One might find it hard to believe that anyone would pine for the incisive point-of-view found in Amistad, a film which luckily supplanted its white guilt/obliged emotional response with stunning courtroom antics. As I watched The Middle Passage overdraw from its seemingly endless reservoir of bland, similar imagery (made all the more muddled by a streaky slow motion used over and over and over again), I yearned for the stability of Amistad, a film whose pace could be called meandering at best. The Middle Passage, a borderline documentary film originally made in France in 1999, appears to have been redressed by HBO Films as a narrative, with the inner voice of the so-called protagonist written by prominent black author Walter Mosley (Devil in a Blue Dress) and read by the already established slave persona of Djimon Hinsou (from Amistad).  What the film fails to grasp in its loopy corridors is the feeling for these strong, virtually helpless people that make them more than the mere animals slave traders fashioned them. The idea of a dialogue less film is very intriguing unless that film features narration read to sound more like a children's book basking in the poetics of horror, occasionally shifting gears to mix with some loose attempt to give voice to a character who may or may not be thinking these things. It is a nice idea to page back to the African homeland to see where the slaves enduring the Middle Passage are from, what is their context and why their fate must be this. Some haunting visuals (none of which contain the aforementioned streaky slow motion) of the slave ship on the water and of rats stealing food from the crowded slaves in the dark, disease-ridden hold of the ship, these images look devastatingly realistic. That the film doesn't find its voice is sad; that I'm ending this review by recommending you watch Amistad instead of The Middle Passage is just plain shocking.

Made to feel so good with so few offending critical gripes, I almost can't remember what I really liked about this film. I think because it feels like a celebration of the chaos of marriage preparation, but is aimed at American audiences, but takes place in India and therefore, transcends the subject's specificity and makes it something we can't help but immerse ourselves into - that might have something to do with it. One of those damn relative movies where everything the relatives do feels relative to my relatives and I go, "Hey, it's all relatively relative after all to be related and relate to the relations whose relativeness causes the relativist, me, to realize that its all relatively relative in a relatable way".

Don't you just really hate it when movies have that hot button subject matter that requires you to feel one way or another about it and, in doing so, to construct such a perspective on the matter that you have no choice but to grab each of your friends by the arm and really,  just...share the passion? Me too. Here, taking a sorely needed opportunity to address the attitude of small town folk towards those different from them (namely homosexuals), The Laramie Project misses another opportunity to do so without resorting to grandstanding, preachiness or the sudden, uncontrollable casting of an entire fleet of well-known indie actors to do their own little version of that "arm grabbin' passion sharing" I mentioned earlier. A more terrific tribute to Matthew Shepard could not have been erected; every character in the film is (save a select few) motivated by a need to celebrate his spirit and his plight. But the larger picture reveals a genuine push to out hate crimes and their instigators. Director Moises Kaufman uses this real life reflexivity concept: theater students from NY, like the ones who wrote the film, go to Laramie, WY to interview townspeople and key players. Unfortunately, by re-envisioning it, Kaufman completely overlooks a marvelous chance to give to the varied tone of opinions surrounding this crime a clear focus bearing any real gravity whatsoever. There doesn't seem to be any beneficial reason why The Laramie Project is staged this way, (unless you're willing to take a major leap by believing it is a connection to minor character Jeremy Davies' enthusiasm for acting). Ironic that the material turns out to be so strong, which only makes us wish more and more that we were watching rough footage of interviews with real people who had real thoughts and real words to really tell us (if someone would tell me the kindliest Catholic Priest in the world was played by the actual man, I'd think about cutting it some slack). It would be harsh to intimate that The Laramie Project feels doctored for dramatic purposes, but it would also be short-sighted to believe otherwise.

