Movies about people under pressure that use sports as the catalyst aren't necessarily new territory. In fact, most of the things that happen in Love & Basketball aren't really all that fresh. Seems the importance shifted from how the pressure would affect what, at first, seems like a backburner priority and later, would become a way of life - the only sure shot among a series of occurences laced with both good and bad luck (the priority being love). The way it amore is placed on a pedestal in Love & Basketball's second half is quite honestly admirable. It is a likely balance, since it remains the only interesting thing happening in the film for the last hour. And teetering on the other side of the scale is a first half that shows us a set-up that is often worth exploring - it occasionally dips into a good romantic edge - and is sometimes a little too indicative of how dark the path is for teenagers who embark on a sports career. Point of fact: I no longer care to see films about how hard it is for young people trying to ride into college on a basketball scholarship, even if you remove them from poverty and desperate situations. And yes, its just a little odd to me that these families live side by side when one household operates from income based on a bank manager's salary and the other operates from income based on a professional basketball player's salary. But details always deserve a little break in a good love story - and this film is no exception. The besst part about Love & Basketball, a film I'm quite content to have been surprised by, is the characters Prince-Blythewood has written. Quincy and Monica are so likeable and so much fun to watch fall in love with each other, the simple and almost redundant basketball parallels just melt away. How wonderful to see in the year 2000 - a romance that is able to stand up to the banal action driving it and overshadow it, redeeming the audience and leaving us satisfied. Lathan is so charming and Epps so cocky - and the two of them so sweet together - it's worth watching for their chemistry alone. Entertaining to say the least, but I've got very little else to say about it. I forgot nearly everything but the romance the next day. Maybe the last thing we needed in this world was another film about lovers and sports - but on the other hand, as long as they keep creating intesting fantasy romances, who cares?

Here comes the grandiose statement from he who practically held his hands in front of his face in efforts to shield himself from disappointment: Topsy Turvy. If
anything is evoked from the beautifully whimsical, expertly staged and marvelously acted Love's Labour's Lost, it's Mike Leigh's delightful celebration of the art of
the musical stylings of Gilbert and Sullivan. Imagine the thrill of sitting in the darkened theater, gigantic smile affixed to my pale little face. Laughs and girly giggles
gurgling from my throat as I imagined the minds of the elderly folk seated in the theater, obviously getting far less out of this slice of pie than myself. Same exact
feeling shivering when I saw Topsy Turvy last February 7th. Branaugh sets the play in WWII. He pumps it full of wonderful 40's and 50's musical tunes (much better than in Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, but the same idea). He, as always, celebrates the beauty of the stage with mannered and overstated lighting, near-silent era acting and a collection of actors who seem to have baccalaureates in comic timing (I'm not kidding - Nathan Lane is as you've never seen him before). But most of all, Branaugh celebrates the joy of a musical and primes the film with good-looking actors (the biggest surprises : Alicia Silverstone and Matthew Lillard can act! Wonderfully!) But above all, what Love's Labour's Lost reminded me of, was that besides the brooding dramatic Branaugh of Hamlet and Henry V, therein still lies that comic genius who splattered Much Ado About Nothing into our collective consciousness seven years ago. For all my love and admiration and getting happy in the seats of the movie house - it marks the ying to a yang that's been raging on too long and almost created a brooding, shell-like exterior to a man who was once married to Emma Thompson. A man that, while brilliant in it, didn't really need to do a film called The Gingerbread Man and definitely could've done without Wild Wild West. It's a celebration of the American musical and also, the return of a Shakespearean titan. This is a film that will be on my top ten list at the end of the year.

[Talk about name dropping; And how embarrassing is stating the date you saw Topsy Turvy? What was that about?]

There is nothing that is not irresistible about the films of Akira Kurosawa. Every one a new journey into the world of visual storytelling, a new homage to myth and honor, each a grand banquet  of cinema - each one great. Madadayo is a wonderful film with its own personal speed and tone - now fast and absolutely perfect, later slow and meandering - this is a film, like most of the master's works, that is meant to evoke both a sense of intimate serenity and also, like the broad stroke of a painter, a wider appreciation for life as an institution, it's unfolding rays poetic and warm in the glow of Kurosawa's painterly creations. Madadayo could easily pass for a film conceived and shot in the mid-40's. This is one of those observations that you bestow in the face of almost inconceivable precision (the technical prowess of stage lighting, solid use of color and intrinsic framing) that leads Kurosawa's films into such a well rounded beauty. A film about students paying tribute to their professor, over many years, is one of those tiny stories that are easily nailed by films made abroad. Following here, Madadayo is a deeply personal film that pays tribute to Kurosawa's longtime favorite professor, Eizo Uchida. The title is a phrase meaning "not yet !" in answer to student's inquires of "Mahda-kai" (meaning "not yet ?"); all this a whimsical pondering to whether the professor is ready for the next life. The professor is played with a childlike wisdom by actor Tatsuo Matsumura. There are scenes where he drops pearls of genius from his mouth, other scenes where he breaks like a dish over the loss of his beloved cat - - - even a moment where he hides under a bblanket for fear of thunder. This is a man full of the honesty and chaste like ability of people we know and love in our worlds. Kurosawa honors him by creating such a magical character out of reality and likening him to such a canny diagesis. Everything in this film is worth experiencing, from the near still moments of seeming docudrama to the poignant dream sequence that closes the film in a place that no director alive could have hoped to transcend his career into as he fades away. And could I justify the mixture of the unkempt and the tight; the fantasy and the homage; the tragic and the comic? Could I put Kurosawa's film into such rigid genre terms and expect that explanation and critique to stand? No. It's all sophistry. There's never a solid way to put one's finger on a work of this magnitude and bring it into the funnel, honing its terms and themes into a great metonymnical simplification that will give the film any real meaning to the reader. I couldn't possibly be so shallow and even if I were to think for days of a sentence or phrase that could complete the void left in my state as a filmgoer and a critic, I couldn't. When I left the theater, the rain was falling hard and the temperature had fallen drastically. I was warm inside and I didn't feel a drop.

