Remember folks, Suzuki's Branded to Kill was once a lowly studio script before he transformed it into a crazed, stylistic fever dream (by all accounts). A heroic accomplishment to say the least - - even if you haven't seen that film (whhich I haven't). Pistol Opera, a loose remake of Suzuki's aforementioned first landing on the map, is the same sort of jumbled mash note, only this time it seems to be striving to be that lowly studio picture. In a move that's no large feat, Suzuki suddenly changes gears in the third act, turning the whole mediocre fantasy into a shaky delivery device for spectacularly outlandish visual stylization. Gorgeous compositions replete with terrifically vibrant color schemes and more-complicated-than-your-first-glance-might-lead-you-to-believe staging beg a certain amount of deserved attention, if not recognition (pieces of it look fuckin' cool). But, alas, the whole thing isn't much more than what it seems, felt especially in the actors - who can't seem to bring any sort of jolt to their dull characters (pawns, all of them), and who rain on Suzuki's peripheral battle between camp and moral depth. At its center, the celluloid representation of this mental struggle is, at the very least, good for a rather long head scratch - - if that's your thing, of course. (It isn't.)

[And was I the only one wondering if the main character's younger sister was, perhaps, a bit too young to be entirely naked?]

The good news is that Fulton and Pepe dispense with the sub-Monty Python animated hi-jinks approximately twenty minutes into the film. The bad news is that their film is a frustrating effort that captures a great number of people getting frustrated. Artistically, like many documentaries about other films, Lost in La Mancha itself is little more than a DVD extra - a feature length gag reel for a film called The Man Who Killed Don Quixote; It might do right by itself if it were to switch titles and, in doing so, be a touch more forthright about its motives: Namely, to raise funding to finish the film that Gilliam himself  - a rabid perfectionist at one moment, an efficient do-or-die man the next - is prevented from completing by one horrible stroke of luck after another (among them weather and the health of a key player). Certainly not (by a long shot) in the same sport as films like Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse or Burden of Dreams, Lost in La Mancha is, all the same, shamelessly entertaining; Watching the nuts and bolts of a film production begins to take on a reality show flavor that occupies one end of a spectrum whose converse is some gorgeous, undeniably Gilliam footage sure to make your salivate for Quixote. Unfortunately, Lost in La Mancha's tale of mad genius is too much the front loaded cart: Not only do we know that Quixote won't leave the ground, but we watch in horror as Gilliam's First Assistant Director misses key signs such as a warning that a location may be shared with NATO jets (whose noise ruins at least two days of shooting), and training the extras in rehearsal (one more day). As the project spirals further and further from reach, Gilliam refuses to fire him - - even as the AD repeatedly takes up his cross and plays the martyr like a rejected middle school-er. (I'd almost like to see the AD's reaction to the sequence where Gilliam and his producers discuss, quite casually, letting him go). As I watched, I felt almost completely consumed by hindsight, suggesting that the film was not made for me, or an audience, but rather for future investors, who could go on to become part of film lore.

Much like its title pissant, the fairly modest open-and-shut tale of Bruce Banner's transformation from repressed weenie to gimungous jade super-weenie is elongated to seemingly no end; Hulk is often too much the epic, ever-full of its own twisted humanity and constantly promising greatness while rarely delivering a fraction of such. Bana's performance as the likeably scarred Bruce seems strangled by pretense (everyone tiptoes on glass far too long about the obvious as if it were some Big Secret) - and also by Ang Lee's befuddling insistence on cranking up the wait-for-it suspense of the green one's first visit (Too bad the ads already prepped us to be thoroughly disappointed). Connelly is a terrifically blank heroine, spending a great deal of her screen time being the dainty yin to military gruff papa Sam Elliot's raging yang. Nolte is just plain creepy (but he still seems way out of place here). So while the story is of little interest and the effects are of less interest still, Digi-Hulk (who looks like a big green baby and was mockingly referred to as Shrek 2 at family gatherings) seems forever incompatible with Bruce Banner, making it difficult to swallow the two-are-one hook - which seems strange given the continual effort by the screenwriters to paint them as peas in a pod. They may have missed the boat almost entirely, but Lee still manages to provide the sole, untainted triumph of the film, telling the story using moving panels, some of which can be seen in the background when he cuts from one to the other - a masterful visual element that seems to breath with the style of a comic book like no other Marvel-approved film (Spider-Man included). Wasted revelation - the editing, I mean - and sad that it doesn't eventually take over and, you know, make this film even remotely electrifying.

