It's 2007's first Asia-to-ebay DVD that I buy, plan to resell, but keep to watch a second time (as I never seem to do)! The fondest recall I have - and it's been more than two months since I've seen it, so forgive me* - is the clarity with which it views people who are willing to make huge changes to themselves to renew interest in sed selves despite the film's other masterstroke (read: rarely spotlighted) observation, that it happens to be human nature for passion to wane. Hardly new news and hardly much is done with the theme; The film seems to hover about this observation from start to finish, never really making a conclusive (or even progressive) point on the theme's behalf. The tight reversal, mirror image structure (wherein the lady appears with only a mask and, later, the fella) is a bit too blatant for my taste, especially given my comfort with the Ki-Duk whose storytelling is unceremonious and unobstructing (both Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring and 3-Iron seem to poke about sans direction or symmetry), but whose tone and momentum were, frequently, breathtaking.

[ You may have noticed that in this 2 month period the film dropped from a B+ to a B. How astute of you to notice. Pat yourself on the back. And so on. The film just didn't have the same resonance in memory that it did while I watched it. Also: I was on the verge of a really difficult stretch at the end of my career over at the ITT. ]

What makes Zodiac so ominously unassuming? Where does that tone one might dial up as suspicious - or even academic - come from? In part, its Fincher's meticullous nature, believing in the honesty of this tale's relative lack of hairpins and out-Law & Ordering Law & Order with superimposed dates, times and places anytime more than a single day passes (it helps that the time gaps are both believable and really satisfying to a filmgoer). There's also an eerie sense of normalcy: A normal so normal it becomes weird of its own. Zodiac not only breathes this eerie normalcy, its built with a modern (read: short attention span) momentum. For being a sprawling eight reels, you're never out of its grasp long enough to realize it. It left me with a strange pause; I was so used to the slow rhythm of unfolding facts, falsehoods and dead leads, I think it just kept going in my head even after the film ended. Gyllenhaal is growing on me, too, which is a good thing, as he plays a character almost more remote than the Zodiac killer himself (sparking a slew of similarities to Hitchcock - that bridge shot with the rising music is a big one - he only becomes the main character halfway through the film). Only Ruffalo seems to have a fully fleshed out distracted-male role, giving as consistently solid a turn as he's raised since his fast burst of genius at the start of his career in You Can Count on Me. Downey, Jr. gives the best performance in the film, but he, too, seems only about half-there. And because its the central storyline, the actual detective work - done by all three characters - is so front and center, so beautifully observed, it consumes us. And we don't really care that the characters are a little thin on being characters. Imagine if James Ellroy had written Family Plot.

[And the opening shot? Quite awesome.]

An incredibly entertaining horse of a familiar shade, but certainly a different color, Grindhouse exists - and succeeds - in an atmosphere of almost complete and utter contradiction: There's its modern sense of contextualizing that's working beautifully to gaze upon these exploitation epics of sleazy vice and relentless violence with fond, almost honorable recall and then, there's also the long-shot (and mostly successful) stab at recreating them, jumbled amidst physically stylistic hues (film breaking, constant missing frames, purposefully scratched and weathered look), a mesh of dialogue that is calculated to be inane (both in its general badness and in its conversational bubble a la Tarantino) and wildly racy plots brimming over with shady, pulp-charged characters. For the most part, it works gangbusters: Planet Terror in particularfeels like its in the right hands, allowing Rodriguez to do what he's been doing for the grand underworld of Mexico for more than a decade now: Envisioning his world where gunfights tend to break out pretty often and, in between, everything's kind of awkward and seedy. His culls easily the only Rose McGowan performance I've ever really dug, a nigh unrecognizable Josh Brolin (gravely voiced and eyes full of murder) and terrific stereotype color in Freddy Rodriguez's mysterious hero and Michael Biehn's perpetually agitated town sheriff. (Planet Terror also features Tarantino, who seems to be lampooning himself as a, heh, actor.) Its an amped up trajectory to Tarantino's double-punch (and reported blueprint for an expanded version, likely to premiere at this year's Cannes Film Festival) of road mayhem, following the terrifically schizophrenic adventures of Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell). What ensues features a great deal of girlish chatter (which, I've found, really works a great deal better once digested and rewatched - - hence the relatively stagnant grade perrched above a review of mostly gushing) and a pair of culminations that seem almost unreal in their cruelty but, conversely, have a thrilling sense of prolonged danger that feels almost utterly unique to the game. (It helps that there's no CGI, which Stuntman Mike does, inevitably, point out to one of the ladies.) Bonus points for leaving unresolved the fate of Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Lee in the hands of backwoods Dodge Challenger owner - and former Vasalube recepient - Jasper (Jonathan Loughran).

