A slow, moody, bloated episode of The X-Files (when it was good, that is); an American horror film/thriller taking exciting risks. A heap of twists in the third act, inexplicably (they don't come smooth exactly), give the movie a sense of logic sorely needed to leave an audience wondering if they should be rooting for lunkhead single father Bill Paxton, who kills cruel people based upon strange angelic visions, or, if we should be damning him for the way he warps the minds of his two boys. Truth be told, an American audience (at this stage in the recent Cinematic Morality Undercurrent anyhow) is likely to ignore the nagging feeling that Paxton may stand for the last angry man or a precursor to the horrors of the Book of Revelations simply because he spends so much of the movie snapping people's heads open with an axe as his children look on in awe. Nevertheless, the film's center, when Paxton is methodically killing people (little else occurs onscreen for these twenty minutes) is so unbearable, I began to wonder if perhaps I was reacting to the grimness of Paxton's violent campaign, or, if I were really growing tired of having it drilled into my head that this guy is going to be interested in going all the way with this. What a revelation when he decides to betray the angelic orders, instead (and here's the risky part), forcing his son (O'Leary) to build a dungeon Paxton plans to keep him the boy in until he has his own vision - or dies trying. This is a draining, often extremely unsettling motion picture we often forget is being told in retrospect by a significantly less interesting perspective that we'd hoped (the present day scenes with McGonaughey and Boothe don't play nearly as potently as the flashbacks do - which tones the immediacy down, selling short the weighty shocks it has in store). But never mind that. Paxton the director has a magnificent eye for detail and keeps the horrific, 'coming-of-age in 1979' religious fanatic tone properly depleted with a underdeveloped looking coat of brown paint (everything rests under what looks like a decade of dust). The actor's performance is, more or less, him, continually flipping back and forth the recognizable Bill Paxton switch from pleasant, helpful father to axe wielding psychopath until he starts to look like a human strobe light (he's mad, he's happy, he's mad, he's happy, he's insane, he's gleeful, and so on...). But for his effort, he creates an unbelievably unpredictable, extremely edgy character we never feel quite comfortable with, which turns out to be an understatement as the film progresses and we start to hope he'll be in less scenes because we can't tolerate his menacing presence (that description alone sounds like an achievement, doesn't it?). If nothing else, Frailty calls to mind The Night of the Hunter (religious nut bothering already disturbed children).

I hate to make Happenstance the scapegoat for being one exploration of fate too many, but …I can’t think of another way to end that sentence. Sure to elicit constant comparison with another, vastly superior, thematically similar Audrey Tatou movie, I never felt as if Happenstance was taking me any place interesting - just complicated. There's too much visible legwork - emphasis and reemphasis – in its constructed connection for it to flow smoothly (i.e. – every character does some tiny, seemingly insignificant thing that winds up changing something comparatively larger for another character). These denizens of a relatively less beatific Paris seem to be occupying far too much time on screen sometimes and far too little at other times (read: there couldn't possibly be symmetry or structural consistency, as it wouldn't serve the many simple coils of chance). I was never exactly sure who was supposed to be a main character and who was supposed to be an out-and-out device (a question I promptly abandoned upon realization that most of the stories were rather arid and lackluster anyway). Meant to act as catalyst for the weaving plot strings, writer director Firode submits characters as familiar as they are uninspired: the cheating husband, the disappointed room mate, the down on her luck sales girl and the owner of a failing restaurant. They all occupy tales which are nothing but mild, snooze inducing misadventures that end abruptly, resolve themselves obviously, and remain unsatisfying. Happenstance isn't bad, per se. It is, however, infuriatingly bland.

