State of Play

State of Play has received much attention for its spin on the plight of today's newspapers. The story pairs up a veteran journalist (Cal McAfferey, played by Russell Crowe with an odd accent) with a newbie blogger (Della Frye, played by Rachel McAdams). The plot is technically about the death of Sonia Baker (Maria Thayer) who just happens to be working for Rep. Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) who just happens to be a former roommate of Cal. It seems there's something rotten in the state department, or in this case the private military company they hire: PointCorp, an analog for Blackwater.

State of Play has two different agendas, one more overt than the other. At its heart, the movie postulates what would happen if the U.S. military had largely surrendered its operations to freelance military operations that are not accountable to the American people. This is no theory. In fact, Blackwater received so much negative publicity that it changed its name to Xe. The supposed hue and cry that would be raised by this revelation didn't amount to much, deflating the entire premise of State of Play.

The other main theme is the tension between supposed cub reporters who only blog on the web and real journalists who aren't afraid to pick up the phone or make a deal. Frye is a foil to make Cal look smart. At no point do we see Frye actually blog or the consequences of her blogging, besides reporting on something Cal felt was private. Or to put it another way: bloggers are self-serving, unethical morons who don't know how to report the facts. The movie feels decidedly lopsided in favor of beat reporters. Oh sure, there's tension and drama and a few surprises along the way. But Frye is completely unnecessary.

In the background is the looming threat of the newspaper being closed, but these occasional reminders (falling from the foul mouth of Helen Mirren, no less) feel forced. To assume one breaking story would save the newspaper is to fundamentally misunderstand the downfall of the newspaper industry.

State of Play was based on a 2003 BBC serial of the same name. And that's the problem. Too long and creaky in places, it feels like a movie drawn from subject matter that's six years out of date.

The Mothman Prophecies

It took me years to see The Mothman Prophecies. I was in the midst of a switch from VCR tapes to DVD player and The Mothman Prophecies was an unfortunate victim of the transition, a tape with no player for it. I promptly forgot about it, but Netflix didn't.

In a somewhat eerie parallel, I recently started prepping the Dark*Matter adventure "The Killing Jar" for my D20 Modern conspiracy game. The Killing Jar has quite a bit of information about the Mothman and provided a helpful backdrop to The Mothman Prophecies.

What's interesting is that this movie actually makes a lot more sense than the book of the same name by John A. Keel. Keel covers a wide range of paranormal phenomena, from UFOs to Men in Black, from ghosts to the bizarre Mothman. The Mothman itself even has a name, Indrid Cold, and isn't afraid to make phone calls late at night.

And that's what's so unsettling about The Mothman Prophecies. The film flagrantly violates movie tropes by having its apparition not only adopt a name but make dire prophecies at length over the phone.

John Klein (Richard Gere) is the perfect foil for an exploration of the beyond, a haunted man who cannot move on after the death of his wife. Klein has an entire conversation with Cold, testing its knowledge of the present and the future. He even tapes the phone call.

But Cold's paranormal abilities extend well beyond phone calls. It can adopt other peoples' voices, both dead and alive. Ghosts show up in the flesh. It can leave messages for you at the front desk. And you can tape it all you want – vocal analysis will show it's an actual voice. Your voice. Only you didn't make the call.

If you know anything about the original Mothman Prophecies, you know how all this ends. But that's beside the point. The Mothman Prophecies is largely about grief and recovery. But it's also about the burden of the future, knowing that there is an inevitable conclusion to all things that we simply cannot control. Death brings that knowledge into terrible perspective.

Unfortunately, the movie drags. And drags. The eerie sounds are a bit overplayed; in some cases, silence would have been more effective than the relentless sound effects. The aural assault may have been more effective in the theater, but on television it's just annoying.

That doesn't detract from Mothman's overall sense of dread. If you have an interest in paranormal procedurals, watch The Mothman Prophecies. It will leave you Cold. And that's a good thing.

Dark Entries

I'm a sucker for haunted house stories, if only because they're such a challenge for modern horror writers to pull off. I also love Blair Witch Project-style narratives, supposedly unfiltered media that catalogues horror without artifice and just presents terror in all its messy glory. So the plot behind Constantine's latest jaunt into the unknown, a reality show about a haunted house, piqued my interest.

Like so many Alan Moore characters, John Constantine is arrogant, wily, grungy, hails from the lower class, and the world pretty much hates him. Constantine and his ilk defined a whole generation of trench-coat wearing bastards that provided a much-needed dose of reality to the comic genre. So it's interesting to insert someone like Constantine in what is an undeniably modern format; that of the narcissistic, relentlessly self-promotional Generation Y-world of reality television.

Constantine shifts very quickly from paranormal investigator of a haunted house to reality show contestant, a shift that isn't entirely believable. We're led to believe it's because Constantine is attracted to a woman on the show who reminds him of someone he once knew. Which is all fine and good, but seems entirely out of character for a drifter who brings bad luck to everyone he meets.

And here's the first problem: it's never realistically explained why all the contestants stay there. The house is a virtual fortress, with no windows or doors. All of the contestants are suffering from grisly, realistic hallucinations. And not one of them cracks enough under the pressure to opt out of the game.

Constantine's arrival mucks up this somewhat delicate balance of greed and paranoia. His sole contribution is sleeping with the woman he was attracted to and asking them all to remember their pasts. In a comic all about Constantine, he barely lifts a finger.

About mid-way through, there's a surprised twist involving demons and hell. I figured it out several pages prior and was actually pleased with the direction the book was going in. In the style of the remake of 13 Ghosts, the book's true premise promised a really dark foray into the human condition as the various contestants realize the hopelessness of their situation and…

But alas, that's for a different book. Once the Big Surprise is revealed, Dark Entries begins a downward spiral into parody. Here's a hint: it includes demons wearing headsets, televisions from hell, and an infernal cannibal who still hears the voice of Sawney Bean.

In other words, instead of continuing the dark noir tone of the first half, or the Gen-Y ironic sensibilities of the second half, it chooses a third route: utter ludicrousness. The infernal forces come off as absurd. When the dismembered head of one of the contestants asks if he'll ever play the piano again, it's clear that Dark Entries has given up.

Rankin seems uncomfortable with the graphic novel format, vacillating between Constantine's noir-style narrative sensibilities, the relentless navel-gazing of modern media, and a bad eighties slasher flick. The result is an uneven installment of the Constantine universe.

Valkyrie

Valkyrie's premise – the plot to kill Hitler – was practically scripted for a movie. Preparing for my Delta Green role-playing game campaign meant researching Nazis and Project Valkyrie, a major historical but oft-ignored event by the American public. Until now.

Because the movie is based on a historical account, typical models of assessing a film – like a twist ending, for example – aren't possible. We know how things turned out. In fact, doing research on how Valkyrie came about and ended somewhat tarnished the movie for me. Valkyrie's not bad, but it wasn't the great drama I hoped it would be.

Tom Cruise is perfectly serviceable as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, and the surrounding cast does an excellent job of showing what amounts to a typical bureaucracy. The more apparent it becomes that Germany might lose the war, the more urgent the plans to overthrow him.

But there were other factors motivating these desperate men, factors that are somewhat lost in the film. My understanding – and I admit this is limited, as I'm no WWII scholar – is that the nobility that led warfare in olden times, and specifically World War I, felt that there was a "wrong" and "right" way to conduct a war. Hitler didn't so much offend this old guard's sense of moral responsibility as it did their sense of following the rules according to an educated upper class. In a sense, Hitler's war was a peoples' war, waged at whatever cost and using whatever resources necessary and, at times, ignoring the right of the nobility to determine how a conflict was conducted.

This is important because Stauffenberg, and some of the elites involved in the attempted coup, were members of this aggrieved ruling class. This isn't to say that Stauffenberg didn't find Hitler's policies reprehensible, but as a large group, it helps explain the framework for why a coup would even be conceived. This entire thrust seems to be deemphasized in the film. It's almost as if Singer was concerned that playing up Stauffenberg's nobility might be a comment on Cruise himself.

The other part that seems to be lacking from the film is the miserable ending for the conspirators. Stulpnagel, the German commander in France, tried to shoot himself several times before being captured by the Gestapo. There is a brief scene where the surviving conspirators are put on a mock trial and holding their pants up; this is because they weren't given belts, to humiliate them more. The scene flashes by so fast that, to a viewer who is unaware of those circumstances, it just seems like the defendants lost a lot of weight and are holding up their pants.

