The Films of 2009 Ranked

Right now, Quentin Tarentino is operating on a level which few filmmakers can come close to. For almost two decades he?s been a leading figure in the world of cinema and in all that time he?s never quit refining his unique style, every film he?s put out has only served to prove just how much of a natural eye for cinema he has. His first two films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, are undisputed classics of the crime genre. His 1997 film Jackie Brown may not have pleased those looking for carnage, but it revealed a degree of maturity that may not have been readily apparent in his earlier work. After a relatively long hiatus he reemerged in 2004 to deliver Kill Bill, a film of the utmost craftsmanship whose first half proved Tarentino?s proficiency at action filmmaking and whose second half revealed layers of pathos which may not have been apparent at first. Then there?s Death Proof, the film featured as the second half of the Grindhouse double feature he put together with friend Robert Rodriguez. This film was not widely loved upon its release, but I stand by it. It certainly will never be looked at as one of Tarentino?s major works, but I think its unique narrative structure and razor sharp dialogue will be better appreciated by those who give it a second look. But amidst all of this activity there was always the prospect of his legendary World War 2 project, a film which he had been working on as far back as that post-Jackie Brown hiatus. The script he?d been working on began to take on legendary proportions and after more than a decade the movie has finally emerged complete with its deliberately misspelled title: Inglourious Basterds.

Set in a World War 2 that would be more recognizable to an Id Software designer than a historian, this film tells a pair of stories that are fated to collide in its final sequence. The first story is that of a French Jew named Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) whose family is killed by a ruthless Nazi tasked with hunting down Jews hiding out in occupied territory. After four years she has adopted the name Emmanuelle Mimieux and begun managing a movie theater in the middle of Paris. After meeting a German war hero named Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), her theater is chosen as the new venue for the premiere of a Nazi propaganda film about Zoller?s exploits. The other storyline is that of the titular commando unit which is composed entirely of revenge seeking Jewish American soldiers but led by the southern born and supposedly part Apache Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), who claims that he is ?in the killin' Nazi bidness, and? bidness is a-boomin'.? This premiere is quickly revealed to be a hotspot for high ranking Nazi officers. So the ?Basterds,? aided by an SAS agent played by Michael Fassbender, decide to target the place for an attack; but Shosanna has plans of her own.

You may not have noticed it amidst all the trouble Lars Von Trier was causing, but when Inglourious Basterds debuted at the Cannes Film Festival it was pretty divisive. I think that?s going to be the case for a lot of Tarentino?s films for a while, possibly for the rest of his career. In the directors own words in a GQ profile by Alex Pappademas ?I?m not a nice-guy artist. When my movies come out, they draw a line in the sand.? Tarentino?s style has basically become its own monster and those who don?t like it will probably not like his films; he stopped making movies for ?everyone? a long time ago. Those who do appreciate his artistry however will be rewarded in droves by his recent work and especially what he does with this latest film.

I found myself oddly excited by this film?s opening credit sequence, I say oddly because those credits are just large white letters over a black background. That may not seem like much but I don?t remember the last time I?ve seen such simple opening credits projected onto a big screen. This is the kind of credit sequence that people seem to have lost patience for a long time ago. Today, if there even is an opening credit sequence in a mainstream film it?s almost always either on top of the opening scene or at least accompanied by some other kind of added stimuli. These minimalist credits pretty perfectly establish the kind of courage and patience that Tarentino will use throughout the film and the scene that follows theme, a tense conversation between a vicious Nazi (Christoph Waltz) and a French farmer (Denis Menochet), embodies the attitude. In the hands of any other filmmaker this scene would have been a five minute throwaway, in Tarentino?s hands the conversation is a fifteen minute epic that builds upon itself until it finally pays off to heartbreaking effect. One suspects that the influence of Sergio Leone is at play in this, and many other long scenes like it, which build up for longer than one would expect only to be resolved through fast bursts of action.

We live in a time when screenplays are all too often written to exacting formulas and rules. The scene I described above is most definitely not within these rules and if someone with less clout had tried to submit it he would have quickly been shot down by a Hollywood reader unable to process such creativity. As the boldly two-act Death Proof proves, Tarentino has never been one to follow rules, and he breaks them with joyous abandon throughout Inglourious Basterds. I?m sure there are going to be a lot of short sighted reviews complaining about the film?s length, and I?ve got news for them: this movie is a minute shorter than both Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown and I didn?t hear anyone *****ing about their run times back in the day. Granted, I?m sure most of these critics will claim that they are complaining about pacing rather than the actual running time, but frankly I?m getting more than a little sick of this lazy shorthand that has gotten out of control among critics as of late. Roger Ebert?s adage that ?no good movie can be too long, and no bad movie is short enough? comes to mind. To me, if the material on hand is all gold I can watch it for hours on end. Nine out of ten times, if a movie is ?too long? one should probably answer why it isn?t worth watching for as long as it runs rather than why it runs as long as it does.

I can understand why this pacing may come as a bit of a surprise to those who had their expectations shaped by Harvey Weinstein?s deceptive advertising campaign which makes this look like some kind of hyper-violent movie that mainly consists of Brad Pitt murdering Nazis. First of all, Brad Pitt is not the main star of the film; he?s just one part of a larger ensemble. In fact I?d be willing to bet that he has less screen time than some of the less known actors. This also isn?t an action film, there are no scenes of open warfare and the violence that is here is graphic but brief. Of course this kind of false advertising has been a staple of Tarentino?s career. Despite their blood soaked reputations, neither Pulp Fiction nor Reservoir Dogs really had much onscreen violence at all. People were similarly disappointed when Jackie Brown, Kill Bill Vol. 2, and Death Proof weren?t the action-packed blood baths they had been lead to expect. In general, Tarentino is not the carnage-meister that the public seems to think he is, and this film is no exception. Those looking for savage pleasures will probably leave disappointed, but hopefully there will be others who leave happy they witnessed something much grander than the low brow thrills they were promised.

As I just mentioned, Brad Pitt is not this film?s star, but when he is onscreen he makes for a very enjoyable presence. He goes all out in his depiction of a violent redneck hell-bent to kill Nazis. Those disappointed that Pitt isn?t a bigger part of the film can take solace in the fact that the rest of this ensemble more than matches his work. Perhaps the performance that most surprised me was that of Mélanie Laurent, a French actress whose previous work was unknown to me. Laurent has the always tricky role of a character forced to conform to a society they inwardly despise. Throughout the film she has a lot of banter with Daniel Brühl, a Nazi who?s clearly attracted to her. Brühl has perhaps an even trickier role because, while he?s a loyal Nazi, he seems like a genuinely nice guy and you suspect that in another life these two might have made a good couple. Both of these actors must perform in both French and German (more on that later), and another actor forced to contend with the language barrier is Michael Fassbender who plays a stiff upper lip Brit who must speak German in order to infiltrate Nazi circles. As for the titular ?Basterds,? not many of them were given enough screen time to stand out. I?m sure that many will pick on the performance of Hostel director Eli Roth and Tarentino?s decision to cast him. My answer to this criticism is the same response I have to those who complained about Tarentino?s own cameos in previous movies (and the various M. Night Shyamalan cameos for that matter): that the only reason they are so bothered by their performance is that you know them as a director, if Eli Roth had just been some dude from central casting no one would have even bothered to comment on his performance, because either way he had very little screen time.

The performance that really deserves special attention is that of Christoph Waltz, who has created one of the greatest villains of recent memory. Like many characters here, Waltz must perform in multiple languages (English, French, and German), and no matter what tongue he?s using he comes off like a snake. Making a Nazi come off as evil is easy, too easy, which is why Tarentino does more with the character. This is a character that starts out interesting and only reveals himself to be even more of a devious enigma the more you get to know him. Tarentino could have given Waltz some sort of sadistic weapon or some kind of eye patch or something stupid like that, but instead he simply makes this man a dangerously intelligent and unpredictable opponent with a very strange interpretation of Nazi ideology. At one point he gives a dark speech comparing Germans to hawks and Jews to rats which is right up there with other famous Tarentino speeches like Samuel L. Jackson?s Ezekiel rant, Christopher Walken?s watch speech and Dennis Hopper?s True Romance speech about the Italian lineage. Waltz has already won a well deserved award from the Cannes Film Festival for this award and he also deserves Oscar consideration.

I just mentioned that a number of the characters here perform in German or French, and indeed a good two thirds of this film plays out in foreign languages with subtitles. Ninety nine percent of the time I?d unequivocally support such authenticity in linguistics, but here I?m a bit more on the fence. The only problem I have with the scenes in French and German is that I can?t help but feel like they?re robbing us of precious minutes of dialogue written by one of the English language?s greatest word smiths. Make no mistake, the subtitled dialogue is damn good; one can definitely tell that those scenes have been written with flare, but it just isn?t quite the same as hearing Tarentino lines spoken in the language they were written in. Then again, even the English material is relatively restrained stylistically and adheres more to the work he did on Kill Bill than Death Proof or Pulp Fiction; this probably isn?t going to be the goldmine of quotable lines that other Tarentino movies have been and I think that?s deliberate. In general I do think that having these lines subtitled rather than spoken in English is made necessary both thematically and by the plotline. As the film goes on, communication amongst people speaking foreign languages becomes very important to the film.

Oh, and as for historical accuracy, forget about it. Tarentino claimed to have spent much of his post Jackie Brown hiatus doing historical research for this movie, which had led me to fear he had finally grown up and was planning to make a ?normal? movie. Thankfully that wasn?t the case, in fact I suspect that most of this research consisted of watching The Dirty Dozen a thousand times. This movie is set in World War 2 but is not about it, it?s really about something that Tarentino knows significantly more about than history: Film. Let me backtrack on that just a little, I?m sure there is a certain degree to accuracy to the minutia of the movie. The uniforms, weapons, and locations are probably authentic and a certain understanding of history does enhance a lot of the details in the movie, but ultimately the war here represents cinematic imagination rather than reality every bit as much as the criminal underworld of Pulp Fiction was a figment of Tarentio?s imagination rather than a document of any real crime syndicate.

When dealing with Nazis, most films rightfully examine the massive damage they did both during the Holocaust and on the battlefields of the war. But Tarentino seems significantly more concerned with what the Nazis did to the German film industry. It?s mentioned in the film that Hitler?s Germany was largely responsible for the demise of the unmatched Weimar era film industry. The filmmakers that weren?t driven out for being ?decadent Jew Intellectuals? would only stay to find their talents wasted on idiotic propaganda films. Is this the greatest sin of the Third Reich? Probably not, and to most of the world it wasn?t worth punishing. So, who better than Tarentino to give cinema its much deserved revenge, something he does with the utmost skill during the films finale which can only be described as ?wild.? To Tarentino cinema (and by extension art) is a significantly stronger force than Nazis, than Hitler, than history itself, and nowhere has he so vividly (and literally) expressed this than with Inglourious Basterds.

Lars Von Trier?s Antichrist premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, and while it did not win the Palme D?or, its screening at that festival will be talked about long after the premier screening of the film that did win (Michael Hanake?s The White Ribbon) has long been forgotten. Von Trier has long been known as a provocateur but even those familiar with his work must not have known what hit them when, without warning, they were confronted by a film that so suddenly assaulted them with extreme images whose purpose were not entirely clear at first glance. Polarized reviews and detailed analysis began pouring out and stories of the film?s hostile press conferences in which Lars Von Trier acted as an amused ringmaster added to the mystique of the film. Some called it misogynistic, some called it deeply spiritual, some called it schlock, others called it profound art. The whole affair harkened back to an age when film artists like Luis Buñuel and Jean Renoir would deliberately shock their audience to the point where they nearly riot. As I far away from southern France when this was going on, I could do nothing but read story after story. I normally avoid plot details to movies before seeing them, but in this case I couldn?t help but read the many spoilers about what it was that had horrified a number of respected critics. Even though I?m generally not a huge fan of Lars Von Trier, all this hoopla tantalized me to the point where I hungered for the day when this thing would come to my city so I could weigh in on this international debate about a film which, love it or hate, has undeniably sparked more thought than most films ever will.

The film has only two speaking roles, that of a man and a woman who are played by Willem DaFoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg respectively. In the film?s prologue, the man and the woman (who are unnamed) are seen making passionate love, unaware that a tragedy is about to occur as their young child walks toward an open window. The boy falls and dies, plunging the two into a grief that is as intense as the joy they experienced in that opening scene. In fact intense emotions are a running theme that will be taken to an absurd extreme in the film?s climax. As the woman wallows in pain, the man (who is a therapist) decides that he will psychologically treat the woman himself. His goal is to discover what it is that the woman fears the most, and this quest leads him to Eden, a forest where the family had once stayed at so that the woman would have time to write her thesis on the subject of Gynocide (the study of witch burning and other such extreme forms of misogyny). Once they arrive at Eden their relationship becomes a rollercoaster of emotions, ranging from passionate lust to deep resentment and other strange things begin to occur; animals like a deer, a raven, and most memorably a fox, begin to appear who behave in ways that are decidedly unnatural and it becomes clear that this woman has a much deeper fear of this forest than the man initially realized.

Lars Von Trier has been a frustrating filmmaker for me. On one hand I can appreciate that he is a man capable of presenting his films in ways that are visually innovative, and I also think he?s excellent at directing actors and actresses, but all too often this talent seems wasted on scripts in which characters behave in illogical ways that are contrary to my perception of reality. Authority figures in his films are moustache twirlingly intolerant, the women in his films are often confused children in need of guidance, and all of this is in service of stories that just don?t make a whole lot of sense. Most of these are criticisms that could be lobbed against Antichrist, which would lead one to believe that this movie would be torturous to me, but that?s not the case. In fact, I think this is the best work that Lars Von Trier has ever done. The film?s extreme nature (symbolic or otherwise) seems to make a lot of the usual Von Trierisms make a lot more sense; these characters inhabit an esoteric realm and this makes the film beholden only to its own internal logic and not to the real world.

Perhaps one of the root problems with a lot of Von Trier?s previous work was his association with the Dogme 95 movement. I?m not completely opposed to Dogme, it?s produced some pretty good movies, but I?m not sure it was really the right mode for Von Trier, which I suppose was probably his own conclusion as evidenced by the fact that he?s only ever made one bonified Dogme film his entire career in spite of the fact that he was sort of the movement?s poster-boy. In fact Antichrist actively goes against all ten of that movement?s famous rules; though most of the camerawork is hand-held, the lush cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle features a look that is heavily filtered and stylized. Take the first scene for example, which is filmed on a set (breaking Dogme rule one), uses non-diegetic opera music (breaking rule two), has non-handheld camera (rule three), is in high contrast black and white (rule four), requires optical work (rule five), ends in a moment of superficial violence (rule six), is in service of what could be called a horror movie (rule eight), is in widescreen (rule nine), and comes after a very large credit belonging to the director (rule ten), oh and arguments could definitely be made that the whole film is temporally and geographically alienated (rule seven).

So what we have here is a film that employs a degree of stylization unseen in Lars Von Trier?s work for a very long time, it harkens back to his early wunderkind days of films like The Element of Crime or Europa. But the Lars Von Trier work I?d most readily compare this film to is probably his unfinished project for Danish television called ?The Kingdom.? Like that work, this seems to tell a story against a spiritual/supernatural backdrop the nature of which is hard to really place a finger on, and like that work this is not afraid to provide the viewer with disturbing images that one is not expecting.

Speaking of those disturbing images, they are probably the most polarizing element of the film. You?ve probably heard about this already, but there is some really extreme violence in this film and if you are someone who?s squeamish about such material, you should probably look elsewhere. In the film?s defense, though the violence is very graphic and disturbing, there isn?t really a large quantity of it. The movie?s reputation is earned mainly from two isolated scenes that come pretty late in the film and these shots aren?t much bloodier than the unrated versions of some of the more extreme horror films. What makes the material here so shocking isn?t necessarily how much is shown so much as the twisted ideas behind what is going on. The most infamous image (it involves a scissors) is a brief shot that doesn?t have a whole lot of blood, but the idea of the action itself is very disturbing. In this case I probably benefited from having read spoilers as this allowed me to mentally prepare for what was coming, the images that inhabited my mind from having read about the material proved a lot more disturbing than the actual images ever could have been. This is a luxury that the Cannes audience did not have, and this probably explains why the film has been better received in subsequent festival screenings.

The two actors who are in the center of all this chaos, Willem DaFoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, do excellent work. Gainsbourg has the unenviable task of displaying extreme emotions without going over the top. When her character begins shouting and screaming it easily could have come off as ridiculous, but Gainsbourg makes it work. She has a physically taxing role and is clearly putting a lot into her craft. Dafoe has a slightly less challenging role, but that shouldn?t diminish his accomplishments. He gives a more subtle performance for a more subtle role, he internalizes more of his emotions and his character can be almost as violent as Gainsbourg?s albeit in a more passive-aggressive way.

The film has so much symbolism and is made in such unconventional ways that it can at times feel like a puzzle demanding the viewer to discover its meaning. There are a number of art house movies that do this, but what perhaps makes this so special it that it actually works pretty well as a thriller even if you?re not interested in connecting the film?s thematic dots. I?m a bit hesitant to call this a horror film, because this doesn?t really operate like a ?mere? genre film, but it does achieve most of the goals that horror films try to achieve. It establishes an atmosphere of dread early on, the tension rises steadily throughout and there is a profound sense of evil throughout which must be directly confronted towards the end. In fact, when looked at as a thriller, the film has a lot in common with The Shining. Like that Kubrick film, this is set in an isolated area from which escape is difficult, this location is haunted by forces that are never explained and only show themselves in occasionally, and in the ending the forces manipulate one of the family members into trying to kill the other. Of course the violent images also link the film with the horror genre, but the images which I found more creepy were the mysterious animals which showed up at times as well as the moments in which limbs and bodies come out of the ground to turn the environment into a Bosch-like hellscape.

But to simply say that this works as a thriller is a cop-out, the themes and symbolism here clearly invites close analysis, and I?m not too proud to admit that I?m not going to be able to explain everything on display here after only one sitting. I?m at a bit of a disadvantage with this one because almost every interpretation of it is either religious or feminist, and those are both disciplines I?ve never had a whole lot of patience for. I?m going to avoid tackling the feminist/antifeminist material, but I?ll take a stab at a religious interpretation, this will involve spoilers. The movie itself is a bit of a paradox as its title derives from a character of the book of Revelation (the final book of the bible) while it?s principle location of Eden is derived from the book of Genesis (the first book of the bible). What?s more Eden is a place you leave, not a place you enter, so perhaps what we?re witnessing is the bible in reverse. Man and woman are cast into Eden instead of out of it, and rather than being paradise it?s a hell. As man was created first and woman second, here woman is destroyed second and man first. So what?s the original sin? Chaos and murder, and the animals labeled the three beggars are the voice of temptation leading the characters toward it, woman first and then man. So, what?s the antichrist? Evidence would seem to suggest that it was the child killed in the first scene, note the positions of his arms as he falls, also the deformity of his feet. This would make Gainsborg?s character the mother of the antichrist, but what?s the polar opposite of a virgin? The answer to that might have something to do with the scene with the scissors.

Is that an airtight theory about this? Hell no. In fact that interpretation has more holes in it than Swiss cheese, but I think it touches on one mode of watching the film. One could probably sit and theorize about it for ages, it?s a bit like Cries and Whispers era Bergman in the way it forces long contemplation in order to find meaning in its stark imagery and bleak subject matter. It may end up being one of those movies like Mullholland Dr or A Tale of Two Sisters that have people watching them a million times in order to post elaborate theories on the internet. Whatever. The meaning of life may or may not be encoded into this thing, but what really matters is that it?s made with the utmost conviction, it?s beautifully crafted, and it?s consistently compelling and thought-provoking. That?s great cinema whether or not it functions as a definitive statement about the fall of man.

Television is a medium that has become increasingly important in the last ten years; shows like ?The Wire,? ?Mad Men,? and ?The Shield? have lead to a great renaissance in the format of serialized storytelling. However the world of television reaches beyond networks like HBO, AMC, and FX (and even beyond those over the air networks that people seem to like). Like the cinema, material is produced for television all over the world, particularly in the UK whose domestic television industry has launched the careers of major talent like Ricky Gervais, Simon Pegg, Steve Coogan, and Hugh Laurie. However, while the basic format for cinema is almost identical the world over, the norms of televised content seem to vary in ways that can be confounding. Every time I?ve tried to get into a much buzzed British program I?m confounded by the cheap film stock they tend to use, but even more so by their short season (excuse me, ?series?) lengths and limited runs. What they call a program I call a miniseries, what?s the point of getting into a show if it?s just going to end after six to twelve short episodes? For those reasons I?ve mainly stuck to television shows from countries that don?t use barbaric horizontal credit sequences, and it seems like the majority of my fellow vertical credit loving Americans do the same. Perhaps that is why the new feature film In the Loop is currently playing in select American theaters even though the UK television series it?s based on, ?The Thick of It,? is nowhere to be found in Region 1.

Though the film is largely an ensemble piece, the lead character is probably Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), the minister for international development. This is a man who seems to mean well for the most part, but he has a Biden-esque habit of saying stupid things in public. The gaffe that really gets him in trouble is when he?s asked about a possible Anglo-American incursion into the Middle East (the film never comes out and says it, but this is obviously meant to represent Iraq), the best answer he can come up with is that war is a ?not unforeseeable? possibility. This clumsy and ambiguous wording results in an angry tongue lashing from the Prime Minister?s Communications Director Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), but the statement is picked up by American war hawks like Linton Barwick (David Rasche), a State Department crony who has little interest in ?the facts? and who gives out friendly smiles while ruthlessly manipulating violent overseas events. However, in spite of the way his statements sound Foster is not in favor of the war (at least in theory) and because of this he is seen as a potential ally to those trying to oppose the war at the highest levels like American Undersecretary Mimi Kennedy and a gruff Military General (James Gandolfini) who doesn?t feel the war is winnable. After another embarrassing fumble of wording, Foster and a young advisor named Toby (Chris Addison) find themselves flying off to Washington D.C. to take part in the debate.

In general, this movie is a little bit like ?The West Wing,? but with less optimism and more swearing. It shows the behind the scenes grind of politics, but does so on a much less appetizing level. The President and the Prime Minister are never seen or named in the movie; this is about people in the middle-management of government in the midst of what is probably the most exciting thing that will ever happen in their careers. They might have beliefs and ideas of their own, but they mostly just have to do what their bosses tell them to do in order to keep their jobs, all the real decisions are made by people well above their pay grades. In this sense the film is a lot like Ricky Gervais? famous Brit-sitcom ?The Office,? except in a business with higher stakes than a paper company; it also shares that series? vérité visual style.

Probably the greatest pleasure of In the Loop is its dialogue, written by the team who wrote for the TV series, and delivered with conviction by a talented cast. Normally the sight of five writers in the credits should be a turn off, but in this case I suspect the team was there simply to fill the movie with great jokes and witty lines rather than to mess with the story. The film rarely seems like it adds unnecessary scenes in order to accommodate a funny set-pieces, it sticks strictly to the story it wants to tell and finds humor in the proceedings rather than looking for it elsewhere. The fact that they are able to turn this television comedy style into a real narrative arc is perhaps the scripts greatest triumph. At first you feel like you?re just watching it for the satirical dialogue, but the tension does ramp up in the third act and you really do start to get excited about the outcome as people on both sides of the pond mobilize to decide whether or not this war happens.