Its cold and snowy small town Indie-Heist Flick skeleton gets a skin of Memento Jr., only instead of tattoos, the main character just uses a notebook, making him smart enough to get mixed up in the reindeer games, but not bright enough to look like he knows what he's doing. Which simply makes his handicap stick out all the more, like a gimmick. If we perhaps lose the notebook and, like, the twenty minutes of the film that center around the brain trauma, which could be replaced by a separate storyline (of Jeff Daniels, perhaps, getting his restaurant in tune - a plot point far more interesting to me than Joseph Gordon-Levitt's head troubles), we could easily imagine the film without the handicap, but with all the same things happening. Even then, this tale of a dim crook hoodwinked by some slightly smarter crooks would still seem all too familiar and all too unremarkable. Scott Frank invests tinges of greatness, to be sure, leaving great betrayals unspoken between characters and giving Daniels an irreverence that's great and funny even when the character itself seems like a frequent visitor to movie scripts (the wacky blind guy!). Gordon-Levitt is good, but wasted here. I think Randy was correct - and helps paint a great example of what's wrong with The Lookout - when he noted the grace and rare quality in a scene where Matthew Goode (the slightly smarter crook) acknowledges that Isla Fisher (his moll) sees The Gun and that she, in turn, acknowledges that she knows what he will wind up having to do with it. Terrific moment, to be sure, but imagine the scene if Goode wasn't there at all (as the camera suddenly, dramatically, pulls back to reveal him). Picture her - following that little peer into the level, Kansas distance (that precedes this scene) - finding the gun, looking at it, replacing it and going inside. Then imagine the film never shows a conversation about her finding it. We just see her steely conflict, the possibility of indifference certainly there and then her dismissal, because she's able to live with herself. A far better scene methinks.

A quite funny shred-up of action movie cliches, buttering its toast a bit too heavily by including a character who loves action movies, et al. It feels a bit like it has arrived a bit too late to be relevant, I'm afraid; Where Shaun of the Dead - a tighter film - seemed almost prompt, as a bevy of zombie-horror reimaginings were swirling in modern American vernacular (badly, I might add), Hot Fuzz, though ambitious as all get-out - and funny as hell, which alone makes it reccomendable - is out to mock a genre spin that seems to be almost dormant. It's like a book report on too broad a subject done with outdated Encyclopedias. But funny.

[I said funny, right.]

Unnecessary above all, but also not as good as Henry Fool, the film which I had considered the closest to a return to form for Hartley (whose last noteworthy film was 1992's Simple Men). Fay Grim, unfortunately, is a cross pollination of the whole Amateur dry-wit spy thing and the storyline of Henry Fool (which, I'm imagining I'm not alone in believing didn't beg a continuation, certaintly not with Fay - an deflated, humdrum Posey - as the main character). Hartley's gleaming auteurism - with its canted angles and attentively shaded scores, its straight-faced incidental humor and theatrical acting style - is nicely on display here, despite the clumsily overplotted political thriller it crowds itself with. Neat bonus: Besides his regulars, Jeff Goldblum is a natural Hartleyian.

Precisely the derivative, growth-hormone induced swill the first film was the antidote to.

