Tinsel Torn REBORN!

Jobs Undoes 'Devils'

2010-06-21T16:45:00.001-07:00

Actually, it looks like Warner Brothers digital department dropped the ball on this one. Since May 31, ITunes has been offering a download of Ken Russell's scandalous classic The Devils. Long out of print and almost unavailable in DVD form (except for a UK release that many feel is inferior), it looked like fans (like yous truly) would finally be able to get their hands on the film. Well, on the first official day of Summer, June 21, ITunes took the title down. While some claim censorship, it's more likely that the WB recognized some rights issue and pulled it. Hope you got your download before it went away. I did.

The 'Kung Fu' Kid

2010-06-13T09:50:00.001-07:00

There's a kind of surreal synchronicity to this story that deserves mentioning. This weekend, Jackie Chan dominated the box office with his take on the '80s classic The Karate Kid. Oddly enough, 14 years ago, the Irish punk band Ash wrote a song called "Kung Fu" which referenced Chan, the aforementioned Ralph Macchio vehicle, and various aspects of the martial arts movie genre. Then, to take matters to even further karmic extremes, the tune was used in the Hong Kong action god's mainstream American hit, Rumble in the Bronx. So in celebration of such far thinking creative coincidences, click on the clip above and enjoy some hard rock, ass-kicking...ass kicking. Oh kung fu, do what you do to me.

In Defense of Big, Dumb Action

2010-06-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

I was pleasantly surprised walking out of the screening of The A-Team this week. For once, a Summer movie wasn't striving to be a Dark Knight rip-off, a uber-hip RomCom, or a psychologically complex and/or limp slice of sci-fi and/or horror. Instead, Joe Carnahan took the old '80 TV property and infused it with enough brainless spectacle to keep this cynical a-hole happy for 110 minutes (sadly, I missed the cameo-filled stinger at the end). It was refreshing to see a movie that just wanted to "wow" you, to take outsized ideas and elements and see how far you could take them. I'm not saying that all dumb action works - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is still one shitty motion picture - but in comparison to thrillers that take themselves way too seriously, Carnahan's comical chaos was a helluva lotta fun.

In many ways, it reminds me of the Crank films, entities I desperately love though they are clearly crafted by bugfuck film geeks whose synapses have been fried by too many video games and not enough complicated reasoning. With the human gonad Jason Statham as Chev Chelios and more ballsy bombast than a hundred other heroes combined, what we wind up with is pure entertainment - aimed at the pre-adolescent part of your stunted aesthetic - but enjoyable nonetheless. I often balk at people who pass on such easy amusements. Granted, it is like laughing when somebody farts, but it's still funny, no matter the lowness of the brow. Sure, you can pump yourself up as above the frantic quick-cut fray, preferring your stunts on the slow, showboating side, and there is something to be said about using the camera as a recording device instead of an active participant in a particular scene, but if you can pull off the "pow", we should be willing to take it every time.

This was part of the problem with earlier offerings like Iron Man 2 and Prince of Persia. Both were so engrossed in being important and unusual that they forgot to deliver the divine daffiness that makes the genre so pleasurable. We don't remember much about the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicles of the Greed Decade except for the goofball catchphrases, post-pummeling one-liners, and of course, the bloodletting itself. For the next few weeks, audiences will indeed be talking about the 3D glasses gag, the mid-air maneuvering of a tank via its turret, and of course the last act cargo ship explosion. Carnahan can be accused of a lot of things, but failing to put the "umph" in what is supposed to be the annual exercise in escapism is not one of them. Call it a guilty pleasure of a flaw in my filmic analysis, but I'm a sucker for big, dumb action. Thankfully, someone this summer is too.

So Far, So 'Meh': May 2010 Movie Report Card

2010-06-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

It's taken me a while to come up with this end of month scorecard, and for the love of all that's cinematic, I am not sure why. So far, the Summer of 2010 has been more than mediocre. It's been predictable, uninspired, underwhelming, and for the most part, antithetical to what the season is all about. As someone who is old enough to remember a time before the May through August popcorn paradigm, it really does look like Hollywood is not trying. They've got movies so micromanaged, so preplanned down to a demographically specific science that, even when they fail to fulfill their theatrical potential, the post-release tie-ins from international, home video, and On Demand more than make up for the missing revenues. Not the most conducive model for amazing motion picture brilliance, right?

Besides, what exactly was I supposed to get out of Sex and the City 2 (aside from a cackling matron headache)? Are films like Just Wright or Letters to Juliet aimed at anyone other than the most simplistic of wish fulfillment gullibles. Sure, the same can be send in opposite gender speak for equally uninvolving efforts like Robin Hood or Prince of Persia, but at the end of the day, the medium is supposed to be for the masses, not handpicked specific subsections within same. Tinseltown has clearly lost the ability to make universal entertainment. Instead, it has turned the once terrific artform into a stock option to be gambled away within a safety net where success is not assured, but pretty damn close to guaranteed.

At this rate, one can only hope that June is less perfunctory. Anyway, here's the grades and a short comment or two on each of the movies released in May (as well as a couple of additional titles which came in under the radar), beginning with the return of a favored superhero. While they are mostly on the positive side, their lack of consistent excellence makes one question the whole mid-year movie push in general:

Iron Man 2 (Grade: B) - there is really nothing wrong with this bigger, more bombastic sequel. Sadly, it would have been nice if director John Favreau and company infused some of the freshness they found for the original into this sometimes bloated follow-up.

The Human Centipede (Grade: A) - at least someone in the world is taking risks, and Tom Six is clearly forging some major ones. This clinical horror thriller is so unsettling it should come with some sort of FDA warning label...or a personal therapist.

Robin Hood (Grade: C-) - you expect better from Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe. Their partnership has provided some interesting (if not always adept) cinematic ideas. This dopey prequel take on the famous English folkhero is definitely not one of them.

Letters to Juliet (Grade: D-) - what does it say about a romantic comedy when you don't care about the generic generational leads at the center and yet root for two aging actors who are a couple in real life? Fails to fulfill any of its narrative promise.

Just Wright (Grade: B-) - the only difference between this and any other ridiculous RomCom is that Queen Latifah and the gang try to keep things serious and sensible. One too many musical montages, perhaps, but at least no silly, outsized slapstick.

Shrek Forever After (Grade: B-) - here's hoping this is the big green ogre's final foray into Pixar's perfect shadow. While the twist helps us reinvest in the characters once again, we soon learn that such personal speculation is not completely worth it.

[REC]2 (Grade: A) - the perfect sequel to an already excellent Spanish horror classic. Does everything right will leaving room for further exploration. Like I said - perfect.

MacGruber (Grade: B) - big, dumb, stupid fun. Sure, the baser level of laughs is not for everyone, and Will Forte's schizophrenic style takes some getting used to, but the end result is still pretty damn hilarious.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Grade: B-) - with his latest attempt to coattail on the unimaginable success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, producer Jerry Bruckheimer forgets three important things - a star worthy of Johnny Depp, a director on par with Gore Verbinski, and a story we can get involved with. Other than that...

Sex and the City 2 (Grade: F) - a slap in the face to successful, free-spirited women everywhere. Who knew that, once they finally wrestled the big fat brass ring away from the dominant paternalistic pecking order, first class females would turn into third rate, intolerant whores?

Survival of the Dead (Grade: D) - poor George Romero. No one really liked his recent revisit to the zombie genre he helped create...and with good reason. This is more Hatfields and McCoys feuding than solid skin snacking. Can you really make an undead epic with the undead?

Transformers 3D Looses It's Cock Tease

2010-05-20T04:50:00.000-07:00

Wow - Michael Bay is a vindictive sod. He's just axed adolescent male eye candy Megan Fox from his third giant robot round-up, and web world is agog with all manner of "he said/she cooed" excuses. Some point to a comment Ms. Fox made about a certain over the top filmmaker being "Hitler". Others argue that, with her shelf life already dangerously close to Kwik-E Mart levels of staleness, a new infusion of romantic blood in needed. After all, you can't have Shia LeBeouf running around chasing racially insensitive automatons and dogging machine testicles and not give him some sugar to snack on come dramatic action reprieve. One imagines Ms. CupieLips will survive. Let's face it - where there's a fake insinuation of sexual allure, there's some studio executive willing to provide a part (and a coach to cast from). Wait til she turns 30! Then she'll really have to worry about who she tags a Nazi. Until then, Megatron will have to live to battle Voltron (or Lameocon, or whatever they call said Go-Bots) without Megan's vacant, dead-eyed stare. Somewhere, Meg Foster is laughing.

Why 'Robin Hood' Sucks!

2010-05-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

Just came across this intriguing post from the SEX IN A SUBMARINE blog of William Martel, professional Hollywood scribe. He makes a very compelling case for why Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott are literary poison.

10 Movies That Definitely Would Benefit from the 'Human Centipede' Treatment

2010-05-06T11:28:00.000-07:00

While talk doesn't always equal tickets sold, it's clear that Tom Six's clinically perverted The Human Centipede has hit a mainstream nerve. When everyday folk are asking you about the notorious foreign fright flick (including those who normally dismiss anything remotely horrific), it's clearly become part of the cultural fabric. As a result, the movie's main theme (an insane doctor's desire to stitch people up - ass to mouth - in order to interconnect them via their gastric systems) could easily become fodder for future projects. Just imagine the next Harry Potter film with a little Voldemort to Malfoy to Bellatrix Lestrange re-attachment, or better yet, the next 3D animated effort with a little cartoon cruelty thrown in. Here are a few suggests for other titles that definitely could use a little digestive diversion:

Transformers 2 - First problem to overcome - the whole 'exhaust to input' dynamic among the robots. Lots of welding will be needed. Second issue - who's got the anus to match Ms. Fox's inflated collagen lips? Nobody in the cast is that big an asshole.

Furry Vengeance - CG critters doing bad physical comedy is one thing. Computer generated varmints stitched together like a taxidermist's sickest fantasy might just makes things more…entertaining. Couldn't be any worse than the kid vid atrocity already on display.

Sex and the City: The Movie - A perfect solution for these whiny , weathered matrons. The only problem - who's motormouth remains rectum free. That is a toughy. Still, this retrofit does offer the perfect built in title - The Human Yenta-pede

Pinocchio (The Roberto Benigni Version) - Might be the only way to shut that balding Italian scallion up.

Nine - Talk about your noxious musical misfires. Perhaps the experience would be improved if, instead of singing, the cast had their vocal chords clogged by another person's internal cast-offs. Definitely couldn't hurt.

Twilight (Any Installment) - Want to take the droning, dreary, human/vampire/werewolf love triangle to its obvious aesthetic ends? Stick Bella in between Edward and Jacob, get out your surgical thread, and let the supernatural sleaze begin!

Bruno - A premise that is basically three-quarters of the way there to begin with - so why stop at the mere suggestion.

The Jonas Brothers: the 3D Concert Experience - See Bruno

Funny Games (American Version) - If director Michael Haenke really wanted to challenge Hollywood's love of all things sick, twisted, and violent, he would have done away with the pair of fey serial killers and, instead, tied his typical American family up, tooth and taint style.

Shrek: Talk about your donkey show!

We're BACK!

2010-05-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

We're back...sort of. Still working the bugs out of the new design (and the equally fresh desire to take this blog in a whole different direction). Don't fret none. Within a day or two, we will return with fresh content. Until then, enjoy the changes,.

Jungle Boogie

2006-12-16T12:47:00.000-08:00

Has any film arrived with more nonsensical – and non-cinematic – baggage as Apocalypto? Granted, Mel Gibson is a notorious nimrod, using the excuse of alcohol-fueled diarrhea of the mouth to cover for what is probably a deep-seated hatred for people outside his religion/race comfort zone. But what his personal philosophy about his fellow man has to do with a movie about South American tribes at the end of their reign as civilized societies is a mystery made even more untenable by the media. Like any major superstar – and for a while, no one was bigger than the slightly manic Mel – the building of a celebrity is only half the press's process. Dragging them back down the stairway of eminence makes up the second section of fame's cyclical nature. If we are to assume that Gibson is at the bottom – he did go through a real rough patch there, and really hasn't pulled his over the hill ass out of the fire quite yet- then this film is a fine first step back into moviemaking meaningfulness. Will it wipe away the cloud of the lingering Anti-Semitic controversy? No. Does it indicate that some artists can successfully separate their craft from their convictions? You bet!

Unlike the ra-ra ridiculousness of Braveheart, or the subjective snuff film reverence of The Passion of the Christ, Gibson gives the audience a break here, creating what is, in essence, a thriller throwback to the days of simply storytelling and full force physical action. This is not a plodding post-modern blockbuster with all manner of metaphysical miscues messing up the stunt work. No, in a script that is elegant in its stereotypical ease, Gibson creates good guys (Jaguar Paw's jungle dwelling tribe) and unbelievable bad guys (the completely corrupt and de-evolving Mayans) and puts them at odds inside a beautiful, bloody epic. Argue over his skill with narrative or characterization, but no one can doubt Gibson's gift behind the lens. There are shots in Apocalypto that will literally take your breath away, moments where you wonder aloud if this is the natural beauty of a practical location, a purely CGI spectacle, or a clever combination of the two. In particular, there's a moment during Jaguar Paw's last act escape where he winds up in a pit of headless corpses. Colored a dire, dreary gray by the surrounding mud, the bodies form a kind of corrupt canvas, as perfect a painting of pain and horror as the visual medium has to offer.

As for the performances, it is hard to challenge or criticize them. Texan Rudy Youngblood is very good in the leading role, though he tends to have less of the detailed physical maladies (bad teeth, body scars) as given to his equally impressive co-stars. Naturally, there's a villain, and Gibson does a very smart thing when it comes to his bad guys. He divides up the evil, making main leader Zero Wolf (played by Raoul Trujillo) a far more focused heavy. Snake Ink, on the other hand, is like a pre-Columbian Simon LeGree. Face forming a constant snarling smirk, actions always poised on the precipice of outright psychosis, newcomer Rodolfo Palacios seems to be channeling every old fashioned rogue in the action movie manual. He is cruel, sadistic, slimy, sarcastic, uncontrollable and completely without redeeming qualities. At least Zero Wolf has a son that he dotes on, a bit of outside emotion that foreshadows a fatal event that drives the Mayans to make Jaguar Paw public enemy numero uno. It is safe to say that, thanks to the use of an ancient language and subtitles, the personalities all seem to merge and meld into a kind of collective clan. It is only via easily remembered art design elements, and individual idiosyncrasies that we end up with certain specific types.

While it may be bereft of real emotion – as much as we like Jaguar Paw, we don't really feel the connection between he and his pregnant mate – there is no doubting Gibson's ability to showboat and inspire. The entire trip through the mad Mayan city, filled with touches both natural and otherworldly, creates the kind of sociological science fiction that any good period piece can provide. We want to be transported to a world we've never experienced, believe in the validity of the varying little details that make up the magical whole. For all his flaws as a human being, his history as a man both married to and marred by his convictions, Mel Gibson should never be doubted as a moviemaker. Apocalypto may not be one of the best movies of the year, but it surely stands shoulder to shoulder with those exceptional efforts of 2006 – at least from an artistic perspective. Besides, what's the better legacy to have hanging around your neck – an undeniably dense anger toward people of a certain persuasion, or the ability to make startling cinematic statements? Gibson should be happy that, for now, outer vision has overcome inner vileness.

8 ouf ot 10

Seeing the Light

2006-12-07T07:19:00.000-08:00

When did moviegoers, including those in the so-called critical class, get so stupid? When, exactly, did they decide to turn off their brains, sitting back mindlessly and demanding that everything in an entertainment be explained to them? Was it when marketing became master of the cinematic domain, when test screenings and focus groups stole creativity out of the hands of the artist? Maybe it was during the days of the high concept, when narrative didn't need to be deep or intricate - it just needed to connect instantly with an audience. Home video definitely drove a stake in the heart of cinematic intellectualism. Once everyone had access to the world's wealth of film, the backseat scholarship began, and as a result, the creation of false perception. Granted, viewing a masterpiece like 2001 on a 13" screen is not the proper way of determining Kubrick's overall approach to science fiction, yet such an aesthetic has long since become the norm. As a result, all of these factors have fooled faux cinephiles into believing they understand the nature of movies. Unfortunately, if they did, they wouldn't now be bellyaching about Darren Aronofsky's latest masterwork.

At its core, The Fountain is a film about accepting death. It's about losing someone you love and learning to cope with the pain. It's mortality as viewed through the central characters of the story, each one presenting their own position on the afterlife in ancient (Izzy) and futuristic (Tommy) terms. For our heroine, the sudden arrival of the end (in the form of an inoperable brain tumor) represents a time of reflection and peace, a chance to put all her most precious thoughts down on paper to share with the man she adores. For our hero, cancer is a pariah, a conquest to overcome, a macho measure of his manhood that will either confirm or corrupt his entire world. As portrayed by Hugh Jackman (batting a big two for two this year after Christopher Nolan's amazing The Prestige) and the radiant Rachel Weisz, Tom and Izzy are drifting apart, at cross-purposes about her oncoming mortality. He's a research scientist obsessed with saving her. She's learning to cope. He can see nothing outside his potential role as savior. She just wants attention. All throughout the story, Tom has opportunities to really connect with his wife, to make her last few months (Weeks? Days? Hours?) of life seem serene. Instead, he is Hellbent on battling her disease – both as a way of saving her life, but also as a way of avoiding the issue in himself.

Jackman does a very interesting thing here, as does Aronofsky. This is not a big picture film, no matter the amazing vistas (Mayan temples, outer space) we end up visiting or the universal emotions being explored. No, both actor and director keep the movie very insular and internalized. Sets are restricted to rooms, corridors, halls, and dense jungle glens. Feelings are set within the barest of basics - happiness and sadness, success and failure. The intriguing Inquisition sequence that starts off Izzy's book (which gives the film its title) is perhaps the sole circumstance in which the world we are experiencing does not come as a direct reflection of our lover's lives. Indeed, Aronofsky seems to be using the set-up to suggest that traditional spirituality – read: religion – is so restrictive in its positions (post-modern or otherwise) that such an outward investigation of the afterlife is warranted. Indeed, the fictional Spanish Queen is seeking such salvation. Her conquistador tempts its fate. Similarly, our interstellar traveler puts his faith in an ancient Mayan myth. His goal seems as strange and evocative as the entire process of dying.

Yet, somehow, this is all baffling to filmgoers. They see Aronofsky jumping through time and the cosmos and consider this the narrative equivalent of Billy Pilgrim – unstuck in the epoch and equally confused. But it's all so obvious, if one merely gets involved in the story. There is no "real" Mayan storyline – it is the tale Izzy tells in her book. There is no space bubble traveling to Xibalba – it's just part of Tommy's interpretation of how Izzy's tale should end. Between the daily struggles to deal with the disease, this couple is losing its grip, grabbing onto fantasy as a way of finding fulfillment and peace. If you simply view all the fantasy material in light of the individual's producing it, Aronofsky's purpose becomes crystal clear. Then, the depth of his designs, and all the little details that go with it, turn something internal and emotion driven into an epic of universe-like proportions. You don't need a perfect score on some Mensa movie maven test to understand this. There are no hidden signals or symbols one must decipher to draw this conclusion. If one would simply switch on their inherent intellect, they'd see the truth behind the tricks – that is, that The Fountain is an astonishing, evocative experience.

9.5 out of 10

Live Forever

2006-11-25T16:34:00.000-08:00

Why has Darren Aronofsky only made three movies in the last decade? Why is it that an imaginative, important voice in post-millennial film can't get a serious sci-fi film greenlit, but horrid hacks like Akiva Goldsman can continuously fuck up possible speculative classics like I, Robot and I Am Legend. In the nine years since he's helmed his three full length features – Pi in 1998, the masterful Requiem for a Dream in 2000, and now, six years later, The Fountain – he's been eclipsed and replaced by the routine and the witless. Yet he's really done nothing to defend his turf. Except for a single screenplay (for the submarine shocker Below) you've got minimal output from a maximum moviemaker. Some have complained that Aronofsky is too obvious in his intentions, announcing his place in the director's chair with self-evident (and important) flare, not to mention an aggressive cinematic despotism. But when former friend Brad Pitt pulled out as the original lead in The Fountain, his now in theater take on immortality, he seemed to implode – taking his desire to make art along with him.

It's not hard to see why. Again, Aronofsky doesn't shy away from the odd and arcane. He is detail-oriented and given to gimmicks. Many find his films difficult to decipher – or in the case of Requiem's tough subject matter – just plain hard to watch. Yet no one can argue with his aesthetic once the final film it delivered. Every self-evident jump cut, every observable optical trick and knotty narrative nuance serves as a means to this filmmaker's wildly earnest ends. No one can accuse Aronofsky of being flamboyant for the sake of flashiness. Nor is he a David Lynch like lover of his own internalized logic. In fact, Aronofsky's films have the ability to feel obvious and obtuse simultaneously, toying with our temperament while challenging us to shut up and pick sides. If you're disgusted by all the dazed and confused motivations behind Requiem's desperate druggies, if you could care less what Max Cohen's code cracking skills mean to religion worldwide, then you will find Aronofsky difficult and underwhelming. But if you can appreciate him on a simple visual level first, the artistic undercurrents will make their presence known soon enough.

When the title The Fountain was first presented a few years back, I feared this would be a film about the so-called "spring of life". You can't live in the Hell that is the Sunshine State of Florida and not hear endless tales of how Ponce De Leon stopped off near St. Augustine and supposedly discovered the source of eternal life. Apparently, it was lots of slaughter-able Seminole Indians and souvenir stands. Of course, it does turn out to be the premise of Aronofsky's time travel epic. He uses the notion of immortality as the basis for a romance that transcends the ages to move from Conquistadors to the cosmic. Critics have been split right down the middle over how successful Aronofsky is at managing this material. Many are simply blown away by the imagery (the trailer provides a few of these eye popping pleasures) while others argue that looks are decidedly deceiving. They state that Aronofsky's arrogance rules the narrative, with his chronologically confusing plot undermining both coherence and characterization.

Frankly, I don't buy it. This is the same journalistic community that dares call Sacha Barron Cohen "the new Peter Sellers" (I feel so bad for the Brit, all the grave spinning he's had to endure over the last couple months) and argues for Stranger Than Fiction over The Prestige. But what really gets me are the constant comparisons to 2001. Granted, I enjoy any mention of my favorite film of all time (Kubrick's genius continues to live on almost 40 years after he first presented it – take that George Lucas), but many of my fellow film 'experts' use it as a nasty negative. Some even reference the Russian wannabe Solaris, again tapping the overlong Soviet sci-fi efforts as an entertainment demerit. But like I said before, I'm not ready to join the filmic lynch mob quite yet. When someone must reference what are more or less considered classic films to guide their grievances, I'm anxious to see what all the fuss is about. True, I won't cotton to a bunch of artsy fartsy pretension pretending to be relevant. But with two undeniably brilliant efforts behind him, it's hard to imagine that Darren Aronofsky failed to fulfill his promise with The Fountain. After all, he's had more time than many to render his results.

Journey Back in Time

2006-11-21T12:26:00.000-08:00

It's been relatively quite over the last few weeks here at Tinsel Torn, and with fairly good reason. As the end of the year starts peering over the shoulder of the preemptive holiday season, obligations and added responsibilities have kept yours truly out of the local Cineplex. Granted, there really isn't much out there worth gravitating toward (dancing CGI penguins? Computer generated British rats? Another heralded helping of some spy named Bond?). While my personal jury is still out on Casino Royale (I am already quite hype-shy thanks to the one-two punch of The Descent and Borat this year) I may be willing to give this reinvented 007 a shot. All grousing aside, I do enjoy a big budget shoot-em up, and the trailer presented before that so called Kazakhstan comedy 'masterpiece' made the espionage exposition look like as much fun as the explosions. Still, the purpose of this project was to reconnect with the theater going experience. So this time, I left my stack of Academy screeners on the shelf and decided to check out the intriguing outsider horror festival 8 Films to Die For.

What followed was a laundry list of weirdness, missteps and movie going misery that I hadn't experienced ever in the previous six months of this experiment. A little background – we live within two miles of a pair of perfectly decent theaters. On one end is an AMC Megaplex connected to a local high-end mall. It's an immaculately clean, stadium seat loaded example of the nu-entertainment ideal. More like sitting in your living room than spending an evening at the cinema, it represents the typical experience almost everyone has who heads to the theater. But if you travel south the same distance, you run into a slapdash strip center called the Britton Plaza, and its fish out of water facility The Britton 8. Even more backstory – this is the theater that my wife and I saw our first film in together as a couple…which was Halloween, by the way. Yep, since 1979, this small movie house (which converted its one big screen into three, and then the aforementioned octet) has been a local favorite, a reminder of high school double dates and a city long gone from the backwater Florida map.