And that sums up the problems I had with the movie. The tension is ratcheted up, there are little known scenes drawn from actual history that further enhance the film, but it all seems to be disconnected from the greater war. It's like Valkyrie took place in a hermetically sealed film universe. This adds to the claustrophobia of the conspiracy, but doesn't quite satisfy those looking for a historical context.

Wanted

The beginning of Wanted plays out a lot like a scene from the Matrix, with a dangerous-looking man in a suit tracking down the source of a special bullet. What ensues is an over-the-top special-effects laden battle in which said man launches himself out of a skyscraper to engage snipers on an adjacent building and manages to kill them all, only to himself be taken out by a sniper's bullet in glorious and disgusting 3-D. Then we're back to a narrative by office drone Wesley Gibson's (James McAvoy), prone to panic attacks and harangued by his overweight boss. Warning: this review contains mild spoilers.

It's easy to make the parallels between The Matrix and Wanted, given the opening scene, but it's the second scene in the office that really gives the film its heart. This is Fight Club by way of Equilibrium, amping up the fisticuffs in the former with the gunplay of the latter.

Gibson suffers frequent panic attacks and medicates himself heavily in an effort to cope with the insults of everyday life: the stupid job, the unfaithful girlfriend, the backstabbing coworker. He is destined for something better, something that involves the sexiest mentor a man could ask for: a woman named Fox (Angelina Jolie). Jolie looks a little too gaunt here, but she hasn't lost her aura of dangerous cool and she uses it in spades to bring poor Gibson into his own as an assassin.

Gibson is, in fact, a member of a secret society known as The Fraternity, who in turn are descended from a medieval order dedicated to interpreting God's will via a loom – that's right, a loom. After translating the threads into binary coded orders, The Fraternity kills people who might alter the world's destiny for the worse.

Once Gibson transitions from office worker to gun-fu martial artist, complete with curving bullets and hyper-time senses, the movie really takes off: Gibson is out to kill Cross, the man who, Sloan (Morgan Freeman) tells him, killed his father.

Unlike say, The Transporter series, which started out semi-realistic and slowly devolved into action parody, Wanted grounds us in a completely altered reality from the start. It makes some of the gun-ballet and insane acrobatics performed by the characters easier to swallow, in the same way we accepted Neo's superheroic feats in the Matrix.

What's surprising is that Wanted is committed to its tale of revenge and betrayal, willing to sacrifice a potential franchise to tell a good story. It asks the question asked of all religions: how long before the speakers of God's will begin twisting it to their own ends? And what is God's will anyway? Heavy stuff, considering the premise involves shooting lots and lots of people.

Wanted is a surprisingly good action movie that transcends the bullet-time genre without seeming too derivative. Along the way, it tells a tight little story that leaves just about everyone dead. And that's not such a bad thing.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

I’m a big fan of the original version of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. It was a snapshot in time of New York City in the seventies; a cynical, bloated, bureaucratic mess that was entirely unprepared for a terrorist attack. In fact, there were actually concerns that the movie would inspire real terrorists to take a subway train hostage. The original featured everything from undercover cops to hippies, a crisp military professional turned terrorist to the random accidents of people in stressful situations. It even invented the “color codenames” later used in Reservoir Dogs.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is catnip to movie directors in the same way that single stage sets are to theatrical directors – be it a subway or a stage with just two chairs, this is a film about two men facing off in a battle of wits. The majority of the movie takes place over an intercom between a terrorist and a dispatcher, with occasional cuts to the havoc their conversation causes throughout New York City. And if the terrorist represents the international Other that is a threat to our national security, the dispatcher represents the everyman of New York, our hardworking servicemen and women who lost their lives on September 11. With material like that, it’s no wonder the film has been remade twice.

Director Tony Scott updates the film to modern day sensibilities. The villain, Ryder (John Travolta in full crazy mode), isn’t a mercenary applying crisp military precision to the art of extortion; he’s a (SPOILER ALERT) former Wall Street tycoon – slightly lower on the villain totem pole than industrialists who pollute the environment. The undercover cop moves into action immediately rather than later in the film, because of course New York’s finest would respond quickly to a terrorist attack. And the dispatcher, Walter Garber (Denzel Washington, looking appropriately puffy and slouched) has a more complicated past and a bigger role.

Unfortunately, the film suffers as a result. In the original, military precision was entirely the point. The trains never ran on time, so challenging New York to meet a deadline was both a delicious irony and a sticking point with a former military officer who expects nothing less than perfection from his men and from the negotiators. Here, that point is muddled by a sort of “we’re all into this together” blue collar ethic that Ryder projects into Garber. Their dialogue still crackles, but this simple change dilutes the force of the film.

The four-man team of bad guys is reduced to two speaking parts, with the other two generic thugs. The emphasis is clearly on Travolta and Washington, and it’s refreshing to have a movie that’s not afraid to spend some time letting actors just act. There’s a lot of talking in this film and that’s not a bad thing.

The movie struggles with the modern updates. A live wireless webcam feed gets broadcast to the Internet without government interference (yeah, right). Even though the laptop’s battery dies, it’s mysteriously back on a moment later. And the two teens on either side of the webcam come off as self-absorbed morons.

Because this is a big budget action film, the quiet subtlety of the original version is glossed over in favor of an MTA agent handling a hostage negotiation, wielding a gun, and ultimately engaging in a showdown with the bad guy. Since Ryder has no principles to speak of, the conclusion is particularly unsatisfying.

Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is a serviceable action film but not a particularly good update of the original. The seventies version was more of a drama with an ensemble cast that was comfortable playing second fiddle to the biggest character of all: New York City.

Quantum of Solace

Congratulations! You've managed to reinvent your Bond franchise after the tired old boy had sipped his last martini, drove his last fast car, and bedded his last exotic hottie. This new Bond is vulnerable and violent at the same time, a wounded animal that was willing to give up the whole spy life for Vesper Lynd, a woman who betrayed him. This is supposed to explain why Bond's such a cold-hearted bastard, and it blazed an exciting if somewhat jarring new path for the Bond films.

The challenge with reinvention is that there is a blurry line between following the new Bond to his logical conclusion and retaining the quintessential elements that constitute Bond. Or to put it another way, if you constantly make Bond different with each film, he's not really James Bond anymore.

Quantum of Solace chose to continue Bond's (Daniel Craig) destructive path from the first film, picking up where Casino Royale left off. Bond tracks the shadowy global conspiracy (Quantum) that has infiltrated Her Majesty's Secret Service. That's right, there's a double agent in double-oh-seven's midst, and only M (Dame Judy Dench) seems to be the least bit concerned about the entire organization being utterly compromised. This is just one of Quantum's many incongruent plot points that are resolved with "LOOK! EXPLOSIONS!" to divert the audience's attention.

Our resident villain is a pop-eyed Buscemi look-alike named Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), who runs...wait for it...Greene Planet, an environmental organization that is secretly arranging deals for oil. But actually, it's about water. Greene's Blofeld-ian murder signature is to drown his victims in oil. It's not nearly as cool as it sounds.

Bond's supposed lust-interest is an agent named Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton), who saunters onto the screen in boots and an overcoat. With her bright red hair, Fields seems like a great romantic foil for Bond. When Bond asks her first name, it's "Fields. Just Fields." No Strawberry. And here we come to the problem: Quantum of Solace seems embarrassed to be a Bond film.

Every opportunity for Bond to be suave gets glossed over. He just commands women, like Fields, into his bed. He kills every bad guy he's supposed to capture. When his license gets revoked, he blithely ignores M's commands. When he attends an opera, Bond lurks in the rafters like some kind of murderous roadie. Instead of cleverly tricking the Quantum cabal into revealing themselves, he crashes their secret meeting and then guns down their goons.

In the first film, Bond's blundering and brutal tactics were excusable because he was new. It was a great way to reboot the franchise with the promise that, over time, Bond would transform into the elegant, suave killer we've come to know and love. It's a particularly American approach, the idea that even killers can better themselves through hard work. But with Quantum of Solace, Bond is so bereft of actual development that he gets a proxy instead: Camille (Olga Kurylenko), an exotic hottie whom he doesn't get to bed.

