Should I even bother to review a movie that actually forgets about a subplot featuring Phil Hartman halfway through the film? Can I be seen in public admitting that this is the one and only Chris Rock performance I actually like? Is it just me, or did Fear of a Black Hat come along a year later and nail the same subject correctly? Is Allen Payne "black", y'all? Is he "black", y'all? Is he "blacker than black (and plus he's black)", y'all?

This is the sort of movie people either choose to give the benefit of the doubt or choose to write off completely. To some, I'm sure it feels like an undercooked, sub par crime drama that really doesn't develop its characters, choosing rather to play up their wild personality quirks. To some, I can see the movie making almost no sense. A guy comes to town, he wanders aimlessly, picking up a girl along a crime spree that includes nicking a cop's badge, gun and teeth and pretending to be said cop, sometimes for good - sometimes for gain. I'm trying to sidestep the need to choose how I feel about Miami Blues; it has a tone that's so utterly unique and on the money that the film can barely hold on to it, dangling it with the slip-any-moment grip of James Stewart grasping the drain pipe in the opening minutes of Vertigo. Sometimes the film falters, believing its dialogue to be more important to what's going on that it is. Other times, lines of dialogue come out like twisted drug speak, main characters speaking comedically in tongues, as if reading the context all wrong and deciding to go ahead and blurt it out anyway. There are scenes in the film that are almost thrilling in how drained they are; in the lack of common suspense that comes out of them. Other scenes feel too ordinary, as if clarity life preservers, floating around for members of the audience who are missing the point. Alec Baldwin, Fred Ward and Jennifer Jason Leigh are different here than they are in any other film. It strikes me as odd that a movie this offbeat would even be given a release. On the other hand, it almost feels like a gem for that very reason: you can almost picture the executives viewing a rough cut, going "This one's going to sink us..."  And a few years later, Orion Pictures did just that.

Was probably a dumb idea to watch Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures last week and follow it up with this, a film that plays for one hundred forty five minutes, not a second of which doesn't make me wish Kubrick had made the film instead of Spielberg. (And, incidentally, I feel even dumber making the same gripe here that I made about, ahem, CB4 - - - does A.I. simply just forgeet about William Hurt after he leaves the room in a key scene at the beginning of the third act?).

One of the most excitingly clever, thoroughly rewarding puzzle films that aren't really puzzle films I've ever seen. Strange how in just seven and a half short years, I could all but completely forget the overall brilliance of it.

I find it odd to be remarking about, of all things, the sincerity of a movie like Joy Ride. But there I was, watching the damn thing, admiring how it so wanted to work its audience over with excitement and horror. Trouble is, as much as I was able to recognize its motives, the actuality of the thing was merely a face value diversion. Not too stimulating. It is often betrayed by its characters, both heroes and villains, who cour their opposing roles, hinting that the door to justified measures swings both ways. (It probably doesn’t help that they are played by the likable Steve Zahn, the annoying, 0 for 3 Paul Walker and Leelee Sobieski, an actress I find more and more unbelievable each time she gives this particular performance). The story itself doesn’t really unfold; it crawls, direction-less, inventing the next step at the last possible moment. It feels like the kind of film Hitchcock’s son (if he had one) would have made: we’ve have all seen it, recognized that he had the aspirations of his father, then we would write it off as a common genre entry. The film rarely gives one a sense of where its going – which is nice, it keeps us interested. Joy Ride leaves a single plot strand dangling into predictability territory early enough in the film that anticipating a surprise ending (which sounds redundant because it is redundant) is almost inescapable. The film has an abrupt ending (as in the equally disappointing Final Destination) and it's the kind that feels like the whole movie existed just to provide that single shock before we trudge out of the theater. Everything that takes place in the film is utterly preposterous, but at the very least, the thrills and spills of a crazy trucker (whose voice sounds like the suspicious drifter David Harris from The Thin Blue Line) stalking two (and then three) teens, feel as absurd as the characters themselves. I found myself not really rooting for anyone in particular, but rather, rooting for the film, hoping it might show me something that really dazzled me; I was sitting on the edge of my seat hoping this action of anticipation would soon occur independently of my own bidding. Though it never reaches that pitch, it burns its little heart out trying. One more quibble: Joy Ride takes place on the desolate, open roads in the middle of our country. I made that trip last year and the problem is this: Joy Ride is just too well shot. I never felt like the characters were anywhere but the arty, vivid colored nightmare world of the filmmakers’ imagination. What the film needs is a dose of naturalism, of mood and of modesty (as seen in director John Dahl’s twin masterworks The Last Seduction and Red Rock West).

