In Good Company (2004)

There's nothing like a good RE-view to get me through my days. Of course, you could easily title today's post "April's Adventures in Pay Per View."

Normally I don't spend money on PPV, especially since I have a steady supply of DVDs from Zip.ca. Of course, two things have encouraged a recent "spending" spree with my remote:

1) I get $50 dollars of free PPV movies/events (that's about ten movies worth) with the set up of my new Star Choice system.

2) I've started getting DVDs that I don't exactly remember when I put them on my Zip list or why/I no longer want to watch them. Mind you, I edit my list everyone once and awhile to avoid this problem, but at 157 titles - and that's just today's count - some still fall through the cracks.

Sadly, this is how I end up wasting time on things like National Treasure or Birth (scroll down).

So you can imagine my pleasure when something light and delightful falls across my path. Hurrah!

Very quickly for the new/extremely slow: There are no holds barred in a RE-view. None. Whatsoever.

I just re-read my initial review, which you should to do too, and I noticed that I missed a couple of things.

1) Topher Grace (Carter) plays his character in this movie, and, while I thought before that it was better than p.s., I think rewatching the latter movie will soon reveal that it should be the other way around. See, there's this thing Grace does, and I think he does it better than anyone. His character is this overly confident goofball who manages to also be lovable because all that confidence is a front for a very deep well of insecurity which all the bluster in the world never quite manages to cover. Whoa, that's a long sentence. Just listen/watch to him deliver a one-liner, and you'll hear/see exactly what I mean.

Okay, I appear to have only missed one thing. I found Scarlett Johansson's character just as annoying this time around, although it was really obvious that Alex intended to break up with Carter at the exact lunch that Dan (Dennis Quaid) and his fists show up at. Not that I think it was right for her to carry on behind her dad's back. Also, I think she's right that Carter isn't really in love with her.

Still . . . Carter rocks! He's too good for you, anyway.

Oh, I remember the second thing now. I never mentioned the soundtrack before, which I really enjoy and recommend. It's filled with artists I have fallen in love with on other soundtracks: Iron & Wine and The Shins via Garden State, Damien Rice via Closer, and Peter Gabriel's Salisbury Hill via Big Fish.

Weitz lost me toward the end with having Quaid switch to endless sermonizing. I get it - you are against giant multinational conglomerates. Good for you. Now stop talking.

Not that his last scenes with Grace aren't sweet. Aw.

Original assessment: B+. Good call, me.

Bewitched (2005)

Short: A washed up actor, Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell) gets a second chance with a television remake of the sixties sitcom, Bewitched. Thinking it will make him look better, Jack pushes for the show to be centered around Darren and casts unknown Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman) as witch-married -to-mortal Samantha. Also unknown to Jack is the fact that Isabel is a real witch.

April is stuck once again in a bit of a crappy movie rut. Life's just tough like that sometimes. Especially when you consider the fact that I do nothing five days a week, you would think I could just get out of it. But it's never that simple, is it?

Also, in my defense, 2005 is no 2004. By the end of June last year, I had reviewed six films that I had seen in theatres, four of which I thought were pretty good. Now I only think two were good, but that's hardly the point. This year, five movies in the same time period, two of which were good. They'll still be good by this time next year, though.

I have a million things to say about this movie, but none are all that flattering. I'll try to keep most of them to myself.

The impeccably coifed and clad Kidman proved her self a sharp comedienne in Moulin Rouge, but Nora Ephron (director and co-writer) wastes those talents. Kidman isn't even playing a character in this movie - she's playing a mix-match of an actual 60s TV housewife and Meg Ryan in earlier, more enjoyable Nora Ephron comedies. What gives? Kidman throws herself fearlessly into her other screen roles, but I don't know what she was thinking here.

Ferrell, and I don't want to give away too much about myself here, can pull laughs out of thin air, but even he can't save this disaster.

The problem you may wonder? Well, it's a pretty cute premise. It it holds water for the first act. The further you get into the movie, though, the worse it gets. Why, oh why, oh why, has Ephron and her sister Delia written a heroine who is so ridiculous? Why in the world does Isabel want to be with this man? Why is she a throw back to pre-Second Wave 1950s housewives? I found myself looking around at all the younger girls than I there and praying that they never look to Kidman as a role model because of this film.

And then they had the fantastic Shirley MacLaine as Iris/Endora resort to magic to hold onto the womanizing Michael Caine. Don't you see, ladies? Men are evil pigs, so the best you can do is hope to manipulate them through deception!

Don't get me wrong, I still laughed. Emily and I laughed a fair deal more than everyone else there. I was in hysterics when Jack was interviewed by James Lipton as a nod to Ferrell's hilarious James Lipton impersonation from SNL.

Even so, the film fell flat and nothing could be done to revive it. So it goes. C-

There was one redeeming factor, though. I got the see the Rent trailer before the movie. That's right, my friends, the trailer. Get excited. Get very, very excited.

It's the DVD cover!

A Gentleman's Game (2001)

I'm sure you had that figured out by now anyway.

Outline: One summer, Timmy Price (Mason Gamble) decides to take up golf, and his dad (Dylan Baker) decides that he would learn a lot more about the game and Fox Chase (their golf/country club) by caddying. Timmy demonstrates an excellent swing, so a respected club member (Philip Baker Hall) recommends Timmy take lessons from Foster Pearse (Gary Sinise), an one-time amateur champion turned horticulturalist.