Imagine my surprise when I entered the facility to see that, in over 28 years, nothing much had really changed. The lobby was still a surreal combination of old fashioned snack bar (complete with popcorn, candy, and…Nutty Bavarian sweetened almonds???) and pre-war tiled bathrooms (purposefully decorated to accentuate Tampa's historic Hispanic heritage). Cracked flooring, stained from thousands of dirty feet, was dull and dingy while the less than contemporary video games sat stoically next to, of all things, a sticker machine. Back when the three screens went 4x4, the Britton took its balcony and converted it into a pair of mini-theaters. The last film I saw in one was Army of Darkness, and I swear I sat there in fear for my life. Nothing is more disconcerting that feeling perched directly over the top of another audience as they laugh and/or shriek along to the feature film below. I imagined that, at any moment, the Britton's second story screens could come crashing down, giving a new meaning to that old '70s in theater gimmick, Sensurround.

I kind of dug the retro feel of the theater, and walked up to the disengaged employee behind the counter (all she required was a mouth full of gum and a finger full of twirled hair to make the cliché complete). I asked for two tickets to the "8 Films to Die For Horror Festival" and I got one of those blank stares that suggested that I was a flatulating butthead. After a subtle scoff, I had my stubs and headed to the last theater on the right. Avoiding massive carpet stains strewn haphazardly down the hall, more than a few resembling the marks left by horses after they uncork their bladder and really let one fly, my wife and I found "Theater 4" and walked in.

The shock was unsettling. Old fashioned hard backed chairs with minimal helpful hinder cushioning. Row after row of bent and broken hand rests. In one seat, somewhere toward the back, what looked like a mummy or a recently reanimated corpse sat sitting, staring blindly at the screen only the occasional movement of its skeleton arm to check the time suggesting any life whatsoever. My first thought was that After Dark, in an obvious attempt to mimic the late great motion picture pitchman William Castle, had hired an actual ghoul to be part of the presentation – kind of like "atmosphere". Ew! Anyway, we found a couple of decent seats in the back, settled in, and hoped that the paranormal patron in front of us had already had its "feeding" for the day.

As the arcane ads for local businesses we'd never heard of played out on a dirty, dilapidated screen, a couple of beefy buffoons came in. High school age, and obviously playing hooky so they could see a really good gorefest, the pair plugged their pieholes with white cherry Icees and popcorn, engaging in a insular conversation loaded with self-serving slang and plenty of private jokes. As they giggled and gorged, the lights came down, and I settled in for a collection of (hopefully) competent genre shorts. As if you haven't guessed by now, I was COMPLETELY off base about what the whole After Dark movie marathon ideal was driving at, and I must admit, it was all my fault. Instead of reading about the anthology each and every time my cursor accidentally triggered the roaring shriek soundclip on that annoying web ad that's been clogging up sites for weeks, I merely cursed the company out loud, promised myself I would be more careful with the mouse, and moved on. Had I taken a moment to play caveat emptor, I would have discovered the truth behind these "too intense" for the mainstream motion pictures.

You see, 8 Films to Die For are actually EIGHT FULL LENGTH FILMS (I know, I hear the "D'uhs" – shut up!). Instead of seeing a collection of horror shorts, my wife and I got to witness one of the "audience favorites" that had been selected over the weekend. See, After Dark required audience to buy eight tickets to see all eight films, and then apparently used its website to rank the offerings. On Monday and Tuesday (11/20 and 11/21), the "best" were given the ever-popular 'encore' treatment. Today's tasty movie morsel was Unrest, a haunted hospital hackjob that was so unbelievably boring that I thought I was watching The Omen remake again. The plot was superficial and silly: a new med student swears she can "feel" the spirit of her classroom cadaver. Through a series of coincidences and standard horror happenstance, she learns the dead body is that of a female serial killer who "won't rest" until her anatomy lesson torso is put to rest.

Within this paltry premise, we get lots of shots of F/X driven vivisection, a couple of completely false scares, and your typical parade of problematic personalities, including the goofy jock and the sensitive foreigner. Director Jason Todd Ipson, who doesn't deserve to use three names, obviously thinks that he's creating something completely brilliant here. His ponderous use of pauses and long, languid tracking shots lack the gravitas he hopes to gain, and a few of this narrative flourishes (a huge tank of formaldehyde where corpses are kept like tacky tropical fish – huh?) ring ridiculous and false. But Unrest's biggest problem is that it's just not scary. Ipson has a way with mood, and there is a nice level of dread dispensed throughout the movie, but the tone is so tenuous, and the logic leaps so extreme, that we barely get our bearings before the movie goes ludicrous, lunging in a whole different direction. By the end, we could care less who lives and who dies. We just keep hoping that the film itself will seize up and stop unspooling.

Again, if this is the example of 8 Films' best, what did their worst look like? Some might suggest that my negative reaction comes straight from having my short films expectations dashed, but once I realized that Unrest was going to be the slim cinematic pickings for the entire two hour running time, I settled in and prepared to be terrified. Frankly, the surroundings, and that elderly "thing" a few rows away were much more frightening than anything onscreen. Truth be told, The Britton would have been a great place to see Saw III. The green and brown optical design scheme used to suggest rot and decay in the film is inherent in every splotch on the theater's walls. One could easily imagine that odd old bat sitting up, pulling off her expressionless wrinkle-filled face, to reveal Tobin Bell smiling out from underneath. It would be the perfect marriage of substance and setting.

The other seven titles – which can be previewed on After Dark's site – don’t seem much better, and frankly, it's hard to see how they could be. Indie horror is going through some incredibly hard times right now, with very little new and inventive coming out of the category. Far too fan-driven and reliant of referencing (better) films from the past, your standard new millennium macabre is a collection of homages and hobbles. Perhaps filmic fate was smiling down on me when I entered that former entertainment stomping ground. I got a nice, noxious case of dreary déjà vu, and I only had to stomach one of the supposedly great eight. Sitting through something like Unrest seven more times would have indeed been something to die for. And as much as I consider the concept, spending my last day on Earth watching lame scary movies is not how I envisioned my death. Eaten by some squirrels, on the other hand…

Unrest – 1.5 out of 5

Satired

2006-11-09T16:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, let's get a few things straight right up front. This is NOT the funniest movie of 2006, not by a big, bad long shot. That award goes to Clerks II, with Kevin Smith's scripted genius acting as a far more astute commentary on our 'culture' than an improvising pigeon English shock comic. Hell, this isn't even the funniest mock documentary of recent years. That title would go to Lollilove, Jenna Fischer's brilliant dissection of celebrity denseness and misapplied charitable principles. There are more laughs in said film's first 15 minutes than in the entirety of Sacha Baron Cohen's one-trick pig and pony act. Anyone whose dared argue that, somehow, Borat is one of the wickedest satires ever foisted on the public in the past decade obviously didn't see the psychotically brilliant South Park film. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, noted for consistently delivering the comedy goods on their sensational TV cartoon classic, took nearly every genre of cinema to task in their twisted animated musical, and proved unquestionably that one could actually laugh until it hurt.

These statements are not meant to beat up on Borat or its creator, the obviously talented Cohen. But the truth about this film really does exist somewhere between the pre-release excitement and the actual execution. This is a very uneven motion picture, with long pauses in between the choice chuckles. The opening of the movie is wonderful, setting up the dreamlike world of the phony Kazakhstan that our main character supposedly lives in. Minor moments with the town rapist, the angry neighbor, and Borat's battleaxe of a wife linger longer than confrontational scenes between the character and obviously uncomfortable social stooges. Part of the humor Cohen taps into is that standard surprise material that Johnny Knoxville and his skater stunt rat pals have been milking for almost a decade. In fact, a great deal of Borat feels like Jackass with an agenda. Had those infamous foolhardy fellows created a narrative for their two big screen efforts in which they travel around America getting to know the real country, perhaps they'd be labeled as the next Peter Sellers, instead of knocked as a bunch of testosterone and liquor fueled losers.

And what of that constant comparison to Britain's late great method madman? It seems really naïve to argue for Cohen's place alongside one of the acknowledged greats of comedy when he can barely hold character throughout the film. His Borat changes constantly, altered to fit the mood of the situation and the tone of the response. This may work when comedy is involved, but as an actor, Cohen has a long ways to go to match Sellers in style, substance – and most importantly, subtlety. This is not to say that the movie is a bomb. In fact, it's one of 2006's most light-hearted and warm surprises. It's just not the greatest, most daring, or controversial film in the history of humor. At the time, Blazing Saddles, with its overt racism, was far more scandalous. Besides, Cohen's jokes are just recycled Woody Allen bits (Jews with horns) amplified by unnecessary repetition. Borat works when the material stays away from the dopey (the singing of the mash up US/supposed Kazakhstan national anthem) or the dumbfounding (two grown men wrestling naked is not cutting edge, it's merely scatological slapstick). A scene revolving around a "pussy magnet" is much funnier than any trip to a Christian revivalist meeting.

As a matter of fact, Borat suffers from some of the same problems that face most motion picture comedies today. Wit is never applicable universally – someone's joke is another man's misery. There will be those who immediately take to what Cohen is doing and declare it to be the revolutionary work that current critical support suggests. On the other hand, there will be those (myself included) who don't simply buy everything in the film and cast a jaundiced eye on many of the movies more infamous moments. Could Cohen really tackle Pamela Anderson like he does without working up something "in advance" with the former Baywatch beauty? Did the high society dinner party people really call the police after their foreign guest tried to give the hostess his bowel movement in a bag? Why did the driving instructor seem so hip and into his sequence while the Atlanta hotel seemed absolutely stunned that someone like Borat would want to check in? Its part and parcel for a film that's overall dichotomy suggests the reasons for its success as well as the issues that keep it so insular. While I know I will probably need a crate of gypsy tears to protect me from the blogger backlash in the making, I stand by my convictions. Borat is a decent film. It is not, however, the shape of things to come…I hope.

6.5 out of 10

Bore, Right?

2006-11-06T13:11:00.000-08:00

Why, exactly is Borat funny? Can someone please explain the appeal to me? Oh, I know – Sacha Baron Cohen is all kinds of genius, taking an act that Howard Stern and Stuttering John Menendez perfected decades before and turning it into some manner of social commentary. Right. He's the next Peter Sellers, a guy who's managed to make three whole characters viable in the entertainment industry vs. the late great British actor's collection of career defining turns. While I get the hysteria and the hype – Heck, I too remember going bonkers when Bill Saluga, a.k.a. Raymond J. Johnson Jr, would show up on a variety show to do his one-note 'doesn't has to call me Johnson' shtick – but I'm not about to label the man a major contributor to the canon of comedy based on a cult cable TV series, an initial box office bomb (remember, there is an Ali G movie floating around out there) and a perfectly executed bit of documentary mocking.

You see, I'm just not sure how uncomfortable social confrontation equals satire. To me, it's all about the target. Since Cohen is coercing the indignation and indignity out of his unsuspecting victims, I tend to look at it like entertainment entrapment. The law makes it clear that individuals cannot be held liable for crimes they were more or less forced or cajoled into committing. It's the same with Cohen's comedy. He gets bigots to expose their hatred, idiots to emphasize their cluelessness and the psychotic to show their terrifying true colors through the humor equivalent of a well-rehearsed show business sting operation. Is it funny to find out that a redneck country bumpkin thinks that Jews are evil? Does it make it more hilarious that Cohen's character Borat totally agrees, and even amplifies the anti-Semitism? I know, I know, Cohen is himself a Jew, and the Jewish people have a long lineage of mocking their own societal standing. But there is a difference between Mel Brooks' Hebrew Indian Chief in Blazing Saddles and a blatantly inflammatory attack on an individual's religious heritage.

Some like to call Cohen, and the character of Borat the Kazakhstan journalist he portrays, as similar to Andy Kaufman and his terrific turn as the little foreign man, later rechristened and reconfigured as Latka Gravas. Sadly, I have to disagree. While Kaufman's act had the same manner of public fearlessness as Cohen's (perhaps that should be the other way around), the insular comic was never using his accented antics as a means of agenda-based criticism. Instead, the squeaky voiced individual with the limited grasp of English was channeling a simple, almost slapstick ideal – goofy voice + social awkwardness = easy comedic gold. That Kaufman could add unsettling layers to the little man character was a testament to his talent, not his desire to shock. He would explore that element much later in his humor, while at present, Cohen just has astonishment on his side – and with success, that too will eventually fade away.

Still, I am willing to give Borat a try. I find it hard to believe all the orgasmic reviews that claim it's the funniest film ever, the most laughing you will ever do in a theater, and/or a revolution in motion picture comedy. I could easily say the same thing about the South Park movie (to me, the kind of pure wit and genius that Borat can only pretend to approach) or something as seminal as Blazing Saddles, or the original Producers. I don't mean to dismiss Cohen outright – I tried to watch his HBO version of The Ali G Show several times, but couldn't get beyond the cartoonish characterization he uses to realize his ideas – and yet I really hesitate to sample his big screen wares. If the hoopla is correct, then I've spent far too much time cooped up in front of my computer commenting on cinema. But if the rave reviews are merely the short sighted opinions of a cinematic community who've forgotten the undeniable comic impact of Animal House, Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Airplane! (staying strictly in the post-modern era) then there is more to the success of Cohen's character than mere marketing. Borat could actually signal the long suspected death of the mainstream movie comedy. How NIIIICE is that?

Blood Bath

2006-11-02T21:35:00.000-08:00

The power of gore…a thing some deplore…cleaning my soul. Nothing gives a grue-loving horror fan like myself a bigger jaundiced jolt than a movie that promises buckets and barrels of blood and then actually delivers in dynamic, drenching deluges. Usually, those of us with a craving for claret have to wait for the ubiquitous "unrated director's cut" DVD of a cinematic scarefest to get our fair share of sluice, especially with the MPAA's determination to snip and clip anything remotely repugnant out of the theatrical experience. Even the hardest "R"s – films like Hostel, etc. – are trimmed of excessive elements to make the parental replacement guardians of generic taste happy. As a result, your film is more easily marketable, especially if you can dry it down to a thoroughly antithetical PG-13. That's why home video has become the safe haven for those of us desperate for decapitations, delighted by disemboweling, and happy whenever a body is hacked, hobbled or otherwise torn into a thousand tasty morsels.

I know, it makes me sound sick, but I don't buy into the psychological dictum that argues for the universal effects of violence on the human consciousness. Will viewing excess splatter cause some people to snap, turning their attentions unnaturally to things dark and disturbing. Absolutely. Should it keep more levelheaded individuals like myself from seeing a good old fashioned zombie gut grinder? Hell friggin' no! Certainly, desensitization and the notion of becoming blasé to massive bloodletting are important ideas for study, but if I'm going to a movie about axe murders, blades better be cleaving skulls. Without the gore, what's the point? That's why I'm so shocked and amazed that Saw III managed to make it into the local Cineplex with so much of its splashy arterial spray intact. It is safe to say that those who'd rather not witness the systematic dismantling of the human carcass should avoid this film at all costs. This is a movie where rib cages are ripped open, arms and legs are twisted in two, and heads are opened so that full blown brain surgery can be viewed in complete disturbing detail.

Credit has to go to the Saw savants Leigh Whannel and James Wan for continuing the carnage they created so successfully with the original Saw. Somehow, they managed to get Darren Lynn Bousman on board as well. After helming the good, if somewhat generic Saw II, the second time is clearly the charm for this directorial newbie. He gets into the splatter spirit early and often. What's particularly fulfilling, especially in light of all the wonderfully disgusting Jigsaw puzzle setpieces in the film, is how rounded and deep the narrative is. Almost all the characters, from serial killer in training Amanda (Shawnee Smith bringing it once again) to desperate, disconnected doctor Lynn go through some major mental changes during the course of the story, and Bousman allows the movie to meander to provide such a potent underscoring. Also, unlike other franchise films, Saw III actually makes an effort to incorporate elements we saw in the first two installments to keep the overall concepts linked and truly fascinating. Considering the way the film ends, it will be interesting to see how Saw IV (yes, it's already tagged for Halloween 2007) keeps the series stable.

This is definitely not a film for all fright fans, however. As a matter of fact, anyone who thinks the original Saw pushed the limits of atrocity acceptability ain't about to cotton to III's numerous nauseating moments. Watching someone smash their own foot into a pliable pulpy mess, witnessing a 'game participant' pierced through several parts of his body, including an incomparably large bull hook through his chin, observing maggot-ridden dead pigs being 'food processed' into a torturous goo, are just a few of the foul moments in a film filled with such lunch launching inducements. Other MPAA addled moviemakers should get themselves a copy of the Saw III cut to argue for their own onscreen splatter. There are facets of this flick that, in retrospect, still cause my jaw to drop. With so many Indie filmmakers promising the pus but completely unable to deliver, it's wonderful to see a legitimate mainstream offering bringing the bile. Saw III may not be the scariest, or most successful horror film ever made, but if you're looking for your pound of fright fan flesh, you'll get a nice craven corpse-full with this shockingly sick flick.

7.5 out of 10

See 'Saw'

2006-10-30T21:41:00.000-08:00

To me, Saw represents a kind of coming of age for the post-modern horror film. After the intellectualizing of the '60s, the grisliness of the '70s, the goofiness of the '80s and the grimness of the '90s, Leigh Whannel and James Wan's wickedly refreshing shell game took the new millennium by storm – and it's not hard to see why. They combined elements from all four eras, wound them up into a complete fanboy froth, and then tossed in a terrific twist ending just to make matters more maddening. Instantly, a saleable skyrocket went off in Hollywood's merchandising machine. If kids would cotton to such an outrageous exercise in bold, brazen mindfucking, why wouldn't they pay to see similarly styled efforts. Bingo, the so-called 'violence porn' era of the new millennium age was born. Though, frankly, Wan and Whannel had very little to do with the autopsy like approach to this new format of fear, their fright fingerprints were all over efforts as diverse as Marcus Nispel's Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and Eli Roth's brilliant cultural allegory Hostel.

Naturally, the downside to all this success is the inevitable sequel. Nothing against Saw II, which I actually liked, but to focus solely on Jigsaw's numerous traps without mimicking the first film's intricate narrative seemed like a step in a derivative direction. Unfortunately, it's the first law of the horror franchises – find the single element that made people appreciate the initial offering and then duplicate it as many times as profitably possible. That's why A Nightmare on Elm Street de-evolved into a never-ending showcase for Freddy Krueger and his frequent wisecracks, or why John Carpenter's original idea for the Halloween series (different director each time, different concepts beyond the slice and dice) ended up being the Michael Myers show after Part 3 pissed off the demographic. At least Saw II made the inspired choice of having Shawnee Smith step into Jigsaw's shoes, supposedly preparing to take the place of the dying villain when he eventually shuffles off this mortal coil. Without her, the second Saw installment would be just a series of puzzle pieces haphazardly strung together.

So what can we expect from Saw III. At first, critics were convinced that a third time would definitely not be the charm. Lionsgate refused to screen the film in advance, and their ploy obviously paid off. The box office total for the pre-Halloween weekend was somewhere in the range of $34 million, better than the second installment released last year at the same time. And while the meter over at Rotten Tomatoes tells the typical sad saga that all scare films seem to go through when it comes to appreciation – only 26 reviews and a paltry 42 percent positive – the untold story is something far more significant. Like fat people in public, motion picture macabre is the last legitimate subject of cinematic segregation that exists in the media. Journalists and reviewers who would normally never knock a well meaning drama or pre-sold high concept comedy feel no such remorse in ripping to shreds the latest terror title – or worse, avoiding it all together. Many in the press are not die-hard horror fans, and the genre really has to work hard to avoid being instantly dismissed as dull and formulaic. While it's unfair to expect objectivity for every film released, it would be nice if writers would address what's on the screen without constantly bringing category into it.

So, just like I did with that cinematic offal known as the Omen, and the horrid, overhyped Chainsaw prequel, I will venture into a theater this week to judge Saw III for myself. I have written about the other films on the 'Net, and have been known to champion several current creature features – Silent Hill, Shaun of the Dead, Slither – as examples of new post-modern horror classics. Perhaps such familiarity with the Saw franchise is a flaw on my part. I could also suffer from a predisposed bias for the first film. Still, I am willing to give this movie a try. Shawnee Smith is back, taking over from a finally fading Jigsaw (can anyone name another actor whose gotten more mileage out of such a minor movie monster as Tobin Bell has with his cancer-ridden killer?) and if the level of invention that threads throughout the series stays the same – or hopefully, increases back to original levels – we could be in for a substantial seasonal hit. Rumor has it that this one really packs a wallop on the old gore score. For a blood hound like me, that's more than enough macabre motivation.

Prestigious

2006-10-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it's hard for a critic to sum up his or her feelings about a film. It usually occurs on those rare occasions – and they are indeed few and far between – when a movie literally makes you forget all the reasons why you are viewing – and eventually reviewing it - in the first place. The narrative catches you completely off guard, the plotting provides more intrigue and enjoyment than you could have possibly imagined. Even better, the themes and emotional underpinnings which motivate the expertly drawn characters are so involving and deep that, before you know it, you've completely forgotten about deadlines, word count and being a clever cinematic scholar. All you care about is the spellbinding experience in front of you. This is indeed what happened to me as I settled in to take on Christopher Nolan's latest mindblowing masterwork, The Prestige. After 135 minutes of nearly flawless filmmaking, it is safe to say that I had lost all concept of critical impartiality. This film is, without a doubt, one of 2006's greatest artistic achievements.

Nolan, a motion picture non-entity nine years ago when he arrived on the scene with his whimsical short Doodlebug, argues for his place among the seemingly small class of post-modern, post-millennial auteurs with this fascinating, finely tuned effort. With only five full length feature films under his belt – 1998's Following, 2000's Memento, 2002's Insomnia, 2005's Batman Begins and now The Prestige – this amazingly gifted Brit continues to baffle as well as make believers out of fans who just can't figure out how he does it. Before he came along, the murder mystery was seen as an old fashioned b-movie subject. But Memento's backwards narrative audacity avoided obvious gimmickry to redefine the genre and become an exceptionally fine film. Similarly, big budget superhero movies were a dime a couple dozen in the free-spending Hollywood of the last decade, and yet Nolan managed to make Batman viable again by positing The Dark Knight with a real and recognizable psychological underpinning. The result? One of last year's best efforts.

And now we have The Prestige. How does one begin to describe how delicate and demanding this movie is? How to be respectful without resorting to full bore film geek love. It is safe to say that the remarkable ensemble cast that Nolan compiles – including award worthy turns from Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine and, believe it or not, David Bowie – is matched in majesty only by the brilliant script adaptation that the director and his screenwriting brother Jonathan carved out of Christopher Priest's prized novel. This is not a film about how certain tricks are accomplished (though we do learn a few secrets along the way), nor is it merely the tale of an increasingly antagonist rivalry between two talented magicians. Instead, The Prestige takes its title literally, asking us to believe in the power that stature and esteem has over two dark, desperate men, to witness how far both will go to achieve it for themselves…and more importantly, prevent it from happening for the other. The plot is complex, weaving in and out of obsession, doubt, ovations and despair. In Nolan's completely capable hands, what could have been muddled or melodramatic is monumental – and quite moving.

This is indeed the kind of experience one goes to the movies for. It's escape, but not the pure popcorn and eye candy kind. Like a rich meal or a decedent desert, The Prestige is the kind of motion picture meal you savor, a movie that requires your utmost indulgence to deliver maximum satisfaction. If a cutthroat competition between two incredibly multifaceted men that skips across time and place to deliver its layers of intrigue and eventual decisive denouements leaves you cold, if you would rather see a pretty period piece, unevenly executed and lacking a real feel for the era in question, then by all means avoid The Prestige and pick out something else to spend your hard earned leisure lira on. But if you don't mind a test, if you're up for experiencing the sights, the smells, and the sensations of a turn of the century world, if brilliant acting by performers getting completely lost in their characters fills you with the kind of cinematic joy that's rare in this pre-packaged and focus grouped entertainment environment, then this is the film for you. It is indeed rare when a movie can make your forget the very reasons why you came to the theater in the first place. Like all the elements that make up this stellar motion picture, it is all part of The Prestige's amazing magic.

9.5 out of 10

We've Got Magic to Do

2006-10-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

The notion of a movie about magicians just seems totally antithetical to both art forms. Film is, by its very nature, a medium of visual deception, and prestidigitation needs the intimacy and illusion of reality – i.e., a live, in person setting – to give the trick it's full effect and power. Merely offering up a magic act on celluloid is a lot like listening to a ventriloquist on the radio. Part of the allure is missing, and much of the inherent wonder is completely gone. No matter how effective the chimera, there will always be the thought rumbling around in the back of one's head that what we are watching is nothing more than an overdone optical effect – or worse, a bit of soggy CGI whimsy. That is why the number of movies featuring magicians, magic and other forms of stage slight of hand is minor at best. Unless you can offer up a good supporting drama, or can elevate the material beyond its 'how is it done' dimensions, you are simply left with a plain old parlor trick – not the most substantive of cinematic content.

