BEING JOHN MALKOVICH: Some readers of this newsletter have told me that my taste in movies runs towards the offbeat and the “different.” I agree, although I would argue that most of the movies listed on my top ten list are widely popular, and would appear on the favorite lists of many other people. In any event, I was ready to like Being John Malkovich, because it has such a wonderfully eccentric premise. It’s about two office workers stuck at dead-end jobs (John Cusack and Catherine Keener) who discover a hidden portal behind a filing cabinet that gives everyone entering it fifteen minutes inside the head and the consciousness of the famous character actor John Malkovich (who plays himself, and is clearly a really good sport who doesn’t take himself with complete seriousness). The plot thickens with plans to make this into a business, and with the involvement of Cusack’s wife (Cameron Diaz) in a more-complicated-than-usual love triangle. Yes, it is a strange plot, but it works, because the actors and the script believe so wholeheartedly in the whole concept, and work hard to bring the audience along. It also helps that the characters are for the most part interesting and well-acted; Cusack, in particular, is impressive as a talented puppeteer who can’t quite find his audience. The trouble is that a quirky, fun movie like this would work so much better with characters who were not only interesting, but also likable, and the main ones just aren’t up to this task. Keener’s character, in particular, is a tiresome, mean brat, and is therefore just not someone with whom I want to spend two hours (and it’s hard to imagine that Cusack’s and Diaz’s characters would have such intense feelings for her, something that weakens the plot as a whole). It’s interesting to note that the plays of Samuel Beckett, which are somewhat similar to this film, almost always have characters to whom I find it easy to relate, which keeps those plays grounded and involving in a way that this movie isn’t. The ending, which is a strange combination of utter, shoulder-shrugging incomprehensibility and unpleasant creepiness, doesn’t help things at all. While this isn’t the worst movie I’ve seen by any means, it’s still missable. RATING: 5.

TALK TO ME: For years, talk show host Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene and his personal style dominated talk radio in Washington, DC, and Greene was considered an important voice for African Americans in the nation’s capital. Greene’s finest hour, without a doubt, was his broadcast during the riots that devastated large parts of the city after Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, and his calming words to his distraught neighbors. The Greene biopic Talk to Me gives us an in-depth tour of Greene’s adult life, showing him to be a more complicated and complex man than his radio persona sometimes implied. For one thing, it was actually in prison that Greene honed both his interest in radio (he was a D. J. on the inmate radio station) and his ability for glib talk; for another, he had performance anxiety that troubled him in more than one area in life, and belied the streetwise confidence that was such an important part of his image. The filmmakers use a supporting lead, a black radio executive who discovers Greene (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and who is also not all that he seems, as an audience character and foil for Greene; the device works well, and functions similarly to Danny Devito’s character in Man On the Moon, which I reviewed two years ago. Taraji Henson, who plays Greene’s longtime wife, and Martin Sheen, as the station manager who has to challenge himself to put up with the Greenes, both make important contributions. The most important role, of course, is Greene himself, and Don Cheadle does his usual fantastic job bringing the character to life by totally immersing himself in the role; see this and then see Hotel Rwanda or Boogie Nights to get an idea of how well Cheadle adapts himself to very different characters. (Cheadle seems somewhat like Spencer Tracy to me, in the sense that both buried themselves so deeply in characters that no two roles of theirs seem much alike, at least at first.) The riot sequence, in particular, is a powerful climax and a tour de force for Cheadle. The only major problem I had with the movie was that it didn’t explore what must have been a major tension for Greene. His street credibility was his main selling point, but there must have been real tension between that and his peaceful words during the worst of the riot (and, more generally, his work at a successful Washington radio station), which must have led to accusations that he was working for “the man,” accusations that surely would have cut Greene to the quick. Indeed, this tension is important to Ejiofor’s character, but we never find out how it affected Greene himself. RATING: 8.

JESUS CAMP: I’ve helped out with the vacation bible school at my church in the summer, and the message that that kind of school usually puts out is inoffensive and apolitical; the kids learn that Jesus loves them, that he died for them, and so on. Suffice it to say that the school depicted in Jesus Camp, a camp for children in rural South Dakota, isn’t your mother’s vacation bible school. Becky Fischer, the head of the camp, and her associates shout at the kids until they break down and tearfully admit what sinners they are, then turn them not merely into fearful Christians, but into right-wing political activists. In a much-talked-about (and creepy) scene, the children pray and give homage to a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush much like the ones that tourists pay to be photographed with on the mall in Washington. (By the way, the homage-to-the-cutout thing is an act that, depending on your theology, might be considered idolatrous). In a less-talked-about but just-as-important scene, the teachers pass out little plastic models of fetuses and teach the kids how to be fanatical anti-abortion advocates. Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady aren’t from the Michael Moore school of documentary-making; they don’t inject themselves into the proceedings, or try to lighten them up with humor (something that might have made the movie more fun to watch, although it might also have limited the directors’ access to their subjects). Instead, they pretty much sit back and let the events they’re filming speak for themselves, although the (over) dramatic music makes it clear how they feel about what we’re seeing. Technically, except for the music and some scenes that should have been allowed to play out longer, the movie is very well-done. This makes it more interesting to talk about the social/political implications of the film than to talk about how good or bad it is. The most provocative question the movie raises is this: by sending them to a camp like this one, are these kids’ parents abusing them? One could argue, of course, that every parent in the whole world has some kind of value that they want their children to share with them, and that this is just as true of secular, liberal parents as it is of Christian conservatives. Indeed, there are values being taught in the film that are hard for anyone of any political stripe to object to; when one young girl says she has no interest in Britney Spears, one has to give her strict parents credit for something. The trouble is that the movie’s subjects move on quickly to less agreeable stances; the Pledge of Allegiance to the Christian States of America that she and her siblings recite a few minutes later is disconcerting (and ironically a bit unpatriotic), and when the kids discourse at length about the evils of (among other things) Harry Potter, it all gets a bit hard to take. Is it so wrong, I would ask Fischer, for children to start off learning that they’re loved and good, and that there might be more to religious life than right-wing social activism? Might that be just as likely to make them into well-behaved, personable adults? Maybe your mother’s vacation Bible school isn’t such a bad place to be, after all. RATING: 8.