Flat, more than anything; Norton is fine, but the whole thing feels like an eventless answer-for-answer's-sake to Lee's overlong, equally unnecessary Hulk. Releasing it ribbon and bow with Iron Man - as if contractual obligations and a prominent studio link would somehow osmotically make this film as likable and spry as that one - feels like a misstep. Ditto Liv Tyler.

If Sydney Pollack had lived to direct it, I think Recount might have pranced in the shadows of politically charged, real-life outskirts pics like The Insider, Shattered Glass or even All The President's Men. Jay Roach seems almost preoccupied with lightening the mood - which is likely a byproduct of the screenplay as much as anything - but all too often, he only succeeds in making the real-life counterparts seem awkward and false; Scenes that involve Bush and Gore, though minimalized and obviously invested with recreation (of actual conversations) rather than dialogue feel extra clunky. Between the real-life race to completely set, establish and break precedent, and the labrynthine study into the lacksadasical process of voting regulations, the content is more than enough to carry. I'd say it is nice to see Kevin Spacey alive and well, but as I don't really watch movies so much anymore, I'm not really qualified to make a statement of that ilk. But it is.

While I can see why National Geographic was all over this – the under ocean shots are like a foreign landscape, for starters – its still very clearly minor Herzog. The people he finds dedicating themselves to an often psychologically traumatizing landscape (no darkness for weeks, a grating silence, an aching loneliness) are each of them somewhat mid-level eccentrics, but rarely do they transcend some greater comment about Antarctica itself – why it brings them back, why it excites them, et al – and even rarer still do they seem to have a common-ness. While this likely the point – the place attracts the right people, its not Alaska, Sr. - Herzog does himself the great disservice of not meddling, the quality I find most attractive about his doc features. After all, if we don't have the bravura of The White Diamond - with Herzog demanding that he and his camera board the balloon that treks to the hidden canopy - we're left with a plateau of mediocrity. (Or, Wheel of Time.)

Stepping back from the fresh edge of Casino Royale, this 007 tale is warmed-over to be sure (mark your checklist: evil organization oversees things, foreign baddie who speaks with odd profundity, wacky compound that practically implodes with fire, all the sex, cars and martini fixins), but Daniel Craig continues to invest the role with the kind of confidence and steel never applied in the history of Bond. He’s really the most exciting thing about the film - - which should sound like the backhanded dig it is; Luckily, his performance makes it more than worthwhile.

Hits the nail on the head, examining this incident from the mouths of its witnesses, participants and Lyndie England, who seems to be both.

Beautiful in its scope, Silent Light is calm and moving, touching the same nerves as both The Straight Story and Breaking the Waves. This is a graceful, otherworldly film.

Horribly top-heavy with exposition, leaning a full 54 minutes into pandersville before it strikes even a moment of pay dirt. The interview sequences are tense, and Langella casts the obligatory glow of honor towards Nixon, even as everyone involved parks it on their haunches to observe a tete-a-tete between two barely realized characters that becomes exciting simply in terms of our collective national identity. We can relate to what happens because we're news junkies, because we know national cynicism towards Nixon is not only accepted but welcome and because Frost has been thrust at us as a second rate everything. (In other words, fish are placed into a barrel and subsequently shot.) The cards are neatly stacked and removed, unceremoniously, one at a time, until there are no more cards. I was just the positive side of even accepting this as a worthwhile film idea - even in the readily homogenized hands of Howard - mostly because it delivers on precisely what it promises, despite offering nearly nothing of depth, conclusion or even notable comment. I can't imagine why they used a documentary-style framing device, a move that serves little purpose except the aforementioned dolling out of obvious factoids for the folks in the back row. If only Steve Coogan's Tony Wilson had been the interviewer...

Would've worked fine in shorter form, but as is - the great daring and wily personality of its charge, the absence of modern context and the almost Truffautian asides - Man on Wire is fine.