[ Note: I went back and reread my review of Breakdown, as Joy Ride’s truckmosphere reminded me of that film. In it, I remark that Breakdown is the sort of film John Dahl might have made earlier in his career. Where does that leave (a damn near psychic) me when Dahl makes that film late in his career and it’s not as good as a film I thought reminded me of his style? Read it again, it makes sense. ]

[ Special, spoiler-laden antecedent: The DVD contains a host of new endings. Instead of spending a period equal to Joy Ride’s running time watching one of the five different scenarios the film could burn itself out with, I chose the original one – which was scrapped (probably after a test screening mishap). Fuller and Lewis jack a cop car, and race to meet the ambulance, but it is too late. The truck driver has taken Venna while Charlotte lies dazed in the ambulance. Impersonating a cop,Fuller distracts the truck driver (after they pull him over) while Lewis rescues Venna from inside the truck. Realizing what is going on, the truck driver runs them down in a cornfield (again, I guess), Lewis shoots some explosive tank being rolled at the front of the cab and the three teens get away. Later, Venna and Lewis kiss. Which brings me to the point: I realized that the theatrical release version never featured a romantic payoff. Good for it. These characters don’t develop themselves to that point, nor does that sort of moment arise. Both endings are rather unsatisfying, but the original one – this one – feels interminable and, once more, it lacks the twist the film so obviously predicated. I realized that I liked the twist in the theatrical version, only because it allows the villain to get away. This is a film where the bad guy wins – and the hero doesn’t exactly get the girl. And that’s the most refreshing thing about this stale affair. ]

It's Ray Winstone, it's the dialogue and, of course, it's Ben Kingsley; but most of all, it's me seeing the beauty in how much of a revolution's turn Glazer spins on such tired material. The premise is an aging (alright, fortysomething) gangster being called to do one last job by his mates. The focus is, instead, shifted to how they try to lure him back (with Kingsley's uber-chiding "not taking no for an answer") and, later, how he tries to cover up. It was my wife that called him a coward, never standing up to anyone. It's Winstone that makes it out alive at journey's end - simply because he's able to remain cool and not challege any of the viciousness put to him. And because its so sharp and short and tight, it's a hell of an entertainment in itself.

Breakthrough independent; odd, seeing as Waking Life contains virtually the same structure and works not a third as well. The film nails a moment, a movement, the kind of character definition that's so universal you barely assumed it was there, let alone recognize it. It's clever, too. The camera set-ups are intriguing as well as the dialogue's natural feel. The words of Linklater, as spoken through a hundred or so non professional actors, don't sound improvised. I think he's a terrific director - but he's in a slump. Somebody save his life tonight.

A single-joke movie where the joke's is on....male models? Yeah, I had a real beef with the...male models? Honest to God, I never thought Ben Stiller could be so, you know, NOT clever. Zoolander lampoons too arcane a subject to make work (or funny, apparently). Though there's some inconsistent - but funny - work from Owen C. Wilson and Will Ferrell, watching Ben Stiller make a fool of himself (his character gets old within seconds of his introduction) is such a burden to behold, it almost seems like we're doing him a disservice by continuing to watch this film. Ridiculous cameos by people like Christian Slater, Steve Kmetko, Vince Vaughn and, especially Jon Voight don't help matters, nor does obvious choice Jerry Stiller feels like in a role he wasn't exactly born to play. By the time its done assaulting us with its VH-1 editing style (not to mention the constant, not-so-subtle plugs for the channel itself), garrish "what a waste" sets and feeble, absolutely wafer-thin SNLesque assassination narrative (I feel like I'm giving it too much credit even calling it merely a "narrative"); there's little else to do but hope Stiller decides to release his short-lived, self-titled TV series on DVD.

