Walk the Line (2005)

Premise: Covering the 20 year period of Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix)’s life, the 50s and 60s, when he toured constantly and survived on pills and liquor, frustrated by his obligation to his wife, Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin), and his desire for his true love, June Carter (Reese Witherspoon).

In other words, not my Johnny Cash – the black robed father figure preacher man. More like my dad’s Johnny Cash.

Okay, let’s get a couple little things out of the way: (1) I’m naturally biased towards a movie starring my favourite actor and about one of my favourite couples. It’s a movie targeted directly at me squared. (2) This is going to be a long review. Buckle up.

While watching the movie, the number one word I used to describe it was “electric.” Afterwards, I thought enough to add “balls out.” One of these epithets has never been used in the history of Feria Films, which should give you a sense of where this movie sits in my mind.

Here’s the thing about biopics: If you attempt to tell an entire life story in 2-3 hours, you tend to discredit huge chunks of an individual’s life. Furthermore, when portraying a public figure, there is a fair amount of pressure on the actor playing him/her. You have to contend with the public impression of the persona, the written material about the person, and the personal recollections of family and friends. In other words, it’s tough. You can try to inhabit the skin of the person you are portraying, matching his/her mannerisms and intonations exactly. When done well, you end up with something (I hear) like Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote. If you take this too far, you end up with a complete caricature. You could go the route of approaching the person as a character, rather than a fully fleshed out public individual, but, if this doesn’t come off as a caricature, it will come off as incomplete.

So, basically, if you don’t have the requisite talent to become this other person, you are completely screwed.

What makes Phoenix and director/co-writer James Mangold’s choice balls out here is their decision was neither to aim for a spot-on “impersonation” nor to treat the man (with whom they worked before his death in 2003) as a character. Phoenix, under Mangold’s direction, sought a much loftier goal: to capture the essence of the Man in Black.

To wit, I am here to tell you that Phoenix nails it. There is no other actor on the market today that can so convincingly portray a plethora of emotions simultaneously. At any given moment, Phoenix could be smart, stupid, sexy, charismatic, angry, confused, sorrowful, violent, lustful, loving, and repentant. I thought of a lot more emotions he conveyed, but, much like my focus on Strathairn in Good Night, and Good Luck., I could go on all day. Phoenix’s Cash, rather than acting with full knowledge of the way things would turn out, played Cash’s addiction beautifully: rock bottom never came soon enough. He never intended to hurt Vivian, but he didn’t know how to stop himself from wanting June. He didn’t want to destroy his family, but he didn’t believe he could survive without the pills.

Haunted by the loss of his best friend and older brother, Jack (Lucas Till), and the knowledge that his father (Robert Patrick) will never consider him a suitable substitute, Phoenix is, above all, a big ball of hurt. When he sneers at Sam Phillips in his first stiff audition, well, you know he’s in for a rough ride. Which is good for you, the viewer, as it means you are in for a breathtakingly balls out and electric performance. As a bonus, Phoenix does all the vocals (!) and plays the guitar (!!) himself. Take that, Jamie Foxx.

The electricity that crackles and snaps in Mangold’s tense opening sequence positively threatens to consume the whole theatre whenever Witherspoon and Phoenix share the screen. Witherspoon, to her immense credit, never allows Carter to come across as some sort of a Madonna, regardless of her position as Cash’s saving grace. She may have helped him kick the pills and booze, but she certainly didn’t take his drunken antics before that lying down. John Carter Cash never knew it until they made the movie, but this was the woman who threw beer bottles at Cash and crew in a fierce admonishment. This was the woman who penned Cash’s (arguably) most famous song about a passion so fiery and dangerous that it threatened to burn them both alive: Ring of Fire. She was strong and sassy and a pistol if there ever was one. Witherspoon brings all of this and more to what would be, in lesser hands, nothing more than a platitude spouting cipher. As a bonus, she does all the vocals (!!!) and plays the autoharp (!!!!) herself. Take that squared, Foxx.