The actor blessed with the most consistently funny character is Peter Capaldi whose character is a profane angry boss character who frequently throws out elaborate threats like ?Just f**king do it! Otherwise you'll find yourself in some medieval war zone in the Caucasus with your arse in the air, trying to persuade a group of men in balaclavas that sustained sexual violence is not the f**king way forward!? He reminded me a lot of both of Ari Gould, the similarly quick speaking and dismissive agent played by Jeremy Piven on the HBO series ?Entourage,? and of the curse spewing executive played by Tom Cruise in the film Tropic Thunder. This is an endlessly amusing character type that might have originated with Kevin Spacey?s part in the Hollywood satire Swimming with Sharks. The similarities may have been unintentional, but I find it very funny that a government communications director would have the same personality type as these Hollywood types who avoid all pleasantries in order to get their way at all costs. Most of the other characters are less over the top than Capaldi?s, but most of them are given some moment where they find themselves on top and are able to chew out one of their co-workers. Even an idiot like Tom Hollander?s character finds and opportunity to do so when his advisor arrives late to a meeting and he milks the opportunity to its fullest.

There?s a certain nihilistic streak to the whole film, no matter what the characters do there?s really no stopping this war from happening; the decision?s been made and the check has been cashed. Those who try to stop the inevitable are only putting their livelihoods on the line in vain, though most of them cave before it comes to that. Perhaps the best thing that can come from this is a certain empathy for the people who are in the middle of the insanity that politics can be at some time, after all they?re only human too and you should maybe cut them a little slack when they take a while to fix your wall.

What may be the film?s one problem is that it came way too late. Imagine how awesome this would have been if it had come out in 2003, right when this kind of decision making was going on in Washington and London. That?s probably a completely unreasonable expectation, after all one can only get a real look at what went into that fateful decision in retrospect, but then again this is a movie that people are comparing to the immortal Dr. Strangelove, and Stanley Kubrick didn?t wait until after a nuclear war started to make that film. Still, no matter when this came out there?s no denying that this is a very funny, smart, and insightful film. They had me at funny.

In the waning years of this decade, 2005-2008, we began to see a number of powerful films from American directors (or at least directors working within the studio system) that seemed to be subconscious reactions to post-9/11 confusion, anxiety, and Bush era discontent. Among the film?s I?d include in this bubble of creativity are Children of Men, Zodiac, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and to some extent The Dark Knight. Though part of me is afraid that I?m just lumping together a bunch of great movies that happened to be made around the same time period, I can?t help but make this link. All of these movies seemed to be made with a certain intensity, they were all movies about uncertainty, about people who had to reconsider their assumptions or about people who fail to rethink their assumptions and paid for it. I bring this little movement up because I think it?s over, most of the films made in the last two years have not really seemed a part of this, possibly because the election of Barrack Obama has changed the political landscape, cynicism is out and hope is in. The Road, a film which was going to come out in 2008 before it was delayed, might just be the final film we?ll be seeing from this brief but rewarding movement of Hollywood cinema.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning Cormac McCarthy novel of the same title, The Road tells the story about a father and son trying to survive in a tough environment. In the vague future of this film, society has collapsed and the environment has become harsh. We are never told if this apocalypse is the result of environmental decay, nuclear warfare, or some sort of disease, but what?s important is that most of the people are gone, the cities are in ruins, and the sun is constantly being blocked by clouds. We see this world from the perspective of an unnamed man (Viggo Mortensen) and his unnamed son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who must both try to walk south in order to escape the approaching winter cold. The son has never really known a better world than the one he lives in, we are told through flashbacks that he was born on the eve of the apocalypse and that his mother (Charlize Theron) has long since passed away.

The film is all about survival, what survival is worth and what you?re willing to do in order to survive. The Mortensen character is someone who values surviving above all else, he?s not someone who is going to let the dimness of the world force him to give up on living as many other people in the situation are reported to have done. He tells his son that the two of them need to ?carry the flame,? to remain human in the face of the horrible things around them, he wants his son to think that the two of them are the ?good guys.? For the most part the two live up to this aspiration, at least when compared to the ?bad guys? that we encounter, particularly armed gangs of cannibals that roam the desolate countryside. At the same time, being a ?good guy? isn?t always easy and Mortensen?s character must make tough decisions about how to treat the people they encounter like a hungry old man (Robert Duvall) and a hungry thief (Michael K. Williams). One also gets the sense that Mortensen?s character has become understandably paranoid, that occasionally he displays caution that hurts him rather than saving him. These occasional moments when reality challenge the ?carry the flame? philosophy that he?s trying to hand down to his son, and in some ways his attempts to be a good man and a survivor become mixed messages for the boy.

Viggo Mortenson is an actor who?s been working since the mid eighties, but he was completely off the radar until he came out of nowhere and appeared in the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a starring role in which, against all expectations, he thrived. He continued to deny expectations when he continued to do amazing work in his post-Aragorn work, partly because he seems to have refused to do roles in frivolous between his serious roles. Working with David Cronenberg he did great work in A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, both films where he must be a very tough character but one with a complexities and vulnerabilities beneath the surface. That?s probably what makes Mortensen so special, he?s like a modern Clint Eastwood, a strong silent type but one who?s more than a stupid action hero. This quality is what makes him perfect for his role here, he needs to be a strong person who?s been molded by a tough environment, but he?s also a caring father who needs to have the tough of a parent throughout.

The rest of the cast has also been very well constructed. Any movie that has a large role for a ten year old kid has a pretty big hurtle to jump because nothing can kill a movie quite like an annoying kid. Fortunately the kid they found, Kodi Smit-McPhee, has pulled off his role admirably. It helps that the character he?s playing has had to mature to some extent beyond his years because of the tough situation he?s in. That tends to erode a lot of the lame kid stuff that can so frequently lead to groan inducing line readings. Aside from the two central roles, every person that these two encounter seems to be perfectly cast. Charlize Theron manages to deliver an understated performance for a character that might have easily been overplayed and there?s also a neat small role for Guy Pearce that I won?t give away.

Of course this is a film that?s defined by its post-apocalyptic setting, and John Hillcoat has made this setting into a character. Hillcoat had done a similar thing with the Australian Outback in his previous film, The Proposition, which was reportedly inspired significantly by Cormac McCarthy?s earlier work. This is a director that knows how to film desolation and he does it exceptionally well here. In fact, visually, this is the best post-apocalypse on film since George Miller?s The Road Warrior, and it might even surpass that car warfare classic in its vision. Most of the film depicts bleak and worn out forests, filled with trees who seem to have shed their leaves. It?s always cold, that?s the threat they?re running from, and snow occasionally enters the frame which is an interesting departure from the desert locales that usually characterize the genre. The sky is always overcast and the world seems to have the color sucked out of it. The remnants of society that are left over, like a scavenged coca-cola can, add more to the feeling of loss than the destroyed landmarks that are usually found in this kind of movie.

This is also a movie that is capable of operating like a thriller when it needs to. The movie opens with a tense standoff between a threatening raider and a frightened Viggo Mortensen. The tension here is excellent and the abrupt way it ends is the perfect capper. An even better scene occurs later on when they sneak into a seemingly abandoned house only to find some profoundly disturbing things are happening there. This scene is as frightening as anything seen in a horror movie this year, and the fact that it furthers most of the film?s themes while also providing visceral chills to the audience is a testament to Hillcoat?s abilities as a director. That said, this isn?t really a thriller even if individual scenes are very tense.

I won?t lie, this movie isn?t exactly a laugh riot. This is a movie that can be a bit tough to watch, it?s a downer and it isn?t exactly ?fun.? Great films are usually challenging and they?re not always going to be a light-hearted evening out, but this is a movie about the end of the world and it isn?t some kind of juvenile work that things the end of the world is going to be a blast. If ?fun? is all you want out of a movie, then you?ll probably be well served by 2012, it?s your loss. That?s going to be one hurdle for this film; another is going to be the inevitable comparisons made to 2007?s Oscar winning Cormac McCarthy adaptation No Country for Old Men. No, this film isn?t going to be as great as that Coen Brothers opus, then again very few movies are. This may not be an instant classic that everyone will agree on the way No Country for Old Men was, but it is far and away better than most anything you?re likely to see in theaters on any given week. This isn?t 2007 and I don?t think we?re going to get too many more films like this for a while. Appreciate this one while it lasts.

You may have never heard of Ramin Bahrani, but his films are among the most important movies coming out of the United States today. Bahrani has made three films now and while none of them have come close to penetrating the mainstream, all of them have an aura of something new and special. His distinct style clearly owes a lot to the Italian Neo-Realist movement (some have glibly called his style neo-neo-realism), as each film depicts a character struggling to survive in poverty and he extensively uses non actors in order to make everything as authentic as possible. I discovered his first film, Man Push Cart, on the Sundance Channel and was immediately transfixed by the travails of the central character as he tried desperately to make ends meet on the streets of New York. His follow up, Chop Shop, also depicted a side of the big apple which has heretofore gone unnoticed by the general public and the world seemed all the more tragic because it was a child placed at the center of the film. My opinion of both of these films has only grown upon reflection and I was certainly excited to see what Bahrani would show us next. His newest film, Goodbye Solo, shifts locations from New York to North Carolina but this does nothing to diminish the newest fascinating slice of life from this important filmmaker.

The film opens in a taxi cab driven by Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané), a Senegalese immigrant with a young family who aspires to become a flight attendant and leave behind his cab. In the back seat of the car is William (Red West), a grumpy old man who?s become very depressed and disillusioned as of late. William has made a proposition to Solo, in a few weeks he wants to be driven out to an area landmark called the Blowing Rock, he doesn?t want a return trip. Solo asks if William plans to jump off this rock but receives no answer. After Solo accepts a hundred dollar deposit for this grim task he decides to try befriending William in hopes of eventually dissuading him from his suicidal plans, but William may be beyond saving at this point.

While Bahrani?s first two films were squarely focused on a single character, this one focuses on a pair of them. Solo, like the immigrants in the first two films, is trying to slowly build a life for himself through tedious day to day work. Unlike the other two, he?s got a family of sort including a step daughter. The other major character is William, who?s played by veteran bit player Red West, though if this were a mainstream film he probably would have been played by someone like Nick Nolte. He?s a gruff old man who doesn?t speak a lot and who isn?t willing to wear his heart on his sleeve. William always resists Solo?s attempts to help him, but one gets a sense of growing respect between the two. This relationship could have easily turned into a saccharine weep-fest were the story placed in the wrong hands, but Bahrani does a very careful tightrope walk and makes the story real rather than contrived.

A big part of the appeal in Bahrani?s films is the way they let you eavesdrop into the lives of people you normally don?t have contact with. Chop Shop was particularly good at this; it was set in the middle of Queens but felt like it was set in a foreign country. Goodbye Solo does not maintain this same sense of foreignness, but it does feel like it?s peaking into a part of the country that isn?t always fun to think about. Bahrani has never ended on an overwhelmingly unhappy note, and each one of them has been more hopeful than the last. The ending of Goodbye Solo is particularly strong in the way it manages to balance hope and melancholy through a few well chosen images.

Writing this, I consistently find myself referring back to Bahrani?s previous work and comparing. Such is the nature of the man?s oeuvre, in a particularly auteurist way he?s managed to make statements in individual films that are magnified by their place in a larger body of work. These are some of the best films about the American immigrant experience that I?ve ever seen and in bringing the techniques of Italian neo-realism into the 21st century, Bahrani has crafted a unique style that has only improved over the course of three films. I?m dying to know where Bahrani goes from here, until then we have a trilogy of excellent films to admire.

It?s no secret that many people view the Best Foreign Language category of the Academy Awards as a mess. Between the country by country submission process, the process of selecting a shortlist, and the process of choosing five final films, there are a ton of roadblocks in which snubs can occur. This was made particularly clear in 2007, when important films like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days were ignored in favor of off the radar oddities like Beaufort, Katy?, and 12. Many also complained about the 2008 lineup, but if you think about it they really stepped up that year. Among the nominees were the Palm D?or winner The Class, critical favorite and future Criterion-laureate Revanche, the wildly creative animated documentary Waltz With Bashir, and Departures, a film whose victory baffled many but which got solid reviews once people finally got a chance to see it. Really, that?s what the category?s major problem is, its dealing with movies which few people have actually had a chance to see and which have had no ability to get buzz stateside. That?s probably the problem that The Baader-Meinhof Complex had when its nomination baffled many. Had it had the stateside released then which it is now finally getting it might have been less of a shock.

The film tells the true story of the RAF, that?s not the Royal Air Force, it?s the Red Army Faction; a group of disillusioned youths who turned to violence in an attempt to cause social change in late sixties Germany. The group could probably be equated to The Weathermen, except that they were more violent and more active than that American group. In short, these were left wing domestic terrorists who reaped havoc throughout Germany for about a decade, and that?s a topic that needs to be approached carefully.

The title refers to RAF members Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck), who became the group?s most famous members. However, the movie does not necessarily focus on either of them and they do not appear to be bilateral leaders of the organization. Rather, this is an ensemble film about an organization that appears to have been somewhat loosely organized. Baader is the member who more closely lives up to what one would expect from an RAF member, he?s young, angry and political. The kind of person who?d normally just wear a Che Guevara T-Shirt but who instead ended up taking arms and emulating him. Meinhof is a bit more intriguing. She began her career as a respected left wing journalist, but finally came to sympathize and ultimately sacrifice everything in order to join the group.

These young people are raging against a lot of things around them, particularly the ongoing war in Vietnam (for which the United States has been using bases in Germany), the treatment of Palestine by Israel, and the general belief that corporations have been controlling everything. They come to the conclusion that to do nothing in the face of all this would be as much of a sin as the conformity the previous generation showed in the face of Nazism. That?s what drove them philosophically, additionally; they were living in a time of worldwide counterculture which is something the film shows very well. The film has a number of montages (perhaps too many) that really drive home the environment which bread this organization and why so many of the youth in Germany came to sympathize with them.

The group?s build is rather interesting as there is a fascinating gender equality to the Baader Meinhoff group. Three of the most important RAF members (Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek), Brigitte Mohnhaupt (Nadja Uhl), and Meinhof), are women and many of them act as aggressively as the men. Do not expect Baader and Meinhof to be some kind of Bonnie and Clyde style lovers in crime. This is the late 60s and the group practices free love, a fact that does not amuse their Palestinian colleagues as evidenced by a scene where they went to a terrorist training camp and gained the reputation of being screw-ups among their peers in the terror business.

Of course, amidst all the 60s clothing and rock music, one must face the fact that these people were killers. Perhaps they were idealistic and well intentioned killers, but killers none the less. That?s what makes this subject matter so challenging; terrorist are probably the least popular people in the world today and with good reason, how do you make these characters sympathetic enough to follow without glorifying them or whitewashing their less savory aspects. This is perhaps not unlike the challenges posed by making a serious film about gangs and organized crime, but magnified by the political elements. To deal with this Edel has chosen to make this a straightforward film about historical events told with meticulous detail and research. Stefan Aust?s book was clearly important to this production for far more than its catchy title, one feels like Edel was interested as much in making an accessible illustrated historical record as he was in telling a cinematic story.

The history here is interesting enough for such a treatment, but it?s also the movies Achilles Heel. The material is never dry, but because this is trying to be so accurate there are developments that go against the nature of film storytelling; important characters emerge in the final act and events occur that seem separate from the main narrative thrust and in general it affair seems a bit unfocused. One wonders if this would be perfected if Edel had been willing to composite a few characters and simplify elements. Quentin Tarentino lovingly asserted in the finale of Inglorious Basterds that film is a stronger force than history, and while I certainly am not recommending that The Baader Meinhof Complex needed to take any departures as radical as Tarentino did, I do think Edel probably should have taken his duties as a film maker a little more seriously than his duties as a historian. Still, the way the film steadfastly presents history in a way that is cinematically compelling if not narratively clan, does make for a very interesting film.

The highly respected critic Manohla Dargis began her recent New York Times profile of the filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow by saying: ?The take on Kathryn Bigelow is that she is a great female director of muscular action movies? sometimes, more simply, she?s called a great female director. But here?s a radical thought: She is, simply, a great filmmaker.? The double standard which Dargis points out is well stated, but I would never go so far as to call Bigelow a ?great director? of any kind. This is, after all, a filmmaker whose greatest claim to fame is a mid-nineties Keanu Reeves vehicle (Point Break) which Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright could ridicule with the same breath they mocked Bad Boys II. The other highlights of her oeuvre are a forgettable Submarine movie called K-19: The Widow Maker and a moderately creative vampire movie called Near Dark which was marred by a low budget and a lame tacked on happy ending. The best movie she?d made up to this point was Strange Days, a mostly forgotten science fiction movie which, while solid, was only a minor triumph. As such I?ve been a bit perplexed by the revisionism with which many are describing this career in the wake of the release of Bigelow?s newest film The Hurt Locker. While I?m still not a fan of Bigelow?s career up to this point, seeing this new film does make me excited to see what the future will bring for Ms. Bigelow, because The Hurt Locker is significantly better than anything she?s made before.

Set in the midst of the Iraq war circa 2004, the film covers 20-30 days in the life of a three-man army bomb squad. The newest member is Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), he?s the commanding officer and he takes point on the bomb defusing duties. Supporting him are Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) who must watch what he?s doing and look out for possible triggermen looking to set off the bombs. Quickly it becomes apparent that Staff Sergeant James has a very different style than his predecessor, he?s reckless and prone to taking wild risks. With only a couple dozen days left in their tour, the men must try to hold out in spite of the danger that this behavior puts them in.

It is no secret that movies about the Iraq War have mostly been miserable failures both critically and commercially. Granted, a lot of the movies that are lumped into the genre are really either primarily about other Middle-East conflicts (E.G. Lions for Lambs, The Kingdom, Rendition) or they?re about the lives of soldiers after they?ve returned home (E.G. Stop Loss, Home of the Brave, The Lucky Ones). Perhaps the only theatrical film thus far which I would unhesitantly say is about the Iraq War is Brian De Palma?s ballsy but at times terribly executed film Redacted, which came under heavy fire by right-wing ideologues for failing to exult ?the troops.? Many suggest that the problem has been that it?s ?too soon,? that there?s no way to fully assess the conflict until after it?s over. I have trouble buying this explanation, as there have been plenty of documentarians who have proven more than able to assess the situation intelligently as well as some surprisingly superior television projects like FX?s ?Over There? and HBO?s ?Generation Kill.? If nothing else these various projects have more than established the look and feel of the war in Iraq to the point where this film feels more like a return to the setting than an introduction to it, thus allowing Bigelow to hit the ground running.

While this clearly isn?t the first work to tackle the conflict, it is the first one to focus on actual combat? sort of. After all, combat in Iraq doesn?t exactly look like the frontline battles of wars past. Most of the fatalities in Iraq come from hidden bombs which often explode before the victims know what hit them. So in spite of the film?s focus on ?combat,? I wouldn?t call it an action movie as many critics have. In fact, the film only has one scene which I?d classify as an honest-to-goodness action sequence, and even there the thrills are mostly suspenseful rather than visceral. Most of the ?combat? consists of tense situations where the team must deal with live bombs which could go off at any moment. The film avoids most of the clichés of bomb defusing; the characters don?t spend minutes choosing between the red and blue wires (at least they don?t announce their dilemma out loud) and they are never given a large readout counting down to when the bomb will blow. The honest-to-goodness action scene I referred to, a tense Sniper duel, is easily the highlight of the film. In fact it may just be the best sniper face-off since Full Metal Jacket.

The particularly impressive thing about the film?s visual style is its ability to balance both conventional and documentary aesthetics. This is an equilibrium that many filmmakers have been trying to perfect lately, thus making this success all the more impressive. The film is shot handheld, but it is in no way meant to be a mockumentary, and it will not be offensive to those opposed to ?the shaky cam.? The picture oddly looks both washed out and digital, a very gritty look but in an entirely twenty first century way. In spite of this gritty look, when the bombs in the film do go off Bigelow is not afraid to shoot them with all the gusto that Roland Emmerich would. Up until now Bigelow?s style resembled the early work of Tony Scott, it was slick and relaxed. So this film?s docudrama aesthetic is a pretty big departure for her. The is made even more impressive if one compares it to the clumsy way Brian De Palma tried to shift into faux-documentary styling in his Iraq film.

The film is completely apolitical, I doubt that Bigelow is a fan of the war, but no judgment seems to be made about the conflict other than that it is a highly dangerous environment that can be incredibly trying for those involved. In fact the movie is so neutral that at times it seems to lack even a storyline. The film is completely dedicated to simply showing twenty-some days in the life of these guys and almost nothing else, it goes from set-piece to set piece with only a few scenes back at the barracks to connect it all. In its third act the film threatens to form an actual narrative arc, but then goes back to its slice of life format. This isn?t to say the film is without depth, though it lacks a strong central story the characters are well developed through their actions and their conversations. Though the format is not conventional, this is not some sort of wild Gus Van Sant style experiment, it won?t be confusing to non-cinephiles and its style serves no extraneous purpose other than to support the material.

The Hurt Locker is indeed the best feature length film about the Iraq war, and by quite a distance at that. Still, I feel there are better movies about the war to be made in the future. Perhaps in the future we?ll get movies about this war that are as refined as a Saving Private Ryan, a Thin Red Line, or a Letters From Iwo Jima. This film is reminiscent of the more primitive World War Two movies that were made in the late forties and fifties like Battleground or Twelve O?Clock High. These were very matter of fact films which simply sought to tell a story about men trying to cope with hardships on a battlefield. They were simple stories of survival, no more concerned with the full ramifications of the war then the men on the ground were. I certainly hope that movies will come that can achieve greater ambitions than this, until then The Hurt Locker will have to do.

I feel really sorry for filmmakers who try to make crime movies these days, the standards for that genre are unbelievably high. No matter how great a movie about gangsters gets, the bar has been set so high by the likes of The Godfather, Goodfellas, and Scarface that it has become hard to call even the best examples of the genre being made today ?great.? Take for example 2007?s American Gangster, a film which is element for element a pretty damn good effort, but when compared to some of the above mentioned films it?s hard to really get too excited about it. Still there have been a few exceptional films like The Departed and City of God which have found their way into the pantheon in spite of the sky high expectations, and one such exception was Michael Mann?s Heat, a sprawling cops and robbers epic which paired Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in a thrilling cat and mouse chase through L.A.?s underworld. Because of this and the presence of A-list talent like Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, Mann?s new film about the legendary John Dillinger, Public Enemies, comes with a level of anticipation above the already high standards of crime epics.