I'm still half considering writing this very review, posting it and then, a week later, amending and (or) scrapping the damn thing, deciding that this very film is one "deliver the lost child to its people against a backdrop of animals herding one way or another" film too many. But I should calm down. Truth be told, I could easily have sprung that very criticism on a dozen other films in the last couple of years. Time to just sit back and thaw out, let the chips fall where they may, accept the fact that every single animated film released is going to be a rescue mission - for good (The Toy Story films) or very, very bad (Shrek). No, Ice Age actually works for me much the way Heartbreakers (of all films) worked for me: minutes into it, I am ready, set and ignoring the story line in favor of the rarely funny, but otherwise entertaining dialogue that breezes us through an otherwise proverbially fatigued tale (I've got one! Baby's Day Out by way of The Jungle Book staged in a diorama with human characters lifted from that episode of Scooby Doo with the frozen Caveman). The characters are surprisingly interesting and well-written (with the exception of Leary's Diego, who seems to flutter back and forth between two singular motives - friendly compassion and scheming malevolence - finding almost zero middle ground and sometimes, zapping back and forth between the two with such slight gradation, they seem like the same emotion). For once, I thoroughly enjoy John Leguizamo (and of course, he'd be animated). His Sid the sloth is one of those main characters who is at once witty and lovable, without resorting to an overflow of either, performing a rare balancing act wherein nearly anything he does is pleasantly satisfying. Romano carries himself in a strangely dry manner (read: bland, not the type of humor employed by nearly every British actor on the planet), a remote offshoot from his TV persona that works wonderfully. The film itself has its share of the perpetually goopy and the strangely offbeat (I defy an audience member not be at least a little impressed by the contribution of the little squirrel chasing his nut and causing, among other things, an ideal distraction), and, rarely, the inspired (the scene with the birds who desperately want to protect three melons struck me as particularly hilarious).  Trouble is, neither of them really fit in the story, which seems to wish it were doing something else. I kept wishing that Ice Age would pursue a more aimless existence, but, alas, it turns out to be almost crucially episodic to the point where the obligatory moments start to feel more and more rhythmic (in short, I could have timed just when each major plot point was going to occur and probably only have been off by a minute or two in each instance). I found it so hard to bear ill will against this film. I suspect I'll find it equally frustrating attempting to remember most of what happened in its scant eighty-one minutes by the end of the week.

This is going to sound curt – and probably a little bit caustic, but, Panic Room shares its best attributes with Jan De Bont’s 1999 film, The Haunting, the absolute definition of a movie whose art direction is allowed to drown out its very narrative. I present for your scrutiny yet another film where setting and atmosphere repeatedly upstage a long string of variations on a gimmick I will also submit works better in parts than as a whole. This gimmick, of course, is how many different ways this blithely introduced room of sheer and utter panic, introduced in the film’s opening act (it’s the penultimate presaging moment), can offset discord in David Koepp’s ho-hum home invasion caper. The intrinsic problem likely to occur in the very risky business of resting an entire film on a singular device being used to distract us from the simplicity of the story is this: sooner or later, your resolution must be addressed and, for at least a few moments, bullshitting your way through a tale using style alone becomes impossible (of course, Koepp doesn’t have a clue how to end the film, anyway – which we’ll put aside for the moment). The contrast director Fincher wants to play with comes too quickly and never reaches the pitch we’d hope for. He’s got a massive space for the baddies, a tiny space for the not so helpless women and a constant push-and-pull of quick entrances and tip toe departures. What he does manage, yet again, is to reveal the beauty in darkness. Fincher finds yet another palette for bending the murky light inside his artsy compositions. He’s the god of the kind of universal surrealism we’re all painfully familiar with; his films are like a scary room with no light switch that we have no choice but to walk through. Fincher’s repertoire reads like that of a horror director trapped in the cinema of pop culture. Which brings us to the cast. Surely the criminals are solid; Whitaker properly mature and cautious, Leto (in another slam-bang performance) amusingly off the handle and Dwight “in danger of being typecast” Yoakam, playing the rabid psychopath every movie villain trio must include. On the victim side of the thick steel doors, Foster could have been more convincing, but, on second thought, maybe not (Koepp doesn’t seem all that concerned with giving her a functional arc, probably assuming that the events of the film take place in one night’s time and how many characters could change in just a few hours anyway? Of course, that’s no help whatsoever). The challenge for Foster probably isn’t as much in creating a character as much as to evoke a standard we can easily recognize and readily accept. I sound a bit dissatisfied with the film – and I am. But for all of its stock failures, it certainly isn’t a boring film or an otherwise offensively inadequate one either. Neither a crushing disappointment or a wild success, Panic Room only seems worse than it is. Fincher’s best entry, The Game, is essentially as much of a trick as this film. The difference is, Panic Room never seems to be after anything more than shocks and thrills. While The Game is a full on engagement, this film feels like a mere simulation. (When the film “ends”, leave the theater after the fade to black – don’t stick around for the superfluous afterthought standing in for the film’s final shot).