Not that I have anything personally against Jamie Foxx. I’m just sayin’.

The only misstep I can think to point out is in the way Vivian is written. Maybe it’s Goodwin’s performance, although I always did enjoy her as Diane on Ed. Maybe, though, Mangold and co-writer Gill Dennis didn’t, or couldn’t, give Goodwin much to work with. Or maybe she was a hellish shrew who thoroughly resented her husband’s career. I don’t really know.

As for Tyler Hilton as Elvis or Waylon Malloy Payne as Jerry Lee Lewis (with whom Cash did assuredly tour), I didn’t buy Hilton as Elvis until he stepped behind the mic. Suddenly, he became Elvis. Weird, huh? Payne makes more of an impression as Lewis, who, seriously, always seems out of his mind. I could have been partial to him, however, as I think Payne as Lewis looks like James Marsters as Spike. Waylon Jennings’ son Shooter playing the father? Sure, why not.

Speaking of Buffy, how great was it to spot Big Gay Larry as Marshall Grant, Cash’s bass player? It was great is what it was.

At the time that I am writing this review, the current user comment on IMDb says, and I quote, “Joaquin Phoenix is brutally hot as Johnny Cash!!” Although I initially cracked up (user comments tend to be written by morons), it’s a fair assessment. Not only do I also think Phoenix is and was hot, it is brutal. Probably not in the way “lgran81” meant, but it is true. Phoenix’s portrayal of the towering legend never betrays his public persona, the volumes of material about a country singer who managed to be fully accessible to those who don’t even like country, or the many fond memories of those who knew him (Carter Cash thought Johnny himself would have approved, after all). It’s not a betrayal because it is exactly what lgran81 thinks it is: brutally ho[nes]t. A

P.S. The smatter of appulase afterwards made me wonder if those hippes over at the Bytowne would have given in the standing O treatment it deserves. Probably.

P.P. S. I knew that that wizard would trounce the Man in Black at the box office opening weekend. I’m cool with that. But now that you’ve seen the longer movie, I recommend that you see this film.

Monsoon Wedding (2001) and Vanity Fair (2004)

The previously mentioned Mira Nair double bill!

Plot 1: Big ol' wedding, monsoon season, lots of shit goes down. Alright, the bride-to-be is engaged in an affair with a married ex, acting out her cold feet in the face of her impending arranged nuptials. Her whole family descends upon the house preparing for this lavish wedding, and all sorts of antics and secrets come to a head, as they so often do in similar movie situations.

Plot 2: Becky Sharp's a social climbing, back-stabbing beyotch, letting no friend stand in her way of getting to the top of the heap.

Here's the problem with this double bill: I've been putting it off because I have nothing to say about either movie. The picture above, from which movie I'll let you guess, I picked for representing my two fav characters in the movie (the event planner and a housemaid, respectively) and for being pretty. I enjoyed the movie and laughed a fair bit, but I'm still convinced that a fair chunk of it went right over my head. At a certain point, given the consumption of marigolds, I became convinced that they were a lesser form of poppy/opiates, poised to overtake the world's heroin market with their readily available americanized form.

I know that's not true, but it's a funny lens with which to view the movie. (B+)

As for the second offering, one word: boring. Bored the hell out of me, really. As much as I like Reese Witherspoon, and as much as I think she works her little tushy off in every role, I again chose a picture that did not feature the main character.

Why, you might ask? You sure do ask a lot of questions. Because, for the life of me, even though that I knew full well that they softened her up for the film's sake, I didn't give a flying fig about Becky's plight. There were too many good looking men with mixed motivations to distract me. Because she screeched like a howler monkey.
Plus, and I don't know if I mentioned this, it was so very boring. Monstrously boring.

So, quite magically but predictably, the combination of a director I thought I liked based on previous work with a writer I knew I liked based on previous work (Julian Fellowes, he of Gosford Park fame) equaled crap. Too bad, so sad, quickly forgotten. C-

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)

Premise: In 1953, journalist and host of CBS’s “See It Now”, Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn), together with his producer, Fred Friendly (George Clooney), and rag-tag team decide to take the bullhorn against Senator Joseph McCarthy (himself)’s red scare.

