Can't say too much here besides the obvious. Time and Tide is a melodramatic thrill ride whose frenetic, colorful action sequences speak every single thing about it. Characters leap off of buildings, change disquises, hide in refrigirators, beat each other up with every imaginable item, and, the creme de la creme, a woman, mid-labor, firing rounds at a henchman as the makeshift doctor, another goon, is shouting: "I see the head!". This is John Woo light as envisioned by Won Kar Wi.

(10/1)

Besides the obvious fact that the film doesn't make a whole lot of sense and, by the time it begins to, is about something totally different, I think the biggest disappointment of The Tailor of Panama is Geoffrey Rush's unnecessarily severe eccentricity as the title character (also known as Harry). Brosnan, behaving more like James Bond here than he does when cast in actual 007 films, comes off as little more than a chauvinist schemer, a character integral only to allow for requisite sex, car chases and devilish, "I am naughty, aren't I?" smiles. The politics of Panama's high rollers, each conniving to control the now independent Canal, are far too complicated and far too important an era for a  perversely comedic story about miscrossed wires and bags of money. What's worse, Boorman gives us a terrifically one-of-a-kind tone and never once stops to let the film breath it in, only working towards his rather tame conclusion (even the alternate one on the DVD, which is drastically different, seems to hum off key to Boorman's vision). And once we're used to the fact that Brendan Gleeson, a ray of hope here as a drunken patriot, isn't going to save the film, it starts chucking hilariously out-of-place characters like the ones played by Jamie Lee Curtis (who looks like a sitcom actress in a Royal Shakespeare Company performance) and Dylan Baker (who carries on like a caricature of Rod Steiger's General in Mars Attacks!).

(10/2)

Opening and closing with voice-over narration like "Some lanes going east, some lanes going west, some leading straight to hell" isn't subtle - and it sums up just how self-conscious L.I.E. (Long Island Expressway) is. Working with too much convenience hurts the film, too: Howie, the central character of the film, has lost his mother to a car accident and his father is days away from being indicted for fraud. At least the film tells you what became of his parents instead of playing him up as one of Peter Pan's lost boys gone horribly wrong (as in, say, Kids). Armed with the first NC-17 rating in quite some time, the film seems to showcase its obvious naughty parts flamboyantly, as if they are loud protests and proud markers of free speech. Thing is, the film really only carries the make-up of an NC-17 rating in elements that could have easily been deep sixed. What makes it truly deserving of a warning like this black mark of a rating is the dark, inescapable tone of danger it mixes in lethal doses with the effects of loneliness. Little to no graphic images exist. The young men in the film rob houses, talk candidly about sex and, in constant implication, find the truth at their hollow centers about how lonely it is to be rich - or to be young (occasionally delving into homoerotic undertones amongst themselves). The lazy days on Long Island, beautifully captured in point counterpoint dirge and wealth, drift into much more unsettling territory. As Howie finds out when one of his larceny victims tracks him down in search of retribution, even the pseudo reality he and his friends had flirted with doesn't compare to an obvious solution to a debt that lingers and shudders in every scene wherein Howie realizes he's alone and trapped between nothing and Big John (Brian Cox). BJ (as his license plate reads) is an ex-marine, ex-pedophile, sometimes poet whom Howie unwittingly steals from early on in the film. The film could easily lose itself here by presenting things in a cut and dried fashion. It doesn't. What is remarkable about L.I.E. that even Todd Solondz's Happiness didn't probe, was the complicated relationship between budding sexuality and seasoned, manipulative seduction. Big John's time with Howie is always frightening, always extremely hard to watch and the filmmaker makes a terrific point, one that tinkers with the idea that Howie isn't entirely turned off by the silent agreement. Cox, whom I've always fancied a decent actor worthy of a meaty role and a movie to carry, lives up to his gift here. His charm and requisite sludge coated dialogue work beautifully to paint us the picture of a saintly monster who always feels "ashamed", but cannot help himself. Dano is good enough to play Howie but not good enough to show us much more than participation in his world, rather than control of it. The film argues that he has more control than most of his friends and it doesn't feel necessarily true. Howie teeters on the edge of convincing us and being yet another spoiled, lost soul drifting through a movie meant to slightly shock us. And it doesn't improve matters when the film chooses to undermine its intelligence with a strange, against-the-grain touch to its conclusion, one that seems to second and third guess what it has built up through its characters. Writer-Director Cuesta has got some terrific ideas, but, in an ironic twist for the subject matter and the attention it garners, he doesn't seem brave enough to carry them all the way through.