The movie goes south from there: inexplicable bad guy meeting that brings everyone together in one place, flaming deathtraps that Bond brute forces his way out of, and a bad guy who physically can't compete with Bond but tries to make up for it by being really, really nuts. The clear advantage Bond has over Greene is obvious; it's like a jock beating up a nerd at supervillain convention.

In the end, Bond finally meets up with the agent responsible for Lynd's betrayal, Yusef Kabira. SPOILER ALERT: After all the beatings, blasting, smashing, crunching, and punching, the movie concludes with a quippy aside and some hurt feelings.

Are you kidding me? By the end of the movie I was so frustrated that I wanted to see Bond seriously #$% up the one guy who could arguably be held accountable for destroying the love of his life. Instead of using Camille as parable to tell the tale of Bond's self-destructive path, Quantum of Solace should have STARTED with Bond leaving Kabira in a body bag. Or multiple bags.

Now that we've gotten the murderous quest for vengeance out of the way, can we get back to Bond being at least slightly civilized, seducing hot women, and killing dangerous villains with awesome technology? Please?

Layer Cake

Like Pulp Fiction, Layer Cake’s title hints at the irregular path the film takes to tell its tale. It follows an honorable crook, which we know only as XXXX (Daniel Craig), who specializes in trafficking cocaine. XXXX’s strategy is to never get involved directly with the criminal element, surrounding himself with other honorable criminals who in turn conduct themselves professionally. It’s all a very neat arrangement on the surface, and XXXX thinks he’s got the system beat. He plans to retire and disappear from the business. WARNING: As we eat this cake, there’s bound to be some juicy spoilers inside.

Peel back a layer… and it turns out that XXXX actually has a boss, Jimmy Price (Kenneth Craham). He demands XXXX personally track down Charlie, the daughter of Price’s fellow crime boss Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon, an evil version of Dumbeldore!). This violates XXXX’s rule of never getting personally involved, but he has no choice.

Peel back a layer…and Price also wants XXXX to organize the distribution of “super ecstasy” tablets from The Duke (Jamie Foreman). Except that the drugs were actually stolen from a Serbian gang, who is intent on tracking them down and murdering everyone involved.

Peel back a layer…and we discover that Price is quite vindictive. He wants XXXX to actually kidnap Charlie in a twisted revenge plot against Temple. It seems Price doesn’t like the idea that XXXX thinks he can retire and wants him dead – if Temple’s men don’t kill him, drug dealers certainly will.

Peel back a layer…and we finally get to the best part of the cake. Nobody is innocent. The professional associates have all committed their own heinous crimes for petty reasons: clubbing snitches to bloody pulps, killing people they dislike, and hiding corpses in freezers. This awful truth requires XXXX to get his hands dirty and he does so in the most thuggish fashion.

The visual direction in Layer Cake is superb, using Matthew Vaughn’s trademark whiplash style that he perfected in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. It makes what could be a standard drug dealing tale much more interesting. Although the accents are hard to follow at times, the acting is top notch. XXXX is a complex character that gives Craig an opportunity to experience extreme violence, utter defeat, passionate lust, and a host of other emotions beyond the reach of the Bond films.

Although Layer Cake narrative can be circuitous, stick with it. There’s one more layer at the end of the movie, a surprise twist that shows we were looking at the wrong cake all along.

Changeling

Changeling is most famous for being produced by Clint Eastwood and its lead actress, Angelina Jolie. Those two names unfortunately overshadow a disturbing true tale of one woman's struggle to find her son.

The film follows Christine Collins (Jolie), a single mother rising in the ranks of the 1920s workforce in Los Angeles. When the hectic workday demands of single parenthood conspire against her, Collins is forced to leave her son Walter alone at home. And then Walter disappears.

But that's not the story. Changeling focuses on what happens to Collins afterwards. The LAPD, under increasing pressure for its thuggish behavior, is desperate for an easy PR-win. When a child comes forward claiming to be Walter, the LAPD publicly declares the case solved. There's just one problem: it's not Walter.

What happens next is a heartbreaking tale of male-dominated institutions bringing their full weight to bear against a single mother without family, friends, or resources. Fortunately, her plight gains the attention of Reverend Gustav Briegleb (the always superb John Malkovich), who uses Collins as part of his public chess game with the LAPD. As tensions escalate and Collins continues to deny the faux Walter as her real son, she is committed to a mental institution to shut her up. The story would end there, if it weren't for evidence that Walter was murdered by Gordon Stewart Northcott.

The status of Jolie as an object of male lust often obscures her acting ability, and it is all the more evident here, where she plays a meek woman who only wants the police to find her son. Her nemesis is Captain J. J. Jones, played by Jeffrey Donovan, he of Burn Notice fame. Donovan seems a little uncomfortable in the role; he slips in and out of his Irish accent and he doesn't always exhibit the hard-edged indifference that makes the character so loathsome.

Changeling's author is the eponymous J. Michael Straczynski, most famous for Babylon 5 but also a scriptwriter for numerous cartoons, Jake and the Fatman, Murder She Wrote, and Walker Texas Ranger. Straczynski knows how to spin an investigative yarn and his attention to detail shows in the film. This is as much a commentary on the changing role of technology, media, and women in American society as it is a historical tale. Oddly, some attributes are glossed over: Northcott's mother is notably missing, as is the fact that many of the political and legal improvements made at the conclusion of the film were ultimately reversed.

None of that detracts from the tale. Whenever a child is endangered, every parent can't help but be alternately terrified and enthralled. We keep hoping for a happy resolution, knowing that it will never come. The best we ask for is that Collins finds some semblance of justice and peace – if not for her missing son, then for herself.

Although it takes a long time to get to its conclusion, Changeling delivers. This is a powerful, heart-wrenching film.

Domino

Domino Harvey (as played by Keira Knightley), had a life that just screams to be made into a movie. Basically, Domino was a spoiled model who decided to take the catty take-no-prisoner glare she so ferociously displayed in the modeling field and transitioned that attitude to life as a bounty hunter. The concept certainly has appeal: the modeling industry has turned models into superheroes of sorts, and it's not hard to imagine them with butt-kicking powers, even though most of them could probably be snapped like a twig. Knightley has the unenviable task of trying to project herself as meaner than she really is, albeit a highly sanitized version that features far less drugs.

The plot, if you can call it that, supposedly revolves around a little girl on her deathbed, a bank robbery gone awry, tattooed lock combinations, Jerry Springer, Tom Waits music, and a lot of coin flipping. The idea being that Harvey is some kind Joker-esque madwoman (or perhaps that's Two-Face) who sees life as a coin flip. As Dryden once said: "'Tis Fate who flings the dice, and as she flings, of kings makes peasants and of peasants kings."

A pretty weighty concept, except Domino is so caught up with its whip-snap, hyperkinetic perspectives that the movie quickly wears out its welcome. The plot of Domino has nowhere to go. It's supposed to ratchet up the tension but doesn't, tries to create a love triangle of sorts between Harvey and her two bounty hunter companions but just comes off icky, and yet conveniently ignores the huge white elephant in the room: Harvey's drug use.

The specter of drug use overshadows the film. It killed Harvey just before the film premiered. When the real Domino Harvey shows up in a cameo, she is a skeleton of her former self. And yet drug use is always the dark realm of the bad guys, even though we know full well that it consumed Harvey.

Domino is too long, too distracted, and too clever for its own good. It tries to be everything: black comedy, action film, serious dissertation on life, bounty hunter couture, and more. It ends up not achieving any of those goals and just comes off as a big, ugly mess.

3:10 to Yuma

3:10 to Yuma is an update of the 1957 movie that's in turn an interpretation of a 1953 Western short story by Elmore Leonard. The 1957 movie cleverly tweaked the Western, inverting the white hats/black hats trope at a time when the genre was chiefly focused on morality. And yet while it flirted with the notion that good guys can be bad and bad guys can be good, it wasn't really willing to go so far as to make the characters more than lovable rogues. So perhaps it was inevitable in the era of Westerns like Unforgiven where the West is an unpleasant, unfair place, that the latest incarnation of 3:10 to Yuma is both more brutal and more fanciful than its predecessor.

The story follows Dan Evans (Christian Bale) and his family, a lame Civil War veteran on a struggling ranch. He has been borrowing money and time from Glen Hollander, a landowner who is more interested in moving Evans' ranch than getting paid. As played by Bale, Evans is a desperate man - as weathered and bitter as a piece of broken leather. He yearns for the respect of his wife and two sons. And when he crosses paths with outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe), Evans sees his chance.