If you think that there's something very strange and circular going on with all the F's and P's in the names of people and places, you're not wrong.

This, my friends, is a quiet movie. A quiet movie can only be viewed in a certain state of mind, and it is often an acquired taste. A quiet movie has a few points, makes them, and moves on without bothering itself about what kind of impact it will make. I have half a mind to compare this movie to the game of golf itself, but I really have no idea, having never played myself. A putt-putt movie, on the other hand, I'd be all over that.

I'd like to say good things about this movie or to say bad, but it's all relative in this case. The plot's your garden variety adults-learn-from-the-lessons-of-children with a little this-is-too-heavy-for-kids coming of age business mixed in for good measure, but it's nothing you've never seen before. Co-writers J. Mills Goodloe (who also directed) and Tom Coyne (who wrote the novel) seem to disregard the obviousness of their storyline to concentrate on the individual scenes instead. Naturally I liked that idea.

They also assembled a handy team. Sinise is the ultimate in the "actors who just act the hell out of everything they are in" category. Heck, he's the reason it exists. I've never seen him in anything where I felt he was out of his element.

Gamble's probably got a nice future ahead of him in movie's. I've only seen him in Gattaca and Rushmore, and you know how I feel about those movies. What can I say? Gamble seems to already be taking a page from Sinise's book, and that's not a bad way to go.

The movie probably could have done better if it hadn't been held back by an R rating, but I can see why they gave it one. It also adds to the bittersweet quality of the picture - Timmy must learn who he can look up to and for what reasons, and that's never fun as a kid.

Of course, if you really want to learn about a boy growing into adolescence when he already thinks he's got it figured out, you're better off reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. C+

Later Bale

Batman Begins (2005)

Premise: After his parents' murders, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) travels to the ends of the earth to understand the criminal mind. In Northern China, Wayne is released from prison by Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) and Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe), who train him and teach him to channel his energies. Later, Wayne returns to Gotham to fight injustice and restore the city.

Or, to quote whomever at IMDB, "The story of how Bruce Wayne became what he was destined to be, Batman."

Quite possibly, for the first time ever, I am more giddy about a movie after I've seen it than I was in anticipating it. I know that sounds bizarre, but you'll see what I mean.

After about a year of anticipation, it's finally here. The movie that is supposed to reinvigorate the franchise after a slow and painful death. The movie that is to provide a shot of imagination that had only existed with the delightful Tim Burton at the helm.

Oh, what to say, what to say. I joyously pronounce this fifth installment the best of them all. The best!

With Christopher Nolan, master of tension, co-writing and directing, I was both eager and anxious. Eager because I know how expertly Nolan can pace a movie, how telling his shots can be, how provocative every frame of his work is. Anxious because I was wary of him possibly selling out all those things and more with a bigger budget at his disposal. Also, how would a pitch perfect thriller director handle an action movie/comic book adaptation?

My anxiety was completely quieted in the first act. Nolan is a force to be reckoned with, Hollywood. His Batman was as sleek and stylish as a matinee idol but with the polish and grace of a true box office star. Nolan's interpretation of the story held true to the Bob Kane original with the kind of embellishments that demonstrated his respect for the subject. Nolan and David S. Goyer's (co-writer) Batman didn't just pay lip service to his chilling past, he embodied it. They had my chin trembling (take that, Claire!) on at least three separate occasions in the first twenty minutes.

Also, the story throws its familiarity out the window by presenting as many as three timelines simultaneously. Even though a lot of the in-between of Wayne's life (i.e. between the murders and Batman) is new for this version, I really felt like it explained a lot. Wayne is too literal (occasionally with hilarious results)! Of course he's a ninja! And of course that other's guy's not.

And to my especial delight Wayne's enemies were not necessarily the same as Batman's. I truly appreciated watching him fight battles on all sides.

The thanks goes, in large part, to the brilliantly cast Bale, using two accents of instead of his usual completely new one. I recently added Bale to my list of actors who just act the hell out of everything they're in, and he has once again proven no exception. Bale powerfully played the way Wayne's patrician upbringing and totally disillusionment in adulthood would result in his self-tortured soul. Wayne is a man searching for the meaning he lost at so young an age and is completely unable to accept it until he can find it in himself, until he can find his own forgiveness. Only Bale's quiet and rage fuelled performance could lead me to all these conclusions.


Neeson and Bale

Of course, there are no slackers in the supporting cast, and you're often distracted by spotting other Nolan alums. Neeson's one goal is to steal every scene he's in, turning in a deviously paternal performance. Michael Caine as the new Alfred is never short of a one-liner, a teary-eyed remembrance, or a harsh glare exactly when Wayne needs them. Gary Oldman proves once again that he is not only the man of a thousand faces but also a thousand characters as the not-quiet-yet Commissioner Gordon. Cillian Murphy rocks his mad scientist villain, his American accent, and he rocked his glasses hardest of all. Morgan Freeman has fun as Lucius Fox, as Wayne Enterprises' answer to Q. Tom Wilkinson works it as an improbably cast Italian Mafioso. Rutger Hauer proves wonderfully underhanded, if none too bright, as Earle, the CEO of Wayne Enterprises.

My only regret is the tacked-on romantic subplot with the unfortunate Katie Holmes. Although I despise that show that launched her, she has done some work that I have enjoyed. Here, however, she exists solely to annoy me. A more credible actress could have made this tedious plot contrivance work to her advantage, but all Holmes did was fail to act appropriately frightened.