(10/4)

Movie about an Australian town, small one at that, called Parkes. The town is unimportant except for a gigantic satellite dish that will bring the images of the Lunar landing in 1969 back to earth, television sets everywhere and into our hearts. The glaring flaw in The Dish is just how uninteresting it manages to make the whole affair seem. The problem could be in the small town's denizens, another collection of clever sounding, foreign accented bumpkins who end up being asked to do big things (think Britcom in the Outback). Sadly, the most interesting character turns out to be Patrick Warburton's nerdy NASA scientist - an American - who has his ice broken by the pal antics of the Dish's Aussie technicians, who like to "goof off". The lack of ample conflict also cripples the film. The first conflict, like the one in The Deep End, could so easily have been resolved through simple means that the pandering which follows (in efforts to find the Lunar module after a power outage), seems desperately forced and comes up feeling tirelessly in opposition to the preamble "based upon a true story" (Would these guys really risk their claim to fame because of a power failure?). By the time the second glitch shows up - and mind you, the film seems to subtly recognize Apollo 13 (ironic as the film was released six years ago, but the actual event won't take place for several years in film time), we're already knee deep in a set of incidents that seem so shallow, so unimportant, so unsuited for triumphant, emotive horn music, that the whole featherweight yarn becomes yet another story that may have been worth telling, but not with such a fake, dry fanfare. Even Sam Neill seems to be bored by the whole thing, giving us the stock suppressed excitement and lightning quick anger fits that work in films with dinosaurs and pianos. The Dish is broken, folks.

(10/5)

Surprisingly enough, The Wedding Planner cuts through the treadle at a lightning quick snap, manages to just barely show us its subversive nature and, in the end, ranks with One Fine Day and Fools Rush In as my highly underrated modern romantic comedy gems. Jennifer Lopez isn't a terrific actress. She never has to be. In The Wedding Planner, we finally see her most thoughtful choice, the character that takes the least amount of energy - and acting talent - to play. Pure charm comes in the lonelyheart irony of Lopez's career choice: planning and executing other people's weddings. In Matthew McGonaughey, she's found a nice fitting puzzle piece (and incidentally, McGonaughey himself has found a perfect role as the utterly charming pediatric doctor set to marry the stock blonde work-a-holic character (Wilson-Sampras), but utterly attracted to Lopez). The film rarely messes around with moving the plot in interesting ways or even making character backgrounds deeper (as we see in the deleted scenes, wherein several stories regarding character's backgrounds are axed for a tighter, more purist romance film). The supporting characters are just that and are kept at arm's length, their idiotic banter strained and given to us in tiny doses. All effort and strength of the film is put into watching Lopez and McGonaughey fall for each other. A romantic comedy that keeps all of its cards straight, keeps its story coherent - but quietly seated in the back seat - and introduces just a touch of malevolence (our moral obsessed society getting off on a film about a wedding planner who uses the bride to get the groom - how devious). The Wedding Planner kept me so utterly compelled, smiling at the tight grasp it had on me and excited by the sparks emitting from the fling at center.

[Note: Producers should have compared notes with the makers of Heartbreakers. Do we need two films where characters accidentally castrate statues and have elaborate jokes made as to the fate of the member?]

(10/7)

The entire film is comprised of lazy sequences of unoriginal scenes which are meant to build to a robbery which is so completely devoid of excitement that when it is successful and the happy ending comes tumbling along, I thank the good lord only eighty-one minutes were necessary to prove that even a mildly interesting premise can be sent monumentally off course into downright bad waters. Sugar & Spice, like a Teen B Movie (without the sometimes hip side effects of the "B"), feels underdone in all corners. Some cheerleaders help their pregnant lead cheerleader rob the supermarket bank branch she works for. A jealous cheerleader from the JV squad blackmails them into letting her be the leader when the pregnant one pops. Only, the blackmailing is her telling the whole story to the cops (while we watch it in flashback) and ending with: "But they didn't do it, they were waiting in my suburban while I went in to get some cash". Think of the Three Strikes cop-out at the end made into a dream sequence where everybody wakes up and goes, "It was only a dream". All the actors are performing eight notches above the necessary caricature needed to bring a teen movie off in quintessential form. Everything rolls downhill into my ten worst list.

