The Merchant of Venice (2004)

Sum: Remember grade 10 English? Okay, good. If not, Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes) wants to borrow money from his depressed friend, Antonio (Jeremy Irons), the title character, so he can woo the beautiful and rich Portia (Lynn Collins). Antonio's a little down on his luck as well, so he borrows money from the Jewish Shylock (Al Pacino), who, instead of charging his usual high rate of interest, requires a pound of Antonio's fair flesh at the forfeitsure of the bond.

You can guess where this is going to end up, can't you?

I remember way back when I read this that I was too busy laughing right out loud at Shakespeare's hilarity (that dude's funny) while the rest of my class stared at me for many obvious reasons instead of wondering what my Jewish teacher thought of the play's outrageous Anti-Semitism. He basically brushed it off as saying that it was very common in the day, and Shakespeare's audience would find Shylock's forced conversion at the end merciful.

Our timid curriculum did nothing to stand up against it, and we all just let it slide.

Adapter-director Michael Radford rightly puts Shylock at the centre of the story, and Pacino restrains himself more than he has in years, making his heartbreak and eventual lashing out all the more painful to watch. Radford, though, like my English teacher of yore, brushed off the racism that haunts the play. He plays it lip service with a historical note at the beginning, and he doesn't seem to give it a second thought after that. I felt like he was missing the point.

He was quick to note, however, the highly suspect relationship between Bassanio and Antonio. I have never doubted that it was Antonio's more-than-friends love that pushed him so far for Bassanio's sake. Irons conveys that love that dares not speak its name well, and I did feel a bit bad for him the whole way through, even if he was a little villain-y himself.

Before I saw the movie, I read that Collins had replaced a very pregnant Cate Blanchett in the play's pivotal role. Now I wish I had never gained this piece of information. Although she bears a physical resemblance to Blanchett, Collins is an actress of nowhere near the calibre. She did a good job, but knowing that it should of been Blanchett made it not good enough.

As for Fiennes, I haven't liked him since he worked with Blanchett in 1998's masterful Elizabeth. I was much too distracted by his eyes being way too close together to think much of his performance.

There were some bright spots in the performances of Kris Marshall as Gratiano, Zuleikha Robinson as Jessica, and cute Charlie Cox as Lorenzo but not in Benoît Delhomme's cinematography. This was the most dreary, cold, and depressing Venice I have ever seen. Ever. I know no one place is permanent sunshine and happiness, but the wintery feel to this movie juxtaposed with the CGI'ed kingdom of love where Portia resides is too much. That's where they are keeping all the happiness, I guess.

I can't argue with Shakespeare's comedy or his time-representative racism. Nonetheless, I can argue with how we refuse to deal with it today. B

Casino (1995)

Premise: When I tried to watch this movie on IFC one night, the guide's description said "Two men turn a casino into an empire." Not quite, IFC or StarChoice people. Two New York men seek to turn a Las Vegas casino into an empire, but they approach it from very different angles. Sam 'Ace' Rothstein (Robert DeNiro) is trying to go legit while Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) is out to steal all he can. Throw in Ginger (Sharon Stone), a hustler who becomes Sam's trophy wife, and you know you're in for trouble.

The really, really good kind of trouble. The kind where you only stop yourself from focusing on the film long enough to comment on how good it is. Unfortunately, everyone and their brother kept trying to ruin it for Princess Conseula and I.

You can see how it might be difficult for us to scrape together 178 minutes, right?

Martin, oh Martin, why do they all have to be so long? I'll never understand that part. I can handle it when you have such a beautifully crafter piece as this one, but I am not among the majority. Hitch always said that the length of a film should be directly proportional to the size of the human bladder.

On the other hand, when was the last time you watch a grand casino epic? I'm thinking never.

This isn't one of Martin's most celebrated movies, but we all know that the Academy has never cared for him. Fools. Still, I found it to be one of the most affecting I have seen. Martin pushed Stone to heights previously unknown, as well as depths. I've always thought she was a hottie, but I never knew she had this in her. Stone's Ginger is strong and stupid, brave and disloyal. It was one of the whirlwind performances where the actress throws herself in head first. Martin was there to catch her.

