completely embarrassing itself, that doesn’t mean we have to beat this thing to death (sorry guys, but seeing someone blow on an NES cartridge doesn’t take me to transcendent heights, especially considering I still have an NES that gets a fair amount of use);
3. The fact that it’s relentlessly whiny about Rudy Giuliani’s work as mayor of NYC, and “coincidentally” was designed to be released the year that ol’ Rudy had a (now immaterialized) shot at running for president (come on, guys, I’m more than aware of the weaknesses of his zero-tolerance policies, but is it too much to ask that your political views have some nuance? or at least some subtlety?);
4. The fact that I’m supposed to feel bad about the fact that Rudy was lowering the boom on people whose entire lives consisted of doing drugs, defacing public property, masturbating, trying to get laid, and masturbating some more;

My search for identity essentially boils down to a quest to get into your pants. If you were a guy, you'd understand.
5. The fact that this is supposed to be a coming-of-age story but that no one ever really comes of age, and in fact many of the characters seem far less mature at the end (apparently, in the world of director Jonathan Levine, maturity consists of learning that both suicide and coitus are rarely ever worth the effort);
6. The fact that whenever any member of the cast was on screen, all I could do was wish they would be off soon (when the choice is between a whiny teen with no friends who thinks his life is somehow profound and his greasy middle-aged psychiatrist who wants nothing more than to cheat on his wife with teenaged girls, it’s kind of a toss-up);
7. The fact that the only exception to this was Mary-freaking-Kate Olsen, whom I’m supposed to hate, but here frustratingly proves that she is, in fact, a talented actress (and, in another stunning display of ineptitude, is given almost no screen time by the ever-navel-gazing writer/director Levine);
8. The fact that Ben Kingsley, who once won an Oscar for his portrayal of Mohandas-freaking-Gandhi, has chosen to spend this summer first desecrating Hinduism in The Love Guru, and then playing one of the most weasely, obnoxious screen characters in recent memory (the aforementioned psychiatrist);
9. The fact that, for all its brooding, this film has absolutely nothing on its mind (aside from the aforementioned lessons about suicide and sex), and is sophomoric at best-or simply amateur, at worst;

Mary-Kate Olsen being awesome; Ben Kingsley embarrassing himself (again...)
10. The fact that I’m supposed to like this drivel because it’s an independent (!!!) film and Levine used some fancy filters on his camera, and the fact that someone is bound to tell me I “just didn’t get it,” presumably in an attempt to make themselves sound smarter than me, which shouldn’t bug me, but does; and finally,
11. The fact that it actually received an award at Sundance and was picked up by Sony for distribution — further proof that I “just didn’t get it,” and will likely get berated by anyone who reads this review.

Really though, I have no excuse except the fact that this just isn’t a very good film. All I can say is that those who are cheering for it must be blinded by the fact that the soundtrack features a lot of songs that they haven’t heard in ten years or so. Aside from that, the only reason to see it is if you’re into narcissism that pretends to be life-affirming. And if you’re not, feel free to skip this one.

So every December, we relive the hell of the battlefields of the early 1940s so that studios can take home a couple statuettes. It’s not hard to understand why, of course: nothing sells to critics like excessively heightened emotion, and the evil of the Nazis is a quick way to get there; on the other hand, the Academy always shies away from controversy, and few things are less controversial than calling Hitler evil.  And this year’s crop is no better or worse than usual: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Reader, Defiance, Good (I admit that I haven’t seen those last two yet), and of course, Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is something of the odd man out here, for a number of reasons: it debuted in wide release (rather than starting in the New York and L.A. circuits, before expanding once it received awards and nominations), it leans more in a “thriller” direction (rather than being a straight-up “drama”), and of course, it was directed by Bryan Singer. Singer, as the director of everything from X-men to The Usual Suspects, is known for directing relatively “smart” movies that are still palatable to the masses. Valkyrie isn’t all that different: it’s a “genre” film — much of it plays out like a heist movie, although the “heist” to be pulled off is an assassination (and not a robbery) — but it’s more-or-less historically accurate, and it features a large number of talented actors.

The box-office draw here, of course, is Tom Cruise, who plays Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a German officer who played a key role in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler toward the end of the war. He’s paired here, however, with a number of talented thespians, including Kenneth Branagh (where has that guy been lately, anyway?) and Tom Wilkinson. Also along for the ride are Bill Nighy, Terrence Stamp, Eddie Izzard and Jamie Parker. In other words, we have all the requisite British actors for an Oscar-winning film, plus a star that still might bring in some money.

But of course, the only relevant question is, does the thing work?

The answer: better than you’d expect it to. Obviously, anyone who knows World War II should know that this particular cartel’s plot ultimately failed. Hitler lived another year — long enough to drive all of his military campaigns into the ground and then commit suicide before he could be brought to justice. Somehow, though, Singer still manages to generate a degree of suspense — probably by keeping the focus on the moment-by-moment progress of the operation, instead of its ultimate success or failure. One particularly tense scene has Stauffenberg attempting to trick Hitler into signing a policy change that will allow for their coup, and once the plot goes into motion, there’s definitely a degree of tension in the air.

More than anything, though, it plays out as a tribute to the German resistance, which is admittedly a commendable undertaking, but it doesn’t manage to match its own virtue with an equal dose of entertainment value. In the end, it’s merely yet another dry historical picture with excellent production values and a talented (and arguably underutilized) cast. It doesn’t add up to all that much, but it goes down pretty easy.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve never worried much about the plausibility, or rather implausibility, of a given movie. Enforcing an outside reality on a piece of insular entertainment seems to be on par with showing up at an all-you-can-eat buffet with a calorie counter in hand. Watching your waistline certainly is an admirable goal, you’ve just come to the wrong place to do it. Director D. J. Caruso seemingly shares this viewpoint. Thus far in his career he has gravitated towards stories that allow him to throw the physics and expectations of the real world out the door, in the service of making an entertaining flick.

With Eagle Eye, Caruso lets us know from the moment he introduces hero Jerry Shaw (Shia LeBeouf) that even though he pays lip service to (and cribs liberally from) the great canon of 70’s thrillers such as The French Connection and The Parallax View that we’re here for a “thrill ride”. None of those pesky character arcs here, ladies and gentlemen! Arms and hands inside the car, no flash photography please. How do we know that Jerry is our hero-to-be? Just watch the way that this put-upon copy clerk plays quad aces. Any wannabe rounder would be jealous of that kind of calm. To be fair, I doubt that anyone pops in this DVD looking for insight or introspection. We’re on the boardwalk buying tickets to the Tilt-A-Whirl, and unlike the questionable quality of carny construction, what we have here is a thrill ride made with great care that  moves along fairly briskly. The action set-pieces are fun, flashy and fairly realistic looking, which in this day and age is deserves some credit.

Unfortunately, the film nearly grinds to a halt when Jerry isn’t running to or from something. Co-stars Michelle Monaghan, Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson are given little to do except yell incredibly silly things. (Honestly, pay special attention to the next-to-last scene, in which a character is forced to state the theme of the movie in a soundbite so stilted it belongs in a circus.) To misuse such a varied and interesting troupe is a shame really — I’m sure that I’ve seen almost every member of this cast in action movies that were both smart and exciting. I won’t expose my personal prejudices here by stating which films those are, but I’m sure the avid researcher could learn a lot about this writer by sussing out the correct flicks.

At least as enjoyable as the film itself, though, was an interesting extra contained on the second DVD of the set, entitled “Shall We Play A Game?” Director Caruso chats with one of his mentors, John Badham, the director of War Games (a personal favorite). As an aspiring filmmaker myself (yes, I’m one of those), I always enjoy seeing the enthusiasm of creative types. Caruso clearly enjoys his work and doesn’t take it too seriously, which is a good quality to have when you make silly action movies, now that I think about it.

While not as unexpectedly enjoyable as the last Caruso/LaBeouf paring (the underrated Disturbia), Eagle Eye is more than watchable in a lazy-evening-with-the-family sort of way.

It’s probably an old cliché to say so, but Ghost Town really is the sort of movie that Hollywood just doesn’t make anymore: a sweet, but not cloying, romantic comedy that — despite its fantastical trappings — features relatively down-to-earth characters (lonely middle-agers, not beautiful twentysomethings already making six-figure incomes), and which gets its most of its humor from characters cracking actual jokes, not acting stupid, or passing gas, or quoting other movies and winking. It’s the sort of film that, if it weren’t filmed in color, you’d almost expect to see Frank Capra’s name in the credits.

The setup goes something like this: Ricky Gervais, the comedian best known for portraying David Brent (the character known to Americans as “Michael Scott”) on the original British version of The Office, plays Bertram Pincus, a self-absorbed and misanthropic dentist living in New York City. When he visits a hospital for a routine colonoscopy, he’s given an overdose of anesthetic that leaves him temporarily dead. The staff successfully revives him, of course, but the ordeal leaves him in an awkward position, straddling the here and the hereafter. In other words, he’s the only person in NYC that can communicate with both the living and the dead.

The classic love triangle: a man, a woman and her dead husband.

As we all learned from Shyamalan nine years ago, the reason the dead walk among the living is because they have unfinished business to attend to — and Bertram learns this too, when he runs into Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear, formerly of Talk Soup), a Manhattan businessman who’s been dead nearly a year. Frank is desperate: his widow Gwen (Téa Leoni, Fun with Dick and Jane) is seriously dating a man he hates, and he needs Bertram to break it up. Bertram, of course, thinks he’s the ideal candidate to lure Gwen away.

