Wait! Wait! I know it's April and I'm just getting around to this, but we don't have to settle for Little Miss Sunshine or Akeelah and the Bee as the supreme crowd pleasers of last year. In the best film of Almodóvar's I've seen, Penelope Cruz lends such a lightness to a tale involving such lurid elements (attempted rape, murder and constant deceit among them) that the effect becomes that of joy, a celebration of family through the strife of horror and, in the film's best trick, a gentle set of connections, all resting on a plot point I dare not make mention of (for fear of blabbermouthing it) but that, rest assured, seems to subvert magic realism while all the while retaining its overall sense of pleasant lunacy.

Three cheers for trotting out this wounded, ugly worldview, a bobber at the end of a thematic string regarding the innate cravings in the aged to possess something young (to remind them of their carefree days prior to that long, permanent shift into maturity). No, wait: Make that three jeers for its overheated sensibilities. Dig that Cate Blanchett mock-crucifixion of sorts as she, howling, flings her self torso-first at a gathered swarm of the British 'razzi (How subtle). Or, just preceeding it, gawk at  The "notes", as read to us in Judi Dench's dry, practically flecking voice-over. She dolls out a barrage of venomous observations: At best, she conveys her chilly demeanor as a device of exposition - as if she even speaks as an automaton of psychotic lust directly to the audience - and at worst, she sounds like generic poison pen junk, going on and on with a malice of strong forward momentum (we suspect these words will be discovered long before the deeply contrived moment where Blanchett finds co-worker/calculating stalker Dench's title leaves and thrashes about like a wind-up toy, spurting excerpts as if she's some strange, severed word artery). Another wreckless thing bound towards me as I watched: A stunningly recycled-sounding Philip Glass score. I've run into this unnerving reality a few times now and it almost strikes me as a betrayal (it still sounds good, so I can't entirely shun it), a sort of selling out through excessive remix (see also: The Hours, Secret Window, The Illusionist). Dench is outstanding as she often is and Blanchett is lovely - despite her tendencies toward fever pitch, but both are wretched and all but celebrated, a point which I think summates my reoccuring beef with Notes on a Scandal: Despite the deeply watchable vice parade it turns out, the melodrama seems worn on its sleeve instead of inside, like watching an overcooked, underprofound spin on a Mike Leigh or a Ken Loach film.

Brian DePalma's Laura, made over-topical - even made into a sci-fi-ish fantasy - butt most of all, directed by Tony Scott, battle axe of fetishized slow-motion and the multi-shot sport feature on his camera. It would be misleading to say that I wasn't following the film closely, but it would also be misleading to infer that it does much more than stage, a quality Scott is also - to mixed results - world-renowned for. He doesn't quite pull off the patented sense of Remove that DePalma oozes, but he seems completely unconcerned that his film is packed wall-to-wall with routine, which almost works for him. What feels like playful intention quickly lapses into pretention, though, as we endure inferences of religious belief and headline-ripping good v evil scenarios (Jim Caveziel's participation seems odd, given his intensely religious off-screen persona). It's difficult to ignore the strangely haunting attach a decidedly autopilot Denzel Washington makes to Paula Patton, the pawn in a particularly heinous act of terrorism set to take place in a (constantly commented on) post-Katrina Big Easy. (See Going Overboard with Topical Issues reference in the first sentence of this notice.) Did I mention he travels through time as a result of a long explanation by a crazed Adam Goldberg, playing the token technogeek? Oh, well, he does. His interchronological adventures are patently absurd, but also a good opportunity to throw in a reasonably inspired car chase. One cannot fault Scott for what he delivers: An explosion, early in the film, incredibly well orchestrated and forgettable entertainment not unlike a slightly more urgent Frequency or a far less magnetic Primer.

Comes across as if it's more comfortably stitching episodes of the show together (I have no evidence - or want of evidence - to back that up.You feels what you feels,, I suppose.)

A second viewing would likely produce a solid A; I look forward to further deciphering which pieces of me are Mark and which pieces are Kurt (instead of the easily lumped "which one are you most like" crap I saw most critics spouting). This is a film set in the coldest of cynical 'burgs (our current world), a film that brands one character using layered guilt-talk with the wife, a Volvo, talk radio, meekness and the gradually dawning, ever-shaky spirit of responsibility while steeping the other in the hazy, aimless freedom of pursuing one's own interests, "somewhere between a nomad and being homeless". The film unfolds leisurely, a dramatic undercurrent made even more audible by its short running time, deliberate sense of pace and occasional lurches into improvised-sounding, suddenly edgy moments of lucidity. I could have watched these characters fumble about in shades of The Modern Liberal for days on end.

