Not much more than great surfing footage and validation to my dream of becoming a surfer one day (no, really). Though the gap between efforts only evinces a single minus as proof, Peralta has vastly improved since helming Dogtown and Z-Boys, a film I found more comfortable in small doses (or, played ad nauseum on Sundance). Perhaps it's the simple fact that surfing six story waves is an awe aspiring defiance of nature and skateboarding is just a great way to skin one's knees. Nevertheless, celebrating a sport with great passion and joy, Riding Giants stays out of your way while you watch, never overdelivering on the technical prowess or oversimplifying itself.

There are some funny bits, but so few of them belong to Ferrell, it's almost depressing to watch him sink back towards the Elf depths (and away from the mighty genius of small roles, a trick made to seem so palpable in Old School). Steve Correll and Paul Rudd pick up slack, as much of the cast does, in just how unbelievably far they stretch their roles. Thing is, none of the actual satirizing adds up to much; The whole needling-the-new-anchor falls so flat from so early on, there's little else we can do from our stranded position but wait for someone to cross the line (big time). By the time it's all over, it earns one of my least favorite three word reviews: "This movie's stupid".

Code 46 is worth seeing. Pretty hard to go wrong with Alwin Kuchler shooting the thing; It's a watered down In the Mood For Love meets "Brave New World" (with tinges of Brief Encounter and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Robbins is pretty docile and Winterbottom doesn't balance the thing properly, leaving the love story and the futuristic society thriller trappings to cancel each other out. I'd mute the thing a few minutes before close (otherwise, you're going to hear a horribly sappy Coldplay song). Morton, as usual, is spectacular.

[This is a one-off e-mailed response that took well under thirty seconds to tap out. It's verbatim.]

The whole spirit in which The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou is made has a sad, beautiful charm that radiates good taste, the driving theme - besides father figures and brilliant musical montages - in Anderson's oeuvre. It's also a less precocious mixed-up-young-man/man-realizes-his-age tale than something like About Schmidt or, in a number of ways, either of Anderson's other schematically symmetrical twenty-fifth-hour-dad tales (I'm exempting Bottle Rocket, I submit, because the father figure link in that one would almost, I think, poke fun at my theory.) Because the main character is the father (more unequivocally than in Tenenbaums and certainly more resolute than the one in Rushmore), The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou seems to be the first of Anderson's films to openly acknowledge that its motive is to move you. That said, the emotion creeps comfortably up on you (that submarine scene where Zissou finally sees the Jaguar Shark is a major contributor), bearing a more subtle ring, I think, because the film seems to find its only jubilant notes towards the end of the film. There's a great deal of assistance from a near-total Bowie soundtrack and from Murray's performance which, though a lot less broad than his turn in Lost in Translation, is another of his great, really funny (but decidedly not comedic) wise old sages. Owen Wilson's much maligned accent fumble seems deliberate (is it?) Then there's Anjelica Huston's scuzzy Aqua lady, DeFoe's faithful dog (to Captain Zissou), Goldblum's gooney half gay arch nemesis, Blanchett's confused preggo reporter, Bud Cort's bond company stooge and so on and so on; He mounts another of his wily, spot-on casts, finding the strangest chemistry in the strangest of melting pots: The kid like eye candy of the sea. Rendered through pitch perfect, cutaway sets and Henry Selick's colorful animatics, this world is a strangely playful zig to the zag of the film's gray skies malaise (a moody tone that Anderson allows to linger, bringing the muted - but deeply felt - conclusion to an amazing, jubilant head). The dialogue is sharper than it has been to date, with Kicking and Screaming's Noah Baumbach contributing his genius for offbeat phrasing and even more offbeat timing. I'm almost tempted to accuse him [Anderson] of transcending the funny nerd in himself and becoming (gulp), an indisposable valuable modern American filmmaker (one of quite a very few). Certainly worth more salt than the current champion of critical mass (Alexander Payne). Really, where does everyone get off ignoring this as the coming-to-grips-with-disappointment anthem for something as run of the mill and off-center as Sideways? (I mean (snort), really.)

The polarizing technique - wherein not a single note of non-football context is established - doesn't really work (we get tired of it driving the point home - that all life is football in this small Texas town - after about twenty minutes, which doesn't deter it from making this point all the way up to the end); But Friday Night Lights has a much more valuable agenda: Entertainment. Like a much more worthwhile version of Any Given Sunday (set in a world that feels more focused, to boot), music flows over the whole thing, little more than a sea of montages, all of it pretty much adding up to brilliant escapism. All of you touting its realism and life-affirming nature can check back in with reality afterwards. Friday Night Lights is a gas.