But Martin and Nicholas Pileggi's screenplay, while elegant, did function as well as a net. I never fully understood why Ginger acted the way she did. I mean, I sort of did, and it wasn't enough. Pileggi also wrote the book, and it is adapted from a true story. Without giving too much away, only one of the three survive, so they'd be the only source on the whole affair, right? Which means that they'd really only have their insight into the story.

Martin and Pileggi did make narration work, even for me. Ace and Nicky had such different interpretations of events that you wanted to hear what each of them would say about what happened over the ten years. You wanted to know what their spin on it would be.

I loved Pesci in this role. I loved to think of him as Brooklyn, so that part was no surprise. What was surprising was what a great villain he made. He put a man's head in a vice, and I still didn't want anything bad to happen to him. It wasn't reserved, but it was glorious.

DeNiro, on the other hand, was cool as a cucumber. Or as cold as ice. Basically, Ace was a calculating iceberg, but he still broke your heart with his love for Ginger. He was one of those mostly easy going men that you would never want to see get angry. When you do, you know someone's gonna get it.

Martin Scorcese, in case you were wondering. We're on a first name basis now. I've decided.

In the end, while long and incredibly difficult to watch it my home, Casino was powerful, messy, and violent. I loved it. A

Happy Anniversary, Feria Films! I was going to review my favourite movie of all time on such a special day, but it has yet to arrive from Zip. It will have to wait.

The first anniversary is paper, so be sure to send a card, cash, or a book. You know, whatever you have.

Fever Pitch (1997)

Summary: Paul Ashworth (Colin Firth) cares more about his favourite losing football team, Arsenal, than he does about the rest of his life. While he's an English teacher, he cares more for the school's football team that he coaches. He becomes involved with an uptight math teacher, Sarah Hughes (Ruth Gemmell), who does her best to keep up with it all until she discovers that she's preggers.

It has all the makings of what April looks for: Colin Firth and a screenplay based on a best selling Nick Hornby autobiographical novel. In fact, Hornby wrote the screenplay himself.

Too bad it's not interesting in anyway. I mostly thought about how it should be funnier and debated turning it off when I watched it months ago. Then I didn't want to write about it because I couldn't think of anything to say about it.

I mean that. It wasn't so bad that I could ridicule it because we all know that I find sweet delight in ridiculing bad movies. It's cathartic. It was so bad that I didn't care about what happened between Paul and Sarah.

Alright, so I wished Sarah would grow a spine a little. It's not that she didn't giver Paul a piece of her mind many times over, but Gemmell didn't do enough to make it seem like it was difficult to deal with Paul's obsession.

Firth was good enough, but I find that I have typecast him in my head. I expect him to be all upper class, stiff upper lip, randy in the bedroom, and he's really not here. He even worked for me in Girl with a Pearl Earring as one hell of a sexy artist. He didn't sell sports fanatic, though. He mostly sold dumbass.

I'm going to go ahead and blame both Hornby's screenplay (if you can imagine), and the plodding pace that director David Evans gave the piece. It's very hard to make a slow comedy work, and Evans' shouldn't have attempted it his first time around.

Also, there was no real need to juxtapose Paul's relationship with Sarah to young Paul's (Luke Aikman) relationship with his father (Neil Pearson). I like Pearson, and I'm all for him in more movies. Even so, showing Paul giving up his dad for football and potentially losing Sarah for that same reason is like writing "Durr!" across the screen for those who didn't see the similarities. I don't care how autobiographical it is, we get it - the man loves his football.

Actually, that was also how I felt about having Firth narrate Paul's feelings about Arsenal, and how everyone loving and supporting one team was like having a big, sweaty, violent, slightly crazed family. I realize that narration is now par for the course in Hornby books-cum-movies, but I believe I recently mentioned that it's starting to grate on my nerves. I think it should be done only if there is no other way to show that something is happening. I don't need to see a happy couple being happy and then be told by some condescending voice-over that they are falling in love - I get it.

I had no idea how annoyed I was with this one. Sorry about the attitude. Basically, I don't want movies to tell me the same thing eight times over and never once make it interesting. C-

Could Graham and I survive with only one movie between us?


Fight Club!

What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
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Garden State (2004) and The Village (2004)

So, if you're a loyal reader, and, even if you're not, you might have a sneaking suspicion that I have reviewed both these movies before. And you'd be right - I reviewed them when I saw them in theatres this summer.

