Atmospheric, entertaining, oddly comical, well-performed; Did the same guy turn out The Pianist two years later? Am I losing my mind?

Sweet, beautiful porn for death-phobics like myself. (Also, the very best guilty pleasure I saw last year).

You mean, honestly, there's no possible way any one of these characters could suddenly grow more interesting than the almost (thankfully) distracting barrage of throwaway gags being fired at a side glance? The real trouble with Looney Tunes: Back in Action is how obvious it seems; There's not a doubt in my mind that the simpleton plot standing front and center was concocted or even executed to be paid any attention to. Fraser seems less happy to be throwing his hunky romantic comedy chops around than he has of late. Jenna Elfman continues to be thoroughly annoying.

Talk about a bunch of leeches! Everybody healing themselves on the warm glow each other's tragedies; It feels like this pre-planned wellness chain for people who really, you know, just suffer. Sickenly theraputic (How much of Kasdan's career can be described as merely therapeutic, though?); Not only are we never really sure it's a movie about actor-as-sedative William Hurt, but the ending is a particularly dimwitted one, pretty much pushing the C/C+ relationship I had with the film over the disparaging side of the fence. Kept trying to enjoy the quirk and rhythm of it and found myself constantly disappointed by Kasdan's quick-pimp style of everyone's "connection". Geena Davis' angry changeover at the end of act two, by the way, is enough to make me want to hit her with that fucking Oscar that ended her career.

What I want, more than anything, is to see a follow-up documentary that focuses on the character who wears a cardboard hat (which reads "Go, baby, go!") and launches into a delicious monologue about his 20 ton air unit that can cool a K-mart but, more importantly, can bring his house down to thirty below zero. Why isn't his reaction prominent when his wife passes a possible conspiracy (on the part of the judges) off as her reason for walking away from the contest? Does bad dental work run in their family? Are they more than cousins? Anyone?

The moments where they get a clear signal on their Preston Sturges homage work wonders (along with cornball Clooney's eyeball delivery) to help us ignore just how Elmore Leanord-of-divorce the actual storyline is. Very rarely is the film outwardly Coenesque but, to its credit, it's also rarely generic. Per contract, the brothers remain perhaps the only filmmakers in Hollywood who can successfully keep a leash on supporting players, cull a decent performance out of Catherine Zeta-Jones and edit a conventional story to look like something flashed from a 40s pan. I'd watch another film with these characters.

It's just semi-grating until the title character shows up. At that point its a vile toss-up: Horrible desecration of (arguably) Mr. Geisel's best work, or merely the worst flash-flood of (justly) deleted scenes from the Mike Myers' era of SNL ever?

Two words: Boogie Nights. One more? Beatyatoit.

[I imagine if one had lived in L.A. during 1981 the film may have carried a tad more resonance; As it is, the journey to capturing the coked-out wasteland of John Holmes and his party people is a pretty grim one, and Wonderland never seems to rise above the sludge with anything more than an epilogue (which, by the way, seems like a bit of a party pooper to the ninety-nine minutes of Rashomon-style inconclusives that preceded it). The milieu - however much of a downer - is eerily evocative and very unnerving; SSadly, the creatures that inhabit said milieu are each more outlandish (slash laughable) than the next, with Kilmer leading the pack, giving the classic one note drug addict performance that's a handful of smoke and mirrors: He's on repetition autopilot: Now incoherently mumbling, now talking really fast, now barely awake - but still trying to talk - now speed blitzing on the vocab tip (you get the point, he's alternating extreme sedation and extreme jitter with maximum transparency). When the film gets to the robbery of Eddie Nash (a goofy Eric Bogosian with an even goofier accent) - you're practically dizzy with deja vu. Certainly obvious that Cox & Co. wanted to obscure the story but, unfortunately, it's still obvious, you see: PT Anderson used up all the good details like a two dollar hooker. (And the wild-eyed, cut-to-the-quick editing? Can we have one drug movie that doesn't feel the need to give the viewer "the experience". Please?]