Gives the giddy thrill of being caught up in a film stunt without actually stooping to the level a film stunt about a guy trapped in a phone booth probably would. A teenage girl-ready, pop-Dog Day Afternoon with none of the depth but twice the head games. Sutherland's obviously separately recorded voice-over is often too book-on-tape to be believable in the same context as the kinetic shock-therapy fueling Ferrell's mind-blowing performance. But the more plausibility issues arise, the more devil-may-care Phone Booth becomes, desperately losing its footing - trying to stay one move ahead of itself.. It's easy enough to spot exactly where the progression will lead to (hint: the film doesn't turn into an anti-phone tirade), but harder to shake the feeling that somehow its headed there without a net. For better or worse (and there's a fair amount of both), you're strapped in with nearly the same intensity I recall from the singular, unbroken thrills of The Blair Witch Project. In that way - I suppose it is a stunt, after all. But it sure doesn't feel like one.

It sure seems like all poor Johnny Depp can do not to announce that he, himself, is pretty much the only thing keeping a late evening audience from drifting into a comparatively more realistic world placed squarely in the dreams they'll have as they doze through perhaps the longest movie ever (alright - I'm exaggerating - but it sure feels like forever and a day when you're watching it). No one has yet heeded my progressively loudening call to arms - obviously - as Gore Verbinski seems to still be making movies for people who fancy breaking down weekend box office results in order to find their place within the cycle that is commerce-as-art. Pirates of the Caribbean is good-hearted enough, but it seems to be jabbing us in the ribs the whole time it's playing, as if to say, "You don't really buy this world, do you?" (It doesn't help that it feels as if initially birthed as a family film and, instead, awkwardly flipped into a PG-13 template; Wasn't there a time, long ago, when a family film had the better chance of scoring at the box office?) Set ostensibly in an animatronic-sprited Disneyland version of the Caribbean, the few lighthearted nudges to the ride that inspired the title (Depp telling fellow inmates, at one point, "You can wave that bone at him forever - the dog is never going to move") seem like precious few in the face of the henpecked story of a cursed rabble of undead pirates who seek the last of a treasure that will supposedly turn them back to mortals. Opening as every other film this summer has (with a flashback), Pirates makes a major chore of mapping out each main characters' place in the curse; Sad to report, when he's not on screen with Jonathan Pryce (playing the serious guy who seems perpetually apologetic for his state), Orlando Bloom is pretty much the most embarrassing, saddening thing about the film. It's reasonably clear from the moment he steps up as a watered down Aladdin-type, that he's not up to being the leading man, the romantic hero or, uh, anyone who's not an elf. In his favor, Verbinski seems to take a sick pleasure in looking the other way as Bloom is constantly used him as a stepping stone for Depp's hilarious, unruly antics - which is a good thing for all of us. Johnny Depp is one of a very few American actors who can still upstage just about everyone in the cast without making it look as if they're doing so. Case in point: Geoffrey Rush's failed, scenery-chewing as the old salt, Barbossa who just keeps - inexplicably - giving Depp chance after chance to make the character - and the actor - look significantly more hollow each time around.

[Why the C+ and not the straight C (for a movie that's certainly deserving of the pungent odor of the latter)? Probably because, try as you may, try as you might, you can't separate Depp's hammy showboating from the proceedings and, gee gosh golly, he's in it enough to make Pirates at least half entertaining. Bruckheimer theatrics aside - and a complete score that I think Bruckheimer himself has pounded out - Pirates is a hell of a throwaway, never burdening you with its memory for more than a few minutes once you're streetside.]

Mostow returns to the successful formula previously honed in Breakdown (and inexplicably abandoned in U-571); Here, resources like the well-known characters and an obvious-headed storyline are nicely cast aside in the spirit of priming the momentum - and scrapping any and all exposition surplus, allowing it to leak out in as few lines as possible. It's a classical model of great action filmmaking and from start to finish it never stops being, in the best way possible, utterly preposterous. It's an incredibly expensive-looking, yet sparely written film (the narrative, as it connects to the previous installments, is as simply put and uncharacteristically unimportant as it could possibly be yet it allows for the maximum in action sequences that seem to have a new energy; Mostow was obviously born to construct death-defying thrills). And somehow all the characters - Stahl, Schwarzenegger, Danes - seem contained by the reverence Mostow and his writers have invested in the film; The Terminator films assimilated into the culture and here, it feels as if everyone involved took great pains not to leave this second sequel looking like a stray black sheep.

