School out, protagonist watches friends disappear to various summer camps. Time on his hands, he spies on the school, viewing subversive activity which turns out to be a summer vacation abolishing scheme masterminded by a James Woods voiced radical who, obsessed with boosting test scores, laughs maniacally. Our hero retrieves his friends to stop the method of removing summer vacation: changing the changing the moon's orbit, freezing earth and thereby eliminating the warm summer months which would otherwise contain vacation. Now picture overdramatized voices, under competent animation and a mind numbingly long rendition of "John Jacob Jingle-Heimer Schmitt". Now picture me reaching for the indiglo button on my watch. Seven thousand times.

Still debating whether or not to call it revelation or a breath of fresh air (thinking of going with the latter, not that anyone can help me decide or anything). It connects its tri-tiered tales in a way that feels right, as if they crave each other. The transitions and time shifting (most notably why it joins the longest list ever, i.e., films compared to 'Pulp Fiction) are seamless almost to the point of working as peepholes that reward you before or after the fan is doused with shit. It doesn't hurt to stand up and shout that the amoral characters are sculpted in such a wonderfully accepted and likable manner that they almost transcend the mega-cliched idea of antiheroism. Oh, and the pace stirs the adrenal glands like, well, almost like nothing I've seen this year (something to remember you by?)

The Million Dollar Hotel is what Lars Von Trier's The Idiots might look like sans the artful 'Dogma 95' restrictions, redressed in a formula centered script and sold as mainstream entertainment. People who first heard, chanted, "Bono wrote this?!" But, but, but, (the sarcastic stutter) I have so much trouble buying that. How could a popular rock musician write something as generic and amateurish as this pile of namby pamby philosophy spewing, overtly expository, "crazy-people-are-sane-in -their-own-way" horse crap. (Even Wim Wenders seems decidedly put off by the whole thing; the only scenes he seems to have directed are the ones that take place at the beginning and the end of the film. This is not the smooth, slow burn of some of his recent cinematic landscapes such as The End of Violence or Lisbon Story.) It isn't that I believe that telling a story from the perspective of a mental deficient is a bad idea (or, in the case of The Caveman's Valentine, we downgrade it to an "atrocious" idea), but giving the voice-over cackle a whole bunch of predictably shifty and uncreative "tells" and leaving them on  full blast chirp from frame one on, twitching maniacally to convey the line of thinking that the REAL crazies are we pesky "normal" people lacking overcooked nicknames, flamboyant personality quirks and mythical flea bag hotels as our place of residence - - - - this is not the way to connect the dots. Jeremy Davies looks like a malfunctioning robot, wiggling about, but never quite able to build anything around the perpetual seizure of a character he inhabits. Mel Gibson sputters off sour mouth inducing lines like: "I'm so hungry, I could eat a whore", while stiffly marching through the wasteland of this nut house searching for the clue to who pushed Israel Goldkiss (Tim Roth) off the roof. (By the way, Gibson actually does less with this role than I'd initially expected, and my expectations were already deep underground heading southward). The assorted wallpaper characters (because they're meant to give flavor, not depth): the irritating Plummer, the aging mod rocker/hypothetical Beatles band member Stormare, the quiet sex pot Jovovich and the relatively restrained Jimmy Smits; these characters rarely do more than define an already overstated vibe that eccentricity + deep "life" insights = intelligent entertainment. Not so. (Some good music plays throughout, acting as a wave of relief at times).

Collapses events nicely, if often too conveniently; the arrangment of ideas and the specific content is Hitchcockian, but as a whole (particularly in the cinematography and hyper quirkiness), it doesn't register as a relic suitable for that comparison (or even that derivation). While it is good at suggesting a plethora of motives, scenarios and sinister possibilites (and it has that dryness used as an alarm for viewers like me who are oft-quoted as saying "This is good because so little is actually happening"), sometimes it delivers and sometimes it plays like a series of diluted cop-outs. I wish I'd bothered to see 'An Affair of Love', so that I could have seen Sergi Lopez in something else - - - as a reference point of sorts.