All this exposition probably makes the film sound like yet another dumbed-down high-concept comedy, but in all honesty, nothing could be further from the truth. Within the first half-hour of the film, you simply forget that anything out of the ordinary is going on at all — you simply take the ghost element for granted while the interactions between the characters play out naturally. The filmmakers clearly weren’t afraid to hire non-“name” actors (no one in the film is particularly well-known on this side of the pond), and this pays off in a big way. This is true in the obvious sense — the audience isn’t carrying the baggage of the actors’ previous roles — but also in the sense that each actor is perfect for his or her role, and doesn’t feel shoehorned in simply to sell tickets. The chemistry between Gervais and Kinnear strikes just the right chord between desperation, jealousy and loathsomeness; the interactions between Gervais and Leoni hit all the right moments of awkwardness and sparks of connection. The characters may seem to be empty archetypes at first (particularly Gervais’s, who initially appears to be a mere self-absorbed snot who has to learn Important Lessons), but the actors and the screenplay work together seamlessly to turn them into real people, all of whom manage to make you love them.

Ghost Town is the same sort of “man-is-privy-to-information-about-the-woman-by-supernatural-means” film as (for instance) Groundhog Day and What Women Want, but like the former (and unlike the latter), it manages to be memorable because it goes beyond its initial Big Idea and takes a long hard look at real people: their lives, their longings, and their failures. Despite its genre trappings, it has much more in common with The Sixth Sense than it initially seems to: like Shyamalan’s film, Ghost Town is a story about those who are dead, whether they know it or not: those who have dead bodies, and those who have dead souls. Watching a spiritual resurrection take place on the big screen is nothing new, but it never gets old, especially when there are actors like Gervais to make it feel so real.

John Patrick Shanley adapts the script from his own play, as well as directing for the first time in 18 years (his previous effort was – can you believe it? – Joe Versus the Volcano). Meryl Streep plays Sister Aloysius, a draconian nun who principles St. Nicholas in the Bronx circa 1964. She clashes with Father Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson’s War), a progressive parish priest, like oil and water. He suggests that Frosty the Snowman would liven up this year’s Christmas pageant; Sister Aloysius sees an endorsement of witchcraft; Father Flynn, in turn, is inspired to preach a sermon on intolerance; and so on and so forth. Sister James (Amy Adams, Enchanted), naivety incarnate, is the young nun caught betwixt their machinations when she reports on what may – or may not be – an inappropriate relationship between Father Flynn and St. Nicholas’ first black student.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman is doubtful about stuff.

Shanley was not the best choice to direct. Faithful to a fault, he attempts to spice up (read: justify) his adaptation with copious dutch angles (when the camera is tilted diagonally) that prove exceptionally distracting. Obvious, too, are the visual metaphors and religious symbolism: an all-seeing eye in stained glass glares at Father Flynn; conspicuous Jesus shadows deck the walls behind characters; while Sisters Aloysius and James discuss how to bring down Father Flynn, a custodial staff brings in a dead mouse and the cat that caught it; and so on and so forth (the phrase ‘on the nose’ was invented for such situations). A more objective architect might have repurposed the material in compelling ways; Shanley just dumps a fresh coat of paint on a structure that was fine to begin with.

The top-shelf cast is enjoyable enough – who can say no to Streep and Hoffman going toe to toe? – and accolades are already showering down like manna from heaven, but the proceedings lack emotional heft. Although we’re told much is at stake (Father Flynn being outed as a pedophile), it never feels like it, due to the insular nature of the material. On stage, this is an accepted limitation: the audience’s minds, given only actors and dialogue and a few props, work to piece together the bigger picture that exists beyond the curtain. This limitation does not exist in film – you can show anything - and so when the major drama is  restricted to a single location and two characters, the audience will struggle to grasp the larger scope of things. They’re waiting, after all, for the director to show it to them.

Doubt begins to feel like a dollhouse,  artificial and insubstantial and emotionally distant, which is a shame given the caliber of its parts. The sum undoubtedly looked much better on stage than it does on the sliver screen.

Well, perhaps that interest was a bit misguided. Or perhaps he’s hit a sophomore slump (this being his second theatrical release). Or maybe he’s simply not at his most comfortable working with a script he didn’t write. Or (most likely) he simply can’t make a great film when he’s not working with great talent. But for whatever reason, his latest – a remake of the 1951 science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still – just doesn’t make it over the bar he’s set for himself.

Talk to your kids about smoking. Or some superior alien race will do it for you.

Acting talent seems to be the biggest culprit here. When he made Emily Rose, Derrickson somehow managed to recruit two of the best character actors available – Tom Wilkinson and Laura Linney – in addition to talented newcomer Jennifer Carpenter. Even when the script faltered, the cast was able to save it with nuanced acting and genuine emotion (in addition to some astonishing body contortions – which Carpenter apparently did herself). With his latest film, we get stuck with Keanu “Ted” Reeves and Will Smith’s son. With that in mind, I can’t believe I ever imagined the project wouldn’t fail.

Now – to be fair – Reeves might actually be one of the better parts of the film. As he’s proven over and over again since Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, he has a serious knack for looking bemused, bewildered, and confused (perhaps this is why the first Matrix was popular but the other two weren’t – once he figured out what was going on, his character ceased to be interesting) – and of course, in the new Day, he has every opportunity to do this, since he plays Klaatu, an extraterrestrial who was recently reborn in a human body in order to warn humanity of its impending destruction. Watching him figure out how to work his arms and legs isn’t without its charm, and the way his character communicates badly with the surrounding humans fits in perfectly. The problem, of course, is that he’s one of three main characters here – and, as such, he has to grow and change.

It’s a change that’s impossible to accept, since it’s nearly impossible to determine exactly what precipitated it – especially with the lukewarm performances we get from his two costars. Jennifer Connelly arguably does her best here, but the script gives her little more to do that blubber repeatedly about how humanity deserves a second chance. As for Jaden Smith, the less said about him, the better. He won some acclaim for The Pursuit of Happyness (which I admit I haven’t seen), but nothing he does here rings true. The role calls for a child who is deeply wounded by the death of his father and mistrustful of his stepmother; unfortunately, he can’t seem to fathom even half that depth of emotion. He comes off as just another child actor trying to get by on apple-cheeked cuteness – the absolute worst thing that could have happened to the role. Even when the script should work here, the actors manage to bring it down.

I'm going to ask you some simple questions. First off: Why, exactly, did we need to remake this film?

This is all terribly unfortunate, since The Day the Earth Stood Still definitely had the potential for greatness (no matter how ill-advised the remake was in the first place). The special effects are arguably some of the best to be put forward this year, striking the perfect balance of 1950s cheese and 2000s whiz-bang CGI (with just a dash of Close Encounters of the Third Kind) – in other words, they effortlessly pull off what Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull tried so desperately to do just a few months ago. The modern interpretation of Klaatu’s robot Gort is a thing of terrible beauty, and probably as close as they could have come to evoking the same feelings that the original might have in the 1950s. The initial, wordless encounter between Klaatu and Helen (Connelly’s character) is a truly emotional experience. And when humanity’s impending doom is finally unleashed, it’s a sight to behold. Too bad none of it means anything.

More than any other film, The Day the Earth Stood Still reminds me of Roland Emmerich’s clunker 10,000 B.C., which came out earlier this year. Like 10,000 B.C., it has an undeniable beauty – it makes you believe its action – but it fails to connect emotionally, or even thematically. While 10,000 B.C. was possessed of a bland New Age formula, however, The Day the Earth Stood Still continues Derrickson’s habit of dipping into Christian mythology – here telling the story of an all-powerful being who must sacrifice himself to save humanity from, paradoxically, his own judgment. Unfortunately, this is just another theme that gets lost in the muddle – and while it’s nice to see Derrickson attempting something a bit more complex than Emily Rose’s themes of faith vs. skepticism, bad acting and bland pacing ultimately do it in.

The spaceships have been upgraded once or twice since 1951. (Now they have cupholders, which really should have come standard in the first place. Why won't Detroit acknowledge the needs of the common extraterrestrial?)

It should go without saying, of course, that the original film is by far the better choice here. What’s frustrating, though, is that this new version could have, like Peter Jackson’s King Kong a few years back, been a colorful fantasia on the motif established by the original. Instead it tries too hard to update it, deviates too far from its themes, and simply fails to develop its characters. In this, it does a disservice not only to the original, but also to itself. Those who loved the original will no doubt be angered, and those of us who are true believers in Derrickson’s skills are left with nothing to do but wait for his next project, which is – I kid you not – an adaptation of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. So, without any irony intended: let’s all pray he doesn’t muck up that particular classic quite as much as he did this one.

Like Eastwood’s vaguely enjoyable clunker Changeling, Martin’s Cadillac Records recounts a handful of events more or less exactly as they happened, and says absolutely nothing about them. The story here is the one of the rise and fall of Chess Records, a hugely influential Chicago-based label for rhythm and blues (or, as it was called at the time, “race music” — seriously). It follows exactly the same story arc as every other musical biopic, ever — rise to stardom, internal troubles, relative fall, comeback, worshipful acknowledgement of influence. It’s a little bit more interesting than your average musician movie, since it’s about a record label — and therefore a collection of artists instead of a single one — but ultimately, it’s just a dull history lesson, albeit with a lot of excellent music. Adrien Brody (The Pianist) stars as Leonard Chess, the Jewish Immigrant who founded Chess Records after building a relationship with numerous artists through his blues club; Jeffrey Wright (Quantum of Solace) plays Muddy Waters, who recorded some of Chess’s earliest hits; hip-hop emcee Mos Def (Be Kind Rewind) plays Chuck Berry, their first crossover success; and R&B diva Beyonce Knowles (who also produced the film) plays legendary vocalist Etta James. Some time is given to their legendary hits, and some time is given to their personal battles (such as Berry’s prison terms), but most of the time is spent on arguments about who is sleeping with whom (go figure).

