1/11/07:  "Four interlocking stories of wildly varying quality are told to no good end in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel, another in the increasingly popular Indie genre some wise critic (whose name sadly escapes me) dubbed The Hyperlink Movie (because all the various characters impact each other for brief moments we might click on and head over to the other story).  Four main story threads are intercut, although they are not happening at the same time, allowing us to have mild surprise at hearing one end of a telephone conversation at the beginning of the movie and the other end of the same conversation at the end.  When this works (Pulp Fiction, anyone?) it can be really electrifying and the various stories can comment on each other in surprising ways.  But Babel remains stubbornly out of focus.  Its' point is right out there in the title for all to see, but what happens onscreen only occasionally serves any purpose other than to ladle on the melodrama.Because the plot is decidedly non-linear, I'll discuss its' four segments in descending order of quality.

The best, which would make an outstanding short film if freed of its' companions, is set in Japan, where we watch a deaf-mute girl (Rinko Kikuchi) drift through a miserable, detached existence throwing herself at every guy who might have sex with her."  MORE

9/1/08:  "I have just completed roughly 45 minutes of online research trying to identify names, characters, actors and incidents in hopes of writing a halfway lucid plot synopsis of a movie I saw just last night, but I have been stonewalled at every turn.  The movie's official site contains a “Synopsis” less than one paragraph long that identifies no character by name and lists the “Cast and Crew” section as “Coming Soon”.  I've skimmed a few reviews (and I HATE reading other people's reviews before writing my own) in hopes that they knew who some of these people were and what they were doing.  No dice.  Even the VinXperienceII.com fan site and its' accompanying MySpace blog couldn't help me out.  So I am left here to tell you that Babylon A.D., Pitch Black star Vin Diesel's return to the kind of dystopian futuristic sci-fi that made him a star is a mess' mess, 87 minutes of mildly entertaining Sci-Fi Channel-style junk that careens from one setpiece to another all the while hinting at a grand, thought-provoking plot 20th Century Fox was not entirely successful at editing out.  Director Mathieu Kassovitz has been shouting from rooftops trying to persuade ticket buyers to avoid the skeletal remains of the movie he tried to shoot, and I have no intention of arguing with him.

Now, for that plot synopsis... It's The Future, and things are not going well.  " MORE

9/3/07:  "OK, I'm going to make this easy for you.  Close your eyes (I'm not sure how you're going to keep reading this once you've done that, but I can't solve all your problems...) and picture the Bruce Lee classic Enter the Dragon and the thousands of ripoffs that have followed it.  Secluded island, the greatest martial artists from around the world gathered for a tournament run by a crime lord against whom Our Hero lusts for revenge.  Got it?  OK, take the words “martial artists” out of that sentence and substitute “Ping Pong Players”.  Does the thought make you smile?  If so, read on.  If not, Balls of Fury, the new comedy from Reno 911! masterminds Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon likely isn't for you.  Using the same formula to bust the bubble of martial arts machismo with which Reno attacks the manliness of police work, Balls is best appreciated if you know your action movie cliches inside and out.  Guilty as charged:  I had a ball.

12 year-old Randy Daytona (Brett DelBuono) is the American star of the 1988 Olympics.  He's cruising toward a Gold Medal in Ping Pong, and his Dad (Robert Patrick) can't resist betting on the seemingly inevitable victory.  So when Randy chokes against East German Karl Wolfschtagg (Thomas Lennon), his father is murdered by a Triad crime lord named Feng."  MORE

9/6/08:  "Ah, the tragic lot of those among us who have the misfortune to have been born Killing Machines.  It is one of the most miraculous aspects of the role movies play in our lives that we become so attached to people who have never lived and have no basis in the real world that we're eager to see stories that deconstruct those fantasies, mulling the lot of the Inhuman Condition of being a movie character.  For decades we watched indestructible supermen mow down everyone who stood between them and justice.  From time to time, it was an anti-hero whose job was to rain death on the innocent, seeing the error of his ways.  Such a character is at the center of The Pang Brothers' Bangkok Dangerous, a remake of their own 1999 Korean thriller that sounds (I've never seen it) like it was substantially more grounded in the real world of Far East crime.  The new movie is a big time Star Vehicle for Nicolas Cage, who turns in another of his patented essays on soulful despair as a hit man who is a master of murder but so divorced from the people around him that a few kind words and a meeting of eyes across a pharmacy turn his entire world upside-down.  The movie's a bit slow and breaks no new ground, but damn if I didn't think “Man, it must be so sad to be a Killing Machine.”"  MORE

