2006: Year in Review

Steven Zaillian's film is a remake of the 50s political thriller based on a rather famous book. His 2006 version is the worst film of the year - which was saying something! Sean Penn stars as a Louisiana senator who is running for office. Observing his rise to power, this film is like watching an overheated remake of "Triumph of the Will" - except Southern-fried and even more heavy-handed!Jude Law shows up as a journalist following the enterprising upstart politician, James Gandolfini is a betrayed constituant and, ultimately, political rival, Kate Winslet is a lovely girl who Law might like but who I cannot fathom the purpose of, and Anthony Hopkins is an old Welsh man collecting a paycheck to give bad line-readings in a train wreck that should've stayed on the studio shelf longer than the 1 year delay it did receive!Zaillian, the talented writer of many great films (including "Gangs of New York") has directed good films in the past ("Searching for Bobby Fischer" and "A Civil Action") but here he's way out of his depth. This was a doomed project and, we can only hope, a film made to be murdered. Take it and cut it up to use as ukelele picks or something! And send Zaillian to Director's Prison while you're at it. Don't let the man direct or produce a project until he can pick up a camera and aim it at something worth a split-second of acknowledgement for the love of all that is HOLY!!!

Writer-director Nick Cassavetes' fact-inspired youth crime saga ellicited in me a dramatic chain reaction of opinions: after the first half-hour or thereabouts, my investment shifted from mild interest and quickly gave way to apathy, followed by contempt, interspersed with unintentional laughter - to say nothing of my eventual lamentation over the two hours of my life I will never recover. The film stars Emile Hirsch as Johnny Truelove, a young "wangster" (wannabe gangster, for any novices out there) who treats his friends like his dogs, greases his associates for unpaid debts, and appears somewhat to take his cues from "Scarface" (a cocaine-engulfed Al Pacino poster hangs on his wall; that film's message is lost on this loser). When a drugged-up business pal named Jake (a superb Ben Foster) can't pay him back, a vendetta of sorts is declared, beginning first with his enemy's violation, robbery and defacation (yes) of Johnny's house, then resulting in a retaliation that gradually (too gradually?) snowballs into chaos. Johnny and his closest associates grab fate by the horns one day when Jake's 15-year-old brother (Anton Yelchin), who appears to be heading down the same path, is in a prime position to be kidnapped. They take him, buddy up to him, and since he's got nowhere else to go, he goes along with it (this is the most extreme case of Stockholm Syndrome ever filmed!). This film starts out decently enough, but eventually begins to feel like a bad After School Special playing at grit. I just couldn't take Hirsch or his co-horts seriously, as they cursed up and down, and had open and almost anonymous sex and aimed weapons at each other. The ordinarily talented ensemble cast, which appears to be taking leave of their abilities, includes Hirsch, Justin Timberlake (see him in Craig Brewer's "Black Snake Moan" instead), Bruce Wills, Sharon Stone, Vincent Kartheiser, Shawn Hatosy, Dominique Swain, Lukas Haas and former "ER" star Alex Kingston - however, it is nice to see Harry Dean Stanton in a grizzled old gangster role, even if he looks like death on a Triscuit. The ONLY good performance lies in the over-the-top histrionics of the ever-reliable Ben Foster as the wild-eyed, drugged-up Jewish neo-Nazi skinhead Jake, who takes umbrage with Johnny in the first place; he's the film's sole entertaining element, making a potentially painful experience watchable whenever he's on-screen. Meanwhile, the plot grows ridiculous: so many people got involved and so many innocent bystanders became witnesses, I was actually laughing as seemingly every bit part and extra was given a subtitle with a witness number. Nick Cassavetes' previous work includes the sad but admirable Nicholas Sparks weepie "The Notebook" (2004) and the manipulative Denzel Washington hostage-crisis melodrama "John Q." (2002). He also had a hand in writing Ted Demme's far superior Scorsese-inspired drug biopic "Blow" (2001). Here, he sinks further toward the bottom of his own barrel; Scorsese, this ain't. If anything, his film reminded me somewhat of such strong recent work as Barbara Kopple's "Havoc" (2005) and the many takes on the criminal youth sub-culture by Larry Clark ("Kids," "Bully," and "Another Day in Paradise," also featuring Kartheiser) - not in quality, you understand, but in terms of what I'd rather be watching. As the plot unspooled in R-rated true crime TV movie of the week fashion and the bumbling idiots/would-be criminals and their bubble-brained bimbos became increasingly concerned that "maybe we could get in a lot of trouble," I just had to shake my head and laugh. They deserved each other. NOTE: One of the biggest questions I get as someone who reviews movies for fun (and out of love and habit) is: How can you sit through the entire running time of a film you know is garbage? My response is two fold: As an aspiring independent filmmaker, how will I know I'm making good films if I avoid or shun the bad ones? And, as an amateur critic (indeed, my abilities may be greater in the written opinion rather than in the narrative), if I don't sit there and take it, then I'll never be able to purge my mind of the painful memory by spewing forth the venom I build up through the film's duration. All the better to express myself, m'dear. Now then: For a much more intelligent and entertaining take on youth and (semi-) organized crime, I implore you to rent Justin Lin's "Better Luck Tomorrow" (2003), an incomparably more effective shoe-string budget masterpiece about a sort of Asian mafia in an Orange County high school.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu?s final film in a trilogy started with 2001?s Amores Perros and continued with 2003?s 21 Grams is a remarkable amalgamation of the cinematic, storytelling and acting qualities that the young budding auteur has accrued throughout his short career. The film, like its predecessors, tells multiple stories, this time crossing continents to intertwine the tales of an American couple on tourist holiday in Morocco, their Mexican nanny who is forced to take their kids with her to her son?s wedding after a horrible accident forces them to stay overseas, a couple of Berber sons experimenting with a shotgun who are responsible for said accident, and finally a deaf teenage girl who is the daughter of the Japanese businessman who gave the gun as a gift to the boys? father, and who is experimenting haphazzardly with sex. These four powder-kegs collide in what amounts to an explosive, thought-provoking, empathetic and, ultimately, heartbreakingly hopeful portrait of contemporary life and the need for cross-cultural communication (to say nothing of proper communication between relations). With an astonishing ensemble cast, including Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barrazza, Michael Pena, Clifton Collins Jr., this is an unforgettable film. At the film?s emotional center is the most stunningly, physically and emotionally daring performance of this year and possibly the decade: young Rinko Kikuchi as Chieko, the psychologically damaged and vulnerable daughter of the Japanese businessman, who must face mourning the death of her mother with dire consequences for herself and, potentially, anyone around her. This is magnificent, international, independent filmmaking at its height!