I genuinely liked the way it seemed to pave its own road - in its moment-to-moment uncertainty of unclassifiable goings-on - but found Peter to be only a minor eccenttric, veering too often into oft-treaded waters that were on our minds from moment one. Michael Shannon beats one out, all Karl Childers menace and awkwardness, later embracing his inner splice-cut-speed twitch and, finally, letting the makeup artist take the wheel. The whole thing seems to be a masterwork of steam-building with only a casual destination (albeit, in one of the coolest sets I've seen in forever). The credence lent by Friedkin - even his proficient direction - gives the thing a shaggy, 70s appeal. We delight in watching Ashley Judd play trashy, but her character's essential participation takes the film by the reigns a bit too forcefully and we seem to be caught up in a ploy to feel something tragic. Based on a play and nicely claustrophobic for it, Bug ultimately turns out to be nothing more than a portrait of a schizophrenic and a manic depressive, lacking the transcendence of their coupling.

A vast and wrecklessly overloaded omnibus film that I will address in equally wreckless measure:

(Yes. I'm really doing it.)

Montmartre, Bruno Podalydès  (B)
[I'm a sucker for romantic whimsy, but why waste Monmartre on something that takes place, for the most part, inside a parked car?]
Quais de Seine, Gurinder Chadha(B-)
[Okay, it's cool to see a guy come to a girl's aid, but this thing goes absolutely nowhere - narrative and emotion wise. Also: Burka Jokes? So played.]
Le Marais, Gus Van Sant (C+)
[Gus Van Sant presents something self-consciously gay? Not surprising. Gus Van Sant presents a single gimmick dissolving before your very eyes to leave you with, um, nothing much at all. Kind of annoying.]
Tuileries, Joel and Ethan Coen(B+)
[One of the best of the bunch mostly because it actually appears to work as a short film. Buscemi getting dumped on seems like an easy potshot (for sure, it's still funny); The sassy, hilariously overdressed kid and his disaffected mother? Fucking genius.]
Loin du 16e, Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas (C)
[My gosh, a trip through gimmick land that takes a starting three transportation changes. How...boring.]
Porte de Choisy, Christopher Doyle(B+)
[Frentic and gorgeous, it's all but an abstract commercial; It works as a short film because sometimes short films are impenetrable, arty messes whose discombobulated instincts are a billion times more interesting than, say, most of the straightforward schlock in this collection.]
Bastille, Isabel Coixet (B-)
[Magic realism drowns out the smirk of the gimmick, but the voice over has the great quality of the new wave films, narrated without much compassion despite the obviously strong and meaningful things happening onscreen. To boot, Coixet's preoccupation with death is still sort of interesting to me.]
Place des Victoires, Nobuhiro Suwa(no recollection)
Tour Eiffel, Sylvain Chomet (no recollection)
Parc Monceau, Alfonso Cuarón(no recollection)
Quartier des Enfants Rouges, Olivier Assayas (B)
[I'm predisposed to like Maggie Gyllenhaal, but its Assayas' trademark spotlight on the arbitrary nature of life and his camerawork, which seems here, more than ever, at full attention to first person details. Not out of the realm of possibility that this is the one short that could work within the context of a feature that might be worth seeing.]
Place des fêtes, Oliver Schmitz(B-)
[Because the chronological snapback contains a really sweet-ish flashback - which shines above rather than cowering - in the face of some extremely self-conscious topical finger waggling.]
Pigalle, Richard LaGravenese (C+)
[General dialogue is, at times, clever and (or) funny, but conceptually, Pigalle is unconscionably silly to nary a satisfactory note.]
Quartier de la Madeleine, Vincenzo Natali (D+)
[Seriously, how do you fuck up vampires?]
Père-Lachaise, Wes Craven(C-)
[Shrill and impossibly one-note; Alexander Payne, why did you choose to sully yourself in this hogwash?]
Faubourg Saint-Denis, Tom Tykwer(B)
[Auteur theory aside, this one feels like a regression back to the Winter Sleepers/Run Lola Run style that I, being in the minority, feel like Tykwer level jumped beautifully in his subsequent films (Perfume excepted, as I haven't seen it yet). Still, if you're going to return to this sort of immediacy and pop energy, this is a magnificent place to do it and his segment - although rooted in a painfully inept misunderstanding of tone on the part of Melchior Beslon's blind student - is a great deal of fun to watch.]
Quartier Latin, Gérard Depardieu and Frédéric Auburtin (C)
[Off-kilter Cassavettes wannabe that's kind of disturbing because it features Ben Gazzara's corpse in a leading role.]
14e arrondissement, Alexander Payne (A-)
[The only one that felt genuinely endearing - still no small task for a short film - and easily the highlight. Margo Martindale's rigid pronounciation, as my wife pointed out, isn't wrong, exactly, but it seems to hint at a lack of awareness of the soft flow of the language, a speck made all the more impressive by Payne's insistence on creating a strong, melancholy person - terrifically human, equal parts positivity and old-fashioned sage - in the confines of the forced, nakedly internalized transcendence (which, by the way, feels suitably and appropriately self-manufactured on her part). The midwest is still the focused demographic, in Paris, and it seems to ache with a transparency typically not felt in films about general colloquial idiosyncracies. As in his features, Payne seems to be one of the few American auteurs capable of balancing actual comedy and actual drama without upsetting the delicacy of either. ]