Okay, so the team’s not really rag-tag. I just liked the way that sounded. I also acknowledge that Murrow and his crew were neither the first nor the last to attack McCarthyism.

Maybe I’m a little bit biased because this movie is so obviously aimed at my bleeding liberal heart. Maybe I’m a bit biased because the Bytowne has decided to crank it up several notches to get me back in the fold. And maybe, just maybe, I was seduced by the spontaneous applause at the end of the film from in the packed cinema because it’s just been too damn long since a movie made anyone want to stand up and cheer.

Even so, I’ve been racking my brain since I saw it on Friday, and I still cannot come up with a single thing I didn’t like about this sparkling gem.

Sure, the sight of a smoky, darkly lit room where reporters discuss the day’s papers from across the country to suss out what news is worth mention on television that week sends my heart into quasi-orgasmic fits of glee because it matches my image of what newsrooms looked like back when the news really mattered. Quite obviously, it matched director/co-writer/producer/supporting player Clooney’s image as well.

I’m going to have to send him a little note thanking him for his decision, circa 1998, to stop sucking and rock has hard as his old school matinee idol good looks, talent, and pitch perfect combo of smarm/charm would let him.

Perhaps the success of this movie is wrapped up in the casting of Strathairn has the euphonically named Murrow. He’s a slight man, not all that well known, and certainly not go-to Hollywood leading man. And yet, there he is: pitch perfect. Cigarette smoke slowly curling away from his perfect placed hand, beautiful three piece (!) suits, power, passion, regret, resignation, humility, confidence, and sympathy. Anyone else would need a three page monologue to get what Strathairn gets out of a single tilt of his head. The way he can never quite look the camera in the eye as he wished them good luck is filled with the knowledge that it will never be enough. Strathairn’s Murrow knows right well that he could be ruining the careers and lives of the men in the room with him when he decides to take on the Senator, and, no matter how passionately they throw themselves into the task, he can never quite get that guilty look out of his eye. I could go on and on about every single gesture and line, Strathairn was that good.

Some people felt that the subplot about the secretly married Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson (a fact that could get them fired at the time) was a bit tacked on. Nothing involving the two of them could ever be wrong, I say.

Not everyone was into the interspersed jazz numbers. I came to the somewhat befuddling conclusion that George Clooney is jazz. I know, I know, it makes no sense in the clear light of day. I still can’t shake the idea that there is some parallel between George Clooney/film and Miles Davis/jazz. Plus, I found it a refreshing alternative to a traditional score full of emotional violins and triumphant trumpets.

Why have Senator McCarthy play himself, people have asked. Clooney and co-writer Grant Heslov are simply doing exactly what Murrow, et al. did fifty years ago: letting the Senator damn himself with his own words.

Most of all, why does a movie set half a century in the past have more relevance today than anything else I have seen this year? Because back then the news mattered. It meant something. It stood up to the government instead of playing its lap dog. Bill O’Reilly may net two million viewers a night, but he represents one incredibly biased part of the spectrum.

I was talking with my grandmother within hours of my screening, and I told her what movie I had just seen. She told me that back then, when television networks still acknowledged this new medium as an educational tool, news anchors weren’t all part of a bland, indiscernible passel nor did they occupy the loathsome celebrity realm of “personality.” Back then, back when the news really mattered, the anchors on these shows were people to be respected and admired. They were heroes.

George Clooney, for telling a bittersweet true story, and for attacking the embedded quality of news outlets today, you are my hero. A+

"And that's why you don't try to teach your son a lesson."

Despite my denial, Ave was right. Those idiots at FOX have cancelled what is easily the funniest show on television.

I should be using this time to write a review of the fabulous Good Night, and Good Luck or the suggested Mira Nair double bill, but I'm not.