From the yellowing, back pocket, canned comic dialogue to the whizzing pace and exaggerated character quirks, to the comic book art inspired cinematography/CGI, to the superlative ensemble characterization, the alternately sugar sweet and surprisingly intelligent Spider-Man comes the closest to being that adaptation that holds the previous medium front and center rather than just out of reach. Even the story construction, which is your classic first-in-a-series, never feels stale or familiar. The central success is the loyalty it poses to its source material (that is, the comic books themselves, not "The Amazing Spider-Man"). Instead of being a departure, instead of declaring itself a new version of the existing phenomenon (and all of the contending and maintaining that goes along with that route), Spider-Man primarily shuns what others have done. For its effort, it doesn’t feel like any of the recent, mediocre shots at Superherodom (the obvious example being X-Men, the not-so-obvious being Spawn). Peter Parker consistently elicits laughter and sympathy, frequently at the same time. As played by a spot-on Tobey Maguire, always terrific (helped by being cast so well so often), you scarcely question him. He’s the rare hero we root for without thought. (And perhaps one of the first that I consciously wanted to be). The villain is Green Goblin (formerly Norman Osbourne), played by Willem DeFoe, an actor whom my wife promptly took the liberty of pointing out, looks a great deal like a goblin anyway (his metal-plated tiki-mask costume is getting a great deal of much deserved backlash from many nerdy - as well as non-nerdy - sources). Here, DeFoe gets to slink around a stained-wood mansion talking to his alter ego in mirrors, laughing maniacally, and, in some great, weighty scenes, he carries on duplicitous talks with the unsuspecting Parker, whom he fancies a surrogate son, unbeknownest that Parker's alter ego is Osbourne's greatest foe). DeFoe is absolutely ideal here, as if the casting agents had used C. Montgomery Burns’ machine, which, after an Ether delirium, retrieves possible matches for humans and hallucinated cartoon characters. Also superbly on the nail are Cliff Robertson and Rosemary Harris as Uncle Ben and Aunt May, who spout comic book-esque expository dialogue replete with beautiful strings of homespun wisdom (pun intended) and fragmented observations from a nearly converse generation vis a vis that of the troubled Parker.  James Franco (as the brooding Harry) and Kirsten Dunst (as the perpetually jovial Mary Jane), are each marvelously sculpted to complement Maguire, both surprisingly divergent of past performances (Dunst's bubblieness seems to be a pleasant extension of her do-no-wrong girl next door; Franco simply plays a character that doesn't remind you that he's the spitting image of James Dean). Lest I forget the character actor J.K. Simmons, whose J. Jonah Jameson, though it may remind you of Seinfeld’s send-up of George Steinbrenner, is so hilariously set to cool o’clock (His Girl Friday-standard time), he masterfully steals the three scenes he’s in. Easily Sam Raimi’s best film (and, as a sidenote, the best Summer Blockbuster Koepp has penned - #6 if you count Snake Eyes, which I do – since 1993’s Jurassic Park); Spider-man is a hoot from start to finish with action setpieces (save the inevitably plain Final Confrontation) as entertaining as Parker’s quieter exploits – from the pubescent note as he experiments with his new powers to an unflappable two-places-at-once schtick. Rivals 1990's Dick Tracy as the best comic book film brought to screen intact with respect to its origins. This one was a big surprise.

In Y Tu Mama Tambien (a title which sounds like it should be followed by "comma, motherfucker" - or Spanish equivalent), Alfonso Cuaron* invests such an air of universality in a tale of two miscreant adolescents traveling with the attractive, outgoing wife of one of their cousins. It answers for me, to a significant level of satisfaction, what exactly went on as the rich, cool kids I used to know grew up (though, to be fair to myself, I was just as content having forgotten the question and, therefore, that it craved an answer). Turns out, according to Cuaron, these hip lotharios went through pretty much the same thing I did - without the sex-filled road trip from Mexico City to a paradisiacal beach called "Heaven's Mouth", that is. Nevertheless, a great deal of wonder and majesty (commandeered primarily through cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's daydream photography - DV-esque graininess notwithstanding), quashes the notion that the world we're watching is at times too much of a fantasy to suggest that these characters are having any kind of valuable learning experience. Lubezki gives Y Tu Mama Tambien a handheld rhythm like the rocking of a boat on a calm day, making it startlingly easy to swallow - despite all the turmoil of sexual longing, looming sorrow and artsy potty mouthin'.  The two teenage boys seem hell bent - almost too hell bent - on becoming men, despite the fact that they really oughta be experiencing this self-journey of the birds (and subsequently, the bees) unconsciously. The last ringing bell comes in the closing ten minutes, when, like I mentioned to my friend Ed, the film becomes almost terminally, overbearingly elegiac; I mean, it was a terrific piece of art and all - but damn it if I didn't feel so fucking downtrodden after viewing it that I wanted to go home and sleep. Still haven't decided whether or not I'm blaming or praising the film for that effectively blunt mood swing. Til then, the minus stays.