But for about four months now, or at least as long as I have been exploring and extolling the wonders of Zip.ca, I've been thinking of a new feature for Feria Films. As you well know, if I like a movie, I want to watch it again and again.

Esp. if it has hotties like Joaquin Phoenix in it.

Okay, well that's not entirely true. I don't think I'll be watching To Die For again any time soon.

But the point is that I like to rewatch movies, and I find that my opinions occasionally differ the second time around. I never go from loving to hating a movie, or vice versa, but the dark, cold, quiet full-emptiness of the movie theatre tends to polarize my responses to movies in a way that the TV screen never does. (I do, however, long for one of those projector and white screen home combos - I knew someone who had one once, and I thought it was the greatest thing since cheese).

I realize that this is the longest intro since the dawn of the running narrative (I device I've started to loathe due to a rash of biopics), so the basic point is that I will occasionally feature running commentary on movies that I've already reviewed. New ideas that I've come across or thought of or read somewhere between now and the original review. Feria Films is only a little less than a year old, so I'll do my best to let a few months pass before I drudge anything up. Bear in mind that these commentaries will feature no warnings and no holds barred, so those who like to live spoiler free had better steer clear.

First up - Zach Braff's quiet, sweet, subconscious rip-off of Beautiful Girls. Still the voice of an age group long since abandoned by Hollywood in favour of money grubbing teen look-a-likes, I found Garden State more quotable and Peter Sarsgaard more captivating this time around. It took Princess Conseula a while to get into it (who can blame her?), and I'm still the only person who laughed their head off at the lady singing "Three Times a Lady" at his mom's funeral. It's just funny, okay?

I also still feel a bit sold out by the ending. It's that battle I brought up earlier about whether it's better (movie-wise) to simply know that you need to find yourself or to actually find yourself. I think Large should have either headed off to California or he should never have even gotten on the plane. If he did a), I would have liked it if Sam showed up with a bunch of cardboard boxes and a roll of packing tape. The end. Or b) He goes up that escalator and comes right back down the other side. Because that struck me as the kind of thing he would do, and he would have raised quite the customs ruckus to get back out there so quickly, unless we are supposed to believe that Sam stood there crying for over an hour.

Now, onto The Village: Joaquin is definitely the sexiest thing since sex. I know because Princess Conseula and I actually agreed on a guy, and that never happens. But the movie's pretty much not surprising or scary after you see it once. The love story is still killer, but I found myself more entranced with all the clues I should have noticed before to care much about Those We Do No Speak Of.

See, as much as I think that M. Night Shaymalan delivers psychological thrillers that actually thrill, they don't have the staying power of, say, Memento. At least not when it comes to my psyche. I've watched Memento way more times than Signs or The Village, but I still always root for the wrong guy.

Christopher Nolan really knows how to put a puzzle together.

Quickie

I just wanted to leave you a brief note to remind you that the Oscar nods are out now. I'm doing an excellent job of controlling my smugness. Really, it's quite impressive. As always, the link:
http://www.oscars.org/77academyawards/noms.html
Feel free to share your thoughts.

Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999)

Short: The rise and fall of Hollywood singer-starlet Dorothy Dandridge (Halle Berry), the first African-American woman to be nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award.

Yup, that's all you need to know right there.

Alright, I confess that it's another made-for-TV movie, although not as obscenely long as Attlia.

This was supposed to be Berry's breakout role, and, to her credit, it is a breakout performance. Berry's the whole show as an African American woman who paved the way in Hollywood while everyone else was reduced to slaves or prostitutes. Of course, when I watch 24, I'm not sure Miss Dandridge would be pleased with the way things turned out for black female characters. She would, I think, find it fitting that Berry's the first African American actress to win the award. Berry is whirlwind as Dandridge, singing and dancing her little heart out. It's not wonder Dandridge was so successful.

The rest of it didn't really turn my crank, though. It had lots of people I like, but I didn't buy the idea that Dandridge would define her life by the men she was with at the time. Her sexual conquests wouldn't be nearly as important to her movie ones. I suppose some of them were inexorably linked but likely not as much that Shonda Rhimes and Scott Abbott's teleplay would have us believe.

Of course, the narrative device of having Dorothy telling her entire story to her sister-in-law who was there the whole time was ill-advised at best.