Luckily, its main character and its length communicate a semi-pure sense of wonder, but this movie can't get out of its own way. The framing device - set during Hurricane Katrina, no less - is beyond problematic.

Its Rourke's movie and, for the most part, its a terrifically gripping and capably haunting one. The heavy lifting of his father-daughter, customer-stripper melodrama isn't within the realm of Aronofsky's capabilities - these scenes almost feel grafted from another, much less unique film - but its no matter: The Wrestler is solid and memorable. Those scenes at the deli counter are among the year's best.

Proving apt at criss-crossing between Germany and Turkey, Akin's The Edge of Heaven is a far more literary affair than Head-On (and, for it, a much less potent one); Its spent less time turning in my head than that film, but even the construction of it, employing a malleable and effective time-shift, only begins to explain why I was so tolerant of a movie where people's paths cross, inexplicably, at key moments. Comparisons to Babel are not out of whack.

Self serving only in its brazen contradictions, Gran Torino's defiance - at least for a good, solid stretch - is worth a dozen Crashes. The method isn't necessarily bold, but the worldview sure is. Even Eastwood's almost cartoonish performance, his undeniably broad arc and the eventual dovetail it makes come off feeling fresh merely because they seem to point at the fundamentally simple difference between sincere racism and hardwired American xenophobia. Its a revenge drama, like Falling Down, but less programmed to hit every talking point; Though set in his ways, there's an almost warm and fuzzy appeal to his remaining rough around the edges as the obligatory melting process sets in. The whole thing has a level of preposterously bad taste that's equal parts hilarious and manipulative. It crackles, though, topping any of Eastwood's recent films with ease of a project more tossed-off than presented.

The barrage of implausible events wouldn't be so offending if it were so racked with cliches. Its premise, though, is just laughable: HAL-like computer controls everything through technology (traffic lights change, it could derail a train, it breaks into government storehouses) as its been programmed by the US Government who wouldn't listen to it - the computer - when it - the computer - told them not to blow up some important terrorists. That it's foundation has such topical ambition is almost sort of harmlessly adorable, but the steady stream of intensely sassy and overzealously "clever" movie dialogue will lodge itself somewhere beneath your skin from moment one. Lucky for Shia LaBeouf, he actually is a talented actor, blowing everyone off the screen with ease; The warmed-over stunts and Thornton's half-assed change of heart kept putting me in mind of a ADD-addled, quick-shot attempt to update The Fugitive. And now I'm going to go be sick.

Gushy memorializing at close aside, Milk never seems the solid biopic flavor, opting instead to free-flow on contact high from Penn's best performance - in my estimation - to date. Everything revolves around him and he's consistently human, very close to the Harvey Milk of The Times of Harvey Milk: Stubborn, very real, very incontrevertible, very funny and very loving. My concerns about Van Sant were more closely associated with mourning - I hated to see him leave the Tarr homage factory - but Milk keeps the director outt of the picture, very wisely, only resurfacing with the To Die For fragment-collage, a 360' shot that might have fallen from Gerry and the creepy way he squeezes suspense along into a foreseen conclusion.

Revolutionary Road is the horrible car crash currently smoldering at the intersection of DiCaprio's obsession with being taken seriously and Winslet's obsession with playing the suburban matriarch, both of them given the lion's share of nothing in Mendes' overheated, distractingly blasé comment on 50s gender and societal roles. It plays out as a series of arguments which gradually tease out each character's completely obvious inner turmoils. I kept wishing they would just be quiet and figure out where the fuck their kids were (this is another film that presupposes that we'll buy tales of family strife yet relegates the children to cameos). Occasionally, Michael Shannon shows up as the shock therapy-drained son of their realtor (!?) and blows everyone off the screen with that severely creepy Lucid Tick he seems to have. You could spot the scenes you'll have to slog through again at the Oscars by the dozens. Dozens.