[* - Turns out, even though Cuaron is back in his native land, I actually find him more appealing in Hollywood - at least the green sheen of the two films he made there (the atrocious Great Expectations and the superb A Little Princess) seems to survive the journey from conception to execution. Don't know who made Y Tu Mama Tambien look so darn grainy (albeit, the actual framing survives and how). If it were Lubezki - who can even make horribly substandard fare like Hearts in Atlantis and Meet Joe Black look gorgeous - it would be his first misstep to date (My two faves of his, case you were or weren't curious, are Sleepy Hollow and Ali). Up next: he'll be shooting Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat for former art director/production designer turned director Bo Welch. ]

A staggeringly clear vision, the kind of imaginative consistency that comes only from Lucas and remains perhaps the only vision unclouded by the interest of his audience. Not exactly a coincidence - some of the big dogs at Studios A-Z might want to perk up their ears at this technique. Is it just me or does this movie actually resonate more deeply in your memory than when you're actually experiencing it (and that's a wild feat because I was giddily thrilled from the first moment to the last).
 

A little less Disney, a little more movie might be nice. Can't exactly champion a film that, had it ended at the one hour mark would have bourne almost certainly the same lackluster result as it does with the subsequent thirty minutes tacked the fuck on. Nevertheless, it is harmless and, in this milieu, harmless feels obviously appropriate. (This is not to say that Cuba Gooding, Jr. isn't still carrying on like he's lost in those blistering thirty seconds of "King of the World" time he was terribly fortunate to find bestowed upon him at the Academy Awards in March of 1997). And, is it just me, or was this movie advertisted with the pretense that the title K-9's would be yapping throughout the whole film? Can't decide if it's actually a blessing or a tragedy that they only speak during a brief dream sequence. Should I even have to make decisions like that?

Not once in its suprisingly scant but sluggish running time does an imaginative collage like Metropolis seem to live up to its surroundings; the story is too miniscule (in the face of its scope) to warrant attention; the entire thing searching desperately for the context a twenty minute newsreel could have easily provided at the beginning (of course, it probably wasn’t taken into consideration that most American viewers don’t know Osamu Tezuka’s sprawling graphic novels by heart); both of the main characters – a naïve flaneur called Kenichi and an organic robot Timi – seem to have a connection they’re not willing to share with the viewer (which is, in essence, one less thing to distract us from the beauty of the world everyone inhabits); the score is a masterstroke, a shady jazz riff (sometimes accompanied by Ray Charles’ voice – especially in a suspiciously Dr. Strangelove-esque moment of swirling destruction and sultry singing) that seems to give this techno-future a sense of classicism rooted in our (2002) present rather than our past (the music, I mean). Almost certainly the first foreign language film I’ve actually contemplated switching from subtitles to dubbed English in order not to miss anything that’s happening onscreen. Best bet is to simply ignore the subtitles or, better yet, to not even bother turning them on. The visual splendor of every speck of Metropolis makes it more than worth seeing which, sadly, makes it more like nearly every other act of anime I’ve seen to date. The equivalent of a Summer blockbuster with rousing, eye-melting visual effects masking a painfully generic narrative.

