I feel, quite honestly, that any knock I make at this film will result in someone calling me an amateur, a closed minded drone, subjecting the culture of Bollywood to unfair slings and (or) arrows (oh, and also, I’ve heard it said that I can’t judge these films the same way I would normal films). I agree. To peruse my credentials (that is, evidence that I’ve seen films of this sort prior to Lagaan), please click here: Dil Se + Bombay. Now. Rejoin me. Lagaan, even for a multi-layered, quasi-historical, not quite musical epic, feels forced. White people are presented as stock, flat demons, eager to keep the openly victimized Indian folk down. The inhabitants of a village, forced to pay triple lagaan (tax) - should they lose a cricket game to the evil Brits - spend so much time leading up to an unusually disposable set of procedurals on the sport, on love and oppression, and so little time just existing. But that’s to be expected. My honest to goodness gripe is that the whole thing feels too simple to pass as a historical epic, but too broad to work on any sort of intimate level. There’s dancing, there’s singing, some interesting observations about class warfare and democracy, but, alas, nothing mind blowing. And, even for a Bollywood film, it unnerves me to see subplots being continually opened in the face of an already alarming number being serviced. But the most crushing blow is that, save one or two, the songs are just plain dull. Essentially, the songs feel wrongly inserted, as if the whole thing was a mediocre comment on class and politics but, for whatever reason, someone decided it would work better with a bunch of songs. I don’t think it would have worked either way.  It’s still the story of Brits playing cricket (for God’s sake!) with Indian peasants meant to stand for the warring spirit transcending Colonial rule. And its still too dry to be fun and too preposterously complicated to be clear.

I don’t know which to whine louder about: the X-ray CGI wipes and overlays or the subplot involving a killer who uses the impressions of a dentist’s teeth  (Steve Martin, at his most half-asleep) in attempts to frame him for said murder. Wackiness calling attention to itself and Helena Bonham-Carter playing yet another sexpot? Where do I sign up? Instead of elaborating (as if I needed to), I’ll jump right into my other, strange gripe: Scott Caan upstaging everyone in the film (except for an hysterical uncredited Kevin Bacon). Doing very little acting (you say he plays a violent brute, eh?), Caan walks off with the film. I’m not even going to begin to attempt to think about trying to comprehend the already highly suspect statement I’ve made there. Some inspired, truly wacky comic moments aside, much like Drowning Mona, the actual narrative at hand is painfully commonplace and insipidly executed, saturated repeatedly with ostentatious, feckless plot twists wherein the Character You’d Never Suspect turns out to be, (that’s right Mr. Amateur Detective), The One Who, Oh By The Way, Turns Out To Have Done It. Extra points awarded for a resolution that doesn’t include a long, unraveling reiteration of What Really Happened. Late breaking points deducted for herky-jerky inconsistency wherein, at one point, I’m laughing out loud, and at other times, rolling my eyes and, finally, putting myself in traction alternating both at light speed.

“It’s mostly just me, dealing with a lot of people who are exposing me to information and ideas that seem vaguely familiar, but at the same time, it all seems very alien to me. I’m not in an objective,
rational world. I’ve been flying around. I don’t know, it’s weird, too, because it’s not like a fixed state, it’s more like, uh, this whole spectrum of awareness, like, uh, the lucidity waivers or, like, right now I know that I’m dreaming, right, and we’re even talking about it. This is the most in myself and in my thoughts I’ve been so far. I’m talking about being in a dream, but I’m beginning to think it’s something that I don’t really have any precedent for. It’s totally unique. The quality of the environment and the information that I’m receiving – like, your soap opera for example: that’s a really cool idea. I didn’t come up with that; it’s like something outside myself, like, transmitted externally. I don’t know what this is.”

Here’s what I do. I take back every single nasty thing I said about Waking Life as long as you don’t tell anyone I plan to live the rest of my life by its teachings. (i.e. – life is just a dream we never wake from, death is merely a representation of life sans rationality). More to Come after third viewing...