A few months back, critics claimed that The Illusionist, a still in theaters sleeper starring Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti wouldn't be able to compete with Christopher "Batman Begins" Nolan and his own post-Memento magic movie, The Prestige. Granted, judging solely by the trailers for both films, Nolan's approach appears the more compelling. While I have purposely avoided the facts surrounding the storyline (not an easy task in today's over-hyped hoopla-oriented marketing mentality), the preview promises things that I can't wait to see - and fear that no director would successfully be able to deliver. Still, you've got to love Hugh Jackman in full blown dandy mode, and Christian Bale continues to prove there is indeed life after playing the precocious lead two decades ago in Stephen Spielberg's criminally underrated Empire of the Sun. His has been a career loaded with interesting choices, performance fearlessness and a little outright luck. Here's hoping his promise to keep The Dark Knight's box office profile secure over the next few years doesn't end up limiting his otherwise challenging choices.

With a supporting cast that includes Scarlett "I'm threatening to become overexposed" Johansson, the movie maestro himself Michael Caine, and David Bowie as Nikola Tesls, and a scope that seems as lush as it is limited to a specific time and place, it is hard to get a handle on what Nolan is actually attempting. If he intends to violate the magician's oath, offering detailed descriptions of how certain classic tricks are accomplished, he then has the burden on building on such already intriguing ideas. On the other hand, if that aspect of the movie is merely color for some other less than successful facet – love story, murder mystery – then we may be in for another glaring example of why enchantment can't make a significant big screen dent. I have faith in the filmmaker, and the able actors he's assembled. And I still can't get the specific images out of my head that the trailer trades on: the illuminated field of lightbulbs, Jackman wielding a wild mechanical contraption, a daunting monolith with electrical conductors jutting out of its sides.

Yet with the likes of David Blaine and Criss Angel blurring the boundaries between magic, mysticism, and technology assisted misdirection, can a movie about said arts really succeed? Is the post-millennial mindset, geared toward finding fault and/or falsehood in everything it sees, capable of dropping the cynicism for once and simply allowing the ruse to work? This jaded, jaundiced view of the world is probably why performers like Angel and Blaine fake their way through most of their moves, realizing that showmanship is far more important than any miraculous feat they could ever perform. The pedigree behind The Prestige, however, tends to overshadow any qualms about the quality of the film's final presentation. All Nolan has to do is pull this off, and his place as a new wave auteur is more or less secured. Like his recent choice of Heath Ledger as his Batman sequel's Joker, he is a filmmaker full of surprises. Here's hoping that The Prestige manages the miraculous – the possibility of magic as a continuing source of cinematic inspiration.

Crime Time

2006-10-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

Was there ever really a doubt? Who out there in the wild world of film fandom actually thought Martin Scorsese, master of the crime drama, would thoroughly screw this concept up? Come on. Take your punishment. Raise your pathetic little hands and be recognized. Sure, the man behind Goodfellas and Mean Streets may be vulnerable when it comes to bombastic biopics or violence-riddled period pieces, but back on his home turf, the sordid underworld of crooks and the corruptible, he's just plain magic. Rag on Casino all you want, but nothing this stellar director did created the void left by Sharon Stone and various underdeveloped ancillary characters. No, The Departed proves conclusively that, when surrounded by a stellar cast capable of completely understanding what this master is after, with the added ability of being able to channel it all through their own unique perspective, filmic fireworks are the result. This is, without a doubt, one of 2006's best movies, another milestone for a man whose career path is paved with such accolades.

Unlike the neo-postmodern motion picture, which paints its important facets with cinematic fluorescents and then repeats the patently obvious points until their rote in our rattle brains, The Departed is a narrative full of the subtlest of suggestions. Crucial connections are merely hinted at, major motivation locked beneath well-crafted dialogue and even more effective performance. Every single actor here is magnificent, each proving why they continually rake in the big bucks whenever Tinsel Town feels they need a basic box office guarantee. As Frank Costello, Jack Nicholson has a disheveled look about him that just screams old world rogue. Even when he's twisting ideas over in his cunning little noggin, you can see the decades of power and control crossing his cragged face. Matt Damon and Leonardo DeCaprio both offer career defining turns, using their own unique brand of individual wholesomeness to underscore the dire desperation each character exists in.

As usual, flying around the edges are perfect supporting turns by Ray Winstone, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg. They all invest The Departed with a gravitas that elevates the occasionally pulpish material above the typical good cop/bad cop shtick. But this is really Scorsese's film, a reinvention of his typical operatic mob mannerisms. Gone are many of his most artistic ploys – the diving and swooping camera, the endless tracking shots, the cutting of scenes to the beat of some well-known rock song – and in their place is a new sense of restraint, a desire to let the narrative, not the nuances, tell the story. Again, how faithful the filmmaker is to the original Hong Kong trilogy is beyond my comprehension, and frankly, after seeing this mesmerizing adaptation, I'm not sure if I ever want to see the source. Scorsese paints such a perfect picture, giving each and every facet of the complex plot room to breath or betray, that to see it done a different way would just be confusing. From the opening introduction of Costello as he shakes down a local grocer to the rooftop finale where everything is resolved without being resolute, we are in the hands of a moviemaking master.

If there is a single flaw in this otherwise faultless film it is the decision to release it in October. Too far away from Oscar to make the necessary critical dent, but left out of a summer where it could clearly shine, Hollywood needs to understand that these are the kind of movies that fans really want. Even the best that the blockbuster season had to offer couldn't hold a single celluloid candle to what The Departed has to offer. Sadly, by the time the Academy is set to vote, the gangster goodness Scorsese provides, and the acting that certifies his skills, will be lost in a pool of hype, happenstance and narrow sighted hubris. The rest of the films arriving this fall and winter will have a ways to go to dethrone The Departed. For my money, this is a great movie, and continuing proof that creativity, not ad campaigns or test screenings, deliver stunning entertainment results. Thankfully, craftsman like Martin Scorsese are still allowed to work their wonders on the wounded soul of the cinema. Without artists like him, all would be lost.

9 out of 10

Departing Shots

2006-10-13T16:43:00.000-07:00

Martin Scorsese is a genius – let's just get that out of the way right up front. He's made more memorable movies in the last three decades than most film fostering countries can claim in their entire sovereign existence. I'll never forget the first Scorsese effort I ever saw, 1974's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. The hotel where we had our apartment in Chicago was starting to offer first run movies as part of its in room service, and I must have watched the Ellen Burstyn starring vehicle dozens of times ("you know what 'balls' are, right?"). From the weird juxtaposition of the pop standard "You'll Never Know" with the hard cock rocking of Mott the Hoople's "All the Way to Memphis" the movie struck several chords in me that I couldn't quite fathom as a still in aesthetic development 13 year old. I knew to appreciate the acting and the atmosphere, but the notion that there was a specific director behind the scenes was a subject that still escaped me. It wouldn't arrive fully until a certain California kid created the summer season blockbuster with his aquatic thriller Jaws.

The first time I visited Scorsese in an actual theater, I knew who he was. Raging Bull had just been released, and everyone on the campus at FSU was abuzz with opinions and caveats. Many mentioned Taxi Driver (which, sadly, I would not see until a year later) and pointed to the monochrome style that he employed as a clear sign of artistry - or artifice - depending on what voice caught your ear. Eventually making it to the local beer serving Drafthouse cinema, my roommate and I crawled out of our party hearty haze and went to a late showing. We ordered our usual pitcher, poured out a couple of cold frosty ones, and got ready to be amazed. We were floored instead. In something of a rarity for us suds-slurping fools, the remaining beer was never touched. It grew warm as the visuals before us exploded. From the moment the now elephantine Robert DeNiro sat reciting his lounge act in front of a dressing room mirror, to the opening credits boxing ballet, we were spellbound. Never before had a moviemaker tapped into such a rich vein of deep, desperate human emotion. Even when another film I favored – Ordinary People – took home the Oscar for Best Director and Picture, I somehow knew that Raging Bull would be the better remembered effort from 1980.

From then on it was just a matter of catching up and keeping touch. Though I skipped the Tom Cruise pool party The Color of Money, and couldn't find a theater in Florida that would dare play the director's religious epic The Last Temptation of Christ, I did dig The King of Comedy and After Hours. After the mob masterpiece Goodfellas and his remake of Cape Fear, I was more than ready for whatever this hard-boiled hero with his finger on the pulse of individual sin and corruption would offer up next. I wasn't quite ready for the curve ball known as The Age of Innocence. To this day I have not seen this critically acclaimed take on Edith Wharton novel. It's just never called my name. Before I knew it however, Casino, Kundun, Gangs of New York and The Aviator had all come and gone, each one looking less and less like the director's best work. Indeed, when Scorsese supporters start pining away for the days when he worked for Roger Corman (Boxcar Bertha) or attempted to resurrect the movie musical (New York, New York), you know his latest offerings are failing to connect like they used to.

That's why I am excited about this week's trip to the Cineplex. Not only has The Departed been getting lots of boffo buzz, but it’s the first Scorsese film in a very long time that has the same vicious vibe as his previous moralistic masterpieces. While it's unfair to pigeonhole this incredibly talented man by his work reinventing the mafia movie, it seems that when he ventures into the underworld, the best of his brilliant ideas come to life. I have not seen the Hong Kong actioner upon which this revamp is based, but I'm fairly certain that it won't really matter. With a cast as considerable as this one, and a gritty Boston backdrop subbing for the filmmaker's favorite New York haunts, this promises to be one heck of a cinematic ride. So far this fall, the pickings have been slim (remember, Tampa is not a major market where every available release is screened) and rather stodgy. The Departed could finally provide the salvation from the summer that the motion picture medium so desperately needs. One thing's for sure – it's good to see Scorsese universally celebrated again. He is an auteur who deserves more than a passing consideration in the post-millennial world of film.

Hatchet Job

2006-10-11T08:04:00.000-07:00

The new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie is so desperate to create some indelible horror imagery that it forgets everything else that's required of a standard big screen movie macabre. It avoids providing characters or situations we can care about – or at the very least, can imagine ourselves involved in. It promises a backstory for one of the most famous fiends in all of movie history – the power tool wielding Leatherface – and ends up reducing him to a credit sequence montage profile of a typical serial killer. It gives R. Lee Ermey so many worthless one liners that he ends up becoming a dingy and decrepit redneck Freddy Krueger, and the rest of the newly named Hewitt family (what was wrong with the original Sawyer moniker, huh?) are all rube archetypes looking for a place to plant their pointless existence. Of the recent rash of terror remakes, violence porn and PG-13 putridness, this massively lame prequel is one of the worst examples of mainstream monster moviemaking since a bunch of babes went spelunking with angry albinos.

It's a shame, really. The 2003 Michael Bay produced revamp had a lot of aficionado angst piled up against it, and yet talented director Marcus Nispel managed to pull it off with a gruesome Grand Guignol majesty that made sense in our 'anything's possible' post-millennial world. Between the opening suicide (and its clever accompanying through-the-head pullback shot) to the moment where one character learns what it's like to literally be a lamb to the slaughter, Recreate Saw wasn't interested in being anything other than a balls to the wall work of unbridled brutality. It didn't care if you enjoyed the narrative – the blood and body parts were gonna fly anyway. This piddling prequel tries to keep up with the 2003 gore score, but can't get to first base when it comes to delivering anything remotely entertaining. Sure, some may say that this is not the purpose of such a cinematic effort. Death and dismemberment are not supposed to be amusing. While that's true, movies are made to be diversions for an audience. If they really believe that viewers want violence without context, there would be spectator seats in every abattoir in town.

The big problem here is focus. We are supposed to see how Thomas Hewitt became the skin-peeling pervert who used the faces of others to cover his own crippled features. But this is really the birth of Sheriff Hoyt more than it is anything else. Ermey is given the majority of the scenes, lines, exposition and most importantly, dimensional development. This non-cop goes from bumpkin to sadistic badass at the drop of a narrative necessity, and never stops snacking on the scenery from thereon in. The rest of the Hewitt house is populated with the previously seen trailer trash family, including an Uncle who gets some homespun surgery, a mother who switches over to the dark side quicker than a certain Skywalker, and that incredibly obese gal whose sole scene is a bad fat joke. As Whoeverface sulks around the basement filleting our Vietnam-bound hero, pointless conversations and illogical situations are playing out above. Poor Lee Tergesen is reduced to a couple of lines as he takes the scenic route – read: long, unnecessary walking scenes – to reach his predetermined fate. Indeed, this is a major flaw in the film. Since we know WHO will survive to show up a few years later, there is no suspense here.

In fact, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning has obviously been crafted for cretins who've never seen a horror movie before. We are supposed to feel dread when a just-fired Tommy shows up in the slaughterhouse boss's office with a sledgehammer in hand. Instead, we realize what's going to happen minutes before the characters do. When the army boy's babe is hiding under a truck, waiting for a free moment to flee, the ground level camera angle is just asking for a pair of sinister boots to saunter by. Even the ending, asks us to believe that a big behemoth of a man, stinking of blood and human remains and probably a good decade away from his last bath, could sneak into a small space – unheard and un-smelled – and work his Black and Decker death dance on someone. Yeah…RIGHT! With a final shot that tries to instill an aesthetic visual elegy on all we've seen occur (and only achieving about 5% of the 1974 original's amazing 'Dance of Death') The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is a bad movie made even worse by its way too ambitious goals. Try as it might, it just can't achieve the timeless quality of its cinematic source, nor can it compete with its own recent revival. Even an unimaginably evil entity like Leatherface deserves a better backstory than this one.

1.5 out of 10

Tobe, or Not Tobe

2006-10-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

Horror fans hated the fact that 2003's ridiculed remake of Tobe Hooper's classic Texas Chain Saw Massacre actually turned out to be a pretty damn good film. Granted, it couldn't hold a cannibalized corpse to the 1974 post-modern masterpiece, but it also didn't come right out and creatively coldcock its predecessor the way other ridiculous revamps (The Amityville Horror, The Fog, The Omen) eventually would. No, the new Saw was sickening and surreal, attempting to give backstory to Leatherface and his now circus freak like family while adding the bloody body parts that the original version could only hint at. Such a combination proved popular, and even with all the whining and chiding from the purists, the new Massacre went on to be a big fat box office hit.

Since success breeds sequels (it's a Hollywood truism), the '03 look at the potential in power tools needed a revisit. But what do you do? Hooper had already come back to Black and Decker territory with his own farcical follow-up in 1986 and there were many more non-official retellings in the direct-to-video days of the '80s and '90s. But Hooper's spin on his timeless terror classic was more of a 'Morning/Mourning in America' spoof than a straightforward horror film. With now familiar characters cracking jokes (The Cook, Jim Siedow, was more or less a nonstop stand-up comic) and Tom Savini exploring the autopsy like attributes of his maddening make-up effects, the entire enterprise felt like a EC Comic gone gonzo. When producer Michael Bay decided to create his version, he went for extremes (remember the suicide-cam?) over any obvious political or social agenda.

So how do you continue a remade franchise's financial bankability? If you're Texas Chain Saw Massacre: The Beginning, you avoid numbering and, instead, you do that most dreaded of all cinematic cheats - the prequel. That's right, new director Jonathan Liebesman (responsible for Darkness Falls and the critically acclaimed direct-to-DVD bridge material between the two Ring films) steps in to replace the artistic approach of Marcus Nispel. His central conceit is to try and recapture the look and feel of early '70s horror ala Rob Zombie and The Devil's Rejects. The story is similar to the original remake (?!?) – a few friends take a last road trip before being shipped off to Vietnam, when they run into the cracked Hewitt clan. Supposedly, we will see Leatherface's transformation from trouble child into serial slayer, and the return of many of the first film's recognizable relatives (most of whom appear obese and/or hygienically challenged). Early buzz is pretty good, at least from a fanboy standpoint. Critics, as usual, use horror as an excuse to argue about the genre overall, frequently failing to take into account individual efforts as their own, stand alone entities.

So the challenge this week is to see if the 'N'th times the charm. I have only seen ONE of the Chain Saw films in an actual movie theater, and that was Hooper's '74 original. The rest of my chainsaw exposure came from VHS, movie channels, and occasional glimpses as part of the typical Halloween marathons. I think Hooper's versions are untouchable, both representing a kind of yin-yang of tone and approach. And I really enjoyed the '03 remake – especially with Nispel's desire to dig deeper into the inherent horror of the concept (after all, this is a story about an inhuman monster who uses a chainsaw to carve up his captives…). Still, unless you're talking about the works of Sam Raimi, genre sequels never seem to hit the right nasty notes. They appear more like retreads than extensions. During the '70s and '80s, we discovered that, in the world of fear, the Saw was indeed family. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning apparently takes such a sentiment literally. And like all matters concerning kin, that's for both good and bad.

Cut and Waste

2006-09-26T08:59:00.000-07:00

Here is what Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia is not. It is NOT a movie about the infamous Los Angeles murder of wannabe starlet Elizabeth Short. No, that heinous crime with its Hollywood Babylon imagery is merely a shuttled aside subplot that barely gets narrative recognition until the final 15 minutes of the story. It is also not a crackerjack look at California corruption ala LA Confidential. Indeed, one would not be remiss in calling this inconsequential effort an overreaching retread. The Black Dahlia is also not Brian DePalma's worst work. That title is still reserved for Raising Cain, or perhaps Mission to Mars. As a matter of fact, in many significant ways, this is a revivalist retro return to form. All throughout the near two hours of overdone plotting, DePalma offers up recognizable highlights of his four decades behind the camera. It's like a visual greatest hits package, referencing everything from Murder A La Mod to Scarface. Even through the occasionally mannered acting and the lack of any real secure cinematic focus, DePalma's lens never lets him down.

Of course, this also means that The Black Dahlia is not a wholly successful effort. As a matter of fact, it hardly even comes close. It is a lax drama, a slight suspense effort and a thoroughly uninteresting mystery. There is nothing present of Ellroy's hard-boiled dialogue – as channeled by Josh Freidman's incessantly convoluted script – or in the human dynamic between the characters to get us rooting for either vengeance or vindication. Short, positioned like a Greek chorus ghost inside an investigation that really doesn't care what she has to say, comes across as an unsympathetic combination of fragile and floozy, a victim with her eventual fate written right across her about to be abused façade. While the manner in which DePalma introduces us to the material is quite novel (one of those operatic, strategically staged set pieces that the director does so well), the rest of her case is a combination of whodunit and who cares.

Another problem plaguing The Black Dahlia is its lack of likeable, or even dramatically recognizable, characters. Leads Aaron Eckhart and Scarlett Johansson are the worst kind of narrative placeholders – individuals elevated to the status of human exposition engines, employed only when the story needs another subplot, or an additional tidbit to push us over into the next knotty situation. As Short, Mia Kirshner is given very little to do except play off of DePalma's 'screen test' gag – open eyes glued to the camera as if she can somehow pass her entire soul through its carefully ground glass. Acquitting themselves quite nicely are Josh Harnett (who could easily play Dick Tracy, should a studio find a need to revisit that classic carton character – and Warren Beatty effort – anytime soon) and Hilary Swank, though the two time Oscar winner is more vocal inflection than three dimensional diva. With a supporting cast that never optically updates the period piece parameters, and a few flashy outbursts of filmic flair, DePalma had some appealing elements at play.

All noir novelty aside however, The Black Dahlia ends up deteriorating just when it should be building up a heady helping of sleazy suspense. Ellroy obviously relishes the crooked realities of 1940s LA, and had Freidman found a way to make all the scattered pieces fit together like a fine tuned murder mystery mechanism, we'd have yet another example of post-modern moviemaking bettering the almost unbeatable days of Tinsel Town past. But even with all its visual panache and big budget details, what we actually end up with is five different stories all struggling for recognition. None of them end well, a couple complicate matters more than they help, and in the end, we feel like the best aspect of the narrative – the vivisection death of a less than innocent female – has been relegated to an annoying afterthought. After years of hoping for a real return to his sensational '70s glory days, DePalma fans will simply have to wait. The Black Dahlia is not a black mark on the talent track record of anyone involved. Yet with such a potentially powerful story, it should have been something very special.

6 out of 10

Body Trouble

2006-09-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

I distinctly remember a time when I awaited the latest Brian DePalma film with the same amount of eagerness as I did efforts by Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese. During the late '60s and early '70s he was right there with his fellow auteurs, matching moves with Coppola, essaying work as vibrant and vital as a certain George Lucas. From Sisters to Carrie, The Fury and Dressed to Kill, this fascinating filmmaker was responsible for a kind of clever amalgamation of outright genre moves and classic Tinsel Town trappings. But somewhere around the whole Blow Out/Scarface/Body Double triad, DePalma began to lose his way. The last two films found him hounded by unwarranted attacks, the first lines of PC propriety finding their earliest artist of choice. Though he would go on to helm the successful Casualties of War, and the blockbuster remake of The Untouchables, critics were just waiting for him to stumble, and stumble big.

That moment came with his hiring to helm the motion picture adaptation of Tom Wolfe's best-selling sensation The Bonfire of the Vanities. In what many now recognize as a complete miscasting of topic with treatment, DePalma was supposed to construct an over the top dark comedy commentary on the recently past Greed decade. Instead, he helmed a debacle of monumental proportions, a film that failed on almost every level of its attempted artistry. It literally ruined his career, causing him to revert to rehashing his Hitchcock obsessions (Raising Cain) and another Tony Montana style crime caper (Carlito's Way). Sure, Mission: Impossible brought him out of the Hollywood dog house, but he quickly killed any momentum from that Cruise controlled mainstream hit by delivering the consecutive flops Snake Eyes, Mission to Mars, and Femme Fatale. It seemed like his glory days were officially gone. His tendency to mimic the Master of Suspense or convolute his compositions with split screen and other optical effects was no longer considered clever. In fact, that time was distinctly dead and buried.

It's really no surprise then that, like any one time icon, DePalma is making a comeback – and he has picked a whopper of a project to reestablish his cinematic credentials. Most people know the story of the Black Dahlia – wannabe starlet Elizabeth Short became infamous in LA, but not for her acting. Her mutilated body, cut in half, drained of blood and missing most of its vital organs, was found lying in a vacant lot, a crude comic smile carved from ear to ear into her face. Kenneth Anger and his Hollywood Babylon book got a lot of mileage out of the Dahlia incident, even publishing a full page photo of the cut-up corpse. The killer was never caught. Surprisingly, not many films have dealt with this celebrated case. Back in 1975, a TV movie – Who is the Black Dahlia? – did the best it could under strict broadcast standards to showcase the scandalous murder, and 1981's True Confessions used the Dahlia as a reference point for a story about governmental and church corruption in 40's California. Though not a hit, the film did contain one incredibly gruesome scene where a detective, played by Robert Duvall, comes across the proposed Dahlia-esque crime scene – a warehouse space awash in dried human blood.

If there was ever a director perfectly suited to bring this material to the screen, it's DePalma. Thanks to a new adaptation by crime author James Ellroy and an all star cast including Oscar winner Hillary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, Josh Harnett and the sexy Scarlett Johansson, this could be a real return to form for our former '70s stalwart. Critical reaction so far has been mixed, DePalma getting the vast majority of the kudos, with several of the opinions commenting on his handling of the delicious excesses of the old film noir formula. We could end up with another circumstace of a sensational story once again failing to get the proper cinematic treatment, or a good old fashioned thriller spiked by DePalma's determined eye. In either case, this will mark my return to the Cineplex after the Blog-buster Overview experiment of the past summer, and I have to say I can't wait. Even though the overall 2006 season was slight, to say the least, my desire to experience film in a theatrical setting has definitely been rekindled. Here's hoping a onetime hero keeps the fire lit, and doesn't blow it – or his career – out with another overreaching mediocrity.

I am TINSEL TORN

2006-09-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

Yep – that's the blog's new name. Tinsel Torn. It more or less reflects my feelings on my little 18 film/15 week venture into the old fashioned summer movie season that I embarked on back in May. Of the many movies I saw, only a couple reminded me of those times, oh so long ago, when I was whisked away by the cinematic expertise and the visual luminescence of the in theater experience – and even then, I wasn't as moved as when Peter Jackson delivered his definitive fantasy trilogy or when David Fincher's Fight Club overwhelmed me with its daring and deception. In fact, it's fair to say that NONE of the movies released this summer stunned me the way Pulp Fiction did the first time I saw it, or Aliens, or Miller's Crossing. About the closest any came was Clerks II and Snakes of a Plane – the former for its brilliant dialogue and dissection of the post-modern malaise of maturity, the latter for actually trying to be a blockbuster: no gadgets, no gimmicks, just a premise and precise execution. Yep, it was a pretty lousy time at the local movie house.