John Dillinger was not a gangster in the way Al Capone, Frank Lucas, or even Henry Hill were. He didn?t run any vast criminal conspiracies from dark mansions nor did he hold any legitimate covers. Rather, he was a bank robber in the vein of Bonnie & Clyde; and was, in spite of his massive fame in the eye of the public, considered ?public enemy number one? by the newly formed FBI. When the film begins, John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) is already an established criminal and the film is about the last few months of his life. Christian Bale plays Melvin Purvis, an FBI agent fresh off the apprehension of Pretty Boy Floyd, who has been put in charge of a task force set up to capture or kill Dillinger. Meanwhile, Dillinger is basking in his infamy; he has the fastest cars, the nicest clothes, and he?s also hooked up with a beautiful woman named Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard). But as Purvis begins to close in it becomes clear that the good times aren?t lasting forever and Dillinger must be increasingly careful in order to survive as public enemy number one.

Another legendary American outlaw was given the film treatment in 2007 with Andrew Dominick?s film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, an excellent film but one which did not resonate well with the public. That film had the difficult task of trying to subvert the legendary status of the outlaw at the center, to show Jesse James for the moody killer he was rather than the Robin Hood figure the public believed him to be, all the while examining what it was that created that public fascination. Michael Mann does not take the same approach with his film though one could envision a film where he does. Generally, Mann seems rather disinterested in the way Dillinger is seen by the public and by Dillinger himself for that matter and instead focuses on how he is viewed by the FBI, the criminal underworld, and his girlfriend Billie Frechette.

Mann could have depicted Dillinger as a martyred rebel or as a menace that needed to be put down by brave G-Men, but he never settles into a simple groove like that. It?s almost impossible not to be pretty impressed by Dillinger?s smooth antics but Mann also does not hesitate to show the more violent aspects of his personality. Mann also undermines a lot of Dillinger?s exploits in a brilliant scene where he is told that much more money is made through a secret telephone fraud than by the very public bank robberies he had involved himself in. On the other hand, the movie is hardly an advertisement for the FBI who are often excessive and cruel in their pursuit of Dillinger, and they seem motivated more by public opinion than a genuine desire to make America safer. Ultimately Mann?s depiction is very matter-of-fact, he shows Dillinger doing the very cool looking things that history records him having done and allows the audience to judge. This failure to take sides may seem frustratingly non-committal to some, but I appreciated Mann?s willingness to report without judgment.

It has become a critical custom to examine Johnny Depp performances by trying to identify the sources of his inspiration, this film will be no exception because he is clearly trying to channel James Cagney. This is a pretty obvious choice but also an effective one especially from a physical perspective. Like Cagney, Depp has a certain range of facial movement here, he can be charming Frechette one moment and then have a killer?s look in his eyes as he fires a Tommy Gun the next. But with a Cagney impersonation comes a certain degree of theatricality that one simply has to accept, and this is particularly troublesome in some of the early line readings. In fact that?s true of a lot of people?s acting in the first few scenes of the film, which seem to be liberally homageing the acting mannerisms of thirties cinema in a way that the later scenes aren?t for some reason.

Unlike Depp, there aren?t many reservations I have about Christian Bale, who?s doing some of the best work I?ve seen him do in a large budget film in a long while. Bale has the Elliot Ness role here; he needs to act like a boy scout but also like a pretty tough and smart agent. Bale is pretty restrained throughout, it?s like he realized his character was no match for John Dillinger in the eyes of the audience so he never goes out of his way to seem like some sort of badass. His character is someone who gets results by being smarter, not stronger, than the opposition and he?s not ashamed to ask for help when he realizes he?s outgunned. But it?s Marion Cottilard who steals the show here. I couldn?t stand the overbearing work Cottilard won an Oscar for in 2007?s La Vie En Rose, but I absolutely loved her here. Dillinger is a man who could have hooked up with movie stars and singers if he wanted to, but Cottilard?s work makes it abundantly clear why he was taken with this coat check girl. Cottilard is drop dead gorgeous in the film and sexy but not in a way that makes her look like some sort of fake Maxim model. She really feels like someone who could verbally go toe to toe with Dillinger and you believe her character when she stays loyal to Dillinger even at personal risk.

In his last two films Michael Mann had been experimenting with Digital Photography, a decision which didn?t draw a lot of attention firstly because both Collateral and Miami Vice spent most of their running time under cover of night and secondly because they both inhabited very modern settings. Here however Mann has thrown down the gauntlet and declared a place in the making of large scale period pieces for digital photography. To shoot with this kind of digital camera is basically the 21st Century equivalent of shooting on grainy 16mm film stock, it lacks a certain glowing beauty but in turn it gains a certain documentary-style immediacy. One thing I like about digital photography is that it really seems to see the world the way the human eye does rather than the way movies try to make the world look. We?re so used to seeing the thirties through orange color filters at magic hour that to see it in this raw form seems kind of jarring. Basically it?s the exact opposite of what Sam Mendes did with Road to Perdition, but I?d say it?s a reasonable tradeoff. After all, how many gangster movies that look like The Untouchables and L.A. Confidential do we need? Because Mann chose to shoot with such a modern and reality tinged medium you really feel like you?re in the same room with John Dillinger, you feel like you?re watching gangland shootouts that were caught on tape and put on Youtube in full 1080p.

Speaking of the shootouts, the action scenes in this film are numerous and awesome. These robberies, escapes, shootouts, and car chases are smoothly shot and kinetic. The action is fast paced and immediate like a Bourne film, but they also lack a lot of the more aggressive techniques that have turned some of the people off to that series. In that sense this is sort of the best of both worlds, it?s intense but I doubt the choreography will confuse anyone. Particularly strong is the sound design. Like the shootout in Heat, all the gunshots here are exceptionally loud and realistic which is invaluable in adding to the intensity of the gunplay. I do not for the life of me know why other directors don?t use Michael Mann?s sound library when putting together their shootouts. Highlights include a tense prison escape that opens the film, a massive shootout in a Wisconsin woods that ends brilliantly, a couple of great bank robberies, a tense cat and mouse scene in a dark hotel room, but best of all is Dillinger?s famous wood gun escape in which he fleas a heavily guarded prison without firing a shot. Those simply seeking summer thrills will be just as happy with this movie as those interested in the life of the famous outlaw.

There are a handful of problems to be found: some of the supporting performances are a little weak, there?s a really bad scene in which Dillinger does something really cocky for no reason (I thought for sure it would end up being a dream sequence or something but it wasn?t), and a there are a couple plot points that never really come to fruition. But the movie?s real sin is just that it isn?t a masterpiece, and that?s what some people demand whenever a great director and cast try to make a crime movie, but that?s a bit short sighted. There are a lot of critics who seem to be holding this to a much higher standard than they should and rejecting it just because it isn?t the best movie this genre has ever seen. That?s a bunch of hogwash; this is better than any Hollywood movie I?ve seen in the last seven months and it should be celebrated for that, not punished for daring to have a good pedigree while not quite being Oscar worthy. This is an excellently executed and very entertaining movie I recommend to anyone without hesitation. If you skip this movie to see a two hour toy commercial or something this weekend you should be ashamed.

Contrary to what Ayn Rand may have told you, corporations are for the most part evil. When left to their own devices they will gladly screw over their competitors, their employees, and their customers if it will make them a little more profit. This is why they make such effective Hollywood villains, they have a long history of activities that would make Darth Vader blush and deep down they have almost no remorse. Since every villain needs a hero to vanquish them, Hollywood has invented someone to put a white hat on: the whistleblower. While the whistleblower genre probably doesn?t have as many websites dedicated to it as other sub-genres, it?s actually a pretty populous category of film and like most things that are done to death people are beginning to get a bit sick of its pattern of self-riotousness and manufactured drama. So, when it came to light that Steven Soderbergh was making adapting the story of real life whistle blower Mark Whitacre it was safe to guess we?d get something more than standard genre fare, and from the moment the film?s trailer came out it was clear that was the case.

Based on the nonfiction book by Kurt Eichenwald, this film tells the story of the man who helped the FBI conduct one of the biggest price fixing scams in American History. This investigation began when the company called in the FBI to deal with an extortion scheme reported by Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), an executive in the lysine division of ADM. Shortly into an investigation by agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula), Whitacre reveals that he and his colleagues have been illegally conspiring with other companies to systematically drive up prices worldwide. Whitacre agrees to wear a wire and collect evidence against the company he works for, and in doing so is able to collect an unprecedented amount of evidence for the FBI. Whitacre claims he?s doing this to clear his conscience, but he doesn?t really seem all that torn up about lysine consumers, so why is he doing this? That will turn out to be the key question at the heart of all of this, because Mark Whiticre is not exactly what he seems.

The conventional wisdom about Steven Soderbergh is that he does big budget studio produced films filled with celebrities in order to build the cache required to make low budget experimental films starring non-actors. Because of this reputation critics are inevitably going to deride this as one of the former, but really this whole notion is something of a misnomer. This may have a bigger budget than something like Bubble and it may star an A-list celebrity, but deep down the way this film handles genre is just as experimental as a lot of those other projects. If you go to one of those seminars they have to teach screenwriters how to build successful formulaic films step by step, the first thing they?ll tell you is to focus on a character with a clear motivation and to have that motivation drive the plot. As such, this would have largely focused on the goal of bringing down ADM and stuck with this conflict throughout if this were a conventional film. Instead, this movie becomes defiantly disinterested in the fate of ADM and instead focuses on what the title says it will focus on the informant.

This informant himself is a pretty odd character played brilliantly by Matt Damon. Whiticre is a strange person who seems more like Ned Flanders than Deep Throat. He?s in his forties, has a bad comb-over, and a goofy looking mustache. More importantly, the guy?s a doofus; he?s the antithesis of the intense image of businessman that Gordon Gecko embodied. At times Whiticre seems to not grasp the stakes of his actions, and the film?s voice over track is clouded by his odd stream-of-consciousness musings about subjects ranging from the German word for pen to the thinking patterns of polar bears. This man?s existence is certainly one of those ?truth is stranger than fiction? type creations and making him believable had to have been a hefty challenge. Fortunately Matt Damon brings Whiticre to the screen excellently. It takes a little while for Damon?s achievement to really sink in, but when you compare his performance here to the badass he was when playing Jason Bourne and it becomes immensely clear how much of a range Damon has as an actor.

Because Whiticre is so strange many have come to label this movie a spoof, but I?d hesitate to use that term simply because it conjures images of broadly comic films like Aireplane and Scary Movie, and this film is neither as silly as those films nor is it trying to be as funny. However, this film does play with genre conventions in a way that?s not completely unlike what spoof films do. This is a movie that easily could have focused other elements, chosen a different tone, and used different techniques and end up looking like a remake of The Insider. Instead Soderbergh is able to make this movie a completely different through a handful of unexpected decisions. For example, the film has adopted a very 1970s aesthetic (even though the story is set in the early 90s), this would seem like a logical enough choice if one was trying to channel the corporate thrillers of that era like The China Syndrome, Serpico, and Silkwood, but it isn?t really the serious filmmaking of the 70?s that he?s channeling. Rather, Soderbergh is channeling everything that was kind of tacky about the era like the gaudy font the captions are in or the unexpected but compelling smooth jazz score by Marvin Hamlisch. As such, the film?s aesthetics sort of play with what we?re supposed to expect from this kind of movie just as much as the script does.

Ignoring all the genre trickery we do still get what is on its own a very fascinating story. Mark Whitacre is an enigma, one that has not been completely cracked by the time the credits role and a big part of the joys of this film are trying to figure out just what makes him tick. What?s more strange is that aside from some of his more self-sabotaging habits, Whitacre isn?t too different from most corporate executives. He?s a man who lies, cheats, and steals almost as a habit then hides behind an ?aw shucks? smile, the only difference is that he seems to believe his own bulls--t. In focusing on this personality we get a much better look at the face of corporate crime than we ever would watching the heroes take down another anonymous board room filled with mustache twirlers. While I wouldn?t place this in the upper echelon of Soderbergh?s work, this is a movie that deserves as much respect and analysis his movies which wear their experimental nature like a badge of honor.

Much the way the Indian film industry has kept the musical alive long after Hollywood stopped caring, Chinese filmmakers have been keeping alive the large scale swordplay epics that Hollywood?s abandoned in favor of superhero-fare and movies based on toy-lines. The Chinese Wuxia genre, characterized by beautifully photographed fight scenes set in ancient China, has been one of the most popular genres of world cinema. Some of the most popular examples of this genre are Ang Lee?s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Zhang Yimou?s Hero and The House of Flying Daggers. I?ve got to say that I?m a sucker for these movies; they?re action movies that have some real ambition being made in a time when Hollywood action movies seem to be made by people who don?t really seem to take their craft seriously. I?m not sure if John Woo?s Red Cliff strictly qualifies as a Wuxia movie, but it has all the elements that have made me dig the genre to begin with.

Set at the end of the Han Dynasty (around 200 C.E.), this film tells the story of the legendary Battle of Red Cliff. Ostensibly this is about a civil war between the Prime Minister Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi), whose taken power through brute force, and a pair of southern warlords named Liu Bei (You Yong) and Sun Quan (Chang Chen). The movie opens with Liu Bei trying to defend civilian refugees from the oncoming army of Cao Cao, he?s able to escape but with massive casualties including his own wife. Knowing that he cannot beat Cao Cao alone, Liu Bei sends his chief strategist Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) to convince Sun Quan into an alliance. Eventually Sun Quan agrees to the alliance and the forces decide to hold fort at the City of Red Cliff and prepare as Cao Caos massive naval fleet slowly approaches.

There is of course a lot more to this; in fact I didn?t even bring up Tony Leung?s character, Zhou Yu, who?s a warrior who takes part in a lot of the action scenes. The film is not meant to be a historically accurate take on the battle; it?s more like the recounting of an exaggerated legend. It also isn?t exactly a complex study of the politics at hand, it?s basically a battle good guys who are really good and bad guys who are really bad. This is old fashioned storytelling in many ways, which is just sort of something that has to be accepted in order to enjoy the movie. While this material isn?t exactly Shakespeare, there also isn?t anything about it that?s irritating, I don?t mind an action movie story that exists just to string together action scenes as long as it isn?t actively bad, and the story here is mostly decent.

What?s really important here are the battle scenes which are some of the best of their kind since Ridley Scott?s Kingdom of Heaven. Woo does need to uses some middling CGI for the wide shots of massive armies, which are not really the movie?s fortes, but for a lot of its duration the movie uses real people for its action scenes and during the medium shots the action is very strong. The fighting is very stylized with warriors able to engage in elaborate combat in the midst of the battlefield. That said, the fighting is not quite as stylized as it is in some of these movies like Hero, in which the characters are able to engage in extra-super-human moves like bating arrows out of the air with swords and you won?t see much wire-work either. This is a war movie first and a martial arts film second, there are scenes where great warriors will pair off and fight mano-e-mano, but for the most part this is about fights between large armies. Also, because the Chinese had access to gunpowder in their ancient warfare, some stuff blows up really good towards the end.

The film was released in two parts in China, and the first part?s release was made to coincide with the 2008 Olympics so as to show the world the country?s power in filmmaking. In this sense they?ve mostly succeeded, the action and production values in this are every bit as good as anything coming out of Hollywood. For its international release the film?s two parts have been spliced together into a single film, consequently, more than two hours have been cut from the film. These cuts are not invisible, there?s an English language voice over at the beginning that sets up the conflict, and captions have been added to help audiences keep the characters straight. The movie does feel rushed and the cuts may explain the simplicity of some of these characters, but I think the story mostly holds up. I hope to someday see the two part original version which will inevitably be available on DVD and Blu-Ray, but this is a movie that should be seen at least once in theaters and I understand the problems with bringing the original version to western theaters. This version will have to do.

This is the first movie which director John Woo has made in China since he left for Hollywood since his 1992 magnum opus Hard Boiled. I don?t think Woo?s best Hollywood works are really as different from his Hong Kong movies as some people think they are, in some ways I think he was the victim of the higher standards people seem to have for American action movies than they do for the exotic Asian ones. Still, his last couple of projects in Hollywood were undeniably poor, and he clearly was never allowed to make anything on this scale by the studio system. This is a return to form. I?m not going to call this a perfect movie, and if Hollywood had been making something other than half-assed CGI-fest as of late I might not have been as enthusiastic about this, but the movie delivers everything you?d expect out of it.

In this brave new world of digital cameras and youtube we?ve been hearing people talk at length about the notion of amateurs making films in their backyards completely removed from ?the system.? I?ve never really been a believer in the concept. Sure there have been a handful of very good micro-budget movies in the past few years but the chances of them really breaking out into the public at large seems to be about the same as they were before all this new technology when people like Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, and Richard Linklater put out similarly budgeted movies to similar success. But, if there?s ever been a clear example of the new system working it?s got to be the new thriller Paranormal Activity, which was made in seven days on a budget of fifteen thousand dollars by someone with no formal film training.

The film takes place entirely in the house of Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston), a young couple that is ?engaged to be engaged.? Katie has been hearing strange noises in the night and feels it is part of a pattern of odd occurrences she?s been sensing occasionally since she was a young girl. Intrigued, Michah buys a professional grade camera he hopes will help them to better document what?s been going on, especially while the two of them are asleep. As their project goes on they do indeed start to pick up some strange occurrences on the tape like a door moving on its own and a few odd noises. They are not sure how to react to what?s been going on but as the nights go by the events the camera picks up start to become more and more threatening.

This is essentially a haunted house movie, but in a way it isn?t. It?s established early on (by a psychic) that the force behind this disturbance is not a ghost, but a demon. Further it is established that this demon is not linked to the house the couple is living in, rather it has been targeting Katie since long before she found her way to this luxurious San Diego residence. This is a very smart bit of exposition because it eliminates the thing that almost always sinks haunted house movies: the notion that the characters could solve all their problems by simply moving. The choice of a demon rather than a ghost is also smart, something about the idea of a demon (which is distinguished as being a non human force as opposed to a deceased human spirit) just conjures up creepier images in the mind.

This plot is actually remarkably similar to a horror movie of a much different kind from earlier this year, Drag Me to Hell. Both films are about women who find themselves targeted by demons and must seek assistance from various paranormal ?experts.? The difference of course is that Drag Me to Hell revels in its silliness; it?s a fun, loud, movie and all of its thrills were right in your face. There?s nothing wrong with any of that and I don?t make this comparison to disparage Sam Raimi?s film, but Paranormal Activity takes almost the exact opposite approach with a similar concept. The approach in Oren Peli?s film is decidedly minimalist in comparison. Here the titular activity comes slowly into the film, the demon does things that are clearly beyond logical explanation but which seem oddly more disturbing because they are done in a way that is still oddly close to reality. Of course this approach would have quickly become tedious if Peli had remained too subtle for too long, thankfully he knows just when to start making the demon more daring in his appearances. This is not like the Blair Witch Project where they wait until pretty much the last shot to actually have something happen.

Which I suppose brings us to the fact that this is yet another ?found footage? movie. Ever since the aforementioned phenomenon of a film there have been a lot of these movies, and after each one gets made everyone feels like they?ve just seen the last film that will get away with the format before it becomes lame, and yet more and more come out to prove there?s still life in the technique. Between [REC], Cloverfield, and this film the ante just seems to keep going up. Perhaps the main appeal of filming a movie like this is that it requires less of a tech budget and less formal training to accomplish, after all, when trying to emulate an amateur a certain lack of professionalism actually helps rather than hurts your film and even the more heavily produced examples of the genre like Cloverfield are cheaper than their competitors. To a mainstream audience crappy film stock is a pretty big distraction unless there?s a narrative reason why what they?re looking at is a lot uglier than the latest Platinum Dunes splatterfest. But let?s not take that to mean that anyone could have made a movie like Paranormal Activities, because trust me, everyone is trying and there?s a reason why Oren Peli?s movie is the one in more than a thousand theaters right now and everyone else?s isn?t.

Of course, like many types of genre film, these found footage films need to establish their rules early on. For example, both Cloverfield and [REC] took the approach of having the movies (sort of) play out in real time, with cuts only occurring when the camera operator choose to turn his device off. This film and The Blair Witch Project instead choose to suggest that the people who found the footage edited the film together. Perhaps the bigger (and decidedly more meta) decision that must be made is how to present the film. The Blair Witch Project made the mistake of presenting the material as if it were a real documentary telling an authentic story even though it was quite obviously fake. The thing is, absolutely no one really thought that movie was real, they were just having fun playing along with the fiction the filmmakers had created. However, there were plenty of people who thought they were surrounded by morons who really did believe it and the result was a backlash perpetrated by those who thought they were smarter than everybody else. That?s why Paramount pictures has been pretty carefully avoiding any claims that this is anything other than a scary movie and selling the project more on the communal experience of seeing it in crowed theater full of screaming people. However, once people have entered the theater the movie still operates in a way that will accentuate the illusion of reality. The film actually has no studio logo at the beginning (an almost unprecedented rarity) and even more surprisingly it has no credits, something I didn?t even know was legal in this day and age.

Something that probably gives this a leg up over its underground competition is that it has managed to snare a pair of actors that know what they?re doing. In many ways, trying to act in a mockumentary seems to be as distinct from acting in a scripted film as acting in a scripted film is to acting on stage. The people acting in movies like this have to achieve a special level of naturalism while working with dialogue that is not flashy and they don?t have the luxury of perfect camera angles. Moreover, the actors themselves need to be both anonymous and average looking, while still trying to make the audience empathize with them. Brian De Palma?s film Redacted gives an excellent example of what not to do when acting in a movie like this, and yet there?s probably yet to be an example of such acting that?s so overwhelmingly good as to provide a high point to compare other films by. Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston (the characters share their names with the actors) are for the most part just the kind of actors that a film like this needs. Both look just like the kind of people you?d run into on the street, they talk like average Joes, but they also have personalities you can sort of latch onto. Featherston in particular makes for a very pleasant screen presence, she feels like that friend of a friend you have and this kind of familiarity helps breed a lot of empathy for the character.

There are however some problems that do hold this movie back from minimalist perfection. In particular, I was a bit annoyed by the way the characters acted in order to deal with they?re situation. Katie desperately wants to call a demonologist to help with the situation while wants to dissect the situation further, mainly through the use of the camera. Both of these seem like workable plans, but neither of them are mutually exclusive, and yet each of them is openly hostile to the other?s plan. Micah?s refusal to call the demonologist is particularly frustrating, I can understand why he?d be wary of the notion when the haunting seemed less than real, but there?s a certain point where the existence of this phenomenon becomes undeniable and at that point the two would do any and everything that they need to do in order to solve their problem. Even after this point Micah refuses to call the one person who by all accounts can deal with the situation, claiming that he?s going to deal with the problem himself. What? It?s a frickin? demon, what the hell does this guy expect to do? Punch it? And Katie?s refusal to examine the video evidence is at times just as silly. You?d think that these people would be desperate enough to accept any help they can get and the notion that there?s some sort of conflict of interest between the two approaches doesn?t really make any sense.

Another problematic element emerges when the movie begins to try to explain what?s been going on. Throughout the movie, there are a lot of hints and clues as to a larger explanation of what?s been going on to Katie. Other cases are found, a history is established and photographs are found. None of these are particularly obtrusive except that they?re complete red herrings that don?t really add up to much of anything. The nature of this haunting is never really explained, in fact that give the movie a lot of its creepy feeling. In fact I?m glad they never explain the nature of this beast, but in establishing a mystery without a solution they are sort of setting the audience up for an anticlimax. Don?t get me wrong, the ending itself is quite good and the last shot is a real doozy, but it feels particularly abrupt because they?ve made it seem like we?re owed a few more twists before this finale.