While Martha Coolidge's direction is powerful, it's not nearly as astonishing as it should be. I wanted to feel like Dorothy was breaking down barriers and paving the way. I wanted to feel like she was at the precipice of something great, not a great big bed. I didn't get any of it, though.

Call me crazy, call me a feminist, call me both. I'd still like to believe that a woman, especially one as important as Dandridge, is more than just the sum of her sexual parts. B

Eight Men Out (1988) and Missing Brendan (2003)

I know that you might be confused by the two movie titles up there, and I don't want you to think that one of them is in some way the sequel to one another. I'll get to my point in a minute if you'll just bear with me.

Plot 1: A dramatized telling of the reasoning and actions behind the Chicago "Black" Sox scandal of 1919.

Plot 2: A family of men go back to Vietnam to try to locate a missing member or at least his body.

Some time ago, I decided that part of the mandate of Feria Films was to warn gentle readers about movies that suck and should be avoided for that reason alone. The problem, though, is that I sometimes feel like I watch a lot of movies that such, and I don't want to write about them after.

I actually watched Eight Men Out on December 20 or 21, and I've been trying to work up a review for it between now and then. I couldn't even come up with a complete plot description. While I sat through the exceptionally long feeling 119 minutes of this ode to not the actual game of baseball, I spend more time wondering when I will ever wise-up and stop renting movies just because a given actor is in it (in this case John Cusack, and the answer is probably never) then caring what happened to anyone in the movie.

Except David Strathairn's down-and-out pitcher, Eddie Cicotte. Even then, I mostly thought about how I sure do like that David Strathairn.

In the second case, I was moronically lured into Missing Brendan by Adam Brody's first season charm, which has promptly evaporated, I assure you. I spent the only twenty minutes I watched of this movie wondering how to tell the person I was watching it with that I wanted to stop watching the movie. By consequence, you know I can't actually review the movie, but I sure can tell you to steer clear. So steer that way.

So, if I ever felt like handing out Fs, this might have been a good place to start. But I won't go that far today.

Solomon and Gaenor (1999)

Premise: On his first day as a packman, Solomon (Ioan Gruffudd) meets the beautiful Gaenor (Nia Roberts). In order to pursue a relationship with her, Jewish Solomon pretends to be the English Sam Livingston. Because no one tells a lie in a movie for no reason, his secret threatens their relationship as Gaenor develop a secret of her own. I should mention that it's Wales in 1911.

Alright, so I'll admit that I was initially a little weary of this movie. My dear Ioan, despite being a very talented and sexy young man, is very often in crap movies. It's just the way it is.

So I watched the preview right before I watched the movie, as is my wont. Not only did excite me for what followed, it also pointed out that the movie won a bunch of awards and nominations, including a nod for best Foreign Language Film at the 2000 Academy Awards. I can assure you that I thought, "What kind of a foreign language is English?" Then I remembered the fluent Yiddish Ioan learned for this part, and I surrendered the sneer. Turns out that another third, I would say, of the film is in Welsh. Complicated stuff, I tell ya.

The other two previews were for East-West, which was an actually good movie that I had to watch for school, and the actual Foreign Language winner for that year, Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother. So, I gotta admit, I was all the more excited for it.

Excitement that paid off, which I thought was something that just didn't happen any more. I find that really good and really bad movies have one thing in common: they stick with you. After I saw Alexander, I was moaning about for weeks about what a terrible movie it was. With this film, I get little flashes of it in my head, and I find myself caught up in heartbreak or elation, depending on the scene. It's really quite refreshing.

Gruffudd and Roberts stole my heart from the get-go, him for bringing the kind of passion and restraint I love him for and her for being strong, loyal, and feisty. Roberts delivers the kind of tour de force performance that the rest of us only dream of witnessing, and Gruffudd keeps everything in check to balance it out. It's smolderingly wonderful and tragic to watch the two of them together.

Writer-director Paul Morrison had me in knots over each challenge the couple faced, and he also had me yelling at the screen. It was another adventure in the arrogance of youth, as well as one in finding yourself. In this case, they both do find themselves by curtain call. His screenplay and direction have their telling moments, but he hides it well for the most part, creating more tragedy with every passing frame in his Romeo and Juliet story.