When Hackman and Wilson aren’t busy riffing on their own personal standard characters, Behind Enemy Lines shifts, with alarming ease, from glossy entertainment to annoyingly exponential implausibility to sappy, patriotic war porn. Imagine if a movie contained far too much slow motion but, also, far too much fast motion and then, after that, too little forward motion (dizzy yet?). Hackman, going for the “pun intended” award, is on unmistakable autopilot (he’s played this character in how many movies, you say?). Wilson, acting less like the star of this noxious pageant than Linus in search of his lost blue blanket, manages to make a single slow motion shot of himself removing his head covering look remarkably cool  (like the ones in every other movie he’s ever been in) – until you realize his dumb ass just blew his own cover (unintentional hilarity alert). You also may find interesting the variation on the “idols shooting arrows” sequence from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where landmines explode on both sides of the top speed runnin’ Wilson. (Until you realize that when landmines repeatedly detonate within ten feet of the spot someone is currently occupying, that person is supposed to, you know, die). And people, let’s say for a moment you forget your precious chicken and the egg enigma and meditate on “Which came first in Balkan war films?” - was it No Man’s Land’s clever soldier -trapped -on- a- land- mine- as- a- comment- on- the- paradoxical- nature- of- war or this film’s enemy- sniper’s- arch- rival- standing- on- a- land- mine- to- show- malevolence- of- sniper- yet- again- when- he- doesn’t- help- the -poor -bastard?) The cinematography is uncharacteristically bleak, often stark – yet strangely beautiful. That the film itself never actually seems heavy or politically engaging is a minor flaw – that it feels like a silly action picture attempting to expose some sort of Worldly Agenda is just sorta insulting.

[And also, the similarities between this and Spy Game – a retiring official breaking rules to rescue an operative with his own strategy, media exploitation and, eventually, a lot of unnecessary flag waving – are uncanny. At least with Spy Game, I knew I was supposed to be enjoying myself. Behind Enemy Lines made me feel like I should be caring about its repulsive, improbable ass. Make a movie where the enemy actually connects with one out of, oh, three million bullets fired, and maybe we’ll talk.]

I'm still humming the Orc theme song: "Where there's a whip, there's a way".

(Probably the best Tolkien adaptation. I added this addendum way after I saw the film because I figured, since no one actually reads this shit, I'd be safe from death threats for, you know, liking this more than The Lord of the Rings: "$311 MILLION DOMESTICALLY, AND, INCIDENTALLY, IF YOU DON'T ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT MORE THAN ANY OTHER FILM YOU'VE EVER FUCKING SEEN, THERE'S PROBABLY SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU, ARRGHHH!" The Fellowship of the Ring.)

John Lennon's words to Muhammed Ali (an unrecognizably virtuoso Will Smith), could easily be explaining to audiences (as well as critics) what they had missed last December: "the more real you get, the more unreal it's gonna get". The brazen unconventionality of the picture, which was undoubtedly lost on more people than it wasn't, depends mostly on Mann's tight, careful selection of important as well as intimate scenes, and how they are to be staged. For instance, why choose Ali's jog through Zaire (a magnificent scene where The Champ starts out excited by the crowds that join him, but later loses himself in their intentions and convictions)? What can be said about a film with such a diverse pulse, such a twittery heart rate that calms and quiets almost as memorably as it leaps and bounces. It's like a long lovemaking session. The first climax comes twenty-five minutes into the film (when Ali pounds Sonny Liston into submission) and the second one, the biggest, longest, loudest one, comes during the last fight - The Rumble in the Jungle, a sequence that holds up so well, and against the reality-stands-nearby odds quadrupled by the freshness of 1996's When We Were Kings. There are other mini-climaxes throughout (Ali has multiple orgasms), but this is a movie, melodramatic like its subject, that is structured around the relationships that made The Champ what he is. Ali captures the ambiguous sense of humor of Howard Cosell (Jon Voight), the fear and insecurity of Malcom X (Mario Van Peebles), the sweet talk of Don King (Mykelti Williamson) and
the tortured worship of sometime trainer Drew "Bundini" Brown (an incredibly surprising Jaime Foxx). Michael Mann's film depicts the man, Ali, himself, without looking like it's trying to depict the man himself (it helps that all four screenwriters seem hell-bent on Ali as the symbol - a decision most likely made to aid the Herculean task of making this self-described "bad man" look as much the hero as possible). Especially lucid is the anger that, conversely, drives Ali through self-assertion and the immodest (to put it mildly) speech that follows. We're privy to Ali's wandering heart (the starry- eyed, dead wrong irony is not lost in a declaration by first wife Songje, "...and maybe you ain't never gonna be with [another woman]") - but also to the love, however temporary, that drives his heart (the flip side, so to speak, of all that anger). So admirable is this anti-biopic, I decided to scratch an itch I'd been neglecting: is there a valid argument for a white director making a film about a black hero? Can Mann truly understand the hope and spirit instilled through Ali's triumphant popularity? Mann rarely tries to, making the film, instead, breath a more universal, all-us-humans breath, to beautifully counter and call attention away from the radical nature of Ali's frequent reverse racism (a great detail like "Ain't no Viet Cong ever called me 'nigger'" is as bracing as some of the violent, reactionary boxing footage). I guess it goes to show, too, that, as we needed another movie about boxing like we needed a bag on our hip - this one is unbelievably powerful, unabashedly alive - and the one that's actually worth watching.

