While masterfully entangling visual and textual poetry, creating a startling insight into the art of verse, sacrificed in the process is the human quality of the characters. In its entire, admittedly overlong running time, only once do we feel for one of the characters (and of all people, it is Samantha Morton, who isn't even really a main character). What ensues is somewhere in the realm of a teetering experiment and a lurid (if scant) biography, never quite grasping either. Director Temple is a master at accentuating the rebellion in both both Roache and Hannah (as he did with the Sex Pistols in The Filth and the Fury and The Great Rock N' Roll Swindle), but he never seems to be interested in taking a crack at their organic personas. Pity. The script seems to beg that we have affection, or at least a working knowledge of their feelings in order to perceive the wild times, grievous circumstances and unparalleled genius of their creative work. The film, however thoroughly watchable (boasting imagery and quiet reflections of Coldridge and Wordsworth that, combined with their opium abuse, make for a dizzyingly trippy oblivion), comes off as a spinning pocket watch: displacing time and reason with every turn, not a care in the world for anything but vanity in its most immediate form.

(7/4)

Playful - if occasionally dull - is the kind of screwball comedy Jump Tomorrow bellies up as. Hopkins crafts some great arbitrary scenes, but his film isn't complex or funny enough to get away with the glaring lack of focus it demonstrates. Both Tunde Adebimpe and Natalia Verbeke give spirited, entirely entertaining performances as incidental lovers. Hippolyte Girardot seems to have been directed to lift and crawl beneath our skin, however. His raving lunatic of a self-conscious Frenchman does little else but set in motion constant conflict (a living, breathing expository device), which, while suspect, is often little more than annoying. Eventually, I like how feather light the film resonates in my mind, but while watching it, I wasn't half as impressed. A good bit of praise is being thrown around for the look of the film, a very pop art modern NY visual scheme. While lovely, it doesn't exactly set the tone Jump Tomorrow would benefit highly from. Often, it seems like a separate entity meant to distract us from the sometimes banal inter workings of the story.

(7/6)

This is a deeply scary film. A group of Hazmat workers are commissioned to clear the asbestos out of the long defunct Danvers Mental Institution outside of Boston. A clear-cut example of filmmakers tendering and making terrific use out of a setting that practically upstages the characters, Session 9 will no doubt draw comparisons to The Shining for its haunted house qualities and to The Blair Witch Project for its low budget effectiveness and competency (the film was shot on High Definition DV which, by all accounts, looks more like film than film). What I really enjoy about the movie is how mysterious it is content on being. This doesn't mean simply that is wears a veil over the true nature of its evil until the closing moments. Session 9 seems to wear an ambiguous air of perpetual eerieness in its pace while the editors mimic a young Terry Rawlings (Alien). Sound, imagination, use of huge amounts of space and lots and lots of dark are what drive this hypnotic horror flick - - - the same sorts of things that made movies like Alien, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist freak us out too much. The unfortunate thing is that the film takes place on such a small scale, that often times a nasty feeling of half formed significance comes through. As if the filmmakers have backed off in spots, the film ultimately doesn't have the weight it purports to. Technicalities, nothing more, nothing less. Session 9 has one sole purpose, which it achieves in spades: I walk to my car looking over both shoulders, aware of every tiny sound and desperately trying to get into my car and lock the doors at lightning speed.

(7/9)

Final Fantasy, which is a beautiful step in animation (and a tolerable anime), comes off more visual than thought provoking, which I think is a good move. To be sure, there are lots of silly moments, but they are outweighed by a uncharacteristically ballsy ending and some really staggering imagination. Like X-Men, I was glad I had never been interested in the Final Fantasy franchise personally. There were a ton of disappointed faces in the crowd of hard-core gamers I attended the first nightly showing with. My advice, should it ever be called upon, is to see the film as a landmark in the realism computer animation can manage. Should you be looking for anything more than already heavily treaded territory in the story department - - - look elsewhere.

(7/11)

"All we said was 'Oh, it's your birthday'."

In this, the final line in the film, encoded is the unresolved, give us this day our daily goings-on nature of Tran Anh Hung's magically breezy slice-of-life. The Vertical Ray of the Sun is a warm day-to-day wash of poetic imagery and human interaction. I think the best part about watching Tran Anh Hung's films (see also Cyclo and The Scent of Green Papaya) is how easily he allows you to grasp the decidedly Eastern filter in his brain that composes such a stark and original world on the screen. In The Vertical Ray of the Sun, the gabby lives of three sisters come off very French (where Hung lives), but their world is a celebration, like a painting, of the art present in how we live life and manipulate our culture. Songs by Married Monk, Arab Strap and especially Lou Reed fill the apartment of Ngo Quang Hai, a twenty something aspiring actor who embraces the carefree routine of waking each morning as if it were a coronation ceremony. In beautifully structured moments like these, we can feel Hung's vision in a free, unclouded expression almost as admirable a director's piece as it is an overall film. Watching it gives one that lofty, extremely rare intoxication that you wish could last forever.