Clocking in at 141 mins, I can honestly tell you that it didn't feel anywhere near that long. I knew that it had to be, but I still felt like I could have kept watching.

As another plus, I have always believed that Gotham more aesthetically resembled Chicago than the Big Apple it is more frequently likened to. I found it immensely gratifying that some of the film was shot on location in Chicago and none of it in New York.

Nolan and Bale have captivated me separately more than once. Together, they should prove an unbeatable combination.

I know that you are sitting here waiting for my seemingly inevitable A+. But you are mistaken, gentle reader. And that's where my giddiness comes in. That's why I'm bouncing in my chair, rubbing my hands together with glee. That's why I was concerned that a day later, I still shouldn't be writing this review because I haven't quite absorbed the whole thing. All the pieces, you see, were there, but it still hasn't come together. It's forced me to anticipate a sequel, if you can imagine, that will be better than the first. So, for now, A.

Being There (1979) and Birth (2004)

Plot 1: After the death of his employer, Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers) is turned out of the estate, which he has never left before. Through series of happy accidents, he falls in with a wealthy family (Shirley Maclaine and Melvyn Douglas) and gains the ear of the president (Jack Warden).

Plot 2: At her engagement party, Anna (Nicole Kidman) is approached by 10 year old boy, Sean (Cameron Bright), who claims to be Anna's dead husband.

No pictures today, folks. These movies aren't worth the effort.

Inspired by two recent contests on Slate, I finally found a way I can blog about these two movies. Here goes.

Have you ever been so thrown off by the premise of a movie that you can't possibly buy a single thing that follows? As a dutiful movie goer, I've swallowed down many an questionable pill to make it through an otherwise palatable movie. I've also suspended my disbelief when the films were premised around something as bizarre as a six foot talking rabbit.

But these two films pushed my limits. Both came highly recommended by two very different sources, so I gave them each a go. I shouldn't have.

Forget about what happens to Chance after he leaves the estate because it didn't matter to me one bit. The trailer tells me that Louise (Ruth Attaway), the housekeeper, is the only person Chance has ever known besides the old man. She raised him, she didn't teach him how to read and write, she cooked his meals, she did his laundry, she somehow instilled the virtues of gardening in him.

So how I can be reasonably expected to believe that Louise would simply leave Chance at the estate to fend for himself? She just leaves him there. "I'm going to leave now, Chance," she says, and she does! What is that? What does she think is going to happen to him?

After this happened, I could barely tolerate sitting through the rest of this off-kilter comedy. I just kept waiting for Louise to realize how stupid, selfish, and cruel she was being and come back for Chance, but she never does. Sorry, but nothing on this earth could make me get into this movie after something so implausible occurred.

The second equally unreasonable premise is easier to sum up: She believes him. Anna tries to deny it, but she believes Sean as soon as he opens his little mouth.

To which I say, are you kidding? I could have gotten into it if she was all, "You're a crazy kid!" from the get-go but then Sean won her over, but this? WTF, mates?

Also, Anne Heche with long brown hair threw me off a bit, too. Not as much, though.

I suppose I should give both these movies a rating since I watched them all the way through. I can't. I didn't believe anything about them because I couldn't see my way through the first twenty minutes of either one. I had a complete disconnect from the movies from the word go.

Feel free to throw out any movies with implausible premises that you couldn't deal with either.

Redford and Dafoe

The Clearing (2004)

Short: Executive Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) is kidnapped by ex-employee Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe), who demands a $10 million ransom from Wayne's wife, Eileen (Helen Mirren).

And that's what happens. Sounds pretty exciting, right? Three talented leads with an interesting premise to work with.

It is, unfortunately, complete forgettable. Within an hour of watching it, I recommended it to my then roomie Eileen. A day later, I couldn't remember why I wanted her to see it. Regardless of my short term memory flaws, movies tend to stick with me. In such a case as this, The Clearing had absolutely no staying power.

I can't pin point the reason why, but Justin Haythe's screenplay and Pieter Jan Brugge's direction are just so boring. Wayne and Arnold's story is intercut with Eileen's story. Eileen's story, however, takes place over a few days while Wayne's is merely one day. This device should have added to the tension, but it just made it all the more confusing.

Also, much was made in the initial reviews about the "psychic connection" between Wayne and Eileen, which manifested itself not the least bit in my viewing.

Plus the trailer has a scene from nearly the end of the movie, so I found myself impatiently waiting for that one scene to somehow fit into this mess.

I've been sitting here wrinkling up my nose at the screen, trying to find something in particular to talk about with this movie. But nothing exists! It's almost as though there is no movie because of the way it only exists in shadows in my memory. C-

Lovely Clive

As I said I would, a very special shout-out goes to the person who could told me where to find The Hire on-line. This one's for you, Pierre Belanger.

Premise: I'm not going to sit here and type out premises to all eight shorts, but there is a general plot to them all. The Driver (Clive Owen) is hired, and he internationally chauffeurs various celebs around through helicopter and machine gun fuelled car chases.

Okay, there aren't helicopters every time.

Last night, my professor put the final nail in the coffin of my dislike for his grandstanding ways by showing us Ticker and leading quite the involved discussion about whether and how this advertising method works.