Chess (Brody) and Waters (Wright)

There’s really not a whole lot to say about the film — like Changeling, it amounts to exactly what it promises, and nothing more. We get to see Waters move up from Mississippi and help create the Chicago blues sound; we get to see Berry invent rock ‘n roll; we get to see James look in all the wrong places for father figures. The problem, of course, is a lack of focus: there are far too many story threads winding through this thing, and Martin’s script fails to bring them together in any meaningful way. It never feels like a story — it’s just a bunch of stuff that happens.

I shouldn’t have to explain this to Hollywood, but apparently someone does: history, when practiced well, is not about listing off what happened in the past. Anyone can do that; a good historian can tell you why it happened, how it happened, and what it means. Of course, this is doubly true for the filmmaker, as she’s working in a medium that’s essentially fictional. She has the ability to tell a story however she wants, and to make it mean whatever she wants; for Martin, as for Eastwood, this is a wasted opportunity. To take a fascinating story like that of Chess Records and make no point other than “All modern popular music is derived from the blues” (something that anyone with a cursory knowledge of musicology could tell you) is simply disappointing.

James (Knowles)

Cadillac Records isn’t a total loss. The meticulous recreation of 1950s Chicago is very nicely done (though I really hope the pompadour never comes back as a hairstyle — what were people thinking?), and most of the actors give spot-on imitations of the musicians they’re portraying. Furthermore, it’s filled with very good renditions of some of the greatest songs ever written: “Hoochie-Coochie Man,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “I Heard Church Bells Ring,” and dozens more (Beyonce’s no Etta, but hey, she tries). It’s these renditions that make the film worth seeing — and a very enjoyable flick, whatever its shortcomings may be. Anyone looking for a primer in the roots of modern popular music is advised to check this one out — just don’t expect it to be anything else.

Thank you for your patience. Many factors contributed to the time it took me to write this, not least of all its length, but I hope it was worth the wait, and I hope that you are still interested in reading it.

There is a clear distinction between the film reviewer and the film critic, although at first glance it appears to simply be semantics. The film reviewer writes for the person who has not yet seen the film in question and may not know anything about it. They avoid significant spoilers, spend a great deal of time synopsizing, keep things relatively brief, and cultivate a tone of recommendation: thumbs up or thumbs down, praise or pan, see it now, wait for the DVD, or avoid like the plague. The film critic, on the other hand, writes for the person who has already seen the film. They discuss the internal workings of the movie, wrestle with why it succeeds or fails, and attempt to bring about a deeper understanding of the film’s sociological implications and its place within the culture at large.

I attempt, with varying degrees of success, to combine both of these paradigms in my writing, but The Dark Knight necessitates a more critical approach. In my professional career as a critic so far, it has been the only film that I have required myself to see twice before writing about. Although I am somewhat late to the party, you would have all seen the film whether I told you to or not, so I’m not concerned with the tardiness of this piece. I am also eschewing the guidelines for reviewing, embracing the role of critic instead, so if you’re in the 5% who have yet to see the box office record breaker (rectify that immediately), consider yourself forewarned.

As filmgoers we are often asked to choose between films that entertain and films that stimulate thought, but rarely are we given both in the same package. Few have accomplished this in recent memory (No Country For Old Men, The Lives of Others, and The Mist all come to mind). The Dark Knight, however, is an epic achievement on both counts.

Even with 5 months left in 2008, I guarantee you will not find a film this magnificently entertaining all year. Allow me to retain my ‘reviewers’ cap for a moment and say that if you consider yourself a movie lover of any significant worth, this is the one film that must be seen theatrically. Must. And having seen it in both standard 35mm and in IMAX, I can happily regurgitate what hundreds of others have said over the past few weeks: you have not truly seen The Dark Knight until you’ve seen it in IMAX. The difference is night and day, due to Christopher Nolan’s brilliant decision (I can only hope other directors follow his lead) to film the action sequences entirely with specialized IMAX cameras. When Batman leaps off a building in Hong Kong and the camera gleefully follows his plummeting descent, it sucked the breath out of my lungs. Literally. The Dark Knight is one of the most exciting, adrenaline-fueled films I have ever seen.

But plenty of films manage to be exciting, even incredibly so. Wanted, Iron Man, and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, each comic book adaptations debuting in the past 3 months, have all registered shockingly high on the fun-o-meter. And while Batman Begins, Nolan’s previous foray into the world of the caped crusader, was considered by many to be the cream of the superhero crop, it remained securely anchored to the ground by its comic book origins. What, then, makes The Dark Knight different?

Christopher Nolan, like (to a lesser extent) Jon Favreau (Iron Man) and Peter Berg (Hancock), has realized that superhero flicks need to evolve to remain viable, both critically and financially. While Tim Burton’s vision of Batman worked fine in 1989, his kitschy and conspicuously stylized aesthetic is no longer relevant, especially in the post-post-9/11 world in which we live. We are reaching superhero burnout, and it won’t be long before Spider-Man goes the way of Daredevil and Ghostrider.

So Nolan strips his film of all but the most essential comic book conventions. While characters and outfits remain, gothic-pop landscapes and goofy plots to destroy the city go. There are no wink-wink-nudge-nudge moments that announce that this is a Comic Book Movie, no traces of irony, no cheeseball asides. Christopher Nolan takes the central question behind Batman – what are the consequences of putting on the mask? – and completely legitimizes it. The entire film is a meditation on the answers to that one question.

Note: Do not read any further until you’ve seen the film.

Bruce Wayne is a man in conflict. Having created the Batman persona, he finds himself disappearing further and further inside of it. Not only is it like a drug, consuming his life to the point where he doesn’t even return home after a night of crime fighting, it is also fracturing his personality. He and others have begun to refer to Batman in the third person, as if he was another entity entirely and not simply Bruce with a mask over his face. Is Batman a part of Bruce Wayne or is Bruce Wayne a part of Batman? The balance is shifting away from the former and ever closer to the latter.

The playboy billionaire, however, is the only one who doesn’t seem to realize this. Alfred recognizes the symbol that his employer’s alter ego has become (“Batman can make the choice that no one else can.”) and Rachel realizes the addictive toll it has taken on the man she loves (“When I told you that if Gotham no longer needed Batman we could be together, I meant it. But now, I’m sure, the day won’t come when you no longer need Batman.”). Wayne, in the meantime, obliviously continues to slip further into the dark abyss of the cowl.

Christian Bale’s guttural, almost ridiculously gruff growl as Batman has drawn a lot of criticism, and initially I was put-off and distracted by it as well. This choice, however, is a finely calculated decision, both directorially and in terms of the character. The difference in voice between Batman and Wayne is so extreme that it effectively separates the two in the audience’s mind. They feel like different characters, and the overlap that existed between them in the first film has almost entirely disappeared here. Gone are the suiting up sequences, and only one scene in the entire film shows us Bruce in the Batman outfit (fittingly enough, it is an emotionally pivotal moment wherein he wrestles with how his choices have led to Rachel’s death). The basement-crawling growl serves to accentuate this division, and it becomes a brilliant maneuver rather than a grating liability.

In addition, it serves to reason that as Bruce is further consumed by his dark half he will embrace, and even revel in, the theatricality of the Batman. The grand entrances, the stunning exits, the shock-and-awe gadgetry, and the rumbling bass are all part of the performance. In The Dark Knight, Bruce begins taking that to ever increasing extremes: escaping with captured criminals by being whipped out of skyscrapers by Skyhook, harnessing the power of thousands of cellphones to paint a sonar portrait of Gotham, and deepening his already-deep growl. As he builds up a tolerance to the Batman drug, Bruce accelerates the spectacle, becoming more and more of a theatrical junkie. And while this certainly serves to threaten his sense of personal identity, it also harbors a much nastier and much less psychological consequence.

Enter the Joker, the direct and tangible result of Batman’s existence. In pulling on the mask, Bruce has “changed things forever,” as the Joker opines while hanging upside down by one leg. He is the yang to Batman’s yin, the Laurel to his Hardy, the flipside of the coin, the unavoidable balance that the universe must bring about. In previous incarnations, both comic and cinematic, Batman was directly responsible for the Joker’s creation by accidentally knocking him into a vat of acid, but here he simply exists by virtue of Batman existing. “You crossed the line first,” Alfred remarks. Giving birth to a new class of crime fighter, Bruce Wayne inevitably birthed its dark twin, a “new class of criminal.”

Heath Ledger is a force of nature. Despite his tragic and untimely death, despite the media circus surrounding him and the film, his performance crushes whatever preconceived notions or extenuating expectations you might have brought into the theater. It is not Heath Ledger. It is not an actor. It is not a real person who once lived and is now dead. It is only the Joker. In all his chaotic charisma, he reaches out with his velvety gloves and erases everything from your mind but him and him alone. There is no hyperbole in saying this is an Oscar worthy performance. Given Ledger’s death and the political nature of the Academy, his posthumous win come February is absolutely guaranteed.

“Nothing. No name. No other alias. Clothing is custom. Nothing in his pockets but knives and lint.” Commissioner Gordon’s estimation of the Joker is a snapshot of who Nolan and Ledger have chosen to give us. Rather than delve into a tired origin story, they have stripped him of his past and loosed him, like a “mad dog,” upon Batman and audiences alike. There is no beginning to him, no back story that might grant him “motivation,” no before and after that has marked nearly every villain in Batman’s storied history. The multiple sob stories that the Joker tells only serve to highlight the fact that he no longer has a story. The Joker simply is.

But what he is not, however, is solely a metaphorical symbol for anarchy and chaos. The Joker did have a past life, and the fact that he was someone is important, even if who he was is not. The original man has been swallowed whole by the Joker, as whole as hell swallows the doomed. The person has become the persona, disappearing fully inside the theatrical – scars, makeup, and purple cloth are all that remain. It is the same fate that awaits Bruce Wayne – how long before he has been completely replaced by cowl, growl, and cape? They are the same at different stages, Bruce Wayne in transition, the Joker having completed his. The Crown Prince of Crime is the inevitable conclusion to the Caped Crusader.