I know what my mom's going to say. She's going to accuse me of not being able to take it easy, of reading into things too much and of not honoring the all-important "Summer Movie" code - they're made to entertain, not for merit (apparently, that's what the fall season is for - or something like that). So much for that crap. Me, Myself & Irene has me wondering why in the hell the Farrelly Bros. are so popular in the first place? Alright - they come up with some decent premises (always with the road movies - but combined with bowling amish folk or, in this case, a cop with a split personality, both sides of which are smitten with the same pair of blue eyes). I'm one who found Dumb & Dumber to be just that and There's Something About Mary - no there's not. Both marginally funny films, each of which didn't exactly do much more for me than a couple of belly laughs here and there, wincing at the dull execution of the premise - that Straight-to-Video script knocked up a notch by it's willingness not to fold when something is utterly tasteless or too disgusting to bear. If it's over-the-top, perverse or taboo - they simply show it and move on. And that's how they make their money (I leave out Kingpin only because it's a brilliant fluke). This is perhaps their most banal and foul attempt at making such low-rent films. Sprinkled throughout are important things : Jim Carrey's wonderfully physical performance, colorfully cartoonish and full of both the likeability we discovered he's capable of (in his "vanguard" pictures, as I like to call them, The Truman Show and Man on the Moon) and the flat-out insanity he's always been known for; the few and far between inspired jokes (he has three kids that his ex-wife mothered with a highly educated African-American midget, his bad personality talks like Clint Eastwood on downers; and finally, some toilet humor that manages to transcend sharp wit - - weird and lofty claim, right?). On the whole, though, Me, Myself & Irene is a really bad, really slow-moving film. It's signature "musical-montage-road-movie" framework is painfully transparent. It's got about four times the pop songs it needs (even if there is a great XTC song, that, for some reason ended up in there). Most of the characters are recycled from their other films (some even three and four times removed by this time, particularly the Albino waiter). And finally, something you'd probably not expected to hear me say, The Farrelly's disdain for the police is becoming something of a boring set of sight gags and jokes. Who are they trying to impress with their constant barrage of bumbling cops? It's strange to think a couple of guys who can be as funny as Kingpin end up resorting to a plot about a dirty cop dogging the EPA about some "golf course thing" that's never clearly explained. It's also odd to think that this film could be as formulaic as a sitcom, with all the freedoms of television obliterated and still come up with so many jokes I had to sit and decide whether I wanted to laugh at or not - bad ones that I've seen used over and over and over. In the end, all I could think of was how much this movie was supposed to be entertaining - and how utterly insulted I felt watching it. I wanted so bad to just sit back, relax and laugh...but I would've fallen asleep, so I had to be alert. One more reason that there is no such thing as a "Summer Movie" made just for entertainment's sake. Me, Myself & Irene is an STV movie with marketing bucks. Period.

Let me forego any play for a summary as you have no doubt pieced it together correctly from Universal and Dreamworks’ startlingly effective marketing
barrage. Meet the Parents is perhaps the driest comedy to be splashed on us in a long time - and I do not mean that in a good way. Ben Stiller, playing the high
priest of embarrassingly out-of-his-league schleps, has no trouble bypassing a needless sympathetic nod for some coy, overtly indulgent slapstick parading. The way
he manages to mix with DeNiro, and turn out an oddly connecting pair - but for all the wrong reasons - is quite simply put, miraculous. And anyway, it is DeNiro
that holds Meet the Parents together. Though he has done comedy, even dark comedy before; it turns out that this unlikely and thoroughly sinister character that he
manages to arrive at before the film closes does the trick and makes the film somewhat more than simply unpleasant (a term that just kept ringing and ringing in my
ears as I sat there, stunned at this film's popularity). Strange, too, that both Blythe Danner and especially Teri Polo are so ineffective since this a film that is primarily
about the nightmarish ritual every future husband faces when confronted with the realization that he'll have to become kin to total strangers, namely, his fiancee's
parents. One would have chosen better female leads or at the very least, give them something to work with. Not sure the virtuoso ending - which almost has
absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film - is necessary. If I were faced with a covert, militaristic Robert DeNiro doing a scene that utterly apologetic, a last
grab for our attention, if you will - and, on top of it, I had to be married to Teri Polo for the rest of my life - I'd bolt like lightning. But then, Ben Stiller's never played anyone particularly bright.

I’ll admit that I’m truly intrigued by the Dogme method of filmmaking (Those of us not familiar as such - go here - I’m done explaining it). In Mifune, the whole concept of Dogme comes around full circle as we begin to see the parameters of it’s strictness constrict - and produce genuine results. The editing suggests such things as parallel action, constant shift in setting and even match action (suggesting further that a scene was shot from several angles in several takes, a tactic that isn’t nearly as obvious in the other three Dogme films). Mifune gives us what I think Lars Von Trier and his associates were aiming at in the first place : evolution. The rules of the style, though strict and considered by some to be contradictory, are getting more and more liberating. The film also seems to be a Danish filmmakers’ lament : challenging the elemental and thematic charms (and downfalls) of the American romantic odyssey. Mifune knows, like Hollywood, that for a successful and involving romance, the audience must believe they could fall for the protagonist of the opposite sex. Consider films like last year’s Notting Hill - a Hollywood romance that bustles alongg much like Mifune, building a pleasing romance, one that we’re all satisfied by, before abruptly tossing a gigantic, bitter monkey-wrench into the gears to the tune of female aggression. In Notting Hill, it destroyed the flow, and, in essence, what was left of the picture. In Mifune, since the film feels so utterly real in every aspect (thanks due to the Dogme certificate), a savage run-in with fate falls easily into place - texturing, rather than decimating the film. Mifune is rich with familiar themes (‘hooker with a heart of gold’) and characters (‘the long-lost invalid sibling’). But while these oft-explored Americanisms seem somehow trite when overflowing our market - they seem fresh and new in Dogme’s reaalm. I think the enactor of what many thought was a silly phase has made it’s point and
can be taken much more seriously. I thought Festen (Dogme #1) and Idioterne (Dogme #2) were both sensational uses of such a palette - the former, (The Celebration in English), a beautiful realization of actors/script using experimental images; and the latter, The Idiots in English, reinvented the thrill of improvisation and culls some truly comical and utterly, heartbreakingly moving scenes in it’s breadth. (The only American entry - Harmony Korine’s Julien Donkey-Boy, though disturbing and real, is so uneven it falls apart before it ever gets going. It’s too much like Korine’s Gummo to be a departure into Dogme. Instead, it’s just a departure. A displeasing one at that.) But Mifune (Dogme #3), the best of the series, does a number of great things within it’s fence. The film takes on a romantic comedy the way it should be taken - with more than just a hint of tragic cconsequence along the way. How often is it that you see the male protagonist in a romantic comedy marry a woman in the opening sequence that he’ll later divorce when faced with love. Usually, even in the most crestfallen of European entries,
forbidden love is played up as lust and cast aside, preferring to show the dark reality of the chains of marriage vows in society. To me - this marks an even more amoral and cynical view of life. Perhaps that’s why Mifune strikes so close to the mark. It’s the kind of film where the moral issues are seen as simple formalities that have nothing to do with reality. I’ve seen this rarely - but wonderfully - executed in modern films (such as Larss Von Trier’s very Dogme-ish Breaking the Waves; Leaving Las Vegas, directed by Mike Figgis whose current project is improvisational and shot on DV; and The Boxer, which is kind of the odd man out, but one whose major strength is that the lovers decide that the romantically devistating reasons presented as “accepted” by society aren’t going to stand in their way). Mifune is the most akin to Breaking the Waves. It’s another marvelously haunting, tragically real Danish Love Story. And tragedy, my friends, is not another way of saying that the protagonists die at the end of the film. Tragedy is a theme and, in the best of films, it’s almost as if it were so strong - it becomes a character of it’s own. This is one of those films. Another striking aspect in Mifune has to be the savage and breathtaking lighting in the creepy farmhouse that most of the film takes place in (though Copenhagen is intercut occasionally and seen as a cold, utterly unforgiving place where nothing good and lasting seems to take place). Using only natural light (as specified in the rules), the film manages to, in nearly every scene, capture that light and make it into a most productive and comfortable entity. The framing is great. The camerawork is great. There’s shots that stick with you. In a film where no tripod is present and everything is done guerilla-style, memorable images are a feat. All four of the Dogme films I’ve seen have managed to pull this off. And the film is nearly a genre film. Though, on the website, director Soren K.
Jacobsen only confesses to having broken one rule (creating “a kind of lighting arrangement”) - isn’t creating a romantic comedy breaking a rule? Hardly. This film is
not a romantic comedy. It certainly could fall in that category, among many, many others. Perhaps that’s the idea with such a rule - instead of begging a reason to avoid genre entries - maybe Trier and fellow creators were hoping to spawn a collection of films that defied one single genre. Two more notes. The character of Rud, played to awe by Jesper Asholt, could easily have been - had the actor been playing himself playing Rud - a character in Idioterne. Something to think about : are we dealing with a style that influences itself? Consider this : the sequences where the nicely gradual relationship between Bjarke and Rud is cultivated - are videotaped by Emil Tarding in almost the same introspective light the Dogme films seem to radiate. Is the style permeating itself into it’s films? When Bjarke
is using a videocamera, are the filmmakers mirroring themselves, stating their position as equal among the actors and the props? How wonderful a creation. Someone said to me the other day that he was already tired of watching Dogme films (though I can’t see why, he’s picked the worst possibly time to choose that route).
With Mifune, Dogme shows it’s full power and it’s true nature and creates one of the best films in recent years for it’s trouble.