Though the murder mystery at the center of the film isn't all that interesting, Pacino seems extremely distracted even before he begins losing sleep. In fact, most of what happens to him in the film creates a rather good argument that his actually having insomnia is almost too glaring a detail not to be integral to his plight. The guy can't sleep. Right. And...? What does that have to do with the price of salmon in Alaska? Though it may not be all that much about its title, Insomnia, among other things, is a technically well-conceived but horribly generic film about whether or not Al Pacino is a good cop.
Nearly every scene in the film seems like building evidence in the case of the audience vs. Al Pacino, as we watch, judging him as he himself unravels while unraveling a crime novel style killing. Then, the restatement; late in the film, a grizzled and rambling Pacino delivers one of those ridiculous turning point speeches to Maura Tierney (a minor character) in a hotel room. He once planted evidence to ensure the conviction of a man he instinctually knew was guilty. (The story of this situation is played hard for shock value, much like the one Vince Vaughn tells to establish his sincerity in The Cell). So, had you not been paying attention for the last one hundred minutes, allow Insomnia to summate:
AL PACINO IS A GOOD COP. Everybody got it? As he is divested of his equanimity, enduring six days with no sleep in Northern Alaska, we get those quick flashes director Christopher Nolan practically rigs the film with (to his credit, they work quite well, just as they did in Memento). Unfortunately, Nolan appears to be using the tactic to prove to us that, somewhere behind all the commonplace cop situations stranded in this remake of Erik Skjoldbjaerg's 1997 thriller, his voice is screaming to be heard (they feel like his solitary personal stamp on the film, as if he were only allowed, contractually, one trademark). Nolan is placated; doomed to riff on someone else's gimmick; locked into a departure from his standard (so much for auteur theory). There are good things going on in the film. Much like Sean Penn's The Pledge, there are scraps of genius left withering among a hamhanded and often tediously obvious procedural. The relationship between
Pacino and Robin Williams, (clearly proud to be playing against type, though he's neither memorable nor excruciating), as they play off each other's confidence, works beautifully in a scene where Williams submits (in the know) to informal questioning after he and Pacino agree on what he'll say earlier (until Williams changes the game plan suddenly, leaving Pacino to play unpredictably off of Williams' new strategy). That they're both angling to escape the situation scot-free, leaving Pacino to sin for the first time (it seems) and Williams to escape with nothing more than a guilty conscience, is one of several improvements to the Skjoldbjaerg's film (which I liked, but, you know, didn't love
or anything). That it's done with far too much nausea inducing, wisdom-imparting dialogue - is maddening (I'd give you a sample, but I kept tuning out; it's not quite the electrifying build-up and release of big name actors whose schedules just managed to not clash so they could appear in this film together - like, for instance, what Pacino and DeNiro demonstrated in Heat). Hilary Swank, plays a rookie who idolizes Pacino, and, later, finds herself in a wonderfully foggy ethical dilemma. Despite my routine counter-Oscar snubbing, I find she is, in fact, quite talented. (spoiler alert, skip to the next sentence to preserve the element of surprise) There's a great scene where Pacino has to call the wife of his partner and tell her that he's been killed - without letting on that he's the one who accidentally killed him (Martin Donovan, looking as out of place as he usually does with anyone who isn't Hal Hartley behind the camera). (welcome back) Unfortunately, though it is a great collection
of nuances - none of them, in their miniscule brilliance, aid Insomnia in being a better, more unique experience. The sense of déjà vu is terminal as scene after scene finds Pacino desperately wrestling with, but honorably deflecting goofball dialogue: (a plane experiences turbulence): "There goes my lunch"; an Internal Affairs agent pisses him off: "You don't have the balls to be a real cop" (hangs up on him). Christopher Nolan has a certain flare - one that he doesn't flag completely throughout Insomnia - but the mood isn't moody, the atmosphere isn't thick and the tone rarely exceeds curiosity. In short: Instead of a grown-up thriller, Insomnia plays, instead, like a slick Hollywood remake of a foreign.....oh, right.

[Nicky Katt. In another great supporting turn. Smarmy delivery of line after line that makes him seem condescending, even though he's occupying the same low spot on the totem pole he warms in The Limey, The Way of the Gun, Boiler Room and countless others. Can someone please get this dude a career?]

This extended episode of Undeclared (sans the funny, little actualities of college) starts with what sounds like an Aaron Copeland arranged version of The Who's "Baba O'Reilly" (it sounds procured from some second rate royalties store for fetishistic songs), which is only topped by a hopelessly goony choral version of Ace of Base's "The Sign" (a la Baz Lurhmann's Romeo + Juliet), which underscores an unconscionably blatant turning point montage which pretty much summates the film: Slackers feels like its aching for a sincere moment but instead, is (properly) trapped inside a parody's body. Jason Schwartzman is Cool Ethan, a nerd so grating, he feels comparable to any of the overplayed to death SNL characters who may have wandered into a psuedo-Rushmore knock off (in fact, if you think about it, Slackers is a testament to the skill of director Wes Anderson, who clearly directed Schwartzman into creating the brilliant Max Fisher, a character Cool Ethan feels like the polar opposite of - in the nerd world, that is). To get Angela, or The Girl (James King, a model-posing-as-actress performance from top to bottom), Ethan is blackmailing the three principles (the older redhead from Nickelodeon's Pete & Pete, the obsessive boyfriend from Undeclared and the lead death evader from Final Destination), who are cheating their way through college with elaborate schemes described with dignity as "cons". Imagine if all of Mamet's twisty manipulations felt implausible and laughably forced. As is the norm when Hollywood casts its lot into the world of adolescence, none of the actors look old enough to be in college (an ironic flip-side to high school films, which always seem populated with characters who look too old and act too mature for their surroundings). As is also usual, peeking its head into the proceedings is an enrapturing sex scene where both characters stop, momentarily, being their characters. Taken alone, it's the only scene in the movie that feels remotely genuine. While it strives ambitiously to be something artier (note the use of Wes Anderson's defining font in the opening and closing titles), Slackers is still a film that purports to fill its running time with talking dick puppetry, pee in the shower jokes, fantastical masturbation gags, antiquated S & M riffs and rampant flatulence humor. Now imagine that film trying to milk a moment of sincere tenderness at the very end with these words: "It's strange, you think you've got life all figured out, it just keeps surprising you. And to think, I learned how to be a better man from being blackmailed by that little freak". At long last, it dips under the surface from Rushmore knock-off to American Pie knock-off. If you can possibly fathom such a thing.