Other moments in the film bear this interrelatedness out. In front of one of the Joker’s deranged and schizophrenic henchmen, Batman remarks to Harvey Dent, “[He is] the kind of mind that the Joker attracts.” The irony is lost on him, as he himself attracts likeminded individuals, unstable copycats intent on vigilantism. “What gives you the right? What’s the difference between you and me?” one of them challenges Batman. His response, “I’m not wearing hockey pants,” is an indication of Bruce Wayne’s self-delusion. Whereas the Joker recognizes, and embraces, the attractive gravity of his persona, Batman denies it. “See, to them, you’re just a freak, like me.” The hero refuses to accept that he is identical to his wannabe batmen and his freakish opponent, just coated with a different shade of paint. His disillusionment is total.

Even the score and the method in which it was created illustrates both the dichotomy and the similarities between the Joker and the Batman. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard collaborated on the score, and when asked which one had composed which aspect of it, they said,

HZ: Nobody will ever know who wrote what tune and what piece.
JNH: Including us!
HZ: Including us. We were doing it on this one, listening to something from the first one, going is that your tune or is that my tune?
JNH: Really true, we just don’t know anymore.

Yet when composing for the Joker they split apart, and Hans Zimmer alone composed the twisted clown’s theme.

HZ: I think that the fearlessness within the character of The Joker and the recklessness, I felt the music had to reflect that – and the single-mindedness. So that in a funny way was where the team idea went out of the window because it really had to be written as one.

Together, yet separate. Alike, yet different. Opposite sides of the same coin.

The image of a coin carries the symbiotic relationship between Batman and the Joker even deeper. Like warring parents within a destructive marriage, others become pawns in their quest to triumph over one another. One of those pawns is Harvey Dent. Batman sees him as a way to escape from his addiction, from the self-inflicted prison he is unable to break out of: “Gotham needs a hero with a face…Harvey is that hero.” The Joker sees him in an entirely different, yet no more selfish, light: “You need an ace in the hole. Mine’s Harvey.” Between them both the White Knight of Gotham is torn apart. If Batman represents the second act and the Joker represents the tragic finale, then Harvey “Two-Face” represents the entire 3-act play.

Handsome, charismatic, idealistic, and with a flair for the dramatic, Harvey Dent is initially no different than Bruce Wayne. Where Wayne ‘kidnaps’ an entire Russian ballet company in order to fabricate an alibi, Dent disarms a witness in court, strips the gun apart, and then insists on continuing his cross-examination. Both of them are consummate showmen.

And then, just as it descended upon Bruce, tragedy strikes Harvey Dent. His loved ones taken from him by violence and his face boiled to char, he enters a dark, self-destructive place. The same anger and inner turmoil that took Bruce to a Chinese concentration camp in Batman Begins takes Harvey deep inside his own ruined psyche. As it happened to the Joker, and as it is happening to Wayne, Harvey fully embraces madness. He destroys the man he was, and Harvey Dent disappears forever. The arc is complete. In his place he leaves Two-Face, the twisted child of both Batman and the Joker. Batman gave him the coin, but the Joker taught him how to flip it. “I brought him down to our level. It wasn’t hard. You see madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push.”

The structural beauty and thematic symmetry of The Dark Knight is completely owed to both Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s brilliant script and Lee Smith’s precise editing. Both are works of art in their own right. Like movements within a symphony, the Nolans weave Batman and the Joker and Harvey Two-Face in and through and around one another, each character reflecting the themes of choice and responsibility and madness. And each of these movements is juggled with expert skill by Smith, who manages, during key moments, three to four separate sequences, blending them all together to create a single, cohesive narrative vision. Notice the final scene, where Batman chooses to shoulder the blame for Harvey’s crimes. Smith moves from Batman and Gordon, to Harvey Dent’s funeral, to Gordon destroying the bat symbol, to Alfred, to Lucius, and then back to Batman, all within the space of mere minutes. Each characters’ story is resolved, and the themes that have been building and rising the entire film crest the top of the wave and crash down in a stunning crescendo, set to Newton and Zimmer’s epic score.

“I’ve seen what I would have to become to stop men like him.” The irony is that in order to stop the Joker from triumphing, Bruce has to embrace the very thing he desperately attempted to reject. He must become the criminal, the murderer, the hunted dog. He must be the man who has no rules, the one who defies laws. He must become the villain. He must become the freak. He must completely, and totally, become the Batman.

With Dent lying broken before him and Rachel, dead, behind him, Bruce finally accepts what he is, what he has become, what Alfred saw from the beginning and what Rachel somehow knew all along. Batman is no longer a part of him, but an icon, a symbol, something beyond himself. The Bat has taken on a life of its own, and the man, at last, embraces the truth of the persona. His sacrifice in doing so is personal, psychological, and perhaps ultimate. One of the strongest ties to his former life, the woman he loved, has been severed, and his hope for a Batman-less Gotham has perished with Harvey Dent. So he willingly races into the future, into a world where Bruce Wayne has faded from memory, a world where only the Dark Knight remains.

He finally understands the consequences of putting on the mask.

BATMAN: You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. I can do those things, because I’m not a hero, not like Dent. I killed those people. That’s what I can be.

GORDON: No, no, you can’t, you’re…

BATMAN: I’m whatever Gotham needs me to be. Call it in.

GORDON: (to crowd at Dent’s funeral) A hero. Not the hero we deserved, but the hero we needed. Nothing less but a knight, shining.
(to Batman) They’ll hunt you.

BATMAN: You’ll hunt me. Condemn me. Set the dogs on me. I guess that’s what needs to happen, because sometimes, the truth isn’t good enough, sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.

Batman flees on foot.

GORDON’S SON: Why is he running, Dad?

GORDON: Because we have to chase him.

GORDON’S SON: He didn’t do anything wrong.

GORDON: He’s the hero that Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him, because he can take it, because he’s not a hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector.

The Dark Knight

The work of Dr. Seuss has not had an easy life on the silver screen. Ron Howard’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas should top any conscious filmgoer’s list of worst Christmas films and the even more despicable The Cat in the Hat surely caused more than one heart attack at the Seuss estate. It is with these two films in mind that I walked into Blue Sky Animation’s production of Horton Hears a Who with trepidation. Would Hollywood again ravage the work of my favorite childhood author and leave it bleeding on the side of the road?

Horton Hears a Who is the story of Horton the elephant (voiced by Jim Carrey), a jovial and slightly dimwitted elephant living in the jungle of Nool. During the heat of the day, while bathing in the cool of pool, Horton hears something very small whiz by him and goes on a search to find out what it is. After earnestly looking he finds a small speck of dust. To Horton’s surprise, this is no ordinary particle, but the home to hundreds of Whos living in the town of Whoville. After talking to the eccentric mayor of Whoville, Horton takes it upon himself to protect this speck from its oppressors at whatever the cost and guide it to the safety of Mount Nool because “a person’s a person, no matter how small.”

Of course, the original Seuss book could never make a 90-minute film. Changes and additions are absolutely necessary and Blue Sky has done a fairly good job with them. Carol Burnett voices the kangaroo who abhors the idea of Horton taking care of a speck. She goes out of her way to try to destroy the speck (“For the sake of the children!”), even hiring a frightening bird-of-prey named Vlad (Will Arnett sounding scarily similar to Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises) to pursue it. These dimensions add extra tension to the jungle side of the story, but Whoville is fleshed out much more as well. Steve Carell voices the eccentric and dedicated mayor of Whoville who feels something has gone quite awry in his peaceful hamlet when Horton’s voice starts booming from the sky. By the end of the film it is his job to convince Whoville that Horton is real and that there is a whole world existing beyond their tiny speck.

The ideas behind these changes work well, but as they say, the devil is in the details. Animated films begin to falter when they pander to the obvious or expected joke. There are a few moments when the film gets completely distracted from the main story and indulges in moments of unnecessary stupidity. A prime example: when Horton decides that he is going to brave whatever is necessary in order to bring the speck to the shelter of Mt. Nool, the film blasts into a supercharged anime sequence so loud and overpowering that the intended audience reaction is nearly impossible. Where Seuss’ work has a timeless quality, these few attempts to be “hip” will alienate audiences ten years from now.

Aside from these things, the beauty of Seuss’ artistry is completely intact. To write off this adaptation because of a few bad additions would be to miss the beauty on display. The swooping and diving shots so obligatory to animated storytelling are put to good use here as the speck floats around the jungle of Nool and finds its home in different places before coming to Horton. The production design and the way characters look is distinctively “Seussian” and never seems distracting while the immediate story is being told. The narrative is presented in such brilliant color that it is hard to be distracted even when some moments become less than compelling.

There is a moment in Horton Hears a Who when the faithful pachyderm passively mentions the “inalienable rights” of the Whos on the speck. The phrase slips by in a flash and could be easy to miss, but it reveals the core of Dr. Seuss’ story. Filled with tasteful hyperbole and metaphors, it makes a hearkening statement about the right of all people to exist, no matter how small they may be; an important message for a culture where the idea of small people actually being people is under fire. It is said that Seuss didn’t like pro-life advocates projecting their message onto his work and it’s certainly understandable given that such a message may have not been his intent. Still, the film teaches respect for people of all sizes and instills a sense of wonder at the things beyond ourselves. In a slimy pool of animated dreck, Horton Hears a Who rises above and will delight and teach both kids and adults with its humor and message.

Those who are of the opinion that C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia as an allegory designed to convert children to Christianity (I’m looking at you, Phillip Pullman) would be well advised to check out Prince Caspian, the latest entry in the eponymous film series (by the way, they should also look up the word “allegory”—but I digress). Make no mistake about it—Lewis, as a former atheist, wrote just as much out of doubt as he did out of faith, and his books were no mere morality plays. Caspian in particular is a dark meditation on the coming of age—the story of children realizing that fairytales simply aren’t true. At the center of it all is the question of what humanity can do when its God has left it alone on the earth. In other words, this ain’t kid stuff; nor is it particularly “religious.”