Part of the fun of Mission : Impossible (the original film) was the way it’s screenwriters David Koepp and Robert Towne (who wrote the sequel) chose to make a
film about the interworkings of a fictional spy organization and made it more believable than any James Bond film made in the last ten years. It also managed to incorporate three magical action setpieces into a story and hand them to us without drawing attention to them as their own entities. It was an underrated film and it’s no wonder I saw it twice in the same two day period. In it’s sequel, the action scenes remain - but they’re twisting in the wind, left out in the cold by a useless, oafish storyline about a deadly virus, it’s cure and an ex-agent (Scott) that wants to cash in on the virus by unleashing it on Sydney and then selling the cure to those affected. (suck in the sarcasm) Oh, but Robert Towne wrote it - he wrote Chinatown. (back to reality) So? I like Thandie Newton. She’s sexy, sensual - she’s the Emmanuelle Beart character from the first film - until Tom Cruise sleeps with her (a plot point wisely excised from the original). Here he develops, not to put to fine a point on it, a personal attachment to a character he has to use - and will later have to save. This is all too familiar and all too insulting. In the first film, when he was just an agent practicing his need to get off on the thrill of the mission. In Mission : Impossible 2, Cruise is simply a hero trying to rescue the girl because he’s in love with her. Duty goes out the window. And so does that sense of satisfaction we get from not having to be perplexed when Cruise does such things as blushes and grits his teeth when she’s forced to sleep with his arch-nemesis, etc. I liked it better when he enjoyed what he did - not who he did. And nobody gets screwed more than John Woo. His balletic visions of two-gun, slow-mo shoot-em-ups (just how many dashes can you use in a sentence, Ben?), car and motorcycle tumble acts and acrobatic kung-fu are so wondrous and made me smile so hard, I wished and wished another film like Face/Off - that’s dumb at face value and knows it - could come along to take hold of these majestic head rushes, weaving them among a story worth hearing. And Tom Cruise, an actor I’ve learned to like very much in the last seven years (the cinematic triplex of The Firm, Jerry Maguire and Eyes Wide Shut), is also left at bay by this yawner. He’s good at the remarks, quirky and intelligent - and he’s given nearly none to spew in the film’s entire one hundred twenty-six minute duration. And for God’s sake, am I the only one who thinks Brendan Gleeson should have been the villain and not characterized as the dummy simply because he’s a little overweight and has that baby face? It may be very good at using it’s sources, but Mission : Impossible 2 is really meant to be nothing more than fun. Less than a year after the new low point was set in the 007 series, nothing could resemble a low-rent Bond flick more than this botched spy thriller. Trouble is, the standards are all screwy. Mission : Impossible 2 should never have to be categorized in the realm of Bond and 007 should never suck enough to have to be slapped on the wrist at all. In a world where both of these things are true, the resemblance of sed motion picture to another franchise and that other franchise being utterly worthless as of this moment : I only wish poor John Woo didn’t have to take the fall in the crossfire. (Was Robert Towne a big fan of Face/Off or what? Nearly every character in the film, at some time or other, sheds a latex mask and turns out to be someone else.) When, oh when is this summer going to produce some watchable films?