Wade is a gentleman outlaw. Suave, violent, and dressed in black, he leads a ragtag band of murderers who will stop at nothing to get the gold, as exemplified by a daring raid on a stagecoach guarded by a gatling gun. Never mind that the gatling gun's weight would make it an impractical accessory for a stagecoach, or that the noise from the gun would most certainly spook the horses.
Given the opportunity to deliver Wade for a bounty, Evans is determined to bring him to justice. At first, it's just for the money, but it becomes clear that it's for more than that - it's to regain a measure of respect, for himself and from his family. Wade comes to like Evans, a man of conviction and courage that he finds lacking in his own gang. When Evans' son William (Logan Lerman) tags along, Wade develops a deeper appreciation for the father/son bond. Through a variety of travails that include Wade's outlaw past coming back to haunt him, the two become brothers in arms.

By the time they get to Yuma, it's clear Wade isn't easily captured or confined; he repeatedly escapes and brags that Yuma prison won't be able to hold him either. So he's literally going along for the ride in the hopes of a happy ending for all: giving Evans his life back and Wade going free once more. That's where the similarities between the movies end. The finale is a gut punch that ratchets up the stakes.

A strong Hollywood Western streak runs through 3:10 to Y uma, starting with the aforementioned gatling gun on a stagecoach. Wade wears a black hat. Charlie Prince (Ben Foster), Wade's right-hand man, twirls his pistols. And for all the talk about Evans being lame, he only occasionally limps - he can shoot, run, and ride with the best of them.

As a realistic depiction of the Wild West, 3:10 to Yuma falls short. But as a meditation on good and evil that gives its actors an opportunity to showcase their considerable talents, Yuma hits its mark ... right between the eyes.

The Bourne Ultimatum

I really wasn't fond of the Bourne Supremacy, which boiled down to, "you're a trained killer, so let's get you involved in a random plot because the audience only cares if you kick butt!" Fortunately, Ultimatum makes up for the lame duck sequel with a movie that actually advances the plot.

Bourne follows a cell phone trail, similar to the latest Bond films (or rather, the Bond films took the idea from Bourne): kill a bad guy, take his phone, page through his address book, trace its location, find bad guy, repeat. This eventually leads to the Treadstone training facility where Project Blackbriar, and Jason Bourne, was created.

The Bourne Ultimatum plays fast and loose with reality; occasionally Bourne just appears and disappears despite the best technology Treadstone has ad its disposable. The message seems to be that even the best surveillance is ultimately flawed because it uses people, and people make assumptions that trip them up. Bourne exploits the arrogance of Treadstone so effectively that he has them running in circles. There are some amazing fight scenes, thrilling chase scenes, and a few scenes that just drag on and on. Jumping from building to building in Madrid gets old after awhile.

Spoiler alert! At the heart of The Bourne Ultimatum is the notion of a black ops team of killing machines. The idea actually has its roots in the conspiracy theory known as Project Monarch: creating superspies through psychological conditioning and torture. It's by no means an original idea, but Ultimatum gives it a twist by showing that Bourne had a lot more to do with the birth of his killer personality than he originally thought.

Who is Jason Bourne? We get his real name, find out where he was trained, and delve into the circumstances that helped create him. The moral implications of who Bourne is and the decisions he made leading up his creation are an important part of the character, and it's a tribute to the screenwriters that it doesn't change what we love about Bourne: killing other spies (AKA "assets").

Casino Royale

My interest in James Bond died the day I saw Pierce Brosnan shoot a machinegun. Gone were the careful headshots of a man who was an expert with his pistol. Replacing that deadly accuracy was frenetic scenes, random gunfire, and Bond bending the laws of reality. The Bond films had become a parody of themselves.

Enter Casino Royale, which makes up for the shambling travesty that was the Casino Royale Bond spoof. Daniel Craig takes on the role of Bond as a newbie, a newbie who is a ruthless killer. Gone are the delicate acrobatics that were the trademark of other Bonds. This Bond is a hulking brute, smashing through walls, ruthlessly shooting people, and otherwise achieving his missions through sheer brute force. It seems jarring at first, but this is the origin of Bond, from thug to international assassin.

The plot, bound by the rules of the original novel, doesn't entirely make sense. Why the entire world, including both the U.S. and British authorities, feel that beating a criminal at a card game is the best way to coerce him is beyond me. But if you're willing to buy into that fact (a requisite, really, for the spy genre where nothing is ever so simple and direct) then the film has a certain cadence to it that really enthralls.

Until the end. The part where, we are led to believe, Bond is going to settle down with Vesper Lynd, a treasury agent, in Venice. Yeah, right.

About ten minutes could have been cut from this scene alone. We get that Bond is enamored with Lynd, that he wants to give it all up for her, but after the torture, the shooting, the gambling, the chasing, the movie becomes something of a snore until it picks up again. And then we're off to the beginning of another movie, with no resolution whatsoever.

Casino Royale is a much improved film, but it's the foundation for the Bond mythology, and as such it breaks previous expectations and struggles to establish new ones. It's much better than the Bond films that went before it, but they set the bar pretty low. As a book-end to Quantum of Solace, Casino Royale can't be really appreciated without seeing the two movies back-to-back.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Having a baby takes one out of the movie swing of things, so it took a long time before I was able to finally able to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. With over 400 reviews at the time of this writing, I'll skip my traditional format of summarizing the movie and just move on to what could have worked and what went horribly, horribly awry.

It made perfect sense to place Indy in the 1950s. I appreciated the nods to the 1950s alien invasion genre, which includes everything from Roswell to psychic powers to a rampant fear of Communism. And the film expertly sets up the 50s, managing to cram in greasers on motorcycles, ice cream shops, Russians, and nuclear bomb tests in the first fifteen minutes.

This movie is loaded with fan-service. There are nods to the other three films, from a fight in the mysterious warehouse at the end of the first movie to Indy starting to speak just like his father ("This is intolerable!") to his fear of snakes. The quicksand scene had me laughing so hard that I was in tears. But somewhere along the line, Spielberg and Lucas lost sight of the purpose of the film. It transformed from making a thrilling adventure to a "one last act for Ford, Spielberg, and Lucas."

I blame the majority of Crystal Skull's foibles on good old Professor "Ox" Oxley (John Hurt). He is a raving madman who has already made it through all the traps leading up to the crystal skull's resting place, so it's not particularly exciting to have Indy decipher his mad ramblings or retrace his steps. This is an Indy adventure in reverse - Indy HAS the object and he's trying to put it BACK. Which isn't all that exciting.

The villains just aren't all that villainous. Col. Dr. Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) is a caricature of a Russian that's not all that scary. Her claim to fame appears to be that she carries a sword (how quaint!). The master plan seems to be vaguely along the lines of "we're going to capture this artifact we don't understand and use it to conquer the world!" It's not even clear the Russians would know what to do with the skull, much less put it to nefarious use. The Australian turncoat is both obviously a turncoat and barely comprehensible. And don't get me started on the bug-squishing scenes that involving ant-ichor splashing on the camera...not once, but TWICE.

Mutt (Shia LeBouf) is a cardboard personality - it took me a second to realize that he never actually cries on cue (the camera whips over to him already misty with tears...twice), filled with angst over Ox, the guy we've never heard of. Mutt appears, with a wink and a nod, to be Indy's successor, but it's a heavy-handed portrayal: Mutt doesn't read but he's worldly! Mutt knows fencing but practices with a knife (that he never uses)! Mutt can ride a motorcycle and calls Indy "old man"! See Mutt swing from a vine and...

I saw this one coming when Mutt got separated from the rest of the group during a fight chase. I prayed: "Dear Lucas, please, please, PLEASE do not have Mutt swing from vines." Then the animated monkeys show up, in much the same way animated gophers showed up in the beginning of the film and threatened to turn Crystal Skull into a nuclear Caddyshack. I prayed again. "Please, please, please, don't have the monkeys swing along with Mutt and help him attack the Russians. Please, please, please..." Then the monkeys attack. Ever see the Simpsons episode, "In Marge We Trust," where Reverend Lovejoy fights off the baboons? It's like that.