One girl pointed out that producing these short films (all under 10 minutes) allows BMW to attract bigger names like Owen, Don Cheadle, F. Murray Abraham, Dennis Haysbert, and Ray Liotta (all in Ticker alone) as well as directors like Tony Scott, Guy Ritchie, John Woo, and Ang Lee. Okay, she really didn't know half those names, but she caught Ridley Scott as a producer and Owen, so bully for her.

Of course, if the girl had done her homework (not that we were assigned homework about BMW Films), she wouldn't have bothered opening her mouth with stupid points like this one. Although we know my love for Clive began some time ago, it wasn't really until Closer that he became a household name. The shorts started long before that movie.

In fact, BMW approached Owen after Croupier, which no one saw. Well, lots of people saw it, but it took forever to turn a decent profit in the box office. It did, however, turn the industry's eye to Owen, and BMW snapped him up before he commanded astronomical salaries and the fantasies of women worldwide.

As for the directors, I've already turned my eye to the startling number of major players at the helm of TV spots, which are shorter and vastly different than The Hire.

Some theorists argue that television shows are built solely to showcase commercials. Outside of TiVo and PVR, they say, you have to watch the commercials in order to get the content you want. So why would BMW place their ads solely on the internet, away from your TV and annoying pop-ups?

BMW says that 85% of their purchases are researched on the internet before hand. A guy in my class pointed out that the shorts don't tell you anything about the car you are seeing. He's right - you are free from seeing a car drive across the desert/salt flat/deserted highway/empty city while a voice over tells you all about the command seating or five-star crash rating or whatever minor improvement a given car company happens to be touting at this moment. No one ever references the car, never mind the make or model.

So you have to go the website to download or stream the shorts, and they still won't try to sell you on the benefits of the Z3. Hmmm. . .

BMW isn't selling a car at all. Commercials sell cars, test drives sell cars, word of mouth sell cars, ratings sell cars. Short films, on the other hand, are about branding - they sell a lifestyle. Obviously you'll never be as sexy, cool-headed, and upright as the Driver, but, when you drive the car, you'll be the next best thing. You'll get to shift the gears (nary a film without at least one shot of the gear shift). You'll hear the engine roar live and in person, and everyone will look at you and what you are driving.

See, when you buy an expensive car, when you really love an expensive car, it's a crime to keep it locked up à la Cameron's dad. All you really want is to see what she can do.

Plus, these films represent a huge opportunity for Owen. He gets to sample the work of internationally acclaimed directors and actors outside of the watchful eye of the press, allowing him to gather what's potentially decades of experience in a few short years.

Above all, for BMW, the consumers come to you. They aren't zipping through your commercials or blocking your pop-ups/behinds. And you don't have to pay like you do every time a commercial airs.

It's bloody brilliant. A+

Someone who can articulate it

All those times people try to get me to watch Quentin Tarantino movies, I find myself defending the absolutely inarticulable reason why I just don't like them. Because I just don't. I mean, sure, there's that thing where I pretty much don't like him either, but I don't connect with anything in his movies.

So, when it came to the two hour, Tarantino-helmed season finale of CSI, I can't say I was particularly excited. It had things I thorough expect from him, and it had things I thoroughly expect from the show.

Much to my glee, Sobell's recap had a little something more. It seems she's none to keen on the overly lauded director either, and she was able to even put it into a few words (click here to view text in original source):

And this is my big problem with Mr. Tarantino. I can handle that he's made a career basically ripping off -- excuse me, being inspired by -- other directors' distinctive visual and narrative styles. I can handle that many of his movies are essentially collections of sets pieces. I can handle that he's over-reliant on using pop culture references as a way to infuse his work with meaning, since he's unwilling or unable to do the hard work and create that on his own. But what really makes me run cold is how Tarantino's depictions of man's inhumanity to man rarely transcend voyeurism. As depicted by him, acts of violence are just some cool shit to show because they make audience members react, and sparking any response is apparently better than striving to make a point that your audience may or may not respond to. Screw that -- if you're going to show something extreme, it should be in the service of a larger point than "I do it because I can."

I feel so relieved now.

Glam rock!

Velvet Goldmine (1998)

Short: In 1984, journalist Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) is assigned a story about the rise and fall of British glam rock icon Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), marking the 10 year anniversary of the concert where Slade faked his own death. Coincidence of coincidences, the only British man in New York happened to be at that concert, and he knows a lot more about Slade, Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), and Mandy Slade (Toni Collette) than his editor could even guess.

Once upon a time, April was attacked by the HoYay. See, I so excited to see my long-term and original movie boyfriend in a movie that I started watching it in the middle, and I saw things that made me immediately snap off the movie. In fact, I pretty much broke up with Christian Bale after that.

Many a moon has passed, and I can handle the HoYay now. If you don't know what HoYay means, you aren't reading enough TWoP. And if you don't know what TWoP stands for, you aren't checking out my links. That's too bad for you, ma'am (or sir).

So, consider yourself warned about the HoYay. Apparently it arrives via spaceship with Oscar Wilde and a green pin.

Any way, you know that part in The Boondock Saints were Rocco accidentally shoots that cat, and Norman Reedus yells, (in an entirely Southern US and not at all Irish way) "Did that just happen?" Well, that's how I feel about this movie. There are only a handful of movies that I could toss in this category, but you know them when you watch them. As soon as the credits start rolling, I look around and ask no one in particular, "What did I just watch?" Not because I've instantly forgotten, you see, but because I have yet to process any of the information.