3/16/08:  "I love unsolved historical mysteries, especially when they involve the hint of government conspiracy.  On this side of the Atlantic, I doubt many people have heard (certainly I hadn't) of the amazing story of the “Walkie Talkie Robbers” who struck the Baker Street Branch of Lloyd's of London on September 11, 1971.  Tunneling under the vault from a storefront two buildings away, they made off with millions of pounds and the contents of over a hundred safe deposit boxes.  A ham radio operator picked up the thieves communicating with their lookout on walkie-talkies and those recordings, along with the shocking nature of the heist, were big news for exactly four days.  Then, all media coverage ceased:  whispers circulated for years until it was recently confirmed that the British government issued a D Notice, which allows them to halt media coverage of any story that might infringe on National Security.  So, what was in those boxes that would inspire such an extreme reaction?  The new heist thriller The Bank Job mixes speculation, invention, and interviews with “confidential sources” of writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais to provide a delightfully decadent answer.

It all starts with Princess Margaret (Louise Chambers), secretly photographed having wild sex at a resort. "  MORE

12/26/08:  "We can nitpick details all day long (Yes, Ray Liotta is batting with the wrong hand as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, and no, I have no idea what Tommy Lee Jones means when he says “Either I'm lying or I'm going to shoot you” near the end of The Fugitive, since what he said was that he wasn't going to shoot Harrison Ford), but in the end most movie battles are won or lost based on tone and characters.  Bedtime Stories, Adam Shankman's high-spirited follow-up to the wondrous Hairspray, has both of those things nailed.  It's about fairy tales for kids, but it's really a fairy tale for grown-ups, where hard work and good-heartedness prevail over back-stabbing and spite in a way they so rarely really seem to do.  With a strong cast succeeding in being either relentlessly likable or hissable as their roles require, Stories easily surmounts the fact that its' plot makes only the most superficial pitch meeting kind of sense.

We begin with narration care of the late Marty Bronson (Jonathan Pryce), who explains how he devoted himself to the dream of owning and operating a motel, assisted by his son “Skeeter” (Thomas Hoffman) who loved to let his imagination run wild in its' many rooms." MORE

11/3/07:  "Ever get that feeling that the “messages” in animated movies just get shoved in there by people who don't believe them for a second because they know that parents are going to feel better about the product if it “teaches” their kids something?  If so, you'll be better prepared for the bizarre experience that is Bee Movie, Dreamworks' Jerry Seinfeld vehicle that stands both for and against every last thing it can think of.  Be an individual, just as long as you're a cog in a machine.  Don't exploit minorities, unless that exploitation is part of the fabric of society.  Do whatever you can to save the environment, but don't learn from your mistakes.  Everyone should find a message to like in Bee Movie's shambling narrative because it takes every possible point of view and treats it as the movie's theme... for a few minutes.  All of which would be easier to take if so much of its' humor weren't on the level of the movie poster that proudly proclaims “Honey Just Got Funny.”  Ugh.

In a hive that, in familiar Pixar/PDI fashion is exactly like human society, bees Barry (Seinfeld) and Adam (Matthew Broderick) have just completed their three days of college and are ready to take their place in the honey-making business that consumes all of their time." MORE

12/25/07:  "As we prepare for that most soul-crushing of national spectacles, an election year, I get this sinking feeling that we've all grown so good at parroting the lawyerly defenses everyone on TV (be they politicians, athletes or celebrities) offers for their Misdeed of the Week that we've begun to apply them to our own lives.  Right and wrong are out of favor, replaced by the Burden of Proof:  if I can construct a logical argument why anything I do is right, then you have no right to criticize me for it.  When our ethical discourse consists almost entirely of random samplings of Dr. Phil and Crossfire, you know we're in trouble.  But it does create a great opening for the likes of 83-year-old Sidney Lumet, who's been looking askance at our national moral failings all the way back to 1957's 12 Angry Men, to construct his best movie in over 30 years. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a slick, ruthless thriller about two brothers with no moral compass and bills to pay.  As you might expect, a whole lotta bad stuff follows while a brilliant filmmaker shows us he still knows his way around.