But it is truth.

And appropriately enough, Caspian is a film where the questions arguably possess more truth than the answers themselves. Keeping in line with Lewis’ dark, semi-tragic vision, the film invites viewers to draw their own conclusions. Now in the interest of full disclosure, I was a huge fan of the Narnia series as a kid (who wasn’t?), but it’s probably been at least ten years since I last read Prince Caspian. For this reason, I can’t entirely vouch for its faithfulness to the source material, but if I remember right, it’s pretty close—aside from a handful of plot truncations and thematic updates. What’s really important, though, is that Walden Media has improved upon the previous entry in the series—which was merely so-so—by leaps and bounds. The four central characters have grown tremendously as actors, the special effects have been greatly improved (though I’ll admit that the world has yet to see a truly convincing CGI mammal), the themes run much deeper and darker, and the violence—which felt a bit neutered and whitewashed in the first entry—has been ratcheted up, while somehow maintaining a PG rating (presumably, Disney fought the MPAA on this all the way down to the wire—I still have yet to see a poster or any sort of promotional material for this film that even mentions a rating). Put simply, Prince Caspian is breathtaking, moving, and exhilarating.

The story takes place 1,000 Narnian years after the events of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which roughly translates to one earth year (don’t ask me to explain this—even Lewis was far from consistent in his parallel chronologies). The Pevensie children (Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley and Anna Popplewell) are returned to Narnia, only to find that it’s become a savage dystopia. Most of the original Narnians have been exterminated by a horde of humans who invaded from earth, and the (illegitimate) throne has been usurped by the evil King Miraz (Sergio Castellitto), uncle of the rightful heir, Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes). Caspian is on the run from his uncle, and the humans are encroaching further into the territory of the remaining Narnians. And no one has seen Aslan in centuries.

Thus the conflict is set up between the believers and the skeptics—those who would continue to seek the lion and those would look for power within themselves—or in others (Oscar winner Tilda Swinton makes a chilling cameo, reprising her role as the White Witch). If The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is an epic about God’s quest for man, then Prince Caspian is a meditation on man’s quest for God—and all that divides the one from the other. Caspian is not afraid to address issues like racism, war, greed, and genocide; nor does it imply that there’s an easy answer to any of these. But the central question it posits is a daunting and worthy one: Does God have to prove himself to us—or is it we who have to prove ourselves to him?

As “children’s” movies go, this is a very “adult” one, sporting some heady existential questions and some overtly sexual undertones (Anna Popplewell does nicely with the sexual empowerment that the role of Susan demands). This works greatly to its benefit, forcing the franchise to grow up, and establishing it as a philosophical and artistic powerhouse. It remains to be seen, of course, whether Disney and Walden can maintain this kind of momentum, but after seeing Caspian, I’m unreservedly rooting for them. In the meantime, the second chapter of the saga offers vivid imagination, beautiful cinematography, and an excellent cast (special shout-outs to Ben Barnes as Caspian and Eddie Izzard as the voice of Reepicheep the swashbuckling mouse)—not to mention a lot to think about. I honestly can’t recommend this film enough.

NOTE: Two of the screencaps within this review contain depictions of violence and strong language.

As a child, when Mark Millar was first introduced to comic books and superheroes, the question he immediately had was, “Where do they all live?” His older brother, never one to pass up a golden opportunity, told the little tot that all of the superheroes were dead because the super-villains had teamed up and wiped them out. While briefly traumatizing him, the prank would also become the basis for his hit 2003 comics mini-series, Wanted.

I picked up a copy of Wanted a few months ago in anticipation of the film. It was unequivocally one of the most sadistically violent, amoral, and thought provoking things I had ever read. The film, sadly, retains the first, waters down the second, and jettisons the third completely.

James McAvoy as Wesley Gibson.

Wesley Gibson (Hollywood It-boy James McAvoy) is a white collar worker trapped within a miserable existence of spreadsheets and TPS reports. Full of self-loathing, his porky boss abuses him, his girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend, and he takes copious amounts of anti-anxiety medicine just to function. As movies about depressed white collar workers are likely to progress (hello Matrix rip-off), another world hides beneath the surface, our hero awaiting only his Otherworldly Boatman (in this instance, Angelina Jolie) to ferry him across to the other side.

Wesley’s father, it appears, was a super-secret assassin in a super-secret society called The Fraternity that follows death orders given to them by a super-secret loom called the Loom of Fate (yup, you read that right). Dear old dad is dead, killed by a rogue agent, and Wesley, who has inherited his father’s superhuman abilities (including curving bullets and millisecond reaction times), is being brought into the fold to exact revenge. Seeing as his life sucks, he’s only too happy to oblige.

When asked whether or not there was ever pressure to tone down the violence found in the comics, Millar is on record as saying that “he would have walked” if that had ever been the case. And while around 70% of the source material is intact (per Millar’s estimation), the brazen tone of the original has been neutered into oblivion (which apparently doesn’t bother him). During the film’s training montage, Wesley is beaten to a bloody pulp, instructed in the art of the knife, and shown how to curve bullets. In the original comic those things happen, but he also has his conscience desensitized by slaughtering hundreds of live cattle, sniping random people on the street, and raping A-list celebrities (because all the heroes are dead, the super-villains can operate with complete impunity). In the movie, the Fraternity justifies its assassinations with the mantra, “Kill one, save a thousand” (Jolie provides a weepy backstory about a murderer who killed her parents because a Fraternity member had wussed out on assassinating him). In the comics, Wesley walks into a police station and executes every last cop with extreme prejudice. Why? He was bored.

A panel from the original comic showing you just how unpleasant existentialism really is.

Now, I’m not one to revel in sadistic excess and glorified amorality. I hated both Sin City and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (whose protagonist lacked any semblance of a conscience). But what I found so fascinating about the original Wanted was its utter willingness to sacrifice any pretense of morality in pursuit of its violent guilty pleasures. The whole premise is revolting, but it takes guts of steel to follow amorality to its natural conclusion: Freudian existentialism (where rigid definitions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ do not exist and man is happiest when he is instinctively pursuing his own pleasure).

The film is unwilling to go to that extreme for obvious marketing and financial reasons. A truly amoral protagonist is unpalatable – no one wants to see their heroes raping innocent civilians just for the heck of it. So instead the film manufactures justifications for its on screen violence: the assassinations are in service to the ‘greater good’ and Wesley only kills the ‘really bad guys’. Ta-da! Now you can enjoy your gore-tastic violence without the burden of having to think about what that actually implies. It’s a calculated decision that will no doubt reap dividends at the box office (Perfume, budgeted at $60 million, made a little over 2 in the US), but it’s the same cop-out nearly every other action film employs, made all the more glaring in light of the uncompromising source material.

Timur Bekmambetov showing off his imagination.

It would be a disservice, however, not to mention Timur Bekmambetov’s genuine skill in crafting a thrilling action sequence. The Russian director behind Night Watch and Day Watch (the marketing insists on calling him a ‘visionary’ although I’m unwilling to go that far) brings his over-the-top aesthetic to Wanted with unrestrained enthusiasm. This is adrenaline fueled eye candy laced with crack that’s shoved straight through your retina and into your brain. Bullets mushroom against one another in midair, cars flip over one another in displays of Speed Racer-like acrobatics, and assassins leap between rooftops like trapeze artists on steroids. It’s all ludicrous, of course, but as long as you can forgive the flagrant abuses of things like gravity and physics you’ll enjoy the action-lover’s buffet that Bekmambetov is serving up.

Millar’s original work conducted a Funny Games-style experiment (albeit much more successful than Michael Haneke’s attempt) wherein you were confronted by the implications of your fascination with and enjoyment of violence: “Did you like the part where he flipped through the air and shot the bad guy in the face? Wasn’t that cool? Hey, what if he executes this innocent woman minding her own business? Still having fun?” Bekmambetov and his handlers at Universal have removed such moral quandaries because, quite frankly, they’re bad for business. Wanted is an acceptable thrill ride that many people will enjoy way more than they should, but it isn’t the uncomfortable examination of violence-obsession that it could have been. I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed a 100% faithful adaptation of the source material very much, but it would have been more interesting than what we’ve been given.

In the movie, Angelina just shoots the bad guys. In the comic, her character executes an entire coffee shop just to make a point.

One of the charges often leveled against film critics is that they are “out of touch” with American audiences. The proof that is generally cited comes from placing each year’s average critical top 10 list and its top 10 grossing films side by side and seeing how closely they match. For example, 2007’s critical darlings, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, respectively placed 36th and 66th at the box office. There are reasons for this discrepancy, primarily bad movie burnout amongst critics and the ever-present tension of art vs. entertainment, but I’ve always prided myself on being an unpretentious critic who loves his trash as much as his mise-en-scène (I did say I was unpretentious, right?). However, sitting in the theater watching Step Brothers, I wondered if I had finally crossed over to the other side. The audience was eating up every second of it like a lottery-winning coke fiend and I was just sitting there, wondering where that piece of food stuck behind my back molar was from, how long it had been there, and gosh it’s really about time I made a dentist appointment.

John C. Reilly as Dale and Will Ferrell as Brennan.

The film begins promisingly enough. Our introduction to the setup, in which two single parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) get married and bring their two 40-something stay-at-home children to live together, takes mere minutes and is a shining example of taut, economical storytelling. When Brennan (Will Ferrell) and Dale (John C. Reilly of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) locked eyes for the first time across the yard to the strains of LCD Soundsytem’s North American Scum, I was surprisingly charmed. The dialogue, acting, cinematography, and music (heck, even the titles) effortlessly sucked me into the film and fully engaged me with the hokey premise. The scene felt like a combination of Wes Anderson and Napoleon Dynamite, and I found myself wondering, “Could this actually be good?”