The easygoing spirit of California middle-class working life breathes through the formulaic, yet strangely entertaining daily-goings on of a flourishing car wash. Dr. Dre doesn't warrant much of our sympathy (as an actor, he's a stony faced amateur), but his antics seem to boom and fly when he and Snoop Dogg (who is inherantly likable as an actor) are riffing together. The supporting players at the Car Wash, as well as Snoop's two women, some bungling kidnappers, a goofy boss and one overweight rent-a-cop make for such hazy, form-fitting characters, you can barely blame DJ Pooh for surrounding them with a comfortable world we the audience can practically feel. Like Friday, he has the dazzling skill of making this world - previously dark-tinged with semi-racist hood universalities - seem like a whole lot of fun to mix it up in. And this joyful "hanging out",  that's The Wash (Oh, and like too many modern black comedies, it's a rabidly pro-pot, often more rabidly a Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg commercial).

In Heist, Mamet isn’t nearly as interested in showing us characters whose actions and suspicions are as intelligent as to put together a back-up plan; here, he’s showing the actual back-up plans in motion, some of which are necessary – and some of which are not, occasionally dipping into the back-up plan of a back-up plan (and so forth). The delight here, as I missed the first time around, is the purity of the thing. Taking a note from the critical notices praising his machismo scheming and elaborate red herring filled confidence games over the years, Mamet seems to have put together a film that contains little else but a robbery, another robbery and a twisty who’s-fucking-who scheme which streams throughout. On occasion, some of lead thief Joe's (a solid, wise old Hackman) risks seem way out there: the security cameras and that last conscious clerk in the opening robbery for instance; Joe's self assured bet that they’ll catch a flight security guard played by Patti LuPone drinking on the job and be able to manipulate her position. But never mind all that. Heist was a film I called “my least favorite of Mamet’s films". If so, why did I run out and watch it again so damn quick? I thought it was for the dialogue. I was wrong. It was to watch people get away with things that look like great fun to get away with, even though the conditions would never be right in real life, not in a million years.

A quicker, slightly less affecting Woody Allen. Baumbach fires more hilarious, more dry one-liners that Whit Stillman (for my money), but his films are ten times more entertaining.

I don't suppose it occurred to anyone that Richard Linklater, one of the most talented - albeit uneven - directors working today, had this kind of purity in him. Is there in existence another film that is so thoroughly dedicated to pleasing the viewer's shrewd sense of romantic accomplishment? Has watching two people so easily and satisfyingly falling for each other ever been so accessible? I wonder sometimes if it is a downfall that I smile like an idiot when I watch films like this one. That smile, it seems, is a dead giveaway that I'm lost in an entirely subjective view of things: I yearn to fall in love again, to find romance, to pursue a beautiful woman with a nervous excitement. And therein lies Linklater's fatal flaw (for me, anyway). The film makes it clear that this is just the right time (like a cosmic cycle) for these people, each coming off a break-up. It leaves us feeling sweet, but also cold. I felt, watching it, able to participate; I was able to enjoy the intoxication of this whirlwind courtship. I smiled a great deal. But in the end, it left me wandering for days, speculating, pondering; in one sense, wishing I was in a position to be these characters. Is Linklater's romantic swoon of celluloid a great film? Yes. Is Before Sunrise a problem for we hopeless romantics, some of us struggling with an impossible paradox: happily married and still hungry for the chase? Hell yeah.

Ah, here's the answer to that pompous question I'd been asking since viewing Hamlet for the first time on the big screen. Why was this film never released on DVD? Why is the widescreen VHS so difficult to come by? The hardly relieving answer, of course, is this: Hamlet should, barring a life threatening jones, be seen in a theater. It has been a long time (so long that I can't remember) since I saw a film whose tone and mood felt so radically altered on my television that I scarcely believed I was watching the same work of art. Don't get me wrong. Don't. Branagh's vision of the great Dane is still a brilliant evocation of Shakespeare's greatest play (and after all, this is the only full text adaptation of this work, depending on your fondness for the Bard, for better or worse); alternately breathlessly exciting and tirelessly dull, Hamlet never flags to where our attention might plummet entirely. Such an ample running time helps to forgive the bad snippets and build up the great ones, but that, I'll submit, also works better in the theater. More than the breadth of it all, Hamlet is so complex and so rich, it begs a viewing without interruption. Don't expect to receive that at home, either. Even if you're alone. (I really did enjoy watching it again, despite how this review reads).