Just about the best film in 2007 is writer-director Craig Brewer's sophomore effort following his 2005 debut, "Hustle & Flow." Starring Samuel L. Jackson as a blues musician who has lost his faith in the lord, as well as his marriage, Brewer's film sets up quite the improbable connection when Jackson finds the town slut (Christina Ricci) beaten and raped on the side of the road. Nursing her back to health, Jackson tells her she's been "put in his path" so he can cure her of her "wickedness." What follows is one of the most bizarrely touching and beautiful romances you're ever likely to see!

Anthony Minghella's attempt at a "hyperlink" film is a hit-and-miss affair connecting a cross-section of characters from both sides of the economic and cultural divide in modern day London via a series of astonishing and perplexing robberies; the results are intermittently absorbing. Will (Jude Law) works for an architecture and and landscape design firm with his partner Sandy (Martin Freeman of TV's "The Office" - the UK version, of course), and the two are planning a "built landscape as art" in the middle of a run-down and dangerous section of the King's Cross section of London. He is in the waning days of a ten-year relationship with Liv (Robin Wright Penn), a Swedish-American who has a 13-year-old daughter from a prior relationship. Her name is Bea (Poppy Rogers), and she is a remarkable young gymnast with borderline Autism and serious behavior issues. Then there's Amira (Juliette Binoche), a Bosnian refugee/widow, a seamstress, who lives in a housing project with her 15-year-old son Miro (Rafi Gavron), and who simply minds her own business. One night, Will and Sandy's offices are robbed of several computers, including some personal plans and photos belonging to Will. It seems Miro is a gymnast in his own right, though he and a relative use his talents to break into the place and steal from it - he goes to the roof to see the housekeepers plug in the security codes through the skylight and then climbs in through it to the floor below to deactivate the codes and let his friends in; they will attempt two more robberies. Soon, a hard-boiled Cockney detective (Ray Winstone, also in Scorsese's "The Departed" and - I think - wearing the same leather jacket) is on the case. Meanwhile, Will and Sandy stake out the place, and one night their stakeout is interrupted by Oana (Vera Farmiga, also from "The Departed"), a Romanian prostitute who, for who knows what reason, buys Will coffee, sits in his car, plays her music, hits on him shamelessly, and doesn't seem to charge him for anything. Gradually, Will (who has a history of infidelity) will fall for Amira, discover her son's connection to the robberies via some evidence returned to the scene of the crime, and he will have a choice to make. Anthony Minghella is the writer-director of such modern epics as "The English Patient" (1996), "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999; his best film to date) and "Cold Mountain" (2003). Here, with a relatively short though luxurious 120 minute running time and a modern setting, Minghella has made his British equivalent of an Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu film (ala' "Babel," "Amores Perros" or "21 Grams") without the amazing results; the film feels like it's going to arrive at some grand conclusion, engages in melodrama along the way, and is shameless in its manipulation of the characters like pawns on a chessboard. In this sense, the film resembles a so-called "hyperlink film," a sub-genre of modern cinema that has been defined in an article in Film Comment by Alissa Quart, who suggested the structure was invented by Robert Altman ("Nashville," "Short Cuts") and has been carried through to more modern fare such as "Crash," "Traffic" and "Syriana," among others. The idea is to see how a seemingly random group of characters are connected - whether they realize it or not - by accident, fate and circumstance. Minghella seems to be attempting the same sort of film here, with somewhat less successful results. Ultimately, this is an interesting series of notions never quite given full breath of life; still, it's well-made and worth a look.

In 1973, William Friedkin's "The Exorcist" scared the bejesus out of young audiences, and now he's back into creepy pseudo-horror mode with this fascinating character study, an exercise in claustrophobic, paranoid breakdowns. Ashley Judd is the bartender at a small lesbian dive in Oklahoma(though she herself is straight). Her best friend is a co-worker and regular seeking a lady with the right touch. Into her life comes the out of place ex-Military officer (Michael Shannon in a terrifying turn) who seems normal during a night of cocaine, booze, and ultimately cheap and tawdry sex. But as time goes by, the psyches of these two are on a collision course with insanity. The officer is talking about bugs and aliens and conspiracies, and it's not that long (perhaps too quick) before Judd believes him. This is a disturbingly effective thriller based on Tracy Letts' stage play, one not to be missed.