In the "making of" docs, Spielberg dismisses using the Nazis as villains out of hand. And yet he went with an off-the-wall sci-fi theme that Lucas struggles to make Indy-esque. They could have easily included Nazis, UFOs, aliens, and arctic bases in one neat, conspiracy-laden package. Instead, two movie-making giants took a weak premise and turned it into an opportunity for nostalgia. It's like Ocean's Twelve and 13...you get the impression the cast is more interested in working than in making the movie work.

Crystal Skull isn't the worst movie ever. But as a final chapter in the Indiana Jones canon, it's more Temple of Doom than Last Crusade.

Taking Lives

I have no idea why this movie was on my Netflix list, but after watching all those Ashley Judd movies I figure Angelina Jolie deserves at least as much of a chance.

Taking Lives is the usual FBI agent stalks the serial killer plot. Pretty/creepy FBI agent, Illeana (Angelina Jolie) is a drop-dead hottie who wears a wedding ring to avoid men asking her out, turns down everyone who asks her out, and likes to sleep in graves to literally walk in the footsteps of her victims. You see, Illeana is the best agent for this sort of case, and presumably anyone interested in catching a serial killer has to be a little strange herself. This supposed brilliance almost never actually appears in the film, unless you count breathless close-ups of Illeana staring at pictures or laying in graves.

Illeana is pursuing a serial killer. This serial killer takes peoples' lives and lives in them, "like a hermit crab." He looks for single men with few attachments who won't be missed for months at a time. Why? Because his mother, Mrs. Asher (Gena Rowlands), believed her son killed his twin brother in a boating accident and kept him locked up in the basement for years at a time. So our bad guy wants to live other peoples' lives because...he has really, really low self-esteem. Sure, okay.

For reasons that seem only to further muddle the plot, all this takes place in Canada. There are several actors in Taking Lives who are most assuredly esteemed thespians in their home country but come off stilted, hostile, and apathetic when speaking English. These angry Canadians are unhappy about an American taking over their case and they're not afraid to speak French around Illeana to let her know it. They showed her!

There are a multitude of problems with this film. It has a really cool ending which doesn't make up for the plodding pace, the ridiculous plot twists, or the leaden acting. Phillip Glass is not the composer for a neo-noir film that needs a dramatic, slow build - his music is too sweeping, too lighthearted, too commercial. There's also a crazy violent sex scene that shows quite a bit of Jolie and seems to exist primarily to boost interest in the film at its nadir.

Taking Lives performs more acrobatics than Illeana in the bedroom to convince us of its plot twists. At one point, a supposedly dead character is propped up by the real bad guy to look like he's committing a crime. Only the shot is CLEARLY of a living person holding a gun to the faux victim's head, and a flashback shows quite a different scene. In other words, Taking Lives simply cheats to pull off its plot twist that we all saw coming a mile away because there's no way the film is going to end in just an hour.

With a subdued Jolie, a bizarre appearance by Kiefer Sutherland, lack of chemistry between the two leads, and a supporting cast that doesn't speak English as their first language, Taking Lives would make for a boring movie even if it were an action film. As a slow-building drama it can barely stir to life.

Live Free or Die Hard

Like most men, I have placed the original Die Hard movie at the pinnacle of macho-action films. What made Die Hard so great wasn't just that it was an action movie, but that it was an old-fashioned tale of cops-and-robbers juiced with testosterone and lots of explosions. John McClane (Bruce Willis) was an ordinary cop thrust into an extraordinary situation, an American-grown defender of justice given the opportunity to strike back against international invaders. Or so it seemed; the joke was on us. The original villain was actually just a petty thief, using the tactics of terrorists to cover his operations. It was a stroke of genius and prescient insight into how the world really works.

Part and parcel of McClane's "normal guy"-ness was his ability to withstand pain and keep functioning. And for that to happen, McClane had to get beat up, stabbed, burned, and otherwise bloodied. McClane was cool in an old-school way; with his stubble, his mumbled asides, and his often-bewildered expressions, he was a fantasized version of every teenage boy (and adult) who didn't have leading man good looks or huge muscles. And he always had a personal stake; McClane was our National Guardsman, protecting his family from crime.

As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and so we're back to Die Hard once more. This has to be the first action movie explicitly based on an article, John Carlin's 1997 "A Farewell to Arms" for Wired magazine. Basically, the article details a "fire sale" - an attack that postulates the next major terrorist attack on America will include an electronic element, combining an electronic attack on the nation's infrastructure with a brute force physical attack.

Into this mix is our pal John, escorting Matt Farrell (Justin Long, AKA the "Mac Guy") to a government safe house. It turns out all the hackers who helped develop the codes to infiltrate the U.S. infrastructure are being eliminated, and Farrell is the only one to have escaped. Thus ensues a new breed of buddy movie, "Boomer Meets Gen Y," and all the hilarity that entails.

Live Free or Die Hard is as much about the consequences of cybeterrorism as it is about the differences in generations. The dialogue between Farrell and McClane centers around these differences in understanding and accepting technology, and what it means to be a hero. In the end, they discover they have a lot to learn from each other (awwww).

The movie is not without its flaws. The PG-13 editing is very noticeable; Willis resorts to grunting and groaning instead of swearing like he did in the earlier films. He moans and groans so loudly that it starts to get comical. There is not one but two unbelievable battles with aircraft that strain credulity, even for a Die Hard movie; I was willing to forgive Car vs. Helicopter, but Eighteen-Wheeler vs. VTOL Jet was just ludicrous. VTOL jets are for taking off and landing, not having old-fashioned showdowns on bridges. And yet, the special effects are so amazing that it's hard to nitpick.

The other problem is the villain, Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant). His disturbing actions are far more cutthroat and scary than his physical presence on screen. As an actor, Olyphant just can't pull it off. By the time McClane reaches him, you just want him to slap the kid upside the head and pull the plug on his computer. And of course, Gabriel's motives are no more noble than the villain from the first movie.

In theory, there's a subplot about McClane's daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), but she doesn't have much to do here other than be a hostage. On the other hand, there's the addition of Kevin Smith as Warlock, a superhacker, that's just hilarious. To people who care about Star Wars and Kevin Smith, anyway.

Live Free or Die Hard tries to have it both ways, appealing to the younger (PG-13 movie release) and older generations (unrated DVD version) and engaging them in a debate about what it is to be a hero. As a believable tale of one man saving the nation, it's often overshadowed by its big-budget special effects. As an action movie, it's a worthy entry in the Die Hard franchise.

Next

I've gamed with my share of psychic characters in various modern-day role-playing games, but for some reason male precogs has never gotten the same attention from Hollywood. The clairvoyant types are always women or kids who talk to ghosts, with the exception of Stir of Echoes...which was about a guy who talked to ghosts. It was high time we had an action-packed, testosterone-injected update of the typical precog movie.

Our hero, Chris Johnson (Nicolas Cage) is wandering around Vegas performing magic tricks. Something is keeping him there: normally, Johnson can only see a few minutes into the future. But when he encounters (or will encounter) Liz Cooper (the delectable Jessica Biel) at a diner, he discovers he can see his future with her, and only with her. At heart, Next is a star-crossed romance.

What's entertaining about this somewhat flimsy premise is that Johnson can make it work. Nobody as hot as Cooper would normally be interested in shlubby Johnson, but he keeps trying alternate approaches, visualizing an endless array of possibilities, until he hits on the tactic that will work.

As you can imagine, precognition is a lot like time travel, and it's difficult to visually pull off. Next does an excellent job of showing what Johnson sees and the innovative ways he uses his gift; at one point, we see him splitting into multiple selves (representing all the possibilities of a particular course of action). In combat, this is really fun to watch - since Johnson can see when someone will throw a punch, he can easily dodge the blow. He can even dodge bullets.

Into this tidy romance steps Callie Ferris (the usually gorgeous Julianne Moore, who looks terrible in this movie), a federal agent bent on using Johnson's powers to stop a nuclear bomb from going off. The plot spins from there. The terrorists, who are tracking Ferris, figure that Johnson must be important because the government wants so desperately to speak with him, so they try to kill Johnson. In other words, the movie is something of a closed loop - the whole reason Johnson gets involved is because people THINK he might be important, and thus he becomes important.

Next has its flaws, however. For one, Cage acts like he's in a daze. His character is bland, confused, and a little addled - not in a cool, I-have-mental-powers sort of way, but an old-man-who-forgot-his-meds sort of way. It's not very appealing, and strains the credibility of any attraction that Biel's character would have to him.