Hearts in Atlantis isn't so much a film, but a contribution, to the seemingly endless movement of inexplicably depressing coming-of-age stories that proceed to billow with horrible events seen through a child's eye, gingerly pinching a dash of the joyous passion of life between its fingers - then holding it back, just out of reach. Anthony Hopkins is on blatant autopilot as Ted, a psychic who dispenses wisdom as if he were God. Anton Yelchin (whose last name, if the "y" were an "f",  summates his performance) plays Bobby – a spry, awfully annoying young man who sees Ted as the father figure he never had (anyone ever seen that in a movie before?!). Early in the film, Bobby wants a bike but his hard working, single mother Liz (Hope Davis) can't afford it so she gets him a library card instead. This opens the door for a speech Ted can deliver about the wonderful imagination books have to offer and how they're just sooooooo great. Then, Hopkins offers Bobby a dollar a week to read the newspaper to him and keep an eye out for mysterious signs on telephone poles and such. There may be news, in the local paper, of government agents perusing Hopkins or, perhaps, code in these mysterious signs (apparently, lost dog means “there's a potential spy in the neighborhood”). And this mixture of the idyllic and the downright implausible continues to spin through the film as Hopkins and Bobby grow closer, Liz suffers unwanted advances from her boss, Bobby lands his best friend Carol Gerber as a girlfriend and faces Harry, the neighborhood bully (who also happens to be the neighborhood's closeted gay adolescent). This bland, malleable material (based, like one too many other films, on a novel by Stephen King that isn't meant to be scary, i.e., “It could be Shawshank, Green Mile successful!”) falls in the hands of filmmaker Scott Hicks who, honestly, hasn't exactly been responsible for his first two films (Shine was Geoffrey Rush's film, obviously; Snow Falling on Cedars belonged to cinematographer Robert Richardson and, perhaps, if he wants it, to composer James Newton Howard). Here, Hicks doesn't so much lend a direction to the film as he seems to have encouraged the actors to dredge up past performances and spew them back without much effort expended (poor Hope Davis seems to be stuck somewhere between her gimmee in Joe Gould’s Secret and the disposable wife she sorta played in Arlington Road). Writer William Goldman seems to have invested more time in writing the opening and closing sequences than he does in the ninety minutes in between (in these scenes, David Morse, in five short minutes, upstages everyone else). The film seems to have been written as a competition between thematic gift horses we're supposed to lavish our attention on: Hopkins’ wise old clairvoyant being tracked by the FBI and Yelchin’s over yearning boyish adventures, set to annoyingly familiar sixties tunes (he seems to know he's making the kind of memories that would make it into a film like this – which is just downright insulting, by the way). There's a grand amount of exposition in far too much of Hearts of Atlantis – but then, there's nothing really subtle or beautiful there to speak for itself, so, I guess to avoid incoherence, that's a plus. Re-read that sentence, shake your head….and tell the world my story.

Seething, flipping out and being the very picture of evil, Denzel chews Training Day to pieces. Unfortunately, on second viewing, all the veneer associated with this out of the ordinary, mighty towering performance doesn't connect to the heartless police corruption in Los Angeles, which looks and feels (almost too much) like second nature. The plot itself feels like equal parts the desperate heist flick (a bag changes hands and must get from point A to point B); a police expose (heavies control the low level soldiers and hierarchy brings everybody down except the men at the top); and best of all, a character study ("A demon with a badge tries to corrupt a tried and true man in blue", a one-line video store summary could read). What bums me out about seeing the film again isn't the well cast Ethan Hawke. He's actually much better than he has to be and God knows being stranded in a movie where Denzel Washington abuses you from start to finish is probably worth at least an Oscar nomination (apparently). But Hawke's character is incredibly inconsistent. He stays naïve far too long and when he finally comes around, his transformation feels all too quick The big blinking problem that sets Training Day outside of a reality it's clearly busy interpreting, is just how overstuffed its idea of a single day turns out to be. It starts out right, but, as the hours tick away, we feel like we're watching too much, an audience forced to watch a radically abnormal day stand-in for business as usual. By the end, most events in the film seem to be functioning merely for our benefit. After seeing it once, I built the movie up, in my mind, around Denzel's performance. The show he puts on, the one that makes this film worth seeing, is really the most valuable thing about Training Day.