An oddly memorable yet deeply flawed, ultimately misfired stab at suburban caricature, Field's Little Children is, essentially, We Don't Live Here Anymore with a child molester piped in for good measure. No discredit forwarded to Jackie Earl Haley's terrifically schizophrenic performance but, unfortunately, his particular "payoff character" seems almost unnecessarily turned from author's crutch of convenience to out-and-out subplot (This is just one of the things Little Children seems hellbent on overdoing. The narration is another.) The film is fine at feeling the abstract strains of confusion: Kate Winslet is clearly too desirable and pitiable - but ever the unwaveringly likable gal - while Patrick Wilson is full of contradiction as a narcissist in search of idealism (although the whole "can't pass the bar" thing almost feels like the obvious, generic objection the film tasks itself with overcoming). It falters, though, when attempting to sprinkle a tone of black comedy here and there, particularly in the aforementioned narration. I found myself thinking it had a great air of inappropriately formal presentation, a set of descriptors too dry - too God's Eye - to be unfolding such wry,, sometimes faux-shocking vernacular (It doesn't exactly fit the melodramatic goings-on of the film, either, but I imagine that was the intended effect.) The theme all around here seems to be purposeful mismatching and, to add insult to injury, it's far too good-looking a film (Antonio Calvache lensed) to be this busy, aesthetically. I walked away feeling empty and hollow and almost betrayed by its artistic greed.

Translating from the stage more succintly in dialogue than staging, Hytner's The History Boys contains some upended norms (casual homosexuality, boys tolerating their teacher's sexual advances as flattery, open challenges to proven admissions essay methods), but mostly it seems to while in making the point - over and over and over again - that being Oxford-bound is an opportunity to destroy one's precious, marginally unique identity. It smacks of shooting fish in a barrel, making it no more than a mild diversion rather than something of warmth or even mild profundity. The camaraderie of its subjects leaves out all the dorm-life rabble and solo character sketch; An easy swallow, certainly harder to leave out, but noticably absent, to be sure. I suspect the stage production probably fit the air of theatrical resonance the material radiates. It translates, but feels clunky. For this to work, a shallow, styrofoam exposition and build-up - which would have been laughable - would likely have been necessary. There's no right answer here. Best illustration of the half-baked stage-to-screen ushering? The deeply awkward sea change early in the film from next-to-last to final semester that appears to take place in the space of a single cut, leaving us to scratch our head for a minute or so.

As an organic treatise on the state of an endlessly complicated country reflected through an everyday prism of its three major religious groups (Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds), Iraq in Fragments is outstanding: Beautiful imagery, thoughtful voice-over and stately observations that rarely need to be forced or explained; Somewhere, though, inside the whole myriad of chaos it profiles, the thing seems to pluck a sour note - particularly in the first episode - as itt finds its common people more or less performing for the camera, a byproduct one imagines might be far more limited by the unprecedented coverage of its subjects (the director lived among them for two years while making the film). Worse still, in the first and the second episodes, the troubling subject of intervention (ostensibly the key word in nearly every angle of the current conflict there) arises as Longley's camera trains on the equivalent of child abuse and vicious beatings (as Sadr's followers beat and kick men selling wine at a market). There's a case to be made for culture-clash, a sense that my own American upbringing couldn't possibly grasp the nuance of Iraqi mentality (although, could that be part of The Grand Point?) - but there's a larger case, methinks, for an ounce of humanitarian responsibility. The grade is probably too high for something I consider despicable (that is, standing by and allowing these things to happen), if only for the actuality that Longley probably feared that by following his instincts to step in, he might be killed. It illustrates (as the recent cell phone video of a Baghdad honor killing does) the clash between broadcasting a cause to rally the world around and simply removing yourself from the personal horror of a moment you're caught up in by watching it through a viewfinder as you record it. Okay, I'm on a tangent. I reccomend the film.