You see, I was a teen in the '70s, perhaps the most magic time in modern film. I was there, in the packed audience, as Jaws taught us that directorial skill could conjure up as many scares as an actual monster. I was there when the same filmmaker filled my mind with wonder about what existed beyond the stars, and the beings who possibly lived there. I was there when George Lucas evoked the moralizing of the past within a vision of the future, mandating multiple journeys to a time long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. And while he didn't capture the particulars of the war perfectly, Francis Ford Coppola exposed the heart of darkness inside of Vietnam, and I was there to witness the Apocalypse Now. From John Carpenters Hitchcockian reinvention of the slasher film with Halloween to the formation of The Rocky Horror Picture Show as an audience participation Midnight cult carnival, I was there. Even throughout my college years, I played catch up, taking in campus showings of missed masterworks like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Taxi Driver, and Pink Flamingos. I felt pretty secure in my motion picture acumen. Then the real world came along.

Oh sure, I saw most of the big ones over the next twenty years – the remaining Star Wars films, the adventures of an archeologist named Indiana Jones. I saw Marty McFly travel back in time – thrice – and witnessed Roger Rabbit get framed and freed, all in the span of a mere two hours. When Sam Raimi, Joel and Ethan Coen, and Quentin Tarantino revolutionized moviemaking with their hyperactive, homage heavy styles, I celebrated the return of technique WITH import. Oh course, my merriment was short lived. As the high concept gave way to the focus group defined, films became product, and I was not buying. While I hate to say it, I left the theaters behind, taking up residence in front of my VCR (and later, laserdisc and DVD players), hoping to locate the filmic solace I so needed. After years of wandering in a less than satisfying wilderness, I decided to re-explore the stadium seat experience once again.

Thus the Blog-Buster Overview is reborn as Tinsel Torn. I am still bothered by the demographically designed drivel that spews out of studios, but I hope that a weekly jaunt to the Cineplex can refresh my spirit and reawaken my interest in cinema, long term. Though many think it’s a crock, I stand serious in my belief that it's tough to be a critic. Over the course of any given month, you sit through dozens of titles, most only mediocre, a few downright depressing. When a miracle happens and your aesthetic lights upon something sensational like The Devil and Daniel Johnston, or the selection of short films from Canada's Fantasia Film Festival, presented as the Small Gauge Trauma DVD, your hope-drained heart leaps with jaundiced joy. You can't believe that you're seeing something worth celebrating while at the same time saddened by the fact that so few of these genuine jewels actually exist. The result is a kind of corrupted pleasure, a guilty feeling in the pit of your stomach that snatches away small sections of your entertainment and stains them forever. That is why I am still Tinsel Torn. I want to continue with my regular treasure hunt, hoping to turn up a few more precious cinematic stones along the way. But I also know that the industry is conspiring against me. This is a business model that still believes Jessica Simpson can be a star.

So we begin the journey again on September 15th, with the arrival of Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia. The first of the many proposed "prestige" pictures preparing to hit screens in the next few months, this infamous murder case boasts a script by Josh Friedman (who reimagined War of the Worlds for a certain Mr. Spielberg) and performances by a cavalcade of current talent. As usual, the Wednesday before the opening will feature my thoughts on the upcoming title, and then within a week, a full fledged review will follow. Those weeks where more than one title calls my name, there will be more musings. When the selection sucks, I will gladly take a week off. 52 weeks – at least as many movies. That's the new mantra. And who knows, maybe I'll go from Tinsel Torn to Hollywood happy one day. Looking over the current Fall schedule, however…

Serpent-Time

2006-08-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

Snakes on a Plane is the missing badass cousin of the original kitschy Airport films from the '70s. It's the unapologetically more professional big brother of all those lame Sci Fi Channel originals featuring oversized crickets and killer amoeba. It's neither the camp classic the Internet hype machine hoped it would be, nor is it the balls to the walls actioner the studios were striving for. Instead, it's a perfect example of the Zen popcorn experience, offering as much goofball yin as cinematic yang. Expertly set up, with a nice drawn out opening that establishes the all important character dynamic, and enough slam bam set pieces to keep us blood and guts buffs ecstatic, this is one of the best balanced films of the entire summer. You're never left wanting as you experience this high concept hoopla. There is just enough of everything that makes an entertaining time at the movies. Heck there's even some additional elements inserted into the narrative just to appease the genre addicts in the audience.

While we will never know how Ronny Yu would have approached this material (his unrated Freddy vs. Jason is a horror fan's fantasy), it is safe to say that director David R. Ellis really stepped up and delivered here. He makes excellent use of the limited space on the aircraft, does a wonderful job of opening up the storyline with the entire FBI/snake expert scenario, and gets his stellar cast to tread lightly between cliché and cleverness for just the right amount of three-dimensional dynamic. Sure, some may grouse about the CGI (frankly, it didn't bother me in the least) and a few of the death F/X look hampered by MPAA demanded cuts (can't wait for the Snakes on a Plane: Unrated DVD in a few months). Still, this is the kind of movie that makes sitting in a theater with a group of like minded moviegoers so much fun. All throughout the running time, the audience I saw it with was laughing, clapping and grooving right along with the action on screen. Ellis had them from the very first moments, and once the reptiles made their appearance, we all simply sat back and bathed in the pulse-pounding Pavlovian pleasures.

Frankly, it's hard to see what people HATE about this film. Granted, it is not perfect. It doesn't try to transcend its b-movie trappings and turn into something other than what it is. But with a title like Snakes on a Plane, it is hard to imagine what they could have been expecting. This isn't meant to be a serious Die Hard like action film, nor is it trying to reinterpret the look and feel of the disaster films from three decades past, ala Poseidon. You go in expecting motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane, and that's what you get – lots of them, in ever more clever death wielding circumstances. Like the best of the Friday the 13th slasher films, Snakes finds creative ways to put the bite on its victims. No body part is safe, which naturally leads to some very funny dialogue, and the make-up work creates some disgusting, wounds and venom results. With Samuel L. Jackson running around spouting memorable, quotable lines, first rate performances by Julianna Margulies, Kenan Thompson and Sunny Mabrey, and the proper equilibrium between realism and the ridiculousness, we have a wholly realized, expertly handled horror film.

It's just too bad about all the pop culture carnival barking. New Line may have thought it hit pre-hype gold when Internet dorks began piling on the film like it was a video of some chick dancing on YouTube, but in my opinion, it ruined its chances at being a surefire summer blockbuster. Sure, Jackson can be proud that fans felt such a kinship with him as an onscreen icon that they would support his decisions and cries for a more R-rated rollercoaster experience (which, frankly, should not even be an issue – PG13 is KILLING the traditional motion picture macabre), and it's clear that had this movie been cut for a more inclusive demographic the result would have been a massive pile of PC crap. But the minute the web got a hold of this title, New Line just stopped caring. They thought the various technological avenues would translate into ticket sales. Instead of letting critics see it in advance, touting it to the mainstream film fan, and avoiding much of the overall geek feeling, they let the nerd direct the shilling. The result is a movie that may never be seen by the people who'd appreciate it the most. Guaranteed to be one of the biggest DVD releases/rentals when it finally hits stores, Snakes on a Plane could have walked away with the summer turnstile championship. It will have to settle for being one of the best overall entertainments of the season.

8.5 out of 10

Fucking Reptiles

2006-08-18T12:34:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is – the final film of the 2006 Blog-buster overview. Yes, I am well aware that summer is still simmering for a few more weeks, but looking over the listings for August 25th and September 1st, I can't say I'm ecstatic about spending a couple of hours in the Cineplex, especially with any one of the upcoming titles. I mean, How to Eat Fried Worms? Invincible? The Wicker Man remake? With the exception of the Outkast film Idlewild, which I fear would test my love of their music more than my acumen as a critic, there is nothing worth getting overly excited about. So the Blog-buster will shift its focus and change its name come September 8th (more on that in a week or so) and thus we end this somewhat dreary season at the cinema with the film that promises to either redefine the marketing (and in some ways, making) of movies, or become the biggest bust of Internet based zeitgeist since George Lucas lured us back into his Star Wars universe with that tainted trilogy of prequel puke. Yep, it's time for Samuel L. Jackson and those motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane.

You got to hand it to the people at New Line. They've milked this overripe b-movie for all it's worth. Frankly, unless these creatures walk on water, draw gallons of flowing fake blood, or gnaw victims in the consistently exposed naughty bits, it will take a lot of sellable schlock to make this movie work. Having been privy to a couple of serpent oriented offerings in my years as a critic (Silent Predators, co-written by Halloween's John Carpenter being one of them), I can safely say that snakes on ANYTHING really don't bother me all that much. I wouldn't own one as a pet, or befriend one during a tribal medicine man's attempt to teach me inner consciousness, Billy Jack style, but I really don't mind the occasional reptile. So I won't be shifting in my stadium seat the minute the snakes start bringing on the bites. I will, however, be rooting for Samuel L. Jackson, an actor so capable he almost saved otherwise crappy films like Formula 51 and Sphere. With his forever iconic turn as Jules in Pulp Fiction, Jackson is an actor already guaranteed a permanent place in cinematic history. Snakes on a Plane could be the pay-off for decades of diligent work, or payback for failing to take his craft more seriously.

Whatever the case, I am always up for a little well churned filmic cheese. I adore bad movies, and not just in the way Mystery Science Theater 3000 taught me to appreciate them. Sure, I still gab along with the occasional DVD, unable to keep my Best Brains wannabe status from slowly leaking out, and frequently, there are independent bungles (It Waits, Zombiegeddon) that are almost unwatchable without a little added colorful commentary. I enjoy the experience of watching brazen incompetence streak across the screen, wondering where the amateurish antics of the filmmaker will lead me next, and how horrible/hackneyed the experience will be. But Snakes on a Plane faces a frightening uphill battle. It is almost impossible to make something PURPOSEFULLY bad. Films like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra or TV shows like Garth Marenghi's Darkplace have had limited success with purposefully putting on the suck, and since Snakes is selling itself as a decisively dumb motion picture, it runs the risk of being crappy without the contrasting transcendence. What's even worse, most people will be paying full price for such an experience, instead of simply sitting down in their EZ-Boys and clicking on the Sci-Fi Channel.

More importantly, Snakes on a Plane will test the new YouTube/MySpace solidarity of fandom. It is one thing to ramble of for several webpages about how "great" you think this concept is, and spending hours Photoshopping your own homemade posters and trailers may not necessarily translate into guaranteed box office receipts. In fact, the old adage agrees – it is easier to talk a good game than to put your ducats in the place of your discussions. If it works, every studio will be pairing up high profile stars with low intellect ideas, and melding them with Internet awareness to create an almost unstoppable amount of Hella-hype. However, I view this as a unique, almost unrepeatable fluke. After all, hundreds of films come falling through the product pipeline every year, some with as ridiculous a premise as our serpents in the substrata, and yet they never reach even a microscopic amount of Snakes on a Plane's curiosity. This might just be a clear, simple case of fad gadgetry, the perfect coming together of concept, timing and environment. After all, it's been a pretty lackluster blockbuster season. Maybe this flight of foul-mouthed fancy will be the tonic to cure our lingering summertime blues. It could also be the final drop of poison in an already lethal summer season. All clichés aside, it's time to buy a ticket and see for ourselves.

Just for One Day

2006-08-16T22:10:00.000-07:00

World Trade Center is a movie made up of almosts. It's almost great. It almost falls apart at times. It almost captures the horror and heroism of that day in September of 2001, and it almost makes us believe in the undeniable spirit of the American people. But just like the persistent rumors of conspiracy and inconsistencies, Oliver Stone's dry documdrama just can't shake its aura of ambiguity. At several instances within its padded two hour running time, the story of trapped Port Authority police officers Steve McLaughlin (Nicholas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) gets lost in a sea of uneven family melodrama and occasionally pointless sequences. Granted, we are dealing with a near transcript like screenplay, only occasionally festooned with the typical Tinsel Town humbug. But there is a big difference between telling a story that's inherently interesting vs. interpreting one that is intrinsically dramatic. As a result, World Trade Center bounces between these two imperfect ideals, never quite centering itself in order to transcend its essential limitations.

Frankly, this is a film that has several narrative strikes against it from the very start. We know the outcome already, are almost universally versed in the events of that day, and recognize that most, if not all, of the storyline must take place between a couple of actors buried under a mountain of claustrophobic rubble. Such internal pitfalls take considerable directorial skill to overcome, and thankfully, actual auteur Stone is around to rise to the challenge. His decision to keep the images of 9/11 brief and suggestive (there are no CGI shots of the planes making contact with the towers) adds to our sense of unease as the various police and fire units respond. We are frontline witnesses to uncertainty and terror. This is a key perspective, as it is the foundation for most of the film. In fact, it is safe to say that World Trade Center is one of the few cinematic efforts that wants to accurately recreate the confusion and chaos that derives from unexpected disaster. Naturally, there are good and bad aspects of this decision. On the plus side, it gives the film a raw authenticity that could have very easily been sugarcoated for mainstream consumption. On the down side, it leaves us feeling disconnected to the events occurring onscreen.

At least the acting is uniformly good, with the men far outshining the underwritten women. As McLaughlin, Nicolas Cage has the least showy role here. Required to act with his eyes and face (the rest of him being trapped under tons of debris) he creates a nuanced, scared civil servant who never once backs down from the decision he made. Even as he's dying he's defying any questioning of his commitment. Pena's part is more problematic. It is the flashy turn, filled with emotional highs and pseudo scenery chewing lows. As a result, we get the feeling that Jimeno is a more poorly defined symbol of the 9/11 struggle. He's scared. He's antsy. He rises to the occasion when called upon (keeping Cage engaged so he doesn't fall asleep, perhaps to never wake up) and even tries to lighten things up once in a while. Yet it all seems scattered, like Pena's not sure which approach will work best. As their spouses, Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal have very little to work with. Bello is Cage's disconnected wife, and her scenes with the couple's children lack the spark that such a tragedy should create. Equally odd, Gyllenhaal is all over the map in her interpretation. Some moments she's bubbly, the next she's on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The consequence of all this confusion is that we never establish the clear-eyed goal that both men are striving for. We need to feel the same amount of yearning that they do. We have to identify with the need to reestablish the familial bonds. Again, it almost happens, but doesn't quite get there.

There are also parts here that drag, moments that lack the drama of other, more mesmerizing sequences. The supporting roles, from the soon to be dead policemen to the rescue crew (made up, partially, of the almost unrecognizable Stephen Dorff and Frank Whaley), are nothing more than archetypes, brought in to give us the human heroics required to serve the finale. As our focused Marine determined to help, Michael Shannon is more sinister than Samaritan. For some reason, Stone and screenwriter Andrea Berloff give him arcane, almost gloomy sentiments to espouse, clouding what should be a very brave, very bold individual. Sure, his military training would render him cold in situations of crisis, but humanizing our champions is what cinema is all about. Indeed, in his desire to remain faithful to the storyline and avoid the controversy he's typically associated with, Stone purposefully avoided anything that would even remotely appear to sensationalize, exploit, or distract from the reality of what happened that day. Sadly, it makes for a rather disjointed entertainment. Truth be told, if filmmakers won't take the brazen steps of interpreting the tragedy of 9/11 through their own particular philosophical or creative bent, to Hell with any and all criticism, then it is perhaps too soon for films of this type. Recreating reality only works when the truth is more compelling than fiction (or, in this case, fictionalizing). World Trade Center fits this category…almost.

7 out of 10

Too Late?

2006-08-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

Let's face it – we're all ostriches. We'd rather spend our days with our heads buried in the suburban sand than deal with the real world issues constantly crashing against our free and democratic shores. We'll elect (and re-elect) a misguided President and support his sloppy war as long as it makes us feel secure in our SWVs, and keeps the materialistic flow unencumbered. We will use the confused mantra of "supporting our troops" as a means of avoiding a real confrontation on the politics of preemption, and balk the minute a potential threat is uncovered. Instead of living in the reality of a precarious post-modern world, where technology and ideology have met to create a continuous network of possible terror, we whine and cry about alert levels and airport security as the rest of the planet experiences daily reminders of the tenuous nature of being a citizen within this specific planetary community.

That is why it is almost never "too soon" to address a tragedy cinematically. Unless we place some manner of shared importance on a singular event, the art of motion picture making is the perfect place to explore theThat is why it is almost never "too soon" to address a tragedy cinematically. Unless we place some manner of deeper meaning inside any calamity. Granted, the potential is always there for exploitation or disrespect, but there are no guarantees in this constantly shifting social stratagem. All of which begs the question – why, pray tell, are the events of 9/11 so off-limits, even today? If it's a question of time and distance, no one is pitching the kind of jingoistic hissy that critics of United 93 and World Trade Center are guilty of regarding a far more devastating - and recent - event. Later this month, Spike Lee will deliver his four hour documentary on the rampant destruction – and lack of proper governmental response – in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. HBO's When the Levee Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts promises to be far more antagonistic and conspiratorial than anything offered in either pro-patriot 9/11 motion picture, and yet we can't wait to see Lee stick it to the man, while wondering aloud how anyone can tackle the tragedy that befell America on that fateful September day.

Some may say that 9/11 and Katrina are apples and oranges, and in many significant ways, that statement is true. But for my money, a hurricane wiping out most of a city, flattening millions of Gulf coast acres and destroying hundreds of thousands of lives stands as far more important than a single act of terrorism that somehow finally managed to make it to our own isolationist shores. 9/11 may be more significant, but Katrina will be more substantive. Call it liberal cluelessness or a lack of context, but the collapse of the World Trade Center is more important for what it symbolizes (America's indirect entry into the cause and effect world of fundamentalism) than for the resulting devastation. Don't get me wrong - no loss of life is acceptable, but would we view the events of that day differently if, once the airplanes hit, the city of New York and the Federal Government simply sat around, waiting until the coast was clear and all the facts were in before they acted? Would we feel any different if the planes had hit some nameless housing projects instead of the symbols of capitalism and commerce? In Katrina's case, the answer seems obvious.

It's with this mindset that I go into Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. The response to his supposedly old fashioned story of courage under fire and personal perseverance has been as polarizing as a Fox News Channel special. On the one hand, reviewers have been taken aback by the lack of inquiry into the events of that day. They are flummoxed by how someone like Stone can step into a simple story of survival and not muck it up with outrageous theorizing and cinema vétité takes. To me, the choice by Stone to direct this movie says more about who he is as a person than as a filmmaker. Noted for taking on taboo subjects and slinging as much well-meaning mud at them as humanly possible, Stone is a considered student of war and politics, a man who has immersed himself in both with frequent phenomenal results. Yet to expect JFK or Nixon out of him every time he takes on a socially significant subject is cruel. There is more to the man than shadow cabals and corruption in high places. I'm willing to let him have his patriotism and propagate it too. The truth often hurts and hurts bad. Avoiding it can only lead to far more significant pain.

Descent-ing Opinion

2006-08-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

I am dead convinced that people have forgotten how to make horror films. Oh sure, they can occasionally come up with halfway decent ideas for said efforts – documentary filmmakers get lost in the woods, groups of teens stumble upon a household of murderous cannibals – but for the most part, there are very few examples of flawless execution. As a matter of fact, there are even fewer examples of outright competency. More times than not, these lackluster efforts come from the homemade movie front – and with good reason. After all, you can't expect individuals with limited budgets and resources to deliver on their usually overextended concepts. But the mainstream monster movie shouldn't suffer from such sloppiness. With adequate funds and the best movie magicians in the business behind them, a commercial horror director should deliver a quasi-quality product almost every time. Sadly, cult fave Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers) doesn't even begin to prevail with his almost unanimously praised follow-up The Descent. For my money, it's one of the most overrated and poorly realized spook shows in a very long time.

Now, I have certain theories about successful onscreen terror, ideas I've accumulated over my four decades of film fandom. They are by no means universal, so feel free to scoff at will. To me, you must have a plausible premise, or characters that compel you (or, in a perfect cinematic world, a combination of both) in order to get "hooked" by a horror film. Many of the genre's most memorable efforts – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist, Psycho, Halloween – have narrative foundations that you can easily identify with, while delivering people one can sympathize with and root for. Hostel has both of these elements, while the recent revamp of The Hills Have Eyes had more plot potential than personalities. Still, it delivered the shivers a heck of a lot better than this spastic spot of spelunking. The notion of going down into a claustrophobic, unexplored cave system is just not something I could see myself doing. It's the same level of implausibility that occurs when, in a completely clichéd and stupid manner, a character foolishly returns to the scene of a previously known danger. Sadly, this also happens The Descent. Characters who clearly understand the peril around them walk blindly (metaphorically, not literally) into harm's hackneyed way – over and over again.

Not that we care very much about our vixens as victims here. Marshall tends to paint his personal portraits in the broadest, most basic human colors possible. Our lead Sarah, a fragile casualty of a pre-credits car crash, is supposedly suffering from some post-mortem depression. She lost her family in the wreck, and she pops pills to ease her (one assumes) suffering. Still, none of this is ever explained. The friendships appear random and concocted for convenience sake, our uber-egoed villain, the needs a less obvious moniker Juno is all self-righteous rigidity. The rest of the cast comes across as players in a group therapy theater company, with every standard stereotype present from the implied lesbian to the conspiratorial best friend. And then there are the monsters – or the "supposed monsters", if we are to believe some Internet conjecture. Chalk white, blind as their cave cousin bats, and seemingly living on a steady diet of human and/or animal torsos, these wall-walking SOB's aren't so much scary as a narrative contrivance. After all, with dread comes a need to source out the scares. But as symbols of fear, they're really unnecessary. Marshall could have easily made a movie where the feeling of being trapped in a cave leads a group of six high strung women to turn on each other with frightening fatal results. Instead, he borrowed a few beasties from the Italian style of splatter and turned on the creature features.

While much of my reaction to the movie can be pegged on my growing cynicism to the overall cinematic experience, and the dearth of inventive fright flicks in general, I still respond when the situation calls for it. I find Open Water endless fascinating, not so much terrifying as psychologically uncomfortable. The same goes for the updated Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a movie that managed to be both gruesome and gratifying without relying on freak show effects. Even something like Saw II delivers more soul stinging chills than ten minutes of this X-gamer goofiness. But perhaps the most disturbing element of The Descent, at least for me, is how seemingly out of step I am in the critical community. Being the odd man out doesn't really bother me that much. But when I read other reviewers who point to the films "startling originality" and "inventive thrills" I begin to question my own convictions. What did they see that I didn't, and more importantly, WHY didn't I see it? Is the entire Descent experience generational, losing older fans of more well-managed macabre while feeding directly into the slam bang universe of a demographic raised on the '80s VHS idea of fear. Will this film follow the trajectory of another initial "classic", the now more or less forgotten Blair Witch Project? Does this mean that The Descent will have about a decade of viability before becoming rote? Who knows? Interestingly enough however, contemplating such questions ends up being far more engaging than any single sequence in this otherwise subpar scare film.

5 out of 10

No Will, No Way!

2006-08-03T22:56:00.000-07:00

That’s right – it’s time for another patented Gibron cinematic stance. There is no way on God’s greening Earth that I will be sitting through Taladega Nights: The Ballad of… Some NASCAR Idiot anytime soon. I despise Will Farrell with a passion that matches my uncontrollable ire over a certain former Friend. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a one note novelty that stopped being interesting the minute Cheri Oteri called for the Ultimate Cheer. True, in the lineage of former SNL’ers still trying to make a dent in the rapidly dying realm of big screen comedy, he’s a tad less offensive than Chris Kattan or Jimmy Fallon – and yes, that IS a lot like saying cat shit stinks less than horse shit. He even earns a minor pass for his crazed playing of the cowbell during Christopher Walken’s inspired sketch turn as the producer of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. Yet such small doses just don’t avoid Farrell’s major problem as a performer – he’s just not friggin’ funny.

Besides, Taladega Nights is milking AUTO RACING for its humor, and when was the last time anyone associated wit (unless it was accompanied by the prefix ‘nit’, ‘dim’ or ‘half’) when it came to guys driving cars around an oval track. The trailer is terrible (though I have been known to run around the house screaming “Help me Tom Cruise!” for no apparent reason) and the obvious jokes (crashing into a house, little kids acknowledging their trophy mom’s ‘hotness’) have the stifling stench of post-modern irony – the kind of seemingly smart riff that’s actually only funny to the few people who are aligned with the maker’s mindset. Nothing good can come of such sloppy satire. Look - when the entire cast of Big Brother 7, who by the way are people trapped in a house with nothing else to look at except each other’s pompous, puffy asshole faces, think this the WORST movie ever made, that’s got to be the equivalent of a populist seal of disapproval.