(10/8)

A good idea for a thriller built around yet another understated, evil corporate villain (played by Tim Robbins of all people). Unfortunately, director Howitt leans far too much on the script, whose idea of suspense seems to be of the "Don't let him catch me in here in the dark looking at these secret files I'm not supposed to see" variety. Feels like the characters are doing that which they are forbidden to do in a room that the antagonist could enter at any moment in nearly every other scene. This technique gets old real fast. Never seen a movie use the same exact gimmick over and over and over again like that. Kind of alarming. Phillippe in his usual overbearing, I-can-carry-the-movie-alone performance. His paranoia is inconsistent. The plotline involving his "girlfriend" (Forlani) and his flirtation with a sexy young graphics designer (Cook) is so weak, you'll cringe every time either character enters the frame. From Peter Howitt, the director of another great-premise-gone-bad foray, Sliding Doors. Admittedly, I'm less surprised than you'd expect to find this film to be as mediocre as it is. Tim Robbins paycheck, donated to his Orson Welles "I fund my own, better projects" trust, is not wasted. He is as entertaining in a bad film, looking to be having a good time, as he was in Mission to Mars.

(10/9)

This is an extremely sloppy thriller rooted in extensive convenience. For one thing, the film itself isn't very clever. The foreshadowing comes in two flavors: obvious and outright blatant. Like a feature length adaptation of closing bulletin board scene in The Usual Suspects, unconscionably pointless scenes play merely to service later plot points. The caper - that is, what exists to speak of - relies on two late second act twists, both of which are unsatisfying, one of which isn't even mildly exciting in the least. The uncreative manner in which the film is structured finds a mapped out checklist of thriller elements: the intelligent cat and mouse dissection of minute details (check), the supposedly deep cross examine/battle of wits phone conversation between detective and criminal (check), unnecessarily complicated explanations of actions unrelated to current scene (check), characters who turn out to be something other than that which they pretend to be (check), borderline admiration of villain and his methods by detective (check) and, let's not discount the stock villain features like accent, raspy voice and seemingly unlimited funds (check). While Morgan Freeman is good at replaying his intelligent, quiet "deducer" role (Outbreak, Kiss the Girls, Seven), watching Along Came a Spider shows just how sad it is to watch a great actor slumming. The occasionally interesting things that fall from his mouth rarely outweigh the constant stream of unsurprising pseudo smarts he displays in the face of his detective work. The characterization he's milking is fast becoming a thin profile, not unlike the ones he applies to nearly everyone in this film. The saving grace of the film is Wincott's performance as the villain. Never ceasing to amaze me, this actor - used far too infrequently in roles this meaty - even manages to transcend how underwritten and severely underdeveloped his character turns out to be. He's what's worth watching in this lackluster, recycled whodunit.

(10/11)

Training Day is rare, and, in many ways, it is extraordinary. In its opening thirty minutes, it manages to harness and make exciting the simple, appealing motive: it is as episodic as the premise would have you believe. Competent writer David Ayer, whose dialogue is his best quality, sidesteps an obvious and unnecessary message opportunity. Instead of pointing out the already well treaded contradiction drugs and their illegality present, Ayer's purpose seems to be in sorting out how well people who understand this contradiction can manipulate it to their advantage (unlike Blow, this film doesn't subject us to an empty visual orgy celebrating a lawbreaker). At the start of the film, Alonzo (Washington) is already at the top of his game and Fuqua never seems interested in dabbling with our projection of him: he's bad, but is he that bad? Question is irrelevant. Is he a modern day Robin Hood, stealing and killing from drug dealers and giving back to the community, its informants and their families?  Not really an interesting parallel to draw. Is "Do you want to go home or do you want to go to jail?" a replacement for "To pass through this forest, you have to pay a tax?" Hardly. Alonzo is such a uncomplicated character passing himself off as a wise old demon, he becomes the perfect catalyst for what Fuqua is really interested in, namely, the exploration of assertive personalities and how they survive in a system which is meant to serve everyone, including those who can't help themselves. Every character in the film is a loud, self priding man. There are no little boys, even Hoyt (Hawke) - who spends at least seventy-five percent of the film being chastised and ripped apart and insulted and threatened by Alonzo. Where the film ends up - which is in possession of a narrative, and least two action sequences too elaborate for the nature of the film - is transcending its flaws in a beautiful dénouement that I won't ruin. The characters in the film, for once, are larger than life without resorting to scenery chewing. Nearly everyone I've spoken to has accused the film of being a showcase for Washington's volcanic, all encompassing rogue cop. Not so. Training Day is just as much about the rookie cop standing up to his senior in actions and bravery as well as language. Hawke is as engaging as Washington and when the movie strays into a more resolved, more familiar set of sequences (a violent tete a tete between the two characters stifles the momentum), he is the one who keeps the low flame burning. As accomplished a piece of rapid fire character study as I've seen this year, Training Day is also one of the most riveting watches of the year. We love to watch characters plot and scheme, but we also like to see characters who believe in the old fashioned values of goodwill and honor. This film has characters sculpted well enough to do both successfully. That is admirable.