I'm too sad about all things inevitable. Good night, Arrested Development. Good luck, Jason Bateman. Someday you'll find a network to appreciate dry wit and sharp comedic timing, packaged togethr nicely with boyish good looks. We'll always have Teen Wolf Too.

I'll gladly give it back if FOX will accept that a show gets less than 4 million viewers. To be honest, I'm overwhelmed with shock at the idea that more people watch the o.c., a show that revolves around two people who can't act and needs plot contrivance to get through every single episode.

Jackals.

American Psycho (2000)

Short: In late 1980s New York, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is a VP of mergers and acquisitions at Pierce and Pierce. At night, however, he’s a murderer with an insatiable bloodlust. After the disappearance of a co-worker, Paul Allen (Jared Leto), Bateman becomes the subject of Detective Kimball’s (Willem Dafoe) investigation, but that only seems to encourage Patrick.

Oddly enough, although there’s a complete story there, I couldn’t really think of anything to write beyond the first two sentences. That’s what it’s about: An affluent, handsome young man in 1987. He’s wealthy and well dressed, goes to the best restaurants, and does the best coke in their bathrooms. And then he kills a lot of people.

Perhaps when Bret Easton Ellis released the novel it was easy to brush off as a gory horror story. Director and co-writer Mary Harron and co-writer Guinevere Turner wanted to prevent the story from slipping into oblivion, so they gave us this master work.

Harron and Turner focus not on the murders themselves but on their protagonist’s reaction to it. They also brought back Bale out of oblivion, so he could dive into the role with maniacal glee. Bateman is deadpan in every situation, hiding away his inner pain and disgust with the language and actions of the other VPs he spends his time with, but he is in fits of joy when he sociopathically defiles all the other beautiful bodies of his generation.

To that end, and without having read the novel, Ellis kind of reminds me of Hemingway. Oh, my, that’s just plain nutty. Okay, let me explain a little, even though the comparison is shaky at best: All of Hemingway’s work, in his own estimation and mine, was him trying to sort out his feelings after the war. Everything he wrote was, on one level or another, about the war. The 20s, as fun as they seem in retrospect, were as bad as and sometimes worse than the war itself because they served to etherize people into forgetting about the war, forgetting to grieve for it. I’ve got it into my head that the materialism of the 80s was like that, creating a façade to hide the emptiness inside.

Bateman’s life is an exaggeration of those feelings, which is what makes it such a rich satire. Oh, satire. I heart you.

John Cale provides an excellent score, which was at turns jovial and menacing, much like the main character himself.

Unfortunately for me, I already knew quite a bit about this movie before I saw it, including the ending. So, either for that reason or because I am one sick puppy, I found a lot of it amusing. Also, either because I knew what was going on or because I’m sharp like a tack, I picked up on a lot of clues that give the ending away.

The movie’s engrossing, delightful, and intelligent, but it’s not quite perfect. No particular reason, no one in particular to blame, but it’s just not quite there. I therefore choose to blame supporting actor Josh Lucas, for (a) taking Cole Hauser’s place and doing a poor job of it (I am convinced that Hauser would have been on to Bateman and kicked his ass), and (b) for reminding me of Ben Affleck in that scene in Good Will Hunting, where he shows up in an ill fitting suit, squirms in his chair, and eventually demands cash.

But, oh, that business card scene. That perfect, perfect scene. A

Jarhead (2005)

Plan: Having gotten lost on the way to college, Swoff (Jake Gyllenhaal) joins the US Marine Corps. Under the tutelage of Staff Sgt. Sykes (Jamie Foxx), Swoff becomes a sniper, and he forms a grudging friendship with fellow sniper Troy (Peter Sarsgaard). Their training leads them the Saudi Arabian border at the beginning on the first Gulf War and eventually into combat in Kuwait.

Yup, I choose an image of a scene that never takes place in the movie. I see it in pretty much every commercial, but it never happens. There's actually quote of a few images I've seen promoted that I never saw on the big screen.