Writer-director Amy Berg's chilling, heartbreaking documentary is a portrait of the (apparent) banality of evil like few ever portrayed in the documentary forum. Oliver O'Grady was a Catholic priest from Ireland who migrated to northern California in the mid-1970s. There, his modus operandi became to befriend family after family, and be the trust of seemingly unlimited access to their children. The Church's "solution" was to enable his pattern by simply moving him about 50 miles away to a parish after each "incident" was reported, allowing his crimes to spread further up the coastline. This resulted in perhaps the most shameful child-sex abuse scandal in the history of the Catholic Church. Berg interviews "Father Ollie" who, though never diagnosed, appears to have a disassociative disorder of some sort or another as he never seems to fully grasp the level of wrong he has perpetrated, and in appears flippant about it on occasion. She interviews his victims, their families, a Catholic Church official who wants justice for O'Grady's victims, and others involved in the case. The film appears to reach a climax with O'Grady exiled to Ireland (without having to identify himself as a child rapist!), where he attempts to contact his victims by letter in order to get them to come and visit with him so he can "apologize" in person. They don't take too kindly to his suggestions. The film then takes a different course, tracking the victims' remarkable courage as they set out to demand an admission of guilt and apology from the Vatican, only to be ignored. Superficially resembling such powerful documentaries as "Capturing the Friedmans" and "Stevie," Berg's film is psychologically fascinating as it watches and listens to an appalling, sick human being, and bears witness to the tragic fallout from his despicable actions. A remarkable film.

Martin Scorsese's best work often deals with crime, with the tension between multiple identities (the public and the private persona), and with moral quagmires. That his newest film, a remake of 2004's Hong Kong action drama "Infernal Affairs", should take on no less than all of these qualities is a sign that he is at the top of his game. Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio are a couple of South Boston natives who grew up on opposite sides of the track (though only one of them came from the wrong one, precisely). Damon is a mob protégé undercover in the State Police Department and DiCaprio is William Costigan, Jr., a police cadet hand-picked out of the Academy to join the ranks of vile, Irish mob boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson, in a career high performance!). Scorsese reteams here with great collaborators Thelma Schoonmaker (editor), Michael Ballhaus (cinematographer), and his own brilliant sense of music supervision (he scores his films like no other!). Cut within an inch of its life to keep pace with an often hyperkinetic camera, as well as some choice bits of source music (including "Shipping Up to Boston" by The Dropkick Murphys), Scorsese's latest crime epic ranks near his best.

Tarsem's mad folly of a cinematic extravaganza is like the most lucid yet surreal dream translated into an audacious cinematic experiment, somewhat akin to the pioneering work of Werner Herzog or David Lynch crossed with Guillermo Del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth"). It's also a celebration of the innocence of childhood, and the fertility of the imagination. The plot: In 1920s Hollywood, a stunt man called Roy (Lee Pace of TV's "Pushing Daisies") is injured on the set of a Western and becomes an in-patient at a large Catholic hospital. He soon befriends a little Romanian orphan named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), and decides to tell her a fantastical story - one which changes all the time, depending upon the kind of story she wants to hear, and which takes shape (for the audience) in the form of how she imagines what he's telling her. It appears to be a sort of period take on "The A-Team" with a band of adventurers (including Roy as "The Black Bandit," philosopher Charles Darwin and his monkey, an African slave, an Italian explosives expert, and an Indian; as they said in "Good Will Hunting": "dots, not feathers"). They must wage war on Governor Odious, who attempted to strand them on a desert island the shape of a butterfly, but must fend off their massive attack. Simple. Roy finds a personal stake in keeping his story going, because he has a newfound desire to commit suicide and requires the little girl to obtain some morphine for him. To Alexandria's horror and chagrin, this takes "her" story to some disturbing and dark territory. This is above all, simply put, a gorgeous achievement. The structure is ostensibly sight after astonishing sight: Darwin's monkey chasing a butterfly through remarkable architecture, a city with rooftops of serulian blue, a "Labyrinth of Despair," a series of intersecting walls of zig-zagging staircases, a man who appears from a burning tree, a series of arrows landing in someone's back, and them subsequently falling backward and being held up by the arrows like a bed of nails for acupuncture, and on and on. Tarsem, a music video vet who started in features with the visionary sci-fi serial killer story "The Cell" (2000) with Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn and the ultra-creepy Vincent D'Onofrio, tells his story for perhaps no other reason than his desire to show us exciting new places and images (there are NO computer-generated effects!). The film was shot over four years in 28 (or was it 18?) countries (even the most remarkable locations existed as is), and is a vanity project stretched to the extreme. Lucky for us, then, that the vanity in this case yields such a wonderful and audience-pleasing result!

Writer-director Jeff Lipsky?s sophomore effort (after 1997?s Childhood?s End) was a delightful, heart-warming, ultimately bittersweet romantic dramedy that literally traced the relationship Stuart (Justin Kirk) and Nicole (Julianne Nicholson) had over the course of a few years, starting with their mutual friends? set-up of the couple on a blind date, moving through marriage and marital troubles, attempted pregnancy, and an ending that is perhaps inevitable, but no less heartbreakingly real for it. A real sleeper!