Morrison has created something spellbinding through his fantastic leads. Damp looking Wales calls you back through the fog with stories of such passion that you can do little but weep. For my part, I could do naught but fall silent. A

I'm experimenting with fonts, in case you can't tell. Let me know if you have any preferences via comments section.

In Good Company (2004)

Situation: Shortly after 51 year-old Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid) discovers that his impossibly beautiful wife, Ann (Marg Helenberger), is expecting another child, he is replaced as the head of ad sales at Sport America (faux Sports Illustrated) by 26 year-old wunderkid, Carter Duryea (Topher Grace), who did something good with cell phones. In order to keep his job, Dan works closely with Carter. The two develop a precarious friendship that is jeopardized when Carter falls for Dan's impossibly beautiful college-aged daughter, Alex (Scarlett Johansson).

A Topher Grace double bill! I was going to review another movie in between, but I couldn't pass up this opportunity for double bill. Have I ever knowingly had a double bill before? I'm not sure.

Anyway, I doubt I will be able to discuss this movie without talking about the end, so you should just stop reading if you, like me, are allergic to spoilers. In the sense that you want to react with violence towards the ruiner who didn't at least warn you.

Because it's so rude.

Okay, that should be long enough for those with less than stellar will power to click off. On to the real reviewing.

And the real Topher Grace! Damn you sitcom that ran out of fuel about one season after it started. Damn extreme thinness than stopped me from seeing it before! Grace has got it goin' on, and I mean that in more ways than one. His still sitcom-esque delivery didn't entirely jive with p.s., but it works wonderfully here. Grace shines like he was born to play a disillusioned yuppie, and his Carter is sweet, funny, and even a bit silly. He won the National Board of Review's award for Best Breakthrough Performance by an Actor for this movie coupled with yesterday's.

Quaid, whom I've never entirely understood as an actor, seems to be relishing this latter-day come back. And, unlike another actor with four movies out this year (of course I'm not talking about you, Jude), he never seems tired or worn-out. I mean, he does in the sense that his character does, but Quaid's lined faced and furrowed brow only serve to cover some truly sparkling eyes. He's having fun, never worried about making the comedy bits comedic or the drama bits dramatic. I'm not too sure what they did to his hair colour, though.

Paul Weitz, writer-director of the rollickin' Nick Hornby adaptation, About a Boy, has attempted a Nick Hornby story of his very own. Sure, he forgot that part of Hornby's charm is that his protagonist is always a lovable asshole, but I suppose that isn't necessary. Instead of relying on a gimmick, as so many writers do, Weitz gives his audience something worth so much more: heart. You just don't get enough of that anymore.

Johasson basically has no character to speak of, so Weitz made up for that by naming her Alex. Yes, the names convey it all here, folks. Dan Foreman - he's a good ol' boy but not in the evil Republican way. Carter Duryea - He's new and got a foreign sounding last name! Can we trust him? Alex - it's the kind of girl's name that suggests that she's got something going on upstairs but not in a pretentious way. Of course, girls with boy's or boy-like names are always tomboys in some sort of a way, like how Alex plays tennis. She wants to do creative writing, too, don't you see, and she has pretty fabric to cover her lamps with, so she's also artistic and sensitive. It's a good thing I like Johasson up there on the movie screen, or I might have had to riot at her caricature rather than character.

I was especially pleased that they didn't waste all the feel good moments in the preview, unlike, say, Spanglish. That said, the movie ended exactly the way I knew it would for Dan. Carter ended up as he should have, except without Alex. He's better off in the long run for it because she was simply too full of the arrogance of youth to appreciate him. Notice I said "arrogance of youth" not "youthfully arrogant" because I'm referring to the kind of arrogance that we all possess while we are young simply because we don't know any better. If it were the other way around, it'd be the combination of youth and arrogance that, even as a youth, you should really know better.

Even so, I kind of wanted to berate her for losing "one of the good ones." The reality is that guys like that don't come walking around the corner everyday, so she really is the one who is losing out. Ah, well, Carter had to find himself and such.