The characters' personalities are clear and working from their first scene, a rather startling achievment in development that, like most of Levinson's films, lapses into melodrama all too quickly. Mickey Rourke and Kevin Bacon give the most noteworthy of performances, unfortunately, an informal lead perspective is given to the oh-so-dull Tim Daly and the big "Best Man" speech is put into the mouth of the oh-so-out-of-place Paul Reiser. Daniel Stern has rarely been this muted or natural and Steve Guttenberg has rarely given a good performance (although, miraculously, he does - in this film). Diner starts out with an arcane, nostalgic bang, as almost entirely (what Graham Greene would refer to as) an entertainment and, as it loses steam, begins to feel more and more like a tragedy is building. When nothing comes - and everything is still building to something, we wonder what it is: a freeze framed picture before the credits. Lousy surprise.

Has more longevity than Diner in the off-beat, jaw droppingly unique comedy department. You sit and you can just feel the bottom ready to drop out. When, after repeated surprises, it does not, you let your guard down and then - BOOM! - melodrama.

Manages to run the gambit from gloriously cinematic (dare I say, almost artsy) to painfully tedious. Aidan Quinn and Kevin Pollack, each carrying less maturity than necessary contribute to the distractingly anachronistic tone (those actors seem to comfortably modern in the face of the old timey Immigrant nostalgia they're mixing with). After a while, the problems don't seem to reflect another time's antiquated customs so much as they seem annoyingly universal. Fine, if that was the desired result. Side effects include the occasional long groan.

Who's this George Lucas and what the hell is he doing to my perception of...George Lucas?

Once in a lifetime, a film comes along, practically begging you to call its protagonist an "asshole". Over and over again. Sometimes, that film, the once in a lifetime one I mean, will beg you to love the selfish ol' sunuvabitch, too. When it calls, dear friend, heed. Heed its nostalgiac call. The Royal Tenenbaums is that film.

Marriage as a blunt instrument. A movie where nearly every scene foreshadows, blatantly, a later scene, isn't as bad as it might sound. It doesn't hurt that the cast is uniformely brilliant. It doesn't help that sometimes characters seem to be included merely as devices to give added depth to more prominent characters (and are left, late in the game, with little to do or resolve). For these characters to take on a more elegant existence than their supporting duties, the film probably would've had to go on for another hour. And no one wants that, especially not Robert Altman, whose style this film seems to echo, in a wierd, Australian way.

Absolutely agonizing. You know how annoying it is when a not so gracefully aging Woody Allen plays a character about ten or fifteen years too young to be believable? And you remember how frustrating is was when he started casting other actors in those roles and directing them to act just like him (save Sean Penn, of course, who managed to find a way around it)? Imagine an movie filled with these characters. Then imagine it plying the same hand-held photography, Bergmanesque behind-the-scenes educated marriage/relationships, criss-crossing love affairs, distant shots of characters reflecting through remote city sounds and indolent exposition (as through mock interviews, constant repetition of motives, absence of variant in each couple's respective quandaries, etc.). Now imagine that Ed Burns is directing, so that, even though he's stripped Woody Allen's style of just about every imaginable subtlety and nuance, he still finds time to make his characters and his plotlines so circular as to be dizzying (this character does this, and then this, and then ends up back at square one - then another character does the same thing, and then again, and again, and so on and so forth). Inches away from comparison with She's the One, mostly because, of a cast of usually reliable thespians - Stanley Tucci (horribly miscast), David Krumholtz (extremely long nails on a very crisp chalkboard), Heather Graham (wildly inconsistent) and Dennis Farina (faux-shock comic relief that's way beneath even him) - at least Rosario Dawson and Brittany Murphy escape unscathed. I wish more promising-yet-unprofitable young Hollywood talent would receive as much of a break as Ed Burns has. Someone needs to tell him that he's not making Husbands and Wives 2. And that his movies really suck.