This scene was funny... at least it was the first time I saw it.

No. No it couldn’t. Director Adam McKay quickly squanders whatever cache he earned in the first 10 minutes by dragging us down into a bog of repetition, redundancy, and sameness, and for those of you reading along with your thesaurus, you may have seen what I did there. The film offers nothing more than the flimsy premise that was promised in the trailer: two middle aged man-children hate one another before discovering that they are exactly alike. Exactly. Alike. The End. Almost every joke and gag riffs on that one idea (which, the production notes tell me, evolved from the dinner table scene in Talladega Nights), and there are only so many shouting matches/brawls/arrested development gags/scrotums that one can take before one’s molars become more interesting in comparison (and no, that last item was not a typo).

The redundancy doesn’t just lie in the film’s premise, but also in its vulgarity. The last time I saw a film that needed its mouth washed out with soap this badly was Clerks. The obscenities in Step Brothers are positively relentless. When did inserting the f-bomb into a sentence automatically make it funny? And when did shouting that sentence make it even more funny? And when did stringing together aforementioned shouted f-bomb-laced sentences become funnier still?

And no, the language itself isn’t the issue (although Step Brothers has given me hope that I’m not nearly as desensitized as I had previously feared). Superbad, which I would never discuss in polite company, nearly broke a few of my ribs I laughed so hard. The difference here is that the vulgarity is hung on a paper-thin foundation, and without sympathetic characters or a narrative that engages you in the slightest (i.e. The 40 Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up), all of the profanity ends up eating away at your soul like battery acid. By the end I was mentally and emotionally exhausted.

The t-shirts in this film are, admittedly, awesome. Costume designer Susan Matheson is the queen of the Salvation Army.

I must admit there are some genuinely funny moments. The brothers’ efforts to sabotage their parents’ plans to sell the house (involving racially sensitive costumes and asphyxiation) had me doubled over, and two gloriously stupid sleepwalking sequences were visually priceless. But those moments were primarily physical comedy, whereas the majority of the film’s humor relies on the characters screaming profanities at one another in various states of undress. That’s just not my bag, baby.

In the interest of full disclosure, McKay’s previous Ferrell-Reilly vehicle, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, made my heart hurt. Numerous people disagreed with me, to the tune of $148 million at the box office, and the audience at Step Brothers was no different. I heard “epic,” “amazing,” and “that was way better than I thought it would be” as I left the theater. Suffice to say, this movie is going to reap great swaths of bank from the pockets of American audiences, and as much as I would like to, I can’t discredit the taste of millions of people. There is undoubtedly a market for this film, but I am (happily) not it.

Movies based on television shows generally fall into one of two categories: either they’re direct continuations of the show that wind up in theaters shortly after the show is cancelled, or even while it’s still on the air (The Man Called Flintstone), or they’re what might be called “re-imaginings,” released decades after the show ends, in a cynical attempt to cash in on the nostalgia of past fans (The Flintstones). Then there’s that nebulous third sort, like The Nude Bomb (sorry, I ran out of Flintstones examples) — the sort that come out within a decade of the show’s end, having given the show’s fans enough time to forget about it, but not enough time to wax nostalgic. Even for those who root for them, it’s hard not to admit the timing is strange, if not downright bad. This can easily color perceptions of the film, and, as you might expect, the new X-Files flick is no exception to this.

But if you’re worried about that, I’m your man, as I guarantee I was the most ignorant person in the audience at the screening I attended of The X-Files: I Want to Believe. I never got around to watching more than a few minutes of the TV series (what can I say, except that it was on TV during the 1990’s — which all took place within the first 15 years of my life, and were arguably a golden age of TV cartoons?). I never even attempted to watch the first movie. I hadn’t even read any reviews of the new film. In other words, my thoughts are the least biased you’re likely to hear.

Mulder and Scully, doing their thing

Between reviewing this and, last week, Brideshead Revisited — based on a novel which I had also never heard of — I’ve decided that I need to educate myself a bit more, but in the meantime, you get to hear the thoughts of someone who knows nothing about the franchise’s past. So here they are:

It wasn’t bad. It was good. Go see it if you want.

Sorry if that was anticlimactic, but this is really the sort of film that you can’t say a whole lot about. It feels exactly how I expected it to feel: like an extra-long episode of a TV show that was once really great, and still holds its own okay, but is straining a bit to come up with new stories on the one hand, and to maintain its relevance to a modern audience on the other. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are (still) compelling in the lead roles, and manage to create a tension that pulls the film through its weaker spots. And the themes, despite feeling a bit dated, for the most part ring true. It’s not perfect, but it’s a taut, fun mystery with a little bit of something on its mind.

The film opens with Agent Dana Scully (Anderson) now working as a pediatric brain surgeon at a Catholic hospital and Agent Fox Mulder (Duchovny) hiding out, on the run from the FBI (I suppose that a fan of the series could tell you why this is). But the FBI has decided they need Mulder back, as they’re facing a case that involves the paranormal. Scully tracks him down and drags him in, and they’re on the case once more. Turns out an FBI agent is missing, presumed dead, and the only lead they have on it is a defrocked Catholic priest who has visions.

Oh, did I mention he was defrocked for being a convicted pedophile?

The proverbial hunt is on. Go FBI, Go!

This appears to be the film’s bid for relevance — after all, Catholic sex abuse scandals became big in the new after the series’ cancellation — but it should go without saying that it doesn’t entirely work. A couple of years ago, it might have felt cutting-edge, or at least current enough to be interesting; unfortunately, here, it works against the film somewhat, making it feel a bit stale and vindictive. Not surprisingly, the film fights an uphill battle in making itself matter; but surprisingly, it succeeds pretty well.

As its once-pervasive catchphrase of a subtitle suggests, this is a film about faith, particularly of the religious variety, and Bill Connolly’s Father Joseph Crissman is the lone (alleged) supernatural bit in the film. Duchovny and Anderson do essentially the same believer vs. skeptic bit that they did on the show (I hear), and keep it relatively fresh, but the emotional crux of the film turns out to be the interaction between Scully and Father Crissman. As a woman of both faith and skepticism, Scully struggles with the idea that God would choose to speak through a man like Crissman, and abuses him to no end in an attempt to get at “the truth.” At the same time, her practice has her working on a child suffering from a fatal and incurable brain disease.

I may not know much about 'X-Files,' but I know a good Internet meme when I see one...

Yeah, yeah, I know — but somehow, they make it work. While the proceedings occasionally descend into sentimentality, this is less about the question of God’s existence than it is of God’s necessity. While we may like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, the fact remains that even the simplest actions require faith (a fact the film is quite fond of). Some of us bear faith’s burden, and some of us the burden of skepticism, but to jettison one in favor of the other would be lunacy for any number of reasons — and this is what The X-Files is really about.

I assume.

Philosophical pretensions aside, though, X-Files is a well-paced little film that doesn’t break a lot of new ground, but manages to bring most of the chills at just the right moments. It’s not the sort of thing that you’ll be telling all your friends about for weeks, but it’s a good way to spend a couple of hours.

The innocence of youth...

Such clearly defined good guys and bad guys should, I think, illustrate why the war is so popular a subject for films, but so difficult a subject to make a great film about. “One-note” and “overdone” is not a good combination (as any quick listen to your local “Pure Rock” radio station will prove), but of course, filmmakers keep trying. The latest entry, Mark Herman’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas tries to shake things up a bit by telling its story from the perspective of the family of a German soldier — and specifically his eight-year-old son Bruno (Asa Butterfield), who unknowingly befriends a Jewish boy interned at the concentration camp his father is charged with running. It’s a valiant effort, but ultimately one that fails to impress, primarily because it can’t think of anything new to say. The result is a beautiful piece of art that’s disappointingly hollow.

The failure here isn’t a problem with the filmmaking. Every shot in the film is gorgeous and meaningful (the stark, gray, art deco house into which the family moves in Poland; the mass grave of dolls Bruno’s sister creates in the cellar when she decides to “grow up”); the characters all put in solid, believable performances; the dialogue is all spot-on (Bruno’s character treads just the right line between naïveté and denial). The trouble is the story, which hits all the notes you expect it to, and nothing more. Herman works hard to make the family sympathetic, but he ultimately can’t side with them since they’re perpetrators of — or at least accessories to — the Final Solution. Ultimately, everyone in the family must learn they were wrong and pay for their mistakes. From the moment Bruno first discovers the internment camp (which he calls “a farm run by people in striped pajamas”), the film runs out of surprises and becomes a slow, sad march toward the inevitable tragic end.

The cynicism of youth...

In this sense, the deck was really stacked against the film in the first place. The simple story, which worked well as an allegory in the novel on which the film is based, becomes a bit too real on screen, and the viewer keeps waiting for something surprising to happen. Nothing does. The friendship between Bruno and Shmuel continues its uneasy growth, Bruno’s mother (Vera Farmiga) finds out what her husband is up to and is appropriately horrified, Bruno’s sister Gretel (Amber Beattie) hangs pictures of Hitler on her walls to impress the soldier she’s crushing on. The devastating end feels far too contrived on screen, and it feels like the movie is beating you over the head with THE MORAL (“Genocide is bad!!!”).

Of course, it’s not that we disagree. One of the major lessons of the Second World War is that genocide is an ugly, terrible thing that should be stopped at any cost. This is an important lesson, and I hope we never forget it. The real question, though, is do we need another patronizing movie to tell us this? Well — no, and certainly not yet another one set during World War II. The reason that great evils like genocide still occur is not because their perpetrators haven’t seen the misery it brought on Germany (a misery that is particularized quite well in the film); it’s because (among other things) they see their situation as fundamentally different. Of course it’s not — it never is — but making more and more WWII dramas about it just serves to distance its evil further for a modern audience. The Holocaust was a terrible time in human history — in some ways the worst ever — but to dwell on it when genocide, slavery, and all sorts of other inhuman atrocities surround us would be just as big a mistake as forgetting it entirely. In other words, the lessons of the Holocaust are invaluable, but we should put them into practice, rather than merely parroting them and then patting ourselves on the back for doing so.