For some reason an iconical director with a following, Aronofsky is also ever the conductor of vast suspensening (yep, it's made-up). The biggest disappointment here isn't how painfully and unsubstantially proficient his film is, its how it fails - with such gorgeous cinematography and another Rhythms of Doomsday score from Clint Mansell - to generate an ounce of exit composure; II didn't feel the urgency of my absorption, not a wit. The tri-part plotline isn't as interesting as it sounds: A cocky doctor (Jackman's stock "keyed-up" guy) is trying to save his wife's life (Rachel Weisz dying of cancer adorably) by using a rare tree while she writes a book about a man trying to find a rare tree to save a nation and so on and so forth. In fact, the central bit is almost self-disposed, as it feeds - much more enjoyably - into the other two where we see: a) an uncomfortably confined visualization of ancient Mayan civilization that's rapturous and absurd and b) Hugh Jackman floating in a bubble, eating a tree (in shots that resemble Requiem for a Dream's quick flash imagery) and, you know, lamenting his wife's pleas. Indifferent, I'm now going in search of the graphic novel from the original script.

Opens intriguingly - with a blur of techno speak that articulates zip - and proceeds to plod along with better intentions than expected (this is a character study, not the trailer-promised lesson entitled The CIA Story), siddling up to an obvious parallel (there used to be a dash of conservative in conservativism) and petering out, after what turns out to be a self-aware three hours, in a fit of melodrama so inane, I probably could have toned down the urgency with which I needed to verify the whole affair's firm ground in fiction. There are a host of these films now - the ones that tell a story about real items, with severe detail and are, quite simply put, whipping by on the fumes of an audience's self-doubt (i.e. - "Did that happen in real life? If so: Wow!") This said, DeNiro's stab at prestige gives him the opportunity to - in full view of Damon's long-sustained pooker face - easily yank the movie out from the automated title character, and from spaz-princess Angelina Jolie (who only seems out of place because she's far too perfect-looking for Damon), and from Billy Crudup (trouncing to death a British accent), and from Michael Gambon (playing the Richard Griffiths' role) and, of course, from John Turturro (who does no particular wrong). Trotting out actual acting, DeNiro does so for the first time in six years, a trick that nearly, in itself, makes the film worthwhile; In just three monologues, he seems to be an anchor for the film both as an exposition device and as the lighthearted mastermind of spydom. And structurally, the film appears to be spying on itself, unfolding the past while gradually sneaking a peek at a present, post-Bay of Pigs melee. That the CIA stuff is pretty dull isn't exactly a detractor: It sets a nice stage for a perversely fascinating character with the wretched habit of seeming to be a bitter, seventy year old man even when he is only twentysomething (although this ultimately wears somewhat thin, too, as he repeatedly, casually dismisses - with, at times, the indifference of a psyychopath - his wife and son). But somebody owes me big time over that crap at the end with his kid.

Honorably candid and with a wringer of a premise, Sleeping Dogs Lie - formerly titled Stay - posits the reality that modern relationships of a romantic kind are far too grounded in truth (down to the bare bone) and suffer greatly for it. The central storyline has a traditional ring - or at least elements of such - as it mines the horror show that is a husband-to-be's initial encounter with his future wife's family, a love story born of rebound and a woman's unflinching obsession with companionship. That the catalyst for all of these events is the main character's dog fellatio invests a level of great, exploratory absurdity that powers the whole film. Goldthwait sketches too-rigid parents, a drug addled brother, a boyfriend's warmed-over charm and another boyfriend's slightly less but nevertheless still warmed-over charm, delivering everything with the production values (including nearly all of its cast) of Cable TV. I kept thinking of Melvin Goes to Dinner and its deeply pretentious downpour of couples' therapy being disguised as comedy. By contrast, Goldthwait seems almost hell-bent in attempting to reset the quintessential idie mold from the inside by using the freedom of a low budget to pull a total of zero punches - faltering only in the odor of sincerity emanating from the third act's set of romantic closures (not the volley of Bonita Friedericy's secret "affairs", but the other thing), improperly laced with a great, subversive moral. Nevertheless, it's a trick to be hilarious, hit universal themes with better than average accuracy and still be driving the whole thing with the whimsical gimmick of a sex comedy.