I thought it seemed a peculiar time to re-release Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, the ultimate amalgam of touchy-feely friendship and science fiction wonder. After all, I’m not sure I can even remember a film being re-issued that was even released before my birth (though I just remembered that the second two Star Wars films make valid exceptions). Interestingly enough, I noted, after the gradual descent the cinema marketplace of family films has taken, devolving into fast-fast-fast and simple-minded (alternately and combined), a slow-to-start, incredibly heavy and, resolutely intelligent film like E.T. The Extra Terrestrial feels like it came from another planet altogether. It’s a sad thing when I have to call such a towering achievement dated due to the current state of its old neighborhood (that is, the mulitplex). The audience, ahem, that I saw it with, brought their kids (as did I) and they seemed decidedly less than content (as did mine) almost to a point where I secretly wished that the film was moving like the more modern junk food cinema, desperately hoping to secure for myself some much anticipated peace and quiet in order to reflect on just how E.T. The Extra Terrestrial was affecting me in my adult years. Eventually, I was able to block distractions out (except the nagging one next to me, whom I took to the restroom, nearly missing the Halloween set-up wherein E.T.’s glow-stick red finger touches Michael’s head, fake knife affixed, repeatedly uttering “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!”). I think my one and only keen - if roundabout - observation encapsulates the necessary plea here: Spielberg so competently grafts the domesticity of this suburban world with E.T.’s twin plights (namely, to get home and to avoid being government-napped) that it almost becomes silly not to believe that, a) Elliot’s mom wouldn’t ask certain questions (namely, why does every room in the house look as if a curious alien has romped and ransacked); b) that government agents could be thwarted by five kids with not so state of the art bicycles and, finally; c) that E.T. wouldn’t eventually, in the end, be saved by his fellow E.T.'s. Spielberg directs the film with such clarity and empathy in every scene, that even the smallest of tikes should have no trouble hoisting their (admittedly) shocked disbelief, and feeling the wonderment with the rest of us. And that final note leaves the film in such a rare place. It truly is one of the very few films of its kind; fantasy masterpieces we go out of our way to avoid finding fault in; cinema we become so engaged in, we vote not to bring hostility to the table and, in exchange, we consent to baring our emotions outright. And for everyone (I’m reasonably sure I’m not even close to being alone here), there is a different moment that brings our respectable, personal houses down. For myself, it’s when E.T. turns out to be alive in the government issued freezer-burn sarcophagus. For my wife, it’s that final farewell, when the spaceship returns to take E.T. back home. For you, it may be something entirely different. Go see it again, if for no other reason, in case someone you know (or maybe not) asks you which scene makes you whimper and snivel and blubber and cry.

[Note: Releasing films like this with new footage is never a great idea, but its especially bad for those of us who haven’t seen the film in question since we were among its target audience. I’m still a touch baffled as what’s new and what’s not – aside from the bathtub sequence (the  CGI image seen in the trailer) and the enhanced spaceship thrusters (see above). At the very least, Universal left the exceedingly dated opening titles alone (a mark in itself that E.T. played in a different time – no family film in recent years has unleashed its above the line credits over black with only music to guide them.]