Though the lifestyle and world of the title gulch is entertaining (and the film contains a whopper of a cool performance by Alessandro Nivola) - Laurel Canyon eventually starts alternating slick revelations with trashy soap-opera payoffs, giving a muddy, disappointing feel to an otherwise perfect opportunity to make with the chortle. Cholodenko is trying way too hard to make a profound mountain from a basic indie-style molehill (there seems to be a dismissively light, Lisa Holofcener touch to rather strong material). The paparazzi fanclub actors who populate this romp of thirtysomethings being tortured to death by their fidelity woes - Nivola, Kate Beckinsale, Christian Bale and Natascha McElone - all have a strange, against-type fire in their eyes, as they play, respectively, naughty, naughty, naughty and, uh, naughty. And unless you were among the rather, ahem, small but decidedly brilliant minority who held High Art out to be one of the great, modern love stories - as I did - you'll probably have no trouble warming to Laurel Canyon's immediately digestible contents.

Manipulative at every turn (and holy horseshoes are there a ton of turns), I couldn't help wondering: Is it really the right thing to do, finish the story and start another one 'stead of rolling the end credits like you're supposed to? Wasn't the story of the horse's rise from nothing to something therapeutic enough for his owner, trainer and jockey? Do we really need to watch the jockey, and the horse (each clipped at the knee) struggle, ascending back to par? Even before he becomes the stepping stone to a lump-in-the-throat (thank you, Mr. Ansen), there is something distractingly hollow about Maguire's fiestiness, but it's not really to do with him - the character, as written, occupies roughly half a dimension (though he's not alone - and it's the level of talent in the film that eventually makes it bearable in spots).The thrill of the races is exciting - but Seabiscuit seems so much more preoccupied by it's own, ailing variation on The Hours structure (dear god don't let this become a trend) wherein three people all have similar experiences (okay, three people and one horse) - - - only to learn from the experiences and each other and so on and so forth until the strings and horns usher us all, eight bucks lighter, into a weepy chorus of tissue puppets. (Oh wait, did I mention William H. Macy's zany-ass cameo? Bang-up stuff, that).

Alright, I'd watch Mark Ruffalo read the dictionary (and at one point in, in desperate search for the definition of "rife", he does) - but this sloppy moral tale of a bare midriff magazine ad posing as a "relationship study" caters just a bit too much to the audience's hunger for hot, fantasy sex on film to be anything close to the honesty it seems to believe it has re-discovered. The confrontation on the pier between Ruffalo and his present day girlfriend - Claire (it's a family name) - is just about the silliest fucking thing I've seen on film this year. (Still, hot fantasy sex is hot fantasy sex, after all).

[I don't mean to be the worst reviewer of all time, but from now on, all culture clash films not named Late Marriage are prevented from earning anything higher than a B.]

Charming enough, I suppose - and the lead actresses are both, in their own right, balls of fire - but, please, it's just hard not to acknowledge that you're watching the billioneth spin on an already rather rote theme.

Let's start it off totally wrong here: By now, you've heard to-death of Irreversible's notorious violence (and rightfully so, as I'm sure Noe certainly guards his claim as one of the most sadistic and, uh, brilliant filmmakers of our time - or any time for that matter). Never meant to be a shock-fest merely for its content (or should I say, not merely content to be a shock-fest), instead Noe uses the camerawork and a variety of other audience-pummeling visual snares to create unapologetic extremes of suspense, and of character. He also tells the story backwards, spiraling from degradation to innocence, channeling a purity from the most compelete and utter of tragic inevitabilities. He also deconstructs these characters, showing flaws of their own - and flaws they cannot help - drawing the conclusion that there is no conclusion (time sees everything die in the end is its worldview; the more cerebral version being that of the slender thread we hang our happiness on, often completely unaware that we aren't really in control). In the process, what emerges is an unmistakably cold, but deft and artful, attack by a director on the viewer's natural instinct followed by an even more sinister splash of water. Cassel and Bellucci are absolutely terrific in the film (they were married when it was made); They make the casual erupt with such vitality, improvising so well that, at one point, Cassel actually covers a blunder - which is, in itself, a dazzling save. Nonchalance is a strange thing to find in such a calculating motion picture, easily the rudest, most stinging - puzzle, or otherwise - movie I've seen. If this one doesn't garrner a physical reaction, check your pulse. (Note: I've never seen Salo).