Dressed in a ridiculous disguise, Hank (Ethan Hawke) waits behind the wheel of a rented car as Bobby (Brian F. O'Byrne) pulls on a mask and walks into a jewelry store." MORE

2/24/07:  "While the Nightly News worries about stolen credit card numbers and kiddie porn, the great mass of Internet users are aware of something far more positive and sublime that has come from their connection to the World Wide Web:  the knowledge that They Are Not Alone.  Think about it:  in the time they've bounced from one hyperlink to another, who hasn't at least once been shocked to discover a large and thriving community of people doing or talking about doing something they thought that only they did.  Some might find this discouraging:  we are all a little less unique than we may have imagined.  But I have found much comfort and inspiration in the knowledge that the people filling the cars and houses around me are bursting at the seams to express their own idiosyncrasies and to find others who share them.  Michael Gondry's fanciful Be Kind Rewind is a movie about a community that discovers a shared desire to express itself through DIY filmmaking.  The oft-delayed film is a bit of a mess, but it's chock full of laughs, good spirits and creativity.  It should resonate with anyone who's ever felt the joy of sharing their creativity with the world at large, be it your songs, your movies, or your own movie review website.

Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) owns a video store, Be Kind Rewind, that has seen better days." MORE

11/20/07:  "According to media reports, a good 20% of the theaters showing Beowulf across the US are doing so in the revolutionary new RealD digital 3-D format.  What this means is that 80% of the people seeing Robert Zemeckis's latest experiment in motion capture animation are really getting screwed.  Don't get me wrong, this adaptation of the oldest known adventure story has its' moments, and a darkly cynical take on the material that gives the final third surprising heft.  But the story here is RealD, which makes an OK animated feature into an unforgettable cinematic breakthrough.

Anybody who's ever had an ancient literature class can tell the story along with me if they like:  King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) has built the greatest Mead Hall in all the land to celebrate the greatness of his warriors.  But on one particularly debaucherous night, the Hall is attacked by a revoltingly misshapen monster called Grendel (Crispin Hellion Glover, who I can just imagine introducing himself as “Crispin H. Glover, the H is for Hellion”), who routs the men but will not lay a hand on the King.  Enter the great hero Beowulf (Ray Winstone) who, along with his right-hand man Wiglaf (Brendan Gleeson) and a band of excessively merry men, travel the world in search of Glory." MORE

11/4/07:  "Like most people, I really wish George Lucas could keep his hands off the Star Wars trilogy and would stop tinkering with special effects, making Greedo shoot first and generally mucking up his Masterpieces.  But there are some movies that benefit from post-release tinkering, and they're generally the ones that were mucked up originally.  For instance, there's Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's futurist classic filming of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By now, most anyone who cares knows the story:  in 1982, Warner Bros. looked at a movie which in some ways was far ahead of its' time and freaked out at its' ambiguous villains and downbeat ending and decided to make some changes.  They made tiny but pivotal alterations to scenes involving Replicant heavy Roy Batty that made him less sympathetic and more conventionally diabolical.  They sliced out two key scenes that establish something VERY important about Harrison Ford's lead character.  And they assigned Ford to record an awful narration track which explained some things to death, changed/ruined the meaning of others, and worst of all tacked on an absurdly out-of-left field happy ending.  Ford intentionally tanked his recording session, but the studio used it anyway.  The result is a movie-crippling drag on what's already not one of his best performances.  But something about Blade Runner shined through all this wreckage and the movie attracted a cult following."  MORE

5/13/07:  "You can't say enough about the influence that Saturday Night Live has had on the shape of movie comedy over the last 30 years.  First, by starting the careers of dozens of stars, from Chevy Chase and John Belushi to Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell.  Then, with the 1992 hit Wayne's World, by introducing a new kind of film that's basically a 90-minute SNL sketch:  the broadest possible characters living in a world only suggested by our own, jam-packed with referential humor and celebrity cameos.  Even when they're not directly inspired by SNL sketches, this sub-genre usually stars vets of the series, and no one's had more success at it than Ferrell, star of the new Blades of Glory.  Because you're not being asked to bond with realistic characters or follow a demanding (or even lucid) story, the SNL-style comedy's quality is entirely tied to the answers to two questions:  how funny are the performances and how good are the jokes?  In the case of Blades of Glory, the answer to both questions is “pretty".

Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell, playing skater as narcissistic rock star) and Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder, straight-arrow innocence in a funny blond wig) were America's top male singles ice skaters, but their furious feud led to a humiliating incident at a medal ceremony that got them both banned for life." MORE

1/31/07:  "If you've seen as many movies and watched as much TV as I have, inevitably you're going to have some personal favorite performers who're complete unknowns to 99.9% of the American public.  I've rented untold direct-to-video dreck to watch Nick Mancuso ply his trade, and my eyes light up whenever I see the names Christopher Lawford or Janet Gunn in a list of credits.  Not everybody stays on the list forever:  some finally get their big break.  Sam Anderson's now a semi-regular on Lost, and I was a huge Brittany Murphy guy back when she was starring in things like The Prophecy 2.  Which brings us to Agnes Bruckner, a 21-year old actress who's been a personal favorite since she blew me away in a supporting role in the otherwise unexceptional 2002 thriller Murder By Numbers.  She's the best thing about the new werewolf flick Blood and Chocolate which, after getting off to a rocky start, shows surprising spunk and brains.