Remember in Arlington Road when, coasting on style, a former music video director delivered quality both cold and chilling? Apparently trying to see just how long he can cruise on this arrangement, Mark Pellington delivers one of the eeriest freakin' movies I've seen in a long while, again using flashy filmmaking in lieu of actual storytelling or directing - which, in this case, turns out to work quite well. He does indeed get caught with his hand in the rampantly far-fetched plot device jar (from the implausible "no one should be alone on Christmas" phone call to the omission of the "incidentally, I was headed to regular Virginia, not West Virginia" explanation - each passed off as predestination, to which I reply, "yeahrightsure"). These fallacies may appear to, sadly, water down the expertly ambiguous second and third acts until you realize that they aren't really acts, though, so much as they're a free floating spaces of time where Richard Gere's head comes apart in a really exciting way. (Gere, incidentally, is so good at playing a forlorn, paranoia-driven guy, stuck like a pin with a tear jerker romantic life; my guess is that this script was pretty much written for him). Also could've done without Alan Bates' commonplace Slumming Older Actor Divulges All sequences, (I believe they're called pointer scenes - and there's two of them, unfortunately). But these aren't gigantic quibbles; more than anything, The Mothman Prophecies is an exercise in the same kind of fear The Blair Witch Project was: the mechanical internalization of the unknown and the iota of residue it leaves (as if it's plugged a tap into your general anxieties, forcing you to reanalyze each of them reintern them into your subconscious). (end of rant). Like Arlington Road, the milieu is visually superior, complete with everything from (the welcome) abundance of street/traffic/head light imagery, to the way we can practically see Pellington nodding to his cinematographer as he blots out obvious light sources (nearly every interior feels like it was sponged with darkness after it had been lit), to the sense of everyday suspense being multiplied exponentially (particularly a ringing phone, which left me scared to pick up my phone all last evening). The final scene - or, as it was probably called on set, "ninety percent of our budget" - is wonderfully terrifying, mostly because it is allowed to go on for so long, yet, inexplicably, retains a believable air (a mixture of top drawer foley editing and invisible digital effects). It's nothing, however, in comparison to the nil amount of comfort offered by the film's decidedly irresolute conclusion. Of course, this wouldn't be so disturbing had the film not put on display, both in it's opening credits and in the equally chilling production notes, that this film is, in fact, Based Upon Actual Events. The warehouse of conjecture both in the film and in real life apropos Mothman sightings is left to flit around in your head like a cinematic aneurysm, (but, you know, non-death inducing).

Starts out a mildly entertaining high-brow teen comedy and almost precisely as the first act concludes, Orange County becomes distractingly over-the-top. Foreshadowing itself until it's almost too dark to make anything of value out, it ends up wanting to be Wonder Boys, but instead, turns into one of the most unbelievably thorough loose-end tying contests I think I've ever seen (and it ties 'em in using a nausea inducing variety of wholesome, on-your-own-terms-but-heartwarming-too manners). Hanks is terrifically likeable, which is a painful tease; one of the movies biggest mistakes is not milking the fresh-faced son of Tom. Instead, it tends to lean on a scenery chewing, charmlessly inconsistent Jack Black performance which feels suspiciously like a moral shock safety net (rather than its likely guise - a failed attempt at comic relief; too bad Black is easily one of the top five most overexposed folks in the limelight of late and culls an appallingly reduced amount of laughs, considering). I find it hard to believe that the two heads responsible for (respectively) the engaging, clever Zero Effect and the dark, equally clever Chuck & Buck came up with this film. Better than one, my ass.