Falls somewhere between a being a horrendous musical where every number is identical, a hypothetical television sitcom (where, I submit, the same thing would happen to the same characters every week) and a variety show (one which seems too unfocused and thin to warrant the label “sketch comedy”). To say The Happiness of the Katakuris is off the wall would simply seem too much like I was giving it a shy, backdoor credit (as "off the wall" tends to imply that, at the very least, the intriguing act of defying convention is taking place). Don’t read this as a plus, my friends. This film is so preposterously unwatchable, it barely fuses moment together with moment, often bungling moments that could’ve easily flowed into each other by slapping uninspired randomness between them (examples include: arbitrary, humorless claymation, dancing blue corpses, a volcano, cut rate slapstick and mock profundity). A great deal of the muddied visual landscape depends on how far Miike is willing to go in order to make sure we leave the theater with a sense of family togetherness. If only the Katakuris could engage in one activity that didn’t seem hopelessly staged to garner laughs – evident from the startling number of takes which feel more like outtakes (which, themselves, come in three flavors: scenes which end at what feels like the middle of a scene through endless laughter and face covering, unintentional pauses and dialogue that feels like it was meant to be improvised but, instead, was just plain rattled off, indifferent to things like meaning or interest). I assume I’ve conveyed the notion, by now, that The Happiness of the Katakuris is a terminally repetitive cinematic blah. I’m still not satisfied, though. Let me try to make it even more clear for you. Our audience was told, prior to the screening, that an audience sitting approximately where we were sitting, at roughly the same time the previous evening, knowing nearly as much as we did of the film (that is, zilch), had hooted and hollered through that screening, enjoying themselves a great deal and perhaps - - - all falling in love together (at any rate). Apparently accepting this notion as a challenge, my audience starting laughing – loudly – right off the bat, regardless of the incredible lack of anything remotely funny occurring on screen. This went on, I’m sad to say, for the rest of the screening. Certain gigglers made such outrageous sounds while laughing, that I began to hear other audience members chuckling at the gigglers (and their strange noises). I tell you this story not to share my pain or, in any way, validate my own self-pity (after all, I paid something like nine bucks to see this damn thing), but, instead, to share my disgust. It seems we as filmgoers are so starved for actual comedy, we can, in essence, simulate comedy at will. We know what’s supposed to funny; we simply decide whether or not to laugh. This ghastly display of controlled laughter caused the few slightly rousing moments in the film to quickly disappear from memory. By the end, Miike’s film was so agonizing, I had considered docking it a letter grade per shot. About the time I considered this abnormal and (admittedly) unprincipled maneuver, the film ended. See grade above.

Let me preface any and all comments made concerning Taking Sides with the knowledge that I openly find Ronald Harwood’s play to be mediocre at best. Most of its central themes, as I found them, were developed in such a hit-em'-over-the-head-then-drill-some-more manner, they left little room for what is, too often, a history lesson underlined with fictional punch, (or was that a good thing that they left little room for yet another history lesson?). The stage play seemed more like a couple of Punch and Judy puppets regaling us with WWII from first to last bullet fired – with a story stuck inside to bookend (it really ought to be vice versa, am I right? Stick with me, now). It was with a hefty restraint that I approached Istvan Szabo’s adaptation of said material.  Color me stupefied then, as I find that this film is quite possibly the most engrossing and fiercely passionate version of the play one could hope for. Harwood (who wrote the screenplay as well) leaves all the blunt, unnecessarily overused historical devices where they belong – in the background. Bringing the drama front and center, he doesn’t just cut the fat off of his baby; he takes the time to replace it with something of interest – better than its source work. Szabo, in turn, culls performances from his cast that are so forcefully animate (bordering on a nice sort of boorishness), he almost makes up for at least one of those grueling three hours of his inappropriately titled 2000 film, Sunshine. Keitel all but erases the main character, Major Steve Arnold, as written in the play, where he feels as if penned by a foreigner who only knows of Americans based only upon television stereotypes). Big bad Harv replaces Major Steve with a character who seems genuinely flawed from the get-go, becomes more and more ferocious and, eventually, argues himself into the inevitable favor of the audience (trust me, it’s a feat). Skarsgard matches him step by step, giving his first performance since 1996’s Breaking the Waves that is actually discernable from the myriad supporting roles in what seemed like every other American film released in the last five years. His absolute devastation is so patently visible on both the inside and outside, we’re left absolutely stunned when he begins to fight for this personal desolation, hoping to regain a portion of what is, essentially, a worthless, guilt-ridden existence. Semi fresh from Run Lola Run, Moritz Bleibtreu brings more maturity to Lt. David Wills, a character that was originally written as the figurehead for wet-behind-the-ears naivete. Harwood tacks on a light romance between Wills and secretary Emmi Straub (Birgit Minichmayr), which doesn’t stunt the film as I would have expected it to, (although, to its credit, the play was smart enough not to heap a love story on an already shaky juggling act). The romance doesn’t necessarily improve the main scenario, but it doesn't call attention to itself in a distracting way, either (trust me, it's another feat). Harwood doesn’t merely tack on the subplots, he moves a great deal of the action discussed in Arnold’s office into the visual realm, which works wonders (so often single setting stage plays are transplanted awkwardly into an unconvincing too few locales). Finally, an exclusion I hesitated to mention earlier (which is, in fact, not the omission of Arnold’s knack for total recall, which seems more like an acting choice than anything else): Helmut Rode’s nazi salute. The script gives so much weight to so many things the play was content to leave to interpretation, but it blows right past the powerhouse moment when the despicable second violinist stands up and does the salute - - - pitch perfectly. The suggestion of a sleeping beast, wrestling with chained pride and confused shame is all but lost in the character. He does the salute, but Szabo treats it as a low-key moment. What makes Taking Sides so skillful is that he chooses not to make quiet nearly every other moment in the film.