The movie would chide my use of the word “werewolf” because we're actually talking about the Loup Garoux, a pack of shape-shifting wolves who spend most of their time in human form hanging around Bucharest, a city we're assured they “rule from the shadows”." MORE

11/1/08:  "It's interesting to watch movie genres evolve over time.  Social attitudes change, landmark movies shape audience expectations, and repetition turns novelty into old hat in the blink of an eye.  Sometimes, real world events demand at least a temporary pivot in a genre's concerns.  For instance, in  a time of war, the Espionage Thriller pretty much has to relocate itself to the scene of the war in question.  That's how we ended up with the War on Terror Thriller, a genre Hollywood's been racing to refine over the last few years even as audiences have proven slow to warm up to it.  Ridley Scott's Body of Lies shows the WOTT coming of age:  it's got the requisite attempts to enlighten us about the nature of the threats emerging from the Middle East and to humanize the non-combatants who live there.  But its' best features have little to do with making points:  Body of Lies is bloated and its' plot too byzantine by half, but it's fronted by three wonderful, well-played characters, and it's got a real spring in its' step.  In short, this is the first War on Terror Thriller that dares to be fun.

Europe is rocked by terror attacks sponsored anonymously by the terrorist Mastermind Al-Saleem (Alon Aboutboul)." MORE

11/30/08:  "Of course we anthropomorphize our pets.  If we didn't view their quirks and characteristics through the prism of human behavior, would we really look to dogs, cats, birds and fish to keep us company?  So, it's not really surprising that Hollywood has spent many years assuring us that our four-legged friends are even more like us than we think; speaking English, standing on two legs, and visiting psychiatrists.  A little of this is cute, a lot of it tends to be grating, but the new 3D Disney flick Bolt finds an intriguing happy medium.  It's about a dog who was placed as a puppy onto a sort of canine Truman Show by unscrupulous (and presumably insane) filmmakers who sought to convince him to live his life for their cameras as a superhero rather than a simple dog.  Yes, all of Bolt's animals are just like people, but they're also just like animals, and the film has as much fun with their non-human attributes as their human ones.  Perhaps even more shocking for a Disney product, its' moralizing about heroism and relationships rings true, resulting in a hugely entertaining comedy that also tugs the heartstrings of critter-loving softies like me.

Bolt (voice of John Travolta) is a dog adopted at a young age by Penny (Miley Cyrus), a feisty teen whose father (Sean Donnellan) is more or less the good guy version of a mad scientist." MORE

1/11/07:  "When it comes to the people around us, just about everybody belongs to one of two groups:  those who look for reasons to like them, and those who look for reasons to dislike them.  Maybe that's why I have such conflicted feelings about the exhaustively titled Borat;  Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (let's call it Borat from now on...).  On the one hand, it's the most hysterically crude laugh riot since South Park:  Bigger, Longer and Uncut.  On the other, it's a dark-hearted, mean-spirited exercise that left me feeling depressed by the cold cynicism of its' filmmakers, who're pretty certain they can tell you everything there is to hate about someone in a few minutes of film.

The film is ostensibly a documentary created by Kazakh TV personality Borat Sagdivev (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his producer/cameraman Azamat Bagatov (Ken Devitian) to educate the proudly racist, homophobic and misogynistic people of backwards Kazakhstan on the ways of the Greatest Country in the World, the (as Borat calls it) U.S. and A."  MORE

8/5/07:  "If you watch TV's 24, you're familiar with the structure.  An overall MacGuffin is established at the outset (Habib Assad has five nuclear warheads within US borders!) and then, one after another, mini-MacGuffins (We've got to get this witness out of the building!  We need that circuit board!) become totally pivotal to getting to the main one, until they're immediately forgotten.  While a lone, invincible hero in the field dodges the bullets of anonymous snipers, a bunch of techies back in some central office tries to either aid or stop his progress with all their computer wizardry.  If you like that structure, you're gonna love The Bourne Ultimatum, which provides Matt Damon as Robert Ludlum's memory-challenged superspy with his most streamlined and efficient vehicle yet.  It lacks the heart of Bourne's first and best adventure, 2002's Bourne Identity, but it goes about its' business with skill and efficiency, and emerges as a triumph of craft over relentlessly familiar material.