Yesterday, while playing with my daughter, I suddenly broke out laughing while picturing Seth Rogen's friends mocking his "throwing dice" dance: "It's the only move he's got." Apatow puts the John Hughes genuineness into a sex comedy, even more vividly - yet still twenty minutes too long - than he did in The 40 Year Old Virgin, proving himself herewithto, possibly the only director making bankably smart comedies in the studio circuit. I still believe he's working up to his masterpiece (running time of hypothetical masterpiece: 90 minutes) - and that his TV shows were, perhaps, his actual watershed - but Knocked Up is a consistent delivery device of gut laughs that it would be foolish not to see repeatedly.

Rallies around a handsome, somewhat generous formula (eerily similar to the one in the first film), soaking up the color of its actors through Soderbergh's cubist/studio hybrid filmmaking, itself the best part of the film. Also: No Julia Roberts.

Though his rat family seems a mite too Don Bluth for my taste - and the humans have an oddly cardboard feel to them - Remy is hilarious. Oswalt gives him a charge; I couldn't help calling to mind his recent comedy album Werewolves and Lollipops: Same cynical voice, only clean and polished and lacking all reference to Rape Stove: The Stove that Rapes People. Clearly minor Pixar, Ratatouille has a patently absurd premise (amazing chef rat secretly controls novice chef by pulling his hair?). I graded it lower than Cars - which was, if you remember, pretty unbelievably out there in and of itself - but Bird's film maintains a consistency of combustible momentum that has not yet faded from the bouncing lamp's output. Great sequences dribble in - the old lady in WWI goggles destroying her house with a shotgun in pursuit of Remy, the all-night cooking lesson between Linguini and Remy, and London's needing to go to the bathroom three times; The film has a sloshy wet grin on its face, almost smirking at how lightly it treads, barely concealing its rush to cap both of its very short-lived major conflicts, and perhaps, just a bit regretful that its lesson is so flagrantly front and center by close. (I threw that third sequence in to fool you. In fact, it stands as a biographical note, as this was London's first experience in a movie theater since she was a snoozing baby.) With nothing forseeable on the plate, I stand before you to utter these words: The next one will rock.