Speaking of Biel, she's simply too attractive for the role. At the time of the film, Biel was 25, Cage was 43. They seem wildly mismatched in age, personality, and temperament. Biel does a good job acting bewildered and enchanted, but she's essentially making goo-goo eyes at a walking, talking zombie.

The other problem is that Next simply doesn't have enough of a budget to pull off all the really cool special effects in the film. The worst is when Johnson drives a stolen car in front of a train; the train, the car, and the crash look like they were made on a Commodore 64. It takes away from an otherwise riveting scene.

The bad guys are non-descript Eurotrash. Their motivation is vague, although they seem to be so powerful that the bad guys even shadow the feds without being noticed. No wonder the only person who can defeat them is a psychic!

When Johsnon and Ferris team up, things really get going. There's nothing like watching a precog and a sniper work in tandem. Or a precog wending his way through a maze trapped with bombs. Or a precog...well, you get the picture. It's fun stuff.

Throughout the movie, Next plays fast and loose with the timeline. At any point in time, we're never sure if we're seeing the future or if Johnson is actually experiencing the future. Depending on your perspective, this is either an interesting twist on the action genre or really annoying. The ending pivots on the phrase, "I made a mistake..."

Was it a mistake? I don't think so. This little movie works with what it has. Sometimes it might overreach, but for the most part it's an exciting science fiction action thriller.

Ocean's Thirteen

I enjoyed Ocean's Twelve. I skipped Ocean's Eleven. I heard good things about Ocean's Thirteen, so I downloaded it.

Ocean's Thirteen is supposed to be better than Twelve; the characters are emotionally invested in the plot (as opposed to the first movie, where they were apparently needed the money, I guess) because this time they're out for revenge. Reuben Tishkoff (Elliot Gould) invests in some properties only to have it forcibly taken from him in a move of Trumpian proportions by the nefarious Willie Bank (Al Pacino). Poor Tishkoff suffers...a stroke? A broken heart? Some kind of nondescript medical condition that leaves him bed-ridden? Our boys are loaded with cash, so it's just a matter of humiliating Bank, returning the property to Tishkoff, and making a quick buck in the process.

The fact that they have to ally with Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) is supposed to make the movie even more hilarious. But it doesn't matter, because our heroes take it in stride. In fact, there's never a moment in the film when we actually feel like things might go sour.

There's a lot of problems with Ocean's Thirteen, not the least of which is the superhero status of our Justice League of Swinging Hip Guys. There's too many of them. They're all really rich at this point. And it's hard to conceivably rouse them into action, even if one of their buddies got hurt. Or to put it another way, when Superman can punch you through a wall with his fist, does he really get that upset if you cut him off in traffic? Does he even drive in traffic?

Bank is supposed to be a really mean guy, but Pacino barely gets to tear up the scenery because it's crowded with a dozen other actors. So he's only sorta mean. He's also really, really paranoid, which makes breaking into his place a challenge. He invests in all kinds of technological defenses, including an artificial intelligence that uses face recognition to spot cheats. Bank is truly a wonder of the modern age.

Opposing this technological villain are our heroes, who kick it old school. And by old school, I mean they buy a gigantic drilling machine to cause an earthquake, thereby temporarily shutting down the computer security system and giving the team time to get in and get out.

This is pretty much where the movie broke down for me. They bought a giant drill to get revenge on this guy? Seriously? When you have that much money, why not buy a big satellite laser and just nuke the guy from orbit?

There are other nearly interesting plots, like the one in which Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon) decides he's up to the challenge of seducing Bank's right hand woman, Abigail Sponder (the SMOKING hot Ellen Barkin). And what do we get? Caldwell ends up using some ridiculous technological doodad to knock her off her heels, which seems suspiciously similar to a date-rape drug. If the movie was trying to make a statement about outwitting your opponent vs. using technology, it failed. If it was trying to imitate the Rat Pack, I don't think drugging the hot chick (no matter how old she is) is how you do it. And given that Barkin smolders on-screen, the fact that there's no actual pressing of flesh really makes the whole film into one big practical joke. If Ocean's Thirteen were trying to emulate the old style heist movies, you'd better believe Caldwell would be keeping the "cougar" busy. The greater sin is that this leaves Barkin with nothing to do than look stupid. She barely has any lines!

There's other stuff that happens, some of it meant to be funny that's not so funny. Basher Tarr (Don Cheadle, still using that ridiculous accent) gets to ham it up, which is a high point in the movie. He writes touching letters to poor old Tishkoff to bring him out of his funk, but we're robbed of any sentimental feeling because we never find out what's in the letters. And for reasons that don't make any sense to me, Brad Pitt and George Clooney are barely in the movie. It's almost as if the guys thought that their egos got in the way of the second film, so instead they'd make it all not about them in the third film and that would make it better.

It doesn't. Ocean's Thirteen is a photocopy of a photocopy. It feels like it's written by guys who didn't bother to see the original Ocean's Eleven and instead wanted to put in jokes about funny noses and "cougars." The allure of the Rat Pack is that they were men playing a boy's game. Ocean's Thirteen feels like boys playing a man's game.

S.W.A.T.

MT: For a bit of a twist on the usual interview, I've decided to interview SWAT the movie about the movie SWAT.

SWAT: Hi, how are ya?

MT: I'm great. So let's cut to the chase: SWAT the movie is a remake of the 1970s television show. The acronym stands for Special Weapons and Tactics, and it glamorizes the police teams that are brought in when military-style tactics are required for an increasingly violent criminal opposition. I love that kind of military drama, and SWAT has a lot of potential. Bringing the television show into the 21st century seems like a no brainer. So what does the movie have to offer?

SWAT: Well we have a returning tough guy, Sgt. Dan "Hondo" Harrelson (Samuel L. Jackson), who puts together a team of equally tough dudes and dudettes: Jim Street (Colin Farrell), Chris Sanchez (Michelle Rodriguez), Deacon "Deke" Kay (LL Cool J), and some other people that aren't as popular.

MT: I know who's in the movie. What's it about?

SWAT: Oh, right, sorry. It's about how Jim has a falling out with his partner Brian Gamble (Jeremy Renner) and that comes back to haunt him.

MT: I just read the IMDB entry and it says the movie is about an imprisoned drug kingpin offering a huge cash reward for anyone who will spring him out of custody. That sounds cool. So which is it?

SWAT: Oh it's about that too. That's the second part of the movie. The first part is the SWAT training.

MT: The first PART?

SWAT: C'mon, everybody's gotta be trained, right?

MT: But it takes up the first half of the movie?!

SWAT: Well, sure. The tension builds as we watch our rookie team gel. Will Deke run fast enough to catch bad guys? Will Street reconcile his bad boy reputation with his strait-laced boss? Will Sanchez be tough enough to survive SWAT?

MT: Uh, you mean Michelle Rodriguez, who also played tough-as-nails chicks in Resident Evil and Lost? It's not exactly a surprise that she can keep up, since Sanchez is pretty much like every other character Rodriguez plays in other movies. Heck, she was even played the same character in Halo 2. While we're on the subject of actors, what's up with Street? Is he supposed to be American? He doesn't sound like it.

SWAT: ...well. See Colin doesn't really do accents. So, he sort of has this mishmash of tough guy speak and his normal dialect.

MT: Wow. Okay, let's forget the actors for a moment. The tactics and training that took up the first half of the film seem to go out the window when Gamble has an opportunity to take a hostage but instead uses the woman as an anchor by tying a rope to her and jumping off a bridge. That doesn't seem very SWAT-ish to me.

SWAT: ... Did I mention the cool theme song to SWAT? It's really cool. The cast hums it in one scene--*starts humming the song loudly*

MT: Yeah, thanks, SWAT. To sum up...

SWAT: *stars humming the song even louder*

MT: To sum up, SWAT is a movie conflicted about what it wants to be when it grows up. It has a lot of attitude but not a lot of meat. Its central conceit, the idea of a team escorting a bad guy to a destination, is excellent, but not really the kind of thing that you would expect out of SWAT...and it certainly doesn't mimic the training that takes up the first half of the film. All that, and the final fight scene is filmed in near total darkness. Rent the 1970s show if you feel nostalgic. This movie is just riding on its coattails.

Hot Fuzz

I loved Shaun of the Dead, so I expected that same magical combination of action, humor, and homage in Hot Fuzz. And that's mostly what I got. Mostly.