Is Paranormal Activity just a product of clever marketing? No, it?s the real deal. But that?s not to say that it?s some sort of classic of the horror genre. The movie is not a perfect gem, nor was ever likely to be one, there?s a certain risk/reward payoff to filming a movie like this and this has gotten about as much out of the concept as it possibly could. Like The Blair Witch Project before it, this will probably be remembered more as a triumph of marketing than as a triumph of filmmaking, but the people in the marketing department aren?t rainmakers and this triumph of marketing would not have been possible were it not for the important fact the Paranormal Activity works. Oh, and don?t listen to the people telling you that this is best enjoyed when watching it with a theater full of screaming douchebags, I saw it at three in the afternoon in a theater with maybe ten people in it and it worked just fine.

I feel like I?ve been fairly careless about the way I?ve been throwing around Judd Apatow?s name whenever I review an R-rated comedy (this is the last time I?m talking about the guy in the first sentence of a movie he didn?t actually make). He?s been such a dominating figure in his genre as of late that he comes up a lot even in reviews for comedies he has absolute no direct role in. Apatow didn?t invent the idea of average Joes cursing at each other and he didn?t invent the idea of raunchy comedies with a heart of gold at the center (Kevin Smith was doing both long before anyone had heard of Apatow). Going into the newest R-rated comedy, The Hangover, I found myself pretty much expecting Superbad 2 and just as it was starting I realized that was sort of unfair. Apatow did not write, direct, or produce this and none of the main cast had ever been in one of his movies. Instead I was going to judge it by the standard of its real director, Todd Phillips, a man with a lower profile but arguably just as much influence. Just look at the film?s main box office competitor Land of the Lost: it stars Will Ferrell who made his film breakthrough in Philips? Old School and it?s a parody of an old T.V. show, a trend started by Phillips? Starsky & Hutch. I wasn?t a huge fan of Old School, so that wasn?t a that high a standard, but as it turned out this is a film that could have just as easily stood toe to toe with anything the much discussed Apatow has ever put out.

Doug (Justin Bartha) is about to get married in two days, he loves his fiancé and has nothing but anticipation for the big day and even her family likes him. Before the big day though, he plans to have an epic bachelor party in Vegas with his two best friends. His two best friends are like opposites: Phil (Bradley Cooper) a pretty boy with a devil-may-care who?s ready to party, and Stu (Ed Helms) an over-cautious dentist who?s been thoroughly ?whipped? by a mean controlling girlfriend (with a history of infidelity) who he inexplicably plans to marry in the future. Also tagging along is Alan (Zach Galifianakis), Doug?s brother in law who seems rather? simple. The film never comes out and identifies him as mentally handicapped but he has a habit of saying a lot of odd things. The four share a toast and decide to have a wild night. Flash forward to the next morning and the friends wake up in a totally trashed hotel suit complete with a chicken roaming around, a live Tiger in the bathroom, and a damn baby lying near the mini-bar. The only thing missing from the room is Doug the bachelor, and no one can remember what happened to him. Hijinx ensue as the four try to retrace their steps and find their friend in time for his wedding.

This project doesn?t really have a lot of star power, none of the cast members were a big part of the Frat Pack or the Apatow crew, none of them are former SNL members, hell the most famous name here is Ed Helms, a former Daily Show correspondent with a supporting role on ?The Office.? None of these actors really standout, the film shows no evidence that any of them could carry a film by themselves, but together they have great chemistry. I think the producers were willing to make this studio comedy without star power is that, unlike a lot of recent comedies, this focuses a lot more on plot than characters. This isn?t a film about the characters coming to grips with their own mediocrity, or trying to struggle with the pros and cons of settling down, in fact no one really grows over the course of the film. Instead the movie is entirely about seeing how these guys are going to solve the problem they?ve put themselves in.

Usually people place a lot of the credit for comedies like this on the actors and their improvisations, but I suspect that a lot more of this film is derived from its script. The story presents a pretty legitimate mystery/puzzle for the protagonists, which seems to take another wacky turn every step of the way. The characters continuously react to these turns with increasing desperate wit. This isn?t a comedy that?s of no value without the laughs; it has a story that can more or less hold its own. The situations are almost as important as the reactions, in a lot of comedies it?s all about the reactions.

Vegas is a pretty good location for all this, it is after all the place dedicated to sin and excess. Yet, as the characters pass the Las Vegas sign the soundtrack isn?t playing ?Viva Las Vegas,? it?s playing an ominous Kanye West song called ?Can?t Tell Me Nothing,? from that point you realize this city has nothing but unpleasantness in store for these guys. The film takes a pretty old school approach to the city, this place doesn?t look like a family resort, it seems like a shady place that can lead to no good. The city seems mainly to be populated with hookers, disreputable celebrities, and cops sick of arrogant tourists causing senseless acts of drunken vandalism.

My only major complaint is with the film?s ending which I feel is something of a copout. I?m going to have to go into spoiler territory to explain this so avert your eyes from this paragraph if you don?t want to know the ending. In the last fifteen minutes the characters are basically able to solve all their problems and the whole think is wrapped up into a perfect bow. This is basically a get out of jail free card for people who have done nothing to earn it. I?m not saying the film needed a completely grim ending but the ending it did have seemed completely incongruous with the darker version of Vegas seen earlier in the film. The ending was such an abrupt left turn that I suspect it was a last minute change in reaction to test screenings or something. This ending basically turns the menacing Vegas from the opening scenes into the consequence free playground that the cities advertising campaigns want you to think it is. I wouldn?t go so far as to say this magical happy ending is disastrous, but it is a major flaw in an otherwise excellent comedy.

This is not really the easiest movie to analyze. It basically comes down to the fact that it?s really really funny. It?s a rowdy affair and if you dig these kinds of movies this is going to be worth your time, if you haven?t liked these kinds of movies this will be no exception. I do like these movies, so I found myself laughing pretty hard the whole way through, these many laughs are more than enough to overcome its poor ending. After the ambitious but disappointing Observe and Report this is exactly what I needed.

If in 2005, you?d asked me about the importance of the Coen brothers to the world of film, I probably would have sadly reported that they might have been on the road to irrelevance. After all, their 2004 remake of The Ladykillers was not well received, nor was their previous film Intolerable Cruelty. Even the films they made earlier in the decade like The Man Who Wasn?t There and O Brother Where Art Thou? were by no means unmitigated triumphs. What a difference two years make. In the last two years the Coens have not only reclaimed their crown as American masters but have gone a step further. With their 2007 Oscar winner No Country For Old Men they made a taught thriller while pushing their aesthetic forward, and with their 2008 comedy Burn After Reading they proved that they could still make hilarious and accessible comedies while maintaining their dark sensibilities. I?ve always loved the Coens when they?re making broad comedy and dark thrillers; but their 2009 victory lap A Serious Man takes the form of that third type of film they?ve made throughout their careers, quirky/metaphorical dramedies, and that?s the side of their oeuvre I?ve never quite been able to close the deal on.

Set (and setting is never an unimportant detail in the work of the Coen brothers) in a Minnesota suburb circa 1967, A Serious Man sings the ballad of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Jewish professor of theoretical physics. Gopnik is up for tenure as the film begins and his son will soon be undergoing his Bar Mitzvah, but he soon finds himself in the middle of an existential crisis. Gopnik?s brother Arthur (Richard Kind) seems to be deep in some shady dealings and has come to live with Larry. Worse yet, Gopnik?s wife Judith (Sari Lennick) tells him that she?s been seeing another man named Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed) and that she wants a Get (a divorce within ?the faith?). If that weren?t enough, he?s having a moral crisis over how to handle a Korean student who has left him an envelope of cash in order to receive a passing grade and he?s been getting threatening calls from the Columbia Record Club. As the movie goes on, these troubles seem less and less like coincidences and more and more like a series of tests from ?Hashem.?

The Coen Brothers have always been an auteurist?s dream; they?ve had an incredibly distinct yet oddly adaptable style that absolutely envelopes everything they touch, at times almost to a fault. Fitting this film into the Coens? body of work is one of its bigger pleasures. The film?s Minnesota setting will immediately invite comparisons to Fargo, but that?s a red herring, this film?s depiction of that setting is pretty different and its story is less literally blood soaked. Narratively I?d probably compare it to The Man Who Wasn?t There in that it?s about an ordinary man whose world collapses around him, tonally I?d probably compare it to the dead faced Miller?s Crossing, but the movie I?d most readily compare it to is Barton Fink both in its surrealism and in its spiritual overtones.

As such the film will probably fit pretty well into the Coen cannon, but its real gift to those analyzing the Coens as auteurs is much richer. This is a very personal film for the Coens, as it depicts the place where their odd, subdued psyches formed, as such this could be something of a Rosetta Stone for their sensibilities. The suburb here is unnamed, but it is presumably the Coens? hometown of St. Louis Park, an old inner-ring suburb west of Minneapolis. The place has a very large Jewish population that lives among the town?s otherwise gentile Midwestern inhabitants. As I am myself a Minneapolis resident, I can attest that this is indeed a pretty detailed an accurate depiction of the area, although a lot has changed since 1967. St. Louis Park doesn?t look as desolate now as it does in the movie (which was actually filmed in a suburb called Bloomington), but there still is a pretty large Jewish population there. Less important than the look are the mannerisms and the details, which rang a lot more true here than they did in Fargo, a film in which everyone seemed to talk like they came straight out of a bad Ole and Lena joke.

All this meticulous setting detail isn?t just window dressing either; it serves to explain a lot of the main characters psychological state. Larry Gopnik is made to feel like an outsider in this suburb filled with mowed lawns and gruff gentiles who play catch and go hunting. His knowledge of Physics seems to mostly go unrewarded (he says he?s never published) and he?s only got three mostly unhelpful Rabbis to turn to during his crisis of faith. Gopnik?s nebbishy tendencies might have served him better in New York where he could have made friends with Woody Allen or something, but here he?s pretty much on his own. Also interesting is the effect the setting has on his children, particularly his son Danny (Aaron Wolff) who is most likely a stand in for the Coens. The summer of love exists only on the radio for Danny and he?s pretty aggressively uninterested both in his father?s travails and in the faith that makes him an outsider. One can picture him eventually getting bored enough to pick up a guitar to imitate the Jefferson Airplane music he?s always listening to, or if film had been his area of interest, perhaps a video camera.

Philosophically, the film addresses the age old question of why bad things happen to good people. That?s never really been a concern to secular thinkers like myself, but to people like Larry Gopnik who feel they are under the protection of a benevolent God, it is a conundrum.

Many have seen the film as having been based on the book of Job, and I will not disagree, in fact there are images toward the end of the film which all but confirm the connection. Essentially, Larry is subject to every cruel unpleasantly that the Coens can throw at him, but he puts up with it all because of his faith and his passive aggressive nature. I?m no theologian so I?m not going to comment on this too much; but I?m pretty sure that the Coens have changed the story?s ending to cynical effect, and that I like.

Some have said that the Coens have used celebrities as a crutch as of late, something this film will never be accused of as this film is pretty much devoid of them. The cast here is for the most part solid but anonymous, many of them being never before seen on film. Michael Stuhlbarg is quite strong in the lead; he manages to walk the fine line of nebbish stereotype, always falling just on the right side, and as his desperation grows he?s able to perfectly panic while trying desperately to internalize as much as he can. Richard Kind is probably the most recognizable face in the whole film, and he brings a pretty good presence to the whole thing. Similarly, Fred Melamed brings a real ?that guy? presence to the film. If those names aren?t obscure enough for you, the Coens have also filled the movie with people who?ve never been in a movie before like Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff, and David Kang who fit in right alongside the anonymous veterans.

Had this film come out in 2005 (in the wake of the Ladykillers debacle) it probably would have been called a return to form, coming out 2009 it?s more like a return to weirdness. In spite of all the film?s many merits, this is simply a movie that is almost smothered in the Coens usual quirks and it will probably baffle anyone who isn?t a diehard Coen veteran. Coen films are almost never ?for everyone? and this one is even more ?not for everyone? than usual, and I?m not sure it was ?for me.? This is a film that is hard to truly like but almost impossible not to respect.

The very first science fiction movie was Georges Méliès? 1902 classic A Trip to the Moon. A fourteen minute epic in which a group of explorers go to the moon, walk onto the surface (no space suit needed), find a group of moon men, beat them off with umbrellas, then return home. The film is probably best known for a moment in which their ship crashes into the man on the moon?s eyeball, he doesn?t look pleased. After that the moon was the number one destination for fictional space travel, at least until we went there for real and realized it was kind of a boring place. In fact it quickly dawned on us that none of the planets in this solar system are really destinations for high adventure and since then we?ve been setting our science fiction stories in distant galaxies. The problem with this is that after a good fifty-some years of space travel it?s become increasingly clear how far away we are from being able to get to Mars, much less a new solar system. In fact the closest planet that might have life on it is 150 trillion miles away. That?s not a problem if you?re making a Space Opera like Star Wars or Star Trek, but it?s not all right if you?re making what you?d call ?hard science fiction,? stories that predict very realistic and plausible future technology. Those kind of serious Science fiction movies have been looking back toward our home solar systems. Danny Boyle?s 2007 hard science fiction film Sunshine had the sun as its destination, while this latest entry of the genre is bringing the genre full circle by returning to our closest celestial neighbor, the moon.

Rather than having a twist ending, this film has a major twist about a third of the way into it. It would be ludicrously hard to talk about this film without giving away this twist, so this review is going to be a bit more spoilerish than most. I won?t give away any of the later developments, but be warned that I will be giving away some key surprises from the first act or two.

The film is set an indeterminate number of years into the future at a point where humanity has finally found a clean source of energy by mining a substance called Helium-3 from the surface of the Moon. A base has been established on the moon but travel there is still a slow and unwieldy process, and as such there is only one person manning the operation, a man named Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell). His main job is to drive to the automated harvesters mining the surface, remove the full capsules of Helium-3, and then launch them off to Earth. His only companion is a robot/computer system called Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). One day Sam sees a strange vision while driving the lunar rover and crashes it right into the automated harvester. He wakes up the next day in the ships infirmary. Gerty wants him to stay in bed, but Sam convinces the computer to let him leave. He immediately drives out to the site of the crash, and looks into the rover where he finds his own body still in there and still alive. He runs the body back to the base and resuscitates it. Now he must discover why there?s someone else who looks just like him on the base and then must find out what the company plans to do about it.

A lot of this movie rests on the shoulders of Sam Rockwell as this is essentially a one man show; or rather a two man show in which Rockwell plays both parts. Rockwell is a great actor who, for whatever reason, has never really been able to break the A-list. He has everything a mainstream actor needs but has never become a household name, possibly because he?s attracted to more challenging material than some actors. His double role here is reminiscent of Nicholas Cage?s double role in Adaptation, he must play two people who look alike but who have fairly different personalities. The original Sam is the slightly more Rockwellish of the two, he?s a laid back person albeit one who?s gone through three long years of moon work and is rather tired from it. The second of the two is a bit more stern and aggressive, he hasn?t been beaten down by his situation and he?s less easy-going. There are physical differences from which you can tell the two apart, the first has a bandage on his hand and a black eye, but for the most part it is Rockwell?s acting which differentiates the two. Quite impressive. My one problem with the characterization (and I mainly blame the script for this) is the fairly unperturbed way Sam reacts to his ?twin? at first. There is a portion shortly after the twist where the characters are way too calm about the fact that their staring at someone who looks just like them. If I was in that situation there would be a lot more swearing and more demands to know exactly what the hell is going on.

The robot here is a cross between HAL 9000 and R2-D2. I?m not exactly sure whether it is an independent robot or if the floating console is a manifestation of the base?s main computer. He floats around, has what looks like a camera lens for an eye and there?s a screen on him which displays various smilies in order to convey emotions. One usually expects these kind of robots to be nothing but trouble, especially when he?s been programmed by a seemingly conspiratorial corporation. This robot plays with that convention, his allegiance is never entirely clear, at least not until very late in the movie. That was an interesting take, but I would have liked a better explanation as to why the robot took the side he did. As it is he just takes a side because he does, I expected that to be resolved better than it was.

Visually the film is perfectly competent but never exceedingly great. The film was made relatively cheaply for a science fiction film of this sort, and I?m sure a lot of ingenuity went into the production. The production leans toward physical effects more than CGI, a decision I certainly approve of, though it was a bit annoying that a few shots of the moon?s surface seemed to be recycled at times. The most impressive element of the production was the space base?s highly detailed interiors, which seemed to share elements from some of the better spaceships of the genre like the Nostromo from Ridley Scott?s Alien or the Icarus II from Danny Boyle?s Sunshine.

I think the concept at the center of this is Chaos Theory. Admittedly, everything I know about this theory comes from the book and movie Jurassic Park, but bear with me. The idea behind Chaos Theory is that no system is perfect because the initial conditions will not remain the same continually. One example given in Michael Creighton?s novel is that of a billiard table on which a ball rolls with enough force to continue rolling forever. Deterministic Theory predicts that the ball would continue along the same pattern forever, while Chaos theory suggest that the felt of the table would eventually deteriorate, imperfections would form on the ball and eventually the conditions would change enough to throw the ball off course. Another film which I think shows chaos theory in action is Peter Weir?s The Truman Show, in which a television network has found the perfect way to keep an unsuspecting man living in their elaborate town-sized city for thirty some years, but bit by bit the illusion was destroyed and an evolving suspicion in the man?s mind about the solution eventually trumps the best laid plans of the producers. There is a similar situation in Moon, though I won?t spell it out for fear of giving away more than I already have, but like The Truman Show this is about a seemingly fool-proof house of cards that finally collapses partly because of an unforeseen accident but mostly because of the unanticipated factor of human curiosity and questioning.

Now, this theoretical interpretation is fine on an intellectual level, but it never really strokes any of the emotions that I expect great cinema to stroke. This film is neither as technically or intellectually ambitious as something like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Solaris, both films with a certain sense of awe that Moon lacks. Aside from my coldly intellectual chaos theory interpretation, I?m not sure this really amounts to much more than an extended episode of The Twilight Zone. Of course, an extended episode of The Twilight Zone is certainly worth watching, but I really wish this had amounted to more. Some of the earlier portions of this movie really seemed to be leading to something grander than the eventual explanation; I looked forward to a really profound explanation for Sam?s visions and for Gerty?s strange behavior. But the solution turned out to be the most mundane of all possible explanations. That was disappointing. Ultimately I believe this is a movie that draws inspiration from all the right sources but which does nothing to push its genre forward in any meaningful way. Still it?s a very well crafted and intriguing 97 minutes of cinema that never seems to drop the ball in a major way; I just wish they tried to run with the ball when they had it instead of standing still with it.

Early in this decade a movie came out called High Fidelity, which got very strong reviews but was avoided by myself for a very long time. The idea of a romantic film starring John Cusack did not appeal to me, but eventually I did see it and was surprised to find it was a very well thought out story made more endearing by the fact that it uses a music fanatic as its main protagonist. This film was based on a novel by a man named Nick Hornby, and while the way that Stephen Frears and his team of writers adapted the film certainly had a lot to do with its success, I?d be willing to bet that the heart of what that made the film special was in the pages of Hornby?s book. Ever since that production Hornby has been a pretty hot commodity in Hollywood, adaptations of his work include About a Boy and Fever Pitch (which was made into an English version about soccer and an American version about baseball). But now the tables are turned, and now Nick Hornby has become a screenwriter adapting someone else?s work, in this case a memoir of a British journalist named Lynn Barber about her coming of age.

The film is set in suburban London circa 1961 and focuses on a sixteen year old girl named Jenny (Carey Mulligan) who is both beautiful and the smartest girl in her class. Her parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) have her on a strict regimen that will hopefully result in her being accepted to Oxford. One part of this regimen is that she?s taken up the cello, and this leads to a chance encounter after a band rehearsal with a man in his thirties named David (Peter Sarsgaard) who offers her a ride home. After this encounter David begins to romance Jenny and invites her on extravagant outings with his friends Danny (Dominic Cooper) and Helen (Rosamund Pike). Jenny?s teacher (Olivia Williams) and headmistress (Emma Thompson) become concerned with this affair and warn that it will threaten her future education, but a life with David is beginning to seem like just as viable a future to Jenny as Oxford, after all he?s able to bring her into high society without having to waste time with a bunch of petty students for three years.

Perhaps the thing this film will be most remembered for is that it introduced the world to Carey Mulligan. Mulligan has heretofore mostly accumulated credits for small parts on English television and is probably most noted for a small role alongside Keira Knightley in the Joe Wright adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. Her work here has been championed as a breakthrough and I will not disagree, she has real star potential. For this role Mulligan must be a teenager who thinks she?s wiser than she really is and has an energy that makes her standout amongst her peers. In this sense the role is not unlike the title role in the 2007 film Juno, albeit in a completely different time and place and without the Diablo Cody-isms. Like Page before her she is able to walk that line between appearing naïve while outwardly trying to exude sophistication and spunk.

She is however just one part of a very strong ensemble. Peter Sarsgaard has the difficult task of making the audience forget that he is a thirty-something creep trying to sleep with a teenager so as to show why said teenager would fall for him. He needs to be charming and pleasant, while also having a bit of that dark side beneath the surface. Alfred Molina is also going to get a lot of attention for his work here, and this is well deserved. His character is pretty funny in his often silly values, and this could have played pretty fake if the actor wasn?t up to the task. Molina makes the father character seem like a real person, even when he?s places the value of knowing a famous author above being a famous author. Actors in smaller roles like Cooper, Pike, Williams, and Thompson also nicely fill out the cast.

Like Mulligan, director Lone Scherfig has emerged from obscurity as an important talent out of this project. I?ll bring up Juno again as a point of comparison, because like Jason Reitman she seems able to give an ambitious directorial edge to her work without suffocating the material with overwhelming style. She?s able to emphasize the glamour of Jenny and David?s outings in a way that makes it seem as intoxicating to the viewer as it does to Jenny in a way that is essential to the believability of the story. Of course this would all be wasted were it not for the solid script by Nick Hornby who further proves that he has a knack for creating endearing and likable characters while giving them really clever, but not overly stylized dialogue.

As I?ve established, there was a lot of talent put behind this and it shows up onscreen, but I ultimately couldn?t help but feel a bit underwhelmed by the end result. I can?t help but think that Lynn Barber?s story was perhaps not worthy of all this talent. It?s clear from the beginning that this relationship is heading for disaster and that Jenny is walking into a trap, so this isn?t really much of a romance. And while there are some good giggles throughout I wouldn?t really recommend it simply as a comedy, so how is this going to stand on its own merely as a story? This is where the house of cards falls down, because as a story this is actually a pretty simplistic work preaching the moral that younglings shouldn?t try to grow up too fast, they should stay in school, and not try to take shortcuts. Sound familiar? Yeah, it?s basically the best written, best acted, and best crafted afterschool special ever made. This shortcoming is made worse by a twist towards the end which prevents the character from learning something for herself and instead has the truth thrust upon her.