Let me tell you something funny (and sorta ironic): When writing reviews, one usually finds the hardest of critiques to get around to writing to be that which one
liked a great deal. It's human nature. You don't want to betray the film and what it meant to you because hey, you want people to know that you connected with it.
But what it really comes down to is articulating your personal analysis of an extreme. This is something I normally encounter with "great" films because there simply
exists a larger volume of quality films than of crap. On the other hand, I've put off writing this review for a couple of days because I was worried I'd miss pointing out some of the god awfulness of it's existence. So - - - "If I miss anybody, it's only because I'm tired..." - - - (Jim Kelly, Enter the Dragon). Satisfying science fiction films are nearly as rare as satisfying horror films (coincidentally they're frequently lumped together in your local video store). In the last few years, I can only remember the underrated terror of Event Horizon; the poetic use of special effects in Contact and the inspired and, in fact, awe aspiring visualization of future-noir in Dark City. On the more rancid side, springing to mind are the misfired camp of Lost in Space; the paper thin illusion of complexity that was Cube; and let's not forget last year's trilogy of bad sci-fi films : the sandpaper dry The Thirteenth Floor, the pompously un-suspenseful The Astronaut's Wife and the silly, if extraordinarily exciting The Matrix. In the past, films have had to transcend cross genre motifs to achieve success : Star Wars is a marvel of storytelling, 2001 is an epic poem that's more about evolving life than space travel - And let's stop there, at 2001, the film my older brother said would have to see it's maker dead before Mission to Mars could be released. But not for plagiarism (as he was inferring), because I would imagine Kubrick would have rolled into his grave had he ever been forced to watch a film as bad as Mission to Mars. Let's be clear right from the get-go that the half a star I gave it was out of charity. As a human being, just like sending flowers to the grave of an enemy, I felt somehow compelled to bestow something upon Mission to Mars. It was just bad enough that it needed a hug. I'd like to laundry list it's faults and other assorted offenses. I'll try not to leave any out (see quote above) : clichedom in all major categories, but especially in
the opening sequence where Don Cheadle says good-bye to his son - and it's the most insincere thing I've ever seen. That brings us to the performances. If you
wanted to see a film full of sluggish acting, A-list actors humiliating themselves and up-and-coming stars putting a nice black mark on their repertoire - welcome to
Mission to Mars. Next, the pacing. The film starts out moving at light speed, ignoring all the important points (such as take-off and clueing the audience in on things
we (ahem!) need to know to make sense of what's occurring onscreen). Then, at about the forty-five minute point - the movie stops dead in it's tracks. It's made no
sense in anything it's done so far, so when a major character suddenly bites the bullet (and they devote twenty minutes of screen time to it), the momentum comes to
a halt like a buick hitting a telephone pole. It's impossible for me to believe that anyone involved did this film for anything more than the almighty dollar just like it's
impossible for me to believe that the film takes place anytime in the future, since everyone seems to be talking as if they were in a B-rated TV movie (if that's
possible) where everything is of the "Make Rocket Go Now!" variety of technical jargon. That, and the utterly absurd establishment that the film is taking place years
from now : the car with an interior motor that's suspiciously quiet. Right. How very clever. My largest gripe (SPOILER ALERT!) is the lackluster ending - - and when I say lackluster, remember how difficult it would be for any ending to actually fail to live up to such a crappy, for lack of a better word, beginning and end. Believe me - there is nothing in the first two thirds of Mission to Mars that would suggest an ending exposing the evolution of man. None of the characters in this film deserve to know the secrets of life. We're not talking about a hokey "surprise" ending here. We're talking about an ending to another movie that mysteriously contains the same characters and which miraculously picks up where 'Mission to Mars' left off - - only it makes zero sense. Perhaps it should have taken a note from Contact, which failed to present us with a concept creation of the alien being featured in that film. The alien in Mission to Mars is not only unnecessary and less than visually stimulating, but it seems so content at playing along with these losers, especially Sinise (who for some reason thinks we're not going to laugh at the predictable way he ends up leaving Mars). I actually found myself holding my laughter in order to hear more of the ridiculous lines spouted in Mission to Mars. I didn't want to have to rewind. I might accidentally go to far and have to watch the scene where Jerry O'Connell constructs his perfect woman's DNA strand using M & M's. Or any of the scenes where Armin Mueller-Stahl uses his accent as collateral for any acting he might need to do. Or, if you're really in the market for stuff not to have to see, ever; leave the room right before Don Cheadle appears in the garden tent, bearded and half crazed (a seeming parallel to Robinson Crusoe, which he discussed (insincerely, you'll remember) with his son) wielding the sharp end of a hatchet. The worst part of that scene? That he doesn't kill and eat the entire crew before starving, himself and therefore ending the film before it gets too -

Fuck it. It gets too ridiculous before the opening credits finish rolling. Brian DePalma is officially a hack.

This is an inexplicably bad film. If you can get past the first thirty minutes - which offensively allow Rupert Everett to exploit himself and put on display the
ridiculously stereotypical way Hollywood chooses to show off its gay characters (I'd be very surprised if the writer even knew a single homosexual), then you'll find
yourself in Madonna's exploitation territory where, not so much because she parents the child in maybe two, three scenes - but because it just seems wrong for her
to have to make yet another statement about single and odd family situations and how they're just fine (which they are - but the ludicrous idea that single mothers
and gay men are going to start cropping up as parents all over the place seems, to me, a tad labored. Maybe I'm wrong). And if you've made it through that - and
I'm not talking about a film that's laughably bad, this one's point blank hard to watch - you're ready for round three, where Robert (Everett) will hire a lawyer and
attempt to sue Madonna into giving up the little boy that, let's face it, Robert raised and Abbey (Madonna) simply holding onto for spite. All this because she wants
to marry Benajamin Bratt (complete with a scene where you think he's going to break up with here but, "Surprise! Surprise! He just wants to tell her he's in love with
her!). Some particulars.  Robert seems to me to be the gay supporting character (clearly meant to be the comic relief in most films), jarringly pushed to center stage
and made to blossom into a fake, absolutely unbelievable character in a set of circumstances that becomes more and more absurd as it compounds. I also wondered
to myself if that screenwriter was really so bitter and cynical that he not only decided to attack this outrageous premise (and decided to turn it into a rebel yell for
custody battles), but also wrote a script where practically nothing new happens. So much of the content of the movie is a variation on every scene preceding it. It's a
loop. A loop of boredom. Finally, and this is more of a personal note than anything, the film flirts with the idea that Abbey and Robert have some sort of romance pending,  like that closing shot of In & Out where "It's okay to be gay - but heterosexuals are the truly happy ones" (which is kind of appalling in itself), The Next Best Thing flirts with the idea that following a drunken sexual encounter, Robert and Abbey will (ahem) be lovers. At that time the film takes its cue to include the meddling old people characters I loathe in romantic comedies. And it just spits in my already slap stinging face. I'd like to spit back, but I wouldn't know who to begin with.