My wife really, really, really tried to push the issue on Heidi (the title character) being the slimey bitch - while her family in Asia were merely following their custom of reconciling 20+ years of heartache with a play for financial support. Even in the less successful epilogue, she states that every letter she's received from them asks for a donation. Am I the only one who sees that both sides are, essentially, in extremely bad spots and maybe - just maybe - our dirtyfilthyrottenstinkin' government should be helping the Danang side of the family that's living in squalor? (Since the U.S. Government did, in fact, initiate Operation Baby Lift, which dragged hundreds of Amerasian children from their mothers and gave them a "better life" in America. I'm thinking they're to blame, you know?)

Grade probably would have been significantly higher if I'd: a) watched this in one sitting; b) not been expecting a fucking masterpiece; c) been able to forget that I'd ever seen a Buster Keaton film (seriously, being unable to see physical comedy without comparing - and inevitably downgrading - it because next to Keaton it's tap water is becoming a rather mammoth problem). I have reservations about M. Hulot's Holiday, but I'm not sure why, exactly; I love the way it seems to meander along, utterly plot less, almost defiantly episodic and that it's tirelessly sparkling to look at, often rather funny and never requires - or even requests - more than half a commiitment from the viewer (it's light, I'm saying). Something about, I suppose, just didn't blow me away. (I guess we're majoring in a viewing #2 with a minor in seeing Tati's other films with pointed interest in keeping the expectations low. This is where I'm tempted to write a long, rambling essay on how preconceiving one's notions before screening any film can be detrimental to excess.) Love the score, by the way.

A riff on every great film noir sequence you could imagine, supposedly made under the influence of deep regret Melville harbored for passing on Rififi 15 years earlier. This movie never stops being badass. Not for one second.

Fascinating emotional patchwork, utterly ambitious idea, highest possible rung of student execution - - still can't get past the dialogue being dubbed afterwards. This could easily have been a masterwork. Instead, it seems to hook the emotional and elemental heft of Frankenheimer's The Train with the dry, hammy wit of Guy Maddin. (Incidentally, this is a combination with a hit or miss percentage of approximately 50%).

I'm not merely making an example of this film - which does, incidentally, feel like it haas lost at least one reel towards the end - by giving it such a high grade; I'm trying to indicate the skill of Assayas the director. I'm also violently excited by Connie Nielsen's and Chloe Sevigny's performances in French. The film itself is one devilish change of motive after another, characters finding themselves suddenly changing power roles and exceptionally antiseptic locales teeming with quiet suspense. Mergers and acquisitions were never so damn entertaining.

Arrrghh...when will they stop poisoning semi-great stories by allowing them to drift in the the hands of Schumacher! (Or, for that matter, his producer, Mr. Bruckheimer.) Veronica Guerin is fascinating enough, but it never quite earns the emotional commitment it purports to assume we'll invest. The title character is made out to be the ultimate martyr in an obviously Irish-penned script (pre- and post-film titles practically ooze a subjective Irish nationalism that, doubtless, an American audience might find ironic, as an American actress plays the fallen reporter as created and directed by American money). There isn't really anything wrong with the personal stock placed in the story - except that it is clear from the start that Guerin's efforts, writing for a sensationalist rag, will cause a great deal of wincing from the audience as we continually watch her venture into the sort of water typically described as "murky" (we call that manipulation, where I come from). Despite the astonishing lack of effort on the part of the filmmakers to give the film a sorely needed dose of humanity, Blanchett manages - as ever - to walk off with the film. Her flirty, uber-confident stride, magnified by scene after scene of stubborn pride points (plied on a pedastal), manages to hold us even when the film does not. The Irish underground seems like a suitably vile place (children handling needles on a dead-end street is a visceral image, I must confess); However, anyone who has seen John Boorman's infinately more valuable film, The General, may find the nightmarish portrayal of the criminals far too different to ignore. Which version is accurate - the one that's message-driven or the one that's mythical?  (Also, I spent a good portion of it in a deep depression when a infectiously energetic, significantly more interesting expository device - played by the ever-indispensible Colin Farrell - gave the film a few thousand watts it could barely hold onto and then, like that, disappeared for the duration.)

If you can get past Alec Guinness' eerified Nosferatu get-up (which is, by the way, the most ingenius thing about the film, though I'm sure some will find it to be too much) - - - this is as black-intentioned a film as Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success only, uh, a bit less precise.

There's an odd sense that the properties of a melodrama are at odds with Boorman's old-gangster story-as-a-biography bent; This devisive quality makes the movie easy as pie to swallow (even if the accents - and the facts - are a bit slurred). Obviously painted as some sort of neighborhood hero, Martin Cahill gets off far too easily. Of course, if anyone but Brendan Gleeson had played him, this would be a bad thing.