Now, with luck, some of those movies improve with repeated viewing. Others, however, are thrown into what I now refer to as the "take it or leave it" pile. I wouldn't want anyone to see it without being warned, but I wouldn't stop anyone from seeing it. Unless they didn't want to be neck deep in the HoYay.

I seem to be doing a lot of explaining for this movie, which is either a bad or a good sign. At this point, I'm not entirely sure.

I've been thinking about it, and, while many actors are well suited to their roles, there are few perfect role/actor combinations. I mean the ones where you couldn't imagine anyone else playing the role half as well, as though the actor were born to be [blank]. For me, Russell Crowe as Maximus and Renee Zellweger as Bridget spring to mind. She's the very embodiment of Bridget Jones.

To that list I add Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Slade. If any one else could look like, sing like, or be a better sociopathic (tm, Sobell!), androgynous, bisexual glam rock star, you let me know who it is. Because it's no one. Meyers, frustrating and useless as anyone normal, is bloody charismatic, and he knows it. You just sit back and wait for those pouty lips to curl and those expressionless eyes to start to gleam. Good for him.

Todd Haynes, who wrote and directed this bizarre little offering, also gave us the glorious and understated Far From Heaven, which also involved the HoYay. I'm thinking that Haynes wants to be a modern day Tennessee Williams. Good luck with that. Williams had the kind of characterization that speaks volumes decades after writing, unlike Haynes here. Far From Heaven, though, was the kind of film that requires multiple viewings to see past its muted tones and into its core. I'm undecided about Haynes.

Shades of Citizen Kane and David Bowie aside, I still don't know how to grade this one. If I give it a C, I worry that you'll interpret it as "average" or "middle of the road," but it's not middle of the road. It's on another street entirely. Still, C.

Kochi, 10 "Up the Stairs"

Born into Brothels (2004)

Subject: Zana Briski moves in with sex workers in Calcutta's red light district (to document them, perhaps) and is immediately drawn to the kids. She starts a photography class with them, all the while becoming more and more attached.

I've been trying to figure out what to write about this movie for weeks now, but it never seems to come out right. Unlike so many of the subjective documentaries I normally see, this one didn't have anything to prove. Nothing to prove and a hundred silent, eloquent points.

As you watch the kids start to see their world in a different way through photography, you also so the hope that comes alive in their education and the inevitability the girls feel about their future. Suddenly, one of them isn't in the film. No one mentions where she went or what happened, yet we all know that she joined the line. Scores of women packed together in a sea of flesh, waiting for the next customer.

As Briski's relationship with the children grows, so does her desire to save them from their fate. Briski struggles to find them places in school, knowing full well that very few schools will take the children of sex workers. Briski and partner Ross Kauffman manage to fill the film with a quiet urgency, a knowledge that perhaps the sex trade is inevitable for many of these young girls.

Oh, check it out! I didn't want you to think I was just going to steal their work.

Utterly depressing; utterly uplifting. A+

It's nicer than the other poster

It really is. The other poster's depressing.

Crash (2005)

iMDB would have me believe 2004, but I disagree.

Sum: Although much of what you may have read suggests that this film revolves around differing lives in Los Angeles intersecting at a car crash, that's misleading. There are, in fact, numerous car crashes, and many of lives never intersect or involve car crashes. Instead, it sort of goes like this: The young DA (Brendan Fraser) and his wife, Jean (Sandra Bullock), are car-jacked by Anthony (Ludacris) and Peter (Larenz Tate), right after Anthony finishes a diatribe about how whites are unjustly afraid of blacks. Jean takes out her anger on her non-white maid, Maria (Yomi Perry), and the locksmith, Daniel (Michael Pena), the film's sole saint. Meanwhile, Officer Ryan (Matt Dillon) pulls over an affluent black couple and molests the wife, Christine (Thandie Newton), while is partner, Officer Hanson (Ryan Phillippe), and her husband, Cameron (Terrence Howard), do nothing but look on in horror. Also, Farhad (Shaun Toub) takes his daughter, Dorri (Bahar Soomekh), to buy a gun to protect their store with a faulty back door/lock. And Graham (Don Cheadle) and his partner, Ria (Jennifer Esposito), investigate a corrupt cop while Graham deals with his smack addict mom.

It's difficult to say what I have to say about this movie. See, there is all this praise out there for the characters saying that which is never said in American movies. True enough. Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco's screenplay has people saying things you've quite likely never heard in a movie before.

But do you really need to hear such things?

I'd like to like this movie. I'd like to say that it was powerful and moving and unlike anything I've ever seen before. And it was. It was all those things. It was also something so much worse.

Apparently, Los Angeles is the city where everyone goes to no longer conceal their racism. I believe that everyone is, in one way or another, racist. People who care about their racism, who recognize it as a problem, identify certain feelings, sayings, ideas as racist and work to stop their minds from going in that direction. In Haggis' Los Angeles (he also directed), though, everyone just says exactly what's on their minds about race relations, beshrew the consequences! Of course, this does not include Pena, what with him being Crash's patron saint and all.

And that's the problem. What is this movie about? RACISM. What is everyone? RACIST. In fact, Haggis wants us to know that we are all mean, hating racists out to destroy each other, and nothing can stop us. That's why this movie isn't powerful and moving and unlike anything else I've ever seen. Unfortunately, I've seen plenty of manipulative, melodramatic, and moralizing movies. As much as each and every player tries to rise above the material, there really is no escaping Haggis' vision.