The hush with which Japanese auteurs address any sort of disarray or chaos is beautiful because it is often ironically deafening (at least, vis-à-vis the attempt at such an approach by any American film you can name). I can rattle off directors, modern and classic, whose films make short work of huge themes by banishing them to the silent treatment (examples would include Hirokazu Kore-eda, Takeshi Kitano, Yasujiro Ozu and even selected Kurosawa). With the disclaimer that I haven’t seen The Eel, Dr. Akagi or Black Rain, the most recognizable titles – in America - attributed to Shohei Imamura, I’ll still venture a guess that, in none of these films, does Imamura take as wrongheaded an
approach to material so unnecessarily silly as in Warm Water Under a Red Bridge. The film concerns the ever handy Character Who Has Lost Everything (Imamura staple Koji Yakusho, spectacularly wasted in this film), who journeys to a small, seaside town in search of a golden Buddha left behind by a curmudgeon/philosopher he once knew (before he, um, died). Yakusho’s search leads him to the title viaduct, and to the house nearby occupied by a Woman With a Really Quirky (read: sexual) Condition (Misha Shimizu, so inert it hurts – which rhymes) and her senile mother who endlessly writes fortunes on little slips of paper. Shimizu’s idiosyncrasy is a baffling one – not my cup of tea, but maybe yours – wherein she endures a massive buildup of water in her system and can only let it out while practicing a vice (limited to either shoplifting or sport fucking). What gives the film a sense of disparate hopelessness is the way it instills such a anticipatory yearning in audience members and not only flat-out refuses to satisfy our longing for one single thing to connect, but it continues to introduce new subplots and characters with what seems like reckless abandon. Every one of the twists Imamura feeds us, even if he were to settle any of them, would undoubtedly still feel like exhausted randomness; the film pretends outright to be about Yakusho’s search and, instead of changing what its about for reasons of epiphany, it supplements actual direction with aimlessness. This senseless about face feels like a vain attempt to jump start the film. It doesn’t help that Imamura hasn’t given his characters enough substance to become anything more than pawns, swirling about in his vacuous narrative. I can’t think of a single one of these goofy dreamers who undergoes any kind of meaningful change by the last reel. Meaning, instead, is attempted through imagery (water appears in one form or another in nearly every shot), which is an enormous failure. Eventually, we’re left to wonder if water is really the necessary thematic keystone for this film (bridges would be more fitting) or if it were chosen merely because it is instrumental in so many of the film’s central elements (there is a difference, you know). Warm Water Under a Red Bridge appears to have been engineered to seem deeper than it actually is and, by the time these characters are trading (what are meant to be) genuinely tortured declarations of love, the film seems to be poking itself in the ribs, echoing my own sentiments (as in “Get a load of this, it’s so ridiculous it’s almost funny”). Then comes The Big Finish, steeped in terminally goofy magic realism, at which point I know for sure that the film was taking itself far too seriously. Sometimes a soft resonance doesn’t dignify what turns out to be complete and utter tedium.