The Ninth Gate, a Polanski film all around, begins with Johnny Depp playing Dean Corso, a sleazy book dealer who rips off his naive clients and makes oodles of money and a sour reputation - which he always has a sarcastic word or two to defend. You have my attention. It’s a movie that starts out fascinating, becomes out-and-out comical and ends on a slightly creep, lightly dusted note of.....of.....I don’t know what. I jotted in my notes that The Ninth Gate is not a film about Corso and it’s not a film about the Satanic text he searches for. It’s really not a film about his client, Boris Balkan (a superbly funny turn by Frank Langella), who wants to - ahem - conjure up Satan. It’s not really a film about the mysterious girl (Seigner) that continually comes to Corso like a hallucination - in his aid, though somewhat ambiguously. I’m not sure I could tell you what it’s primarily about. I’m not even sure it matters. The Ninth Gate is a film that’s not really all that silly - but is hilarious. It leaves no doubt that it was crafted to be that way and it begs no apology for itself. It’s quite aware that you’re judging it and it’s laughing at you. It’s like a nude woman walking through a crowd - never self conscious - and proud, oh so proud of what’s it poossesses. The film authentically holds it’s own pace and mood. I can see where some might find it slow - boring even. It’s utter Polanski from start to finish. His films have evolved into a series of really odd stories - told in really normal and face value ways - and observed through the muddy eyes of expectation. It’s Polanski. We expect it to be....something. And whether or not it’s what we expect - it’s always quite defiant and really qquite jarringly....normal. And that’s what I love about this film and the rest of Polanski’s recent repertoire - his films constantly surprise us by beeing less than we expect from his wild following and reputation. Strange stories told in a very straightforward manner. And
usually with a humor all their own. It’s also enjoying itself. The schmaltzy and wonderfully playful score - that’s evil - but 50’s television evil, not real eviil. The dog that seems clearly embarrassed by Corso, who washes his face in a fountain. The catfight, yes catfight, between Lena Olin and Frank Langella. Yes, catfight.  And that great line, spoken by Barbara Jefford : “Besides...my orgy days are over.” Oh, that’s just perfect. All these great, funny, perfect touches. And in the end, when the inevitable spice of the occult must present itself - it’s funny, not scary. And it’s meant to be. My question is : Why is this film so heavily criticized? It’s a comedy. It’s funny in the way Stanley Kubrick’s films are. The oddity of reality occurs to us as we’re watching something outlandish - and we have to laugh. And it’s a good, strong, hearty laugh. And we mean it. It’s the kind of laugh you look forward to savoring. Depp is perfect casting. He’s so overdue to play a down-and-out character, repeatedly ousted. He’s the perpetual vision of the guy who gets soaked by the passing car - stops to be ridiculed - and continues on, tailed placed firmly between his legs. But since he thinks he’s a badass book dealer knowitall - it’s really, really funny. It’s a stretch - and that’s why it’s great. And how could I forget Darius Khondji - the cinematographer behind Se7en and The Beach - who manages to re-define the coolness in watching Johnny Depp smoke a cigarette. And in a film where there’s alot of book examining, that Khondji finds such a goldmine in showing up his craft - the beautiful presentation of celluloid - is a feat in itself.
The Ninth Gate is a film that doesn’t take itself seriously - it’s a comedy that doesn’t take the audience seriously. And it knows it.

I have a lot of good things to say about legendary director Zhang Yimou’s latest cinematic offering. Before that - to balance the scales - allow me to showcase my biases. I love Zhang Yimou. I think he’s one of the best filmmakers working in the world today. To Live, made in 1994, is one of the best films I’ve ever seen. His quieter, but still wonderfully constructed family trilogy - Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern and The Story of Qui Ju are necessary treasures which are gloriously written. His first film, Red Sorghum boasts, literally, some of the best imagery put on film in the last twenty years. And finally, Shanghai Triad, which I discounted at first - is a brilliant period piece and one of the most suspenseful films ever to travel the language gap. In short - I went into Not One Less with the director’s entire repertoire on my mind, expecting nothing short of absolute majesty - and, given that silly buildup, was nott disappointed. Not One Less is a very different kind of film for Yimou. For one, much of it is hand-held. It straddles the fine line between narrative and the very evocation of direct cinema. It’s also a different type of film because it’s a message film - one that’s never obtrusive nor preachy. It certainly doesn’t feel like a message film - but the epilogue makes it one. And it’s not a bad thing. And it’s whimsical. It’s a real-life story, but it’s light around the edges - keeping it afloat when the really intense subject matter comes to pass. My original take on the film was that it fit the mold for an American ‘at-all-costs’ picture. I quickly refuted that type of thinking. Not One Less is genre-less. Like his last film, Yimou creates with the palette of life and defies what is on the surface - giving us a film that builds and builds with energy and beauty - and never seems to land in familiar film territory. It seems to make its own place in it’s own world. And it’s simply delightful. The movie opens with Wei Minzhi, 13, being summoned as a substitute teacher to a class of 28 while the regular teacher (Gao Enman) visits his ailing mother for one month. He instructs her not to let a single student quit the class (down 12 kids from the beginning of the school year already). What ensues is a power struggle - a stubborn journey of retrieval - and ultimate respect which defies Wei Minzhi’s age. She inevitably loses a student - a sharp but wicked young man, Zhang Huike - to a debt he must work to pay off for his own ailing mother. When Minzhi ventures to the big city to drag him back with her - the film gambles and wins on whether or not it can portray the hopelessness that overwhelms Wei Minzhi - and an appropriate vindication of sorts. It’s the kind of perfection you grill over in your head, smiling to yourself and hoping everyone in the theater has picked up on the same thing you have. Finally, when the persistent Wei Minzhi begins spending money to make things right - the movie breaks free. It becomes a woonderful excursion of self-discovery for her - and breaks down beautifully to : childhood innocence embodied, struck, discarded and regained. With strife comes results - as simple as that. Not One Less - using non-professional actors, raw compassion and a wondrous bout of dedication - is simplicity defined and easily one of the best films of the year.

Nurse Betty is a strange kind of inherently American film. The bending vortex of narrative curves it contains handle themselves as a road movie would - but
they also caress the great American fantasy driven cleverness that film scripts often have trouble handling in the delicate nature necessary. This film is no different.
The film concerns a waitress, Betty (Zelwegger), whose husband (the brilliant chameleon Aaron Eckart) is killed by two hit men who take to the road convinced
Betty was in on her husband's dirty deeds. It doesn't help her case that she's fled to Hollywood to find her knight in shining armor (a TV doctor played with oozing
pretension by Greg Kinnear). It's playful - if exaggerated and overblown - twist, is that she has had a psychologgical breakdown and is genuinely convinced that the
TV world is real and that her husband is alive and well (she's just leaving him for the doctor, you see). It's not really the premise that sours the movie as much as the writer's vain and stringy attempts to counterbalance it. Freeman and Rock (the stand-up comedian who, as an actor, is little more than a coprolaliac with a wooden face) provide the reality meant to be inter cut with Betty's odyssey, giving the audience a sense of hope that all will be resolved in our real world  - rather than Betty's fantasy world (what an anticlimactic premonition, don't you think?). Luckily, this phase is delayed as long as possible and the lovable, Dorothy-like Betty (who, by the way, is brought to life beautifully by Renee Zelwegger) is allowed to frolic about in her haze of bliss - often comical, rarely misfired - while the film ponders how it will grab the strings with it's free hand and tie them together before all interest in the screenwriter's narrow attempts to weave the hit men into this fable is lost. Gradually, the film draws its subjects nearer and nearer to each other and, as the twists bend into a soft, unstable mess - the film's final act appears in a disjointed and backward place: neither fantasy or reality. The film becomes a series of situations you'd only see in the movies (particularly an unveiled secret coming late in the film that's neither shocking nor interesting - perhaps that will dispel the rumor thaat there's a necessity for such a secret to ensure popularity and success in every dang movie that's released). If anything is salvageable from the film as a whole, it is painstakingly well directed. LaBute (whose Your Friends and Neighbors and In the Company of Men, benefited from his writing more than anything) is particularly adroit at grabbing performances out of his actors that can transcend some of the hopelessly inert and sour dialogue choices. For example, even though the subplot involving the hit men feels like were ripped straight from a high school kid's most amateurish Tarantino-notebook script doodling; LaBute seems to have instructed Freeman to carry on as if he were less a philosophizing hit man - as we've digested in American films for years - than an aging professional, eager to do the things people do when they retire, no matter what he did for a living. LaBute wisely steers the film away from a reaction to modern confusion of television and reality (you know, a "message movie", whatever that is) making the weight of the film, that is, Betty's plight, seem less like a symbolic journey and much more like a present-day fairy tale. I can just barely imagine the storybook pictures of her in her nurse's uniform, stumbling through a fictional hospital in search of doctor who, "if he were any more handsome, it would be a crime". Nurse Betty takes it's share of wrong turns and manages to come off as little more than another mediocre addition to the already mammoth list of films bearing that particuarly brand of quality this year; but at the very least, it's a diversion that's, in it's own ever confusing and often funny way, light and feathery. Though the surface appears to be a complicated, bustling chaos - it's not. More, in this case, is most certainly less. Something can always be said for entertainment that forges simplicity out of complication.