[Note: The alternate ending to the film, which features the three wise men being disappointed  that Hawke booked the bag (and its expensive contents) into evidence, is preposterous. After he tells them to go away, I thought "Ooooo, he's a sharp one, ain't he?" Had that been the actual ending, a conversation may have ensued between myself and others who had seen the film as to just how long it took for him to be a) fired, b) killed, c) run a train upon? Whoops. One too many.]

One of the most wildly uneven films I've seen in years. Taps the spectrum from almost home movie bad quality to absolutely mesmerizing. Jake Gyllenhaal may be the poor man's Tobey McGuire and Drew Barrymore may give her best performance to date. The montage with Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels" is the best sequence in the film: a music video-esque introduction to characters who will continually let us down but who, every once in awhile, make up for it in big ways. The messiness of schizophrenia and mental anguish are handled nicely, but are repeatedly sold short in a subplot about time travel that seems laughable and ill developed. Everybody in the movie feels like they fell out of a TV movie - but, predominantly, that's what they'rre supposed to feel like. What Kelly needed was a budget (the movie looks like it was made on a shoestring, i.e., unprofessional) and someone to knock the bejeezus out of his script until it was a fated tale of high school life and not a contrived bit about a dark, seemingly harmless boy we're meant to champion even though he's doing the evil bidding of a sinister rabbit (whom he hallucinates). I wanted so much, at times, to love this movie for its keen, original sensibilities. But I also wanted to turn it off several times because it seemed as if it were getting off on sabotaging itself with ridiculous special effects and space time continuum blather.

Everybody in the film keeps telling Bevery D'Onofrio (Barrymore, playing one note cranked up to 11) that she's smart and she'll survive. The character doesn't really seem all that smart. Nothing she says or does even suggests intelligence. The film pulls the same crap. It tells you how smart it is with what I initially thought was a self congratulatory nod (framing the story of a teenage pregnancy and its effects on the life of young mother D'Onofrio around her last hurdle in getting the book published on which this film is based). Later, as I realized that "self congratulatory" wasn't exactly the feeling I got from said frame, it seemed to me that these sequences of D'Onofrio and grown up son Jason (Adam Garcia) were merely there to give the film a much needed weight. It doesn't work. Nothing in the film feels very important, or worth telling. Every scene playing as if it will never end, echoing scenes in other movies that are usually supplemented with resolution. Ironically, the whole film seems to be the resolution to its self: that the film got made makes the film worthwhile. I don't buy that. I sat and watched the detached, emotionless, excessively melodramatic life of a character and found almost no center to it; it all seems to be a big scam for someone to cash in on having a rotten life and then, on top of that, exclaiming to the world how joyous it is to be able to cash in on misery by sharing it with others via a novel. I thank you so very much. Now, if I could just get those one hundred thirty minutes (that's right, we're in epic territory) of my life back, I'll just be on my way.

"Someday I hope I can meet [death], like she did, with the same....calm".