Milos Forman's sweeping historical epic has, we sense, about as much to do with history as a romance novel has to do with taste and restraint. That being said, it is about as handsome a film as we could possibly hope for; people looking for truth had best look to the history books. Francisco Goya (Stellan Skarsgard) was perhaps the most famous (or infamous) painter in Spain in the late 1700s. As the Spanish Inquisition started, the film suggests, the Church officials who were controlling the wretched chapter in history looked at Goya as a heretic, blaspheming against religious values with his provocative compositions and their content. In the film, Goya is a painter for hire, working for money, and we meet him as he is painting a muse of sorts: Ines Bilbatua (Natalie Portman). She is a lovely girl, the daughter of a merchant, but she has been suspected of her own heresy. The Inquisitors investigate her and torture her to determine if she is, in fact, a practicer of Judaism (seemingly the chief crime against the Church during the Inquisition). Goya is fond of her and goes to Brother Lorenzo (Javier Bardem), one of the Inquisition's chief religious figures in charge, attempting to spare her. Their lives are, from here on, intertwined and at about the halfway mark the film audaciously leaps forward "15 years later" to the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte (Craig Stevenson). Lorenzo has fleed to France and Goya is now completely deaf. Ines is released from her Inquisitional prison and has been badly disfigured, is almost mute, and quite mad, apparently. She believes she had a child with Lorenzo and that the child, Alicia (also played by Portman) must still be alive - somewhere. Lorenzo tracks her down, discovering she's a prostitute. The film has been directed and co-written by Milos Forman, who is known for his beautiful portraits of artists and outcasts, a champion of free speech and independence of spirit. Who else, after his debut feature ("The Fireman's Ball") was forever banned from his homeland, could escape the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia, only to come to America and create film after film about distinctly American ideals? Forman, in addition to his Oscar-winning history with films like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975) and "Amadeus" (1984), also made a hippie musical ("Hair"), a film about the most notorious purveyor of porn in America ("The People vs. Larry Flynt"), and a film about perhaps the most enigmatic comedian ever to live ("Man on the Moon," about Andy Kaufman). Here, he seems to have brought all of his technical prowess to bear on material that ain't quite ready for prime time. His screenplay, co-written with Jean-Claude Carriere (who has helped write everything from Luis Bunuel films to the Nicole Kidman flop "Birth"), is more a series of scenes written as an excuse for gorgeous backdrops and somewhat over the top performances; plot is not a word in this film's vocabulary. And what about those performances? Skarsgard, a Swede, makes no attempt whatsoever to sound different from his normal accent; Portman is in full-on semi-European mode, as if that will make her sound authentic; Bardem is Spanish, so he sounds more or less right at home (though he always sounds like he's speaking through a head cold), and what are we to make of Randy Quaid as King Carlos IV? So this isn't great Forman, but the story is interesting enough and it's very well-made. A minor work, to be sure.

Alan Bennett adapted his own Tony-winning stage play for Nicholas Hytner (the director of Bennett's 1994 play adaptation "The Madness of King George"). It concerns a group of Oxford-bound Sheffield boys who have a homosexual teacher (he gropes the kids on occasion) and are saddled with a young upstart (Stephen Campbell Moore from "Bright Young Things") who is to coach them to their Oxford exams. Richard Griffiths is terrific as the gay English teacher who fondles and adores them. Funny and somehow never too unsettling, this is maybe the warmest film about sexual abuse ever made.

Writer-director David Lynch?s follow-up to 2001?s Mulholland Drive is a phantasmagorical cinematic experiment of the highest order. Again telling a story of an actress in an increasingly cold, alien, warped (read: Lynchian) version of Hollywood, this time Lynch returns to collaborate with Laura Dern (for the first time since 1990?s Wild at Heart) to spin a yarn about ?a woman in trouble? (or so say the trailers and posters). In reality (is there such a thing with Lynch anymore?), this is a powerful piece of digital filmmaking, unspooling over 3 hours to sometimes monotonous, often stunning, occasionally hilarious and, ultimately, brilliant results. It just about breaks the test tubes, but Lynch knows what he?s doing!

Ray Lawrence's follow-up to 2002's LANTANA follows in that film's footsteps in a curious way: where as that was an Altman-esque Aussie version of SHORT CUTS, this film is actually based on one of the Raymond Carver short stories that that film took as its source material ("So Much Water So Close to Home"). Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney are a couple living in the title town whose lives are rocked when Byrne and some friends go on a fishing expedition and wait for a whole weekend before reporting that they've found an Aboriginal girl murdered and laying in the lake. The uproar over their controversial decision (waiting to report it) overtakes the actual tragedy of her murder (at the hands of a mysterious truck driver). The film is slow and deep at two hours, but eventually involves you enough - if not as much as Lawrence's previous film. A good, solid effort.