Adventure!

It’s been a difficult time for those of us who still believed the House of Mouse was still capable of greatness (I count myself as one of the few people who loved 2002’s Treasure Planet), but two years ago, hope appeared on the horizon. After a brief spat with those new animation titans, Pixar Animation Studios, Disney purchased them through an all-stock transaction, making Pixar stockholders part-owners of Disney (and giving Steve Jobs, Pixar’s largest stockholder, the largest single-owner share of Disney). The result? Pixar execs were put on the Walt Disney Co. board of directors, and hence partially in charge of production.

It was a change that’s been good for everyone. It may seem a bit strange that Disney had to be reminded of the art of animation by their own protégés, but it’s emphatically the case (as Bolt proves — but then, I’m getting ahead of myself). It’s an oversimplification of course, but what it comes down to is this: Disney was a company that had ballooned far beyond what it was ever supposed to be, and had been run by bean counters far too long. What it needed were dreamers who believed in the power of art, and when it merged with Pixar, it got several (not the least of which was Jobs himself).

One of these was John Lasseter, the director of Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, and Cars, who joined the Bolt project as producer in 2006. When he came aboard, he revamped the story, replaced several characters, fired the original director (Chris Sanders of Lilo and Stitch fame), and then told everyone to finish the film in a year and a half (it was supposed to take four).

Let me assure you that all this tough love was well worth it.

Awkwardness!

Bolt is the first film to emerge from the new, Pixar-ized Disney, functioning as a manifesto to the world — sort of a “here’s-what-we-can-do, here’s-what-you-always-knew-we-could-do.” I’d be lying if I said I was anything less than enthralled from start to finish by this film: I honestly can’t remember the last time I laughed — or cried — so hard at a movie (WALL-E comes close, but I won’t open up that can of worms just yet). It’s not exactly a landmark artistic achievement, but it is a nearly flawless little family comedy — a testament to what animators can accomplish when they actually buckle down and work hard on making a quality product.

The story is a tried-and-true one, and really not that far removed from some of Lasseter’s other projects: Bolt (voice of John Travlota) is a dog who acts on a television show where his character has superpowers, and in order to ensure that he exudes authentic emotion, the producer leads him to believe that everything in the show is real. When an episode ends with a cliffhanger wherein his young owner Penny (voice of Miley “Disney’s Latest Tween Goldmine” Cyrus) gets abducted by the villain, he breaks out of his trailer and goes on a series of misadventures in an attempt to save her.

So it’s not anything new plot-wise (show me one movie that is), but it’s how meticulously crafted it is that makes it such a refreshing, thrilling treat. The first thing you notice about it is how in touch it is with the medium of animation — something Disney’s films have lacked in the recent past. Fundamentally, this is a film that gives animators free reign to do whatever they want with their medium, and it ends up being a film that could only have been animated. There are numerous nods to everything from Looney Tunes to anime (the biggest influence is probably Steven Spielberg’s 90’s cartoon Animaniacs — right down to the alley cat who sounds vaguely like Bernadette Peters [but, for the record, is actually voiced by Susie Essman]), but they play as homages and studies, not rip-offs or lamely ironic references. This all combines with a visual style inspired by Edward Hopper paintings (making it much less of an eyesore than, say, Madagascar 2).

The second thing you’ll probably notice is just how funny all of it is. Once Rhino the hamster (voice of animator Mark Walton) shows up, you know it’s going to be one hilarious film. The repartee between the characters — Bolt, his cat hostage, and his hamster sidekick — is both well-written and seamlessly acted, and you can’t help but get involved emotionally as Mittens the cat tries to show Bolt the truth about himself, Bolt tries to deny it, and Rhino remains oblivious to it all. This is all backed by an excellent score from John Powell, which hits just the right note between family-film sentimentality, primetime bombast, and 21st-century irony.

Hollywood superficiality!

Fundamentally, though, what will stick with you about Bolt is how refined its storytelling chops are. The contrasts and tensions within this film run deep: between the frantic and the calm (it’s neither an overly hyper mess like Chicken Little nor a stodgy morass like Brother Bear), but also — and more importantly — between that which is real and that which is illusion. It’s fitting that the de facto villain here turns out to be a Hollywood agent (Greg Germann of Ally McBeal) whose entire existence revolves around communicating badly in order to further his career. As Bolt learns to turn away from his fantasy life and live in the real world, with real friends and real meaning, it becomes clear that this is really just a metaphor for the transition Disney is going through right now.

More often than not, it feels a bit fake when a major Hollywood studio so conspicuously rejects commercialism, but given the circumstances, it seems genuine — particularly coming on the heels of WALL-E, which was similarly themed, but quite a bit less subtle about it. (I know someone will criticize my five-star rating, particularly in light of WALL-E’s status as a critical darling, but the fact is that Bolt is at least as successful as Pixar’s space opera, even if it is somewhat less ambitious.) Bolt is truly Disney’s manifesto — an explicit rejection of their recent past, and a declaration of an intent to build something better than the hype-’n-product factory they’ve been as of late. What’s truly exciting about it, though, is that it’s obvious that even better things are yet to come — particularly next year, when The Mouse reinstates traditional cel animation with The Princess and the Frog. When that one is released, I’ll be sitting front row center.

I love Peter Berg, much much more than I reasonably should. He’s directed some entertaining (if slightly forgettable) movies like Friday Night Lights and The Kingdom, but he holds a special place in my heart for putting one of the greatest action epics of all time onto film. That’s right, you guessed it, The Rundown, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Seann William Scott (you know, Stifler from American Pie).

You probably think I’m being sarcastic. I’m not. For inexplicable reasons, The Rundown is one of my all-time favorites, sharing a spot in my Top 10 along with Vertigo, Lawrence of Arabia, and Requiem for a Dream (I am nothing if not eclectic). I love this film with a passion that borders on the unhealthy, and my wife becomes intensely irritated with me whenever I want to watch it for the 37th time. It’s a mania that rises to teenage-girl-meets-Titanic levels of obsession, and whenever I meet one of the uninitiated, a rabid glee enters my eyes as I preach on its Looney Tunes-esque action sequences, its Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo, and Christopher Walken uttering my favorite line of dialogue ever, “Wow, that’s a lot of cows.” Professional propriety can shove it–I love this film.

So you can imagine the lightheaded anticipation I’ve felt ever since witnessing that first Hancock trailer back in January. Not only was it riotously funny, Peter “The Rundown” Berg (!) was at the helm, and maybe, just maybe, another guilty pleasure masterpiece would muscle its way into my Top 10.

Sadly, it wasn’t to be. Even though the cynic within me took a backseat to the giddy fanboy, Hancock left me more conscious of its flaws than of its successes, and although it has moments of genuine popcorn gobbling fun, it ultimately buckles under the weight of its own ambition.

Hancock reasons with the locals.

Will Smith (I Am Legend) plays the titular ‘hero,’ a grimy bum who would rather sleep off his hangover on a city bench than save the day from L.A.’s various do-badders. The opening sequence finds him reluctantly stepping in to stop a high speed pursuit on the 105 Freeway (his ‘call to action’ is a small boy with a colorful vocabulary). He cartwheels through the air like a drunken Superman, which makes sense since he is drunk, casually destroying property with all the finesse of an inebriated 3-legged bull in a china shop. He lands in the back of the perpetrators’ SUV and tries to calmly reason with them and their Uzis, until they rat-a-tat-tat his favorite pair of shades and trusty bottle of Jim Beam, at which point he gets slightly peeved and proceeds to spike their vehicle, with them in it, on top of a nearby skyscraper. A local newscaster informs us that the property damage has climbed to $9 million, a “personal best” for Hancock, and wishes that he would go save New York instead. Thus we are introduced to our antihero, a lazy, foul-mouthed, unloved strongman in desperate need of a PR makeover.

Will Smith as Hancock and Jason Bateman as Ray Embrey.

The first two thirds of the film are sheer genre fun and almost worth the price of admission. While not groundbreaking, the premise is certainly clever, and the script mines the gimmick for all it’s worth. A few of the gags are painfully unfunny (one in particular brings new, unpleasant meaning to the term ‘brown noser’), but most of them pulled the guffaws out of me in spite of my better judgment. Hancock chucks obese bullies thousands of feet in the air, “rescues” beached whales, and argues with the locals over whether he should have flipped the car or gone straight up into the air with it. Jason Bateman (oh Michael Bluth, your Arrested Development fans miss you) plays the PR exec with a heart of gold who takes Hancock under his wing and sets him on the road to recovery, redemption, and civil responsibility. And, as schmaltzy as that sounds, the film (accompanied by Will Smith’s respectable acting chops) deftly earns Hancock’s transformation from a**hole to role model. The transition would have been ripe for melodrama, but Berg navigates the emotionally gooey minefields of AA meetings and adorable kids who “believe in him” with a sure hand, and I never once had trouble believing that Hancock was becoming a better human being.

Then, just when the film has charmed its way into your good graces, it whips out a 3rd act revelation that resembles more of a kick to the crown jewels than a shockingly clever twist (which they no doubt thought they had achieved). Ribald-superhero-comedy-with-a-surprisingly-tender-heart meet epic-Shakespearean-romantic-tragedy-chock-full-of-confusing-Lady in the Waterish-mythology. Wait, what? To discuss it any further would be to potentially ruin the surprise (as bizarre as it may be), but suffice to say Berg and his scripters make a fatal miscalculation that shipwrecks an otherwise wonderful flick.