Perhaps I'm confusing a big, dumb irony (hard metal group in gushy-teared therapy) for some unnamed, pointlessly belabored epiphany about egos, the music business and the strength of bonds. Since I have great trouble taking Metallica seriously - and value the documentarians that created Paradise Lost much more than this MTV-gets-deep expose - I had trouble drawing much of transcendeence or power from it. Some Kind of Monster either wanted to go more interesting directions - i.e. the cult of celebrity, the antithetical effects of sobriety on an anger-fueled money-making machine - or it was intent on burying its obvious tendencies towards marketing Metallica's so-called comeback album ("St. Anger") under long, tedious sequences of  footage that feels more prodded than naturally occuring. What's worse is that the film constantly proves my point about its forgettable entertainment trappings, leaving the best bits of the nearly nine hour documentary
(okay, just over two, but certainly feeling like nine) to be merely the quirky ones: The ramblings of drummer Lars' Middle Earthen father, former member Dave Mustaine pouring his heart out during a psychology session, and a final, hopeful search for a new bassist. Originally planned as a 6 part series for VH-1. Not surprising

If I were willing to sit through another hour of this, I say "Yeah, expand these characters". But I'm not. The characters are sad wrecks, flitting at both extremes of their capabilities, often without transition. Gabriel Byrne is probably the most abrupt (he'd be a surprise if everyone else weren't doing it), but Reese Witherspoon's is the most disappointing. It seems as if proving cliched adages is the only ammunition necessary to rain on her parade. It's a moral smackdown and Nair seems to take such pleasure in it. (At least Witherspoon doesn't embarass herself as in The Importance of Being Earnest).

If this had been a how-to documentary on Oscar Baiting, it couldn't have been any more obvious than Hackford's Ray.

Glides on eerie tone, lots of anticipation, and gobs of witheld information. It helps that Julianne Moore is a great actress. Effectively revealed as trash when it ceases being satisfying and turns flat at close. I'm not too big to admit I ran up the stairs after I turned the lights out for the evening. (And hopefully, you're too humble to send mocking e-mails...)

It's sly because it seems to be made with all the stamps and approval of the Right itself, despite proving without a doubt that the hypocrisy of the Moral Majority is a dangerous thing when in the hands of political figures. As a documentary, it seems to change its tune too drastically when it arrives at our current leader in its closing forty minutes. (It doesn't help that I'm terminally biased and have very specific opinions about both politics and religion.)

The best part about The Motorcycle Diaries - a road trip to enlightenment that takes place when Che Guevara was still called Ernesto (for a while, anyhow) - has got to be the principles'; Both Gael García Bernal and Rodrigo De la Serna marvelously embody the recklessness of adventure and emotion as the aimlessness of youth disappears into the direction of maturity. The rub is in the film's constant use of cliches, employing nary a style of more than conventionality (most times) to bring their trek to a head. The gorgeous location photography all over South America is, well, gorgeous - but what repeatedly sings about the film is the whole concept of realizing one wants to give oneself to something larger than oneself. I'm almost ashamed to overpraise the triumphant spirit of the film in light of the greviously unsanctimonious conformity evinced in its cheap gags and obvious constuction. Nevertheless, I walked away from it in a mood to "think about stuff".

Tsai's films have more in common with photography than film, commanding your patience with long, docile master shots that look like they took about a day each to frame. As such, he finds a genuine warmth in celebrating the rainy last night of moviegoing at a movie house made mostly of cold concrete. A movie plays for specters of its characters, who bump around with the few film fans as the lonesome, methodical manager of the theater tracks down hallways and climbs stairs. If you look too close, it can become rhythmic with static energy - but the purpose seems more likely to lie in the viewers' meditation on their own experience that accompanies having so much darn time to think while you watch (As a consolation prize, the film does better in your mind.) This cinema-as-excuse-for-occasion -to-ponder technique is a genre (see waterrmarks like 2001 and Gerry), and within that genre Goodbye Dragon Inn sits somewhere in the middle. Tsai always attracts me, but his films never seem to live up to my expectations while i'm watching them.

[I'm tired of hearing about the spoiler alert crap associated with this thing and am not going to use one. I pretty much assume that people are like me and don't read about a movie until they've seen it. Maybe that's far-fetched. I don't know.]