The action picks up directly from the end of The Bourne Supremacy, with Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) on the run from Russian agents.  After cleaning up some business from the previous film, he catches the trail of a journalist (Paddy Considine) who's gotten a tip about the shadowy government program that made Bourne the amnesiac killer he is today."  MORE

9/18/07:  "One of the main functions of the movies is to allow us the catharsis of simplistic solutions to complex problems, which often means that the Good Guys do things that would make them Bad Guys in the real world.  Nowhere is this line clearer than in the case of vigilante justice.  Movie heroes always know exactly who is guilty and how to make them pay, and movie villains always REALLY have it coming.  Alas, in the real world, vigilantism is often directed at the innocent, and the motives of its' practitioners are rarely pure.  Neil Jordan's The Brave One is a fascinating character study that doesn't bust out of the conventions of the vigilante thriller, but focuses on what causes one woman to embrace her urge to “make things right” by killing the bad guys.  The mostly routine plot leans heavily on Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard to elevate it with their performances, and they come through in a big way.

NPR Radio Host Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) is out for a walk with her fiance, Dr. David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews), when they're attacked by three hoodlums.  Both are horribly beaten, and only Erica survives."  MORE

2/26/07:  "I vaguely remember the 2001 arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who, for over 15 years, had been selling America's most classified secrets to foreign powers.  What I don't recall hearing anything about is the crucial role played in the investigation by a young surveillance operative named Eric O'Neill.  The story of the fateful time these two men spent together is told in Billy Ray's excellent thriller Breach, a character study about what it takes to serve, and to betray, your country.

Computer expert Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe) photographs and follows suspects for the FBI.  He dreams of becoming an Agent, and gets a step closer when he's summoned to the offices of Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney).  She assigns him to be a clerk for Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), a Bureau veteran who's running a new division designed to upgrade their computer security.  But Eric's real mission is to observe Hanssen, with the official explanation that he's a sexual deviant whose activities could embarrass the government.  Tough, paranoid and deeply religious, Hanssen initially intimidates and amuses his new clerk.  But soon, he's taken in by his apparent sincerity and the interest he and his wife Bonnie (Kathleen Quinlan) take in Eric and his new wife Juliana (Caroline Dhavernas)."  MORE

1/16/08:  "It might happen tomorrow, it might happen next year, or it might not be until 2063, but one day each and every person reading this (and yes, shudder, the writer as well) is going to die.  We all know it:  we might not believe it, exactly, but we do know, and this presents us all with both a burden and an opportunity.  Because we know we won't be here forever, we have an incentive to pack our lives with as much of the good stuff as we can get our hands on.  But the enormity of our impending demise is so huge that thinking about it is kinda like looking directly into the sun.  As such, we tend to shy away from the knowledge and, in so doing, to shy away from the opportunities that knowledge presents. The Bucket List is a movie about two men who've spent decades living like they had an endless supply of tomorrows, confronted with the fact that they don't.  Skillfully played by two of our finest actors, it is at its' best a touching and thoughtful story about the emotional and practical implications of our mortality.  It too struggles to keep its' eyes directly on the facts at its' heart, and at times wanders off on tangents unworthy of a Grumpy Old Men sequel.  But like its' characters, it saves its' best for last, and the sentimentally inclined had better come packing tissues.  Lots and lots of tissues." MORE

9/20/08:  "There are times when I'm glad I'm not paid to do this.  There a two goals to good film criticism, the first being to dissect why a given film does or does not work against the criteria we tell ourselves are objective.  The other is to step back after seeing and reacting to that film and to try and understand our own thoughts and feelings about it.  I find myself pulled in two different directions regarding Burn After Reading, the tonally challenged new dramedy from the Coen Brothers.  Measured against those objective standards, the movie just doesn't work.  Even at just a shade over 90 minutes, it feels very long, the performances are coming from all sorts of different directions, and both the Coens and their actors fail miserably at making any of their network of interconnected characters empathetic in any way.  But as the story rolled to its' conclusion and the final scenes played out, I couldn't help but feel like I'd just seen something really profound.  Like a lesser Forrest Gump, a movie that never fails to affect me emotionally even as I struggle in vain to understand just what it's trying to say, Burn After Reading feels like a mournful eulogy for a nation that's abandoned all sense of ethics and morality in its' mad pursuit of happiness that will never come precisely because the seekers have become so soulless.  It's just hard for me to explain HOW it is this, but through the rubble of one failed scene after another, I felt it in my gut, and I was glad I saw this deeply flawed movie.  Your results may vary." MORE