So with the flailing manchild disappearing in the rear view mirror, the question for the week of August 4th becomes what to see. The latest example of Robin William’s inability to say “NO” to any script that falls through his transom, a.k.a. The Night Listener, is opening. The premise sounds interesting – radio talk show host seeks out a child who needs his help, only to discover the boy may not have ever existed – but the media have made the mistake of discussing the backstory to Armistead Maupin’s inspiration for the story, so consider this surprise ending already ‘spoiled’. Then there’s Barnyard: The Original Party Animals, another CGI mess that has famous voices doing the cartoon equivalent of community service. All stunt speaking aside, this is a film that has the inaccurate audacity to put UDDERS on the male cow characters. Sure, dismiss this obvious biological mistake as part of the art and magic of animation. Or maybe the guys who created this crap (Steve Oedekerk, creator of Kung Pow: Enter the Fist and those nauseating Thumb movies) know something that an entire mess of Midwest dairy farmers don’t. Either way, they’ll be no more 3-D showcases this summer.

So it’s up to The Descent to save the day – which is kind of sad, especially when you consider that, like 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead before it, this British horror film has been out, viewed, and available on import DVD for months now. The buzz is good, and the set-up (a group of spelunkers gets trapped in a cave with some unholy, carnivorous creatures) already has my preview spine a-tingling. Oddly enough, this will be the first horror movie I see in a theater since the thoroughly abysmal Blair Witch Project (this year’s Omen was so awful it doesn’t count). While my impending middle age has me more or less immune to most movie macabre, the decidedly domestic setting from which I view most scary films may play into such a placated passiveness. It will be interesting to experience what’s supposed to be a bang-up fear fest with an audience tuned in to the shivers. Then again, I could easily gain the same experience sitting in on Taladega’s talentlessness or Barnyard’s genetic jerryrigging. Sadly, even a seasoned summer movie pro like myself doesn’t have that kind of shock theater stamina.

South Breach

2006-08-02T17:49:00.000-07:00

Miami Vice is an expressionist crime drama. Writer/director Michael Mann purposely moves a million light years away from the fashion and artifice of his infamous ‘80s zeitgeist to deliver a movie with many of its details missing. This is not necessarily a bad thing – as a visualist, he is more than capable of allowing his images to paint in the particulars. But when you are working from a premise that involves undercover drug deals, back stabbing middlemen, random white supremacists, and the mingling of personal and professional feelings, little things like never properly introducing the rest of the Vice squadron do come back to haunt you – especially when you are relying on them to bolster much of the last act’s action. Beautiful to look at and difficult to embrace, this is a movie of moments, not of overall narrative force. The brand new versions of Crockett and Tubbs are acceptable – Foxx is all super serious, while Farrell puts on his oiliest wise ass persona. They may be nothing more than icons in a film loaded with such symbolic cues, but we gladly accept their ‘by the book’ bravado and believe them as the ‘70s throwback super cops that they are – nothing more or less.

Once again employing the fascinating film/digital aesthetic that he used in Collateral, Mann’s version of Vice is like Heat without the interesting middle act. That previous look at life on both sides of the law had Al Pacino, Val Kilmer and Robert De Niro to bolster its occasional lapses. Our leads here are flashy fluff compared to that titanic trio. Still, Mann manages to make it work – sort of. The nightclub set up, which is never explained in relationship to the rest of the film, gets us started with an atmospheric bang. Suggesting more than showing, the first few deaths are designed to peak our interest (a pair of legs in a pool of blood, a spray of gore along a busy Broward county highway) while the last 45 minutes offers the kind of suspense ridden double crossing denouement we’ve come to expect from the genre. Even the grue is cranked up a couple of notches as limbs are blown off and heads become riddled with holes as bullets blaze in an expertly helmed firefight. Thankfully, these surrounding elements are strong enough to save the sloppy, unexceptional center. Gong Li, trying out her English (and not always succeeding), is an attractive love interest for Crockett, but she’s not very engaging. We want more than steely business sense and the ability to make cow eyes at decidedly unctuous Farrell. When they’re together onscreen, the result is sluggishness, not sparks.

During these dull interludes, Mann really pours on the visual poetry. There are several sensational sequences where a lone speedboat blazes toward a seemingly endless horizon. We are also entranced by an amazing aerial shot of a gorgeous South American waterfall, which reveals itself as part of a high ranking cartel overlord’s backyard. It’s not difficult to get swept up in the epic elements of Miami Vice, since Mann lingers on them, hoping that they help us understand the vastness of the international drug trade. But this means something has to suffer, and in this case, it’s the characters. There is honestly not a single three dimensional personality in the entire picture. Foxx is so stodgily even-keeled that when a fellow officer is mortally wounded, his sudden concern seems completely out of place. Farrell also turns up the mixed emotion waterworks when he has to make one of those clichéd sacrifices that all lawmen in his cinematic position are required to do. Yet neither scene connects with us. Even with aspects of life and death at play, we are sadly detached from the personal side of this story.

In fact, Miami Vice is much more interesting in its approach to the crime thriller than in its desire to dig deep into the world of illegal drugs. The unbelievable influx of technology – cell phones, GPS, laptops, tracking devices - makes for an initially disorienting experience. When an FBI official asks Crockett how they can discuss such delicate issues over an open, non-secure line, he bluntly blurts back “this is how I got the information, so let’s deal with it. “ Indeed, the ready access to information worldwide makes the undercover element all the more intriguing. With smugglers able to immediately access your (phony) dossier from anywhere on the planet, Crockett and Tubbs always seem moments away from being discovered. Yet even this can’t make the movie a kinetic actioner or a simmering neo-noir. Instead, Michael Mann appears to be retrofitting the routine of cop dramas past into a sci-fi space of rap video level luxury and post-modern machismo. While it may occasionally have you thinking of another South Florida cinematic spree featuring a Cuban exile, a mountain of coke, his sister complex and a mega-weapon known as his “li’l friend”, Miami Vice is no Scarface. It’s more serious, and less sensational. Too bad it’s not as entertaining.

7 out of 10

CG-Irony

2006-07-31T14:33:00.000-07:00

Monster House is not your typical computer generated cartoon. It doesn’t offer cutesy, cuddly anthropomorphic beings voiced by famous celebrities cracking Borscht Belt level pop culture quips. There’s no major moral about believing in yourself or savoring your friendships. There’s only one major action setpiece, and it grows instinctually out of the storyline, not merely tossed in to show off the computing power. The wee ones won’t be clamoring for Chowder or Zee action figures (though a fully articulated Monster House model would be sweet) and only the most seasoned film going youngster will find anything instantly “likeable” about this narrative. Hats off to Executive Producers Stephen Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis. They have made the first tween classic, a movie destined to be remembered by audience members a little too old for talking cars and wise cracking woodland creatures, but still unable to enjoy the harsher elements a PG-13 or R film has to offer. For them, this is a Goonies to get lost in, an amiable adventure yarn that has action and atmosphere to burn.

That being said, who was the nimrod over at Sony who decided to make this a SUMMER release? Especially with Pixar pitching its own animated auto extravaganza and Warner’s Ant Bully, Paramount’s Barnyard and their own Open Season all vying for the same demographic dollars. Granted, with DVD sales indicating that children will sit through even the most middling exercise in CGI idiocy, piling on seems profitable. But the fact of the matter is, Monster House deserves better. It is a more fully realized film than most of its bitmap brethren. It has real performance from real actors, not stunt casting for the sake of marquee value. It follows traditional narrative lines while tweaking and twisting them to create an entirely new notion of the family film and it does so via a cinematic style that doesn’t utilize strict cartoony conceits. Besides, this is a film that feels like Fall, utilizing rich autumnal colors and the crackle of fallen leaves to accent its moody Halloween setting. Placing it in the middle of beach and sunburn season is just dumb. One needs that certain snap in the air to get the full effect.

Maybe this is why, instead of a booming box office success, the film is fairing rather poorly in the receipts race. It’s a similar stumbling block that faced Zemeckis’s last effort, the yuletide treat The Polar Express. Thanks to IMAX and the seasonal push, however, that occasionally creepy Christmas Card found its footing. Maybe the same will happen here. But Monster House could also be hampered by something I like to call ‘computerized confusion’. You see, ever since a couple of toys went talky, Hollywood has brainwashed its audiences into thinking that making the inanimate “come to life” is the only legitimate use for CGI. Realism should be avoided in favor of three-dimensional drawings. Want proof? When Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was released back in 2001, everyone balked at the blending of legitimate (if, in the end, rather lame) sci-fi with photo realistic computer rendered animation. Sure the story sucked, and some of the voice work was over the top and obvious, but the actual use of the infinite motherboard possibilities to create a sense of authenticity and texture was superb. It’s the same with Monster House, except that, this time we have a tasty tale of a demonic domicile to go along with all the bit rate bells and whistles.

It’s a shame, really. The audience I saw the film with contained many little children, and they sat mesmerized by the story, the situation, and all the spooky spectacle. Abide the warnings though parents – this is way too intense for the under seven set. I would argue that any responsible guardian should keep the toddlers at home until the next offering of funny furry woodlanders arrive. No, let Monster House be the post-modern Hardy Boys (with a little help from and prim and proper Ms. Drew) it strives for. Let it teach your preteen that there is still some magic left in the standard Cineplex experience, that everything doesn’t have to be micromanaged and marketed to complement a fast food tie-in or a theme park attraction. Monster House deserves to be a milestone moment in the lives of young filmgoers, a creative coming of age where the electronic babysitter gives way to the real appreciation of film as an artform. Leave it to two men who’ve made their careers out of such aesthetic defining moments to put the latest technology to the test - and doing so without relying on the gimmicks that are quickly killing the genre. No matter the time of year, Monster House is a masterful flight of fancy.

8 out of 10

'Miami' Advice

2006-07-29T21:45:00.000-07:00

Another week, another quandary – and this one is quite a bit larger than the Jennifer Aniston dilemma from the beginning of June. On one side of the situation is Michael Mann, a director who I’ve admired since I stumbled upon his breakthrough film, Thief, way back in 1981. I followed him through his flawed attempt at horror (1983’s The Keep), his first big crime epic (the amazing Manhunter) and his artistic take on James Fenimore Copper’s Last of the Mohicans. But somewhere in the middle of all this moviemaking, Mann lost me. Right before the original Hannibal Lector spectacle dropped, Mann became associated with a TV fad gadget called Miami Vice. He executive produced the MTV inspired cop drama, meshing his day-glo colored conceits to a rapid editing music video sort of stylizing. The result was the ruination of serious television, a decided step backward in the way in which narrative was supposed to be presented. Many found it edgy, electrifying and eclectic. I found it dumb, obvious and highly annoying. I never watched a single episode all the way through, and was glad when the series died after five flummoxing years. While its ADD attitude still permeates our current entertainment arena, the series other preposterous production designs (pastels, high fashion couture claptrap) have more or less disappeared – thank GOD!

As a result ever since Mohicans, Mann has been hit or miss with me. Loved The Insider, didn’t care for Ali. Enjoyed Heat, but can’t get through Collateral – and it has nothing to do with the switch to digital. Nope, that Tom Cruise vehicle rubs me the wrong way because of the presence of one of the most overrated actors to ever pick up an Oscar. I’m speaking, of course, of Jamie Foxx. Somewhere, in the bowels of Hell, Satan is holding this man’s contractual comeuppance, counting the days until professional payback is warranted. With so many stellar African American actors around, why Hollywood keeps giving this weak wannabe so many starring roles is a major mystery. Maybe the Devil has deals with all the people who hire him as well. If that’s the case, God needs to intervene PDQ. Witchcraft is the only way for me to rationalize Foxx’s frequency on the big screen. His hip hop caterwauling should be reason enough to warrant an instant blackballing. Besides, he’s all shallow bravado and false feelings. He was terrible in Booty Call, nothing more than mediocre in Any Given Sunday, far too obvious in Ali and nothing more than an unsubstantiated sidekick to Collateral’s Mr. Scientology. If the Academy is handing out statues for imitation - which is what Foxx earned for his turn as the memorable Mr. Charles in Ray - then Fred Travelina and Rich Little should be clamoring for their trophies too. That the man who played the fugly “Wanda” on In Living Color shares space with Spencer Tracy, Jack Nicolson, and Denzel Washington is just plain heresy.

Now, add in Colin Farrell, an actor who I’ve never really considered seriously, and you’ve got three strikes against my ever enjoying a movie like Miami Vice. I just can’t see getting involved in a movie starring people I don’t regularly gravitate toward as performers, helmed by a man whose missed the motion picture boat more than once in the last decade. And then, when you consider the throwback plotline (undercover agents in an ongoing drug war begin to lose their sense of identity and purpose) and the stereotypical South Florida locale (that’s right – Miami is just one big party – just ask the poor people), this summer sampling already has my pre-screening patience wearing thin. It’s nice to see that the bulk of the reviews are split down the center, with those unhappy that the film doesn’t follow the original series voicing the majority of the discontent. Since I hold no allegiance to Don Johnson, Phillip Michael Thomas, and the designer dudes that defined their characters, this gives me hope. The rest of the criticism argues for Mann’s way behind the lens, while citing the film is more empty action eye candy than meaningful character concerns. Again, I can live with stunt work and shootouts - but it’s going to take a lot of squibs and other pyrotechnics to keep Foxx and Farrell from fucking this up for me. Yet in a season where other potential catastrophes (Click, Clerks II) turned out to be endearing and enjoyable, maybe Miami Vice can pull this one out as well. Or it could all be just a post-millennial update of the ‘80s idea of style over substance. Here’s praying the Greed decade’s dynamic stays well in the past, where it definitely belongs.

Talk Talk

2006-07-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

The characters in a Kevin Smith movie love to talk. To them, talking is not just a means of casual communication. It’s an artform. It’s a psychological starting point. It’s the purpose for all human interaction and a skill that too few in the populace ever strive to perfect. Yet as a screenwriter, Smith is known for his excellent dialogue and creative conversations. It’s been his trademark – for better and for worse – for his entire career. Thankfully, Clerks II is no different. This joyous jeer-athon, filled with more dirty-word laden depth and instantly quotable moments than the rest of the summer movie selections combined, is a love letter to the unbridled ecstasy in speaking one’s mind. The sentiments may not always be pleasant, or PC, or practical (Transformers vs. Go-Bots???) but the ability to hear them becomes an odd kind of old fashioned movie magic. Instead of being swept away by a visionary set of images, or a complex, clockwork plot, we find ourselves lost in a world of words – and what a glorious gabfest it is.

As someone who went into this film completely unaware of the entire View Askew universe (know of it, and that’s about it) I was shocked at how well Smith’s insular satire worked. A keen observer of people and personalities, there is never a wrong note in either the way he paints a character, or how these three dimensional individuals listen and respond. From old pros (the original counter jockeys Brian “Dante” O’Halloran and Jeff “Randal” Anderson are back) to excellent new additions (Trevor Fehrman’s fantastic Elias, Rosario Dawson’s dynamic Becky), Smith stays true to the originals format of riffs and rants while adding in something we usually don’t get from this filmmaker’s work. Indeed, during several inspired musical montages, Smith uses The Jackson Five’s “ABC”, The Smashing Pumpkins “1979” and Soul Asylum’s “Misery” to make valid points about the lost of enchantment once maturity steps in and demands you grow up. For an artist known for his limited cinematic skills, these showcase moments really elevate this film beyond the dirty joke ideal.

The profaneness will be what many Smith fans expect, and it’s interesting to see how much the social climate has changed in the 12 years since the initial film. Maybe it’s me, but discussions revolving around going ‘ass to mouth’, bestiality (or as the film insists, ‘interspecies erotica’) and oversized ‘woman parts’ just aren’t as shocking as they once were. Smith himself has said that he finds it fascinating that, this time around, his dialogue only merited an R rating. After all, the original Clerks was slammed with an NC-17 for its raunchy and rude content. Call it the continued mainstreaming of pornography, or the industry coming around to Smith’s way of thinking, but there is nothing really immoral about the conversations in Clerks II. Again, they represent the way real people talk to each other. And whether it’s a debate about Star Wars vs. Lord of the Rings or a long involved bit of interpersonal introspection (Dawson and O’Halloran have several sensational scenes together), there is nothing more refreshing than intelligent writing handled by actors perfectly in sync with their scribe.

Apparently, this was the Kevin Smith I was missing. This was the man who millions fawned over while I faked disinterest. This was the filmmaker who used carefully chosen words and phrases to make sense of the generation into which he was born, while I argued he was self-indulgent and inert. Boy, was I wrong. Clerks II easily takes its place as one of the summer’s best, most surprising entertainments, and even tops entries that wanted to blow us away with superheroic deeds and soft soap sentimentality (and now, more than ever, I wish he had been involved in the Superman revamp). In a perfect world, people would see past the blue humor and foul language, the obsession with sex and the exquisite non-sequitors and embrace this filmmaker as the King of Conversations. Few films in recent memory have gotten under my middle-aged skin as effectively as Clerks II. It was one of the few films offered that made the Summer of 2006 tolerable…and memorable.

8 out of 10

CG-Ire

2006-07-26T10:32:00.000-07:00

I am always shocked when a trailer and/or movie poster arrives on the scene announcing another CGI extravaganza. No other aspect of the animation artform has so readily devoured itself as quickly as computer generated cartooning. Back in the day, Disney, Warners and Paramount made thousands of short subjects over several decades, only to have another medium – television – destroy their big screen viability while opening up another avenue for their presentation. Full length animated features also lasted up until the boob tube decried that a child (supposedly the SOLE demographic for a pen and ink entry) could only handle 30 minute segments of entertainment at one sitting. Yet ever since Toy Story, the genre’s true benchmark of box office viability and public appreciation, CGI has threatened to die more quickly than any other animation style…and the reasons are as painfully obvious as Paris Hilton’s lack of talent.

You see, Shrek, and similar samplings of its ilk, are the category killers here – successful slants on CG’s animated ideals taken to strange, surreal stand up comedy extremes. Overloaded with present and past pop culture references, packed with stunt voice casting meant to be it’s own level of joke, and hyperactive to the point of requiring Ritalin, this system has been racking up receipts that boggle the studios’ superficial imagination. Sadly, these once clever tales have become the repugnant rule of thumb. They’ve even caused longtime traditionalists at the House of Mouse to abandon 2-D (at least, temporarily). Nowadays, EVERY CG release has to have a wiseass main character, a crazy supporting player, a pseudo sexy love interest and an overwhelming amount of easy, underbaked gags. All the animators have to do is change the species (shark, ant, woodland creature, barnyard animal, robot, alien – heck, anything that can be anthropomorphized) and the stadium seats will supposedly be packed.

This is why I am SO happy about the arrival of Monster House. By now, everyone knows that this is another of Robert Zemeckis’s ongoing experiments with a more photo-realistic, motion capture style of CG work. Yet instead of stepping behind the virtual camera as he did with 2004’s quasi-creepy The Polar Express, he has handed over the rendering reigns to first timer Gil Kenan. Better still, House appears to avoid all the movie references and hackneyed homages of the film format’s formula to tell a real story involving amiable, if archetypical, pre-teens having one of those adventures that movie kids always seem to have. From the trailers I have seen, the design looks exceptional, with the title structure having a great deal of supernatural panache. Similarly, the narrative appears to avoid all the PC-pronouncements that typically taint a family film (can’t be too scary, can’t be too inventive, can’t be too involving) and have become the staid trademark of the recent vector graphing entertainments.

House is, however, not the CG shape of things to come. In just a few shorts weeks, we will see another variation on the insect theme (The Ant Bully), a farm full of faux familiar voices (Barnyard) and, in the fall, the ersatz hilarity of battles between the hunted and the hunters (Open Season), and uptown/downtown rats (Flushed Away). Maybe these movies will work (as Over the Hedge did a few months back) or they might just end up as so much Shark’s Tale chum. But with Monster House the mood is different. There is a feeling of real potential here, that anyone who sets foot in the theater will be whisked back to their childhood, their friends, and that one spooky address at the end of a notorious road. If anything can cure my current CG-ire, it may just be this creepy little cartoon. On the other hand, it could be another entrée in the genre’s desire to consume itself whole.

The Power of Miss

2006-07-24T15:13:00.000-07:00

A college professor once told me that the key to any successful science fiction or fantasy narrative is a clear and concise set of rules. As a writer, you are in complete control of any alternate universe you create, and have to make sure that you set specific boundaries and limits. Without them, your story will have a tendency to scatter, losing its grip on the false truth you’re forging and crashing, headlong, into the reality in which we truly live. It’s even more perilous when you try to meld the two. Myth doesn’t react well to modernity, and the more you try to push the two together, the more aggressively they will try to stay apart. On it’s surface, the story of a troubled apartment superintendent who discovers a beautiful, baffling creature on his doorstep one evening should make for something compelling and emotional. But instead, it’s an exercise in insularity that never gels into the fascinating fable it thinks it is. It’s a huge problem for the latest release from that twist-ending trademark M. Night Shyamalan. Even with his considerable cinematic skill, Lady in the Water is his most inert movie to date.

It’s clear from the first few moments our otherworldly figure shows up. A porcelain pawn in the director’s desire to meld fairytales with faith, our so-called ‘narf’ is like mankind’s Jiminy Cricket. These sea creatures show up every once in a while to give human’s bumbling moral direction a hand. She needs to connect with certain people, to inspire them to greatness beyond their current state and lead them toward their undeniable fate. She’s therefore a Calvinist catalyst, preaching predetermination while shivering at the thought of the grass-covered wolves that lie in wait to poison her. If we buy the premise – and trust me, it’s a pretty hard sell – then we can accept the rest of the rituals. As our guide, Paul Giamatti (playing the unfortunately named Cleveland Heep) tries his best to instill an aura of magic into what is going on. He obviously has a handle on the conventions involved. But it’s Shyamalan himself that seems to be uncertain as to what those made-up mandates really are. All throughout it’s running time, Lady in the Water tends to make up its rules as it goes along, giving new or tangential powers to elements and individuals out of a sheer need for plotting or cleverness. One moment all hope is lost. A quick trip to our Asians as exposition, and we’re back on track.

A perfect example comes after Story (so our heroine is called) fails to initially unite with her giant eagle guardian. Since this incident occurs within the first half hour of the film, we know there needs to be an alternative method of closure. But said ‘Plan B’ becomes the entire rest of the narrative and never makes a great deal of sense. New ephemeral beings are introduced – the Symbolist, the Guild, a gang of super evil monkeys – and different interpretations are giving to concepts we thought were concrete. This is obviously Shyamalan’s perceived way of keeping us on our toes. It’s also why he has a completely pointless film critic character become the patsy for our usual predictability. The crab, played with complete cynicism by Bob Balaban, thinks he knows it all, unwittingly argues for the purpose of certain individuals that we’ve seen in the film, and then gets his exclamation mark comeuppance in a way that defies his so-called intellect. All groan-inducing jabs to my fellow reviewers aside, Balaban is equally responsible for calling out the audience. It’s one of Shyamalan’s several “dares”. If you don’t buy into his scattershot saga, you are just as dim as this closed off detractor.

From an acting standpoint, there is a great deal here that is good. Shyamalan has been taken to task for casting himself in the substantial supporting role (as a writer who may be the narf’s Earthbound target). Beside the egotistical world-changing implications, he does have a couple of nice scenes where his soft-spoken introspection works. And, as stated before, Giamatti delivers his typical grandness. As a matter of fact, his performance angers us because it seems that all of his efforts are basically going to waste. The biggest disappointment however is Bryce Dallas Howard. Her turn is as colorless as her complexion, and the lack of anything interesting for Story to do really undermines Shyamalan’s mythology. Such a creature should be something other than a good looking doormat for the people she’s supposed to inspire. From a directing standpoint, there are wonderful visual turns and the familiar Shyamalan forewarning with scenes and situations set to pay off later on. Here, though, he’s developed a habit of over the shoulder shots that’s grows increasingly annoying. But it’s the writing that eventually ruins this film. There is probably an engaging story to be told about a race of sentient sea beings desperate to steer mankind into a more soulful, sensible direction. This chaotic cautionary tale needed a far more firm alternative reality in which to work. Without it, it becomes just another preposterous bit of failed folklore.

5.5 out of 10

Bleak Smith

2006-07-21T13:21:00.000-07:00

Speaking of moviemaking mysteries, why do I find Kevin Smith so engaging as a personality, and so deadly dull as a filmmaker? Granted, I have barely ventured into his canon (I’ve seen MOST of Dogma, all of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, a little of the original Clerks, and have purposefully avoided Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Jersey Girl), but that’s just because I get such immediate cinematic agita whenever one of his efforts unscroll across the screen. Frankly, he’s not much of a filmmaker, but he wouldn’t be specifically peeved by such a statement. In fact, Smith himself has downplayed his stylistic limits behind the camera. Where he really thinks he excels is in the screenwriting department. Praised empathically for his witty, vulgarity-laced dialogues, many believe that the literary end of entertainment is where this rebellious filmmaker really shines.