Daughter From Danang commences simply enough, dolling out the facts of Operation: Baby Lift, a government funded final attempt to vindicate and gain support for the already smoldered war in Vietnam. The details of this operation are grim – and almost unbelievable: two thousand Ameresian children – some orphans, some not - are to be taken from their homes in Vietnam for their own good, and transplanted to families here in the US of A. Before the story of one such child’s reunion and the subsequent emotional roller coaster associated with said reunion even begins to unfold, Daughter From Danang has already established an engaging binary quagmire: will these kids have opportunities abroad or are they being ripped from their families under the pretense of democracy? When the protagonist, Heidi, does finally make it to her birthplace, the ensuing event is effortlessly beautiful for several extremely obvious reasons. What is not so obvious at this point, is just how much bottled pain is lurking and how strangely similar Heidi is to her birth mother – to a fault (in one scene, they both pretend to forgive each other with the same reserved smugness). The filmmakers are careful, never skulking about the frames, sticking their noses where they only kinda sorta belong. In fact, it may be one of the most objective documentaries I’ve ever seen (a hyperbolic statement I base on the strength of its ability to convince us to forget the presence of the camera and all the absurd baggage it tends to carry with it). Consequently, as the film presents both of Heidi’s worlds, the layers begin to peel so smoothly, we almost don’t feel the film shrinking our comfort zone, thrusting us into life at its most intense and becoming exponentially, emotionally complex. It is a testament to the film how johnny-on-the-spot the filmmakers are, transforming the mere luck of such a powerful familial confrontation into such a relevant revelation about culture and identity. Like other documentaries which boast a thoroughly impartial set of arguments (see also the superb 1996’s Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills), the filmmakers seem to be trapping us into creating a logical conclusion while simultaneously doubting ourselves to the last; (the point being that if we reflect long enough, we’re bound to realize that there is no real conclusion, merely a dominant majority of feelings). The last third of Daughter From Danang - the film’s anti-denouement if you will - is so completely absorbing, so intellectually challenging, so universal, so didactic and so overwhelming, we begin feeling thankful that it won’t affect us directly if we aren’t able to sort it all out.

The events of this takes-place-in-one-day film (already highly suspect) all surround an incident whose catalyst (a significant red folder), when not being overextended by process of extreme emphasis (“This File is important! Get The File! If it’s not found – jail time! You’re fired if That File isn’t at the right place at the right time! That File is my life! We could all get in trouble if That File isn’t recovered!” And so forth), acts as what seems, at times, like the sole piece of evidence that Ben Affleck’s terminally confidant lawyer character ever did anything remotely wrong since birth. Portrayed as a victimized saint (all he ever did was That One Bad Thing Involving A Red File), the film seems more interested in the possibility that Affleck’s heinous actions can be erased simply if
he is proved to be a Nice Guy (i.e., but telling off everybody who isn’t expressly portrayed as a Nice Guy, including, at first, Samuel L. Jackson). The other trick director Roger Michell (of Notting Hill fame) attempts to pull off, is making the source of Affleck’s wrongdoing affect the admittedly jaded Samuel L. Jackson (a recently sober/separated father or two) in a similar way, all but forcing him to turn his right to might and back again in order to screw Affleck for a traffic accident both were involved in; a traffic accident which made Jackson late for his custody hearing and therefore, cost him said custody (it's more complicated than this, but you get the picture). As the day goes on, a number of gotcha! incidents occur – all of which are believable at best, but, marginally, uninteresting and usually uninspired (particularly the one where Affleck’s front tire doesn’t become dislodged until Jackson passes him in a cab, twirling the tire iron he used to loosen the bolts). It seems as if both parties repeatedly decide not to taunt each other – then completely abandon their do-good ways for a more sporting, more vicious series of revenge moves (and so on and so forth.) By the time we come around full circle, the subtext of doing the “right thing” has been thoroughly nudged below what plays like a series of grave practical jokes; a back-and-forth, more specific version of Michael Douglas’ vigilance in Falling Down. That Changing Lanes aspires to ply a positive message is admirable. That the resolution and clarity of the film’s message is wrapped up with a bow and served at the end with almost no connection to the day’s events is contemptible; instead of learning a lesson from their childish shenanigans, Affleck and Jackson seem to find their solace through pure exhaustion. (And by that, I mean that they are worn out – tired; not that they’ve exhausted every mean-spirited option and if you can’t beat em’ join em’ and all you need is love or something like that. Not what I was saying at all.) Affleck, who seems to be playing an annoyingly similar character to the one he played in Bounce (same character arc and everything), doesn’t offer us anything new from his less than substantial range. Instead, he flits around in the same anybody-with-half-a-lick-of-talent-could’ve-played-this-role enthusiasm. Samuel L. Jackson, an actor, seems his usually stranded self – offering what amounts to, as usual, a superb performance in a moderately bad film. The massive supply of supporting characters, none of whom seem to play a properly vital role in the proceedings, come at us like cameos: Sydney Pollack as Affleck’s semi-oily boss, Amanda Peet as Affleck’s semi-oily wife, Dylan Baker as a semi-oily “fix-it” guy (he erases your credit and so forth), William Hurt as Jackson’s speech-prone sponsor and Matt Malloy as Jackson’s mousy loan officer. Then I go back to the title, which has about eight meanings – all of them smirk-worthy, none of them worth thinking about for more than a second or two. As the film finds the main characters in the same lane they’ve likely occupied for the last several years, only veering into new territory mid third act, a better title may have been Cut Off (or Last Second Merge). Either way, they’ve taken the wrong exit.