Mira Nair's epic is a tale of strangers in a strange land, of coming to terms with your roots, and of the changes within a family over time. Ashoke Ganguli (Irrfan Khan) is a Calcutta student whose parents arrange a marriage to Ashima (Tabu), a lovely and well-read young woman. He is a student in New York and takes his new bride to the big, cold city to start a life together. Before long, they have two children who grow up before their very eyes. Sonia (Sahira Nair, the director's niece) is a pretty but shiftless teenage girl, and her brother Gogol (Kal Penn of "Harold & Kumar" fame) is a typical, modern American teenage boy, teased over his name (even his sister calls him "Goggles") and seemingly embarrassed by his heritage. A family trip back to India, featuring a visit to the Taj Mahal, is a key turning point: Gogol, who has a penchant for drawing, wants to be an architect - just like his father aspired to be. Gogol changes his name to Nikhil (he's named after the obscure Russian writer) and is off in New York, where he falls for a pretty blonde called Max (Jacinda Barrett), short for Maxine. Friends and acquaintances are made, with Gogol becoming close with Max's family (her mother is played by Glenne Headly) and Ashima becoming a librarian (her colleague is played by Brooke Smith). Before long, Gogol's parents are put off by his independence of spirit, but after a time, eventually will come around ("Times are changing," Ashima muses). His father, meanwhile, tries to explain to him the importance of his name (an early scene of a train wreck and some brief flashbacks later on figure in), but he just doesn't seem to appreciate it till it's too late. After a family tragedy, Nikhil (Penn) runs back regretfully into the "old ways" - shaves his head, insists on being called Gogol again (once his "pet name," now his "good name") and shuts Max out. Will they get back together? In the interim, he falls for a Bengali girl named Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson), a sexy student of all-things French who had a brief, shy and near-silent run-in with Gogol in their youth. They are married, and life takes yet another turn. 'Round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows. Mira Nair is the wondrous Indian filmmaker who came on the scene with "Salaam Bombay!" (1988), continued with "Mississippi Masala" (1991) and would go on to make the wonderfully Altman-esque native film "Monsoon Wedding" (2001) and the epic adaptation of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" (2004) with Reese Witherspoon. She is comfortable in English and Hindi with subtitles, has worked with unknowns and movie stars alike; she once directed Denzel Washington in an early role ("Mississippi Masala") and Uma Thurman in the TV film "Hysterical Blindness" (2001). In Penn, she has found a decently known performer who can play his part well and isn't a million miles removed from his character's experience - an Indian twenty-something born in America. I was most moved, however, by the performances of Tabu and Khan. They manage to go from being young in an arranged marriage, to eventually an older and loving couple raising two kids in a strange country. They are warm, sweet and completely believable. The screenplay by Sooni Taraporevala, based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, doesn't really have a plot, is episodic in nature, uses the metaphor of the name and its meaning as a theme more than a plot point, has the feel at times of a slice-of-life, yet manages to wring the contours of melodrama out of it. In its tale of generational differences among a family of immigrants in America, I was somewhat reminded of Gregory Nava's wonderful film "My Family" (1995), as well as Nancy Savoca's "Household Saints" (1993) for its portrayal of traditional values vs. the independence of youth (though there, it was the child who was more "traditional" and here it's vice-versa). If the film has a flaw, it's a technical one at the screenplay level: it seems to start from Ashoke's point of view, before shifting first to Ashima, then to Gogol for a long time, and ending again with Ashima. Perhaps it is in fact about everyone, but to me it felt a bit muddled in that way. Nevertheless, Nair has made a moving and thoughtful tribute to a specific immigrant experience.

Richard Eyre's riveting, saucy psychodrama is a taut, suspenseful, deeply involving thriller in which words are used as weapons rather than brute force, in which deceit and blackmail pass for friendship, and in which two women become inextribably entwined in a dangerous scandal. Judi Dench stars as Barbara Covett, the draconian history teacher at a private school in modern London. Barbara is sharp-witted, misanthropic and bitter, and keeps a journal in which she spews venom behind the backs of everyone she works with. Then one day, Barbara meets a new "friend." This would be Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), the fetching and sweet young art teacher who has found her way to this school. At work, she quickly attracts the affections of a geekish older teacher (Phil Davis), while at home, she is forced to attempt to balance her marriage to another older man (Bill Nighy) and her children (a teenage girl and a pre-teen with Down's Syndrome). What Sheba will soon discover is that she has found her way not just into a new job or new romantic prospects, but deep into the web of the vampire Barbara as well. When Barbara goes looking for Sheba one night during a school assembly, she stumbles upon a most disturbing sight: Sheba going down on one of her young male students (Andrew Simpson). Barbara sees this as an opportunity, however, she doesn't want money. She wants to seduce Sheba into being first friends, then confidantes, and eventually, blackmailing poor Sheba into oblivion. Her blackmail is verbal, emotional and psychological. Sheba would do anything to keep her secret from coming out, and is willing to go along with Barbara knowing, seeing her as, in a way, her best friend, with Barbara the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing and Sheba a lamb to the slaughter. The film, directed by Richard Eyre ("Iris," "Stage Beauty"), was adapted from the novel by Zoe Heller. The screenplay by Patrick Marber ("Closer") is full-to-brimming with ink-black wit, devilish treachery, and fascinating psychological gamesmanship. The omnipresent musical score by Philip Glass ("The Fog of War" among others) is by turns operatic and insistent, overly dramatizing what is, after all, most likely a fairly local or, at most, potentially nation-wide scandal. Blanchett and Dench deliver terrific performances, one-upping each other at every turn. Dench is the real surprise, however, as the wrinkled-old-prune-cum-newly-revitalized-succubus. Her attraction to Sheba is growing palpable even before she catches her "in the act;" her illusions shattered, you could almost look at her post-incident reactions as a sort of sapphic "Madonna/Whore" complex (you'll recall from "Raging Bull" and "Taxi Driver" the idea that a man sees virtue and honor in a woman, typically an icy blonde, before seeing her in a whole new and altogether more ugly light). These two get into the skins of these characters, and draw blood. This is one of the most wretchedly delightful films of the year.



NOTE: Nominated for 4 Oscars: Actress, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, and Original Score!

John Carney's film is winsome yet sometimes profane, heartwarming yet bittersweet; the tiny Irish musical that could. The "plot" is simplicity itself: The "Guy" (Glen Hansard of the Frames) meets the "Girl" (Czech immigrant Marketa Irglova) and they make beautiful music together. But the Devil's in the details: The "Guy" (Hansard), who alternates his time between working in his father's vacuum repair shop and singing for pennies on the street with his knowledge of "established songs," as well as his trusty guitar to guide his original efforts, is a heartbroken Irish troubadour on the streets of Dublin. The "Girl", a young beauty who has more than one surprise up her sleeve, quickly takes to the sad "old man" who is enchanted by her as well. They decide to at least have a musical relationship, collaborating on some songs; she plays piano, sings background and writes a few lovely lyrics and he bangs out a mean guitar string. But is it meant to be? Writer-director John Carney doesn't interfere with fancy camerawork or even the typical jittery nature of digital video - despite a heart-stoppingly accelerated shooting schedule and an excruciatingly shoe-string budget. Hansard and Irglova are something approaching magical as two ordinary people in an ordinary world with extraordinary gifts who find each other. The music these two make together is adorable, catchy, and memorable. The results are an utterly lovely experience you won't soon forget.