Relegating the generic, overheated plotlines to music montages in early sequences? Great Idea. Busting into straight-up musical? Not so great idea. Casting Eddie Murphy as a go-for-broke Motown singer? Terrific idea. Casting Jaime Foxx as the wicked manager/husband/guy on cover of Black Entrepenuer Magazine? Um, nope. Doesn't work. Too often bludgeoned by its own storyline - particularly everything involving Jennifer Hudson's Effie White, who perpetually needs to be convinced of everything - Condon's musical has neither the reverancce of Gods and Monsters nor the benign mundanity of Kinsey. It's certainly on its feet, with great, staged musical numbers and a handful of semi-tolerable songs, but it turns this era in musical history into plaincake lesson in human nature.

As a rule, any film that ends in an orgy has my vote, but Perfume: The Story of a Murder, with a crutch the size of Paris (we can't smell what's occuring onscreen and we don't walk away feeling as though scents have been conveyed, exactly), wobbles a bit before it gets to the penultimate mass fucking. Don't get me wrong: Tykwer's formal composition and his unwillingness to shy away from the novel's grisly edges (even smattering them with wry black humor sometimes) are terrific, but Perfume has a decidedly dull main character (played by Ben Whishaw, who has been Keith Richards, Bob Dylan and John Keats within a span of three years, by the way) and a distracting Dustin Hoffman performance, both of which leave the film in the hands of its atmosphere, which is only barely enough to carry it. It's a pity, though. While I remembered very little of the book (as Kurt Cobain's favorite book, I read it way back in 8th Grade), I certainly retained the importance of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille as a colorful horrorshow of awkwardness. Here, he's portrayed with a measure of misunderstood genius in Mommy-Issue excuse mode that feels like an apology for his amorality. Tykwer is a director who carries the promise of progressive cinema - both Run Lola Run and Heaven are terrific exercises in speed and genre-reversal, while The Princess and the Warrior, his most underrated film, contains precisely the right interplay of fate and narrative - but his Perfume: The Story of a Murder has the tinkered dampness of a homegrown oxymoron: The American Studio Independent. Not a good sign.

Immensely unsatisfying but acutely brilliant really, really, really often, Inland Empire is one of those you want to like more than you actually do. D'Angelo is right to say he felt like he was watching "the most aggressively avant-garde narrative feature ever made" during the second hour, but its also a really diminishing observation as not only is that the point, but Lynch is one of those filmmakers who so clearly shouts his mission statement from the rooftops; One cannot bring labels and actually expect them to stick. Each film belongs to the viewer and the interpretation is personal - if only for being indescribable. For me, the snippets acted thematically and I gleaned a variety of shades of loss and darkness from them, but couldn't possibly begin to assess what feels like dream logic with any level of clarity or sincerity. It tatters on longer than it ought, continuing long after I was content with the experience (although, to those it matters most to, its hard to really make even that one stick) and sags to kitchen sinkism in more than one spot (the dancing gals, yes, but also its tendency to recycle the same means of shock). It also features moments of pure terror and hilarity, feelings Lynch has always marvelled at inviting to the same party (To be read in his throaty, accented voice: "Set them loose in the same mixed company and watch the magic of art!")

Foolhardy in its thudding crisscross narrative ambition from the get-go, Bobby is lazily bursting with eight stories, featuring twenty-two characters who jabber themselves into 60s-caricature oblivion (it's a toss-up what's most embarrassing, but Ashton Kutcher's participation is up there). While everyone really seems Perpetually Caught Up in this teleplay, Bobby darinly fails to reveal a single interesting/non-fawning thought on RFK, its peripheral centerpiece. Painfully and consistently irrelevant are the riffs on worsening racial divides, on a very black and white drug culture, on age (for some reason) and, without batting an eye, on the mechanics of an affair between - I'm not kidding - William H. Macy and Heather Graham. Further irksome is the way Estevez envisions himself as the kept husband to the waning cabaret singer (Moore, whose scenes with Sharon Stone are just laughable), nobly standing by a long past-due passion, as if he sort of gets off on watching the sparks burn out on her career. Emilio, however, is watching from a terrifically chilly ashpit. I don't remember endorsing Rated X and I'm still curious: Why does this exist, exactly?