[Also, I really, really, really, really want to watch Irreversible again - but, seriously, I don't ever want to watch Irreversible again.]

Probably not a great idea to watch Spider-Man a night later. If anything, having seen Daredevil only made me appreciate the web slinger's comic fluff all the more; Mark Steven Johnson removes none of the goopiness from his Simon Birch heavy-hand, giving us a bunch of characters who babble on in soap operatic tones, barely able to navigate through the half-story he's cooked up. Only Colin Farrell's performance seems to make a ripple (big shock there, right?), with Michael Clarke Duncan's Kingpin far too overwrought, Ben Affleck's Daredevil ridiculously wimpy and Jennifer Garner's Elektra defined (sorry) by her cleavage. Throw in the homogenized likes of cred-diminishing Joe Pantaliano and Jon Favreau and you've got yourself a half-assed attempt at something that really, as ever, would be much less painful if it had used its whole ass.

Powered by hyper-hilarious, improvisatory performances by Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell, let me just point out that this film is actually even a little bit better than Phillips previous gross-out opus Road Trip, mostly due to the unending thrill we get watching these two idiots' delivery. And here's my applause for keeping the fucker under 90 minutes.

The chances it takes make it worthwhile - but its sad to be faced with a movie that, if it had gone even further with these chances, could have been something truly special. The clipped, rare dialogue is certainly of great benefit - but everytime an action scene crops up that doesn't feature knife-happy Del Toro going  mano-a-mano with Jones, the film loses its great charm: The clumsy, strangely paced rumble of Friedkin relishing his actors, as they get into each other's personal space. Most of it feels oddly abstract - probably because of what is left unstated. Good for it. Whenever it's divulging its information, it seems to be firing it out as quickly as possible, as not to embarrass itself. If it had been a quiet fever dream of sorts, who knows - it might have even attained the rank of suspenseful. Alright, let's not start saying shit we can't exactly take back.)

[By the way, who made Tommy Lee Jones into a 97 year old man? Why did someone steal this confused old man's bus pass? Who was behind the denial of a senior citizen's discount?]
 

Spun, with it's 70s-emulatin', overexposed film stock and folksy soundtrack, is at times sweepingly happy, though it's never long before being permeated with heavy doses of melancholy (and infinite sadness). It eventually falls on its side, heavy with a vision that purports to - yes, for the thousandeth time - duplicate the mixed up world of drug addicts (this time speed freaks); Instead, Spun seems to be exploiting drug addiction as a means for all sorts of cinematic whirligigs and eye poppers. That it is never boring means that - not in vain - it actually seems to carry on with the attitude that it is somehow proud to be using a social issue as a stepping stone to excite an audience. Liked all the crazy, tripped-out imagery, the scattershot editing, the use of the opening chords of Donovan's "Hurdy-Gurdy Man" as the film's theme in two scenes. Like that it turns out to have been based upon three days in the life of its' creator (who chauffered a Methamphetamine cook around in 1995). Not sure I like how it is flat-out incapable of sustaining a solid tone for more than thirty seconds; It's scarcely able to fuse the goofy laughs with the emotional baggage its dragging along. You just have to laugh when it begs you to take it seriously - but while it's in its' kill-two-birds-and-get-stoned groove, Spun kicks itself into some interesting spots, and makes the past tense of its' title seem almost foolhardy.