George Washington is often so arbitrary, so beautifully random in its observations, it feels like a documentary. What makes it such a compelling work of fiction, though, is director David Gordon Green's sweet, soft eye. Many independent films look cheap and artsy but you doubt the director planned all of it. Many independent films employ a visual style which looks more accidentally emotional than purposefully engineered to be meaningful. George Washington gives one the impression that Green understands the language of his medium to such an extent, that he can machinate a film to look this effortlessly saturated with contradicting gaudiness: herein lies a dirt poor, rusty, falling apart mess of a town, racially charged and repressed, as seen through the eyes of God. We believe Green clearly knows how every single image will come out, how every color will register and how his composition will guide the stirring journey of the characters. Consider the scene where the neighborhood kids go to the pool. The discoloration of the film stock appears so yellow that the water is almost beautiful, a crystal sparkle in its swish. The background, a fence, some trees, the concrete walk around the pool, all of it is almost browning. This community oasis looks so soothing, so desperate a safe zone in this pressing, fatigued world.  In every sequence, Green seems to be able to manipulate his cinematography to make ordinary ugliness become like an exciting, painterly landscape for the characters to subsist in. In one horrific sequence, he's able to make shadows come alive, almost swallowing the bathroom where a tragic event takes place. And it is this event which strikes the film into a roaring blur of silences and bold, shattering moments of reality. As these kids wander the street, sometimes coping, sometimes being heroic, sometimes growing up, sometimes living, sometimes barely breathing - something happens: their world becomes our world. Green has authored a puissant film that left its camera trance on my psyche long after the credits had rolled. His actors are non-professional. His filmmaking is patient, but multifaceted: he isn't watching these kids, or judging them. He's trying to show us something more in them. "Sometimes I save people's lives", discloses George Richardson, the title character of sorts. What an epiphany. Green celebrates these people, their world and the idea that they feel like they are part of something much larger than they are. That he manages to share this candid revelation with us, just about "lift[ed] me up so gently so as not to touch the ground".

Thinking back on Fireworks and Sonatine, the other two Takeshi Kitano directed films I've seen, Brother doesn't veer too far from Kitano's usual style of plotting. In fact, if anything, Brother is a more complex - albeit more ridiculous - story. No, what left me dissatisfied about his latest film, which takes place here in America, was the execution. Whereas the previous films were more or less of a cerebral depth that transcends the much of the brutal Yakuza violence which was included, Brother never really gets past being a showcase for its violence. How many times can we watch Kitano outweigh his predecessors simply by spraying a room with bullets and causing an alarming number of deaths? How many times can we expect him to turn up with some surprise, some hard edged shock move that will save the day? In the previous films, those questions were never an issue. The violence was balanced. In Brother, it seems to be one of two things; either a) Kitano had a creative superflow that allowed for a great number of creative murder sequences he just had to include or (more likely), b) On American soil, an action movie speaks louder than something with a smidgen of profundity attached. The quiet Yakuza in American gang territory yields some fine moments. Kitano's wacky bets with Omar Epps amused me (especially when one of Kitano's henchman stood at a window and counted the people passing, Epps betting there would be more men than women and Kitano, who cheats like a gentleman, betting the opposite). At first, a heap of bodies arranged to spell the Japanese character for "Death" seemed hokey, but upon reflection, it also seems to be a sly jab at the film's impractical incidences of bloodletting. The sad thing is that, unlike Kitano's previous films, there are also moments of Kung Fu dubbed awkwardness (though the film is subtitled where necessary) where characters utter lines of dialogue in English that sound like they've been lost somewhere in translation (a bellhop misreading a silent Kitano and uttering, "No tip this time!?" springs readily to mind). The least of this stumble speak is Kitano's dialogue. His former motive in motion pictures (after the crippling motorcycle accident, mind you) seemed to be including himself as the quiet badass, the guy who doesn't say but half a sentence (therefore, his actions speak, oh so easily, louder than his words). Here, he's blathering far too often, using too much English and saying things that just don't seem to go with the character he's presenting us with. Overlong, slow and repetitive, Brother grounds itself long before it can propel us into its wicked little world. By the time the film ends - and it ends with three really bad, really superfluous scenes (one is a scene snatched right out of Sonatine) - I was so tired of this cartoonish, sketch-thin gangster world, I yearned for just a glimpse of any of the recent mundane drug dealer flicks. At the very least, they're remotely believable.