So, Haggis, what shall we do with you? Here's what I want you to do. Grab your Oscar of its shelf, dust it off, and give it a long hard look in the face. Then, rent Million Dollar Baby, and consider your elegant, delicate treatment of an equally sensitive issue. Maybe Clint Eastwood's gentle touch helped more than your hamfists, but you may have something to you yet.

Even so, a movie seeking to bludgeon its audience with their own RACISM isn't worth your $9.95. Wait for the DVD. It is worth that much. C+

The Spanish Prisoner

The Spanish Prisoner (1997)

Perhaps it's a bit redundant to see the title three times before you see the plot description. I'm still working out these photoblogging kinks. Just wait 'til the day I attempt vlogging. Anyway . . .

Brief: Joe Ross (Campbell Scott) is flown, along with George Lang (Ricky Jay) and Susan Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon), to the Caribbean island of St. Estephe in order to attend a meeting about the top-secret "process" he invented. While there, he is befriended by Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin), a wealthy business man who asks for a favour. Joe complies and quickly finds himself further and further alienated from his colleagues and drawn to Jimmy, a man whose own dubious nature Joe begins to suspect.

I'd tell you to watch the preview to make that clearer, but I watched the preview and thought it was about money laundering, which it is very much not. As usual, I was trying to give you a description without giving too much away. The movie has a fairly long set up, so that made it a bit trickier.

What I love about this film, what I love about all of David Mamet's films, is the innate lyricism to his scripts. There's a rhythm to them that draws you in, lulling and jarring you at appropriate moments. I think that's what makes Pidgeon so well suited to his work. She's the only one who could endear the audience while delivering the odd lines Mamet throws at her.

As much as I always enjoy that work, I didn't find Mamet's story thrilling so much as confusing. Mind you, I was thrown a bit by the lack of money laundering, and I believe I recovered enough to simply not understand. I like that you never find out what the process is, but I don't like that you have absolutely no sense at all of anything that goes on in that secure building. Oh, well.

As for Scott, well, I don't know what to think about him. There's nothing wrong with his acting, and I found his Joe to be over-the-top most of the time in his sense of self-possession. Maybe that's just the way he was written. In any case, as he is the so-called patron saint of the indie film, I suppose I should lay off him.

I saw this movie more than a week ago, and I've been struggling with reviewing it ever since. The truth is, I have nothing in particular to say about it. I didn't really strike me one way or the other except for how confusing it was with all the crossing, double, and triple crossing in the second act. By the third it's all pretty much sorted, so there's less to worry about it.

All in all, I've come to expect a little bit more from Mamet. B-

Sideways

Sideways (2004)

It's RE-view time! To remind you of the rules: I see the movie in the theatre; I see it again on DVD. No plot description and no holds barred on what I may mention for that movie's plot.

While no movie is ever perfect, this movie is the closest offering from last year. Last year, unlike the others between it and my beloved 2000, was an amazing year for movies. Movies were wonderful to watch last year.

As I was watching it this time, I kept trying to put my finger on what makes it so good besides the obvious. Outside of the quality of the actors, the direction, the script, the setting.

The scene that kills me, the scene that breaks my heart and sends it soaring, occurs when Miles and Maya discuss what got them into wine. When he starts to describe the pinot grape as "thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early," it's as "haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle" as the wine he so loves. And then, with the same question, Maya pushes the bounds with how "a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your '61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline." Chilling and uplifting.

The true triumph of Alexander Payne's latest offering, that which sets it apart from Election and About Schimdt, is that is isn't a mood piece. You need to be in the right frame of mind to find Election hilarious. If you're not there, the movie seems tedious.

With this film, though, you don't have to been in the mood to be amused. You just to watch. The movie will get to you. It's inevitable. It is haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and alive and constantly evolving and gaining complexity as any one piece of time (thanks, JS!) can be.

Plus, I like that it makes me compare Miles' wine snobbery to my alleged movie snobbery. It's not as though I refer to myself as a cineast. I can't even spell cineast.

Although Miles is clearly an alcoholic, the oenophile in him is drawn not to the bottle but to the single mouthful - he's seduced by its colour, clarity, viscosity, and scent long before the wine hits his lips. I'm a junkie for film, but the cineaphile (if I may be so bold as to use that word) in me is drawn to the single scene, the perfect line reading.

Towards the end of the movie, as Miles is bidding Jack so long until the rehearsal dinner, Miles turns back to Jack to get their stories straight.

Miles: Uh, wait a minute, wait a minute. How come I wasn't hurt?
Jack: (throws arm up casually) You were wearing your seat belt.

Perfect, perfect scene. Jack doesn't even pause in his reply, and Miles starts to chuckle softly at the simplicity of Jack's scheme as he heads back to his car. It's the briefest of moments, and it is in those brief moments that the audience gets to feel like they are on the inside. Not because they've just watched this whole movie but because there's an undeniably familiar quality to this one tiny moment.

That's why I'm into movies. And they just taste so good.

What is ePIC?

First, click here. It's pretty self explanatory what to do once you get there. Then, come back here, and we can talk.

So, assuming you don't possess the same level of idiot as the girl behind me today in class ("Is this what's really going to happen?"), what do you think? Does Google want to own my ass?