Odd to sidestep my reasoning for even seeing this film in the theater (I must admit, it was Charlie Kaufman’s name on the script) so early as the first sentence in this review, but…here goes. Tim Robbins, I’ve noticed, watching him for the first time since his candid, indulgent (and forgivably over-the-top) performance in High Fidelity, that this great, great actor has left me, dare I say, cold. The lack of sincerity in his performances (which I may or may not be inventing) – stems from his rabidly vocal acceptance of the one-for-them, one-for-me program Hollywood is currently offering nearly everyone, it seems – has become borderline ribald; here, I’m not even sure into which category this film would fit (though I’ll divulge my opinion if you indulge me this review). Robbins, of course, isn’t the only thing I found irritating about Michael Gondry’s vacillating, decidedly one-note film, (that I’d almost categorize as a film essay, if not for the incessant narrative, which pushed even myself to the limits of realistic tolerance). The principle characters add up like so: Robbins playing a neurotic scientist, obsessed with table manners; Arquette “playing” (I still don’t actually consider her an actress) a novelist with a body hair problem to rival the Sasquatch; and Ifans, perhaps the most interesting of the bunch, playing a man who thinks he’s an ape. The scenario adds up thus: Robbins, dating Arquette (but ignorant to her little quirk), is trying to reprogram Ifans into a society man while simultaneously teaching little white mice table manners (to compensate for the table manners he was forced to obey as a child). Sounds like a doozy. Unfortunately, where Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich and the forthcoming Adaptation allow their wacky premises to unfold with an uncharacteristic straight face, Human Nature, instead, plays everything up as if it were the sensational material it appears to be, which, miraculously, renders everything intensely ordinary. Gondry clearly isn’t as concise a director as Spike Jonze (take a look at the bands they chose to outline: Gondry did Bjork videos, which are all visually ecstatic but rarely coherent while Jonze did Beastie Boys videos, which don't just play like mini movies, they all seem to have a complementary style that fits like a glove). There are some truly great moments in the film: Tim Robbins dinner table bouts with his parents’ adopted son all ring quite hilarious and Rhys Ifans deadpan Senate hearing is first rate. Arquette seems to be stuck in a world where she thinks she’s terminally cute, but in fact, looks as if she’s tapping some strange little girl’s ghost via some sort of cinematic séance. In this film, Robbins seems so decidedly interested in playing the part but never actually interesting in the part and, inevitably, tips the scales in the wrong direction (alright, I believe it to be a first for him: an unprofitable throwaway he probably assumed would sport quality of the top drawer variety). Instead an easy laugh, which would likely amount to a forgive-and-forget matter, Human Nature turns into a good idea gone horribly, spectacularly mediocre. What could possibly be worse than that?

A playwright, successful in the past, is simultaneously attempting to survive his wife’s loudly ticking biological clock, an identity crisis and a bout of writer’s block complete with late night walks, a visit to the proctologist and a disastrous party sequence. Oh, and he finds himself, gradually (by which I mean, through a single montage) embracing his role as a father figure to his single neighbor’s handicapped daughter, and… let me guess, you’ve heard something similar before?

[Still, nice to see Branagh in a somewhat down-to-earth role, not stuck in an antiquated period or straining an obviously far fetched accent (as in Wild Wild West or The Gingerbread Man), but credibly living in the present, delightfully acid-tongued, actually choosing to participate in a film which contains a scene where he’s required to be on all fours, screaming lines like, “God, you made me ejaculate, you bastard!”. But then I think of the L.A. traffic jokes (groan), a Petula Clark sing-along (wretch) and, dear God, that agonizingly predictable, sappy to the last, “conclusion”….]