Bread and Roses would have made a magnificent, incredibly clever fiction film. And, as a non-fiction film, it doesn't tumble hard, exactly. But that's not to say that with every subsequent frame, the film's many layers begin to feel more and more over-dramatized. Bread and Roses tells story of an illegal Mexican alien (the spry, sweet Pilar Padilla) who finds work as a janitor in an L.A. office building - and eventually becomes part of a movement hell-bent on union organization. It's Ken Loach from start to finish. His dry aesthetic, in which he barely scampers away from the medium shot, is always compensated for by his taste in strong, inspiring tales, ones that he directs the bloody hell out of. Here, as in the other two Loach films I've seen (Raining Stones and Ladybird, Ladybird), he takes the working class world, sees a seminal, basic problem in its routine and situates his protagonists in the ultimate risk spot as they try to improve their lot. This is probably the most successful film (of the three) and I state this on a purely demonstrative note: I admired its gradual drive to a screaming passion. There are scenes of great epiphany. There are scenes of powerhouse rebel rousing, characters lost in crowds, fighting for their rights amidst boisterous demonstrations which look so natural, so untouched by their dramatic force, they barely defy their staged reality. What strikes me about Loach's film is that it works because you believe it, but the actual work put in to make you believe it isn't believable enough. I'll say that again (actually, you can go back and read it again. I'll wait. (pauses) Ready? Okay). I submit things like the budding romance between Padilla and (the indelible, magnetic) Adrien Brody that is developed with understatement but, whose mere inclusion feels manufactured, as if it were the designated peripheral appendage, meant to make the story seem less didactic or hose off its keen sense of punctilioussness. Other plot turns, which I'll not reveal (one involves fingerprints, another a phone call made from a cell) feel like they belong in the film - but seem to pile up too quickly to seem real. I'm still not sure why illegal immigrants would be able to swing paper trailed items like health care and union cards - but there's probably a sound explanation I'm overlooking. (And anyway, the movie seems to be operating with the knowledge that fighting for these things could mean actually getting these things, so it clearly knows something I don't.) The old adage "truth is stranger than fiction" may apply. I've not read about the actual happening. I found the film to be a great entertainment. I don't remember whether or not the words "Based Upon a True Story" appear before the title of the film or not; the film's blind belief in that phrase is my major quibble.

"My friend George said he could read God's mind." Staggeringly powerful the second time around. Really just a collection of offbeat, affecting human moments. Shouldn't all films sneak into our souls and fill us with delight as this one does? I actually feel I'm ready to watch it again. It's almost a theraputic wash, a kind of free refill for my reality spattered pscyhe.

Somebody shitcan those scenes with the robots and the plot....get back to the mockery!

Enjoying K-Pax was one of the larger challenges of the past year. Not to say I went out of my way to enjoy the damn thing. I couldn't figure it out at first (which is to say, I knew I was responding badly to it, but - geegollygosh, why?) . Was it one of those films that plays a few kooky, off-key notes (an alien on earth) among a relatively static backbeat (the reality around us), hoping to drum up some wacky "how would we deal with that anyway" setiment? Was it one of those movies in which you imagine the screenwriter to be a failed astronomer intimating some cornball theory and then struggling to make it seem inherently probable? Or, on the lower end of the totem pole, was it simply a fish out of water ploy, not so cleverly hidden beneath a couple of genre headings (science fiction, psychiatric drama)? In a larger sense, I found K-Pax to be all three and, in the opening fifteen minutes or so - also deemed it clearly disposable. And now I'm roughly halfway through this review, ready to drop the "BUT WAIT, I LIKED IT...marginally" bomb: what I found, as I watched K-Pax, was that all the exposition techniques (Spacey's first hour is him describing) and determined, silly ambiguity (I want to believe he's a huggable spaceman!) was meant to set this whole thing up as a fantasy. K-Pax has more in common with films where you'd immediately dismiss your keen sense of plausibility, trading up for a much more entertaining suspension of incredulity; in essence, the exact kind of picture we'd likely see released during the summertime (where we'd cherish the preciousness of a charming alien amongst us rather than thinking hard on its profundity). Instead of asking you to buy into their balmy, isolated world (which resembles planet earth in name only), K-Pax becomes like urine in bathwater: it warms you up even though you know you ought to be letting the water out. (Sorry about that). Spacey keeps the affair vibrant; his performance is so unbelievably radiant with pleasure and infectious enthusiasm, we can easily disregard dry, boring ol' Jeff Bridges (who looks to be boring himself to death, barely able to keep his eyes open long enough to ignore his family and obsess over his caseload). I was a bit underwhelmed as it opened, but the second hour is actually the so-called "magic" one, wherein nearly every scene is borderline therapeutic, with the exception of the few that aren't (like, oh, say, for example... a double murder and a rape?). Any remote storytelling method miraculously dissolves as soon as necessary, leaving (miraculously, again) a film so cozily unpredictable, you allow yourself to be swept into it. Or, for seasoned cynics, we simply tire of fighting, and wind up surrendering to its warm and fuzzy ways.