Simon Pegg is Nicholas Angel, a super cop that is driving the London bobbies mad because he's so good at his job. To keep him out of their hair, the London office sends Angel to a little town known as Sandford. There, he is teamed up with Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), a bit of a slob who wants to be a good cop but learned most of it from watching movies like Point Break and Bad Boys.

Life's pretty boring in Sandford, but there's more than meets the eye. Like every good film made by British blokes, the city folk are secretly suspicious of the common people. And that of course means there's a cult lurking about that must be stopped. It all has something of a Wicker Man feel to it.

The first half of the film is something of a murder mystery, as black clad assailants reminiscent of Scream brutally off witnesses. Once Angel and Butterman discover the truth, the film degenerates into an all out gun-fest, including acrobatics, car chases, foot chases, and wicked one liners.

The problem with Hot Fuzz is that it's shot exactly like Shaun of the Dead, complete with the cut scenes, character dialogue, and gore. Frost is playing almost the exact same character from the first film, except that instead of being a useless drug dealer he's a useless cop instead.

And then there's the gore. I've seen a lot of buddy cop shows and none of them are as disgustingly gory as the murders in Hot Fuzz. It's as if the movie was filmed by horror buffs who like action films, but they didn't know precisely how to create an action film so they went with what they know best - whenever a scene calls for gore, the movie goes way over the top. This includes one victim's head exploding on screen as a church spire drives down into his ribcage (we get to watch him stumble about a few seconds, sans head) and another church spire, this time in miniature, stabbing through a man's throat and up through his tongue and out his mouth. I mean, seriously...Scream wasn't this gross and it was a horror movie.

The movie wraps up with our intrepid cops blowing up a bunch of old people. Which is either hilarious or a little tiresome, depending on what you thought of the film up to that point.

Although the interaction between Angel and Butterman are entertaining, Hot Fuzz's pacing is uneven, which is a shame. Pegg and Wright's enthusiasm for the genre is infectious, but in this case they'd be better off renting cop movies than making one.

Those church spire scenes still give me nightmares. *shudder*

Shooter

In "Microtrends," a new book by pollster Mark Penn, 1 percent of Californians between the ages of 16 and 22 expected to be military snipers in 10 years. Why? "Aspiring snipers are evidence of a patriotic generation, who see sniping--a profession requiring reserve and cool in a war without front lines--as the new "Top Gun" military profession." Mix this particular factoid with the "other gunman" conspiracy theory and you have Shooter.

Mark Wahlberg plays Bob Lee Swagger, a military sniper abandoned during a field op. His best friend dies in the ensuing fracas, but Swagger survives to become one of those militia-type recluses who lives alone with his dog in the mountains, spouting conspiracy theory. He's just the kind of antihero America needs, and it's not long before Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) asks for his help in serving the country once more. It seems an assassination attempt is planned against the President, and only Swagger can plot out the sniper's moves before he actually makes them. Playing on Swagger's patriotic sympathies, Johnson lures him out into the open and...

Spoiler alert! But seriously, you saw this coming, right?

Surprise, surprise, in retracing the steps of a would-be assassin, Swagger is framed AS the assassin! An all-out manhunt ensues, with Swagger enlisting allies like the girlfriend of his dead buddy (tasty Kate Mara as Sarah Fenn) and an agent in the wrong place at the wrong time (Michael Pena as Nick Memphis). Seems the good Colonel is actually a subversive government agent working for a Dick Cheney-esque senator, Charles F. Meachum (Ned Beatty).

Thus ensues a cat-and-also-cat game between Swagger and everyone else as they struggle to track down a ghost who strikes like a thunderbolt out of the blue. The twists and turns, the blatant pandering to conspiracy theory, and the demonizing of a Republican-run government are all very entertaining or insulting, depending on your views. And Shooter delivers in spades, with plenty of head shots that make this movie the modern descendant of Rambo.

Unfortunately, Shooter is also highly predictable. Swagger's inevitable betrayal is obvious from the start. And the fact that the government agents might not be good guys is clearly telegraphed by Elias Koteas, who dresses like a bad guy in his black suit and tie, and even adjusts it once, goodfella style. I mean, the guy's name is Jack Payne for crying out loud! Why not just call him Major Blood and be done with it?

Still, Shooter is very entertaining. There's enough skin, violence, humor and conspiracy theory to keep an audience entertained. The ending may be complete wish fulfillment, but it's extremely satisfying. Those Californians will have plenty of reasons to want to be snipers by the end of this film.

The Bourne Supremacy

Where last we left Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), he was living in a secluded location with his new girlfriend. The Bourne Supremacy picks up where the Bourne Identity left off: Jason Bourne is a professional killer, a member of the Treadstone Group, who no longer remembers his identity. It turns out that Bourne is a perfect scapegoat for another murder, and it's not long before an assassination is pinned on him.

And that's the awkward thing about this installment in the Bourne series. Bourne's reason for involvement in the plot is basically summed up as "it seemed like a good idea at the time." Fortunately, Bourne slowly unearths information about his own past amidst the machinations of FBI, European assassins, and the Treadstone Group. Unfortunately, professional "bad guy" character actors play the bad guys. I guessed the twist upon his appearance. Hint: look for the slimy political type who has no reason to go along on the mission but gets told to do so anyway.

There are other problems: one of my pet peeves, the blurry memory cam. Bourne's done some very bad things in his past missions, the missions he supposedly can't remember, and the director decided to tell us by having Bourne remember through echoing, blurry shots. They get old, fast.

The trademark gritty fighting scenes are all here, including insane car chases (more like a series of car crashes), the clever turnabouts that you never see in other spy movies, and plenty of fisticuffs. Bourne Supremacy doesn't do everything right, but it has street-level action down perfectly.

By the end of the film we learn Bourne's full name. But that's a cop out: the Supremacy is more about Bourne proving that in the past he was never a very nice guy. That's hardly news.

Bourne Supremacy feels more like an episode in a series than a movie. Bourne fans won't be disappointed, but the rest of us will have to wait until the third installment comes out on DVD to see Bourne develop beyond an amnesiac killing machine.

The Italian Job

I live right around the corner from a Mini Coop dealership and I'm an Italian-American, so I thought it fitting that I finally rented this movie. It's a remake of the 1969 original starring Michael Caine. Whereas that film took place in Italy, the remake stays there only for the introduction and then swiftly moves to California.

I love heist films. Like Ocean's Eleven or Heat, it's all about the cast. You can see a pattern in the characters:

THE WHEELMAN: This is the guy who mans the getaway vehicle, be it helicopter, jet, or car. Handsome Rob (Jason Statham, my favorite action hero) plays a decidedly scrappy, suave wheelman. This also happens to be almost the exact character from The Transporter. Hopefully, Statham will move beyond this type of character, but it's a testament to action tropes that he can actually be typecast as "the wheelman."

THE TECH: This guy is almost always a nerd and usually the comic relief. Lyle (Seth Green) nails this role and actually steals the show with his jokes. One ad-libbed sequence of Lyle mocking Handsome Rob is the funniest part of the movie. Of course, the challenge with this sort of character is that he needs to be able to pull off seemingly magical feats of technological wizardry without overshadowing the expertise involved. When Lyle manages to take control of the entire traffic system, you really have to wonder if he couldn't be better off striking out on his own. He's almost too good for the movie.

THE DEMOLITIONIST: The demolitionist's job is to blow things up. Sometimes he's a homicidal maniac, other times he's cool and collected. Left Ear (Mos Def) is a cool customer. And he doesn't like dogs. He gives Lyle competition for the funniest line in the movie:

Left Ear: This dude got dogs. I don't do dogs... I had a real bad experience, man.
Charlie Croker: What happened?
Left Ear: I had. A bad. Experience.

THE OLD MAN: You've seen this guy before. He's probably the former leader of the group. He's seen too much, been around the block too many times, and he knows his days are numbered. He just wants one last, big heist so he can retire forever. He almost always dies in the film. That pretty much sums up John Bridger (Donald Sutherland).

THE HOT CHICK: A recent invention, the hot chick's purpose is to keep men interested. She can have a variety of roles (tech, wheel-err-woman, demolitionist). Sometimes she has her own unique set of skills as safecracker. That's John's daughter, Stella (Charlize Theron), who competes admirably in the sea of testosterone.

THE LEADER: Handsome, smart, a safecracker himself, this guy is the one who pulls off a sneaky job right under the bad guys' noses. Unfortunately, Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg) is more narrator than anything else. He seems to have very little to do, and that's a shame, because Wahlberg's talented enough to do much more.