[Note: As of 5/15, I have indeed seen 'An Affair of Love', a brilliant film that made me want to see everything Sergi Lopez had ever done (Nathalie Baye, too). Look for it at #3 on my top ten for 2000, as well as within  May's Chronicle. Films like 'With a Friend Like Harry' do a good job displaying Lopez's effortlessness. He doesn't really emote or project, but you get the idea. A marvelous actor.]

The first thirty minutes of Francois Ozon's Under the Sand work in much the skillfully foreboding manner I expect his short films did (again, had I bothered to see them). Pushing a set of moments, slow burning - part ordinary, part steeped in anticipation - on an audience, like lowering oneself into a hot bath, works synonomously with a gradual sense of refreshment. That he chooses a circumtance wherein a wife loses a husband to the sea, but cannot find his body (and then proceeds into a rampant, but excrutiatingly bland campaign of denial) would have spelled masterpiece. As is often the case with highly pleasing premises, Ozon finds no trouble in pointing his film in an interesting direction, but chooses to make the journey of our main character (played with a patient grace and neurotic sexiness by Charlotte Rampling) one in which the same borderline preposterous note is played in the same key over and over again. As her progression stops dead in its tracks, we find all of the obligatory sequences for a film like this sputtering at us much too plainly to transcend something of substance: a) a frantic search through the husband's belongings ensues with a "what have I done" slump concluding the romp; b) the best friend, willing to endure Rampling's quirky dismissal of reality and insistence that her husband is still with her; c) the lover she takes to pretend she is still with him, or, to treat as badly as she possibly can (it's a toss-up). Even as the film closes, Ozon seems to have sensed that the proper elements are not in place for the proper conclusion. As the awkward moments flare and immediately fizzle, Under the Sand shows us a filmmaker with a gift for the set-up, but no clue how to make it work. Or maybe I'm just really, really upset that he uses Portishead's "Undenied" so beautifully.

[Greatish scene: Rampling, nearly committed to an apartment she is viewing, almost faints as she gazes through the window at her very own backyard necropolis. "Imagine that", I thought, "She's wary of death". Go figure.]

I feel really strange doing both of these things in this single review, but here goes. I don't like the digital photography. I don't like where Wayne Wang is going. There, I said both things. To start, the last thing a hyper-sexual film about the business of sexual relationships needs is to look like a grainy, hundred-thousand dollar, blatantly self conscious indie flick. As far as the subersive elements go, the script is problematic in how little weight it holds: everything seems to happen around hot, lengthy sex scenes, that, while practical, all but grinds the film's momentum to a halt far too many times to keep a working rhythm humming. Admittedly, I am a huge Wayne Wang fan (I even supported Anywhere But Here, if you can believe that). He is indeed a director obsessed with storytelling and how it  configures inside a story. He picks a decent road here, and certainly expands on enough of what is going on for the film to be textually worthwhile (it has no trouble nailing the idea that "the center of the world" is only made what such by what lies around it). I take issue with Peter Sarsgaard's character even being allowed to interact with Molly Parker's character. They clearly change who they are too often and too suddenly to preserve a sense of credibility (even though they are examining the impersonality of professional versus personal relationships). Still, I found myself entranced by the film and not just because of the sex; The Center of the World makes us interested in what will happen next, even if quite often, what happens next is a mammoth let-down. In the unofficial battle between the Americanized high drama Eastern-import directors, Wang is still in a dead heat with Ang Lee (at the very least, this film isn't as bad as Ride With the Devil). But really, should I be holding contests like this in a tiny room where my ego alone exceeds maximum occupancy?