If ever there has been a movie that more toughly challenges Roger Ebert?s adage that ?it?s not what a movie is about, but how it?s about it that matters? in my mind. The ?what? that this movie is about is rather boring to me, but the ?how? it?s about it is very strong. Ultimately, I?m going to have to split the difference and recommend that people see this movie in order to enjoy it in the moment, enjoy the acting, enjoy the script, enjoy the filmmaking, but the whole affair is more shallow than it first appears and it avoids a lot of the tougher questions involved in favor of light-handed moralizing.

For the last decade I?ve heard people talk a lot about how technologies like inexpensive digital cameras, Final Cut Pro, and Youtube are going to lead to a surge of underground creativity. Frankly I?ve never been too excited by the prospect, most of the stuff getting made by these amateurs are either unambitious crap that?s likely to be enjoyed only by those in the immediate family of the makers, or they?ve been boring bits of pretension made by people more obsessed with being ?indie? than in making a movie that are actually worth watching. Still the law of averages suggests that something decent would eventually come out of the whirlpool of content floating around the internet, and it looks like South African/Canadian filmmaker Neill Blomkamp may be the first person of this ?revolution? to make good, thanks in no small part to his discovery by Peter Jackson. Blomkamp was hand selected by Jackson to direct a film based on the ?Halo? video game series, largely because of a short film he made called ?Alive in Joburg.? The big wigs weren?t so willing to put that much money in the hands of someone who came into the business in such an unconventional way, consequently that film was indefinitely shelved. To make up for that disappointment Peter Jackson has chipped in to produce District 9, a feature length adaptation of the aforementioned ?Alive in Joburg? short. The results produced some very unconventional trailers, and the support of an expansive viral campaign that has resulted in a lot of buzz.

The film doesn?t make a big deal about it, but this is basically a work of alternate history. In this timeline the world was changed when a flying saucer entered the Earth?s atmosphere in 1982 and eventually stopped in the skies over Johannesburg, South Africa and stayed in place for months. When a team cut through the side of the ship they found a group of mal-nourished insectoid aliens, which would not be able to live on the ship much longer (which apparently stopped out of technical difficulties). The solution that the South African government came to was to allow the aliens onto the surface, but segregate them into a large hellish camp called District 9. The film picks up twenty years later and the slums that these aliens have been forced to live in have become even more dilapidated than it was before. Still, this widespread segregation has done nothing to quell public fears, so the government now wants to move all the aliens into a new camp, which promises to be even worse than the old one. Tasked with evicting all these people is Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), who they want to gather eviction signatures from all the aliens in District 9. Of course the signing of these notices is not optional; it?s just one of the many dumb rubber stamps that governments often use to disguise blatant oppression. While doing this task Merwe is exposed to an alien substance which begins to transform him into one of these aliens, his hybrid nature could be very valuable because it could give humanity insights into alien weaponry, but these insights would mean dissecting him alive. As such, Merwe must break out of the complex and become a fugitive, in order to track down the only aliens that can help him.

Any semi-educated person would quickly see that this story is deeply allegorical, both of South African Apartheid and of stories of human oppression the world over. The aliens are the oppressed minority, the ?other,? the poor, the social problem that the government would rather hide than solve. The film?s best statement is the way it points out the absurdity of using segregation (both overt and subtle) as a means of dealing with people. The aliens here live in the most god-awful hellhole one can imagine, the kind of place that guilt-tripping charities show children walking through in their advertisements. To the shame of both South Africa and the world, these slums were not built for the movie; they were simply found and filmed in. Of course it?s not the aliens fault that they live in shit, the government just put them there, and gave them no means to leave. Since they are given no way to integrate into society they have no way to improve their condition, they are simply ignored and forced to fend for themselves with none of the resources the rest of us have. Since society has ignored them, they?ve turned to the only ones willing to serve them, gangs of Nigerian criminals interested in acquiring their weapons. What?s more, they need to contend with brutal cops who are pretty much their only exposure to ?humanity,? and who give them no reason to respect or play by the rules of their neighbors. The message here is simple but refreshing: if you treat others like dirt they WILL do the same unto you.

I?d like to thank Peter Jackson, QED International, Tri-Star Pictures, and anyone else responsible for supporting this film and giving it such a confident wide release. No matter how many problems I may have with this film (and I have many) the fact remains that this is significantly more creative than anything in theaters and I heartily recommend it over whatever market-tested bullshit its competing against this weekend. However, I can?t help but think this is something of a missed opportunity on a number of levels.

The film uses a vérité style and fits well in a recent trend in the style?s use in mainstream genre films like Cloverfield and Borat, as well as television shows like ?The Office? and ?Curb Your Enthusiasm.? This film starts as a mock-documentary presumably for a fictional television station (whose logo can be seen in the corner during these sections). This mockumentary element is not to be confused with the ?found footage? format seen in movies like The Blair Witch Project and [REC], the difference being that those movies simply show footage shot by characters while this is meant to look like a fully produced documentary complete with talking heads. But about a half an hour into the film they begin to cut to shots that this documentary crew would have no access to, the bug begins to disappear and eventually the talking heads stop talking, from here on the movie stops posing as a documentary, the handheld look remains but the film turns into a standard work of narrative fiction. I can?t say I was a fan of the way this was accomplished, what was the point of posing as a documentary in the first place if the format was to be abandoned after about a half hour? I suppose it could be said that this allowed for some needed exposition about the world of the film, but why the sneaky transition? How did the fictional documentary end? Did the producers seek to film a documentary that had a beginning, a coda, but no middle? And if so, why so much exposition, wouldn?t the people of the film?s world already be acquainted with all this knowledge? As for the film?s special effects; they were clearly not made with the kind of budget that Jackson himself would have wielded (the film was legitimately made independently and only distributed by a major studio) and are not top of the line, but they do work to tell the story and make up for their occasional crudeness with the creativity with which they are used.

If you look at the marketing for this film you?ll get a pretty good sense of the film?s visual style, the film?s political overtones, and hints that there is action to be found in it. What you will not see is any sign that the film has a main character in it, and for good reason. Simply put, Wikus van der Merwe is a horrible character to put at the center of a film like this. He is not a hero at all, he?s a bureaucratic pencil pusher and something of a nerd. That could have made for a very interesting character, but they never really pull it off. Sharlto Copley plays the guy a little too broadly comedic for my taste; I really wish they had chosen a character who is simply an average everyman to put at the center of this rather than someone who is this aggressively dopey. But the bigger problem is that at the start of this film Merwe is a complete asshole who does hateful things that are in no way excused by the fact that he hides behind laws, red tape, and a smug dorky smile. He?s just as bad as the killer mercenaries who do his bidding, and for most of the movie he operates entirely out of enlightened self-interest and does very little to redeem himself until he magically grows a conscious in the film?s eleventh hour. In short, this guy is not someone the audience should sympathize with or find cool, which I could forgive if they explored the negative side of his personality more thoughtfully but they don?t, he just sort of turns into an action hero halfway through, and not a very good action hero at that.

Why am I picking on this guy? Because he?s the only person in it that we really get to know and as such he has extra burdens to carry. Few of the other humans involved get much more than a few minutes of screen time, but what?s even more criminal is how little we get to see of the non-humans. By this I don?t mean that the aliens have little screen time, because they actually have screen time in abundance, just not meaty screen time. In many ways this film is guilty of the same sin that the film?s fictional society is guilty of, it makes no attempt to get to know and understand the aliens. For the most part these aliens are merely background scenery used to illustrate the titular slum; Blombkamp seems a lot more interested in the ant farm that is District 9 than in the ants that live in it. There?s only one alien in the whole film we know by name and even he is given little personality. Rarely do we ever see an extended conversation involving any of these aliens; I would have liked to know what makes them tick, if they do anything other than buy meat from vendors, what their culture is like, and if they have a leader. And are there any humans trying to advocate for the aliens? What does the rest of the world think of this concentration camp? All of these are questions the movie seems to be interested in, but it never thoughtfully explores them at all. In many ways I wish there had been a way to explore this world outside the limited confines of a thriller storyline. Eventually the film turns into a full on action movie, a very unique and well done action movie, but an action movie none the less. There?s nothing inherently wrong with action films, but in many ways this just seemed a little too easy, are there not ways to deal with issues in science fiction films other than violence?

District 9 probably does vindicate Peter Jackson?s faith in Neill Blomkamp, but only to a degree. With this project Blomkamp has created an interesting universe; I just wish he had found something more interesting to do in it than a Hitchcockian wrong man thriller mixed with touches of Cronenbergian body horror (Merwe?s DNA predicament is straight out of the 1986 version of The Fly). As an allegory this is interesting if not fully fleshed out, as an action film it entertains, but as a drama it leaves something to be desired. The studios were perhaps right to make Blomkamp grow a little bit before he worked on something as big as a Halo movie. Then again if it was going to be anything like the game that movie probably would have focused even more on action than this, but at least it wouldn?t have promised anything else.

I think at this point Judd Apatow is a guy who really doesn?t need an introduction. I?m a big fan of the movies he?s directed (The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up) and even the first string efforts he?s merely produced (Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Pineapple Express). As one of the biggest Apatow apologists around it was a little painful to admit that the trailer to his newest film, Funny People, didn?t seem funny to me at all. I?ve never been one to dismiss a movie over a trailer, but if the jokes in that trailer were the best the movie had to offer the movie seemed to have all the makings for two and a half hours of painful viewing. I was particularly afraid to see the movie simply because I didn?t want to bear witness to the fall of God?s gift to comedy, Judd Apatow. Eventually though, when facing a very long boring day, I decided that I needed to see a movie to fill my time and I was a lot more willing to roll the dice on a not so well received Apatow project than on some crap like G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. So, reluctantly, I decided to give this a chance.

The movie primarily involves George Simmons (Adam Sandler), a famous comedic actor who?s just been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. He?s been told that, eventually, this disease will probably kill him; a revelation that results in a lot of soul searching. He eventually decides to leave the bad, sell-out movies he?s been making in order to return to his stand-up roots. In doing so he encounters a young aspiring comedian named Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) and decides to hire him as an assistant/joke writer. Because Ira is currently living in a hovel with two other young comics (Jonah Hill and Jason Schwarzman), he?s eager to take the job. A reluctant friendship forms between George and Ira, which proves to be beneficial for both of them. But increasingly, George starts thinking about his ex-girlfriend Laura (Leslie Mann), who?s now married to a successful salesman named Clarke (Eric Bana).

I think the key to enjoying Funny People is to go in with the right expectations, and in this department I benefited from waiting a week and a half to see it. The movie is not without chuckle inducing moments and clever lines, but if you go into this movie expecting it to be a laugh riot like The 40 Year Old Virgin or Superbad, you will leave very disappointed. Still, part of the appeal of Apatow?s films has been that they tend to be genuinely compelling for reasons beyond their laugh-per-minute quotient, and this film is not an exception. The movie I?d most readily compare it to is Kevin Smith?s film Chasing Amy, a movie that wasn?t nearly as funny as anything else Smith did but which nonetheless had an interesting story and compelling characters.

The film?s story is likely a very personal one for both Judd Apatow and even more so for star Adam Sandler. We see a lot of George Simmons? movie work like ?Re-Do? (which features Simmons? face imposed onto a baby) and ?Mer-Man? (with Simmons as, you guessed it, a Mer-Man). The movie ruthlessly parodies these kind of juvenile comedies that Sandler and similar comedians like Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy have whored themselves out to long after they needed the money. In spite of all the money these movies make for Sandler?s character, with the specter of death in his midst they seem like a serious waste of life. I can?t help but wonder if Sandler was reading this screenplay while he was on the set of last year?s Bedtime Stories and You Don't Mess with the Zohan. This isn?t the only thing about the George Simmons? character which pretty closely resembles that of the real Adam Sandler. It must have taken a lot of courage for Sandler to really examine his real life on screen like this and the autobiographical nature of the role brings a lot of authenticity to his performance. Sandler may not be the greatest actor in the world, but he is indisputably the perfect person for this role.

The other side of this story is that of comedians like Seth Rogen?s character who have not yet had the chance to sell out. I don?t know any stand-up comedians and I?ve never been backstage at a comedy club, but I can tell that the portrayal of that lifestyle here is authentic in the same way I can just feel that The Hurt Locker is an authentic portrayal of the military. The comics can certainly be selfish, competitive, and sometimes greedy, but for the most part they are all well meaning people who ultimately just want to follow their dreams. They make fun of each other, but it?s all in good fun, it?s really pretty refreshing just how positive a lot of these people are and in ways that are never corny. This is one of the few movies in recent memory that seeks to have you laughing with the characters instead of at them.

There?s also a third aspect to the movie, that of a love triangle between Adam Sandler?s character, Leslie Mann?s character, and Eric Bana?s character. Unlike the rich comedian/poor comedian stories which tend to overlap and switch off between each other, this one mostly plays out in one burst all the way through the film?s third act and it almost wears out its welcome. Still, I found a lot of truth in these segments and they were also enjoyable in their own way. Leslie Mann works as a believable object of Sandler?s affection and Eric Bana seems a lot more compelling here than he has been in a bunch of the blockbusters he?s been featured in recently.

Is this the Judd Apatow movie I wanted? Not exactly, but I like a lot of what I got. If only this movie had some more belly laughs I could whole heartedly recommend it, but that just isn?t what this is and recommending a comedy without very many laughs is not an easy thing to do. Still I was never bored by the movie; I felt for the characters and wanted them to be happy by the end, that?s a rare thing that should be relished. The movie deals with the kind of questions that successful comedians like Judd Apatow almost certainly ask themselves, and here he chose to explore those questions rather than making the movie that would be the most broadly comedic and I respect that a lot. I?m sure that Apatow is proud of this movie and that he?ll get back to making hilarious work now that he?s gotten this out of his system. If Apatow had delivered any movie other than the one he delivered he would have, in a way, been making the same mistake that George Simmons made when he chose to star in ?Mer-Man? rather than follow his dreams.

Star Trek was once just a T.V. show, and not a particularly well produced show either, but that show laid the groundwork for a universe that would support five spinoffs, ten feature length movies, countless novels, and unlimited merchandising. This is a series that elicits some of the most passionate fandom in all of pop culture, but that was also its undoing. I for one love Star Trek; I own all the movies and I?ve seen every single episode of all five live action T.V. series. In spite of this, I?d never call myself a full fledged trekkie, because that word conjures up disturbing images of grown men living in their mother?s basement who dress up as Vulcans to go to conventions and spend a fortune on toys. No one wants to associate themselves with those Klingon-speaking freaks, and I think that?s a big part of why the last couple movies did poor at the box office, and why the last series got cancelled pre-maturely in spite of solid third and fourth seasons.

I may be in the minority I thought the last feature film in the franchise, Star Trek: Nemesis, wasn?t half bad. It didn?t have a wildly creative story, but the battles were pretty cool and at its center was a nifty exploration of the debate between nature and nurture. I would have loved to see the series go on with The Next Generation cast; after all, the original cast?s film series frequently recovered from lackluster installments, and the abandonment of the series left fans without the sense of closure they deserved. As such, I wasn?t too thrilled when I heard J.J. Abrams was going to ?reboot? the series. As was the case with Casino Royale, I was afraid this was an extreme solution to problems that had simpler solutions. What?s more, J.J. Abrams has always been hit or miss for me. While I dig his show ?Lost? and I thought Cloverfield was a pretty cool project, but I generally disliked his debut film Mission: Impossible 3. Flawed as the previous Mission: Impossible films had been, they at least took themselves seriously; Abram?s third entry to the series on the other hand was a very smug film that used quirkiness as crutch. That?s a very cheap tactic which I have a great distaste for, and it?s a style that Abrams very easily could have fallen into while making a Star Trek reboot.

If Abrams was just going to turn the series into a great big joke I was going to be pissed. Add to that the young MTV-ready cast and the general ambiguity as to whether this would fit into the continuity of the series and I was more than prepared for this to be a disaster. Thankfully, most of my fears were only half founded. The film does have a handful of problems, and I?ll get into them momentarily, but in general this is a pretty decent film and Abrams has clearly matured some since his debut. Word of warning, while I will generally be a spoiler-free review, there are some surprises fairly early in the film that I will be discussing, so you may not want to read further if you want a completely pure viewing experience.

The film opens with an attack on a Federation Starship by a very larger and mysterious Romulan vessel. The Federation ship is destroyed, but a few people escape including a pregnant woman whose husband is killed on the ship, she soon gives birth to a son and right before her husband is killed he persuades her to name the boy James T. Kirk. Twenty-some years later, James Kirk (Chris Pine) is a reckless young man roaming Iowa making trouble. Fate will eventually lead him to meet a Starfleet officer named Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who convinces Kirk to join Starfleet and put his considerable skills to work. Kirk is an ace cadet but his skills will be put to the test when there is a crisis near the planet Vulcan which sounds an awful lot like the disturbance that occurred in the attack at the beginning of the film.

Obviously this entry of the series is a prequel of sorts going into the younger years of the cast of the Original Series. Abrams has cast young actors in all the roles, so I suppose an analysis of the cast is the best place to start. I was pretty surprised when I heard that Chris Pine had been cast as Kirk, mainly because I?d never heard of the guy or seen any of his movies. I went in not knowing what to expect from the guy, but I was pretty impressed with his work. The original Kirk was basically an All-American Flash Gordon-type space hero, and Pine is able to embody this without taking it too far. Also he? never? does that? stuttery? William Shater? impersonation that I? was afraid he?d? do. Pine is trying to embody Captain James Tiberius Kirk, not that hammy actor who?s turned his career into a joke.

Mr. Spock is portrayed by Zachary Quinto, who was a little more familiar to me from his work on television?s ?Heroes.? While I hated that show pretty much from the beginning, but Quinto and his character Sylar is one of the few elements of the show I liked. In the previous shows they would occasionally mention that Spock was half human, but that element was rarely explored in depth. This younger Spock is clearly trying a lot harder to come to terms with his partially human ancestry, and that?s an interesting take on the character.

The rest of the cast is given less screen time. Uhura (Zoe Saldana) is given a sexy makeover, Saldana is certainly easy on the eyes and I hope her character is given more to do in the sequels. McCoy is his usual caffeinated self, Carl Urban does a pretty decent DeForest Kelley impression and provides some of the film?s more appropriate comic relief. Sulu (John Cho) is given a pretty cool action scene (he?s an accomplished fencer, a callback to an original series episode called ?The Naked Time?), but is otherwise not given much to do. Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty, is the only cast member I was particularly familiar with going in. He doesn?t look anything like James Doohan, but he clearly understands the rhythm of what makes the character work, and his Scottish accent is significantly better. The one performance I didn?t much care for at all was that of Anton Yelchin, who plays Chekov and maintains and magnifies the character?s horrible Russian accent, which is odd considering that Yelchin was born in Saint Petersburg (but raised in the United States). There are extensive (lame) jokes about the character?s ridiculous accent, so I can only assume that this was Abrams? doing rather than Yelchin?s. If they could give Scotty a better accent why not Chekov?

Wait a minute? What?s Chekov even doing here? Wasn?t Chekov first introduced in the series second season? Well, Abrams has found a way to get around these kinds of continuity issues; this is a little bit spoiler-ish so you may want to skip to the next paragraph. The mysterious ship from the first attack is a Romulan mining ship that has transported itself back in time from the Next Generation era. The idea is that the actions of this ship have cause a butterfly effect that has altered history. So Trek continuity before March 22, 2233 remains in place, but events after it are more or less fair game. I don?t know if I like this, Abrams has basically wiped out forty three years of material, none of it ever happened. Does this mean Kirk?s dogfight with Khan was all for nothing? Does it mean Jean-Luc Picard never gets born? Does it mean Captain Sisko?s fight against the Dominion was a big waste of time? In fact, it means that the only Trek series that hasn?t been wiped to oblivion was ?Enterprise,? and I?m sure that alone will piss off a lot of people. That?s an unsettling development, and unusual considering that the one part of Trek continuity that really needed shaking up was the back story which claims that World War Three occurred in the early 90s. On the other hand I like that Abrams found a way to reboot the series within its continuity rather than inexplicably rebooting it the way they did with James Bond.

In order to gain back some Trekkie-cred, Abrams has filled the movie with references and interesting aspects of pre-reboot continuity. For instance, we see Kirk taking the Kobayashi Maru, a Starfleet exam referenced in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Also interesting is the inclusion of Captain Pike, the leader of the Enterprise from an unaired pilot called ?The Cage? who was established as the previous pilot of the Enterprise when footage from ?The Cage? was used in a two-part episode called ?The Menagerie.? The film also includes various trademark lines from the series like ?I?m a doctor, not a physicist? and ?I'm giving it all she's got, Captain.? In fact there are probably a lot of smaller references I didn?t pick up on in one viewing, and many fans will probably be so busy combing through them that they?ll forget that J.J. Abrams has wiped everything that ever happened on their favorite T.V. show from the history books.

However, most people aren?t going to give a damn about these obscure references. They just want to know one thing: ?is this a fun movie?? The answer is certainly ?yes?. As an action movie this is up to the standards of recent summer blockbusters in a way that most other Trek movies haven?t. There are at least two good ship to ship battles, one shootout, and a particularly exceptional set-piece involving space suits, a giant drill, and a samurai sword. Action has always been part of the franchise, but rarely to this level, and occasionally the technology that?s been established isn?t ideal for high octane thrills. The Enterprise itself is a large and not overly nimble vessel, it was clearly meant to be more like a giant tall ship than a slick motorboat. This doesn?t stop J.J. Abrams from constructing elaborate effects sequences that are occasionally too big for their own good. The set in the final shootout is almost hypnotically huge; the action taking place there almost gets drowned out by the effects in the background.

There was however one action sequence that was blatantly misguided, and that was a completely gratuitous car chase in the beginning of the film. The scene involved Kirk as a thirteen year old boy stealing a classic car and recklessly driving it off a cliff. I question this scene firstly because it?s pointless, everything it says about the character is established just as well in a later bar fight scene, it does nothing to advance the plot, it comes very soon after another better action scene that is more than enough to kick off the movie and its style is generally out of place in a Space Opera. This chase to the tune of The Beastie Boys? ?Sabotage? (a song choice I would more than aprove of in a better chase scene), feels more like something out of The Fast and The Furious than Star Trek.

That misguided chase scene isn?t the only mistake J.J. Abrams makes in order to reach a larger audience. I think there are generally a few too many attempts at humor going on in the film. There are plenty of jokes that are brief, unobtrusive, and funny, and I?m more than happy to see them in the film. Then there are other jokes that are long, misguided and out of place. I?ve already mentioned that they go too far with Chekov?s thick accent, and that?s more than apparent in a lengthy portion of the film in which he bungles a monologue to a lame comedic effect. There?s also a dumb joke about enlarged hands and a goofy effects sequence about Scotty getting stuck in a series of tubes. Other jokes aren?t so bad in and of themselves, so much as in their quantity. I have no problem with Abrams using occasional humor to lighten up the mood, but at time there are a few too many light moments in a row for comfort. That said, the humor here isn?t anywhere near as smug or obtrusive as it was in Mission: Impossible 3, so Abrams is clearly learning a little restraint.