I, of course, would debate that fact. If something is well written, it should hold your interest as it plays out in front of you. Messy mise-en-scene aside, Smith’s supposed verbal superiority should win out over any other nominal filmmaking conceit, like characterization, narrative drive, or thematic resonance. Personally, I think the fanboys and followers have it wrong. Smith is not a great writer. He’s a great communicator. He can take ideas as obscure as donkey sex shows, the craziness of Catholic theology, comic book fandom, or the everyday trials and tribulations of a couple of stupid stoners, and render them pristine in their ability to persuade and please. Nowhere is this talent truer than in his amazingly engaging four hour DVD extravaganza An Evening with Kevin Smith. Over the course of this collection of college campus meet and greets, Smith delivers tales so tantalizing in a style so sly that it sucks you in without really trying to do so. Like the late great Spaulding Gray, Smith’s merry monologues transcend their anecdotal elements to become iconic incidents in an industry mired in mediocrity.

After witnessing the creative washout that was Superman Returns, Smith’s story of how he was brought onto the project – and more importantly, why he left – is incredibly prophetic. But it’s not just the details that are deliciously dishy (meeting with Jon Peters for some peculiar “production” notes), it’s the way Smith walks us through the meaningless morass known as the Hollywood hack factory that gives his speech its spark. He’s an insider not afraid to out the inert idiosyncrasies of those he’s forced to work with. It’s a strategy that works well whether he’s discussing a supposed feud with Tim Burton, or the odd weekend he spent as Prince’s personal documentarian. Not one to kiss and completely tell all, Smith still comes across as glorified gossip. The only difference is, he’s more than capable of spilling the beans, and doesn’t care who gets upset in the process. Applying this mindset to his movies, Smith seems to be making the films he feels will satisfy his whims, and doesn’t care who ends up “getting” them.

Such a standoffish attitude definitely comes across onscreen. From the sections of his films that I’ve seen, there is a cloying, confrontational attitude that seems to be saying “I dare you to like this”. On stage, in front of a bunch of undergrads whose questions guide his focus, Smith is electrifying. Yet left to his own devices, he can be incredibly insular and even more myopic. Besides, his is a world view carved out of the worst, whining aspects of alienation. It was the reason I couldn’t sit through the first Clerks. Even among all the scandalous sex jokes and prurient putdowns, the stench of estrangement from the reality of the world was far too strong. I don’t get the same sense from Clerks II. Maybe, with maturity, Smith has lightened up a little. Maybe the response to his personal appearances confirmed that, no matter what us asshole critics have to say, he knows how to connect to his determined demographic. It could be that Smith has turned the corner, convinced that broadening, not narrowing his approach will result in more box office benefice. Whatever the case, the second time around for this material promises to be more than just more of the same. It better be, or that will be end up being my response as well.

Next Time: CG-Ire

Night Time

2006-07-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

The weekend of July 21st sees the opening of three major summer movies: M Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water, Kevin Smith’s Clerks II and the CG animated Monster House. While all three films will be seen over the next two weeks, I thought I would breakdown each entry, providing some context into what makes these releases important in the Summer of 2006 mix.

Part 1: Night Time

Is there a director more reviled than M. Night Shyamalan. Not in the traditional Uwe Boll/Paul WS Anderson type of abhorrence. No, Night seems capable of creating a kind of nuclear nastiness when it comes to his relatively small catalog of films. Maybe it’s the jealousy factor. After all, name another moviemaker who has forged so much fanboy ire out of so few films. His first two efforts – 1992’s Praying with Anger and 1998’s Wide Awake – remain relatively unseen, while the rest of his canon stand as benchmarks for measuring your relative level of admiration or disdain. For many, the stepping off point seems to be Signs. The 2002 alien invasion storyline told from one family’s narrow perspective was apparently so pat, so anticlimactic in its callback to numerous facets of foreshadowing, that its clockwork construction simply imploded, spiraling into its own insularity. As a result, such a storytelling stunt apparently failed to fully connect with audiences.

Others point to the last scene in Unbreakable as the moment that M Night merged with the illogical infinite. Granted, his desire to end every film after his “I see dead people” smash The Sixth Sense with a ‘betch you didn’t see that coming’ twist seemed trite, a desire to create a calling card for his otherwise untried works. Yet his take on the comic book hero (and, in sharp contrast, the uber-villiain) was viewed as either laudable or laughable –usually broken down along graphic novel novices and the pure pulp geeks. The Village apparently violated everyone’s trust – the director (who decided his next film would go in a very different direction) the studio (Night parted ways with Disney over the effort) and the audience (who failed to make the movie a solid summer smash). While many claim it has redeeming elements, the general consensus is that this problematic pilgrim’s progress was more timid Twilight Zone fodder than a full-fledged examination of a community created out of fear and isolationism.

Frankly, I have enjoyed every film this interesting director has made. Some call him the new Spielberg, and I would contest such a claim. While he does have a distinctive style – heavy on the details, meticulous in the plotting, and overflowing with carefully composed shots – he doesn’t have the original summer savant’s sense of narrative drive. No one can take a premise and push it to the very limits of its logistics better than our pal Steve. Besides, the man who made Jaws wouldn’t cast himself in substantial supporting roles (this habit remains Night’s sole unforgivable conceit). In many instances, I’ve enjoyed the performances more than the plots. Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix have all excelled under Night’s nuanced tutelage, and despite what the messageboards say, none of these superstars will be removing these efforts from their resume anytime soon.

All of which leads to Lady in the Water. Promising more of the pretension and none of the plot twists that have haunted Night since the start of his fame, critics have carved into this movie like the pre-holiday turkey they all hoped it would be. In fact, the amount of vindictive venom is deeply surprising. Again, the notion of resentment comes to the fore, since other offerings by the director have fallen under an equally heavy deconstructive glare and have still been entertaining and engaging. Has the visionary auteur finally hit the wall? Does his desire to play by his own increasingly insular rules mean the end of his tenure as a box office favorite? Will anything about Lady’s production experience – and eventual popularity…or lack thereof - alter his sense of entitlement and self-importance. Like most of Night’s movies, the answer remains an enigma.

Next Time - Part 2: Bleak-Smith

Baby Shit

2006-07-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Little Man is the worst movie of the summer. In fact, it’s safe to say that it will probably land right up near the top as the worst movie of the YEAR. Bereft of anything closely resembling intelligence or entertainment value, and unbelievably bad at delivering its more than minor elements, this so called comedy from the family Wayans (Marlon and Shawn onscreen, Keenan Ivory behind the camera) feels like nothing more than a tactless grab for cash. In fact, the brothers must believe that all audiences – not just the urban/teen demo they are obviously aiming at – have the combined IQ of a loganberry. This story of an undersized criminal named Calvin and how he ended up playing baby for a weekend (in order to reclaim a diamond he had to ditch and….oh, never mind) is almost indecipherable. As such, you’d have to be brain dead to defend such illogical plotting, one dimensional characterization and aimless middle act meandering supposedly passing itself off as humor.

This is, without a doubt, the most joyless film released by a semi-major studio (Revolution) in recent memory. Nothing about the movie feels fun – not the noxious as rainbow-slicked lunchmeat premise, not the frequently flimsy special effects (something about Marlon as a midget is…well…just off) and definitely not the appalling amateurish acting. Constantly breaking character and playing random ages depending on the scene, our criminal “kid” Calvin is unstuck in slapstick time. Some moments, he’s a toddler. Sometimes, he’s clearly ready for grade school. That everyone is unable to see through his bad baby ruse creates one of Little Man’s several non-suspendable moments of dopey disbelief. If a couple of adults, staring at another adult’s privates, dismiss both his “maturity” and his pubic hair as normal (and let’s not talk about the doctor who gives this dwarf his ‘youngster’ seal of approval), then they deserve all the derision and ridicule that comes their way. Even worse, there is an implication that our ersatz ‘infant” has sex with his adoptive mother. In actuality, it’s a moment that’s MORE repugnant than it sounds.

In fact, there is a creepy undercurrent of child sexualization running all throughout Little Man, staining and soiling its farcical aspects. In a scene that’s supposed to be amusing, our mini-criminal, in full diaper and ‘da-da’ mode, frenches the holy Hell out of a dumb blond bimbo. Everyone’s reaction? Ummm…that’s unusual. No kidding. Then, when Calvin runs into his accomplice at the park (played with all the finesse of a foot cramp by Tracy Morgan), the skittish parents all ask the same question – “Did he try to touch you?” From another molestation mention to the ‘aforementioned morning’ after scene, all this carnal kiddie joking is just disturbing. But the Wayans don’t stop there. They offer their own unique hate take on white wannabes (former In Living Color co-star Kelly Coffield gets the dishonor of doing the stereotypical “Caucasian talking Ebonics” bit) as well as dissing the old and elderly (John Witherspoon is reduced to playing a one note old coot, lacking a single witty remark or rejoinder). In fact, it’s safe to say that this is a motion picture experience forged out of anger – the obvious antagonism of the filmmakers for the viewer, and the eventual reciprocal rage of the crowd.

As with all gimmick-based entertainments, the result is only as good as the gag. Yet Little Man is one of the rare cases where this maxim misses the point. The sight of Marlon Wayans miniaturized interests us for about 30 seconds. We look for the F/X flaws, and try to get lost in the device. Then we wonder if he’ll do anything clever or exciting with this unusual stature circumstance. Well, if you consider hitting people on the head with frying pans and plastic baseball bats witty, if you get all exhilarated watching a 34 year old actor mug shamelessly for the camera while cooing like a stunted spaz, then you’ll probably enjoy this unmitigated mess, and I’m sure the Wayans will spend your hard earned pennies well. Just don’t expect them to give you anything of substance in return. When the audience has to work several times harder than the cast to find any sort of pleasure or plausibility out of a premise, there’s no hope for redemption, or relief. Unless you want to waste 90 minute of your life, or feel the need to subject yourself to the latest example of miserable moviemaking masochism, avoid this horrid little turd of a film. Little Man deserves little respect.

.5 out of 10

Fidgeting

2006-07-13T15:51:00.000-07:00

I’m surprised more critics and industry observers have not called the Wayan Brothers on their latest ethnicity exaggeration epic Little Man. After all, while the execution is all state of the art special effects, the storyline appears to be a direct “crib” of the Little Rascals/Our Gang comedy from 1932, Free Eats. You know the one: Spanky, Stymie and the rest are orphaned urchins who get the chance to visit a mansion. There, a wealthy family treats them to a grand gluttonous extravaganza of cake, ice cream and personal humiliation. A couple of dwarf criminals tag along, realizing that wherever there’s rich people, there’s valuables worth stealing. They hope to mingle in with the wee ones while smoking cigars and snorting like sailors. Eventually, the kids catch on, and in one of the more memorable moments in the short, Stymie outs the duo by proudly proclaiming in non-PC platitudes “dem’s fidgets!” As played by real little people, the Rascal’s farcical elements were amplified by the freak show nature of their co-stars.

In Little Man, computers have been used to turn Marlon Wayans into a sort of lame ghetto Lilliputian, his recognizable face mugging away on top of what looks like a miniaturized man’s body. The effect is a little off-putting at first, since he doesn’t quite look like a real dwarf, nor does he successfully remind one of a discernible dinky dude. It’s a weird visual illusion, somewhere between success and sloppy. It’s similar to the frighteningly fake “Caucasian girl” façade both brothers braved (Shawn is his sibling’s co-hort in crass comedy) for their horribly unfunny film from 2004, White Chicks. In fact, the Wayans in general seem to be trading on a tendency to diminish their own background for the sake of some mainstream scratch, and while there is nothing wrong with hiding your heritage for the sake of a snicker, it seems disingenuous to their older brother Keenan’s original entry into the pop culture picture. His In Living Color series wanted to bring meaningful minority faces to the washed out whiteness of TV. Now, with two Scary Movies (1 and 2) and these two films under his directorial belt, it appears that noble sentiment has been sent packing.

In fact, this trend in making race erasing a gimmick (granted, while Little Man featured African American’s the comedy appears to be pure frat boy funk) will eventually backfire on the Wayans. After all, where do they go from here? Will they get Marlon and Shawn to douse themselves in Rogaine and run around on all fours as wise-cracking hounds (I can see the film’s title right now – Who Let the Dogz Out!)? Or better yet, will they fit the duo in one ton fat suits and have them straddling motorcycles as Billy and Benny McCrary/McGuire? Tyler Perry has the whole rude old lady shtick down pat (take that wannbe Martin “Big Momma” Lawrence), so maybe they can find something funny in utereo. The Incredible Mr. Zygote, perhaps. Or maybe a thug version of Look Who’s Talking, where a fetus goes Tupac on the surrounding placenta? Apparently, in the Wayans world, nothing is out of the question.

Whatever their future, I dread Little Man’s abundance of inappropriate humor, the unseemly sexualization of children, and a wealth of BM/doodie/checher material. After all, babies are shitting machines, so why would the Wayans pass up a chance to riff on excrement? And if someone, say constant co-star John Witherspoon, manages a Stymie-like “fidgets” comment, I’ll be rolling down the aisle in referential reverie. Someone needs to recognize the brain-bending boldness of those horribly racist Little Rascal routines. Who better than the family that’s trying to best the Gang’s bigotry to make the necessary connection?

Treasure Trove

2006-07-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

There is more of everything in the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie: more spectacle; more exotic locales; more convoluted story contrivances. Anyone who thought the first film was teeming with plot and particulars will find their narrative tolerances tweaked toward overload by this sensational sequel. Between the introduction of two new villains, the addition of a new “quest” and the held-over elements from the first good-natured go round, there’s nary a moment of breathing room in this wonderfully effective popcorn entertainment. Granted, the POTC movies aren’t out to make grand statements about loyalty, the sea, or the shrinking sense of the world. Instead, they merely want to amuse, to provide 150 minutes of escapist fun in their swordplay, slapstick, and sensational special effects. George Lucas and his dire digital space operas be damned – Gore Verbinski and his capable cast of eye candy actors are on course to deliver the landlubber version of what the Star Wars series originally promised it would be.

After the living dead skeletal pirates of the first film, Dead Man’s Chest had its wildly imaginative work cut out for it. After all, those undead outlaws were incredibly inventive and handled with stellar CGI flare. Amazingly enough, the sequel delivers, rendering head horror Davy Jones and his cutthroat band of buccaneers as remarkable combinations of sea creatures and humans. From half-man hammerheads to cutthroats with crustaceans crafted to their faces, the overall look of the movie’s fiends is simply remarkable. Jones himself is a squid-festooned dandy with huge lobster claws and an excess of tentacles that makes Geoffrey Rush’s Captain Barbossa look like a minor league monster by comparison. Equally unsettling is Naomie Harris as voodoo priestess Tia Dalma. Eyes accented with harrowing contacts, and smiling through a mouth of vile, blackened teeth, her otherworldly turn is terrific. In fact, all the actors acquit themselves admirably, expanding on their original roles to add subtle shading to what are, basically, creative cartoon characters.

Aside from the spectacle, Johnny Depp deserves a great deal of credit for turning Capt. Jack Sparrow into a fully rounded rascal. In the first film, the accent and demeanor mask a truly conflicted individual. Now, with an entire performance under his belt, Depp loosens up, making Jack a scoundrel as lost in his sea-faring situation as Jones or Barboosa. It will be interesting to see where he takes Sparrow in the final film, tentatively entitled At World’s End. There is so much this incredible actor can do with this dapper delight that every scene becomes a breathless anticipation of something special. And, as always, Depp doesn’t disappoint. In fact, it’s safe to say that this long time industry eccentric has probably found the breakout series that will change the very scope of his future career. Unlike Ewan McGregor, or the horrid Hayden Christensen from Lucas’s lamentable sequels, Depp’s Sparrow will be seen as a stepping stone, not an infamous coffin nail, in his bankable big screen persona. Even as he continues to choose daring, difficult films, newfound fans will support him. Sparrow is that kind of indelible icon.

Additional praise must also go to Gore Verbinski, proving that he has a directorial mantle similar to that of Peter Jackson’s – at least when it comes to handling the multi-faceted epic. Juggling several different storylines at once, Verbinski always seems to find the linking material to keep us engaged and intrigued. He is also becoming an expert at big canvas set piece action. The opening escape from a cannibal island is amazing, and the finale, featuring a huge rotating water wheel and a full fledged onslaught by Davy Jones’ beasties is unbelievable in its scale and effectiveness. There are dozens of equally memorable moments strewn throughout – the arrival of the Flying Dutchman, as well as an equally unbelievable dive into the briny deep – and the computer-generated Kraken instills fear and foreboding with its vividly rendered CGI size. It’s rare today when a movie can make me immediately want to see it again. I’ll be queuing up to Dead Man’s Chest at least one more time before the summer is out. It’s truly one of this otherwise sloppy season’s cinematic highlights.

8 out of 10

Avast...Difference

2006-07-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

In some ways, Disney didn’t deserve the massive mega-hit that it’s attraction premised adventure saga Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl eventually became. After making audiences suffer through the horrendous Haunted Mansion (Come see former superstar Eddie Murphy channel Mantan Moreland – and fail) and equally vile The Country Bears (no noxious aside necessary here) the chances this buccaneer-based project would be the one to fly seemed as remote as locating traditional animators on the studio lot. After all, it had Johnny Depp as its lead, and untried talents Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley along for unsure support. When your most certain box office draw was Shiny McShine’s sensational Geoffrey Rush, the prognosis for success seemed like a combination of Waterworld and Roman Polanski’s 1986’s boat bandit flop.

Besides, sea-faring outlaws with sabers in their teeth and parrots on their shoulder are not the universal draw they once were. Sure, they seem all cute and cuddly in their amusing animatronic setting or when viewed casually from a computer controlled boat. But try and capture an authentic vibe with these Jolly Rodger rejects from eons past and you end up with something that resembles cinematic scurvy. I hazily remember heading out to the theaters one sunny July afternoon in 1976 to see Robert Shaw in Swashbuckler. Fresh off of Jaws, it was Quint’s turn to shine as a puffy sleeved profiteer. Sadly, this seems to be the film that cured me of my ever wanting to sail the motion picture high seas with cutthroat swabs ever again. Sure, the swordplay was fun, as was a character that wore deadly finger knives, but aside from that, my lasting impressions of the experience are vague at best.

So while I’m sure Murphy is miffed that he signed up for the flaccid family film filled with ghosts, Depp must be digging his new found fame. The ‘artist formerly known as a 21 Jump Street teen idol’ has sure come a long way from his days as a creative cult icon. He has almost always made smart choices, and the decision to dive into a House of Mouse live action film has got to be one of his more startling, more flummoxing career moves. He’s just not the first name you think of when it comes to action/adventure leads. And it’s still hard to believe that audiences embraced his turn as a fey Jean LaFitte fop since it represented the actor at his most experimental and eccentric. Yet here it is, billions of bucks later and mandatory sequel time. In true Matrix fashion, Uncle Walt’s international movie machine is spitting out two revisits to the Pirate’s paradigm for the price of a small island nation. Heck, they’ve even added Depp’s visage to their theme park attraction.

Critical consensus on the latest installment has been more or less divided down the middle, with 50% saying it’s a sensational summer blockbuster while a similar percentile call it dull, un-involving and overlong. And since it’s already made more money in three days than any other movie EVER in the history of such opening weekend-oriented value systems, it seems that these plundering scallywags are more or less review proof. It will be interesting to see what director Gore Verbinski has in store for us this time around. Like Bryan “Superman” Singer, he sure has a lot of commercial clout for someone whose directed films focusing on a mouse, an ancient gun, a disgruntled weatherman and a killer videotape. Still, the trailer offers some stunning set pieces, and the look of Davy Jones and his fellow fallen pirates is eerie and inventive. This could end up being another summer surprise…or it could sink to the bottom of the ocean like so much cinematic chum. With Disney, the forecast is never clear.

Steel-ing Summer

2006-07-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

In the lexicon of comic book movies, it’s not as good as Sam Raimi’s Spidey series and both Burton and Nolan’s Batman can rest comfortably in their place along the cinematic superhero hall of fame. But Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns is good – damn good. It’s just not great. As a matter of fact, it misses greatness by a margin measured in just a few filmic fractions. Yet these flaws are still large enough to occasionally sidetrack what is, for the most part, a faithful fulfillment of the decades long struggle to bring the Man of Steel back to the screen. Like Hulk, which tended to take itself too seriously for its own good, this latest incarnation of the speeding bullet/bird-plane personage repeatedly dances around decent ideas without ever landing smack dab in the center of them. In addition, Bryan Singer still doesn’t impress me as a director with a future outside a certain style of film (more on this in a moment). However, it is safe to say that with this highly entertaining experience, our undeniable icon to truth, justice and the American way is back with a viable vengeance.

Certainly, Singer makes his mistakes. Using the original films as a guide was an idea goofier than bringing dinosaurs back from the dead, and the constant referencing of those mid-70s blockbusters bogs down the narrative. Several times during the film, I found myself wondering what the rumored re-imaginings of the man and his material (Kevin Smith, Brett Ratner, McG, Tim Burton, JJ Abrams) came up with. Certainly something more original than giving Superman a son could have been considered for the reintroduction of this classic comic character. While bringing back Lex Luthor worked out well (Kevin Spacey adds a slimy, sinister edge to the role that Gene Hackman failed to find) and the nods to the first film’s origin story are sensational, Returns often feels like the middle act in an already running series. In fact, Singer and his screenwriters spend so much time on those touchy feely parts of the plot (the whole romantic angle with Lois’s new love interest is unexceptional) that they lose a lot of their movie’s direction and drive. Along with the dumb decision to cast Kate Bosworth as the Pulitzer Prize winning (!?!?) journalist (she is simply out of her league here), the emotional side of Superman slows down the spectacle.

What does work, though, are the reasons that movies are made. The airplane sequence is brilliantly realized, a terrific tour de force for the F/X crews as well as a brazen bright spot in Singer’s otherwise sedentary style. Unlike Spielberg or Jackson, this director seems to slack off the minute the main action scenes are over. The sections where Superman saves Metropolis are superb, as is the final confrontation with Luthor. But all the stuff inside the Daily Planet, all the material between Lois and her lover, just sits there without any strength or cinematic sizzle. They seem like rest stops between set pieces. In addition, Singer needed a stronger editorial hand in shaping this story. We meander into time-consuming tangents quite frequently, left with dangling elements (the whole Pulitzer business, the cannibal dog) that never really pay off. Still, the center is solid with Brandon Routh owning the role of Clark Kent/Superman. Though a questionable choice at first, he is incredibly magnetic onscreen, capable of delivering the many sides of the Man of Steel with grace, genuineness, and more than a little wit. This is indeed a very funny film, with lots of clever repartee between characters. Thankfully, the humor doesn’t overpower the heroics, as we are definitely left wanting more – more Routh, more feats of derring-do, more Superman.

Perhaps this is the best way to judge a blockbuster; determining if there’s material worth a second (or third, or fourth) look. The answer is an emphatic “yes”. The Fortress of Solitude sequence is atmospheric and compelling, while Luthor’s ultimate plan is realized in brilliant bit map authenticity. The CGI is never intrusive, the cityscapes of Metropolis are spectacular and Superman’s flying capabilities come across smoother and more valid than in any other super hero movie. It will be interesting to see where the sequel takes us. Like Burton’s first Batman, there are a lot of obvious safeguards in place here, studio-mandated moments that keep the film feeling frequently hemmed in and overly controlled. Perhaps, if it’s successful enough, Warners will turn Singer loose, letting him deliver a definitive take on the subject of Superman without all the nods to fanboy mandates and test audience tendencies. Ranking right up there with the summer’s other entertainment highlights, Superman Returns is one comic book movie that gets it more or less right.

7.5 out of 10

It's the Song, not the Singer

2006-07-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

Where did Bryan Singer get his current cinematic clout? After all, this is a filmmaker with a decidedly limited canon, frequently focusing on a specific genre (the comic/action film) and without substantive popularity outside the X-Men faithful. He’s certainly no Spielberg, can’t match cinematic wits with generational peers Peter Jackson or M. Night Shyamalan, and has yet to prove he can make a decent movie outside an Oscar winning screenplay (The Usual Suspects) or a well established narrative mythology. Still, he’s being championed as the brilliant savior of the Superman series, the Man of Steel’s filmic messiah. Granted, without seeing the film it is hard to judge whether he deserves such slobbering accolades. But it’s clear from the previous films in his oeuvre that Singer has a finite amount of box office goodwill to work with, and this latest entertainment endeavor may use most of it up.