It's one of the most non-commercial films I've seen (ever). I'm ashamed to admit that my tastes run parallel to the categorically obtuse - or non-package able. That makes me a complete and utter elitist and a walking contradiction: Elephant, by being the square, intrepid peg in the round, marketable hole, is essentially aimed squarely - and, perhaps, only - at those who value film as high art (Winning the Palme D'Or a pretty flashy tip-off). While it may not be surprising that Van Sant's deceptively minimalist, incredibly strong filmic medicine appeals to me as a cineaste, it's valuable to say that a broader audience could take stock in a film that seems to shun influence and court a non-judgemental attitude about a topic so abominable it often seems easier to find a scapegoat. It is hard to nail it down: Is this an important or, indeed, a great film? ('s certainly a unique one) Yes, it is (both), in the way it is filmed and the way it is told - but moreover, Elephant is a masterwork because it chooses to make all consequences exist on the same level plain and never makes the mistake of giving one character the leverage other characters could be seen, in a moral context, to deserve. The result is this: The ideology isn't anything of a surprise or a transcendence (as in a typically then-this-happened narrative), instead, an event that stands like an elephant in a room is surrounded by its inhabitants and is simply stated rather than falling prey to hypotheses or pre-drawn conclusions. For an issue to exist in our world, it must usually be first tainted by the media, then blown out of proportion by the moral majority, then given blame to assign and penalties to be deducted. Van Sant's film contains none of that. I'm not sure I've found myself more chilled than when I'm asked to ride to school with, scheme with, or watch, two killers whose reasons seem more or less obvious in one way - and yet completely unknown in another. He doesn't go the cheaply fearless route and make it sympathetic for these teenage gunsmen. The mere gesture of reporting - instead of dramatizing, as it were - makes the lack of verdict arrival quite effective: Van Sant is merely calling to our attention that something like this happened; "Is there anything more frustrating, or sad than how very straightforward and unadorned it is: Two people killed a number of others"? It's as if the film was made in the interim between the incident itself and its analysis. It's as if Van Sant has documented Columbine before the media even had time to dub it a massacre - or even had time to arrive. This - besides being an extremely objective vision of a high school shooting's arc (from nothing to everything), it also happens to be an masterful contrast of soberly reported statement versus sensationalist debacle of swelled proportion; It's the act before the finger pointing. The culmination of the film - though some have called it pornographic and self-serving - is considerably more disturbing than you can possibly be prepared for. Wandering, dazed by Van Sant's unequivocally objective God's eye camerawork, lost in a constantly changing singular perspective, stoned on the camera trance, we watch as helplessly as the victims, as everything and nothing happens. Here is the point: There have been school shootings since Columbine. Some have also been prevented. Placing blame on anything but the two individuals who perpetrated the murders is delusion.

Though the performances are all spectacular, I felt a bit buffaloed: He lied to all these people and they felt hurt, but is it really that far-fetched that a magazine - even one as nose in the air with overstated almightiness as The New Republic - would print something that (gulp, followed by gasp) wasn't true? What this real-life story does is create an atmosphere where great, tense scenes of suspense and exposure can bubble - a kind of film I'd feel comfortable dubbing The Insider, Jr. Though it is disturbing to admit that both Irwin Winkler and George Lucas were unsuccessful at garnering the most from Hayden Christensen, it cannot be taken away from Billy Ray (rhyme alert!), who is a born director of actors (put him on the list with Joe Carnahan for amazing discoveries). What happens in this film occasionally feels overblown, but its bare sincerity is noteworthy - and deserving of respect. Occasionally, the same note seems hammered for effect to excess (one lie after another gets more tiresome than it sounds); I think, though, the idea is to really relish characters who - for a change - aren't cynical about their belief in the value of what they do. Oh, and Peter Saarsgard: Yeah, he's fucking amazing.

[Yes, alright - yes - it was a like a leaky faucet when you've got to pee: The power of suggestion in Shattered Glass made me hungry and passionate about writing (a practice I enjoy, anyway) and eager to sit down and pound out these words/revisions/devastatingly shameful notices. Now I feel like the dork I am. Venting complete. Return to base.]