I was more than willing to give this a pass for a lot of continuity errors, but there are a few larger qualms I have with its adherence to the larger themes of the show. In particular, I object to the way that McCoy has been relegated to the role of comic relief. I?ve always viewed the trinity of Spock (logic), McCoy (Emotion), and Kirk (a mix of the two) to be essential to the dynamic of the Original cast. Here they?ve made Kirk more impulsive and turned focused on a duality between him and Spock. I hope they make McCoy, and the rest of the cast for that matter, more important in the next film.

The more insidious problem here is the focus on action over ideas. J.J. Abrams has said that he wanted to explore the optimism at the center of Gene Rodenberry?s vision, but you wouldn?t know it from watching the film. Previous Trek films have all managed to explore philosophical issues in the midst of adventure, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was an examination of death, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was an elaborate political allegory, even lackluster installments like Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek: Insurrection had more thematic ambition than this. There?s none of that here, this is an action movie, a very fun and well crafted action movie that establishes interesting characters, but an action movie nonetheless. That?s why I cannot rank this new film among the best this series has offered, but that?s not to say I didn?t have fun along the way. This is a good movie, but on the spectrum of summer entertainment it?s much more in line with Iron Man than The Dark Knight, though there are of course much worse things to be in line with than that.

At times, I can?t help but feel depressed when I look at the box office numbers for soulless cookie-cutter blockbusters like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. There was a time when movies like The Godfather, The Exorcist, and The Graduate could become not only sleeper hits but outright cultural phenomenons. Adjusted for inflation all of those movies are within the all time box office top twenty. Now it seems like the only way to gain such cultural prominence is to have Madison Avenue flock people like sheep towards highly calculated products filled with shiny objects. It would be easy to dismiss these audience trends as the result of an ever more stupid society, but that?s perhaps a bit too pessimistic. The more likely explanation is the much talked about separation of pop culture into various niches, thus leaving no one project able to gain a mass audience. Why am I talking about this? Because one of the more refreshing exceptions to this trend was Sacha Baron Cohen?s 2006 satire Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Say what you will about the movie, but there is no denying that it is perhaps the best tribute to word of mouth, creative marketing, and genuine cultural adventurousness since the 1999 sleeper success The Blair Witch Project. I had a few issues with Borat, but these reservations were overpowered by the satisfaction of seeing something so original and unmarked-tested make $261,572,744.

Borat was a smart film that was completely willing to piss off, marginalize, and alienate its audience; I liked that a lot. Unfortunately, I think it also wasn?t as consistent as I perhaps would have liked it to be. A couple of the sketches in it like the Rodeo and the religious revival were great examples of dead on satire, but there were also some sketches felt like missed opportunities. For example, his interviews with Bob Barr and his trip to a confederate antique store were both rife for biting satire but instead they devolved into cheap physical comedy. Such inconsistency is perhaps to be expected from films like this which rely so heavily on improvised interactions with unknowing participants. Going into Cohen?s new film, Brüno, I hoped that he would have honed his act to perfection and delivered a film that was all killer and no filler.

The Brüno character was first introduced on Cohen?s HBO series ?Da Ali G Show.? The character can bluntly be described as a flaming fruit. He embodies every stereotype people can possibly have about homosexuals: he?s sexually promiscuous, he?s effeminate, and he takes the fashion world seriously. He makes Liberace look like J. Edgar Hoover (okay, bad example). It?s a character that would be highly offensive to real life homosexuals if it was meant to be an authentic reflection of their community, but that?s not what he?s trying to do here, rather his goal is to make his victims really uncomfortable. The other major characteristic of the Brüno character is that he is astonishingly stupid and has no conception of reality. He?s someone who?s probably never read a single book unrelated to fashion and celebrity gossip. For example, his only understanding of Adolf Hitler is that he?s Austria?s biggest celebrity; everything else about him is incidental.

While the supposed goal of the ?documentary? that the Borat character was making was to learn about America and apply the lessons to his home country, all Brüno is trying to do with his cross country travels is become a celebrity. It?s quickly established that he has no talent as an actor, so he quickly tries his hand at some of the stupider tactics used to gain exposure in the twenty-first century like adopting African babies, making sex tapes, and insincerely taking up a social cause. As you can probably tell, celebrity culture is a big target here. In fact Cohen probably achieves more to expose celebrity obsession than he does to expose the film?s more talked about target of homophobia. Particularly telling is a bit where Cohen is auditioning various parents who wish to involve their babies in a photo shoot. Brüno asks if they are willing to have their children in all sorts of outlandish and sometimes dangerous situations, and they all agree to everything he wants to put the children through, one even agrees to subject their baby to liposuction. One cannot help but wonder what dementia would lead these people to place their children?s fifteen minutes of fame out of the way before they can even walk.

Of course the homophobia angle is their too, but this is where Cohen begins falling into some of the traps he fell into on Borat. Perhaps the biggest missed opportunity is the interview he was somehow able to get with Ron Paul (who should seriously fire his publicist). Rather than getting Paul to hang himself with his own words, as he did during the best moments of ?Da Ali G Show,? he chooses to never even conduct the interview. Instead he lures him into a waiting room, drops his pants and tries to seduce Paul who proceeds to do what any reasonable person would do: he runs out of the room. Frankly, I think this might be the lamest gag Cohen has ever done in any of his projects. He does nothing to strike at Paul?s political positions (incidentally he?s one of the few Republicans who supports gay rights), he just pulls a sub-Ashton Kutcher prank. His work heretofore has succeeded largely because he focused on exposing what people are willing to say in front of very large cameras with the full knowledge that what they say may be aired in some capacity. As such his resorting to the use of hidden cameras here is particularly disappointing.

Another missed opportunity is an interview he gets with one of those crazy church people who thinks he needs to ?reform? gay people. Done right this could have been the centerpiece of the movie, but it really amounts to little more than a framing device in the final cut. Bill Maher was able to get a much better interview out of one of these assholes in his documentary Religulous. Another missed opportunity was his interaction with a Fred Phelps protest which amounted to little more than him running passed them in S&M gear, a prank that resulted in a real interaction would have been preferable.

It should also be noted that this has some really graphic sexual material. The film opens with a gay sex scene that is so over the top that it makes the wrestling scene from Borat look positively puritanical. Hell, it even makes the puppet sex scene from Team America: World Police look subtle. Then there was a scene at a swingers club which featured unsimulated sex. The penetration was concealed by large censor boxes, but there was still it was clear what was going on and the scene ended with a long altercation with a dominatrix. How this material avoided an NC-17 rating I do not know. In fact I?m going to be very angry if the MPAA gives another Ang Lee or Atom Egoyan drama that stigmatizing rating after this. A lot of the sexual material on display seems to mainly be there to shock the prudes in the audience, and I don?t have a problem with that goal. It reminds me a bit of the controversy baiting elements that surrealists like Salvatore Dali and Luis Buñuel would add to their work to shock the bourgeois sensibilities of their audience. It?s oddly refreshing to see a mainstream movie that?s pushing the boundaries of sex instead of violence.

There are definitely highlights to Brüno that are better than anything in Borat: I?m thinking in particular of the baby interviews, an interview with an actual terrorist, a climactic scene in front of a crowd of really scary looking rednecks, and best of all a focus test of an absolutely bizarre television pilot. However, the film does not always reach these heights. In fact there are many more outright bombs here then there were in Borat, which oddly proved to be the more consistent of the two films. Also the plot that connects everything here is pretty much an inferior retread of the plot Borat used. So obviously this completely failed to live up to my dream of a Cohen film that was all killer and no filler. Still there is plenty to admire about Cohen?s work here. I think part of the problem is that the exposure he got from Borat hurt some of his opportunities. I can?t help but think that this would have been the better of the two projects if he had made it first. In spite of the problems I?m still going to recommend this film for the bits that worked. And let?s face it, even though we?ve seen Cohen?s work once before, his shtick is still fresher than 90% of mainstream comedies.

This has been a pretty lame May for me movie-wise, I dug Star Trek but everything else that came out didn?t seem worth my time. X-Men Origins: Wolverine looked like a blatant attempt to milk dry an already wounded series, Angels and Demons looked as stupid as the other Dan Brown properties, and Terminator: Salvation had a hack director whose intentions were only confirmed by the blatant sell-out of its PG-13 rating. This trend of making movies PG-13 for no reason other than to make a little extra money is quickly becoming a major pet peeve of mine, I don?t demand extra sex, violence, and cursing but it?s indicative of a larger problem; one of trying to appeal to overly wide audiences and consequently making mild soulless movies made in marketing committees. It?s beginning to seem like a PG-13 rating is like a stamp that has less to do with content and more to do with a lame attitude. Shocking as that Terminator rating was, I was even more surprised when I learned that Sam Raimi?s new horror title, Drag Me to Hell, would also have this dreaded rating. This shocked me first because this was supposed to be Raimi?s return to the hardcore and second because the film?s outlandish title seemed to indicate that this would be something that would revel in its content and wear a harder rating like a badge of honor. I almost didn?t bother going to this, but unlike Terminator: Salvation, this still had a stellar director and solid reviews so I bit the bullet and went ahead to the movie.

The film is about Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), a loan officer at a bank branch in Southern California. She?s good at her job, but her boss (David Paymer) feels that she?s been a bit too generous with people and is thinking about giving a big promotion to the suck-up rookie officer Stu (Reggie Lee). Under pressure from the money chasing parents of her caring boyfriend (Justin Long), Christine sees an opportunity to prove she can make ?tough decisions? when an old gypsy woman named Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) comes into the bank asking for a not so reasonable extension on her sub-prime loan. Christine denies the loan to the approval of her boss, but the gypsy feels she?s been shamed and makes a scene. Later that day, the gypsy attacks Christine and places a curse on her? with spooky results.

You did read that right, the villain of this is a gypsy curse? gypsy. Do they even have gypsies in this country? It doesn?t matter; this movie is obviously taking a campy approach to the genre. The film reminded me a lot of the George Romero/Stephen King collaboration Creepshow, which was based on old EC comics. This is a heightened world with heightened morality; Christine is punished for her immorality toward the gypsy woman in a very ironic way. That the film can get very predictable at times, especially regarding the very last twist, sort of goes with the territory. What Raimi does not do is go as far into the realm of tribute as something like Grindhouse, this doesn?t feel like it should be set in the fifties and the production values are just as good as the budget allows it to be. I do question the sometimes excessive use of CGI and not very good CGI either.

So how is Mr. Raimi going to scare anyone without gallons of plasma? Well he?s going to makes stuff jump out at you unexpectedly? a lot. You know those websites that people trick you into going to that make you focus on some sort of puzzle and concentrate before some sort of creepy picture suddenly pops out and a loud noise plays and sort of give you a heart attack? The whole first act of this movie is sort of a chain of those sorts of scares, creepy things jump out at the character often accompanied by very loud music, these blatantly manipulative tricks have often been called the horror equivalent of a pie in the face, they?re effective but cheap. Granted, Raimi does these more effectively than most filmmakers out there, but I expect a little more from him and for a decent portion of the movie I was afraid that was all I was going to get.

Fortunately the film improves dramatically in the film?s third act where its inner Evil Dead kicks in and the curse begins to manifest itself in more tangible ways and Christine?s predicament starts to take precedent over the jump-scares which incidentally are becoming less effective around this point. Many have said the movie is just as good without the blood, but I?m not as willing to give him a pass as some have been. There is one scene in particular (it involves an anvil) which almost certainly would have benefited from legitimate splatter elements. I?m sure this release is a big opportunity for Raimi?s horror shingle Ghosthouse Pictures, and he clearly wants to get as much money out of it as possible, but it?s clear he?s sacrificed the opportunity to make as much money as possible. But is this really a wise decision even on a financial level? I?d think the audience for something called ?Drag Me to Hell? would want over the top violence. Sometimes marketers are too busy chasing the 13-17 market that they forget that gore sells (just ask the producers of the Saw films) and you are sacrificing an audience when you do things like that. Raimi tries to make up for this with material that is generically gross in a ?Fear Factor? way without actual violence, but this mostly just comes across as crass.

A lot of people have been reciving Alison Lohman?s performance pretty negatively. I?ve liked Alison Lohman?s work ever since her excellent performance in Ridley Scott?s Matchstick Men. Frankly, I think some people might be a bit too suspicious of attractive blonde women in horror films, maybe they just confused her with Lindsay Lohan whom Alison bears no relation. I think Lohman portrays her character just fine; this is a broad performance in a genre film, it isn?t going to win Oscars or anything but it works for the film. If anyone is annoying here it is almost certainly Justin Long. I?ve had a firm dislike for Mr. Long for quite a while and this confirms all my suspicions. Someone of this age being a University Professor is about as unlikely as Katie Holmes playing an ADA in Batman Begins (which isn?t to say such an achievement is impossible in either case). Long just sort of plays himself, as he usually does. More interesting is the work of Lorna Raver as the Gypsy woman, she totally commits to this crazy role and brings a lot to the project.

There?s a lot wrong with this movie? A Lot. But I?d be lying if I said I didn?t have a very good time with it. This in an unashamed B-movie in the classic sense of the word, and it is a whole lot of fun. There are a lot of bad movies that claim to have a fun factor which overcomes whatever flaws they have; the problem is that they aren?t really fun they just think they are because they could cram a lot of special effects and explosions into every frame. Many reviews will compare this film to a rollercoaster, and rightfully so. There?s a legitimate energy that makes you forget about the problems while you?re watching it, it?s one of the few movies that really earns the right to ask you to leave your brain at the door. I saw it as a Sunday matinee and that?s probably the best place to experience it. This probably needs a big screen and a great sound system to make the jump-scares really work, though I?m not sure I?d be happy to pay full price for it, it is a B-movie after all.

During the late seventies a paranoid streak began to emerge in Hollywood thrillers like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View, this trend has widely been linked to post-Watergate cynicism that was going on throughout the country. Nixon?s scandal had exposed the ability of the government and agencies like the CIA to secretly do all sorts of sinister things behind Kafka-esque webs of complication, secrecy, and intrigue. This trend seems to have re-emerged as of late in films like Syriana and Michael Clayton, partly because of the forceful nature of the Bush administration, but the main reason has been the behavior of corporations who now more than ever seem hell-bent not only on fair profits but outright world domination. There was plenty of evidence of just how powerful corporate institutions had gotten when The International began filming in the September of 2007; but the parallels of the world today seemed all the more prescient to the world of today by the time it reached theaters in the February of 2009, one month after names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG began to be fixtures in the nations headlines.



The antagonist at the center of the film is the fictional International Bank of Business and Credit, investigating them are an INTERPOL agent named Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) and a Manhattan Assistant District Attorney named Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts). The bank is believed to be the financial institution of choice for organized crime, but it quickly seems that the extent of this bank?s corruption extends far beyond the mafia and into third world coups, first world assassinations, and the trade of advanced weapons to unsavory elements. Their investigation brings them to Berlin, Milan, New York, and even Turkey; all the while they encounter a conspiracy of massive proportions.



One of the biggest complaints about Stephen Gaghan?s Syriana (another film that can claim to be part of the paranoid thriller?s resurgence) was that the story was labyrinthine to the point of incoherence. Gaghan?s answer to the criticism is that the film is supposed to be borderline impenetrable in order to reflect just how complex the issues at the center are in the real world, that no one person can comprehend ?the system? in its entirety. There seems to be a similar notion at work here; the story is very hard to follow what with the alphabet soup of agencies and financial transactions that are in on the film?s central conspiracy, but this is deliberate. About two thirds of the way into the film a character asserts that the ?difference between fact and fiction [is that] fiction needs to make sense.? I?m very fond of this line, it certainly conveys the frustration of trying to solve major problems caused in elaborate ways by astonishingly powerful forces, and this sentiment almost makes me want to forgive the script for all its convolutions.



The problem is that this doesn?t have anywhere near the authenticity of something like Syriana, I think it has the right spirit but the deal breaker is that the forces here are significantly more trigger-happy than they would be in the real world. There are two action sequences here that are real double edged swords, on one hand they seem out of place and unrealistic, but on the other hand they are very skillfully made and enjoyable as they occur. The first is an assassination scene which adds new life to the cliché of the sniper on the roof, the other is a very tense and well choreographed shootout in the famed Guggenheim Museum. Director Tom Tykwer clearly still has the eye for interesting stylistic decisions he had when he made Run Lola Run, but has matured from that effort and abandoned the kinetic overdrive that I think ultimately sunk that former effort. In fact these scenes are refreshingly slow and careful, they don?t overload the sound mix and they have effective pauses for tension. So the catch-22 of the film is that these two scenes are awesome and make the film worth watching on their own, but they are ultimately detrimental to the rest of the movie.



Ultimately, this is a movie that delivers pretty much exactly what I expected from it. It?s a well crafted, glossy thriller that isn?t wildly stupid even if it isn?t particularly insightful either. I didn?t think Clive Owen was particularly well cast as he lacks some of the practical rage the part needs, but he isn?t terrible either and the rest of the cast is pretty good. The film shoots in a number of interesting locales and in a bunch of architecturally interesting locations. I don?t think I would have recommended anyone see it for full price at a theater, but it?s pretty much perfect DVD rental material, just keep in mind that you?re renting an action flick and not a legitimately political thriller.

Christopher Wallace (AKA The Notorious B.I.G. AKA Biggie Smalls AKA Big Poppa) titled his first album Ready to Die, in his great album track ?Everyday Struggle? he rhymed ?I don?t wanna live no more/sometimes I feel death knocking at my front door? and his follow-up album was to be titled Life After Death. Notorious, a big budget biopic about the slain rapper, opens with a clip from an interview in which Biggie laments that he doesn?t think he?ll be lucky enough to be around in ten years. Like his sometimes friend, sometimes rival, and fellow rap icon Tupac Shakur he was a man eerily in tune with the life threatening dangers of the street life he became famous rapping about. The ironic twist is that in the final years of his life he was beginning to find some degree of hope, but it was too late. As a ?gangsta? his life mirrored Caine Lawson, the gangster at the center of the Allen & Albert Hughes excellent Menace II Society who only realized that he truly did care if he lived or died with his final breaths, a part which ironically would have been played by Tupac Shakur had he not had a falling out with the film?s brother directors. But Biggie?s greater legacy will be as a musician and in this field his story has as much of interest as other more established artists like Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, the only difference is that Biggies story was cut short at an age where those two musicians stories were just beginning. This biopic wisely chooses to focus on this later story than the former and it?s a film that understands what it was about this man such a magnetic figure in his domain.

The film opens on that fateful night in 1997 where Biggie is shot dead in the middle of Los Angeles, but it quickly flashes back to his life as a young kid in the Clinton Hill area of Brooklyn. His mother Voletta (Angela Bassett) was a school teacher who did everything in her power to help young Chris (who is played at this age by Biggie?s thirteen year old son Chris ?CJ? Wallace, Jr.), in this sense Biggie?s story is perhaps less sympathetic than others who were driven to the streets by worse conditions. Still, one has to realize that Wallace entered the drug game at a very young age and at the height of the crack epidemic. After a period of incarceration, Biggie turns his focus away from drug dealing and toward his talent for rap which he has been developing since he was very young. He meets the famous Sean ?Puffy? Combs (Derek Luke), who?s an up and coming talent scout at this point, and is promised a record deal. The incarceration of his best friend drives him to put everything he?s got into his music career. Along the way he meets (and beds) a then unknown Lil? Kim (Naturi Naughton) and his future wife Faith Evens (Antonique Smith), and then later meets the fellow rapper he will forever be linked with, Tupac Shakur (Anthony Mackie).

George Tillman, Jr. shoots the film with a music video gloss that?s heavy on camera trickery and fancy editing. This works great when Biggie is ?In mansion and Benz?s, Givin ends to my friends and it feels stupendous,? but it is a lot more problematic when he?s ?livin everyday like a hustle, another drug to juggle.? These scenes scream out for a more down to earth and gritty approach and all of Tillman?s gloss really feels wrong on the streets of Brooklyn, consequently the first half hour or so of this movie really suffers. Tillman seems to understand this problem and wisely cuts this portion short, quickly moving on to his rise to fame in which the style he?s chosen tends to thrive.

I wouldn?t call myself a Biggie expert going into this film, but I am a fan and I feel like I?ve collected a pretty good knowledge of his life over the years. As far as I can tell, this movie is exceptionally accurate to the real facts of the man?s life. I didn?t see any obvious inaccuracies and most if not all of the famous moments of his life are here. I am however a bit suspicious about the depiction of Biggie?s mother and of Puff Daddy, both of whom are credited as producers here. Puff Daddy in particular seems to be painted both as blameless in the East Coast/West Coast feud which breaks out in the second act and as some sort of uplifting coach to Biggie. To his credit, Puffy has allowed the film to point out some of the sillier aspects of his public personality, but the mentorship hat he?s wearing here seems a bit too good to be true. Biggie?s mother Voletta also seems a bit too good to be true. Don?t get me wrong, I?m sure Voletta was and is a great woman who did everything she could in raising this troubled youth, but at times the film makes her out to be downright saintly, there are very few people in the world who are this devoid of fault or weakness.

As one could probably guess, finding a talented, four hundred pound, twenty-five year old, African American actor with rapping abilities probably wasn?t easy. Realizing that there weren?t any veteran actors who resembled the film?s subject, the producers went on a very public search for the right man to fill Biggie?s size fourteen shoes. The man they found was Jamal Woolard, a real Brooklyn rapper who is perhaps most famous up to this point for being one of many rappers who have been shot outside the New York radio station Hot 97. Woolard really does look and sound a lot like the real Biggie, his impersonation skills truly are impressive, but I wouldn?t really call this a spectacular performance. I think this is a performance that the Academy should take a close look at, not because I think it?s really worthy of their award, but because it might make them realize that doing these sort of celebrity impersonations really isn?t as hard as it looks. Don?t take that to mean that I think Woolard didn?t work hard on his performance here; in fact I?m sure he put everything he had into his work here and in turn puts in a very good performance. But this isn?t the work of a master thespian and outside of his impression I wouldn?t call his scene to scene work particularly special. Still, he mostly does what he needs to do and he even does all of his own rapping. Speaking of the rapping, the song selection is pretty good here.

Many called the film ?formulaic? during the initial round of reviews, but I?m not sure that?s really fair. Its only formulaic if telling someone?s life story from beginning to end is a formula, would you criticized a written biography for taking such a trajectory? I wouldn?t, because that?s simply the clearest way to tell someone?s life story. There?s certainly a place for adventurous biopics like I?m Not There, but Biggie Smalls story isn?t as well known as Bob Dylan?s and such trickery would probably do him a disservice. I know I?d certainly prefer a ?conventional? to a movie like La Vie En Rose, which screws with chronology for no reason other than to pretend it?s less conventional than it is.

So, in final analysis, this is a pretty good example of a music biopic. It isn?t great and it has flaws but it?s a good representation of the iconic rapper. It probably has little appeal to those who have no interest in the subject, but those looking for a Biggie Smalls biopic will be well served.