Aside from Public Access, Singer’s apparently less than successful first full length film, I have seen everything else this director has done. I should probably add that the best comic book movie, in my opinion, is not the Batmans or the Spidies, but Guillermo Del Toro’s smashing Hellboy. Not only did Del Toro blend the real with the artificial expertly, he managed to create incredible visuals on a budget ($66 million) less than X-men ($75 million) or X2 ($110 million). Indeed, when I think about those two mutant-based movies, I have to admit an amiable, but less than impressed view. They are entertaining, feature fine work by most of the cast, and show flashes of brilliance mixed in with their action/comic formulas. But to me, they never transcend their origins to be anything other than fan-friendly interpretations of their geeked out source. In fact, they suffer from a pedestrian adherence to the mandates of nerd fulfillment. You can easily visualize Singer sitting onset, a clipboard loaded with X-men references before him, checking off one by one the elements he needs to feature in order to make the faithful happy.

Besides, when it comes to action, Singer is way down on a long list of filmmakers who handle that kind of kinetic cinematic situation a whole heck of a lot better. It’s a group that begins with Spielberg and Jackson and works its way down past the Raimis and the Del Toros, the Richard Donners and the Robert Zemeckises before Singer comes into view. Let’s face it – The Usual Suspects is not an action packed thriller, and anyone whose seen Apt Pupil can tell you that Stephen King offered more chills and thrills in his nasty little novella than Singer could find in several static scenes. No, it appears that the ability to put butts in seats is what makes this more or less industry novice a financially formulated top tier filmmaker. Superman Returns may be the proof that he’s finally reached the upper echelons of his motion picture peer group. But the lack of universal praise for the film (it currently sits with Cars in overall critical comment) and the less than stellar opening (it barely beat Jurassic Park III for third best July 4^th bow) could be clear signs of Singer’s cinematic weakness.

While it may seem unfair to beat up on a director whose been given little opportunity to develop his visual portfolio, it is also not fair to praise him for being profitable. Art may not be commerce’s closest twin, but we do hope that our big screen amusements reach some manner of aesthetic accord when they ask for our money. Singer is just successful, nothing else. He will now be stuck delivering a sequel or two in the continuing serialization of the Superman story, hemmed in by a mandate to follow the same facets that made the first film a moneymaking success. Yet these superhero exercises won’t guarantee his place in the hierarchy of quality filmmakers. There are hundreds of films that deliver box office profits without meriting a consideration of classicism. Sadly, it looks like Bryan Singer will be stuck earning dollars instead of expanding his creative canvas to be something other than a studio shill.

Stupor Man

2006-06-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

In the first of a two part pre-preparation for seeing the upcoming return of the Man of Steel, I focus on my confusion surrounding all the Superman fandom and the character in general.

As admitted here before, I am about as comic book ignorant as you can get. I don’t consider this a lacking on my part, however. Growing up, some kids find their solace in sports. Others, in the dim radioactive glow of the television. A few more seek it in music and/or movies. While I adored the cinema, I was really more of a book boy. I used to ride my bike to the local mall, head to the Hallmark Card Store/Bookseller and paw through the paperbacks, looking for the latest Ray Bradbury collection or any Robert Bloch/Richard Matheson novel. I wasn’t a pure sci-fi geek (though I really enjoyed the genre) and occasionally experimented outside my field of familiarity (a western here, a crime thriller there), but I was clearly a fan of the whole fantasy/horror/speculative fiction world. Indeed, I was far more adventurous in my teens than I currently am today. Call it age or a mature stubbornness, but I just don’t test the literary waters with the frequency that I used to. In my youth, reading was enjoyment. Today, it’s a minor escape.

It’s no surprise then that most of my friends were like me. TV in the early 70s was yet to gear its programming in our tween/teen direction and reading seemed to be the appropriate thing to do. I’ll never forget running across Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama in the lobby newsstand of a downtown Chicago hotel. I remember staring at the cover for days before finally buying a copy and diving into the thick, techno-speak epic. Sadly, outside my circle of friends, few shared my literary obsession. In fact many of my relatives/family friends were either into rock and roll – or comics. One older cousin, in fact, gave me my first, frightening taste of funny book fear. A lover of EC’s horror line, and the gruesome offshoots that followed, he would drag out his gore drenched covers with dismembered bodies and ghoulish fiends and chase us kids around the living room, recreating the diabolic dialogue listed on the cover as we shrieked in terror.

But I digress. Superman, to me, was never a pop icon, or a symbol of virtue in a world sadly lacking same. To me, he was the dumpy George Reeves in a bad monochrome (later, color) kiddie show. I never ‘got’ the concept of the man of steel. Aside from that Achilles Heel kryptonite, he was supposed indestructible. So unlike Batman, or any other ‘human’ based superhero, Superman needed – nay, REQUIRED - a super villain to make any match-up appear interesting. Certainly, the ‘50s TV version didn’t follow this logic, as our emblematic champion was rescuing old ladies, defeating bank robbers, and basically acting like a super sized policeman in many of his adventures. When the major motion picture arrived in the ‘70s, the laconic Lex Luthor (played by Gene Hackman) was more of an organizer than an opponent. He devised dangers for Sups to overcome, and when that didn’t work, out came the gratuitous green crystals. Superman 2 was a little better, since it pitted the defender of freedom against individuals of his own alien kind. Not only did it even out the playing field, but it made the superpower dynamic all that more intriguing.

Well, we’re back to square one with Bryan Singer’s relaunch of the Superman story, and frankly, I am so far not impressed. The hype machine has a lot to do with it. I don’t buy into forced flamboyance, and all the fanboy foaming over Singer and his “saving” of the Man of Steel just turns me off. I did catch a few minutes of Brandon Routh on Larry King Live the other night and he did more or less convince me of his casting with his genial, upfront demeanor. Frankly, he should have been wheeled out a couple of months ago, using his obvious personable mannerism to sell those of us unsure cinephiles on his ability to capture something special in this version of Superman. Call me a comics crackpot, but I find Raimi’s Spider-Man movies (and, to a lesser extent, the two Tim Burton directed Batman fims) as the epitome of superhero cinema. They tap into something subtextual as well as symbolic about the reason people lose themselves in the pen and ink world of heroes and villains. So far, the Super-ballyhoo has not had that effect on me.

Next in Part 2: Bryan Singer deconstructed.

In-Complete Control

2006-06-26T17:45:00.000-07:00

Click is far from perfect. It’s bifurcated approach to family friendly comedy is confusing to both audience and actors. One moment we are laughing as a dog humps a huge stuffed duck. The next our heartstrings are being tugged and tweaked as lessons about living are paraded out like so many superstar cameos. At the center is the same old story we’ve witnessed ad nauseum from the hackneyed Hollywood dream factory – overworked parent/partner learns that his devotion to career is destroying his idyllic home - and, without giving much away, Click doesn’t stray from the formulaic fallout involved. Instead, it wallows in it, pushing tears and belly laughs like punctuation in the life sentences of these golden oldie proverbs. John Lennon once argued “All You Need is Love”. Click argues that said emotion and a high tech plot gimmick are indeed the answer to the repugnant routine of the rat race.

Still, for all its obvious faults, I found myself completely lost in this genial, quasi-genuine comedy. Sandler and his stellar cast - from the beautiful Kate Beckinsale to the ever quirky Christopher Walken – deliver this combination of fart jokes and dramatic dross with enough poignant force to keep the numerous flaws at bay. Granted, it is easy to pick this movie apart. It is overloaded at the front with farce, saving all of its sap until the end and narrative quandaries creep up frequently (what’s the deal with the O’Doyles? How did a butthead like David Hasselhoff become an architectural big wig?). Yet, the way our star and his Wedding Singer/Waterboy director pal Frank Coraci approach this material, you can’t help but give in to its many manipulations. As Michael Newman, Sandler straddles the growing chasm between his glorified goofball past (Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison) and his more moderated mainstream future (50 First Dates, Punch-Drunk Love). His family is fresh and unforced, with kids who are clever without being cloying, and a spouse who struggles to support her underachieving man.

Indeed, without the novelty of the “universal remote” this far more Sandler-esque response to Spanglish could actually play on its own. The opening act, with its near-novel take on family and home have a wonderful rhythm and sincerity. Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner make an excellent pair of aging parents and Jennifer Coolidge’s maneater Janine is an anarchic archetype. But once we get to the techno-tenets of the film, we feel the tone subtlety shifting. Gone are the obvious jokes and slapstick riffs. In their place are pokes at DVD, business acumen, and the concept at time. As Sandler masters his new convenience device, the ways in which he uses it make some manner of sense. Indeed, we buy into the entire remote ruse since it comes with an inherent curiosity. We want to see where the next click takes him. The sentimental last act will be the toughest for the comic’s fans to fully fathom. It’s not because of the depth Click strives for, but the obvious attempts at interpersonal exploitation. While the movie earned its ending’s emotionalism (at least in my opinion), there will be those who think their favorite funnyman has seriously sold out for some syrupy sentimentality.

Indeed, Click is sappy and saccharine, but it’s the good kind of cleansing, cathartic corniness. It reminds us that movies can, occasionally, hit upon the proper combination of entertainment and emotion and play both to a single, satisfying draw. This is not the funniest film Sandler has made (for me, The Waterboy wins that distinction) nor will it be the most maudlin of his overall career (remember, next up is a 9/11 drama). In fact, those critics who’ve called this a midpoint in his shift from stooge to seriousness have more or less hit the narrative nail right on the head. It was a major risk for this popular performer to try and combine dopiness with drama, and it doesn’t always work. But when it does, Click surpasses most of the baffling bullcrap being passed off as blockbuster summer cinema this year. It’s sweet, serious, stupid, strange and just a little sloppy. But at its core is a real desire to comment on the intrinsic value of family. And for this antisocial cynic, the message came across loud and tear…I mean, clear.

7 out of 10

Changing Channels

2006-06-22T23:01:00.000-07:00

To me, Adam Sandler will always be “The Stud Boy” from MTV’s long defunked game show Remote Control. As much as I enjoyed his occasional Opera Man shtick on SNL or his quirky turns in films like The Waterboy and Little Nicky, Sandler seems best – at least to me – when he’s working outside the noticeable arrested development ideal. The whole farty fratboy crudity just doesn’t appeal to me. Besides, it was done definitively by John Belushi and the rest of the Animal House gang, back when the comic was a mere bed-wetting whelp. I am not one of those who think Sandler is unfunny. I just don’t think he’s ever truly tapped into his original stand-up persona; that well defined combination of Brooklyn bray and observational obviousness. When he’s purposefully silly, he’s sensational. When he’s forcibly foolish, he flops around like a dying perch.

So in a box office weekend that sees most of the Hollywood heavy hitters inhaling for the arrival of a certain Man of Steel, Sandler’s family comedy, Click, appears poised for some easy Cineplex supremacy. The storyline cribs from several better sources (including the classic magic watch episode of The Twilight Zone) and seems to forsake most of Sandler’s certified inanity for more family-oriented saccharine. This will be my first in-theater experience with Sandler. My personal belief is that humor is so individualized that it’s getting harder and harder to tap into everyone’s particular funny bone. With other media outlets able to micromanage amusement down to a specific demographic, universal stabs at wit have become almost obsolete. It’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to add the Our Gang rip-off Little Man to my list of must-see summer fare. The Wayans seem dedicated to finding projects that simultaneously downplay and uphold their minority status, and seeing how an audience reacts to such an obvious slapstick stratagem will be a very engaging experience.

It’s the same with Sandler. For decades he’s been the adolescents’ go to guy, the ageless anarchist who still views middle school humor as the height of hilarity. As he attempts to branch out into more adult oriented roles (his next movie is a 9/11 drama costarring Don Cheadle - !!!) he obviously feels the need to make the occasional callback to his days as a dunderheaded ditz. Will this fun-loving flippancy work in the context of a maudlin meditation on maturing? Who knows. Even with the monkey faced mugging of that entertainment non-entity David Hasselhoff and the scene stealing stealth of Christopher Walken, it looks like this may be the second weakest entry in the entire summer movie series. If anyone can save it, it’s Sandler. Conversely, he’s the very reason why it may just reek.

Luch-Adore

2006-06-21T09:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it isn’t Napoleon Dynamite. Frankly, what could be? Jared Hess and his uniquely named wife Jerusha delivered a devastatingly original take on human folly with their look at a bunch of Idaho eccentrics, and very few films could match its amiable instant karma. So it’s unfair to grade Nacho Libre by any other standards that it’s own. Sure, Hess shows a great deal of cinematic sameness with his food-oriented opening and random blackout gags (what was with that corncob to the eye, anyway). Still, as a look at the Luchadores of Mexico and the way in which they infiltrate and influence the everyday life of the country’s sun-dried citizenry, this is a clever, cute little movie. And while it doesn’t have Napoleon Dynamite’s wealth of quotable dialogue (it’s a safe bet no spelling bee-er will be giving a shout out to pals with that “stretchy pants” line), it does contain enough clever moments to warrant a real recommendation.

At the center of course is Jack Black, and for many, he stands as the reason the film flies and/or fails. Too bad the comedic crackpot didn’t have more to work with. Nacho is really not much of a character. He is a dreamer, and a loveable loser, but his is a persona made up almost exclusively of desire and doughiness. Black deserves kudos for showing off his bud-stage man boobs and bountiful belly. The sight of Nacho running around the ring like an escaped Easter ham is hilarious. Indeed, all the moments in the ring are wonderful, Hess helming nice non-formulaic sequences of what are typical Tinsel Town “moments”. I especially liked the statistical rundown on every competitor before the big wrestle-off, with some of the profiles being incredible witty. Still, a lot of people like Jack in wildman wastoid mode, his over the top tendencies and egomaniacal mugging a staple of his standard cinematic shtick. Here, he is subdued and sort of sweet, allowing his love of the masked machismo that comes with being a Luchadore drive his dimensions. As a result, Black is not always funny, but he is always winning.

Paired up with a Hispanic stick figure named Hector Jimenez, we get the perfect comedy duo. It’s just too bad the Hesses and co-writer Mike White (of Chuck & Buck/School of Rock fame) can’t give them more to do. Indeed, toward the end, Esqueleto (Spanish for “skeleton”) goes from being part of the action to merely a bystander. He stands along the sidelines as our porcine hero walks away with the rest of the film. Then there is the love story – or, would it be better to call it an “almost” love story – between Nacho and new nun Sister Encarnacion. Ana de la Reguera looks like a cross between Selma Hayek and Penelope Cruz, but her role is so underwritten that she functions less as a romantic interest for Nacho and more like a mandated female face amongst a sea of grimy gauchos. Indeed, some folks have complained that Nacho Libre is racist in its depiction of Mexican poverty and ethnic stereotypes. And while one can see a small dash of Bill Dana’s Jose Jimenze in Black’s bilingual buffoonery, it’s done with such innocence that it’s not all that shocking.

Indeed, if there is anything unsettling about the film, it’s the thought of how much better it could be. The legend of the Luchadores is ripe fodder for far out funny business (anyone who’s watched an El Santo film can testify to this) and the situation created (orphanage chef fighting for his charges) has its own easily explorable charms. But Hess seems smitten with his Dynamite dynamic of superficiality with a spark. When he focused on a group of groan-inducing geeks, it seemed to work. But here, with so much history inherent in the material, we definitely feel the short shrift. For all its minor faults, Nacho Libre doesn’t deserve the critical drubbing it’s getting. It seems that, for many, the past efforts of the talented individuals in front of and behind the camera created expectations that this quirky little comedy couldn’t possibly meet. Taken on its own though, its definitely one of the better offerings of this so far subpar summer.

6.5 out of 10

Nachismo!

2006-06-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

I am a late comer to the Jack Black fan club, and I have to admit that my membership is tenuous at best. I can count on one hand – almost one FINGER actually – the number of films I have seen him in, and his turn as filmmaker Carl Denham in Peter Jackson’s jolly remake of King Kong is not really the standard Black characterization. True, he is also in one of my favorite Tim Burton films, the horribly misunderstood Mars Attacks!, but his crewcut gets more laughs than he does, and while I find Shallow Hal an interesting movie, Jack plays it straight. He is not the wicked wildman that every Tenacious D fan dotes over. Without a School of Rock frame of reference or High Fidelity hierarchy to judge by, Black was more or less lost to me prior to chartering that clipper to Skull Island.

So when Nacho Libre was announced, I was more than a little skeptical. I adore the entire El Santo school of Mexican wrestling, since it’s the only version of the sport that never once tries to force its false reality on fans. The superhero dynamic recalls the days of classic comic books, and the use of disguises – both in and out of the ring – is showmanship at the highest level. Besides, it’s men grappling in goofy masks for crying out loud. There is just something uniquely sublime about such an idea. Now add Black’s frog-like figure, the writer from Chuck & Buck, and the team behind Napoleon Dynamite and this could be a real comedic gem. Initial critical reaction seems to suggest that Nacho is a ‘dumb’ comedy, the kind of brazen silliness that our jaded critical community just can’t accept without a healthy dose or raunch, or some gross out gags.

Still, I am excited about Nacho Libre, and unlike other cinematic genres, comedy is pretty hard to call on a universal level. Some people love Jerry Seinfeld. Others enjoy Ron White, or Dane Cook. Trying to get a consensus on funny is, at best, a flawed conceit, at worst an impossible undertaking. It’s why those who managed to tap into almost everyone’s humor zone (Jim Carrey, Bill Murray) become such massive cinematic superstars. Laughter is just that personal. And to me, the sight of Jack Black, Porky Pig belly hanging out over a pair of “stretchy pants” like an uncooked ham, is hilarious. Hopefully the rest of the movie – including those amazing looking feral midgets – will live up to these muy gordo expectations. If not, it will be boredom, not beauty, that killed this anticipated box office beast.

Road Rave

2006-06-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

It’s pretty unfair. As a matter of fact, it’s downright despicable when you think about it. Pixar has been producing certified creative magic for nearly twenty years, and yet the recent dogpile to downplay the equally impressive Cars is flabbergasting. I, for one, just don’t see it. What flaws did the other critics see here that I did not? What level of cinematic skill were they hoping for that the movie failed to live up to? Granted, I still think The Incredibles is the best thing the studio has ever done, an unexpected turn into superhero mythology that avoided the standard anthropomorphic objects (toys, vehicle) or entities (fish, bugs) to reinvent the language of 3D animation. Yet apparently with all the memories of Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc. floating around in their brain, my fellow film reviewers just couldn’t cotton to automobiles with attitude.

Granted, this is the most relaxed movie Pixar has ever made, a real attempt at capturing the slower, subtler style of full length feature animation from the past. Sure, the movie starts off like a rocket, and ends with the same sensational racing car frenzy. And in between are nice riffs on NASCAR, celebrity, marketing and selfishness. But once we get to Radiator Springs (in a convoluted manner that may be the film’s only flaw), the character development perfectly meshes with the narrative drive to put the brakes to the pace. Frankly, I can’t think of a single middle act moment I’d sacrifice for the sake of time. The tractor tipping was well down and highly imaginative, the romanticized look at a Route 66 from a fantasy bygone era is brilliantly evocative. All the bonding situations work, and the sequence were Paul Newman’s Hudson shows the speed demon Lighting McQueen how to properly negotiate a sharp turn is just iconic.

Even the elements I thought wouldn’t work did. Larry the Cable Guy looks like roadkill incarnate in his Blue Collar guise, but as Mater the tow truck, his goofy redneck charms are infectious. So are the semi-stereotypical sections with the Hispanic lowrider Ramone, and Italian tire merchants Luigi and Guido, and the confused old Model T curio shop owner Lizzie. Perhaps the reason reviewers find fault in this film is that they aren’t noticing the abundance of detail here, those tiny moments that make Pixar product shine. I especially liked the VW ‘bugs’, the road cone motel, and the rock formations that look like classic cars (and classic car sculptures). This is obviously a movie for those in love with the myth of the American highway, the notion that the open road offers infinite possibilities. It’s freedom and adventure, all just a glorious gas and gulp away. Many of the vistas offered by director John Lassiter and the rest of his team really illustrate this ideal.

As usual, Cars leaves one wanting more. I, for one, would love to know what makes George Carlin’s organic gas so “special”, or why bad guy Chick Hicks (a classic voice work turn by Michael Keaton) is so angry and envious. With almost all the focus on our red racer Lightning McQueen, some of the subplots do seem shortchanged, but they aren’t under-developed, just asking to be expanded and enjoyed. After an initial selection of below-average blockbusters that promised excitement, only to inspire ennui, Cars becomes the first film to live up to – and in my case at least, supercede - the standard Hollywood hype. While it may not seem like it now, this will wind up another cartoon classic from a company that, apparently, can produce nothing but timeless treats.

8 out of 10

Satan for Dummies

2006-06-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

It’s official: The Omen remake is the worst movie I have seen so far this summer. It’s dull, soulless and without a single significant redeeming feature. Anyone with fond memories of the original should steer clear of this turgid excuse for a cash grab. There is nothing hear that you haven’t seen before, heard before, or snickered at before. If you thought the shot-for-shot redux of Psycho was pointless, you ain’t see nothing yet. Frankly there are more problems here than just over familiarity. Thirty years ago, the premise of The Omen seemed fresh, and intriguing. People actually feared the concept of The Devil. Now, with Da Vinci coding up Jesus’ sex life and religion regularly making its way into the worlds of politics and pundits, the arrival of the Antichrist feels like an anticlimactic Fox News Headline. We’ve been told he is coming for 20 plus years. Now that he’s arrived, it’s a lot like the evil Emperor’s new clothes.

As I feared, both Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles are woefully miscast as the well-placed power couple Richard and Katherine Thorne. They are so young looking, as a matter of fact, that the movie has to make several obvious nods to the fact. They toss in nepotism, and a baptism made relationship to the President to argue for the mid 30’s Pappa Thorne as Ambassador to England. Sadly, this is not the sole bit of sloppiness on the part of scribe David Seltzer (he of the original Omen screenplay) and director John Moore. After helming the less than stellar Flight of the Phoenix remake, Moore proves that, as cinematic skills go, he specializes in mundane-en-scene. This is one of the least alive films in recent memory, bereft of even a moment of forward momentum. The narrative takes itself so seriously that it permanently plods along, never achieving a gonzo genre groove. Unlike the Texas Chainsaw and Hills Have Eyes revamps, which explore the movie from the myth backwards, this rote recollection of the first film is just a series of shots leading to a thoroughly predicable finale.

Then there is the horrible hellboy himself, the haughtily named Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick. He looks less like an actual child and more like someone’s idea of what a brat actor playing the Devil’s spawning should be. His dark eyes and Moe bowl haircut can’t hide the fact that this kid can’t act. His entire range of emotion consists of scrunching up his face and attempting to glower. Even when he’s pitching his preposterous hissy as the family pulls up to a cathedral, Moore hides his half-baked histrionics with music video style editing and hand-held hackwork. Thankfully, a couple of the performers acquit themselves. Pete Postlethwaite is so determined in his turn as the about-to-be-skewered Father Brennan that you almost start to care. Almost. Then David Thewlis channels his own inner David Warner, turning soon-to-be-headless photographer Keith Jennings into a near three-dimensional entity. Nearly.

Yet it’s all in service of something done ten times better three decades ago. When Gregory Peck squinted his eyes and looked skeptical, there was power in his presence. Mr. Schreiber is just a wet behind the ears wuss. When Lee Remick died, she got the spectacular send off her long-suffering mother character deserved. Here, Julie Stiles just convulses a little under Mia Farrow’s aged corpse hands (as Ms. Baylock, Farrow is just fair) before simply fading away. Thewlis’s Mediterranean Mohawk has a nice gory gratuity to it, but everything else is sullied and soiled by the overabundance of exposition. Nothing ruins a gag faster, be it in humor or horror, than someone having to explain it to you. But in the case of The Omen, we already knew the tale. The constant repetition and reminders are just onerous overkill.

1 out of 10

Gods and Little Monsters

2006-06-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

When it was released in 1976, EVERYBODY wanted to see The Omen. Like The Exorcist before, it was considered a high class horror film, a movie macabre with one eye on its fright factors and another on the year-end awards lists. It offered Oscar winner Gregory Peck and one-time nominee (for The Days of Wine and Roses) Lee Remick in a child-oriented continuation of the decade’s unfathomable fascination with the Devil. Along with a few stunning set pieces (David Warner’s decapitation was a grin-inducing gore benchmark) and a staggering amount of theological tubthumping, it fueled the foundationless belief that the Antichrist was just a couple of Revelation passages away from arriving.