The nagging bother of a film like Onegin (pronounced in the film as Un-YAY-ghin) is that it translates in the art market much the way Arnold Schwarzenegger or Adam Sandler films do : It's merely a vehicle (in this case, a vehicle in which to display the indispensible Ralph Fiennes in yet another set of bad wigs, ornate duds
and verbose lines of dialogue). Hard to swallow a film that feels less like its own entity and more like a blueprint to be fed to first-time Masterpiece Theater directors
on how to film duels, exploit embittered sexual repression, beef up on scoffing, stage elaborate dinners...the list goes on and on. And believe it or not, Liv Tyler
doesn't embarass herself in the least - it's Martin Donovan that's a shameful wreck. His Russian soldier get-up (complete with overwraught hat, pointy sideburns and
overdecorated jacket) looks so atrocious on him and his acting is so far-fetched, that by the time his character is introduced (mid-third act or so) and we're
wondering just how many Merchant-Ivory tones can be stacked on top each other before the pile comes toppling down, the film begins to embody little more than
my introduction quip : a one-trick pony showcasing a great actor who, apparently, has little else on his acting repertoire than favors for his director sister who, by the
way, has put together a complete waste of time (even for Liv Tyler, who should on her knees thanking the Good Lord she's not cast in some sort of
Armageddon 2 or More Empire Records. Complete with Cookie's Fortune and Stealing Beauty, she's fast becoming something of a reputable actress.
Complete with The Avengers and Onegin, Ralph is slowly sliding downhill.)

God, where in the hell did the heyday of stand-up concert films disappear to? The breathless gasps of delight as the end credits finally relieved you from comic
fantasy land in the hands of Eddie Murphy (Delirious and Raw are personal treasures of mine), Red Foxx, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby.  You'll briefly calculate
that I've only named black comics - and given the one-track thematic preoccupation of The Original Kings of Comedy, Spike Lee's newest chance to show white
people what they're missing in being white (I know that's just not fair being that I love his movies and all, but - damn, nigga - you know?); I'm really not to blame for
the racial long division. First of all - when you make a stand-up concert film, try not to intercut boring sequences of backstage tomfoolery that goes nowhere and
wreaks havoc on your mufukin' momentum. Second of all - crowd reaction shots are well and good, but not when the crowd upstages your comedians (as in one
brief sequence when I was practically shushing Steve Harvey in order to correctly understand the mishmash of jibberjabber from this knuckle head in the front row).
And finally, putting your best comedian at the bottom of the order is smart - granted - but don't make the first ninety minutes too got-dam agonizing; I can't even tell
you if Cedric the Entertainer was funny - I was dozing moments into his act. And yeah, the last comedian, Bernie Mac (think a black W.C. Fields, child hating and
nearly unintelligible) was almost a hoot (course God knows why he chose to throw in a deeply ancient joke about a stuttering child); but it's the principle of the
matter. If you've got three comedians, all connected to sitcoms (and breathing the episodic, watery styling of such a medium), and you're so hell-bent with urgency to
get them on the big screen - please do my good friends the American filmgoers a personal favor - make these comics grossly more than merely intermittently funny.
When a mufuka wanna laugh, a mufuka wanna laugh! Seriously, now.

[Editor's Note to the cinematographer : When you've got a cool name like Malik Hassan Sayeed, dropping the Hassan is a childish cop-out - as is doing the
photography for a fucking concert.]

As is the norm for actors-turned-directors, they project the majority of roles they've played into the fantasy of their dream pictures - which sometimes works
(Nil By Mouth, prime example), but often does not (How many times can I put you down for watching The Postman). Peter Mullan, whose work I'm not at all familiar with (but I'm aware includes at least one film with Ken Loach, a magnificent director of the "London downer"), matches exactly whom I'd picture him to be: a gruff, thick-accented working class stiff, not unlike the Platonic form for any of the characters in Loach's films. But familiarizing myself with all of these swirling thespians and auteurs brings little to boil outside the point of similarity : far too many of the films that hail from England, Scotland and Ireland look and feel the same. Orphans certainly looks the same, and with it's droll, mismatched score (and tirelessly definitive of depression, one thing this film needs much less of) and preoccupation with the central character in the film, a dead mother - it certainly comes close enough to measuring against every other "hard luck in a row home near the land of the Catholic guilt trip" film I've been privy to view. On the other hand, though the mother's death seems only a shallow ploy to disguise an often clever riff on Scorcese's After Hours, Orphans keeps the hits coming at a decent pace, slowed only when the film decides to be about something. It's at it's very best when it's coming up with outlandish and disastrously painful situations to thrust it's three protagonists into. They are, as follows: a divorcee (Henshall), stabbed in an opening sequence and bleeding throughout the rest of the film; a college boy (Lewis) hell-bent on avenging sed stabbing; a crippled girl (Stevenson) who, confined to a wheelchair and let loose by her guardian, ends up helplessly celebrating a surprise birthday party with a family she's not at all familiar with; and finally, sed guardian (McCole), who has resolved to spend the night with his mother's coffin in the neighborhood church. The blunt of it is that they are all siblings - or, as the title would suggest in the wake of their recent loss - orphans. The film will indelibly hammeer the idea that these grown-up kids are projecting their aggression on the world or acting as if they don't have a mom. But don't be fooled. The best scenes in the film are the ingenious ones that you'd likely find in a Todd Solondz film : the college boy's crony (Gallagher) threatening a cheapskate only to find the cheapskate masturbating; an obnoxious bartender who is fond of locking his customers in his storage room gets his just desserts; and finally, the hilarious image of a man so stuck on preserving the memory of his mother, that he insists on bearing the coffin on his back sans the pallbearers. Perhaps it's that final ridiculous request, to carry a overtly grand load on one's back, that provides the only viable connection between the strange and dark episodes that befall four grief-stricken siblings the night before their mum's funeral. In the morning, just like in the rest of the film - one thing's got nothing to do with thee other.