I?m not really a big comic book fan anymore, though I have been in the past. Throughout my teens I followed comic books, but I only really had enough cash for one hobby and I ended up choosing movies to follow seriously and comics sort of went by the wayside. I still read the occasional trade paperback, but otherwise the habit is pretty much in my past. There is however one relic from my comic book years that I still treasure and that?s my old Watchmen volume. I first read Alan Moore?s classic when I was fifteen and it simply blew my mind. I?ve read it many times since and it?s never failed to bowl me over with its complex story, meticulous structure, and dry satirical wit. A film adaptation of the tome has been rumored for decades, but whenever I heard talk of it I had one stock reaction: ?Watchmen is unfilmable.? Now, to my continuing shock, someone has actually made the movie.

The story is an example of the alternate timeline genre. It essentially asks how history would have been affected if costumed vigilantes actually had popped up during the thirties as they did in comic books, and then influenced future generations to do the same. The main story is set during the mid eighties (a contemporary setting when the book was written), and begins with the death of the works most enduring characters; Edward Blake AKA The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) a former vigilante who is tossed out of a window by a shadowy figure. Ostensibly, this is a murder mystery seeking to find who murdered Blake and more importantly why. But there?s a lot more to the whole affair, the story investigates a number of remaining heroes and investigates how they came to be via a number of flashbacks set throughout the later twentieth century. It?s ultimately an exploration of the superhero as a character type, how the real world would affect them and how they would affect the real world.

I?m just going to concede right now that this is not a movie I can look at objectively. Alan Moore?s comic book just means too much to me and I?m just going to be holding an adaptation thereof to a much higher standard than I would any average movie. There?s no doubt that it was the financial success of Robert Rodriguez?s Sin City and Zack Snyder?s 300 that inspired the studio to give Snyder the go ahead for the project. Both of those projects had managed to stay true to their crazy source material by being almost frame by frame recreations of the comic panels. But those were Frank Miller adaptations, not Alan Moore adaptations and there?s a huge difference. Frank Miller, particularly in the case of those titles, is a dude who draws cool looking stuff for the sake of drawing cool looking stuff. They?re very simple and superficial works and there?s nothing wrong with that, but that?s not what Moore does.

So what is it about Moore?s work that makes it so hard to adapt? It?s very long, but more importantly it?s complex, it covers two generations, and is set during three time periods. It has six main characters, each with a back-story that cannot be ignored as well as an entirely new take on recent history that needs to be explored. Secondly, while it is now thought of as a graphic novel, it was actually a twelve issue mini-series and a number of those issues are structurally self- contained. I?m thinking in particular of issue five (Fearful Symmetry) which is page for page symmetrical in the way its stories weave together, and issue six (The Abyss Gazes Also) which tells its story entirely from the perspective of a psychologist side character who over the course of the issue goes from optimism to despair as he's forced to look deep into Rorsach's psyche only to find a mirror image of himself. I highly doubted the film would preserve these structural pivots, and indeed both of these things are lost.

And that leads to larger problem; that a lot of what makes Watchmen a masterpiece is in the details rather than the story itself. The book is loaded with all sorts of sly anecdotes and small bits of brilliance that are littered throughout the narrative and into the very margins. There were just so many things that would have to be lost in any adaptations and each one of them is going to be missed. Add to all that the fact that the comic is loaded with edgy, and un-studio-friendly stuff that was unlikely to ever be seen in a studio production, and it becomes abundantly clear why I?ve been insisting on the story?s unfilmability.

To director Zack Snyder?s credit, he got a lot more into this than I thought he would, and by a lot more I mean a hell of a lot more. They were able to get the basic story in, most of the origins and a decent idea of the past events that lead up to the main story. That?s a lot more than I ever thought they could get into two hours and forty minutes, but this density comes at a price. There is so much squeezed into so little time that the movie has no room to breathe. Consequently, the whole thing feels very rushed, and the events seem to take place over a shorter period of time than they are supposed to. It?s abundantly clear to any viewer that this is not a story that was meant to be told in such a short span of time, and yet there?s still a lot missing from the equation.

The most egregious cut is the omission of a sub-plot about a newspaper vendor in the middle of New York prone to ranting about current events. The main story takes place against the backdrop of a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which has brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction. This is established in the film and occasionally the audience is reminded of it, but not nearly to the extent that the comic books do. The aforementioned subplot is the main place where this is discussed, and it gives the whole story a degree of apocalyptic paranoia. This is essential both to the story?s tone and in establishing the stakes of everything that goes on.

Another of the aspects that was always a sticking point in the adaptation was the violence, sex, nudity, and language that would have horrified any movie studio. To Zack Snyder?s credit, he doesn?t sell out on anything, he shies away from nothing and appears to have ignored every studio note he undoubtedly received. Dr. Manhattan is just as naked here as he was in the book (the elimination of which would have been symbolically false), and thankfully Snyder has also included all the R-rated violence of the book. The problem, is that Snyder has not only matched the books violence but actually increased it. What was once an off-screen arson has been turned into a meat clever butchery, what was once a throat cutting has turned into a graphic chainsaw massacre, and an attempted rape scene comes with additional blows from the assailant. I suspect that Alan Moore would be horrified by this decision. Moore very specifically made all of the violence in the book potent but brief, and he?s not overly proud of all the senselessly violent stories that his work has inspired.

There are also a number of less graphic and more action oriented fight scenes that have been mishandled. Snyder has grabbed at every scene of violence to be found here and milked it for all it?s worth, extending and sensationalizing each one of them. The opening murder has gone from basically being the discovery of a body to being a five minute highly choreographed fistfight, later fights have been turned from three frame encounters into elaborate actions scenes. I probably could have lived with this, but I don?t like the way these fights play out. The characters tend to jump higher, fight faster, and have faster reflexes than any real human ever could, which is a problem because these aren?t supposed to be actually super powered people. They?re Batman-like vigilantes who aren?t supposed to be stronger than very fit humans.

This brings me to Zack Snyder?s visual style, which is another serious problem the film has. Snyder?s special effects heavy visuals were perfectly suited for filming a story about a bunch of Greeks chopping people?s heads off, but again, Watchmen isn?t a project like that. This is a dialogue heavy work that is meant to inhabit the real world. But this doesn?t look like the real world, it looks like a series of sets that have been decorated to the nth detail, everything just seems really artificial. Snyder has his camera in close all the time, he worries too much about trying to match the comic book?s angles and compositions. It feels like the camera can never sit back and simply observe people having a conversation. Look most other comic book adaptation (The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Spider-Man) and you?ll find they don?t have the same problems connecting with the real world, they?re look is a lot more naturalistic. Also the movie?s cinematography was a bit darker and bluer than I would have liked. Dave Gibbon?s artwork was a lot brighter, and skewed toward the style of silver age comics.

This brings me to another one of the film?s failures, in that its cast is not as great as it should have been. The best of the lot is easily Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who captures the look and attitude of The Comedian perfectly. Jackie Earle Haley also manages to bring the cold craziness of Rorschach both masked and unmasked, great casting there. Billy Crudup also does everything he needs to do while voicing and mocaping Dr. Manhattan. But the other three of the main cast deliver very problematic performances. Patrick Wilson fails miserably in the key role of the second Nite Owl, he fails to make him anything more than a stereotype in the early scenes and his character evolution is rushed and lacking in the subtleties needed. Malin Akerman also isn?t great as the second Silk Spectre, she comes off as whiny rather than pitiable in the film, she come off as something of a ditz. But the most egregious handling of a character is that of Adrian Veidt AKA Ozymandias. I don?t entirely blame Matthew Goode for this, but he plays Veidt as a an overly cold and calculating figure. This is exactly what Veidt is supposed to be like internally, but not externally; externally he is supposed to be a pseudo-Captain America, a Richard Branson type billionaire that has the public?s love.

I don?t want to let my pickiness overlook the film?s strong points, and there are a lot of them. It would be almost impossible for someone to adapt Watchmen and not have some of its brilliance rub off on the project. Though satire isn?t as much of a focus here as it is in the book, there are some funny moments that will be especially potent to those who don?t see them coming. Also, the movie sports an excellent soundtrack which perfectly accentuates the story with classic rock from the sixties. Also very impressive is the opening credits which show images of series history set to Bob Dylan?s ?The Times They Are a-Changin,?? though I wonder how much sense this will make to those unaccustomed to the original mythology.

If nothing else Zack Snyder?s heart seemed to be in the right place, he stayed remarkably close to the source, but to what end? More than any adaptation I?ve seen, Watchmen seems more concerned with the letter of the source than the spirit. Frankly, the book was unfilmable. Sure Snyder fits a lot of Moore?s words and images onto the screen but he never creates the right the right tone and never matches Moore?s audacity. This is very different from the Wachowski Brother?s adaptation of V For Vendetta. In that project the Wachowski?s adapted the story to a different political climate and in doing so made it their own. It was something that manages to be its own thing; this on the other hand has little to offer aside from its inferiority to the source.

I?m not sure how people unfamiliar with the source would react to the film. But frankly feel sorry for them. This shouldn?t be anyone?s first exposure to Alan Moore?s magnum opus. If you really want to take in the Watchmen story this weekend they shouldn?t go to the movie theater, they should go to a book store. The real deal will be sitting in a large pile on a table near the door.

My relationship with Hollywood comedy has been shaky at best for the longest time. I?ve long been at odds with public opinion about 70s and 80s comedy ?classics? like Caddyshack, Airplane, and Animal House, which all seemed like half-assed unfunny messes to me; and it wasn?t just those three movies either. I was about ready to dismiss film as a strong medium for comedy in favor of standup and television? then a man named Judd Apatow came along. It was with Judd Apatow produced films like The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad that I finally began to laugh at movie theaters again. And it didn?t stop at Mr. Apatow?s work either, a lot of other comedic talents were given the freedom to follow his example and put out like minded films. This seemed to reach its peak last year with the release of such films as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express, Zach and Miri Make a Porno, and to some extents Tropic Thunder which all seemed to be inspired by this wave to some extent. But after all that? I was beginning to think I?d finally had my fill of comedies where people curse a lot and talk bluntly about sex. I skipped a few of these movies like Role Models just because I was getting sick of the formula. Hopefully I?ve had a long enough rest because it appears that the 2009 wave of these movies is being kicked off by the new Seth Rogen vehicle Observe and Report.

The film centers on Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen), a mall security guard with delusions of grandeur. Barnhardt takes his job very seriously and views himself as a real officer of the peace. These delusions are only enhanced by the emergence of a flasher (Randy Gambill) who?s been? flashing? in the mall parking lot. Ronnie views this as a call for him to step up and right a wrong in this world, his reaction to this minor sex-offense is disproportionately violent. Ronnie begins a stalker-ish fixation with one of the flasher?s ?victims? (Anna Ferris) for whom Ronnie believes he has a particular responsibility to protect. It soon becomes apparent that Ronnie is not just a mildly delusional loser, but an increasingly dangerous sociopath; he?s been prescribed to take anti-psychotic drugs and he has a rather twisted (but not incestuous) relationship with his mother (who he still lives with).

In case you haven?t noticed, this comedy has a very dark streak to it. In fact this is probably the first comedy ever made to claim Martin Scorsese?s blood soaked masterpiece Taxi Driver as a primary influence, unless you mistakenly categorize Scorsese?s own very good but decidedly un-funny film The King of Comedy as an actual comedy (which it isn?t in spite of the title). In fact the parallels between this and Taxi Driver frequently move beyond conceptual inspiration to the point of being an outright parody. Anna Ferris is in the Cybill Shepherd role, A coffee shop clerk named Nell (Collette Wolfe) is in the Jodie Foster role, her boss (Patton Oswalt) is in the Harvey Keitel role, the movie?s ending is clearly in the same fantasy territory as the final scenes of Scorsese?s film and there?s even a voice-over double take clearly inspired by De Niro?s ?listen you fuckers? monologue. The idea of turning this material into a broad comedy is inspired, but the idea is easier said than done and without expert execution this movie was doomed.

Sadly, I?m not sure that director Jody Hill was really quite up to the challenge of bringing his inspired vision to the screen. Hill rose to relative prominence on the strength of his debut film The Foot-Fist Way, a micro budget production that gained a distribution deal after it impressed Will Ferrell and Adam Mckay. I was not as impressed by that movie as that pair of comedic all-stars, but I did see a lot of potential in its star Danny McBride (who has a very small cameo in Observe). I was even more impressed by McBride and Hill?s HBO series ?Eastbound and Down,? but again I was more convinced of McBride?s talent than Hill?s mastery of comedic structure by that project.

Finally after seeing this project I think that maybe Hill should stick to writing at this stage, because this movie falls prey to some very inconstant tone that may have been acceptable in another film but which torpedoes the meticulous balancing act this film absolutely needed. The key decision that Hill fails to clearly make is whether the film conveys the perspective of an omniscient observer or whether it?s showing what?s in the head of its disturbed protagonist. If it?s from an omniscient perspective then why are there so many bizarre occurrences? Why is Ronnie able to fight so effectively? And why are his actions placed on a pedestal at certain points? But if it?s from Ronnie?s perspective why does he still seem like a buffoon for much of the film?s running time? Why do we still hear people mock him behind his back? The answer is that the film wants to have its cake and eat it too. If the movie began to be told entirely from Ronnie?s it would have stopped being funny fast, because Ronnie doesn?t see himself as funny. As such the film never really commits to one side or the other in its flawed third act.

This is a real shame because in spite of the film can?t commit to a tone, Seth Rogen unquestionably commits to his role and gives what is easily the best performance of his career. Rogen is hardly the lovable loser here that he is in films like Knocked Up, he?s certainly a loser but he?s hardly lovable. Subverting your normal persona like that is hardly easy, just ask Jim Carrey how well The Cable Guy turned out, but Rogen clearly understands exactly what this film is supposed to be and delivers what?s needed. Reportedly Rogen agreed to star in the film under the sole condition that the studio not screw with the darkness of Hill?s vision. I was beginning to worry about Rogen before this, but now I really think he?s going to have a very long and successful career, he seems to be challenging himself and picking interesting roles rather than coasting on his reputation.

I wish I could say as much for the rest of the cast, but I think a lot of the supporting performances are a bit inconsistent. This is actually the first film I?ve seen Anna Ferris in, she was all right but I can?t say I really see what the fuss is about. Ray Liotta seems to be capitalizing on his usual barking persona, but I?m not sure he does enough to differentiate himself from his straight performances; the jokes seem to be missing whenever he?s on screen. Aziz Ansari gives his all but is limited by dialogue that feels a bit like recycled ?fuck you? humor from other Apatow-esque films. Finally, there?s Michael Peña, whose character would probably feel more at home in a Will Ferrell movie than in a dark comedy about a sociopath.

The movie really does have a pretty decent supply of laughs, and if that?s all you need this movie probably is recommendable (assuming the dark tone is right for you). However, I really can?t help being pretty damn disappointed by the whole affair. The concept and performance of a brilliant movie are here and it?s just undermined by some shaky direction the whole way, I just don?t think Jody Hill had the chops to pull this off. I think that in the hads of someone like Terry Zwigoff, Spike Jonze, or David Gordon Green (who lends his usual cinematographer to the project) this could have been brilliant, but without directorial genius to match the genius of its concept I think the film falls apart.

The end of 2009 is quickly approaching and in even though we still have an important month of watching ahead of us many are already jumping the gun and making lists of the decades best? everything. I shudder at just how many of these lists we?re going to have to sort through in the not too distant future, not that my hands are clean of this, I?ve been working on my lists for well over a year in advance. Anyway, I bring this up because many will be looking back and thinking about the various filmmakers who have defined a decade of cinema, and I cannot imagine a grouping of such filmmakers that won?t include Steven Soderbergh. If for nothing else Soderbergh must be recognized for just how prolific he is. In an era where major filmmakers can spend ten years and only make three to four films Soderbergh has made twelve, thirteen if you count Che as two. Some of these movies were blockbusters (the ?Ocean?s? movies), some were serious (Traffic), some were funny (The Informant), some were fantastical (Solaris), some were nostalgic (The Good German), and then there were the ones that were experimental even by Soderberghian standards. By these I am mainly referring to Full Frontal, Bubble, and this newer one, The Girlfriend Experience.

The Girlfriend Experience is a film about a woman named Christine (Sasha Grey) who?s recently begun working as a high class prostitute. The title refers to a particular type of prostitution that Christine specializes in; she will escort her Johns and pretend to be a longtime girlfriend throughout the night. She?s living with a (real) boyfriend named Chris (Chris Santos), a personal trainer who knows about Christine?s job but seems to be alright with it.

As far as story goes, that?s about all there is to tell. This is a movie where not a lot happens, it?s all about simply taking a peak into this person?s life for a little while. The movie is set in a very specific time, at the height of the recent financial crisis and before the election of Barrack Obama. Almost everyone in the movie seems to have this crisis on the back of their mind and they talk about it a lot, only without saying much of anything insightful about it. As a matter of fact, not many people say much of anything insightful at all in this movie. All of the dialogue is naturalistic, possibly to a fault, it is very good at capturing with complete reality the way people tend to speak to each other, but that means listening to a lot of dull and banal conversations throughout.

The conventional wisdom today when making something as aggressively realistic as this is to shoot in a similarly naturalistic, handheld style, on cameras that are almost consumer grade. But Soderbergh has completely ignored this conventional wisdom here and on his last film Bubble, instead he?s shot both films with some incredibly vivid widescreen cinematography. I suppose that one of the benefits of being your own cinematographer is that you don?t need to hire a second string DP when your budget is smaller than usual.

The film?s star is Sasha Grey who started her career making hardcore pornography. She is an interesting choice for the role, after all the original plan for this series of experimental films was to find a location and use local non actors to form a story, and it?s not easy to cast an actual hooker. Grey does work in this film, though I have my doubts as to whether she has much more potential outside of the genre she?s traditionally worked in, this is a non-actor performance through and through. Chris Santos is good too, but in the same capacity.

As has been said in pretty much any review of this movie, this is an experimental work and needs to be viewed as such, if you?re not interested in the experiment this movie has nothing for you. Sometimes I think critics are a bit too excited to heap praise on experimental works simply because they?re experimental. Often these movies will have a few interesting things going for them but they won?t really work for me as an actual cinematic viewing experience. I?ve definitely gotten that feeling from some of Gus Van Sant?s experimental work as of late, I got it from Bubble, and I definitely got it from this film. I won?t dismiss this, because there are some things to appreciate about it on some intellectual level, but it didn?t really elicited much from me except for a passive interest in some of the aspects of the filmmaking. This is for Soderbergh devotees only.

The early part of a film year can be? interesting. Everyone knows what to expect from the summer (blockbusters) and everyone knows what to expect from the late fall and early winter (prestige pictures), but what about the other seasons? The later part of winter and early spring are often used as dumping grounds for the movies that studios didn?t think could compete during the more competitive parts of the year. That means that there?s a lot of crap coming out, but it can also be an exciting time to watch from a distance. Patterns established decades ago tend to play out during the summer and fall, but these dumping periods tend to be a lot less predictable. Movies can come out of nowhere and be surprise successes and surprise hits. One such effort is the journeyman action film Taken, an unpretentious thriller that had been released months earlier in Europe but which finally found a U.S. release late in the January of 2009. The modest production ended up making almost a hundred and fifty million dollars at the box office, surprising analysts everywhere.

The party who has been ?taken? is a seventeen year old named Kim (Maggie Grace), the daughter of an ex-CIA agent named Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson). The kidnapping occurs shortly after she lands in Paris to go on a European vacation. Mills had objected to this trip but reluctantly allowed it to happen in order to please Kim and look less over protective to his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen). The moment he learns that his daughter has been kidnapped he immediately springs into action and runs off to Europe to save her. There he must investigate the world of forced prostitution in order to save the one he loves.

From that summery I bet you can tell what the movie?s biggest problem is: incredible unoriginality. This ?rescue the kidnapped daughter? scenario is the oldest action movie cliché in the book. We can all probably name a million movies which have this exact same plot and what?s worse is that this movie doesn?t even do the smallest thing in order to give this some kind of original twist. There are no surprise revelations, no twists you didn?t see coming, not even a remotely different interpretation of the situation, just the same tired revenge fantasy we?ve all seen a million times; this is formulaic filmmaking through and through.

Additionally the film has undertones that are not entirely savory. Many have seen the fact that Kim is kidnapped immediately after she leaves the United States as evidence of Xenophobia. This argument does not really hold much water with me, mainly because it was produced and co-written by Luc Besson and directed by Pierre Morel who are both residents of the country that the movie supposedly vilifies. What really concerns me is not the film?s view of France, but rather the view it seems to have of the Eastern Europeans involved in the kidnapping. The idea of a film using immigrants as its villain isn?t in and of itself offensive, but we all know the long sad history of the protection of white women being used as a means of vilifying a group of people and some of the way these foreign criminals are depicted seems a little leery to me. Even more disturbing is that the Neeson character has a view of torture that would make Jack Bauer blush, the way the film uses the kidnapping to justify this kind of brutality is tenuous at best.

I?ll grant the film that its action scenes are fairly well shot and choreographed, but they?re not much more original or ambitious than the film?s story. We?re given a run of the mill SUV chase, a decent car chase, some standard gunplay, and some fast paced fight scene that look a hell of a lot like the fights from the Bourne series. Again, there?s nothing inherently wrong with any of these set pieces, they just do not innovate and they do not equal the best this genre has to offer.

Pretty much the only thing in this entire movie that rises above the level of average is the performance of Liam Neeson. Action movies of this caliber usually star the likes of Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme, but Liam Neeson is a legitimate actor and his casting was a really smart way of elevating this material. Neeson is the kind of actor who can avoid being the kind of stone faced steroid freak who personified 80s action while also not being the kind of whiney twenty-somethings that have been populating action flicks these days.

There is mild enjoyment to be gained from Taken, but rather than spending your time with it I strongly recommend checking out a David Mamet movie called Spartan. Spartan is also a movie about a determined agent trying to find a kidnapped teenager, but it is significantly smarter, more original, and better written; in general it puts Taken to shame. If you rent Spartan you?ll be on the edge of your seat trying to guess where it will go next, if you rent Taken you?ll get a very strong sense of déjà vu.

One of my favorite online past-times is to read a blog called ?Stuff White People Like.? This is a satirical site that catalogs and explains various things that white people (by which they mean hipster yuppies) disingenuously enjoy out of a subconscious desire to be hipper than thou. Every entry of this blog deals with a subject like ?Organic Food,? ?David Sedaris,? or ?New Balance Shoes.? So why do I bring this up? Because I think the people who write for that site could write an entire book about how much of the new Indie romance (500) Days of Summer has been done in order to impress white people. Among the entries of that blog which would apply to this film are: ?Apple Products,? ?Indie Music,? ?Irony,? ?Juno,? ?Girls With Bangs,? ?Musical Comedy (courtesy of a brief but conspicuous dance scene, more about that latter),? ?Modern Furniture,? ?Bad Memories of High School,? ?T-Shirts,? ?Architecture,? ?Wes Anerson,? ?Having Two Last Names (courtesy of star Joseph Gordon-Levit),? and I?m probably forgetting a few.