Why is this film so dry? Totally interesting, flamboyant guy with the tracks of life experience practically stiched on his body. Revisitation of former cannibal group he once bonded a wee bit much with. Margaret Mead minus the boredom. So why did I feel compelled to get slightly bored? Probably because the film is a messy scatter of half-thought out editing schemes, unfinished thematic chapters and choppy, often ugly photography. I shouldn't whine: Keep the River on Your Right is solid entertainment when Tobias is onscreen. Kind of like a geriatric Timothy "Speed" Levitch (of The Cruise) who, instead of guiding NY City tour buses, guides folks through primitive landscapes. As a historian, as a person - even as a Homosexual Jew, which the film exentuates a tad too much for a clear focus (as this isn't really a biography, and it really isn't the story of his reunion with his haunted past) - Tobias Schneebaum is a terrific presence and alone ushers the film into recommendable territory. The filmmakers aren't always up to the daunting task of pushing his relevant antics to the forefront of clarity or entertainment (or a healthy dose of the two simultaneously) and we get the sense that some of the better moments are gathering dust on an editing room floor somewhere. But nevermind all that, Keep the River on Your Right isn't a total loss by a long shot. I don't feel like I know Tobias as well as I'd like, but for who he is, I was happy to spend any amount of time with him.

Nothing more than an animated Farrelly Bros. road movie (complete with road and incessant song after song). The jokes, for the most part, are either tirelessly and eye-rollingly flat (the donkey is the best part because he has a greater amount of comedic successes because he talks a mile a minute - - - but isn't that a bad thing?), or obsessive about knocking Disney (aparently Katzenberg's torch burning as a vengance - - - but not a terribly efficient one, I'm afraid). Visually superior to the last two Dreamworks animated extravaganzas (I'm talking now about the non-clay productions), Antz and The Prince of Egypt, but about one third as intelligent and far less entertaining than those two films. The voices jive with the characters, but each character seems more thinly drawn than the last, negating that plus. Though Farquad isn't a main character, he isn't much more than an enigma (and using John Lithgow makes it all the more stock); Cameron Diaz's character is so mushy and so one-dimensional it doesn't baffle me that the utterly inconsistent Shrek (another in a long list of boring main characters) falls head over heels for her (of course, not until after several lengthy soliloquies on being yourself and other honey-soaked messages which ought to be thematic rather than outright). Eddie Murphy, as stated, plays the donkey as a motormouth and though a good number of his funnies are more pan than cake, he still manages to keep the dim pulse beeping on this otherwise lifeless venture. Ending on a sing-song celebration note (suspiciously like Toy Story 2, but not nearly as effective) only pumps the last ounce of bitterness in my walk to the parking lot. Shrek is.....(ooo, do I do it, isn't it too base?)....(tempting!, tempting!).....DRECK. (Oh, fine....I'm corny, after all.)

[ooo, ooo, anybody remember when Ren & Stimpy used gross-out humor as an art form, straddling fairy tales and lampooning them with much more pep, vim and verve than displayed here? Anybody!?]

Somewhere, buried underneath the majesty of this burlesque, Bollywood-inspired spectacle of sex, intrigue and flashy nightclub colors, lies a tired, almost redundantly base story. Luhrmann, Kidman and MacGregor work overtime to be sure you don't realize it too soon and that we still, though insulted by the rather underwhelming arc, are blown away by the fantasmagoric, show-stopping elation of it all.