More direct in scaring up its honest tidbits, most of them found dropping from characters' mouths as they philosophize in fits of utterly terrific improvisation; It's often therapeutic - and uniquely universal in its own little way. Green seems to have tightened his focal point since George Washington, which is both good and (very rarely) bad. Whereas his debut was a circumnavigated homage to Terence Malick's hazy, tone poem storytelling, All the Real Girls is far more concerned with its characters and how they communicate the emotional tumbles of their existence without the shackles of convention. The film makes marvelous use of its free flowing narrative, itself an exercise in fantastic, vital writing; Green teases information so thoroughly and so vibrantly, he astoundingly makes the film's off-the-cuff dialogue bouts meld with its cohesive sketches of personality. Paul Schneider and Zooey Deschanel are both rapturous - but so is the rest of the supporting cast - from Schneider's goofy, hollow headed crronies to Deschanel's towheaded little brother to Schneider's mom and uncle to the various supporting players that seem to breath and snarl with the restless aches of small-town life (like George Washington, Green and his cinematographer have no trouble finding the utmost beauty in some of the most dilapidated of vistas; I can't remember the last time a film evoked the Autumn weather with an earthy radiance so overpowering that I could practically taste it in my nostrils). Sadly, the wondrous dialogue that all appears to have been simultaneously made up and carefully considered for inclusion, sometimes seems to leak out moments of oddly sour sap; Green so deftly handles the huge hurdle he creates for himself in the final thirty minutes, it's almost hard not to feel a touch cheated by Schneider and Deschanel's use of lines that feel forever hatched from the wrap-up on any given sitcom ("I can't even talk to you anymore!" belongs nowhere near a great film like this one - - or does it?) What I've neglected to menttion is that All the Real Girls has a ton of genuine laughs in it as well. Schneider's friend Mustache, an over friendly, under mannered dork practically steals at least half a dozen scenes. (Watch the deleted scenes on the DVD - - this ham had a good number of his most gut busting - if entirely superfluous - scenes axed).

Not to get painfully mathematical but, honestly, without a warning one might, quite rightfully in fact, slam one's thumb into the stop button just about anywhere in the vibrant crayola-thon of this film's inimitably cute first act. Here's a tip: Don't. While the first act appears to wear a sagging label bearing the generic brand of garden variety obsessive love, the film actually turns out to be a terrific bout of filmmaking, a painstakingly mounted exercise in perspective askew and, sadly, a botched whole whose third act becomes the greedy spoil sport of its parts. Observe. Audrey Tatou plays a girl in love with a cardiologist; The part must have read to the actress as an obvious chance to keep her dimple-cheeked adorableness intact while indulging a borderline spoofy dark side. The whole twisted affair is written off to a disorder called erotomania, which I won't bother describing (you'll get it - - and if you don't, there's a pair of steel rimmed glasses with a psychologist attached to them explaining it over swoony music in the last ten). The most satisfying thing about the film is the way the second act complements the first - even when you know what's going on, it's still a joy to watch the film deceive your assumptions. The criticism has been enacted that the film considers the audience to be rife with dimwittedness (else how could we miss clue after clue in that simplistic shake of a first act). What's really obvious, though, is the way it all wraps up; He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not goes way overboard with itself in the last act, giving the drive back over a severe case of the deeply implausible. If you thought ignoring your instincts was hard when they're right, wait until you start second guessing their quite valid cry of "yeahrightsure" as the cardiologist has his "Kobayashi" moment.

The outright statement of metaphor between care of teeth and care of marriage gets it out of the way. Not having to think about it while you ingest the daily grind of a husband (Campbell Scott, in typically top form) who knows his wife (Hope Davis, also in typically top form) is cheating on him is a plus, (though trying to figure out just why these characters do what they do is impossibly overcomplicated for something so simple and, eventually, so carefully laid out: Scott doesn't want the "hassle" of divorce). The extended sequence wherein the flu goes through this family of five is probably the least exciting part of the film, but it's also the only set of moments that seem to flow with the rhythm of actual family life, and therefore prove a point beyond the collection of familiar "marriage" moments (I kept thinking, this movie probably works best for cinephiles who aren't married either as a deterrent or simply because the only experience they have is with their parents or their friends marriage; This should key you in to which group you belong and, accordingly, how the film may affect you). The Secret Lives of Dentists is a better film when its not making any serious observations but is, instead, merely being funny (Denis Leary's declaration of "The World's Greatest Dentist" to a roomful of theater patrons is the film's high point). Rudolph doesn't necessarily blow it - the whole thing is proficient at worst - but he never really exceeds the original voice-over's goal: To prove that, like good dental hygiene, marriage requires constant attention. Is it just me, or am I incapable of accepting a movie that wears its non-epiphany status on its sleeve like Dorothy Parker's broken heart?

[Am I the only one who thought dressing the fake alter-ego Denis Leary up exactly like Tyler Durden couldn't have been a worse idea?]