NOTE: Winner of the 2007 Oscar for Best Song ("Falling Slowly").

A delightful, mostly entertaining and rewarding omnibus film from some of our most celebrated directors, about maybe the most beautiful city in the world. Some 19 different directors (some in pairs) each work to present a story set in a different section of the City of Lights, and the results are generally mixed. A few segments stand out, including an early one by Gurinder Chadha ("Bend It Like Beckham") about a young Parisian student who quickly falls for a young Muslim woman after his friends tease her when she trips and drops her things. There's an amusing near-silent segment from the Coen Brothers ("Fargo") in which Steve Buscemi attracts the wrong kind of attention at a stop in the Metro. Sylvain Chomet ("The Triplets of Belleville") this time works in colorful live action to present the delightful and warm story of how two mimes met and fell in love, featuring the Eiffel Tower. Alfonso Cuaron ("Children of Men") follows Nick Nolte as he and daughter Ludivine Sagnier walk (in an unbroken shot) down a long and busy street, covering a range of topics before arriving at Nolte's destination: to babysit. Vincenzo Natali ("Cube") directs Elijah Wood in the horrific story of a tourist who gets bitten by a vampire and falls in love. Wes Craven takes a scarcely less supernatural approach as he follows British newlyweds Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell through a famous cemetery, discussing their relationship and even meeting the ghost of Oscar Wilde. Olivier Assayas ("Clean") follows a drug-addicted actress (Maggie Gyllenhaal) on a long night of shooting and snorting cocaine. Famed cinematographer Christopher Doyle ("In the Mood for Love" and "Hero") directs famous director Barbet Schroeder ("Barfly," "Reversal of Fortune") as he makes his way through an Asian district, and gets assaulted. Gus Van Sant follows an American youth who is the object of affection for a young French apprentice, but the language barrier gets in the way of any physical contact. Tom Tykwer ("Run Lola Run") directs aspiring actress Natalie Portman in the hyperkinetic retrospective of her one-time romance with a blind student. Some are less memorable, from the likes of Bruno Podalydes, Walter Salles, Nobuhiro Suwa, and others. The film ends with Margo Martindale, directed by Alexander Payne ("Election," "Sideways"), as an American tourist amusingly narrating her trip alone to Paris for her French class - in a Southern accent. All in all, this is a hit and miss affair, but a nice one that makes you want to visit the city as soon as it's over.

This modern-day fairy-tale was on the shelf for two years (made in 2006, released in early 2008 - and only somewhat at that point). Hard to figure what the concerns were. It's a little uneven, and not too funny, but nice enough. Penelope is a rich blue-blood born into a family curse resulting in having the nose (and, I think, ears) of a pig. It will (supposedly) take a society blue blood to lift said curse by falling for her, so her mother (Catherine O'Hara in overdrive mode) conspires to get her hitched to the first guy who can look at her without running out of the room, jumping out a window, etc. (surprisingly, it takes several potential sudors for this to occur) and through various contrivances, Penelope soon discovers Max (James McAvoy, filmed prior to "Atonement" though released after the ultra-serious World War II British romance), a hard-gambling swindler who sees her for who she truly is from the get-go and regrets how he treats her from the start.

OK, so this isn't incredibly deep stuff and it's silly and all, but Christina Ricci is cute in the title role, I liked a throw-away extended cameo (credited) from producer Reese Witherspoon as a friend in the big city that Penelope meets, and I liked the somewhat muddled message that one should accept who they are and come to love themselves before they can love anyone else (though the transmission of the message is a bit garbled under some "Shrek"-like twists and turns in the final third). Still, a worthy effort (maybe a rental, if not worthy of a trip to the multiplex).

Robert Altman's film (which turned out to be his last) is a lively entertainment, a sweet ode to the simple pleasures to be had listening to the radio, and a lovely film about (appropriately) death. Altman employs a typically large ensemble cast for ostensibly the last broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion," a St. Paul, Minnesota-based radio variety show, "the kind that died 50 years ago." Not particularly upset about the fact he's soon to be out of a job, the leader of this ragtag group is GK (Garrison Keillor), the narrator and head writer of the show. He is joined on stage by the Johnson Girls, Rhonda (Lily Tomlin from "Nashville") and Yolanda (Meryl Streep), and Yolanda brings along her talented misfit teenage daughter Lola (a stellar Lindsay Lohan). There's also the trail-hands Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly), whose specialty includes the uproarious musical tribut to ribald humor, "Bad Jokes." In typical Altman fashion, we also get a glimpse behind the scenes of the last show, with an anxiety-ridden stage manager named Molly ("Saturday Night Live" alum Maya Rudolph), who is several months pregnant (Rudolph's baby's actual father is stand-by director Paul Thomas Anderson, who was heavily influenced by Altman). Then, in the center of it all, is Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), a bumbling private-eye type who runs security for the program and has his eyes on all the variables that could make this night memorable in the worst possible ways. Seems the company was bought by a Texas conglomerate and they've sent their "axeman" (a humorless Tommy Lee Jones) to shut the whole thing down. Can the mysterious, white-trenchcoated "Dangerous Woman," (Virginia Madsen), an apparent angel, save them? Altman's film has a modest 105-minute running time and I wanted it to go on forever. The comedy is warm and teasing, the cast is delightful, and the soundtrack is filled with wall-to-wall music of the sort that Midwestern types love - songs which reflect a spirit, and arguably a sense of spirituality, which even the most hardened cynic can't resist. From Keillor's early solo "Slow Days of Summer" to Streep and Tomlin's showstopper "My Minnesota Home," from "Gold Watch and Chain," to the cast's big finale of "Red River Valley," this film is loaded with wonderful music. I dare you not to tear up and get a shiver down your spine as Chuck (L.Q. Jones), a sick old performer, takes to the stage to sing "You Have Been a Friend to Me," and towards the end appears to be gasping for air mid-lyric, eyes red, face pale, and just the slightest hint of tears forming. Robert Altman was 81 when he died in November 2006, having finally won an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement earlier that year and having completed this wonderfully fitting final work (he had two more films in pre-production at the time). He had a way of making his film sets like a party, and he loved actors, inviting them to bring what they could to make the party more festive. His camera (manned here by Ed Lachmann) was always moving, roving around to see whatever could be seen; it never appeared planned. He made judicious use of the zoom lense; he often liked to peek into the cracks and crevices behind the main action to see and show what most directors wouldn't bother with. The backgrounds of his films were never empty; he was as interested in the "side-stories" as he was in the "main plot." Yet his films never had a plot, per say; they were open to the many possibilities of everyday life. He gathered his massive casts for wonderful works, first garnering attention and acclaim with "MASH" (1970) and "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" (1971), and continued his style, developing a special sound system for recording his actors, which came in handy on such masterpieces as "Nashville" (1975), "The Player" (1992), "Short Cuts" (1993), and "Gosford Park" (2001) among many others. These were the work of a true artist, and he remains sorely missed.