(7/12)

Chain Camera has an oddly intriguing but thoroughly glitched premise wherein nine students are given cameras to videotape their lives for one week and, upon completion, are required to pass the cameras to nine more students who will do the same (and so on and so on and so on). The unfortunate thing about this film being shown in a ninety minute squeeze instead of a multi-hour PBS run is that, as it is, Chain Camera rings to an almost exclusive tune of fragmentation. Giving only sixteen students five minutes apiece leaves us wishing we could get to know more about these students before Dick slaps a ridiculous graduation/prom summation on the ending and, as with any exploration of a youth transitional period, we know we are expected to find it moving (but in Chain Camera it is just plain impossible). It's an admirable, really revolutionary idea. What Dick does with it smacks of IN-PROGRESS.

(7/13)

A taut and utterly fascinating character drama posing as a heist film throws back its homage teaser to the decided seventies (and I'm talking in tone, writing, camera work and pacing). Hard not to let Brando take over every scene he ends up in (also hard to swallow Bassett in a clearly tacked on move of character convenience). DeNiro and Norton, who come off with a paternal pecking order too uncanny to ignore, keep the film banging along even when you know damn well you're supposed to be expecting a hard twist. But, because this is a seventies replica, the twist is more The French Connection than The Usual Suspects. More than that, though, was the fact that Oz, an odd choice to begin with, keeps the film unusually successful on two levels. First and foremost, he stages robberies in that methodical, balletic, that's-how-they-do-that style which we, as audience members, have come to soak up like sweet, sweet candy. Second, Oz manages to make the planning scenes as well as the initial bickering scenes as tense as any of the actual robbery sequences. When a film can make a bunch of guys talking (and I know, these aren't just guys, these are acting Gods) seem as electrifying as a guy hanging upside down above infrared alarms seconds before he's about to crack the world's most difficult safe - - - you best back up and recognize, fool.

(7/14)

If this is such a funny movie, why did I feel so guilty every time I laughed? Maybe because Made is so thoroughly unimaginative. To start, it is almost entirely comprised of dialogue (though, to be fair, Favreau's overuse of dialogue is much more entertaining than, say, Kevin Smith's). The actual narrative is the kind of story you'd likely find in a class far south of the promising writer of Swingers. The characters, though they have a lot of really hilarious things to say, come in two flavors: boring (Favreau, who declares neither intention or personality) and irritating (Vaughn, so completely cartoonish and one-dimensional, the only guy who could possibly be able to play him would be Vince Vaugh-, oh. Never mind). I'd have discounted the whole bloody affair if I hadn't caught myself giggling so often. Favreau duplicates the satisfying textual pleasures of his previous venture in an almost entirely unsatisfying film. Peter Falk, however, in a terrific turn, escapes unscathed.

(7/14)

I was not a fan of MTV's short lived series The State. The creators of that show have fashioned a film that, while it is pretty darn funny, never really gets its head above the eternal sketch comedy structure it employs. The last day of summer camp in 1981 is a great setting and a great time period and, for all of Wet Hot American Summer's disdain for cinematic framework, the film looks and feels gleefully (and nightmarishly) authentic. Some nice turns by Michael Showalter (who co-wrote the script), Paul Rudd and Janeane Garofalo help to keep the film in a more sturdy resting place so we can get the laughs in before it gets out of hand (the last half hour is basically a series of three sketches edited together, better masking their true nature). David Hyde Pierce is particularly interesting as a neighborly nerd who takes the "inside" kids (i.e. - the D & D freaks) into the woods for a day of science and education. Though read as a replica - or even a satire - by some critics, I think what Wet Hot American Summer ultimately achieves are good, solid laughs. Nothing more, nothing less. I wholeheartedly doubt the film was aiming for any sort of era definition or cutting edge observational comedy. Seems a touch lofty for the company involved, don't'cha think?.