More importantly, how much of this pessimistic view is realistic? Is the day coming when there will be no discussion of journalistic ethics? No more New York Times?

I have my opinions, and I believe this link will help you generate yours. I'd like to hear yours first.

Inventing the Abbotts (1997)

Summary: JC Holt (Billy Crudup) is obsessed with the Abbotts, the seemingly wealthiest family in the small town of Hayley, Illinois. More specifically, he is obsessed with Lloyd Abbott’s (Will Patton) beautiful daughters, Alice (Joanna Going), Eleanor (Jennifer Connelly), and Pamela (Liv Tyler). His younger brother Doug (Joaquin Phoenix) determines to stay far away from the Abbotts for this very reason, but he is consistently drawn to youngest daughter Pam.

I am of two minds about this movie. It opened with “Undecided”, which is one of my favourite jazz era songs, but it was performed by the Ray Gelato Giants when it should have been the great Ella Fitzgerald.

And that’s the thing about this movie. Right elements in the wrong context.

Ken Hixon’s screenplay, based on Sue Miller’s story, is unbelievably obvious, contrived, and goes on longer than it should. He also wrote City by the Sea, another overblown story, but one I loved because I’m a complete sucker for fathers and sons who say “I love you.”

There’s actually a part where the narrator (Michael Keaton) comes to the realization that “there was nothing especially original about [his] mother”, and the same is true of Hixon and Miller’s story.

Despite the material they were working with, everyone acted the hell out of this thing. Of course, that’s what I’ve always respected and am drawn to the most about Phoenix and Crudup (although he’s never quite caught my eye the way Joaquin has). That’s probably why my memory converted Crudup to Phoenix in The Hi-Lo Country. Because they just act the hell out of everything they are given, completely regardless of everything save the craft.

I was just about to call them actor’s actors, but I’m not sure what that would mean. If anything, they are both acting’s actors and audience’s actors because it’s perhaps loyalty to the art as well as the viewer that they make something so memorable out of something so forgettable.

Plus I think they really could pass for brothers.

I’d give the credit to director Pat O’Connor, but she hasn’t earned it. Her Circle of Friends was lovely, but her Sweet November was one of the most awful things I’ve ever seen. Just thinking about it now makes me want to up-chuck. Unlike Schumacher yesterday, I don’t think the shooting script has that much influence of the quality of O’Connor’s work. I just don’t think she understands people all that well. You need to, though, to tell a story in a way that it will connect with the audience.

Nit-picky point: They couldn’t get a better match for Phoenix than Keaton? That’s not what Phoenix sounds like now, eight years later, and it’s not what he will sound like however many more years down the line the narration is supposed to take place. Surely there must be someone else with similar delivery to Phoenix’s Doug, if not his accent. Keaton’s line readings just bugged me. They came across as lazy.

As always, I raise my glass to the dearly departed Michael Kamen, whose wonderfully evocative score had me tearing up over moments that my mind railed against. Objectively, they weren’t that good, but a well-done scene between Phoenix and the talented and beautiful Tyler or Phoenix and Crudup with Kamen’s string section swelling in the background could get to anyone.

If I could somehow discount the direction, the plot, and Keaton, this movie would get an A without hesitation. But I can’t. B

8 MM (1999)

Outline: Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter) hires private detective Tom Welles (Nicholas Cage) to authenticate an 8 millimetre snuff film she finds among her deceased husband's belongings. Once he does, she asks him to find out everything he can about it: who the girl was, how involved her husband was, and who made it. Welles' investigation takes him to LA, where he hires a porn store clerk, Max (Joaquin Phoenix), to help him navigate through the industry.

My second example in as many weeks of Joel Schumacher (director, obviously) being only as good as the script he's working with.

There are two detective archetypes in movies: 1) The family man whose perfect American life (wife, daughter, nice house) is contrasted with the filth and immorality he pursues or 2) The hard boiled, hard drinking man cut off from the world because of his contempt for it (just look at the base creatures he investigates in his line of work!) who only needs the love of a good woman to straighten himself out.

Welles is the former. The sexy and talented Catherine Keener is his wife. Some baby is his daughter. In the likely way, Welles becomes obsessed with finding the girl in the film, obsessed with hurting those who hurt her, in shocking twists that shock no one. Cage does very little with the role except pull an impressive face at one point. In the same way that Liz has a Michael Douglas rule, I have a Nicholas Cage rule: nothing with Cage can ever be all that good. He does Welles' descent into violence pretty realistically, but, at least at first, he's utterly too squeamish to be a detective. It's like he's never seen anything violent and degrading before, which raises the question as to how he could even authenticate the film if the world of snuff filmmaking is so new.

If I start asking questions like that now, I'll never finish this review. Basically speaking, Cage's characterization was over-the-top, like many of his egomanical performances we are so frequently "treated" to.

Phoenix amused me as a blue-haired, tightly-clad clerk who wasn't as interested in his product as he was in rhyme and his own idiomatic speech patterns (no wonder the band didn't work out). He always manages to rise above the archetype, in this case he who no one believed in, who (likely) ran away, and who never managed to succeed (perhaps he never believed in himself?). Welles takes a shine to him (not like that), and he wants to protect him, so we all know how that's going to turn out.