Hancock and PETA are BFF.

Humor me an anecdote. My cafeteria in college was overseen by a company with dubious culinary credentials. Mystery meats made regular appearances, and the one bright spot in the week was Mexican day, since you have to work pretty hard to screw up tacos and beans. Sitting down to lunch between bouts of Abstract Algebra and Glee Club, I coated my tortilla in sour cream and opened up for a mammoth bite of Tex-Mex goodness…and nearly threw up as my mouth was assaulted with a disgustingly foreign flavor. Cleansing my palate out with some generic blue soda, I realized that the ever-vigilant cafeteria staff had mistakenly placed cream cheese into the sour cream bin.

Now, I love cream cheese almost as much as I love sour cream, but when I’m promised one and given the other instead, the effect is shockingly unpleasant. Neither of Hancock’s films (and there are two distinctly different motion pictures wrestling one another within it) are necessarily bad, but when you’ve been savoring and enjoying one, only to have it secretly switched on you halfway through, it’s like being served a bagel topped with sour cream.

With a little more work in the script stage, Hancock could have been the surprise gem of the summer, destined for loving cult status, rather than the forgettable box office flash-in-the-pan it’s sure to become. You’ve let me down a bit, Peter Berg, but we can still be pals, and if I’m not mistaken I think I hear The Rundown calling to me from the other room. In movies, as in life, there’s nothing a little Christopher Walken can’t fix.

I sat through all 81 minutes of Space Chimps, but all I could think about the whole time was WALL-E. It had never occurred to me before that hour and a half (which I’ll never get back, by the way), but Pixar managed to make an entire movie set in space, without ever once resorting to extraterrestrials as a plot point. This may not seem remarkable, until you consider how infrequently that sort of storyline actually makes it into production. It’s not hard to imagine the studio board meeting that birthed this film…

“Okay…so we have our Oscar picture for the year. Now we need something that will actually make money.”

“A family film maybe?”

“That’s it! Families will line up for whatever crap we throw their way!”

“It’ll be animated, of course.”

“So we’ll need some people who can draw…”

“Draw? No, you idiot! I’m talking about computer animation! The stuff that any idiot can make in his sleep!”

Chimps with jetpacks. Nothing could go wrong here.

“Oh, yeah! That stuff is gold! So we’ll need some idiots. What will it be about?”

“Talking animals, of course. Why, is there something else you can do with animation?”

“No, of course not. I meant, what kind of talking animal?”

“How about monkeys? Kids love monkeys!”

“Good…good…and what should the monkeys do?”

“Let’s send them into outer space. Kids love outer space!”

“I like it! But what will they do in outer space?”

“Encounter aliens, of course. What else could possibly happen in outer space? Oh, and kids love aliens!”

“Great! I want a script by Friday…and some Happy Meal toy mockups on Monday. Nah, forget the script, it’ll work itself out. Just have some toys for me tomorrow.”

The classic story of boy chimp meets girl chimp.

This is the sort of half-baked quality you get with Space Chimps—but honestly, if you can’t infer that from the title, you have no one to blame but yourself. The whole thing plays out about like that one episode of your favorite Saturday morning cartoon—y’know, the one where the characters went into space. (You know the one I’m talking about—it probably aired the week after the one where they went to the old west, and a week before the one where they became pirates. Oh, and two weeks before the one where they went back in time…) At times, it’s impressive merely for being as lazy as it is, but mostly, it’s just dull and eye-rolling—and makes you worry about the generation that’s being raised on this sort of garbage.

Andy Samberg of Saturday Night Live stars as the voice of Ham III, the grandson of a famous chimp astronaut. He works in a circus as a showboating projectile (he’s shot from a cannon nightly), and enjoys the glory and women that come with it (mostly the women, of course). Unfortunately for him, a U.S. senator (Stanley Tucci) has other plans for him. NASA has discovered a wormhole and is going to send a crew of chimps through it; to generate public interest, the senator wants to put Ham on the shuttle. He’s not interested, but unfortunately for him, he’s a chimp, so he doesn’t have a choice in the matter.

From there, the movie basically goes through the motions. The chimps find themselves on a distant planet (evidently designed by animators who spent their entire childhoods playing Toejam and Earl) where they fight an evil dictator alien (named, cleverly, Zartog), meet a cute thing whose head lights up (named, cleverly, Kilowatt), and learn valuable lessons about life. Oh, and the boy chimp and the girl chimp fall in love. Didn’t see that one coming.

Yep. It's that bad.

The problem with all this is twofold: First, Ham is so arrogant and obnoxious as a character that he’s impossible to identify with or like. I didn’t want to see him change (as he inevitably was going to do)—I just wanted to see him disappear. It’s nothing short of painful to see him hitting on Luna, the token female chimp (voiced by Cheryl Hines) and know that somehow, inexplicably, she’ll come around and fall for him after all. Come on, now—do we really need to teach our children that the rude, lazy slob always gets the girl? (Doesn’t the world already teach them that well enough?)

Secondly, the whole thing just tries too hard to appeal to adults, when it’s already having trouble appealing to kids. This is the sort of film that thinks it’s really clever to merely reference another film (the obvious ones get referenced here: 2001, The Right Stuff—the latter on two separate occasions) or to make a subtle joke about penises. (I counted four—one of which involved monkey masturbation. How many can you find?). There are occasional cutaways in a style ripped off directly from Family Guy, but none of it clicks—it all feels like a rejected Shrek script. (But I admit there are occasional good jokes—for instance, the Great Cloud of Id, a diaphanus being on the planet that causes everyone to ask each other, “And how does that make you feel?”)

If you were to design a race of aliens, would they look like (a) reptilian blobs, or (b) reptilian blobs?

Then again, I’m probably holding this film up to an overly high standard, since its sole purpose is doubtless to launch a series of direct-to-video sequels made to babysit your children. And it’s probably unfair to compare the work of studios like 20th Century Fox with Pixar’s films. After all, Pixar is in the business of making art, while everyone else in computer animation is merely churning out product. But by working in a field that Pixar created, these other filmmakers are setting themselves up for inevitable comparisons—particularly if they’re going to insist on ripping off Pixar’s work. Space Chimps is a space epic following on the heels of Pixar’s space epic, and the screening I attended was preceded by the trailer for Fly Me to the Moon, which apparently is yet another space epic (about—you guessed it—talking flies in space). This slavish aping (get it? it’s a pun!) of the industry leader betrays either an unfathomable cluelessness, or simply a pediaphobic cynicism. Pixar’s films aren’t successful because they’re computer-animated; they’re successful because they’re great art. There’s more craft in a single frame of WALL-E than there is all of Space Chimps, and either studio execs can’t see this, or they simply don’t care. Odds are, they see a pile of money generated by a Pixar film, then mentally distill it into its most easily imitable aspects, and let their underlings do the rest. It makes for a sad existence for animators who would rather work on something meaningful, it’s unfortunate for kids who end up raised on dreck, and it’s annoying to their parents, who have to sit through it with them.

But most of all, it’s sad that no one respects animation as a medium, and this is why.

Well, say hello to yet another.

Nerdcore is the new music on the scene. Yes, “nerdcore” — the fusion of hardcore rap and, um, nerdiness. Credited with creating the genre and coining the term itself is San Francisco-based rapper MC Frontalot, who mixes tight beats with lyrics about the Internet, wookiees, and +3 two-handed broadswords. After building a substantial fanbase online and becoming “rapper laureate” for popular nerd-oriented webcomic Penny Arcade, the performer launched a tour of the continental U.S. in addition to a debut album entitled Nerdcore Rising; the film of the same title, directed by stand-up comedienne Negin Farsad, documents the tour. She and her camera follow Frontalot and his backing band as they tour throughout the southeast and the midwest, singing songs like “I Hate Your Blog” and “Hassle: The Dorkening,” culminating in a sold-out performance at PAX (the Penny Arcade Expo) in Seattle. The concert and road footage is interspersed with interviews with other nerdcore emcees (including Optimus Rhyme, NurseHella, and MC Lars), in addition to hip-hop producer Prince Paul (who’s worked with everyone from jazz-rap group De La Soul to horrorcore group Gravediggaz) and nerd music pioneer “Weird Al” Yankovic.

It’s unfortunate that the film doesn’t work particularly well, either as a concert movie or as a serious documentary. The concert footage is badly filmed, with a grainy texture and a sound quality that’s even worse, and the interviews don’t generally go very far past the obvious (though Prince Paul is remarkably insightful in his advocacy for the new genre). Farsad also fails to generate a cohesive aesthetic — occasionally dipping into rotoscoping and used-car-lot-commercial-level CGI, but generally just making the screen look cluttered (though the occasional presence of animated on-screen lyrics keeps things interesting). The involvement of so many other nerdcore artists also begs the question of why Farsad doesn’t bother to insert any of their songs or performances to give a broader picture of the genre.

There’s one moment in the film that is particularly interesting: as the band’s van enters New Orleans, Farsad’s camera surveys the damage wrought by the hurricanes of the last several years (it’s not pretty), and then cuts to footage of the band watching a couple of musicians play the blues on the street. Farsad intercuts this with interview footage in which her various subjects discuss the question, “Is nerdcore racist?” In other words, when dorky white people do what cool black people do, should that be considered offensive?

Even this misses the point though: it’s simply an attempt to graft mid-20th century thinking onto a decidedly 21st-century genre of music. Hip-hop is the world’s first truly global musical movement, and while the majority of the original performers may have been black (and Hispanic), it’s become a multiracial movement, with performers of every race and subgenres in nearly every country — whether MTV and commercial radio acknowledge it or not. As Prince Paul points out, the whole point of hip-hop is to be yourself and “keep it real.”

And, whether we’re fly gangstaz or white nerds, I think we can all get behind that sentiment.