The wife and I, we had Crunch Berries while we watched the film and, to me, this couldn't have been more fitting. You see, Slumdog Millionaire has a sugary sweet corn-based crunch, too, and its the kind that features sex slavery, lads dripping in feces and a roomful of tech support staff (the outsourced sort that make your film seem topical for no particular reason). Danny Boyle's unnerving Colonial Outsider perspective is hard to put out of your mind, especially when you're racing to put other things out (the plausibility of a game show that allows its contestants to go to the bathroom between hearing the question and answering it, for instance). You'll think its cute the first two or three time a question DIRECTLY RELATES TO HIS OWN LIFE, but after time number, oh, say nine, you'll probably just be annoyed. The buoyant tone is almost entirely anchored by big, musical montages, many of which are genuinely likable - particularly the one featuring that creepy, Fagenesque dude who relieves little boys of their eyeballs (seriously!). The whole affair has a nagging mixture of arched eyebrow, state-of-the-world critique and bonafied musically-gorged melodrama. Its kind of like Moulin Rouge meets City of God. Which is kind of like Crunch meets Berries.

Though its more message-focused and a bit more mannered than Old Joy - admittedly a looming achievement that no next film could live up to - Wendy and Lucy still bears that soft, flowing tone of simplicity and rough hewn documentary-style riff. Michelle Williams is all dim to the bigger picture and lost in the order of things, and the performance is terrific. The world of it is fine to get lost in, and the film's observations - as mixed on their place in this film as I am - are not altogether a unfair assessment of the mood of many societal pockets. And, of course, there's Will Oldham, again seeming more wild than civilized, dancing about by a fire in the woods.

This is a scrambling madhouse of an ensemble - with Almaric leading the pack as yet another screwloose - complete with forked plot points brimming and intertwining in a grand tradition of grim idiosyncrasy and fey jubilance. Set-up in their tallways French home, the relatives here must all give blood to find a match for the matriarch's rare cancer, skulking about in fits of confrontation, fueling a constant state of great, nostalgic observation. Where Desplechin's Kings and Queen pitted dueling storylines against one another (effectively allowing them to cancel each other out in a hail of ho-hum), the many threads of A Christmas Tale are endlessly endearing and, often, seem lighter on their feet. But playing fast and loose doesn't sap the gusto: Momentum is held for an achingly long time, barely sputtering out at close and never veering into a familiar or simple set of emotional farewells. It seems reflexive as to its purpose: A comfort film of the absurd.

Though it has a tendency towards fluff and tantrums, Vicky Christina Barcelona makes out well when the narration is the prevailing spice and the whole thing seems a light, literary My Greatest Summer Ever sort of tale. Both Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johanssen are glamorously empty - Allen chooses to rain what little humanity he can muster onto Penelope Cruz's flipout Art Pscyho. All of it, however, is precluded by Javier Bardem's Juan Antonio Gonzalo, easily of Allen's most enjoyable alter egos. Women want to be with him, men want to be him, he doesn't wear shoes and lives in a hermetic maze of art studios. I kept feeling a canny Spain Good/America Bad verve - - but the film is so light that any speck of deep thought could cause it to implode. Rohmer's mark is there, too, although there's far too much scenery chewing in this film to call his specter anything more than a glance.

It's the return of Jonathan Demme! I got the most lost in this film and it was so wonderful. (Yes, that's stunned sincerity.) The performances are terrific, but the verite disassociation gives the film's nerve-touching charms such room to breathe. In the music-packed home of a Connecticut family, The Black Sheep returns for her sister's wedding only to find all the skeletons still lingering in the closet. On paper, it probably seems almost crass in its familiarity. No so. Make no mistake: This is one of the most effective marriages of an impeccably-realized script and a detached riff of improvisation. All those comparisons to The Celebration are warranted. I'll stand back and let that sink in.