Andrew Kevin Walker's screenplay didn't do it for me. I'm cracking up because I was thinking about how much better it would have been if Welles' squeamishness had been played up for comedic effect like Ichabod Crane's (Johnny Depp) in Sleepy Hollow, which Walker also wrote. So, there ya go, Walker! Just stick with stuff like that. He also wrote two of the "The Hire" screenplays, all of which I am dying to see. Special shout-out to anyone who knows where I can get them.

Oh, get this: The actual script by Andrew Kevin Walker was reworked by Joel Schumacher and Nicholas Kazan after Walker left the project in disagreement with the director. (Click here for the source).

Also, what was with Jenny Powell's line readings?

Oh, Schumacher. Blindingly brilliant visual style. At an absolute loss for what to do with a formulaic script. Not that it was all that bad. I've seen far, far worse. B

The Interpreter (2005)

Brief: Late one night at the UN, interpreter Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman) overhears an assassination plot against soon-to-visit President Zuwanie (Earl Cameron) of Matobo. Agents Woods (Catherine Keener) and Keller (Sean Penn) are called in to investigate, but Keller quickly uncovers much closer ties between Silvia and the President than the UN anticipated.

You take three screen writers: one lackluster (Charles Randolph), one medium luster (Scott Frank), and one electric (Steven Zaillian), and add one director (Syndey Pollack) who at least one critic has accused of no longer directing. What do you get?

Something banal, something mediocre, something middle brow. It's not so blah that I wouldn't recommend it, not so enticing that I would. The plot, for me, was a done deal thanks to the lying previews, so it was hard to fall into that sort of pulsing intensity that the film was supposed to have. There was only one scene that had me digging my nails into the arm rests.

There were some great exchanges between Kidman and Penn as well as Woods and Penn, but since I've long regarded the three of them as richly talented performers (although some lacking in discernment when compared to the others), I can't say I was surprised. I wouldn't rank these among their best performances, but they are no where near the worst.

Pollack's main concern is neither the story nor the telling of it; rather, that concern seems to be the building where the majority of the action takes place. He wants you to experience its bass toned beauty, its every surface and texture more lovingly shot than artful directed.

Intended or not, it was Kidman's clothes, Vespa, hair, and apartment that I was most concerned for in this film. If anyone can tell me where I can get that jacket, s/he will be getting a very special shout out. Her whole look was this "I don't care how I look" thing that I would love to start pulling off exactly this minute. Okay, maybe her hair was a little over the top. I think she could have managed a complete ponytail. Ponytails don't really work with my curls, but I want her look other than that.

It's sort of another Closer - I'm not sure how to grade it. Two great performers, not two great performances. Once again, there was nothing wrong with them per se, but there was nothing memorable about them either. Serious clothes envy. Nothing spectacular, nothing horrible.

Ah, what the heck. B

Easy Rider (1969)

Plot: Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) set out on a motorcycle trip from LA to New Orleans, picking up George Hansen (Jack Nicholson) along the way.

I'm shaking my head at this movie. I watched it nearly a week ago, and I still don't get it. I just don't get it.

It's the supposed quintessential movie of the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll generation, of the counter-culture, of the independents. Alright. Hopper was stoned out of his mind when he made the movie (true story!), so I can buy at least two of the three.

What is this movie about? What are Hopper (director/co-writer), Fonda (co-writer), and Terry Southern (co-writer) saying? Hippies are misunderstood and frequently the victims of violence? Drugs are both good and bad? Road trips can be fun? Some people are nice and some aren't?

For example, you see complete strangers willing to feed and/or board Wyatt and Billy. Then you see a cafe that refuses to serve them because they have "long hair" (Fonda's hair wasn't long at all) and are strange strangers.

I know I should comment on the acting, but it wasn't acting at all. I know there were screenwriters, but I doubt there was much of a script. I think Hopper and Fonda just said whatever they wanted to say, Nicholson played a character (which, I find, Nicholson basically plays a version of himself in everything), and everyone else did what they could with what they had.

Also, what was with the editing and cinematography? What do you want from me Donn Cambern? Those edits made me feel like I would never really get to know what was happening. If that was the point, though, then good work.

I got the impression that although the film wasn't about following any particular plot, it was supposed to be saying something about America. Is it the sum of its parts? Is it that there is always someone waiting to take away the occasionally glimmer of happiness that few are lucky enough to find?

Perhaps. You won't find it here, though. C- (I can't fail it just because I don't get it)

Moulin Rouge Lite and The Dressing Room

You know that new Chanel No5 spot? The Moulin Rouge-y looking one with Nicole Kidman having an affair with who appears to be Karl from Love, Actually then runs off to some glamorous event?

Well, it looks so much like a Baz Luhrmann production because it is one.

"The Dressing Room" - Again, I know you know the spot. Susan Sarandon/Julianne Moore/Eva Mendes/Kate Bosworth/Halle Berry go from an awards show to a more dressed down look with the help of Revlon cosmetics.

Why is it so elegant and effortless? Because Robert Altman directed it.

Now, I understand the appeal and have long enjoyed the use of actors instead of models as spokespersons for various products. But when did big time directors get into advertising? What's the appeal there?

How can Revlon, a notoriously sinking ship, even afford someone like Altman in addition to all those beauties?

Can someone please explain this to me? Aren't I supposed to be looking to the silver screen for their work?

This isn't what I thought they meant

"Have you noticed that the silver screen is looking a bit tarnished these days?" asks a book review in The Weekly Standard. The tarnish at the multiplex is quite real, according to Edward Jay Epstein, author of The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood.

More . . .