That bugs.

Way back in 1999, Joaquin Phoenix and Tobey Maguire faced off 2 Stars, 1 Slot style. Inexplicably, though understandably, Maguire won that round. (Personally, I think that time has shown that they simply aren't vying after the same slot). By 2004, Maguire had another long lashed thespian chipping away at his claim to fame: Jake Gyllenhaal. They went after the same roles (Gyllenhaal was slated to take over web-slinging duties when it appeared that Maguire would have to bow out of Spidey 2 for health reasons; Maguire lost this role to Gyllenhaal). Again, inexplicably but understandably, in this 2 Stars, 1 Slot battle, Gyllenhaal took home the title.

Should he have won? Well, Gyllenhaal's got two movies out in as many months, while Maguire's got none. On the other hand, if you seriously want to pit their 2004 summer blockbusters against each other, you must have it in for Gyllenhaal.

More importantly, if they are interchangeable, then you should be able to imagine Phoenix or Maguire dancing around in nothing but two Santa hats. What's that? Phoenix would never? Maguire would, but you wouldn't want him to? Yeah, that's what I thought.

I think it's an age thing. (Phoenix and Maguire are less than year apart, but the youngest still has five years on Gyllenhaal).

Alright, the movie.

The main problem plaguing adaptations is the reliance on voice over. If the actors can do their jobs, a voice over shouldn't be necessary. Sometimes it helps to elevate the material, but it rarely seems necessary.

I bring this problem up because it affected Gyllenhaal's performance. There are scenes, whole chunks of the movie, where he doesn't bother trying because he knows a voice over will sort it all out later. Later, as the VOs become sparser, Gyllenhaal turns on the charisma and pathos, but it's not enough for me to forgive his earlier failings, even if his new physique remains awfully distracting.

If I am to choose my favourite actor from the movie with a double 'a' in his name, it's going to be Sarsgaard. Jason McBride posited that he may be the John Malkovich of the next generation, and his laconic delivery and droopy eye lids certainly suggest as much. Sarsgaard isn't sexy because he's a big ball of sensitivity and pain like Gyllenhaal. Rather, he's sexy because he's so damn apathetic. Like him or don't - he doesn't care. Don't want to go see this movie of his opening this weekend? He doesn't care. He's got another one opening a few doors down the hall in your local Cineplex. Of course, once he's subdued you with his opaque carefree ways, he's going to explode in a rage that, although you never saw it coming, manages to seem perfectly natural.

Foxx conveys energy and hilarious enthusiasm as someone who loves his job; Dennis Haysbert shows up to give one of the best performances of his career (yes, in five minutes. Take that, Dame Dench! You needed nine!); Lucas Black reappears to my surprise and pleasure; and I now believe that it is required by law for every war movie to contain a character Fowler and for him to be a fuck-up (get your leg up there, Fowler!). Chris Cooper does his old pals Mendes and Gyllenhaal a props and gets the funniest line in the whole movie during his three minutes. I, too, will maintain a constant state of suspicious alertness.

It's too bad that Sam Mendes (director), William Broyles Jr. (screenwriter), and Thomas Newman (composer) all suck. Mendes and Broyles attempt to make a war movie, in part, about war movies (i.e. Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket), but it never cements. And, again, they should be making a satirical comparison to the situation Swoff et al was facing then and the situation in the Gulf now, but they never make it over the hump. For a novel based solely in the horrors of war (or the more painful horror of waiting for it), the movie never gets past glorifying the violence it's supposed to be against.

As for Newman, well, remember all those times I accused you of being able to write only one score? I'm sorry about that. I was wrong. You can write another score. You can write one that doesn't at all suit the movie, doesn't elevate the scenes, and is, in fact, counter productive. Good work, Thomas. You're a winner.

And so it is. Mendes has squandered the good will engendered to him from his one critical success. The rest of you should be alright, though. B

The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999) and Naked in New York (1993)

The Eric Stoltz Double Bill!