(7/19)

Remember how The Lost World was so pretentious and turned out to be such a truly horrible experience for all who saw it? Yeah, Jurassic Park 3, as you can tell from that number in the title, isn't self conscious at all about what it is. This is a throwaway that isn't worried about how dimwitted its characters are or how laughable their situation is. Seemingly composed only to spotlight the dinos, Jurassic Park 3 works overtime to move as quickly as possible from one Prehistoric confrontation to the next. The film is short, moves at a deliciously rapid pace and, though a number of the dinosaur rumbles are too over-the-top even for a B-movie, at the very least, the franchise is still delivering new species (the Spinosaurus, Pterodactyls) every time around while continually updating the old ones (T. Rex and the Raptors). Not meant to have any particular artistic value - and obviously wide awake enough to be aware of it - Jurassic Park 3 wins my vote as thrilling, forgettable entertainment.

(7/20)

The surprisingly endearing and riotously entertaining story of an East Berlin boy who rose to become the cross dressing Hedwig, leader of a punk rock band called the Angry Inch, set off one specific, weary observation in my brain as I tried to watch it : This is surely the glam rock fantasy film Todd Haynes meant Velvet Goldmine to be. Indeed, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a great deal more exciting and certainly worlds better written, but what it lacks that Velvet Goldmine, bad as it was, carried in spades, is the visual gusto. Hedwig and the Angry Inch recalls a more low budget, arty Rocky Horror Picture Show in the delight it takes in dolling out "supposedly" subversive lifestyle shock therapy in a manner so straightforward and so prideful (not to mention fun), you can't help but wonder if the love and care exhibited could win over some intolerants in the very venue you're currently frequenting. The thing is, the story itself isn't all that impressive. Hedwig's true love is revealed to be a bible banger named Mark Gnossis. From the moment this strand of the plot appears, the film starts to follow their bitter separation (and Gnossis' subsequent stardom at Hedwig's expense), a rather uninteresting bit, in contrast with the loud, wild joy of establishment and excess that precedes it. Though this story of Hedwig's search for healing and a new love is, essentially, the heart of the film all along, time is wisely shifted throughout to keep it interesting. That said, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a particular triumph for John Cameron Mitchell, who clearly possess a gift in staging musicals (a genre so rare it is almost extinct), as well as writing them. His performance is miraculous and even though you say to yourself the whole time you're watching it, "This is merely a re-creation of a stage show he performed hundreds if not thousands of times, how could he possibly blow the role?"; Mitchell is still a mighty fresh, impressive presence. This is a very funny movie to boot, one that inspires a nearly permanent grin as it unfolds (that is, when you're not making that face we all make whilst rocking out to the number of catchy, genuinely cool tunes played by Hedwig and the Angry Inch, including one which we're asked to sing along to).  Fair warning: Hedwig and the Angry Inch veers off target, petering itself almost to death at close, but  it is definitely worth salvaging. Enjoying the best parts of art while we can, and taking the good with the bad is something we are often asked to do when watching films. In spite of a shaky conclusion, Hedwig and the Angry Inch more than recommends itself .

(7/30)

To be sure (and, I guess, fair), I am glad I watched Monkeybone. It isn't everyday you see a seventy-five million dollar project about a man competing with his repressed id. Rarer still is the film released despite being nearly incoherent. So it seems odd to me that a film so content on ignoring its obvious selling point (that is, the sets and animation via Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick), a film that bombed in an apocalyptic display of mis-marketing, would be released with all of the subsequent deleted scenes NOT re-inserted in the final film. Seems to me there's little to lose at this point. Monkeybone is as good an example as you're likely to see of the kind of filmmaking we are rarely privy to in the studio / multiplex / mass audience playing field : material not tailored, written, engineered, or even remotely close to being marketable. Unfortunately, it is also a misfired attempt at creating comic book style artistry on-screen. AND, with Chris Columbus (Mrs. Doubtfire, Home Alone) aboard, Monkeybone contains a rather long, rather idiotic replica of late eighties / early nineties quasi slapstick that just turns the film into an even MORE horrendous mess. Some nice turns by Dave Foley, Chris Kattan and, especially Bob Odenkirk (as a crazy doctor hell-bent on securing innards for the organ donor program) cushion the blow a tad. Brendan Fraser, who seems to have as many variations on being a goofy nerd as John Cusack has on being the funny, high on self pity every man, never really carries the movie as he's supposed to (though, to his credit, his part is written as a spastic, inconsistent afterthought). Doing a number of the same things he did in last year's better-by-comparison remake of Bedazzled, Fraser takes a half step down as uber-nerd of the modern cinema. See the film on DVD for the countless galleries of unused photographs and the plethora of deleted scenes (watch them before the film for a better understanding of just what the hell is going on). See the film for Selick's mind bending, nightmarish (as well as Nightmare-ish) visuals. Don't see the film because you expect to be entertained or spun a yarn you could even begin to comprehend. Be warned.

(7/31)