(10/14)

What I like in a romantic comedy is when the two characters onscreen have been written to contain certain charms that I myself wish I possessed. Then, as the events of the plot are gradually revealed, I can enjoy myself more because the film plays as a fantasy. Romantic comedy is really all about how to get the audience to relate to themselves, their fantasy and the kind of emotions they have felt - but aren't the sort you can feel whenever the hell you please. What I dislike is when two characters who aren't necessarily written well enough to find their own charms, pass themselves off as charming for my benefit and, instead of acting out an adequately universal fantasy, spend a good seventy-five minutes putzing around in complete and utter agony over deep, stinging regret. This I cannot plug myself into. When Serendipity opens with two characters (Cusack and Beckinsale) having a cute, completely satisfying chance encounter which is sweet - until ruined by the Beckinsale character's obsession with fate, that is - I pretty much expected that director Peter Chelsom (see Town and Country below) would be just as interested in such satisfaction. Turns out he fancies a nihilistic thrill in subjecting an audience to shallow characters running around, whining hither and thither about the grand "what ifs" and the not-so-grand "Spose'ta"'s (see Town and Country below). Instead of a love story, Serendipity is a kind of mad dash to a dark reconciliation, a quick lurch to get cold feet and float off to love land with someone you've just met instead of that sad sack you're leaving at the altar. Details of parallel love crusades connect left and right, right down to annoying sidekicks (Piven and Shannon, respectively) and fiancés. Somewhere in the mix falls Eugene Levy, the cashier at the clothing store where Cusack and Beckinsale first meet. Doing nearly the same character he was content to do American Pie, his nerdy authority-gives-way-to-sympathy is less than gratifying and he feels less like a part of the film than a silly character inserted to keep the film funny whenever it feels like it might get astrological or weepy. It doesn't work. And I can say the same for the film, which features no less than two Nick Drake songs that turn out to be the most interesting thing about it.

(10/14)

This already legendary failure, an expensive and heavily tinkered with pseudo Woody Allen comedy is even worse than that description would have you believe. It is so rancid, in fact, that I was able to think back to the last time I saw a pseudo Woody Allen film, which was Miami Rhapsody (and any film that calls to mind Miami Rhapsody must be bad news). Town and Country is so disjointed, so comedically lethargic, it nearly goes so far as to feel like a Woody Allen spoof. My purpose in making such a statement is not for a single human to take Town and Country in that way, or, to say that a film this bad could even be a competent spoof of anything (short of itself, that is). Probably the film's biggest problem - that is, aside from the editing which leaves to be explained a great deal in the narrative department - is how wrongheaded the characterizations and relationships are. Anyone who has seen any film starring Warren Beatty (even Ishtar, which Town and Country recalls in overall badness) knows he has no business playing the stiff, tempted guy. By the same token, Garry Shandling (having already proven he can't play a horny sleaze ball very well - a couple of times now) shouldn't be playing the wild, senior philanderer, the character everyone emulates secretly. A terminally agitated and later profanely mad Diane Keaton is out of her range as well, leaving only Goldie Hawn and a handful of supporting turns (which feel like create-your-own-character cameos) to explain to us just what lies beyond two husbands who cheat on their wives. My personal favorite of the blink-and-you-miss-them appearances is Charleton Heston's. All four scenes he appears in hail from a subplot that feels like it was shortened drastically in the tinkering process. And he manages to keep only his eccentricity constant - the rest seems improvised each time. Each one is more outlandish and unfunny than the last. Directed by - I guess - Peter Chelsom, who has also made Seerendipity, which has the same disdain for the audience that Town and Country does. This is a comedy. And I'm laughing at it, not with it.