With Hollywood’s redux fever at an all time pathetic pitch, what with versions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, The Fog and The Hills Have Eyes under its belt, it’s now apparently time to revisit little Beelzebubba Jr. and his numbskulled foster family. Sadly, the makers of this unapologetic update have made a crucial mistake, one that may sink the scare fest before it even gets a chance to fire up its familiar frights. With Peck and Remick on board, the premise had a seriousness and a gravitas that Julie Stiles and Liev Schrieber just can’t offer. Instead of being a well-seasoned government official and a fashion plate wife, we get a couple of Gen X pretenders to the throne. Peck was 51 when he made the original. Schrieber is just scraping 40. And Remick’s feisty 41 can’t match Stiles zygote-like 25!

The marketers of this remake must assume that, with the rest of the planet lining up to see Pixar’s latest, Cars, a significant group of alienated teens and scary movie geeks will be willing to give their Satanic shell game a try. Buzz is bad, and the reasons are readily apparent in the trailer. For the most part, this looks like a shot for shot redux. It is so recognizable, you may catch yourself looking for Gus Van Zant’s name amongst the credits. Besides, the kid looks like he regularly attends the Hannibal Lector Finishing School. His eyes have that Charlie Manson “Helter Skelter” quality that more or less certifies that he’s evil incarnate. Yet as one of the few horror offerings this blockbuster season, I’ll be plunking down my dosh to witness a movie I’ve already experienced for close to three decades. You gotta love Hollywood!

Continuing on with my hate/hate relationship with in theater family fare (I still have the selfish stench of the Over the Hedge herd in my naysaying nostrils), I’ll be doubling up this week. Cars should continue the newest House of Mouse division’s winning streak – even with the problematic presence of Larry the Cable Guy in a leading role. How this king of buttscratchin’ and BO became a superstar celebrity speaks volumes for our culturally corrupt social order. One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State aside, Pixar can usually be counted on for megatons of imagination and an oversized helping of heart. Unless they overdo it with the NASCAR nods, or let Larry fire off one too many of his country bumpkin butt burps (read: fart jokes) we should have our first critical hit of the Summer. Too bad that drip Damien has to step in and spoil the party. Here’s hoping he, instead of his nanny, is dangling from a noose at week’s end.

'Hedge' Enemy

2006-06-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

It took Walt Disney and his posthumous House of Mouse, the Warner Brothers and anyone else in the cartoon business nearly 70 years to really kill off hand drawn animation. Yet it’s hard to say what is more depressing – the end of said art form as a viable entertainment entity, or the supersonic manner in which CGI is headed toward the same filmic fate. By now, your 3-D microchip movie has become so formulaic that other genres – like romantic comedies and horror films – are getting jealous of their obvious recipes for semi-success. In fact, even the most illiterate cinephile can list the necessary elements for any Fox/Pixar/Dreamworks product. Take some anthropomorphic entities (cars, animals, toys, fish), load up the script with dozens of dime store pop culture references, hire several superstars for a little voice over stunt casting, create an over the top action scene or three, and then layer in the lame substandard rock tunes (or if you’re lucky, Randy Newman’s LA shuffle songcraft). Viola! Instant Shrek! When I decided to see Over the Hedge this week (sticking fast to my “No Aniston” manifesto of last week), what I expected was the typical CG stuff. What I got instead was a confusing combination of big screen fun and in-theater frustration.

As a movie, Over the Hedge is leaps and bounds better than previous Dreamworks drek like Shark Tale, or the mediocre Madagascar. Perhaps this is because it is based on a comic strip, and therefore, the creative team has to balance the need to stay true to the characters while jazzing up the pixel pizzazz to hopefully stimulate the core demographics’ tiny brain. While there is way too much leaning toward the light show here, there are some highly redemptive moments. Gary Shandling is great as the cautious turtle Verne, while Steve Carrell is almost unrecognizable as the hyperactive squirrel Hammy. Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara do a nice Fargo accent riff with their porcupine characters, while Wanda Sykes sounds weirdly out of place as the wood’s first ghetto skunk. Still, she’s endearing in her seduction scene with a burly suburban cat. About the only individual here who sounds generic is that blockbuster big deal Bruce Willis. His rotten raccoon RJ is bland, really nothing more than a story catalyst whose illogical actions at the beginning of the film fill a pedestrian requirement to get the narrative going. Frankly, the plot didn’t need the pissed-off bear angle to work. Having the creatures figure out how to fend for themselves as suburbia envelops and overwhelms them would have been good enough. Instead, we’re back to the old ‘goal/mission’ mandates of the modern cartoon canon, substituting spectacle for subtlety.

Another problem arrives with the human element in the plot. The deranged homeowner who hates the creatures is Cruella DeVille without the style or wicked wit, and the bumbling exterminator (sorry, ‘Verminator’) is underwritten and very poorly executed. He’s like a refrigerator with a comb-over. Indeed, the entire suburban setting looks boxy and mundane, offering none of the artistry or aesthetic we except from the CGI genre. Only Nick Notle’s angry bear makes any impact. But if you’re looking for the real villain here, it is not associated with the film itself. It’s the parents who insist upon using the cinema as a way station for their ill-mannered and ADD addled brats. I had stopped going to family fare back in the early ‘90s, when children would chime in with their less than intelligent running commentaries during (typically, Disney) films. You’ve really never experienced Aladdin or The Lion King until you’ve had a sold-out theater filled with smelly, sticky children shouting out every line and shrieking every song like a dying donkey with no ‘off’ switch. Since those heinous experiences I have refused to experience anything animated or G rated in a theater.

At first, it looked like Over the Hedge would be different. The seats were mostly empty as the movie started. But leave it to a clan of SUV-driving dunderheads to waltz into the screening, arms overloaded with sugar-coated kiddie samplers, and immediately take up residence right in front of my wife and I. There was row after row of available seating, but since they decided to travel in a herd, they needed an entire section to themselves (what they really needed was some family planning, but I digress). Anyway, the entire movie was marred by their incessant talking, non-stop fidgeting, intermittent cell phone activation and frequent requests to visit the restroom. At certain moments I could drown it all out and enjoy the film. At others, all I could hear was the sound of underdeveloped brains with no internal monologue chattering away like monkeys with manic-depressive disorder. Joy.

As a result, Over the Hedge was a very mixed bag for me. I liked the sequence where Hammy pounded caffeine and the entire cosmos slowed down as he went about his successful subterfuge. I also enjoyed several of the skunk jokes, including the moment where the potent rodent finally fired off her stink bomb. But much of the material is aimed at the toddler to tween set, and based on the amount of seat shifting they did, they found much of the movie like a visit to the ear doctor. While it can’t compare to Pixar’s best – and frankly, what could? - it does have its definite delights. Once Cars hits theaters this week, this middling success will more than likely slink off the cultural landscape, waiting for its eventual DVD revival. It can be happy with being literally half-hearted while moving us ever closer to CGI’s final resting place.

5 out of 10

The June 2nd Connundrum

2006-06-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

I hate Jennifer Aniston. Nope, sorry, that’s not the right word. I DESPISE her. She is no ‘friend’ to me, and her peachy keen public persona reminds me of the girls I knew in junior high who hid their slutty skank side behind a demeanor of good-natured wholesomeness. Besides, she really can’t act. Her performances are usually pitched at a level between somnambulist and the school play, and no amount of press can prove that her sitcom success was anything but a fluke of clever marketing. Even in her supposedly serious Indie persona, she is merely average. The Good Girl, featuring a cast of co-stars that put the artist most notable for her haircuts to shame, proved that she could almost hold her own with the heavy hitters of outside cinema. But when it comes to drawing this 45 year old film fan into the theater, Aniston ain’t going to do it.

So for those of you expecting a review of The Break-Up next week, I apologize, but it’s just not going to happen. Me and the Missus wouldn’t be caught dead seeing a sloppy romantic comedy featuring real life paramours unless the last names of Burton and Taylor are part of the title cards. Modern unmarrieds are like a disease in our current pop culture landscape. We celebrate Brad and Angelina like they’re members of the cosmic elite, but laugh like loons when Jessica Simpson and her boy toy hubby Nick Lachey lapse into marital decay (actually, it IS kind of funny). While the subject of who Aniston screws is as baser as back fence gossip gets, it seems to be a prime concern for a significant number of the purchasing public. Of course, Mr. Pitt didn’t help matters much. He better watch out, or he will supplant Warren Beatty and that old timer Jack Nicholson in the disreputable category of clueless show biz cad. After all, the critical afterglow of Fight Club can only last so long.

Of course, the inevitable question becomes – what to see for the next write up. Unfortunately, living in the tainted town of Tampa means I don’t have access to much art house fare. That leaves out such curious question marks as District B13, or An Inconvenient Truth. A one time favorite theater of mine – The Olde Hyde Park 7 – has had a major (read: stadium seating) overhaul, and are tauting such titles as The Notorious Betty Page and Thank You for Smoking. Yet, sadly, these films seem at odds with my desire to dive into the mainstream Hollywood maelstrom. Therefore, I am probably stuck picking through the rest of the box office wreckage. Over The Hedge is still around, but I have kid vid issues (to me, CGI cannot save uninspired animation loaded with crass cultural references – or a theater full of noisy, unsupervised brats) and I am sure I could scrounge up a screening of Mission Impossible III, if I wanted. Heck, out of total desperation I could take in See No Evil, or maybe even RV.

But there is one thing for sure. Jennifer Aniston and I will not be “an item” this weekend…or ever.

X Minus

2006-05-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

When is a spectacle not very special, an epic rather anemic? When it’s the final film in the so-so serialization of the X-Men comics onto the silver screen. Fans foamed when they learned that their beloved Bryan Singer wouldn’t be helming this final installment in the seemingly stalled franchise, but they really needn’t have worried. Not even their much admired moviemaker could have saved this script. Someone in Fox’s story department must have decided that the first two films were just too packed with context, and jettisoned most of the political and social significance from the storyline. Then they filled in the gaps with mutants - more and more mutants. Frankly, the desire to overload the narrative with new faces is just one of several cinematic missteps X-Men: The Last Stand makes (and, in all honestly, a flaw flowing through all three films). No, all new director Brett Ratner brings to the mix is a level of superficiality that a concept as complex as this can’t possibly survive on.

Dealing with the influx of newbies for a moment, only Kelsey Grammar seems convinced he is in a storyline of substance. His Beast, woefully underdeveloped and underrepresented, cuts an intriguing swath in the scenes he is in. But we don’t learn enough about him, his motives and his mindset, to welcome him wholly into the X-Men fold. He often feels like a hold-over from a different film. Then there are Magneto’s new companions. Pyro, otherwise known as the snot-nosed irritant Aaron Stanford, is like that know-it-all asshole who sat behind you in Math class, answering every question correctly as he incessantly kicked the back of your seat. He needs a beat down, big time, along with a huge cup of bad boy comeuppance. While this may all be a compliment to Mr. Stanford’s performance, I for one wished he would choke on his own conflagration and DIE!. As for the rest of the bad guys, they look like they dropped out of a primitive performance art version of Rent. Their tattooed and pierced personages look like throwbacks to a Goth jam band festival, not a futuristic force of evil. And poor Vinnie Jones, reduced to playing a boulder with a British accent. How the mighty have fallen.

(And could someone tell me why the critical community is so cow-eyed over Ellen Page’s good girl Kitty Pride. So she passes through walls. Big friggin’ deal. I killed a gopher once with a stick.)

But the main problem with the film, one that keeps it from reaching the highest elevations of popcorn entertainment, is its lack of real emotional resonance. Several MAJOR characters bite the big one in this film - on both sides of the ethical equation - and yet there is not a single second where these deaths/transformations have a viable, visceral impact. When Jean Gray returns from her watery grave, it’s a CGI sequence out of the lake-bound version of The Perfect Storm. When another important player disintegrates into a thousand shards of essence, it’s supposed to be a heart-wrenching end for an iconic figure. But the sentiment is stillborn, falling flat within the whirlwind Ratner is constantly creating. The action set pieces all suffer from this sense of the staged. The final standoff between man and mutant, occurring in one of the most illogical locales in all of filmdom, delivers none of the thrilling satisfaction we expect from such cinematic fireworks. We want to be wowed and awe-struck. Instead, we are struck with how ordinary it all is.

Granted, the movie is mildly entertaining, never truly curling up and turning into the corrupt cowflop the fans had feared (though that doesn’t seem to be the case for the truly devoted. Apparently, this movie bites bug butt from their graphic novel perspective), and in Jean Gray’s angry alter ego The Phoenix, Famke Jassen has finally found a role to fit her arch androgyny. Why Wolverine and Cyclops go ga-ga over her rather masculine mannerisms is one of the trilogy’s biggest mysteries. Hugh Jackman makes the impossible-to-kill triple blade boy a sure symbol of half-baked heroism. It will be interesting to see how the planned spin-off for his manmade mutant character comes off. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart trade Old Vic volleys - and age defying make-up work as part of a pre-credits flashback - and Ratner does indeed keep the franchise’s future afloat without doing any real damage. No, the desire to rush out another X-Men movie before the storyline was secure is why the third times not quite the charm. Instead, we have a perfunctory piece of summer film fluff that ends this cinematic phase of the X-Men with a decided whimper, not the big badass bang everyone had hoped for.

5 out of 10

Comics Only

2006-05-23T21:15:00.000-07:00

I have to admit it: I was NEVER a huge comic books fan. I only followed two characters quasi-religiously - Plasticman and Howard the Duck - and was intrigued by, but never collected outright, the adventures of that hammer-slinging Norseman, the Mighty Thor. I was well aware of the obsessive/compulsive nature of those “into” what my Grandmother called “funny books”. I had a best friend in high school who overloaded several filing cabinets in his bedroom with carefully categorized and baggied issues of all the titles that came out each week (he must be a billionaire by now…or very lonely). As a child, my cousins used to drag out their gory EC entries to “show off the good parts”, while an Archies or Little Dot always seemed to be lying in the back seat of the family car. I’m not a nimrod - I’m well aware of the whole Bat-Super-Aqua-Spider-man dynamic, and I do understand and appreciate the whole “graphic novel” notion of recent decades. But for me, comics are and remain a wise-ass fowl and some dude who could stretch himself into pretzel shapes.

All of which leads to this week's entry - X-Men: The Last Stand (gee, I wonder why they decided against something simpler, like X³-Men, or X-Men³. Probably too algebraic for the non-mathematical mainstream crowd). While I will NEVER understand why film fans foam at the mouth over Bryan Singer (has he really earned such geeked out praise?), I do have a fondness for the first two films. The leatherette outfits the mutants must wear seem like a cop out to their comic counterparts (after all, colorful iconic garb is what makes our superheroes so…super), the films’ undercurrent of intolerance worked well. X2, on the other hand, seemed like a sprawling sequel in search of a stabilizer. At any given moment, the follow-up looked like it would breach its cinematic limits and explode expositionally, trying to be everything to everyone. With the boring Brett Ratner behind the lens this time out, it will be interesting to see where the series goes. Will Brett abandon Singer’s comic nerd necessities to deliver a standard action flick? Or will he stick with the determined devotion that worked in the past? That’s the real “X” factor here.

'Da Vinci' Load

2006-05-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

Someone needs to stop Akiva Goldsman before he writes again. Already announced to mangle and maul the brilliant Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend (I’ll just skip the whole problematic “Fresh Prince” angle for now), his is a career coated in such mediocrity that the notion that he owns an Academy Award for his piss poor efforts is enough to void Oscar’s entire reason to exist. While he may be the nicest man in the history of the world, bathing orphaned kittens in his spare time, he just can’t write a coherent/compelling screenplay. Want proof? Look at his IMDb listing. Anyone responsible for Practical Magic, Batman and Robin AND the big screen bungle of Lost in Space deserves karate chops, not kudos.

It’s no surprise then that Goldsman’s ham-fisted handling of Dan Brown’s blockbuster The Da Vinci Code is what ultimately sinks this excessively expositional stinker. For a film based on an incredibly interesting premise (I especially like the central notion of Christianity being formed by the Word of God…as determined by Emperor Constantine and his Council of Nicea), Goldsman, and the equally uninspired director Ron “Opie Cunningham” Howard craft a thriller with no thrills, a mystery whose main tenets have been long known by the viewing public, and a transcontinental chase that looks like it was filmed on the streets of Epcot, not the major cities of the world. If it wasn’t for the unshaved faces of the numerous noxious Gardiens walking around with questionable personal hygiene, we’d never know we were in France.

The Da Vinci Code is a huge, unbridled mess, a movie that doesn’t understand the simplest of things - like how to tell a story. Knowing full well that ANY adaptation of Brown’s bombshell is going to meet with criticism and carping, Goldsman and Howard attempt the impossible - cramming every narrative nook and cranny from the novel into a 150 minute film. As a result, these plot point pit stops really ruin whatever forward momentum the storyline tries to build. As part of these purposeful pauses, we get flashbacks, character backstory, explanatory asides and routine revelations, all rendered in what can best be described as a desaturated nod to Gore Verbinksi’s The Ring. Whenever we need context in this confusing, catawampus waste of time, Howard drains out the color and gives us a sneak peek at all the history/humanity/happenstance behind the often baffling brouhaha. It’s not long before the film starts to lap itself, re-explaining things we already know as characters converse, non stop.

Nothing works here - not the performances, not the “twists”, not the threat of evil from a pasty-faced, self flagellating albino monk. Tom Hanks does an atypical turn as a sleepwalker as scholar, forced to be a passive aggressive member of his own heroics, while Amelie sweetie Audrey Tautou apparently found her character’s motivation by watching various wildlife creatures stare directly into the headlights of oncoming cars. Most critics praise Sir Ian McKellen’s Sir Leigh Fleabag (sorry, ‘Teabing’) as the best thing in the film, but he’s so obvious in his hobbled histrionics that his last act character turn is tired, not thrilling. Indeed, everything about The Da Vinci Code is insular and insipid. Somewhere inside this creaky, crappy film is a real adventure romp waiting to be revealed. Sadly, it’s swamped by fan expectations and the lousy, languid writing of one of Hollywood’s most heinous hacks.

3 out of 10

'Code' Cocked

2006-05-16T22:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, Week 1 came and went without a hitch (except for the weird guy sitting behind me during Poseidon who seemed to be gasping for air right along with the cast onscreen - yeesh!) and now it's time to turn our sights to the second of our (supposed to be) stellar studio offerings. While I have not plunked down the $8.00 to visit Dan Brown's literary take on Jesus as baby daddy, I have reviewed several of the cottage industry offshoots that arrived in preparation of the Ron Howard directed/Tom Hanks starring big screen adaptation. So in anticipation of this week's entry - The Da Vinci Code - I will be plowing through these titles once again, making sure I get my Knights Templar in a row. From Merovingians and the Priore of Zion to the disturbing fact that Akiva Goldsman is behind the laptop on this one (anyone who gave this stunted scribe an Oscar deserves a special place in Hell. Got that, Satan my man-goat?) I can only imagine another mediocre time at the movies. The film will be a big fat hit (you don't sell 79 gagillion novels and not make some impact at the box office) but as art, it will definitely pale in comparision to the title talent.

Fan Overboard

2006-05-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

It seems almost surreal to say this, but Irwin Allen was a stark raving genius. Want proof? Well, look no further than that capsized cruiser called Poseidon and then match it against Mr. Lost in Space’s 1972 epic of the same name (sort of). Even with all of Hollywood’s CGI shuffling, and an audience testing process that should have micromanaged the remake down to a dozen or so effective set-pieces, this movie flounders like its director’s post-Das Boot career. Oh sure, Woflgang Peterson delivered In the Line of Fire and Air Force One during the decades since his German U-boat drama showed us the other side of World War II. But when you ratchet up substantial stinkers like Enemy Mine, Troy and Outbreak, your Emperor-like new clothes are bound to be revealed.

In an industry loaded with certifiably dumb ideas, this one didn’t seem so stupid - at least, not at first. Peterson, a decent action director, would take one of the most novel notions for a disaster pic of all time, update it with the latest in studio wizardry, and deliver it to a demographic still zygoted when the original offered its Oscar caliber cast. It’s amazing to look back and realize that five out of the ten leads in the maiden voyage of Poseidon all owned Academy gold (Gene Hackman was handed his during production, while Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters and Jack Albertson all had their statuettes at home). The current passenger list, however, is made up of a single award winner (Richard Dreyfus) and several other actors who must have been hanging around the Warner Brothers lot when the project was in pre-production.

Not that a group of Old Vic thespians with Shakespeare around for rewrites could save this waterlogged waste of time. Poseidon is 90 minutes of endless meandering, heroics via happenstance and shoddy F/X work. It’s a film that avoids logic and logistics to make up or modify its rules of survival at any given moments. Characters come and go with reckless abandon, and the action sequences stink of first draft dimensions. Granted, the opening set-piece, where that mighty rogue wave (the PC terminology for the far more racially charged “tidal” wave, apparently) topples the ship has some nice moments, even if the computer generated people look like shoddy stick figures with St. Vitus Dance. And Peterson sure likes to show off his corpses. There are more dead bodies in Poseidon than in any other sinking ship melodrama ever made, and this director loves to languish on their burned, drowned dimensions.

But it all adds up to nothing, or actually, more than nothing. Call it a brisk and breezy summer entertainment - or that most dreaded of post-modern denouncements, the “popcorn” movie - but it doesn’t change the fact that Poseidon sputters when it should sail. Even in his grave, Irwin Allen still knows that you have to have people to root for, otherwise you’re watching the cinematic equivalent of a tour video for the new Poseidon ride at Universal Studios. Sadly, some familiar faces (Dreyfus, the getting mighty creaky Kurt Russell) and forced, formulaic relationships are all we have to go on. By the time we reach the surprisingly stupid finale (featuring the only engine room that can still function after being submerged in salt water for several hours), we just want out - out of the narrative, out of the constant screaming and caterwauling, out of the hackneyed he-man hyperactivity. When something that cost $200 million can make the startlingly awful Beyond the Poseidon Adventure look like a real winner, you know there is something substantially wrong. Poseidon should have been more than just a high tech trick. However, even in this case, technology can’t save our ship.

2 out of 10

Drowning by (the) Numbers

2006-05-10T21:33:00.000-07:00

This week, I will be attending the latest release from Das Boot director Wolfgang Peterson. It's that most au currant concept in Hollywood today - the reimagining of a previous motion picture. Wolfy is preparing his big budget, CGI riff on a personal fave from the early '70s, The Poseidon Adventure (now given the more hep, hipster tag Poseidon. One name. You know, like Cher). Anyway, the previews look tempting, but early buzz is bad. Many critics find the new version as unbelieveable as Stella Stevens marrying Ernest Borgnine (heck, I still can't get over the fact my man Marty shacked up with Ethel Merman...eek!). Anyway, I look forward to lots of action setpieces, unlimited explosions (both above and beneath water), and a substantial lack of Shelly Winters. For those of you living under a pop culture boulder, here's the trailer (thanks, You Tube!)

Let the Shames Begin...

2006-05-10T21:12:00.000-07:00

Every summer they arrive, and every summer I ignore them. Hollywood ramps up the hype machine, promising untold entertainment possibilities, and almost from the very first bit of ballyhoo, I'm bored. It's not because of the films themselves - most end up being excellent escapist fun, and a few even manage to make it over into the arena of the memorable/masterful.

Still, it seems kind of strange that a person whose made their reputation as a critic, whose reviewed over 1400 titles in his tenure as a writer, would simply blow off the summer blockbuster season and not at least try to get involved. I used to. Oh yes, back in the day when life seemed simpler and time more plentiful, I would take in almost every popcorn picture. From the dopiest action flick to the high concept comedy, I would pay my money, find a (non stadium) seat and partake of the Tinsel Town tonic. Sometimes, the draft was dismal and dumb. At other times, the ambrosia was sweet and heady.

In a move designed to reconnect with my film criticism calling, I am starting this blog. My goal is simple - to stop wondering about the big budget spectacles playing at my local Multiplex and actually witness this summer's cinematic onslaught. Now, granted, I can't see every movie that makes it to the theaters each week, but I promise I will see one MAJOR motion picture a week, from now until the end of August, all in an attempt to reset my internal aesthetic.

As a middle-aged man, however, a few caveats are in order. I cannot make opening day screenings because of previous commitments both personal and professional. Instead, I will be attending a MONDAY afternoon matinee, and will hopefully have my thoughts up two days later, on WEDNESDAY. Unless something happens (like nuclear war, or a bad case of writer's cramp), I should have no problem with the schedule. Also, as the mood hits me, I will update the blog with films I am interested in, links to trailers, and some pre-screening ruminations of my expectations.

It may be fun. It may turn out to be a colossal folly. My aim is understandable - in an industry that I am an ancillary part of, I feel more like an interloper than an insider. So for the next 18 weeks or so (David Poland has dibs on the number '20') I return to the scene of my initial love affair with film. Let the shames begin...

Save me a seat,

BILL

Coming Soon!

2006-05-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

Let the 2006 Summer movie season begin.

BILL