In washing the practically grim taste of The Secret Lives of Dentists out of my mouth, I readily submit that I enjoyed The Italian Job, for the most part, as an escape from the somber weight of that film. On the opposing face of that coin, you have to admire a film that's practically without a discernable style of its own, but nevertheless manages to stay completely straight-faced as it proceeds to pile the unreal upon the undoable, neatly stacking them among rows and rows of the absolutely impossible. Never, I mean not once during its unfolding, does The Italian Job even consider stopping long enough to examine how intricate it's not - and how beautifully convenient it is. Edward Norton stomps around, thoroughly annoyed to have been given birth to (and, by all reports, for having to lower himself to do this contractually-bound summer throwaway) and, for once, doesn't walk away with the film. That alone has to be worth, uh, something.. Everyone on the "team" seems to be having a grand old time - albeit, they're not exactly larger-than-life. The heist has a simulated overkill feel to it. That pretty much defines the film's attitude: There isn't a spontaneous moment to be found, but you can barely see the ground from your supremely over-the-top vantage point. (Oh, and I liked that feeling, by the way.)

[Two notes of interest: Special Oscar goes to: Mark Bridges, who designed the costumes that Charlize Theron wears; Though I don't exactly agree, I like the Imdb's User Comment post on the front page for this film: "Ouch! The Mark Wahlberg's acting is hurting my head!"]

LaBute fashioned this film (first a play with the identical cast in London) as an answer to the vile reception that befell his first film, In the Company of Men. And unlike its model, when The Shape of Things is over, you're not suddenly overcome with disgust or prompted to think really deeply. What it fills you with - besides a great joy that LaBute has re-embraced his inner nihilist - is the sense that an issue like Our Social Preoccupation with Vanity and How The Media Doesn't Exactly Help Matters is almost too broad and too unconquerable to be pigeonholed into this sly tale of boy-meets-grad-student, grad-student-molds-boy, audience-goes-through-the-motions-of-being-shocked. Don't get me wrong - LaBute's is a fine film (not far from fiilmed theater but fine), and one worth allowing yourself to be provoked by, noteworthy on a far more actor-oriented level than its predecessors, or than its overbearing scheme would suggest - but there's something untimely about it,, something that feels dated in the commentary on pretension among post-college aged kids, something cushioned about its coldness. I've said it to far too many people to count, but I stand by it: Paul Rudd deserves the praise. He's been in the grey zone know as pre-phone book territory far too long (which gets its name from my frequent, orgasmic chant of submission that I (yes, I) would watch said actor rattle off page after page of my local yellow pages if that were the only way to see them perform).  He is hereby upgraded. Rachel Weisz, whom I neglect to mention below in my Confidence review (she's actually got a presence here, rather than a persona cobbled together with various pieces of various femmes fatale in that film, but I digress), matches him step for step; The film's central storyline is offset by one that's slightly more comedic and often, much easier to believe, wherein Gretchen Mol is having second thoughts about her upcoming marriage (the kind of nuptual that could easily save time in skipping the actual ceremony and getting to the ugly divorce already) to Frederick Weller, whose uncanny reaction to a petty sculpture vandalism (standing as an act of artistic freedom or, more accurately, freeing the art) turns into the most vividly uncomfortable scene in a film that is pretty much all about escalating to a wrenching climax. This squabble over the validity in defacing a statue turns ferocious, and speaks volumes more than anything the central focus manages to cook up.

I was planning on saddling up my high horse to venture out (into uncharted waters, mind) in search of an ear that could stand a long justification of Edward Burns' seemingly lone shade of character. I don't like the guy - but at least he's not directing. Here, his commanding way, rendered persistent either consciously or by sheer sleepwalking automation is, for my money, right on the money. He never stops professionalizing the con game, barely able to sneak a few breaths in between scamming. Most of the rest of the cast is a blur; Too many c(r)ooks syndrome is in full force. The big deal here would obviously be if one were to consider Dustin Hoffman's three scenes equal to a character (hint: they're not), but there's no cause to fret - dude's so uncommonly bizarre (even for a guy who seems to be aiming in that general direction with each and every role of late), it's almost fun to watch what unnecessary, "out there" thing he'll blather on about next. The con is completely irrelevant as far as I'm concerned, and the film makes that clear from the first moment, when it begins with a thoroughly antiquated voice-over narration explaining what a con is, followed by your standard red herring wherein the hero appears to be precious seconds from being done in, only to make with the long and involved flashback detailing his route to said "done in" point. Certainly not of the fresh quality it obviously fashions itself worth brandishing. Feeling all the threads come together isn't as satisfying as it should be because it's entirely based upon two really obvious things. If you haven't figured them out by the time the film "reveals" them, I feel a deep sense of pity in my heart for me if I should ever have to discuss movies with you ever again.