(10/14)

I actually believe that most of what I enjoyed about 15 Minutes was how over-the-top it was content to be for a message movie that was sorta kinda sposta almost nearly radiate a potent realism. I like how whizzing and slivered the important stuff was. I like that an action scene and a car chase inhabit the same movie where we mock both the media and the general public - and that the movie another rehash of Natural Born Killers. I like the twist in the middle of the film which feels more like a calculated risk - that pays out like a jackpot - than something to keep the audience foocused. I like that Ed Burns is finally being cast as a NYC firefighter (because I think that's pretty much the closest possible match for his attitude in all the movies in which he doesn't play a NYC firefighter - which is all of them). The two Russian guys who videotape their killing spree and then make movie deals, etc. - I could do without the rather unwarranted and head scratching judgmental hammer that comes down after nearly an hour and a half of unapologetic, blunt gore. Note to Herzfeld: easy on the expository subjectivity - you're an artist and the audience isn't going to miss the fact that what these two psychopaths are doing is wrong. There are a number of moments when I laughed at the film. There were even some moments when I was outwardly embarrassed to be watching the film. What comes through, though, loud and clear, is a film made in the studio system with all the right darkness and all the right buttons pushed to form the definitive collection of; or should I say, this is the best possible big budget movie that could have been made spotlighting the problem with the media today.

(10/14)

Unfortunately, the ever bland, almost annoyingly presumptuous Angel Eyes can never decide to be a love story or a low level character study. Better when it is a love story (because the predominant focal point, cop Lopez's unwillingness to make amends with her father, is so dry as to be sedating). Caveziel and Lopez are interesting together - almost a fit worth watching. Every time we are interested, though, Mandoki takes us back into character descriptions that rarely get below the surface and never reveal characters remarkable enough to stand behind the amount of screen time spend prodding the proverbial "what" which makes them tick. A sneaky bit of false foreshadowing - what my friend Randy would call "lying to the audience" - leads us to believe we're watching something that could turn supernatural any second. Like a slow leak, this idea is further and further dispelled, and we begin losing the movie. By the end, we wonder if what occurred was earth shattering enough to be worthy of a film. I've come to my own conclusion: It's not.

(10/15)

This is a film with a lot of hokey symbolism, a ton of really bad "movie" dialogue and what turns out to be a really entertaining 2.25 hours that I'm 100% positive I was supposed to take more seriously than I did. Thing with Rod Lurie - and let me get this out real quick, he used to be a film critic - is that he makes these political films (also Deterrence and The Contender) meant to be extremes of one controversial issue and expects them to be somehow artistic. Deterrence was somehow less chilling than the movie it was clearly patterned after - Sidney Lumet's masterpiece Fail Saffe - but, nevertheless, it was a remarkably suspenseful update. The Contender, though it had a few greatish performances in it, played wishy-washy until we didn't care about either side - or what was unfolding on screen. So Lurie has proved that he can water down a classic and that he can't have it both ways. In The Last Castle, Lurie strives to do both and, again, fails miserably. A watered down version of The Shawshank Redemption's audience friendly horrors (and the warden that masks the conspiracy) mixed with the kind of genre confusion that only benefits the select few doesn't serve Lurie too well. The script is so full of stuff that we'd rather not see - and I'd rather not relay - that it falls on the shoulders of Redford to carry the film. He's capable. For the most part, we can diffuse our frustration at not being told a very valuable tale by watching him cleverly play a ridiculously superhero-esque combat veteran. Gandolfini plays a really dorky - almost faggy - version of himself here (which works, miraculously) and the terrific actor Mark Ruffalo (from You Can Count on Me) does some fine work as the resident Morgan Freeman knock off - you know, the guy who can "get you stuff" but can't be bothered with loyalties. By the end of the film, when the pieces are starting to fall into place and a bunch of convicts arrested for errors in the "military" code take over a prison, we're yelping as if The Great Escape or Papillon is upon us. We can almost feel Lurie's presence in the background of our subconscious, screaming "Wait! You're supposed to be learning a lesson!" If the lesson was to get off on a kick ass helicopter crash as well as some lines spoken with Bruckheimer-esque sass, I read you loud and clear, good buddy. I'm guessing that's not the point, though.