I get pangs of complete and utter annoyance when I’m watching a good piece of entertainment get racked with a fierce, lopsided history lesson, and vice versa. The vice versa stands totally naked in Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, an epic cut beautifully as a gutless mini-series, but predominantly shallow on the big screen. Sliced evenly, like white bread (for the almost sick drive of patriotism attached to every bookend), the tragic event of Pearl Harbor becomes an excuse for a blood curdling vengeance, a prolonged (but well-etched) action sequence and a detached, utterly preposterous love triangle hell bent on prolonging the masked subtext of near-sighted racism and tireless grandstanding. Is there a reason the film feels the need to over exert itself in order to impress us? Why does every curve of the story, every beat and every sequence seem to be screaming for our acceptance and wincing when it speeds past any desperate attempt to even remotely discuss a historical occurrence. It used to be that epics either thrived on techno babble (which is kind of cool if enough exists to flabbergast you past the point where it matters whatsoever) or the ability to cull a love story with a happening placed neatly, framing all four corners. By the end of this brightly photographed, sharply developed, unconscionably base motion picture, I was so sick of seeing these actors traipse around like they had nothing better to do than look pretty and half ass their way through a freeze frame in our legacy that is certainly meant more to be a solemn, revered reflection than the action segment between heavy petting and top secret, anti-Japanese air raids. The film, which opened on Memorial Day and was home to an immediate sell-out, meant absolutely nothing to me. I snapped up the stairs more interested in finding my car than exploring the sad day that befell so many in Hawaii on December 7. In other words, I wasn't able to buy the line sold to me and I certainly didn’t learn anything more than how not to make a film surrounding something people still feel bad about. The first act and a half, which centers around a love triangle so utterly gaping in left field with sap that most soap operas would probably make that lemon sour face in disgust upon first sight of it. Following which, the attack on Pearl Harbor – which is nicely staged, even balletic (did you expect much less from the team that specializes in making action for action’s sake and carries the biggest purse in these parts) – a sequence that is both stunning and oddly cramped (not only does it get old, but I kept asking myself why in the hell main characters managed to continually dodge death, why they would repeatedly stop to advance the plot as if real time meant nothing and for the love of Peter, why does Cuba Gooding, Jr. have such a hard-on for weaponry?); situated nicely between the most appalling sections of the film, the latter is an all-out air raid called project Doolittle (or, as I’d politely dub it: "the prime justification" i.e. there's no way we can end
the film without watching the red, white and blue call in a vicious vengeance), where any of the sub half assed attempts to give the Japanese a real face are coldly abandoned (I’m referring now to the handy-dandy carboard status with the mock martial arts movie subtitles that are as mannered and stiff as the presentation of those brief glimpses into their commanders saying as little as was necessary for clarity). Finally, a covert agenda is revealed, the 1940’s physique cashed in for almost blatant racism I had hoped would not escalate, but instead became an inseperable part of the film. Is there a law that says we cannot have patriotism without our requisite superiority complex? Why shrink the tragedy by suffocating it with formula and soap opera pandering? But - hey, wasn't it
supposed to be a whole lot more to a whole lot of people (than merely entertaining) who hold the event to be reverent and traumatizing? Could FDR, wheelchair ridden all his life, really stand up?

Dear Diary,

Somewhere around the end of act one, I get horribly bored watching Bridget's stylish, outward self loathing. Colin Firth stands around looking cold and stiff while Hugh Grant plays his stock chauvanist and lest I forget the main character, a performance that is somehow really good, but dangerously close to implausible (that Texas twang doesn't ring-a-ding-ding the British drawl as it should, Ms. Zelwegger). Nevertheless, there are some solid laughs, clever, truly memorable dialogue and a terrific supporting turn by one of my new favorites, Mr. Jim Broadbent.

You can practically see the words "Comedy Central Movies Presents" before the credits as this cutesy, wholly flat film noir send-up proceeds to strangle the very life out of you with dry, lazy acting and a preposterous, almost laughable narrative.

Very much like watching someone play the world's coolest video game (only you're not allowed to partake); The Mummy Returns is more animated than man. And the characters you so loved from the campy original have been drained of their thirties' sass and replentished with some oddball hybrid of self-mockery and anachronistic tone.

There are some damn funny lines in this movie as Duchovny charms the living pants off of us, Orlando Jones hilariously picking up the slack; it turns into something less than believable or watchable by its conclusion and Julianne Moore, a very talented actress, gives a performance that feels out of place. She's the arch villain coming around to crash the boys club and  fall madly for Duchovny. You know it from moment one and as the movie wanes with a spunky "rivalry" between the two, you can only roll your eyes. More like Gremlins than Men in Black, but the Ghostbusters is definately all over Evolution.

Odd how Disney hires the dark princes behind The Hunchback of Notre Dame and gives them a script full of Don Bluth-isms (even the characters are drawn in the half-human/half-cartoon tizzy of the Bluthmeister). Able to create a wonderful level of hallucinogenic visualization, deeply bizarre occurences and a shocking amount of violence, Trousdale and Wise once again take the idea of a Disney feature and shadow it with the rich adventure and danger of live action. The script, however, which has no fewer than five writers attached, has too much oft-treaded territory to really shine and winds up sprouting a formula and nurturing it at what seems like the expense of imagination. The good news is, the imagination is so overwhelming and overpowering - - - you may not even notice that there is a movie taking place at all.