Alright, I admit that I'm finally in the mood for an overlong, overstated event epic. And kudos to Robert Rodat for finding the niche he belongs in : anti-war
films that even the dumbest of nature's filmgoers can swallow. 'The Patriot', though guilty of nearly every cinematic cliche in the book, is still an entertaining and
rousing picture full of big, bold characters we long to see, but have all but died out. I'm speaking of course of the rebel rousers; the big tough revenge seekers and
the bruisers who swallow their pride, roll up their sleeves and kick ass. Just slightly moreso than when Emmerich had Will Smith doing it to aliens, The Patriot keeps
us on the edge of our seats with good old-fashioned bloodshed, romance and string music. This is a noble failure that, minus the gore, could easily have passed for
any of the cut-and-dried war epics of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Really, how many times can we watch one army outwit the other army (that's been winning all along, mind you), by simply having more men hidden somewhere? How many times can we hear the word "beseech"? How many times can we watch Mel Gibson hack to pieces another man for doing him some sort of unforgiveable wrong? The proof: Emmerich hides the men, Rodat cooks up goofball dialogue and Gibson has his eyes blinking from fatherhood to bloody revenge constantly. This is film with no surprises that managed to hold my attention even in the wake of it's utterly detached pace. I'm all for films like this. I'm thinking to myself, : "This is what the summer crowd deserves - mindless entertainment; a good, long story; and a buff leading man that fulfills the fatherly compassionate side and the male brutality side of a familiar character. There's a billion things that could've been done to The Patriot to make it a quality film - one that's fit for packaging in the faall and divying Oscars to - but why bother? This is, even more than ID4, methinks, the summer movie for the ages: An epic with no brain, all the right visual cues and gumption to spare.

Most of Pay it Forward is a rather noxious insult. It is an insult to the audience because, though structurally sound, it never strays from the straight and narrow
path to a crescendo of petty manipulation. It is an insult to its actors as all three lead players are better than their dialogue, their characters and, as a result, their
performances (which suffer greatly from having to strain every scene for an peak that is just unattainable). It is an insult as a screenplay because it is repetitive,
distracted and simply too dry and far-fetched to pass this subject off to us as plausible (or even remotely interesting). And it is an insult to the industry because it
seems to have little else occupying its mind than a play for duplication of past success; (with many examples: Thomas Newman's score either is or sounds
dangerously close to his score for American Beauty, Kevin Spacey has most of the same emotionally crippled ground to forage in here as in Beauty and Osment,
who seems to have been instructed to act is if still seeing dead people should have been much more naturalistic.) Trevor (Osment) gives birth to a line of thinking dictating that one person does a life affirming good deed for three people who in turn pay the favor forward to three more and so on. This is a fabulous idea - with reservations. Several people are rewarded with this system, some in need and others, like Jay Mohr, certainly not in need (he's a reporter whose car is wrecked in a hopeless hostage negotiation scene brimming an intensity that is just out of place here). The whole film revolves around whether or not this notion will come off without a hitch and whether Trevor's mom (Hunt) will end up in love with Trevor's teacher (Spacey) and whether she'll stay on the wagon and whether his father (Bon Jovi) will return and whether the homeless guy (Caveziel) he helps will stay off of dope and just how in the hell Angie Dickinson is supposed to fit into this puzzle. These six plot points should hold you over - and suggest just how crowded and unfocused Leder's film is. The film isn't guilty of leaving strands resting inconclusive as the credits roll (thank God) but it never makes any of them really worth holding a focal point. This, I think is why it comes off so bland and unable to illicit emotion. Pessimism doesn't necessarily spoil the sweetness of Trevor's deeds, though heaven help us, this is a deeply cynical film. The world these people live in isn't necessarily Shangri-La, but the film has a really clean-cut air to it that thrashes at the hands of all the strife hidden throughout. Everything feels a little too convenient. There's little room for anything to go undefined, unspecified or unaffecting. When we finally get the gist of Hunt's relationship with Trevor's natural father or when the specifics of Spacey's character defining scars are revealed, we can't help but wonder if all Pay it Forward really consists of is the nature of its subject; namely, surprises. The whole "good deed" concept is based on observing, even watching out for people to make sure they're doing okay - and if we observe an opportunity to lend them a hand, we should take it. The whole idea is as surprising to the do-gooder as it is to the do-goodee. The film behaves that way, too. Every single bit of blatant foreshadowing is presented in this method that seems inherently veiled; to be lifted out of its obscurity and defined by the film in "Surprise! It's exactly what you expected!" method. Its really somewhat patronizing to watch a film that tells us we're going to be surprised and then seems to over react when we're not in the least bit startled by it. Pay it Forward takes place in Las Vegas, a town that's been put on film too many times to recount. I can't remember it ever looking so low-key. This is valuable in making us believe that in a town so reliant on bad luck to sustain itself, there is always the chance that somewhere within can exist a type of good luck that is more of a leap of faith than a "Hail Mary" bet. There's really nothing the film can do with a trait like this - except squander it. I can't remember aa single instance when the film makes reference to the gambling industry or even hints at drawing such a parallel. This is a town that is all about luck. This is a movie that is all about good fortune. 'Spose its yet another case of "never the twain shall meet". And, though I really was in an unpleasant sort of state viewing such a riotously mediocre tear jerker (let's call a spade a spade, folks) - somewhere nestled in the nooks and craannies of Pay it Forward is a nice, domesticated shot at the horrors of alcoholism. Leave it to a film about good deeds to succeed on only one front - a front that is far from center stage. Nevertheless, Hunt works as a woman in recovery, nearly on the outs with her son and longing to have the courage to see things straight. I kept thinking to myself, "Why can't this film be about alcoholism and just grace the screen with a subplot about good deeds?" In a perfect world - a utopia (as the film suggests) - films could know their limits. Pay it Forward, a film supposedly about making the world a better place, seems pretty well satisfied with dystopia.