Ed Blum's Altman-esque romantic comedy is the latest ensemble mosaic from London (following in the footsteps of Winterbottom's WONDERLAND and Mike Leigh's entire career). This one is about a series of sexually-themed conversations in a famous London park on a bright, sunshiny day in which several couples and prospective couples chat and chat...and chat. Highlights include Ewan McGregor as an uncommitted half of a gay couple thinking about having kids, there's an old couple who seem to have fallen into a routine of running into one another and flirting, as if every time is the first time they met, there's Adrian Lester as a man who is in the middle of a divorce from the woman he loves, Oscar-nominee Sophie Okonedo (HOTEL RWANDA) as a strangely defensive girl who first antagonizes, then seduces a creepy loner, only to turn schizophrenic on him, and Gina McKee, that gorgeously melancholy English rose, as a middle-aged beauty on a blind date that goes from bad to worse. Funny, sweet, and ultimately moving, this is as inconsequential and as lovely as a nice spring day in the park.

Writer-director John Cameron Mitchell?s Shortbus is the director?s brilliant follow-up to his edgy musical comedy, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). This time, Mitchell has cast largely amateur and unknown actors as a group of lonely, sad people post-9/11 who are searching for sex and, ultimately, love. They all converge upon a nightly salon (hence the title), where games, orgies, conversations and art emerge from the miasma to form a sort of sexual underground that deserves to be above ground. Among the standouts in this terrific unknown cast are Sook-Yin Lee as Sofie, a sex therapist who has never had an orgasm, Lindsay Beamish as Severin, the melancholy dominatrix who takes polaroids and labels them in her spare time as an aspiring artist, and Justin Bond as?himself(?), the host and emcee of Shortbus. It?s a remarkably moving, funny and beautiful film to behold! Look for Mitchell in the orgy scene.

Sometimes, I wish I could write a negative review and still recommend the film it concerns. Richard Kelly's surrealist epic is an apocalyptic thriller, a futuristic satire, a political comedy, and an utter mess. It's an insane affair which is the kind of film that goes over the top, doubles back, and then goes over the top again. Normally, this is a good thing, but Kelly's film is so filled to brimming over with half-baked notions, bizarre characters and connections between them, and confounding plot twists that it is virtually impossible to understand. The film concerns...there's no satisfying or clear way to finish that sentence. Let us attempt then to untangle the plot. In a futuristic Los Angeles (well, 2008), there exists (let's see if I've got this straight): Boxer Santoros (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), a Hollywood action star with Republican ties; Krysta Kapowski, aka Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a porn actress with a socio-political agenda with whom Boxer is having an affair; a Bush-esque senator (Holmes Osborne) whose daughter (Mandy Moore) is married to Boxer, whose wife (Miranda Richardson) is the director of the NSA and seems to bark commands from a high-tech monitoring station, and whose advisor (John Larroquette) would be a Karl Rove-ian asset were he not quite so clueless; Roland Taverner, an LAPD officer (Seann William Scott) who has been kidnapped and replaced by a double (a similar fate to that which may have befallen the action star); and a "neo-Marxist" movement that is attempting to stage a revolution against the current government. They include characters such as Baron Von Westphalen (Wallace Shawn), a mad scientist experimenting on soldiers, and his cadre of followers, including the exotic and heavily made-up Serpentine (Bai Ling), Dr. Inga Von Westphalen (Beth Grant), who is the Baron's mother (how old would Beth Grant have to be to play Wallace Shawn's mother?), a dwarf witch (Zelda Rubenstein from "Poltergeist" and TV's "Picket Fences") and porn director Cyndi Pinziki (Nora Dunn). The film has other hangers-on, such as a mysterious man in a truck (Christopher Lambert), a bizarre performance troupe that includes Cheri Oteri and Amy Pohler, a long way from "Saturday Night Live," who appear to be attempting to...who knows? There's also Jon Lovitz as a blonde LAPD officer whose interactions with Boxer and Traveler lead to a "COPS"-esque moment of documentary violence, various spoutings of the Book of Revelation in select verses, an unrecognizable Kevin Smith (looking like a gray bearded Philip Seymour Hoffman) as Simon Theory, who sits back and...I dunno, and a musical performance or two involving Rebekha Del Rio (of David Lynch's similarly anarchic L.A. saga "Mulholland Drive") and Justin Timberlake, who plays former military soldier turned narrator Private Pilot Abilene. The film was written and directed by Richard Kelly, who previously made the comparably confounding but infinitely more fascinating "Donnie Darko" (2001). This film is intermittently wonderful and maddening, ultimately making about as little sense as I think I can fathom. What are these characters doing here on the cusp of the Apocalypse? What does it matter? If the film is too goofy to be taken seriously, it's also too bizarre to comprehend. Still, it's strangely watchable. You have to give it to Kelly: when he goes for broke, he obliterates the piggy bank. Let's call this a non-recommendation with a wink. Those who would respond to such know who you are.