Maybe a movie where you realize that you need to find yourself is even better than one where you do find yourself by the third act. Or maybe not. Stay tuned. B+

As you well know, those Golden Globe things happened the other night, and they smacked of more vindication for April. Somebody better call the Academy before I get really smug. Here's a link to recap what you missed:http://www.hfpa.org/goldenglobeawards.html.

p.s. (2004)

Brief: Louise Harrington (Laura Linney), who works for Admissions at the Columbia School of Fine Arts, happens upon an application from a young man, F. Scott Feinstadt (Topher Grace), who shares the name, lexicon, and voice of her deceased high school sweetheart. When she invites him in for an interview, she discovers that he also shares his face and his talent. Louise immediately embarks on a sexual relationship with F. Scott (as he is called, for reasons ridiculous). Her best friend, Missy (Marcia Gay Harden), appears to test this discovery of Louise's. At the same time, she deals with revelations from her ex-husband (Gabriel Byrne) and her recovering addict brother (Paul Rudd).

I feel like I am finally out from under the heap of uninspiring movies that has been plaguing me for some time now. It's not that I've stopped watching movies, but I have stopped consuming them with the same ferocious appetite that I used to, mostly because the movies I was seeing were just too dull to merit mentioning. I had to dive back into some of my old favourites (e.g. say anything) to keep from giving up entirely. Alas, I had already reviewed the ones I watched, so we were stuck in a state of reviewing limbo.

How quickly a trip to the Bytowne can change all of that! I watched two good movies this week-end, and enough of another to whet my appetite for a trip to Blockbuster.

Linney delivers another fantastic performance. It made me want to shout, "Give her the damn Oscar already!", although she strikes me as the kind of actress who doesn't worry about things like that. Sure, her performance here isn't as Oscar-worthy as, say, her work in 2000's You Can Count on Me, but I think she just deserves one by now. Linney can be so hard and brittle one minute, and her eyes can fill up with a long forgotten innocence the next. She gets me every time because, despite her tiny movie-star frame and stunning beauty, she always, above all, seems like a real woman, with real emotions and reactions.

Where has Grace been hiding? Under some forsaken sitcom rock? Let him out, casting agents! Another performance that made me want to shout - although, in this case, I wanted to shout, "Eat it, Kutcher!" (thanks, Em!) because Grace is just so much better. I think neither he nor director/writer Dylan Kidd put much thought into the idea that F. Scott might be using Louise to get into art school, which is a sub-plot or counter-plot that could have given his character more emotional weight. He was capable of much more depth than has been previously imagined, although his delivery was a little too sitcom-y at points. Even so, bonus points for the hotness of two different coloured eyes.

Marica Gay Harden. I had to use her whole name there to send that message across. What a fantastic talent she is. She can seem so emotional fragile in one movie (last year's glorious Mystic River), and here she is a towering giant of a woman. Missy isn't the best best friend, but you can quickly see what Louise sees in her.

Two things occurred to me when I saw this movie:

1) Gabriel Byrne is possibly the poor man's Sean Penn. At least he seemed that way to me in the scenes he shared with Linney (again, see Mystic River to understand where I am coming from).

2) Arm cuffs/wrist bands - or whatever you call them - are just the lazy costumer's way of indicating that the character is an agnsty/misunderstood artist/bad-ass. Witness Mark Ruffalo in You Can Count on Me, Ryan on the o.c., or Jess on Gilmore Girls. I'm going to be watching very closely come Thursday to make sure that the o.c.'s Alex is sporting one. Honestly, though, I haven't thought of arm bands/wrist cuffs as anything short of mainstream for about four years now. Costume designers have got to get out sometime to see what the kids are wearing these days. Or just keep using leather jackets, à la James Dean. No one's on to that one yet.

Overall, as much as I enjoyed the movie while I watched it, it didn't stick with me longer than half an hour. Dylan Kidd's good, but he's not quite great yet. B+

Bride of the Wind (2001)

Idea: The story of Alma Mahler's (Sarah Wynter) many love affairs: her first husband, composer Gustav Mahler (Jonathan Pryce); expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka (Vincent Perez); architect Walter Gropius (Simon Verhoeven); and writer Franz Werfel (Gregor Seburg).

I've wanted to see this movie since OAC, when I first listened to Gustav Mahler's music. I was always supposed to tell Mr. Nicholas what I thought of the movie, and I am sure that I will should I ever see him again.

The title, taken from one of Kokoschka's paintings of the two lovers, fills the movie with much more promise than it can deliver.