It’s a film about a character that bags criminals for a living (and he’s good at it) until he becomes the wrongly accused man (Hitchcock territory) and, eventually, gets chased around while perpetually repeating the title (as if, should he say it enough times, he'll be exonerated all wrong). Indeed, these are some patently boring ironies that are all but an afterthought in the face of a director whose idea of filmmaking is balancing a slim intellect with the mammoth commercial sensibility he once thrived on. Here, he’s utilizing so many talented people – special effects wizards, proven writers, Tom Cruise – that’s he’s spoiled the pot. With the exception of the car chase early in the second act, the film never feels more interesting or original than it has to be, instead, overloading on exposition to the point of distraction, often sacrificing style for clarity (even when clarity has already been established two or three times over). There is a scene at the outset that feels like Spielberg trying to do Kubrick: soft, tinkling classical music over a hurried investigation where Cruise shifts frames of information across a glass screen. Spielberg obviously wants to render balletic a routine; the way Kubrick was often able to do. What’s missing is the slow portraiture of Kubrick’s rhythm. Spielberg tried to nail it with A.I., but was a little too quick, a little too self-conscious and cut away a little too much. Here, it's much worse. He seems to be trying to ape Kubrick on speed; hoping Tom Cruise can bring a smidgen of the humanity he displayed in Eyes Wide Shut with him into Minority Report (unfortunately, none of the film feels remotely intimate, even – I should say, especially – when it’s trying to be). In the end, Spielberg has lost his sense of adventure, content, rather, in deploying set-pieces and long, ranting pointer scenes at a monotonous pace and developing Cruise’s character simply by stating and restating that he’s lost a child (as if that excuses just about any malfeasance he could possibly conjure). Unfolding in a banausic version of the dystopia revered in Blade Runner (also based upon a Philip K. Dick story), Minority Report has an ugly, colorless visual landscape that produces one absolutely stunning frame: a crossroads medium shot of Samantha Morton slung over Cruise's shoulder, each party looking in opposite directions. And though it's frugal about the reverberations of its concept on society, the film is constantly finding goofy ways to segue into its many cute little futuristic contraptions, causing the future to appear dangerously like Demolition Man played straight (except for Colin Ferrell repeatedly slamming his fist into his hand like a bare-knuckle boxer – that's actually a sub-Demolition Man quirk). The supremely talented Samantha Morton gets points for tolerating a role that requires her to be bald, mostly silent and to lie around in a tank and stare at the ceiling for two-thirds of the running time (she’s still remarkable). I fielded the argument that science-fiction pieces that feature hypothetical advances in science are almost always problematic and, in ways we’re expected to ignore, often seem wildly implausible. My response to this: if you’re going to tell the audience a character will become blind when he unwraps his bandages and you’re going to tell an audience that he has new eyes underneath anyway, it would probably be a good idea for him to either: a) not unwrap the bandages (or, if he does, you know, have him go blind like you said he would), or, b) not worry about spiders mistaking his new eyes for his old ones (isn’t that why he had the procedure done in the first place?). Once the audience is betrayed like that, you open yourself up to a force of nit-pickiness the likes of which few have seen. (And if you’re planning to discuss the third act with me, for quick recognition as well as preservation of time, let’s call it the Painfully Obvious Red Herring Act.)