NOTE: The film premiered at 160 minutes at the Cannes Film Festival to only a slightly less baffled response. Apparently, it also contained the (now entirely omitted) subplot involving Janeane Garofalo as General Teena MacArthur (no relation, I'm sure). Hmm...

Guillaume Canet's thriller is a labyrinthine but rivetingly perplexing web into which the audience is pulled and never let go. Alex Beck (Francois Cluzet) and Margot (Marie-Josee Croze) were childhood sweethearts. Now married and living in France, they go away for a quiet weekend at a cabin in the middle of nowhere and are skinny-dipping one night when Margot goes to let the dog out of the house. She never returns and before long Alex is knocked unconcious into the water. Eight years later, Alex is a pediatrician in a Paris hopsital with a tenuous relationship to his sister Anne (Marina Hands) but gets along pretty well with her wife Helene (the British Kristin Scott Thomas, speaking perfect French). One day, Alex receives an anonymous e-mail with a link to a real-time video of a crowded corner of the city - and his wife standing there in the middle of it. Soon, Alex is out to find his wife, who appears to be very much alive, and yet must do so on the run from the police, who through an elaborate frame-up job have come to suspect him in a series of other murders by a mysterious cadre of hired thugs who appear to have been responsible for the apparent murder and disappearance of Margot eight years earlier. There is more - much more in fact, including a mid-level crook whose kid Alex once treated; a high-speed foot chase through the crowded streets of Paris, across an expressway and through the Clignancourt antiques marketplace; the discovery of a shotgun used in another murder that is tied directly to Alex; a strategic tip-off by Alex's lawyer (Nathalie Baye); the mysterious motives of Margot's father (Andre Dussolier), an aging detective; the horse races enjoyed by a Senator (Jean Rochefort) and the questionable actions of his son (played by Canet himself). The film, co-written and directed by Guillaume Canet, is adapted from a novel by Harlan Coben. The film is all style and plot, but is utterly fascinating in its application of one of Hitchcock's old standbys: the Innocent Man Wrongly Accused. As Alex (Cluzet) runs, we feel like we're running with him, racing against time to discover the truth and prove himself innocent of multiple murders. This is one of the best thrillers of recent years.

Writer-director Pedro Almodovar, he of the resurrection of Spanish cinema, spins a slight but brilliant tale of a young mother (Penelope Cruz, in her best performance since Almodovar?s All About My Mother in 1999!) in La Mancha whose husband is killed (no spoilers here), who must dispose of his body (and scandal) and who must go about her life. Meanwhile, her mother (Carmen Maura) returns (seemingly) from the dead to help guide her family back toward repair. Bittersweet, warm and oddly funny, this is a gorgeously devour-able confection well worth seeking out.

Ken Loach's "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" (2007) is a fantastic, well-wrought drama about two brothers who join the fight for the Irish Republican Army only to come at odds with each other when the British sign a pathetic excuse for a treaty, integrating the Irish into the British Army, while making Ireland its "own republic" (under the British Empire's rule).

Powerfully acted (especially by Cillian Murphy as the doctor/soldier protagonist Damien), this is ultimately a story of how politics and ethics can intervene in the connection between family, and how ultimately you have to do what you believe in to the very end.

Very well-made, with luscious green scenery brought out beautifully, this is a great film! The deserved winner of the 2006 Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or (Best Film)!

Lucky McKee's "The Woods" is the director's follow-up to his 2003 debut "May." That was a masterful horror/black comedy mixing elements of "Frankenstein" and "Carrie" to tell the wrenchingly sad and achingly beautiful - if horrific and disturbing - story of a lonely young girl who simply wants to make a connection and learns "if you can't meet a friend, make one."

McKee is in no less homage-y territory here: There are elements reminiscent of both "Carrie" (yet again) and Dario Argento's classic "Suspiria" within this tale set in 1965 New England (I'd assume that's where it's set, but it's never revealed). We meet Heather (Bruckner), a troubled youth who has started a fire in her home and whose parents (including hammy actor extraordinaire Bruce Campbell!) decide to ship her off to a private all-girls Academy.

This school is somewhat off-putting and strange, and ultimately the headmistress (Patricia Clarkson, creepy and realistic all at once) is near-immediately suspicious of the young upstart she's admitted to her school.

Soon, disturbing noises, darkly lit sojurns to off-the-beaten-path territories within the school grounds, and more than a few cliched myths and confrontations between adversarial students rear their ugly heads, and we have a rather straight-forward thriller - especially coming from the young and promising writer-director of one of my all-time favorite horror films.

Mr. McKee, as I've read, may have had this film taken away from him. Still, some if not all of the old McKee touches are present: especially a creepily slowed down version of the classic "You Don't Own Me" straining on the soundtrack at various intervals - including the end credits.

Ultimately, this is a very standard and mildly boring horror-lite effort that neither engages that much, nor wows us with anything really new. Well-made and intriguing, it's worth checking out on a cold, dark and scary night...Watch it on DVD.