Plot 1: Ayn Rand's (Helen Mirren) long term affair with her protégé, Nathaniel (Eric Stoltz), destroys her marriage to Frank (Peter Fonda) and his to Barbara (Julie Delpy), which Rand encouraged in the first place.

Plot 2: Jake Briggs (Eric Stoltz) looks back on his relationship with Joanne White (Mary-Louise Parker) as he attempts to get his first post-graduation play produced on Broadway.

They're not really plot heavy movies. In fact, I wasn't even going to bother with Passion until I saw Naked because I started to wonder about certain things. I'll get to them a bit later.

Not unlike Wednesday's movie, Passion is a big ol' lie. The disc jacket contained the number 15 in there somewhere, either suggesting that they had a 15 year affair or that they had a 15 year age difference. Neither is true. Rand was 25 years his senior, and their affair lasted about eight years. Technically speaking, they don't break up until much later in the film, but she effectively cuts him out of her life as soon as she finishes Atlas Shrugged.

Of course, she gets all huffed up and face slappy, yelling about her betrayal. My response: Stuff it, Rand. I mean, capitalism? That's your philosophy? Self-interest? You were out of your ever loving mind!

More importantly, the trailer and much of the beginning of the movie, including the opening monologue by Delpy, suggests that Barbara, too, was in love with Rand, and that was the real cause of her marital strife. Any time she and Nathaniel ran into any trouble I thought, "Well, of course! She's a lesbian!" And when they finally end things, she leaves him for . . . another man. Trust me, I was confused.

Meanwhile, back in the early nineties, another nothing special kind of movie put two people I really love together (Parker and Stoltz), and then threw in Ralph Macchio for good measure. And, to be honest, he was very funny in this movie. His antics and contradictory lines (e.g. "Is this because I'm gay? Because I'm not gay.") and general being-in-love with Briggs stuff just cracked my shit up.

Of course, it's been nearly a week since the last Stoltz sighting, and I've started asking myself one important question that should have come up earlier: Why is it that I love Eric Stoltz? And the sub-question: What, exactly, do I see in him anyway?

For a while in there, I thought he was simply the older version of another redhead I have inexplicably loved for years: Seth Green.

Now, you might be thinking that I, like the rest of my generation, fell for him as Oz during his Buffy stint. Except that I didn't. I know because the very first episode that he was in, this exchange occurred between my mom and I:

Me: [reads Seth Green's name in the "guest starring" credits] Seth Green's going to be on!
My mom: Who?
Me: Seth Green. [sees Seth and points] Him!
My Mom: [silence]

I can never quite pinpoint the exact role or year, even, when I became conscious of Green's existence. But I was, and there he was, and man, did Oz make me swoon. Of course, this devotion has proven itself out since I can reasonably consider him the most underused comedic talent of his age group, and he can charm the needles off a cactus. He's boyish and cute and self-effacing and non-threatening. He could be a screw up, or he could swoop in and save the day. I'd buy it.

But Stoltz, on the other hand, I'm even less sure about. I've been looking over his filmography, and, I swear, I only started seeing his work after I decided that I loved him. The closest I can come to picking a time when I saw him in something but didn't identify him as someone I loved was the first time I saw Little Women. So, 1994. And I know I didn't notice you because you couldn't hold a candle to Christian Bale (see Eflin April's Celebrity Crushes: The Original).

Sure, I appreciate you in the thankless role now, but I'm fairly certain that I thought very little of you at the time. Since then I've enjoyed you in things like Bodies, Rest and Motion, The House of Mirth, and, most notably, Some Kind of Wonderful. The more I think about that movie, the more it rocks. Also, as the reverse jail baiting (the jail bait baited him, but he never bit) drama teacher August Dmitri on Once and Again.

The more I think about it, as much as you cranked out the angst as a teen, as much as Valhere in say anything . . . /whatever you were in Fast Times was a perfect Peter Pan stoner dude, as much as I can believe you as a dandy in period pieces, if I am going to name your defining role, it's going to be as Jamie's ex on Mad About You.