The film might have worked as a grotesque caricature of the kind of people professional sports breed and the nearsighted real life decisions they entertain us by making as badly as possible. Instead, it feels like a bunch of unmotivated cretins with a blind ambition, striving to find something other than money to drive them – and failing (Wait a minute…) Where the more successful 1975 film stood as a precursor, its content simply about individuality struggling to stand within a faceless, corporate world, Rollerball is about trying to score an American Cable Deal by putting people at risk of injury and death – a chilling scenario indeed if it hadn't already been blundgeoned with it  in real life (especially in any one of the more coherently played matches in the wide, wide world of sports). Instead of murder being a common occurrence in the half roller derby, half hockey hybrid of scoring and mayhem, its seen as an remote possibility, the kind of thing that shouldn’t - and, until late in the film doesn't - happen (this does, by the way,  inadvertently remove any ballast the game itself may have held); nothing in the film feels meaty enough to satisfy, and instead, the whole ordeal feels like a string of subplots that add up to something less than a story – all shot and staged by what looks like a second unit director (i.e. - the extensive delays in release of McTiernan’s update don’t feel like they were utilized in order to improve the film). Rollerball feels like it was done entirely on one-takes and held back for more self-conscious reasons (at one point, talks ensued about whether it should be banned to Cable TV rather than released in theaters – fitting for a number of reasons, I assure you, not the least of which would've been that I'd never have had to endure it). The characters are as indistinguishable from one another as the shots which make up the Rollerball sequences (everything moving too fast, each shot looking far too similar to the last, the cuts coming too fast and too oblong to get a sense of what’s going on; consequently it feels like it was shot, cropped and then letterboxed for release). The casting is dead-on (I misappropriate, this is not a compliment) as far as B-movies go: I assume Chris Klein, LL Cool J, Romijn-Stamos and Jean Reno (why are critics standing up for him like as if he hadn't appeared in Godzilla and ten movies just like it?) had a film like this pretty much written into their respective contracts (though I suspect Naveen Andrews is here for the paycheck). I wonder if the dialogue was re-written and re-dubbed (little of it matches the lips of the actors) inexplicably bad to match the company involved and their penchant for stunted, goofball delivery I wonder if a good thirty minutes of the first act was left on the cutting room floor (in a single minute, we cut from Chris Klein turning down LL Cool J's Rollerball Sales Pitch to Klein raised, in four short years, to God status). I wonder if when remaking films, one might examine the shortcomings of the original (some certainly did exist) and expound on them. I wonder if its possible that McTiernan, having actually made a film worse than The 13th Warrior, could actually make a film worse than Rollerball. (Not that I’m posing the challenge).

Got mondo despondent when this pleasantly uneven subsequent voyage into uncharted Disney waters began; the outer space set-up preceding the first act is absolutely charmless, never landing anywhere close to being funny or interesting, but does feature a few characters who will carry over into the main leg of the story (in which they miraculously become funny). Little Lilo is positively magnetic, a cross between Charlie Brown's sister Lucy and his would be girlfriend Peppermint Patty; alternately raising hell and fluttering her eyelashes all cutesy like. Her older sister (Carrere) is a classic mother figure - rarely more than a wall for Lilo to bounce off of; which is what makes the introduction of Stitch - an alien posing as a dog - so unbelievably rewarding: if his personality lacks dynamic, it makes up for it by being so furiously and unpredictably hostile (often, by making the abstraction of unpredictability almost a unavoidable trait, you'll have to remind yourself you're watching a movie that you know is going to end with hugs and kisses and love and tenderness). As the story progresses, most of the trouble the title characters find themselves in is terrifically entertaining, especially a subplot wherein Lilo is persued by a tall, dark Child Services Caseworker voiced by Ving Rhames. Animation feels like a Miyazaki knock-off, but, since it takes place in Hawaii and seems to incorporate the mood of Elvis Presley, it actually seems to work. Stopping the film to sing a song while surfing would usually present me with the opportunity to pretend I'm not groaning audibly; here, I'm practically joining my daughter (on her second viewing, mind) when she dances in the aisle). I'm still reeling at how neatly it ends (despite the conflicts being all but larger than life), but Lilo & Stitch is easily forgivable. It's good at what it is - even if sometimes 'it' is just what you're expecting 'it' to be.

How hard do you have to try to fuck up Oscar Wilde?  Parker, on his second try (I actually sorta dug An Ideal Husband, but that's miles from memory now) at this, manages to add just enough that wasn't there (Everett running from two collectors like he's Buster Keaton, tattoos on characters' asses - don't ask), and reduce just enough of what was there (where's the guy running in and actually claiming to be Ernest?), to create a far too coherent, absolutely dull version of a really, really funny play. And who told Rupert Everett to abandon the perpetually dry, young bloke he was building a rather solid career on and instantly start mimicking Hank Azaria (actually, he comes off more like Jim Carrey in his slapstick days or Adam Sandler). Watching him trapse through an already wounded film almost makes this affair too much to swallow entirely. Dench is fine; someday I'd love to see Firth smile; Witherspoon is hopelessly out of place (sorry, but I've got to call a blonde a blonde); O'Connor is completely wasted as is Tom Wilkinson. The whole movie is an appalling bore. Feels like every joke is pinpointed and put on such a pedastal that it fails to live up to the momentary expectation Parker gives it; he's obviously so in love with the play that he wants to represent it as operatically as possible. Doesn't realize, the poor schmuck, this play works its own magic.