Its a film about a French Puppet Troupe Singer whose son Simon is the star of Chinese Nanny's film about a Red Balloon, most of the action taking place in the margins (and largely in their warmly cluttered, modern Paris apartment). The slice of life rhythms have a cozy feel that's impossible not to get caught up in: We're instantly drawn to the gentle pace of life, the bubbles of happiness, glee in everyday routines, and that sense of wonder Hou draws out of practically nothing using only mise-en-scene and a lazy piano score. Just as Mark Richardson stated that he wanted to live inside Brian Eno's "Thursday Afternoon", I want to live inside this film.

[Yes. That was me name dropping just then. I'm so embarrassed.]

Shanley wisely stays out of the way of the play, allowing it to do its own heavy lifting. The banter and semantics are a delight to listen to - both Hoffman and Streep have a crackling appeal - but Shanley's probing of the truths off truth has a small scale appeal. Its subject matter feels dwarfed by the insistence on moral aligning (it's a good thing). There's a stickiness that's hard to get around, of course: Set in a working class Catholic School (circa 1964), audience context in a world where the sexual misgivings of priests in the Catholic Church have been acknowledged and are openly discussed among the populuos deprives the film of the punch it should pack on a content level. The sense that steps are more vigilantly taken to prevent these abuses also helps to keep the film from working the topicality into some half-baked parallel. Instead, the film rigidly focuses on the matter of settling What is Right and From Whose Eyes. The tête-à-tête is a muted, carefully plotted affair until it isn't, a one-upsmanship that grows with the steady stream of weather harbingers that punctuate the back and forth control within the politics of debate. Doubt is immensely engrossing, however lacking in transcendence. Because its a work of projected subjectivity - insomuch as it seems to invite the viewpoint of the viewer - the only greater sense of itself is what we bring to the proceedings. Perhaps I didn't have much to, ahem, bring. Others may feel differently.
 

James Bond, meet Billy Elliott. Billy Elliott, James Bond. Now let's make with the light, conventional squares amidst HORRIBLE HOLOCAUST-ERA VIOLENCE. Who will sign my petition to retire The Zwick?

Fascinating, more than anything, but aligned with Soderbergh's typically straightforward, subtly artful filmmaking. Del Toro is in top form, marching his Communist guerillas through the jungles of Cuba and Bolivia in search of a government to replace. As a historical epic, Che's emphasis is on humanity, with the first part cross-cutting between The Cuban Revolution and Che's visit to the UN to "negotiate" with dignitaries from Latin America and the second part retaining some of the ponderance Malick might have interjected as Che's Bolivian Revolution gradually slips away from him until the Bolivian military overtakes him. Painted as a man of belief and ideals, the film attempts to endorse his spirited good intentions while acknowledging his misguided politics (to mixed results). What really strikes the viewer is the sense of time. Soderbergh pipes in titles such as "Day 156", allowing the ellipses between these interludes to punctuate the emphasis on methodology: The movie never feels more effortless than when its simply unfolding the day to day business mechancis of guerilla warfare. The shootouts in the streets of Santa Clara have an eerie, extremely low key feel that gives the culmination - despite the celebration that follows - seem almost like a letdown for the rebel group whose every action in the past few years built to this moment: How could the reality ever live up to their penultimate goal? Soderbergh's answer to Che's dorm room poster/legendary hero to the ignorant status is to keep it muted and experential.

Then this big, fat trucker stands over me and says: "Well, looks like we got ourselves a reader." Did I step out of an intellectual closet somewhere? This is a book. I READ. There, I said it: I feel better. More to come...

I'm still not down for a flurry of forced coincidence, but Spielmann has a number of moments that might even qualify as Egoyanesque. His balance of who takes blame, who assigns blame and what is open to interpretation gives the characters a chess piece feel, but not an unwelcome one: Its genuinely intriguing to watch them navigate about in a world of foggy moral notions. Johannes Krisch's reserved demeanor keeps him marginally mysterious; He's a grumpy old man already, but not a worthless one. Also: How in the bloody hell did they get the wind to do that at just the right time. (Probable answer: Wind machine.)