I tend not to trust a film that takes place in racially segregated Baltimore circa '55 wherein two Jewish kids pursue a taboo-drunk Protestant girl and a sugary sweet black girl, respectively, as if a how-to guide for racial equality dating. Later, Orlando Jones shows up as the single least threatening hood ever put on screen in a non-comedic role. Trouble with writing the whole affair off is, the film succeeds in beautifully posturing two relationships (yes, the aforementioned race card affairs) that blossom into thoroughly believable friendships between a boy and a girl. All that, and it is rather entertaining to boot.

What flickers is the offbeat energy of the performers filtered through the strangely inconsistent push to render cinematic that which is two dimensional; David Byrne’s wild-eyed singer (practically an alter ego as we find out during a sobering meet-the-band moment about twenty minutes prior to close) makes for a fascinating character – part mental patient, part soothsayer - but I couldn’t help wondering if perhaaps the eccentricity he wears on his sleeve actually goes with the remarkably simple, reggae-infused, subvert-the-system-already attitude of the songs (on second thought – it absolutely does). At best, the film is electrifying, if, for no other reason, Stop Making Sense boasts an acute introspection into the personal excitement of the musicians and, once more, that an effort is undoubtedly made to go about it in an interesting manner; at worst, it still bears all the resilience of a traditional concert film with less deterrence than expected. Not as monumental, but certainly as good an vehicle for introducing a band’s music (as say, The Last Waltz was).

[originally fitted with a three star chain, but was upgraded after nearly a week when I watched the first couple songs again, let the thing play in its entirety while closing the store the other night, hummed the music obsessively for the next twelve hours, purchased the soundtrack and listened to it almost nonstop. Hooked be me, says I.]

It is Bunuel, but it's not Bunuel Bunuel, if you take my meaning. Still, he casts two different actresses as the same character - and something about that is really, really, really, really fucking cool.

Bergman creates a masterfully funereal ebb for sisterly relationships to flow within, by way of a terribly upsetting nightmare, the kind of true-to-life dreamscape that feels more real than it appears.

It is better than the Hollywood remake, (but honestly, not that much better). Whomever decided to crank up the score and play it over the entire freakin' movie with almost zero silence (and I'm pointing at Sluizer here, you insecure dolt, you), probably should have just scrapped the whole thing instead. I mean, do we really need two movies based on the same story - neither of them nearly as good as, say Jonathan Mostow's Breakdown? (Which, incidentally, acts as an unofficial homage, methinks).

So visibly competent and assured and clever and clear is Kaufman's direction and so powerful are the performances by Day-Lewis, Binoche and Olin that The Unbearable Lightness of Being, hailing from one of the so-called unfilmable novels, almost transcends its own repetitious patterns.

Yeah, Revenge of the Jedi really wouldn't have been a sensible title. Also, did Lucas only realize Vader could feel Luke's presence on set the day they were filming the scene where Han, Leia, Chewy and Luke have to use the clearance code to access Endor? I mean, come on.

These stories are like silent films, they tell the story visually with dialogue and special effects used as music, essentially. These movies give the sense of what's going on without the continuity overall; a grander scale; they jump quite a bit, move faster than usual with no beginnings or endings. Logic through repeat viewings with first act confrontations as teasers for third act climaxes. (If it sounds like I just pillaged Lucas's words from the Episode 1 commentary, only one explanation exists).

And later, we find out they struck back once before - but they weren't going by the moniker THE EMPIRE yet. (I think Darth Vader was still in Jedi/Mary Kay training at that point, if I'm not mistaken).

The first hour gets an A- for being as absolutely entertaining and conceptually saliva-worthy as it sounds (two out-of-place nineties kids get sucked into a fifties-era TV show). The second hour gets a C for being dumb enough to pound us over the head with what really ought to be a subtext (not to mention, it stops being entertaining after the first five times something changes from Black and White to color - blame the TV generation, I guess). And that middles out to, well, you can read, can't you?