How this film ever came to be the most thrilling and deeply haunting film I've seen on the big screen this summer is a mystery even to myself. Somewhere in the
grumpy and obnoxious depths of my critical mind, I mustered the courage to ignore the scattered melodrama and thin character developement within. I sped past all
the exposition; all the establishment; all the boring kissy stuff. Like Twister, The Perfect Storm is a realistic film that still contains a whole bunch of formalities that
you'd only find in a film (lame dialogue, "too perfect" conditions, situations and symbolism). So why am I so forgiving? Why have I chose to allow this film to win me
over, despite such shortcomings? Why have I traded blindness for summer bliss? I've pinpointed it. The Perfect Storm is the complete and utter transcendence of a story that has no physical middle in real life (so the writer and the filmmakers have to invent it). It becomes exactly the piece of sensationalist fiction that it should. This is a film where no single moment is allowed to abate the excitement. This is a film I have to restrain myself to keep from cheering at, a film that exhausts me entirely and leaves me feeling as if I've witnessed the greatest adventure ever attempted on the high seas (underline ever). And maybe the magician's trick (ie: the special effects) seems a shallow and dishonest one. It's not. After years of abiding empty special effects fireworks shows (Independence Day comes to mind right quick), The Perfect Storm, which may seem empty in it's stunning lack of character appreciation, still manages to make these cardboard cutouts interact and create a sort of humanism that may not be entirely tolerable, but works well enough to guide us into the action. I could be bold here and draw comparisons to Hemingway and Conrad - I'll spare you (or not - I could almost feel the burn of Conrad's "Typhoon" in Mark Wahlberg's evocation of an amateur at sea or Conrad's "The Nigger of the Narcissus" in the camraderie that comes apart in the grueling work on the sea). Most of all, The Perfect Storm captures the two worlds (land and ocean) with a great deal of respect for their method of operation. Sure these men risk their lives. Peterson gives us men who want nothing more than to live with their hearts beating - until they beat out of their chest and into the salty water. Sure their families don't understand. Peterson gives us the foreign detachment of all the landlovers with the added comfort that comes with how unbelievably short-lived their appearance is onscreen. This film is about the boat and the sea. Period. It understands the rush, but doesn't need to show us that it does. It's the self-assured direction Peterson displayed in Das Boot and In the Line of Fire. He finds the swell of the story and plays it up to exponential proportions. In 'Boot' it was rushed claustrophobia; in Fire it was "beat-the-clock" to redemption. In The Perfect Storm, it's  "How big can we make these waves and how many different ways can these guys try to beat them?" And that's enough to keep me in cinematic orgasms.

[So, Tom, I guess you were right to make fun of me when I referenced Conrad in this review. Very right.]

What exactly is the sum of equal parts when we mix the methodical stratagem of limited resources from Alien, the outnumbered militaristic hunter-becomes-the-hunted-and-so-forth notion of Aliens and the value of one life versus another as time runs out on a group of moral reprehensibles from Alien
3? You get this heavily familiar yet visually interesting (hey, that's a first for a science fiction film!) "fight the bad aliens until the last man dies" dreck. While a watery action picture posing as an visually independent pissing contest between beefcake Vin Diesel and some hammerhead sharks with wings (also posing - as unbeatable wraiths) may sound like a fitting - even good - idea for David Twohy, who co-wrote The Fugitive and many other Hollywood scripts - it's not. It becomes rather obvious that you're peddling through the la-la land of a hack when every time the characters open their mouths, you want the aliens to win with an intense ferocity. You know the time is nigh when arbitrary plot rules are governed by these terrible characters, each posing as another rung on the sci-fi stereotype moussaka.
I found myself even distracted as the action was happening - how come everything has to come apart? How come we can't have a film where the stranded
human diversity factor can add up and inspire teamwork instead of the inevitable "destroy the crew from within" plot line. The strife among these thinly cast space
raiders seems forced. And why, all of the sudden, do space ship flicks have to have at least one futuristic drug addict? (Supernova, I'm looking in your direction as well). Pitch Black is not an entirely mortal wound - Diesel's overacting is really quite a blast to watch and though it seems his character is only semi-interesting, he's
always doing something nifty with his eyes or voice to make it more enticing for us to watch him risk his life (although personally, I think he should have followed his
initial plan and decimated the crew when the ship first crash-lands; anyway, that's me, the nihilist). I also wasn't necessarily offended by a great deal of the look of the
film: some interesting costume choices, several sharp filters to delineate between three different suns and, finally, a single image of the creatures, as seen through night
goggles, emerging from a crater that resembled something of a volcano - a Renaissance painting, if you will, depicting a demonic reckoning a la intergalactic, airborne
carnivores. Nevertheless, Pitch Black is so utterly reminiscent of about a dozen other movies - and that's really most of what shows onscreen. All of the touches meant to stake it apart as a separate claim from the films it is imitating are in vain. Pitch Black is shot in the dark - that misses.

Play it to the Bone - the experimental film? Huh. Odd nowadays to even see a 2 act film get made, much less a Ron Shelton
"It's-my-patriotic-duty-to-show-what-goes-on-behind-the-scenes-in-the-sports-world-and-just-maybe-sqeeze-several-metaphors-for-life-into-the-running-time-
while-i'm-at-it" pictures. Nevertheless, he manages to fire off maybe his first overlong and over trite motion picture. Play it to the Bone takes place in about twenty-four hours. Only about one of those hours is really electrifying. Shelton shares with us two characters that are good friends - and professional boxers - and tracks them from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, chronicling every inch of their mindless psycho babble while they compete for the attention of the Grace, their driver (a very bubbly, down-to-earth Lolita Davidovitch - the best performance in the film). To touch up the focus - they're Woody Harrelson and Antonio Banderas (terrific together, incidentally) and they're on their way to fight each other for fifty large and a shot and a "title shot" at the middleweight championship. They've also both been rejected by Grace. The film is experimental because it's clear that Shelton is aiming to explore the alchemy of camaraderie when it's exploited within a profession like boxing. He's interested in building a friendship and then testing it late in the film - which he does. And the boxing sequences (which involve hallucination and celebrity cameos, not necessarily in that order) are great, however predictable. Play it to the Bone has got a clear point, but too often clouds it with too much conversation and too much inclusion of over-the-top, unnecessary character acting (Lucy Liu as the nymphet given the responsibility of funding the car trip when Grace's credit card maxes out; Tom Sizemore as a Boxing promoter with no volume switch; and Robert Wagner as a Hotel Manager/ Investor/One Dimensional Male Chauvinist). But it's not a terrible film. Banderas and Harrelson take it to the notch it needs to occupy in order to pass for entertainment, and Shelton, operating just outside of his usual range of charm, seems obviously distracted by the glitter associated with boxing when he realizes that avoiding such oddities and details would make for a tighter, much more noteworthy picture. Eventually, though, what it comes down to - and what made both Bull Durham*and Tin Cup so much damn fun to watch - is that Shelton has abandoned one of his real talents : the love story. I know a director shouldn't make the same movie over and over and over again but when sed auteur has the god-given talent to make a likable romantic comedy - he should use it like he'll be dead tomorrow. Regarding friendship, Shelton is only inches from a winning film.

**[Yeah, I've never seen Bull Durham...]