The film announces from the beginning (via a monotone voice over reminiscent of The Royal Tenenbaums) that this is a story of boy meets girl, but that it is not a love story. The boy is Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a twenty-something working at a greeting card company in spite of the fact that he holds an architecture degree. The girl is Summer Finn (Get it! Her name?s Summer and the movie is called 500 Days of Summer!) who is played by Zooey Deschanel. Summer is the new assistant at Tom?s greeting card company, they have little to do with each other at first, but eventually they bond over their enjoyment of the band The Smiths. Soon they hook up, but it?s clear that they are both looking for different things in a relationship. Tom believes in true love and is out looking for ?the one,? while Summer is a free spirit just looking for a good time. Their relationship goes for many ups and downs over the course of the film and eventually they must either reconcile their difference or, well? the voice over did say this wasn?t a love story.

I?ve heard a lot of stories about the way ?mini-majors? (The ?independent? divisions of major studios, ala Miramax, Focus Features, Sony Pictures Classics, etc.) control things when they are producing movies. Bear in mind that this refers to the movies they actually produce, not necessarily the ones they purchase and distribute. The conclusion many have drawn about these studios is that they control productions just as much as the major studios do, that the ?independent? label is merely a marketing device. The ?mini-major? who?s most notorious for this is Fox Searchlight Pictures, the people who brought us Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine, and Juno. Now of course those are good movies, and the mere fact that a studio has control over a film doesn?t mean it will automatically be bad, but it can be a big roadblock to true creativity, and this will rear its head in movies from studios like this that are less successful than the aforementioned titles. I bring all this up because (500) Days of Summer seems to me like a ground zero for just how crass mini-majors have become.

At its heart, I think this movie does have a pretty cute story that has a whiff of authenticity to it, but all of that has been steamrolled by a lot of derivative and obnoxious directorial tricks courtesy director Marc Webb, who unsurprisingly has a background in music videos. It feels almost like the script was given to some sort of mad scientist in the Fox Searchlight labs (we?ll call him a quirkologist), who went through it and decided to add every whimsical ?indie? cliché he could think of. It?s got a non-chronological narrative, a load of pop culture references, an indie rock soundtrack, moments of unexpected animation, and even a god damn spontaneous musical number that?s been added for questionable reasons. The base story is of course inviting such a treatment in many ways; after all, it?s about a mopey quarter-life crisis guy who seeks happiness via a manic pixie dream girl. For those who do not know the phrase ?manic pixie dreamgirl,? it?s a work coined by critic Nathan Rabin to describe women in films that appear out of nowhere merely to serve the purpose of acting wacky and lifting up the film?s male protagonist. Zach Braff?s Garden State and Cameron Crowe?s Elizabethtown both did as much with this archetype as was ever needed and this movie seems rather superfluous. Oh, and don?t get me started on Tom?s magically precocious little sister who gives him love advice.

Now in spite of my general distaste for this film?s derivative elements and general obnoxiousness, there are aspects to it that were clever. Earlier I glibly dismissed the film?s non-chronological narrative as one of a list of indie clichés it indulges in, but the truth is that the technique was uses pretty effectively here and if that were the only of those clichés it used I probably wouldn?t have made the complaint. Also, there are some genuinely funny moments sprinkled throughout the film, I especially liked the film?s customized ?the events are fiction? disclaimer at the beginning and the reading of a greeting card that Tom writes while in the midst of depression. Also, the acting in the film is mostly admirable. While the film?s main character is a whiney tool, the way Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays him makes him seem a lot more relatable than the character that?s written on the script. Zooey Deschanel is trying to do something similar, but the script has placed more obstacles in her path than in her co-star?s.

When all is said and done, this is a very irritating film. It?s a romantic comedy that uses hip techniques and references to hide the fact that at its heart it?s just another date movie. That said, it does at least try to hide this fact, which is more than can be said of the cookie-cutter nonsense like The Proposal which has dominated the genre for the longest time. As such, it probably is an above average choice if one is looking to take someone of the opposite sex to see something that could be called romantic. Under all other circumstances I?d advise against seeing it.

If you listen to a lot of podcasts like I do, then you?ve more than likely heard of Rian Johnson, a promising young director who?s developed an impressive web presence. Johnson?s first movie was a film called Brick, which took all the style and lingo of film noir and pulp novels and places them into a high school setting. I thought Brick was a neat little film but I wasn?t wildly thrilled by it, it was a well made movies with a concept that was sort of fun, but it was a pretty shallow movie. Now Rian Johnson is back, and with a bigger budget and a cast full of name actors to make a film called The Brothers Bloom.

The elder of the two Blooms is Stephen Bloom (Mark Ruffalo) and the younger Bloom is known only as Bloom (Adrien Brody), and he?s the one we follow through the movie for the most part. These two brothers are con men and have been for years. They take part in elaborate ?long cons? that take them all over the world and usually seem to end with Adrian Brody pretending to get shot. Their partner in crime is a mysterious Japanese woman known only as Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi) who loves explosives and speaks very little English. Brody?s character has grown tired of this life and wants to retire but, to quote the third Godfather film, just when he thought he was out, his brother pulled him back in. The two plan to pull off one last con, the mark is a Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz) a rich young woman with no direction in life. The plan is to tell Stamp they are smugglers and have her take part in their smuggling endeavors, thus giving her the adventure she wants but ending that adventure by ripping her off. The only problem is that Brody?s character is beginning to really like this girl.

Probably this film?s best asset is its cast who in many ways elevate a lot of this material. The standout is probably Mark Ruffalo, who?s a character actor that I shouldn?t underestimate as often as I seem to. With his performance here Ruffalo is able to balance the way his character tends to be likable while behaving like a bit of a fox. Brody also works here, I really like how that guy is able to do leading man performances without feeling like a phony movie star. Rachel Weisz is also pretty effectively charming, she?s doing sort of a giddy Natalie Portman kind of role here and she makes her character a lot more believable than it should be. Rinko Kikuchi is also a pretty neat little mysterious presence and there are also neat little parts here for Robbie Coltrane and Maximilian Schell. They even manage to bring Ricky Jay in as the narrator, an appropriate choice if ever there was one.

The problem here is that this movie is way too clever for its own good. Rian Johnson is basically trying to make an anti-con man con man movie. Deciding that it is too predictable to have yet another one of these movies where one of the characters turns out to be playing everyone the whole time, he?s decided to play with that trope. The problem is that instead to reducing some of the trickery, he?s kept all the double and triple crosses and added extra meta-junk to the proceedings, and the result is a bit of a mess. The movie forces us to deal both with the crazy plot while also having to contend with the Adrian Brody characters lightweight existential crisis and the relationships between everyone, I?m not sure Rian Johnson really knew which of these elements he wanted to emphasize and the movie suffers for it.

The other elephant that?s in the room is that Rian Johnson has ripped off Wes Anderson?s style from head to foot. This style theft is undeniable and Johnson seems completely unapologetic about it. This is problematic on many levels, not the least because Wes Anderson movies are getting tired enough when the real McCoy is making them without the imitators diluting the style further. It?s not just the bright visual style and use of classic rock that contributes to this either, the script also fits into the Wes Anderson mold pretty neatly with its use of twenty-something angst set against a playful adventure story in a whimsical environment. The pathos of these movies is beginning to feel pretty insincere and the comical quirks are quickly going from being charming to being obnoxious. I?m just really tired of seeing movies that have the tone of comedies without the laughs and that?s increasingly what these Wes Andersonian movies are beginning to boil down to.

Rian Johnson is a promising filmmaker but he needs to stop trying to hide behind his cleverness and just tell a damn story. This movie is able to pass the time well enough but it amounts to nothing and I found the ending to be pretty unsatisfying both on an emotional level and as the end to a con. There are worse ways to spend two hours, but this is a movie without weight that I will quickly be forgetting about.

As much as I?ve liked the R-rated comedies that have been coming out in the last half-decade, there are some trends amongst them that have been annoying to me. One of these annoyances has been the rise of the word ?bromance? in order to describe movies about close friendships between men. The truth is that this isn?t a new or original story-type, in fact stories about men trying to sort between the values of friendship versus romance can be seen in a Shakespeare play called ?Two Gentlemen of Verona,? and can probably be traced even further back. Still, there are some people who insist on glibly labeling movies about friendship, and since every coined meme needs a point of oversaturation we have now been given a movie that?s takes this term to an extreme point where it stops making sense.

The movie focuses on a real estate salesman named Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) who has just become engaged to the love of his life, a woman named Zooey Rice (Rashida Jones). In the process of planning the wedding, Klaven realizes that he doesn?t have any male friends he?s close enough to in order to ask them to be his best man. His father (J.K. Simmons) reminds him that he?s always been a ?girlfriend guy? whose relationships with other men have fallen by the wayside. So, Klaven goes on an odyssey guided by his gay brother (Andy Samberg) to find a best friend. Eventually he meets Sydney Fife (Jason Segel), a single free spirit who lives in a tricked out man?s den. Seeing his potential ?bro,? Klaven starts a friendship with Fife but realizes that friendship can sometimes be harder than romance.

As you can probably percieve, this movie?s setup is more than a little problematic from the get-go. Perhaps there are people in the world like Peter Klaven, but I doubt that they?re ever going to be as much of a clear cut case as he is, what?s more I doubt they?re going to come to as much of a sudden realization as he does. Also bizarre is Klaven?s plan to find a friend for the primary motive of having a best man at his wedding, what?s more, how the hell can he expect to form such a strong friendship in a mere six months? Close friendships are just not something you go out and actively try to form the way you actively try to find girlfriends.

And this brings us to the movie?s next major problem, namely that its entire premise is based around trying to make the formation of a friendship fit inside the tropes of the romantic comedy. This is problematic firstly because it means adopting the many weaknesses and clichés of that genre. More importantly, the whole concept of this film is flawed to begin with; friendships and romances simply are not as superficially similar as the movie is trying to say they are. As such the characters behave very strangely throughout the course of the film and the whole thing just rings pretty false. The stakes involved in a friendship, especially weird friendships that are expected to form in a few months, as they would be in a real romance. As such, the ups and downs of this relationship just aren?t very dramatic as the movie leads up to its lame anti-climax.

All this could have been forgiven if the movie had been very funny, but it isn?t. Segal and Rudd are good performers, but the material they?re working with is not very good. The dialogue is not particularly sharp and the gags are not very strong. There are a few decent chuckle moments along the way, and the performances are workable. In fact, like a lot of mediocre romantic comedies I?d say that this film is kind of watchable in spite of its immense flaws. However, the simple fact is that this isn?t as funny as the typical R-rated comedy and it probably isn?t going to get anyone laid the way a romantic comedy, so what use does this thing serve? Not much.

Lee Daniel?s film Precious is a movie that has been heavily hyped by a number of critical forces since its debut at this year?s Sundance film festival. In spite of all the good marks the film has been getting, the prospect of actually seeing the damn thing is something I?d been dreading all year. There were a number of elements to this movie that had me apprehensions, chief among them being the movie?s title, which seems to set the movie up has some kind of kindergarten level self-esteem exercise about how everyone is ?special? and ?precious.? Even the film?s producers seem to be embraced by that title as evidenced by the awkward way they?ve been attaching ?based on the novel ?Push? by Sapphire? to the back of it every chance they get. The bigger force in making me dread this viewing experience is the film?s trailer, which sells the movie as exactly the kind of inspirational sappiness I was afraid it would be. The fact that Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, two people who are hardly adverse to the saccharine, were attaching their names didn?t boost my confidence either. My one hope was that the last prestige movie I dreaded this much was Brokeback Mountain, which looked like pure cheese from the trailer featuring the trademark ?I can?t quit you? line, but that movie proved to be a extremely well done and expertly restrained work. Knowing how bad trailers can make certain movies look when they?re being sold to the public, I held out hope that this was just a case of problematic advertising, that this really was as good as all the buzz would have me believe. Trust me; I really wanted this to be good, but for the most part this proved to be a sad case of truth in advertising.



The film centers on Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), who goes by her middle name and who is in a really bad situation. She?s a sixteen year old living in a squalid Harlem apartment with her mentally and physically abusive mother (Mo?Nique), who gets all her income from welfare. Claireece is illiterate, she gave birth to a mentally disabled child after being raped by her own father, and now she?s pregnant again with another of her father?s children. So what is the point of focusing on someone who is in this bad of a situation. If the not-so-subtle naming of its main character, the ?inspirational? quote the movie opens on, its tagline (Life is hard. Life is short. Life is painful. Life is rich. Life is....Precious.) and its website URL (weareallprecious.com) are any indication; the hallmark card-like goal of this movie is to prove to its audience that everyone even, if they are in dire straits, is precious. This is a message in search of an audience to convince. Does anyone really think a person is any less ?precious? simply because they suffer in life? I find it rather insulting that the filmmakers feel the need to prove this to the audience to begin with. What?s worse I don?t think the film even follows its own mantra.



Let?s think about all the problems that the filmmakers have saddled Caireece with. It obviously isn?t Caireece?s fault that her mother is abusive, her mother is also implicated as the source of Claireece?s problems in school, and her parents are also the cause of her pregnancies either by direct action (in the case of her father) or from failing to prevent the situation (in the case of her mother). Sapphire and screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher have basically constructed a character who is completely blameless for the situation she?s in, every one of her problems are without a shadow of a doubt placed squarely on the shoulders of her screwed up family. This, too me, is the root weakness of this movie. It?s very easy to generate sympathy for someone who?s had all their problems thrust upon them, its simplistic. Had they decided to create a character that was in a situation like this because they themselves made some bad decisions in life, and then established them as someone who was ?precious? it would have made for a movie that was significantly more challenging, provocative, and true to life.



As such, I found myself significantly more interested in Claireece?s deeply flawed mother than I was in the blameless martyr for whom the film is titled. But the film isn?t really interested in exploring this mother either, or in adding many nuances to her character. She?s basically as evil as Claireece is sympathetic. This mother is pretty much everything that Ronald Reagan had in his head when he coined the term ?welfare queen.? She?s a fat, lazy woman who spends all her days watching game shows except when she occasionally leaves in order to play ?the numbers.? She constantly abuses and discourages Claireece, threatening to beat her whenever she fails to do everything she?s told and actively preventing her from furthering her education. Later in the movie she proves to be such a moustache twirling villain as to actively insult and toss a baby. But let?s hold on a second. I thought everybody was supposed to be precious. Therefore, shouldn?t that make Claireece?s mother precious too. I don?t think the content of the movie would support that, it produces a pretty simple dichotomy of the blameless child and the evil mother. In essence this is a movie that has a great deal of sympathy for people who are born into bad situations, but very little sympathy for those who have created a bad situation for themselves. This rather conservative message is a fair enough point of view, but I find the film?s endless claims of having a compassionate and non-judgmental world view to be disingenuous.



Putting all that aside, there are other elements that make this a pretty uncompelling movie going experience, and chief among them is a character named Blu Rain, played by Paula Patton, who is meant to be a thinly disguised version of the movie?s author (get it, sapphire, Blue Rain). This character is a teacher at an alternative education facility that Claireece is sent to, and this school storyline is easily the most clichéd and sappy element of the whole movie. This whole subplot basically turns this into one of those horrible movies about saint-like inspirational teachers trying desperately to reach a diverse group of ?inner-city? youths. There is almost nothing that separates the classroom elements here from garbage like Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver, and Freedom Writers. I had thought that this ridiculous trope had been shattered once and for all by Ryan Fleck?s excellent 2006 drama Half Nelson, and perhaps by the great fourth season of David Simon?s ?The Wire,? both works which have significantly more knowledge of the condition of underprivileged youths than this movie could ever dream of possessing. The ineptitude of this sub-plot is magnified by Paula Patton?s less than stellar performance which is well below the standard set by the rest of the cast. When this character says to Caireece: ?your daughter loves you, I love you? it?s every bit as TV-movie worthy as the trailer would have you believe.



Fortunately, the rest of the acting in this movie is a lot better than the work Patton displays. In fact I?d probably say that the excellent performances of Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique are damn near the film?s only redeeming qualities. Sidibe, an unknown, is quite a find and is perfect for her role. Many have made the mistake of thinking that she was simply an underprivileged young girl that the filmmakers found on the street and essentially cast as herself in the role, but this isn?t really the case, she?s an actress playing a role and she plays it really well. Mo?Nique is even more of a revelation in her role, like Jamie Foxx before her she?s a comedian who has broken out of the ?black comedy? ghetto to prove herself to be a great and forceful actor. These are both roles that require the two thespians to inhabit very foreign roles which require a whole lot of yelling and crying, the kind of roles that are easy to give awards to, but both Sidibe and Mo?Nique do their jobs effectively and I think it is their work that has primarily tricked a multitude of critics and pundits into thinking this movie is something more than it really is.



I wish I could say that there was another element that matched the performances of these two actresses, but there really isn?t. I suppose some of the dialogue was pretty well written, at least outside of the Blu Rain sub-plot, but otherwise I found a lot of the filmmaking here subpar. Lee Daniels? direction here seems confused and inconsistent. On one hand Daniels, whose only previous directing credit is the critically lambasted Shadowboxer, seems to want to give the movie a gritty handheld look to match the material, but he undercuts this style at all points with a variety of visual tricks and devices that are at odds with this. The movie is filled with montages, scenes where video is superimposed onto walls, obnoxious fantasy sequences that go nowhere and signify almost nothing, and the occasional Arronofsy-esque quick cut montage. It feels like Daniels is trying to use every crayon in his box of tricks to seeing what sticks rather than simply letting the story play out, and this is all the more problematic simply because a lot of these tricks aren?t even overly well executed.



There?s one great scene towards the end, a confrontation between Claireece and her mother, in which the two actresses are finally allowed to talk in detail without being interrupted by one of Lee Daniel?s stupid tricks. It?s probably the only scene in the movie where the mother is given a shred of complexity and the film?s style really accentuates the scene rather than interrupt it. This is like an isolated scene from a much better movie and if the rest of the material here had been on par with that scene this might have been something great. Instead this is a major missed opportunity filled with sappy material, a confused message, told by a confused filmmaker that has somehow hypnotized America?s critics into ignoring its numerous flaws.

If there?s anyone whose status as a major celebrity baffles me, it?s Nicholas Cage. That?s not to say I hate him as an actor, in fact I?ve loved a number of his performances, but he isn?t a guy who screams star quality and he?s prone to some really misguided career choices. At times it seems like Cage can?t say ?no? to a script, that?s pretty much the only explanation for why he?s found himself at the center of so many cookie-cutter Hollywood action movies. In just the last three years he?s stared in such dreck as Bangkok Dangerous, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Ghost Rider, and a remake of The Wicker Man. When I saw the trailer for his newest film, Knowing, I really couldn?t help but roll my eyes. Everything about the trailer suggested that this was just another in a long string of Nicholas Cage stinkers. Given my instincts about the star and trailer mixed with the film?s lackluster scoring on Rotten Tomatoes, I was quite prepared to skip Knowing altogether. Then a funny thing happened; Roger Ebert, a critic I have a lot of respect for, broke from the general critical consensus and gave the movie a glowing four star review. I don?t want to sound like I?ll do anything Ebert tells me to do; he (like all critics) is perfectly capable of displaying ludicrous taste on occasion. However, his praise got me just curious enough to look deeper, and in doing so I realized that the film was directed by Alex Proyas; the man behind one of the 90?s greatest science fiction movies, Dark City. I still wasn?t going to lay my money down to see the film, but I was just intrigued enough to give the DVD a rental once it came out.

The film opens in a classroom circa 1959. The class has decided to put together a time capsule that will be opened in fifty years. Each student draws a picture of what they think the future will look like, except for one odd little girl who instead of drawing finds herself furiously writing a long series of numbers across two sides of a sheet of paper. The teacher finds it odd, but puts it in the capsule anyway. The school is probably more dedicated to the idea of time capsules than any school in history, and they diligently open up the capsule fifty years later in an elaborate ceremony. The papers within are handed out to a crowd of kids, and in the frenzy the aforementioned page full of numbers finds its way into the hands of a child named Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury). Against the rules of the ceremony he brings his artifact home with him where it falls into the hands of his father, an MIT professor named John Koestler (Nicholas Cage). Koestler initially thinks nothing of this until he sees the number 91120012604 in the series, 9/11/2001 2604. He looks up the September 11th attack and sees that there were in fact 2604 people killed in the world trade center that day. He then begins to take a hard look at the pattern of numbers and realizes that every number in the series corresponds to a world tragedy. All the numbers have been accounted for except for three which are going to predict disasters that will occur in the coming weeks.

For all the flack I just gave Nicholas Cage, he really truly isn?t a bad actor, most of the dread I have over his career has more to do with the ridiculous films he chooses to make than what he actually does in them. His work here was mostly dignified, he plays an average guy and he plays him well enough. I also thought Chandler Canterbury did well as far as child performances go, and Rose Byrne (despite some terrible dialogue and some ridiculous scripted behavior the part of her character) also does well enough given the material she?s given.

However, all three of these actors have a big challenge here: dealing with a ridiculous script that feels like it was ghost written by M. Night Shyamalan, and not The Sixth Sense Shyamalan, more like the Lady in the Water Shyamalan. The screenplay was in fact written by Ryne Douglas Pearson, Juliet Snowden, and Stiles White. You haven?t heard of these people because the only theatrical movie on any of their resumes is a mercifully forgotten horror film called Boogeyman. There is however a reason I bring Shyamalan into this, because it?s a similarly high concept thriller which take ludicrous twists and expects the audience to just go along with it. The whole concept is after all ridiculous, the film claims that every major disaster of the last fifty years is represented on the code Cage finds, but there are hundreds of plane crashes, building fires, and warfare incidents a year, how the hell are you going to fit every one of them on one sheet of paper?

But even if you can go along with this, one still has to contend with this screen play?s nasty habit of using coincidence to drive its story. Why did this sheet of paper land in the hands of Cage, someone who?s later revealed to have had a major connection to it in a number of ways? Coincidence. Why did Cage happen to be exactly where he needed to be to witness one of the disasters predicted on the paper? Coincidence, even though the movie contradicts itself and says he was lead there even though he didn?t know how to locate disasters until after this one happened. And finally how did Cage stumble upon the number 91120012604 which would turn out to be the key to solving the code? Coincidence. And I could have maybe accepted that last one had the film not proven itself to be as lazily written as it was. It gets even worse in the last twenty minutes where the characters all suddenly abandon logic and start doing whatever suites the story that?s been written instead of making the decisions rational people would make.

That said, all of this film?s faults are with the script and I think its director, Alex Proyas, mostly acquits himself here. Proyas avoids unnecessary stylization and shoots the film in a way that?s mostly relaxed and dignified. He doesn?t over edit the film and he doesn?t try to make it a kinetic experience. There are three fairly strong set pieces. The first, a plane crash, is one of the most intense five minutes of disaster filmmaking I?ve seen in a long time. The second, a train crash, is marred by some iffy CGI but Proyas shoots it well. I won?t give away the third, but I will say that it?s executed well even if it is part of a very stupid ending.

Roger Ebert is one of my heroes, but I?m going to have to strongly disagree with him on this one. Ebert argues that this is an exploration of whether the universe is random or deterministic, and indeed it does explore just that. The problem is that it explores the issue in a way that is cheesy and ham-fisted, and its plot hole ridden script lacks the logical seaworthiness that such an exploration requires. The film also fails on a human level and as a thriller it isn?t very thrilling.