Trading the immensely successful absorption of career nuts and bolts that worked gangbusters in Shattered Glass, Ray looks at a similarly eccentric code of ethics (the end defeats the means in the eye of the perp) by way of a bystander who is, unfortunately, played with neither gravity nor maturity by Ryan Phillipe, thereby sacking any chance that the film could, under any circumstances, become even momentarily riveting. Chris Cooper glides along beautifully on the fumes of an aging paradox; He believes in the power of Communism, but lacks the full-on dedication to embrace its faithlessness, resulting in a messy dogma that requires him to quietly beg repentence for the very sins he's in the process of committing. By the time he's taken down - they tell you this in the opening moments of the film, so zip your spoiler hole - he's acutely aware of his downward trajectory, going so far to point out that the GPS tracker implanted in his car interferes with the radio and so forth. But the film is still, unfortunately, about the betrayer (Phillipe), and about the FBI cronies putting said betrayer up to spying on "the worst spy in American History". Its a case of miscasting - Laura Linney is particularly hammy as well - but also a bad mixture of 70s political intrigue (the locations, the taut, mindless suspense setpieces, et al) and 00s bluntness (exposition is waiting at every turn, with only Cooper at the reigns of his own words, at times). And while the eerieness of Cooper's fascination with religion, galvanizing his dark streak at every turn, is nearly worth the price of admission, Breach is a pretty stale product: Sullied entertainment build around a great performance.

"Don't you get it? I'm not going to sell out," sayeth Damien to his brother Teddy. Despite my being able to understand roughly 30-40% of the thick-accented, oddly unsubtitled dialogue, the distillation of singular thought is the slippery eel here, never more evident than in the manifestation of chaos and confusion; Loach renders Ireland's early struggle for freedom from England (and, later, from itself) as a tug-o-war so complicit, its participants so uncertain of its exact terms, that they find themselves passionately fighting for a cause - any cause - even as they're being pulled into the mud pit of ambiguity that stands between the two hypothetical teams of tuggers. This, of course, is what makes Damien's assertion so sharp: He seems the only character in the film who has a clear head. This period is interesting of itself (see also: Michael Collins), but the struggle for a freedom that would so obviously be rightly deserved can find itself plied for message mongering, sprawling epics and even passion plays the like we'll not refer to again. The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a bit more heightened than, say, Bloody Sunday, in terms of dramatic effect (the Black-and-Tans are almost cartoonish, I'll grant you), but its bloodshirt attitude, led with a staggering greatness by Cillian Murphy (in his best role to date), seems to melt everything away into a blur, which brings me back to the start: Despite my trials with the actual language of the film, the confusion of a dialogue muddle actually seems to benefit a film which depicts, masterfully, the wobble of debate versus violence.

The trick, of course, is to simultaneously be fresh (read: funny) and respectful to the series, both of which The Simpsons Movie does - but not all the way through. In classic, latter season episode-style (wherein the first 10 minutes - which might have little or nothing to do with the rest - are far more hilarious and engaging than the second 20), The Simpsons Movie bangs through 30 minutes of solid A material before introducing a narrative in a moment that's obviously unavoidable but, nevertheless, the first step in an obvious downward spiral. Using self-deprecating ads, flexed PG-13 privelidges (cursing! more brazen nudity! paraphenalia!)  and the genuine charm of its characters (whom, miraculously, it stays true to), the film never stops being entertaining but, occasionally, begins to feel poorly translated; In precise words: It's reach exceeds its grasp. It's a bad idea to make a film like this, period, because any attempt cheapens the serendipidous magic of the its content of origin (in this case made worse by being the deeply nostalgic, utterly clear high point in my youth: Something I always, even when I changed as a person, was deeply loyal to). In embracing a place as a "movie", it puts itself in the ring with a longer meditation. It's middleground between being too absurd and not absurd enough works beautifully as short bursts of satire, but doesn't work as well as a feature. All of that said, my first and most profound impression of the film is that it is rampantly, consistently funny and that this really trumps all because, for Christ's sake, who could turn down anything being the name The Simpsons? (Except their later musical albums. And almost all the video games. And those awful, awful comic books.)
 