Wynter, who I rather enjoyed as Kate on the second season of 24, is so very disappointing here. It occurs to me now that I may have just liked Kate because she understood the show's underlying principle of "trust in Jack." Here, however, Wynter gave me no reason to care about what happened to Alma at any point. Her Alma was basically a big ho. She hopped right into bed with a number of men, and then would suddenly claim that they were "stifling" her. The problem was that the audience had no evidence that Alma was being stifled except once. In that case, there were multiple ways she could have gotten around it, so she really didn't have any reason to be so angry. Wynter's Alma was beautiful and out-spoken enough to understand why she initially attracted so many men but never clever or cunning enough to understand how she kept them or herself, for that matter. She was just boring.

As was pretty much the rest of the movie, except for maybe Perez's Kokoschka. Everyone kept referring to Alma's as so passionate (while I found her terribly dull and overly naked), but Perez actually had the goods to carry that title. Kokoschka also most seemed like the one who least tried to "stifle" her in anyway, and he, in my opinion, suffered the most for it.

Although director Bruce Beresford has had some success in his past (Driving Miss Daisy, And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself), he's also had some stupendous clunkers (Her Alibi, Last Dance). This movie falls into the latter category. Given such an exciting premise, Beresford just can seem to get this movie off the ground.

Of course, he can share the blame with Marilyn Levy, who wrote the somewhat insane dialogue. Levy, after all, is the one who had Alma constantly proclaiming about how "stifling" she felt it all to be. I find consolation in the fact that she hasn't written anything else before or since.

I've said it before, and I'm going to have to say it again. If the movie can't give you a reason to care, it has failed its audience. D

White Squall (1996)

Plan: In the fall of 1960, Charles Gieg (Scott Wolf) boards the Albatross, a school ship, captained by ‘Skipper’ Sheldon (Jeff Bridges). While learning to sail, the boys are schooled in sciences by the Skipper’s wife, Alice (Caroline Goodall), and in English by McCrea (John Savage). Discipline and camaraderie are the basis of the teaching, and Chuck bonds with rich-kid Frank (Jeremy Sisto), acrophobic Gil (Ryan Phillippe), and diver Dean (Eric Michael Cole). All is going well until the Albatross is caught in a white squall, six people die, and a disciplinary committee seeks to take the Skipper’s ticket.

I felt I could tell you all of that without ruining the movie because it’s based on a true story. In fact, Todd Robinson’s screenplay is based on the book, The Last Voyage of the Albatross by Charles Gieg, Jr. and Felix Sutton. I would think that Chuckster would know what was going on since he was there. Don’t know about this Felix character, though.

Although Robinson’s narration portions, also done by Wolf, are filled with the kind of heavy handed language and literary style that doesn’t sound much like a 17 year-old boy, it does reflect the kind of wisdom and gravitas Gieg may have possessed years later, so I will let that part slide.

Otherwise, Robinson’s script captures all the mocking and rivalry of teenage boy friendship without becoming insensitive of the topic. It’s especially difficult to create something compelling out of something that must have been so well known in the its day, but Robinson and director Ridley Scott rise to the challenge by saving the squall and court for the end, focusing instead on what happens between the crew members before hand.

Scott’s a funny guy. That’s what I always think when I think of his movies (e.g. Gladiator, Thelma & Louise, Black Hawk Down, Blade Runner). He’s the kind of meticulous director who decides before hand how a scene should be, and then he shoots it until he gets want he wants. Smart move, if you’ve got the talent to pull it off. Scott, though sometimes a little misguided, has got the goods.

He works especially well with his leading men (ignoring the growingly vapid, Keanu-clone Josh Hartnett), although who wouldn’t with Bridges? Sure, everyone’s all about him now for The Door in the Floor, but Jeff’s pretty much been a director’s dream since the start. He generally tears into his roles with gusto, and this film is no exception. The Skipper’s a strong and hard man, the kind, as Gieg observes, that “makes you want to please him.”

Plus, I really like Bridges’ weird and instantly identifiable voice.

It’s great to see the eternally youthful Wolf (already a mature 27 when this movie was made) frolicking about with Sisto, Phillippe before he was an ass, and Cole, as well as goodies like Ethan Embry, David Lascher, and Jason Marsden.

I’m not going to lie. As much as a joke as the end has become among those in the know, I still cry every time Frank rings that bell. B+