(10/20)

From Hell doesn't go the character study route. This film takes what the Hughes Bros. have done previously - which is to sensationalize a series of down endings, giving flight to the kind of Scorcese-infused streetwise guerilla filmmaking that is thoroughly appealing (Menace II Society, Dead Presidents) - and cranks up the whole affair, giving rise to a broad, square account that removes itself from telling one character's story and, instead, tells the story of an event through a series of sub characters (a hooker, an inspector, a brain affected surgeon, the queen, the police captain). Despite the showcased theory being a long shot, it still makes for a more complicated entertainment than my original, simple expectation that I'd be watching a defiant  inspector do drugs and solve a crime. Instead, From Hell is a wonderfully atmospheric film about a symbol who is able to continue to be a symbol even when his identity is revealed. The conspiracy shown to be behind this symbol - according to this account - lends a looming, distant scope to the rather intimate tone of the film. The Hughes Bros. prove that they their brand of sensationalism can even be diffused through the facade of a period mystery. Their style of storytelling is so clear in the face of the relative complexity of the narrative that we're never invited to lose ourselves in the mounting details. Some films with excessive twists rely on the fact that these twists are so many and so complicated that the audience will buy them simply to avoid missing part of the film putting them together. The Hughes Bros. are competent enough to have such twists but are skillful at making them accessible. Maybe they were afraid filmgoers would take their vision of gas lamp lit Whitecastle with hookers in tow for granted, and write From Hell off as merely another of their "hood movies". This is a departure for these filmmakers and a worthwhile one. There are some random misgivings: the trippy drug vision seem out of place visually, John Merrick aka The Elephant Man is included as an arcane period marker for some reason and there are moments where too much reliance on audience anticipation warps the effectiveness of two or three scenes. The film bounces back. It never lets itself lapse too long and seems content in its 137 minute running time. This is an exceptional achievement, far more accomplished than one may assume from the marketing campaign of even the source.

(10/21)

Where occasionally a really clever joke will fall through the cracks, most of the film could be less boisterous, more slight. The visual effects have become so obsessively ambitious, they start to show their seams not merely in their shoddiness, but in their lack of integral participation in the story. A formulaic cross weaving of a father trying to relate to his maturing teenager and a supernatural gift that is necessary to save a forest for some animals (from, get this, the evil land developers). Dr. Doolittle 2 gets old minutes after the most shamelessly fabricated white family posing as African Americans arrives at a cabin in the woods. Once Steve Zahn's annoying bear shows up, it can only be a matter of time before the fart jokes start flinging. Easily categorical: unnecessary sequel, paycheck, black eye in the face of slightly clever original. Take your pick.

(10/22)

"Whatever you saw was completely out of context!"
-Rip Torn to Julie Haggerty

What scares me most about Freddy Got Fingered is that I began to watch the line between artsy and fartsy blur until I realized I'd been watching it in lew of the film. The film (if you want to call it that) is, at times, little more than a showcase for Green's patented brand of chicanery: gross out stunts posing as creative subversion of so called good taste / values. Actually, Freddy Got Fingered is a nearly plot less gimmick of a film that recycles itself over and over and over again until you're sure that you're watching something you've seen earlier on. It seems, at heart, to have a slowly eroding message about taking what you see seriously, perhaps even a Godardian aimlessness that relies on  mise en scene to take over where the narrative fears to tread. And, most of all, it stammers around with a big, blinking sign on its forehead trying to draw attention to itself. Like its creator, it turns out to be far too self conscious a slice of immaturity to realize how unfunny it truly is. Rarely do laughs come without guilty strings (that's where you kick yourself for laughing and hope no one else heard you justifying this low-grade spoof of itself). It really isn't the immediate pile of waste most critics dismissed it as (and, for that matter, it isn't the brilliant button pushing, pseudo satire other critics praised it as). It fits neatly in-between as an admirable failure - but a failure (at high-minded filmmaking in a low minded mask, attempting to reach followers of both brands of art).

(10/22)

Less flamboyantly self-conscious about hitting all the weird stops than 'Lost Highway', it has the smooth texture of Lynchville circa 'Twin Peaks' in a landscape that feels equal parts like the work of a brilliant editor (culling his mini-series down to 146 minutes) and a capable filmmaker (the confines of coherence have never seemed to restrain Lynch and this film offers no digression). In 1999, I dubbed 'The Straight Story' his best film. If ever there was a car crash of 'Twin Peaks' with the sensibilities and silky perfection of 'The Straight Story', 'Mulholland Dr.' is it. Funny, Scary, beautifully shot and scored - - - hits every imaginable Lynch base.