Bale captures Dengler to a T - that arrogant, supersmart, excited kid in a grown-up's flight suit - but Herzog is, as ever, the main character. He piles on off-kilter sequences, lingering shots of the jungle, a wobbly-weeble ending so in opposition to his style it is almost the most thrilling moment of what amounts to, I believe, a genre film; Herzog looms in every frame, observing human nature at face value, as he always does. It's always kind of fun to watch Bale play someone who is just so together and he's seen, here, being practically sainted (Herzog seems to see nothing but good and right in him). Even Zahn has a drone-muted zombie feel to him, a different rhythm than nearly his entire career (which, save Out of Sight, is a welcome surprise). Interactions are all jilted to sound almost naturalistic; The dialogue feels invented on the spot, the story made up after the "script" was filmed. There's a looseness to it that feels like the style of pre-documentary-phase Herzog, and also, the endlessly addictive flavor of the bizarre.

Precisely the type of film to fit Bong's jagged mood shifts and excessively sparkling cinematography. There's slowly creeping J-horror hues, there is that unflappably off-kilter Katakuris-comedy element (when they're all rolling on the floor crying and its hilarious) and there's even that disconnected connection (Kore-eda?) as old and young characters intertwine. And then there's Hollywood and Message tags (Giant Monster CGI-worship intermingling with environmental alarm). Bong is a director we should never import and a director so successful at combining and conquering a slew of genres within one film. Kang-ho Song, as the film's unlikely hero, is wonderful. I could have watched it for days on end.

Glen Hansard is immediately - and overwhelmingly - likable and a terrific, reasonablyy talented folk singer and Once is a very charming picture, indeed; I wish there had been more money available to its' makers: Shooting it on scaborous HD served little to no aesthetic purpose.  I loved that it descended, thrillingly, from its love story haunches to reveal, instead, that indescribable bond between collaborating artists. Not only are modern films set in some medium of art typically missing this nuance (in favor of sexual attraction, unfounded romances, et al), but they seem to be missing out on the joy of pursuit - it's supposed to be about the chase, not the payoff.

Mixed bag here, eliding on charm (it's damn funny) even when its being utterly banal (scenes challenge the norm, but the general "last big, long night" shape of it is achingly familiar); I could've listened to Jonah Hill and Michael Cera jabber all day in their aimlessly filthily empty vernacular, but most of the things that happen to them aren't nearly as interesting - or entertaining - as the events which befall McLovin' and The Officers (Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Seth Rogen, Bill Hader, respectively). There's a cartoonish bent that doesn't jive with its beautifully desheveled navigation of the hierarchy in a friendship triangle, but it's consistently funny, which, as I've said countless times prior, is all we really ask of le cinema.

Dull - more than anything - but also lost in a sea of its own clichedom. Feels much like something I'd see on cable - not HBO or Showtime, but TBS or TNT. Why anyone would hire such a conservative filmmaker to make a western in a time when we simply aren't making great westerns (of the 7 post-Unforgiven titles included in Cinematical's list, Dead Man is the only keeper). The vistas are supposed to rule, the people are supposed to be filthy inside and out and there must be a desirable (or risible - you have your pick) connection to the genre. This is, of course, the biggest ruling factor. The Western is a genre and the best way to mine the fuck out of a genre film until it cannot play straight is to hire an interesting director. Werner Herzog. David Cronenberg. Not: James Mangold. And then, here's Russell Crowe, recycling Jack Aubrey, casually (as if it's no big deal to shit on a brilliant turn like that one), with Christian Bale adrift in a deeply underdeveloped character we'll just call Wilting Father. It's not that Bale is bad, exactly, but he doesn't transcend the role, either: His act of heroism barely raises an eyebrow. Gretchen Mol is typically annoying, Peter Fonda superfluous and Ben Foster channeling (badly) Owen Wilson. Only Dallas Roberts' ever hurried, ever blunt Grayson Butterfield seems in sync (although Vinessa Shaw, ever the hot piece of business, works just fine.)