There's lots of silhouettes, lots of pointer scenes and tons of grab-you-by-the-throat emoting; The film is cut from a tradionalist cloth of the underdog's victory, but ends up a mixed bag of misfires and greatness. Depiction of aging intelligence feels more Space Cowboys than Blood Work: Lotsa breeze shooting 'tween the cantankerous eye-narrower (Eastwood, indulging himself more than he ought to) and the film's most interesting character, a retired fighter with holes in his socks (Freeman, whose voice-over narration is the smoothest thing about the film). If the garbled banter of geriatrics isn't your speed, there's Swank's distracting double-wide accent, a detail that should have been enough to dispense with the introduction of her pathetic family, who belong to one of the most cartoonish evocations of a stereotype - white trash, in this case - I've seen in forever. Idealy, the movie could have operated without them: Though her big tell-off-mom scene points out a valuable irony (the strength in being defenseless), it obstructs the genuinely positive spirit of Maggie, a force that, occasionally, feels too strong to spoil with nagging cynicism (think Bess in Breaking the Waves, only much less moving).  The second-act euthanasia conference - both the pleading and the refusal - feel like they fall from a different fillm altogether. The twenty-ton ending is more of an emotional creschendo than Million Dollar Baby can swing. (In fact, the please-talk-about-me ending feels especially garish when you recall how seamlessly a similar turning point flowed out of a film like Bringing out the Dead just five years prior.) Despite its shortcomings as a somewhat superficial manipulator, Eastwood's film, while it lasts, is the least regrettable film he's made since The Bridges of Madison County. It's nice to see a film about boxing that genuinely celebrates the aesthetic beauty of the sport without lurching into overt analogy. It's nice to see a film told with sad recounting rather than fond recollection. Subplots are obvious and abruptly developed, but because the story is layered (told through Freeman using Swank to tell the story of Eastwood), we don't really notice all that much. That might be the most sophisticated thing Million Dollary Baby pulls off. That, and impressing so many people I once trusted.

The overarching sentimentality feels as perfunctory as the pleasures we get watching Depp romp with the kids. The movie never really shifts gears - spinning its wheels with nearly every plot point - but it remains effortlessly pleasing. Itt helps that Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet work so well together. Note to Forster: Give Rhada Mitchell something to do (what are you, crazy?)

The manipulative tricks reduce everyone to bare, animal instinct - and it's fun to listen as it happens; These actors make a film of nothing but dialogue as intense and biting as a high glamour version of In the Company of Men.

The rare and admirable by-the-numbers execution of a historical event that makes you wish so very badly that you could offer something more than anger. Similar to Black Hawk Down (but done better), Hotel Rwanda deconstucts the complex machinations of a situation that goes horribly wrong too quickly to react to. I feel ulnerable giving myself over to a film that's often awfully conventional. Sometimes you just decide that it doesn't matter.

The gratuituous Gladiator-worship that went into this film could be commended as meticulous and borderline-obsessesive if it weren't written by one of that film's creators (David Franzoni). It becomes tough to follow a film so depleted of originality while simultaneously feeling rooked by Bruckheimer's stab at the historical hero epic. Clive Owen broods more often not, seemingly busting off another one for them; It's been utterly oddington - and a good indicator of his strengths - watching him three times in six days: I wish I'd started with this one because it was such a pile of rubbish (and It would've been out of the way), but also because the transition works better: If I'd opened with this one, he would have gone from the brooding conformist to the quieter, more calculating sexual predator in Closer and finally, emerge with his quietly focused sense of "right" a la I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. (Or, loudest, somewhat loud to quiet.)

This tangent should also advertise the lack of time I'm interested in dedicating to this messy, exacting tripe.

Breakfast Club-style confessionals stacked six deep: The kind of excessive resolution whose intentions are better than its outcome. Luckily, characters are stronger than its story deserves, its dialogue more enjoyable than its message or its visual evocation. It's somehow sharp enough to borrow (read: steal) Wes Anderson's fire outright, but treats its more as homage than xerox. If I'd seen this when I was pressed to back up the short-lived "Wes Anderson School of Filmmaking" theory, I may have been clearer and less lost in left field. Nevertheless, Braff makes a fine main character: He's the poor man's John Cusack: The lanky doofus whose delivery of just the right combination of nervous energy and sly charm is terrifically paired with Portman's self-consciously confident eccentricity (she's also quite charming, and awfully freakin' cute). All in all, it's the quintessential independent film of the year, with all the good and bad attributes such an inference carries with it.

All connections between the characters in this film are vague. Ordinarily, this is a complaint of mine (mostly because it's here and there, rather than consistent). But I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is also something of a existential hood picture. The focus never seems to be on crime or the life of these British hooligans, instead staring down at the sort of men they are, shaping the characters even when they flit around in a standard setup. It then turns out to be the Best Standard Setup ever, when you realize what motivates the viscious fate of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (in the best spin on his arrogant-teen-in-grown-man's-body to date).

As vehicles go, The Big Bounce : Owen C. Wilson as In Good Company : Topher Grace. (Okay, and everybody was right: Scarlett Johanssen is just plain smokin'.)

Too trashy to be anything of substance, too sincere and ambitious to be great trash. I wish DePalma had directed it. Or a stage director. As it is, Saw is the type of film whose passing interest in the puzzle genre is squashed by its unbridled excitement at showing a man saw through his own leg. I always felt like it could go to the appropriate extremes a third generation Seven-ripoff might go, but it keeps everything on the somewhat tired side of the B-genre. More than anything, I wanted it to confine itself to the room where the protagonists awake - probably the only remotely unique thing about the film.