(10/24)

This is a fish out of water comedy that works. I'm going to say that again. This is the fish out of water comedy that works. Set on a Swedish commune in the mid-1970's wherein one of the members' sister comes to cool off after her husband hits her one too many times, the temperament is light - but light taken seriously enough to be pulled off correctly. Together manages to transcend a juvenile mediocrity, the kind of cut and dried another film would revel in if given such a standard, almost cliched situational stepping stone. Instead of being traditionally straightforward, Together uses its Lars Von Trier-esque camerawork ("You are there - but for some reason you are jittery, perhaps seasick and wobbling all about"), quick fade transitions and a screen steeped in red to suggest the elevated stature of its viewpoint: classical, yet playful. It has moved beyond acknowledging the oddity of its characters to a place where they seem normal and comfortable. Though the film is set entirely in Sweden and actors speak a foreign tongue, there is absolutely nothing detached or distant about the world of Together. Everything seems to occur with a universal edge that is merely inferred. Like a dream state, we are conscious of everything in detail even though we've not lived through any of it. There is the problem of how the film manages to seem miraculously genre friendly - for all its creativity, it still doesn't achieve the off-the-wall verve its aiming for. There are silly moments that resort back to the old gags - characters who bare their private parts in the kitchen just as the outsider enters, a character who gets movie character drunk, the hyper Marxist who taunts a Government official - but they remain isolated and sour, rarely tinkering with the bright, snappy momentum of the rest of the film. Perhaps the best thing I can say about the film is that it uses the title countless times in dialogue and inference - and this never seems pretentious or off key. For a film about people who choose to live together without rules and can't seem to agree on anything but what's wrong with their own rules, the contradiction is subtle enough not to drift into message territory while being clear enough to let its presence be known. All that and a great song by ABBA.

(10/28)

The new stage has been set. There's a breed among genres quietly burning a hole in the sleeve of comedy to become its own sub genre. These films have budgets lower by comparison to the average star powered comedies. They feel more like the raw footage for their trailer than an actual film. These movies tend to boast production values far less ambitious than their competitors. The movies themselves, constructed from a script choked by running gags and overflowing with random, eccentric characters with nothing to do but appear out of nowhere to say something goofy. Often times included is a love story where a loser meets - as in Greenfield's The Animal - an attractive model type, one who is so far out of his league she's playing a different sport (or, if unavailable, has participated in a TV reality show and could sell seven or eight more tickets). These love stories don't require much. The woman has to be wary of the man throughout all but the last act when it will be revealed that she loves him - even if minutes earlier she was spitting in his general direction. The antagonist is the Bluto type, possessing all the values the sympathy ridden protagonist lacks - but in such an obnoxious way, we can't help but hate him (even when he's played by the usually noteworthy character actor John C. McGinley, as he is here). The real kicker to these films is the style in which they are made. All of the comedy is meant to be a quick fix. Rarely is more than one type of joke told. In The Animal, Rob Schneider is in a bad car accident and is put back together with animal parts. Everything that happens in the movie is meant to garner a different animal reaction from him. And absolutely none of these reactions are creative in the least. I've seen a few of these films now. Adam Sandler has made numerous ones. Rob Schneider starred in one two years ago called Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. A sequel to the hilarious Friday was made in this style. The producer decided that wasn't enough and released another film, one that was even more shameful called Three Strikes. These films (with the exception of the last film I mentioned) make unheard of amounts of money. People actually pay full price to see these films and then, on top of that, give money to the theater in the form of concessions. They rent the video and return it late and pay two and three times what the film cost to rent - which was more than it was worth in the first place. I didn't mean to turn this into a rant. Really. I'm now missing eighty minutes of my life. I am. I'm on a kick. Maybe you can help me. I just want to say that we only live an average of seventy-two years (you ladies get a few more). Let's watch something else for a change. Anything else. Almost anything else. Okay, bottom line coming. Don't rent The Animal. Don't watch The Animal. Write your congressman, lobby to have a bill entered that stops films of such low stature from being made. Picket your theater. Picket the studios. Picket the stars. Just picket. Help me out here, folks. Really.

(10/29)