I have a couple of genuine, non-subjective gripes about Himalaya, but let me first air my #1 grievance, the one you're probably assuming anyway, (and here am I, the national hero by default, actually admitting to) how insufferably difficult it was to stay conscious while wading through this inconceivably sluggish National Geographic Special fitted with a loose narrative and some "characters". Make no mistake, you'll be moved by the scenery, most of it of such majesty, you almost doubt the need to set a story against it. On the other hand, the story Eric Valli has lined up is so problematic; alternately familiar and slender, it hardly seems worth wasting such beautiful photography on. Nevertheless, Valli seems to believe he's got something magical in the story of a grandfather's determined charge to lead a team of yaks across the title mountains, bearing salt for trading in the far off distance. (Watching a stubborn old man lead weary townsfolk and some yaks across the mountains is just as boring as it sounds, I assure you). We know Valli believes that he's got the next epic-y earth shaker for a couple of reasons, the most irritating being that his story is neither intimate nor ambitious; the least irritating is that he is utterly repetitious, constantly falling back on the same scene over and over (you know, that one where the grandfather dispenses wisdom to the children and everything suddenly turns into roses and sunshine). Eventually, after jump-starting my viewing four times (that is, to go back to the spot where I last remembered something happening before nodding off completely), I just let the damn thing play - half naps and all. The film never reaches the kind of pitch that would match any of its staggeringly beautiful photography (and don't think it doesn't attempt to reach that pitch, it has this prologue in the village that lasts a grueling forty-four minutes - - - quite a build-up for what amounts to a cross country yak haulin', am I right?). My advice is to mute the damn thing and watch it without subtitles. Most of what is said isn't all that integral anyway.

Madagascar. You will now enter a hypnotic state. You will do exactly as I say and you will not remember any of what transpires here. You will ignore the critical response to Woody Allen’s The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. You will follow what I disclose, that this film opens with a Woody Allen character resembling a misogynist (a rare character for Allen) who quickly (and thankfully), through a clever hypnotism gag, becomes something resembling a human. I would venture that this is the most satisfying arc I’ve seen Allen write for himself since Bullets Over Broadway (where he let John Cusack play him). Allen’s films inevitably become charmingly direction less (unless we’re talking about either Celebrity or Small Time Crooks, both of which are nauseatingly aimless), but here, he coils the foundation of his premise like Manhattan Murder Mystery with a solid story line that appears to have itself a tidy destination. The film ends up being able to pull off both comedic endeavors (the solid story and the charming aimlessness) using as a bridge a snazzy second act suspense tactic wherein both main characters are knocking off houses while under hypnotism, neither of them aware that they themselves or the other party are guilty of said acts. Colorful period settings, and the ever rhythmic Big Band buzz lends a nice touch to Allen’s simple little scenario as it turns convoluted to the point of giddy, inspired lunacy. As a superior counterpart to Allen, Helen Hunt spits out the rude little one liners almost as fast as he does, giving one of her best turns to date (with urgency: “Oh no, you can’t sleep here, I can’t afford the fumigation bills!). The film wraps up with a certain amount of forced, infuriating irony that, admittedly, sticks hard in the craw (I can almost see critics faulting it pompously, dismissing the entire affair out of a hateful spite). But I doubt that was it. The movie is categorically hit or miss. So often I found myself being captivated by the kind of simple things Allen once made effortless. We’ve come to expect a great deal from Woody. Hopes get high, bars get set too low and, really, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion all but requires that you’ve adapted to the less multifaceted Allen tone of late (this is where critics find themselves the most discontented, methinks). When I snap my fingers, you’ll immediately cut him some slack and awake, refreshed, with memory only of the good things I’ve said about The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Then you’ll go out and rent it. One – you’re coming out of it, now – Two – you’re almost there – Three – I’m about to snap my fingers…(snaps fingers).

She's really both and he's just a gruff German guy who is neither a princess or a warrior. So the title doesn't make that much sense. Luckily, the movie makes perfect sense, connecting each and every plot strand in such hyper convenient ways, Tykwer delivers one of the more pure meditations on fate I've seen.