That's right. He was in all of five episodes of Mad About You, and that's how I think of him. A somewhat smug, educated, slightly sarcastic yuppie, slowly wrapping his tea bag string around a spoon as Jamie rants on and on about who broke up with whom first. He who orders in waffles for breakfast. He probably eats them wearing a bathrobe over full pajamas, the New York Times folded crisply in front of him, as he plans his next Zabars trip ("Before or after the bookshop? Starbucks stop?").

I know, I know. I've thought way too much about this. But I do it, so you don't have to.

More importantly, it appears that Stoltz is a Sometimes Friend. He's nice enough, friendly and smart and funny, until his smugness overcomes him, causing him to unintentionally say something incredibly hurtful. So confident, so content. You may even describe him as poised.

Aside from the red hair and lovely light eyes, there's nothing particularly remarkable about him. This sentiment translates to any movie he has a leading role in.

So, for lying and subjecting me to your lies, The Passion of Ayn Rand gets a D.

Naked in New York, however, has one of my all-time favourite endings. I have been saying for some time now that a movie should end with the couple just breaking up. No cheating, abuse, or tears. No moving on something better. Two people who just didn't work out. So for that, plus Macchio, plus Kathleen Turner, plus Paul Guilfoyle, you get a C+.

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2003)

Brief: Will Graham (Clive Owen) has been in hiding from his mob life for three years. Following his brother Davey's (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) suicide, Will returns to London to figure out why his little brother would kill himself, given that he was neither suicidal nor did he kindly leave a note behind.

The movie built on lies! And stupidity!

If you happen to see a trailer for this movie or read any other short plot descriptions for it, you might think that Will doesn't believe that Davey would kill himself, so he sets out to find his killer. That's what I sure thought the movie was about.

And, given that the preview and every plot description known to man tells you that Davey's dead and Will's got questions on his mind, you wouldn't think that they would waste a solid twenty minutes of 103 they've got on setting up his suicide and Will's eventual return, would you?

Well, you're wrong. Because they do. They do in order to bore and horrify you.

Also, given that Malcolm McDowell features prominently in the trailer and ads, it's pretty obvious who is going to be the villain of this piece. It's not like you see Will head home, start putting the pieces together, and finally heartbreakingly realize that Davey did indeed kill himself, and there's horrific reason why.

I think I would have liked that movie.

No one will successfully beat out Owen as the manliest man in Mantown for years, so it's fantastic when he does manly man things like be hard boiled and plot revenge. And when he throws in a little inner turmoil for good measure? All the better to make you swoon, my dear.

As for Rhys-Meyers, despite his fish eyes and androgyny, I'm starting to believe that he's the best sad pretty boy around. He's like the coolest, prettiest boy in high school, all sensitive and charming until the moment you piss him off. Then he dismisses you with an icy stare and a lip sneer. Push your luck beyond that, and he's likely to slit your throat in the lunch line.

I like what I've seen so far from director Mike Hodges since he made Owen famous with Croupier and turned Ryan Gosling into a bona fide sex god with Murder by Numbers. He's moody and arty and minimalist in a way that I enjoy.

So I place the blame squarely on writer Trevor Preston's shoulders, who didn't do anything worth note before this and hasn't had a screenplay produced since. Anyone who thinks leaving Charlotte Rampling hostage for all eternity with some nameless stooge is a good ending is clearly an idiot. D

Interstitial Advertising

As anyone who follows the A.V. Club link off the side bar knows, there is an ad that you can choose to skip that momentarily separates you from media commentary. Just now, the ad I happened upon invited me to click through to view another spot that will make me "laugh [my] head off."

I, however, did not need to click through in order to enjoy this burst of commercial humour.

Because, seriously? Ads advertising ads? That's hilarious in and of itself. It's weird and meta and tongue-in-cheek.

Whoever those geniuses are behind that Bud Light (if you can imagine) ad deserve a round on me.