Notable, as was 2005's chilling Downfall, for the cross-section detail of its fascinating and frightening subject: A militant, politically organized Germany. Sucking down fact after fact - most gleaned of Ulrich Mühe's terriffic melting robot - about the GDR's state security ministry, the STASI, becomes a thrilling venture in and of itself. Equally revelatory is the cramped tightrope position of The Artist in such a State, a concept stacked almost to tipping with overkill theatrics, but peppered, beautifully, with a wiretap potboiler reasonably fit to tickle both DePalma (with his penchant for Voyeuristic Thrills) and Hitchcock (suspense woven among a character's multiple loyalties). That it goes on about fifteen minutes too long isn't really a black mark, per se (insomuch as it didn't radically change the already overplotted experience); Its closing bookend is silly, and clearly defines the type of film it is: Ideal candidate for Best Foreign Language Academy Award.

Though De-IMAXed, I don't actually suspect I've missed out on much, here: Space is mind-blowing to me no matter how my field of vision is filled. It's clearly aping the expertly photographed workaday atmosphere of Robert Richardson's eye in Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (and his assist on Mr. Death), using the Philip Glass music to try to catapult itself into the occasional 'qatsi territory. It succeeds because of its unprecedented access and its candidness, but also because it leans on its serendipidous good fortune: The loony, kid-like principle investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Steve Squyres, falls straight out of one of the aforementioned Errol Morris documentaries. He gestures crazily, draws wild parallels and, most importantly, is always aware of the camera. By the way: Imagine if this $820 Million program was given the $1-2 Trillion dollars that speculators believe we will have spent on the Iraq War when it is all said and done. Am I the only one that thinks Space should be our priority investment?

Consistently funny, but also consistently sketch-level, operating in as episodic a manner as it did in the HBO-run, with a thin narrative thread - - no, wait, hold up, I'm taking too this seriously already... Delivers roughly the same charms as the TV show, with roughly the same gusto and definitely the same cartoonish production values. It's a stand-up routine translated to the theatrical consciousness with no real urgency or necessity; Great comedy simply interpreted for another, not necessarily broader medium. Its also worth noting that this is Jack Black's third foray into the abstracts of rock worship, and given that its haunches are pure lampoon, it remains the most pure and - unfortunately - the most limited. You don't sponge his enthusiasm quite the way you do in School of Rock or High Fidelity; It's giddy, headier, less nuanced and it fucking rocks.

A shockumentery, in part, but also overbearingly manipulative and far too flirty with an aspect of itself I'd almost branded unethical* (it explains this about midway through). Its rapid succession of accounts of child sexual abuse and unflinching (and unquestionable) dissection of the effects is so chilling, I found myself tortured and restless after watching it. But the bluntness - countless close-ups of a weeping, foreign-accented papa - is deeply transparent. The objective party in me knows that some of this is really unassuming, duh filmmaking (the wipes/fades/Mick Harvey doing the score), but the subjective side wins out because the argument is so important and has the balls to expose the following: a) the origin (in the 4th century, the Catholic church imposed celibacy in order to redirect the estates of dead priests from their eldest sons back to the church), b) the current status of the problem (rampant abuse of power continues, from CA's network of troubles to that of the US), c) how high it goes - i.e. Pope Benedict XVI's participation (he was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prior to his current appointment  and, apparently, that position had the influence and direct jurisdiction to address the allegations properly) and, d) the solution (which is, obviously, to end celibacy among priests). Deliver Us From Evil is preaching to the choir and raised my hyperbole/asshole meter a full ten volts. Anyone who has even peripherally glanced at the subject since I've seen this film has found themselves on the receiving end of an unholy earful of unholiness.

[ * - Father O'Grady carries on indifferently, with the remove of conscience shared only by a serial killer or someone with a severe mental disease. As we watch him draft a letter of apology, invite his victims to meet him for closure, univite them upon further reflection and, finally, wax poetic about The Catholic Church's lasting residue, it seems almost inhuman to imagine filmmakers standing idly by as he walks in and among children and indirectly interacts with his victims. O'Grady, however, we learn, has done time in prison. Mental health professionals call the closure (in the letters) a good thing. A lawyer is shown exposing O'Grady to the public thoroughly and, most importantly, in his current town in Ireland. The filmmakers certainly prove that this particular situation is under control. It almost works to show how much is involved in getting it under control, giving nod to the grandness of this malady as a whole. ]