The villain is Steve (Edward Norton) a thief turned bad. He knows all of our protagonists' tricks, so he knows how to counter them. And since he stole the gold from the original Italian Job, he's the perfect foil. Norton plays him with just the right amount of shifty-eyed sleaze.

The Italian Job has lots of cool car chases, lots of near misses, and a lot of twists and turns (literally and figuratively) that make it a brisk, entertaining movie. You get quickly caught up in the machinations of the characters, which allows the film to get away with a lot of unbelievable nonsense. But who cares? From the funky flashbacks to the quippy asides, it's clear that Italian Job doesn't take itself too seriously.

Although it's more Job than Italian, the Italian Job is still a fun ride.

A History of Violence

David Cronenberg is not the first person I think of for an action film. But then, despite the movie's name, this isn't an action film. It's parable about all kinds of violence: violence between parent and child, between children, between husband and wife, between brothers, and of course, good old-fashioned violence against people who disagree with you.

The Stalls are a perfect family. There's hot lawyer wife Edie (Maria Bello), soft-spoken Tom (Viggo Mortensen), and their children: wisecracking teenage Jack (Ashton Holmes) and cute-as-a-button Sarah (Heidi Hayes). Into this perfect family portrait enters violence in the form of bullies at school and thugs who attempt to rob Tom's diner.

It turns out that Tom has an ugly past he's been trying to keep secret. But when Tom violently repels the robbers and becomes a minor celebrity, his past comes back in force.
Carl Fogarty (a snarling Ed Harris), a mobster who wants Tom to "go for a drive," shows up at Tom's doorstep, threatening his friends and family. Things spiral downward from there.

Tom's struggle isn't just about his criminal past. Cronenberg unspools on screen a litmus test of violent scenarios, and then asks the audience each time: Is this okay? The questions start out easy to answer and become increasingly complex. By the time Tom grabs his wife in a violent embrace that turns passionate, we suddenly understand that each person defines their own boundary of when violence is and isn't acceptable. And the morality attached to each act of violence is a fluid thing indeed.

All the actors pull their weight in History of Violence, except perhaps Hayes--she's no Dakota Fanning, but she acts suitably cute (a little too cute). Everyone else is excellent, from Bello's desperate, hurt looks to Holmes terrified/thrilled rage, to the inimitable Harris as a very scary man. And of course there's Mortensen, who infuses every character with a level of depth with a sad glance.

By the time Richie Cusack (William Hurt) appears, the violence at home has come full circle. I'm not particular fond of Hurt, but he does an excellent, frightening job here, as a mobster completely bereft of any moral compass.

This movie poses important questions that challenge American assumptions about violence, similar to how American History X challenged our assumptions about racism. It's in answering those questions that the movie becomes more than action film and transforms into a morality tale worth seeing.

Mission Impossible III

I avoided the third installment of Mission Impossible for the same reason a lot of people did: Tom Cruise. It's a tradeoff: a bankable star becomes a liability if you happen to dislike him. Of course, the people who don't like these big budget stars are usually not substantial enough to affect sales. Given Sumner Redstone's, CEO of Paramount, decision to cut ties with Cruise, it seems that his outrageous antics finally caught up with him.

And that's a shame, because Mission Impossible III is really good.

The problems I've had with the other installments revolved around what happened to the original conceit of the series: it was a carefully planned operation performed by a team. Being privy to the operation in the beginning, we worried for each agent as they performed their particularly dangerous and important task. This is the whole symbolism of the burning fuse: the agents light the fuse, but the conclusion is an inevitable explosion. In short, we knew what to expect and got it at every episode, even if there were a few twists and turns along the way.

Thus making Mission Impossible a star vehicle is against the spirit of the series. There's no one star agent; there can't be, because every agent is important. Right? The first two movies forgot that point.

In MI3, J.J. Abrams brings the series back to its roots. In essence, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) performs a standard mission extraction. They pull it off perfectly. There's just one problem: the bad guy (Owen Davian, played with chilling aplomb by Philip Seymour Hoffman) refuses to be interrogated. Utterly unafraid, he begins interrogating his interrogator. And suddenly, MI3 has been turned on its ear.

What if everything went right, asks Abrams, and it still all went horribly wrong?

What's so refreshing about MI3 is that even when Hunt defects, even when he's not sure who's on his side, his team sticks by him. When he goes rogue, his team goes with him. And when he goes on a mission to stop Davian, his teammates are right there in the mix, risking their lives for their leader.

There are some amazing scenes, including a sliding fight on the rooftop of an office skyscraper and a helicopter battle in a wind turbine farm. Add into the mix a ticking time bomb and the tension and action keeps the audience on its toes.

By never forgetting what made Mission Impossible great, Abrams brings the magic back. And Cruise delivers without hopping on a single couch.

The Prestige

The Prestige is the "other" film about magicians, which came out right around the time of The Illusionist. Although on the surface the two films seem to be set in similar time periods about similar subjects, they couldn't be more different.

The Prestige is about two magicians and their obsessive quest to one-up each other. Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) is a polished American magician who performs with his wife, fellow British magician Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and gizmo inventor Cutter (Michael Caine). When Angier's wife drowns during a trick, he blames Borden for the deed. Borden's unsatisfying response to which knot he tied is, "I don't know."

That burning question ("How could he not know?") consumes Angier and sets the tone for the movie. But this is esteemed director Christopher Nolan we're talking about, so nothing is that simple. The movie has multiple layers. It's broken into three parts (the Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige). But it's also a duel between the two magicians, consuming everything from their friends (Cutter) to their wives to their mistresses (Olivia Wenscombe, played by Scarlett Johansson) to their very children, retold through each of their respective diaries. It's also a battle of magic vs. technology, illusion vs. reality, showmanship vs. stagecraft. Nolan poses the question: When does a single-minded quest for perfection become ruthless enough to commit murder?

The twists and turns in the film aren't too hard to follow; astute viewers will pick up on the secrets behind both magicians' acts. What's really terrifying is the little sins that magicians commit in performing their illusions. What happens to all cute those bunnies and pigeons that disappear? You don't want to know.

If The Prestige has a flaw, it's that the movie takes so long to reveal the entirety of its performance and deception. Still, the gut-punch ending is worth the wait.

Walking Tall

Walking Tall is a remake of the 1973 film, which is in turn a "semi-biopic" of Sheriff Buford Pusser. Ironically enough, Pusser was a former professional wrestler-turned lawman in McNairy County, Tennessee. For those of you keeping track, the Buford Pusser was renamed to Chris Vaughn (in the world of macho movies, this is understandable) and his background was changed from wrestling to Special Forces. Which is funny, because Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who plays the role of Vaughn, is a former professional wrestler turned actor.

In this action movie, Vaughn returns to his hometown of Kitsap County, Washington (instead of Pusser's actual McNairy County, Tennessee) from a stint in the Special Forces. We're not sure what Vaughn did, but it must have been ugly, because he never speaks about it and answers questions about people he killed with a sad stare. Unfortunately, Kitsap County has gone downhill since the local lumber mill closed. His father, Vaughn Sr. (John Beasley) is out of work. Vaughn's sister Michelle (Kristen Wilson) has become a cop, but her son Pete (Khleo Thomas) hangs out with the wrong crowd. Heck, even Vaughn's old girlfriend Deni (Ashley Scott) has become a stripper. All these sins can be blamed on Vaughn's old high school rival, Jay Hamilton (played with sneering arrogance by Neal McDonough).

Vaughn's return is cause for celebration by his friends, including the recovering alcoholic Ray (Johnny Knoxville, of all people), who treat him to a night of gambling and debauchery at Hamilton's premiere casino. But the whole place is dirty, where gamblers cheat and drugs are given to kids. It's at this point that Walking Tall flirts with cartoonish levels of evil. Even Hamilton points this out: "Why would I sell drugs when I own the entire town already?" Why indeed?

Vaughn goes nuts once he discovers that the place is corrupt, and his fisticuffs earn him a form of vicious revenge from the security staff that involves a box cutter and a lot of cutaway scenes of Vaughn screaming. Left to die, he manages to recover on his parents' sofa. The sheriff (Michael Bowen) and his deputies are obviously in Hamilton's pocket and refuse to help. When Vaughn's nephew overdoses on drugs gained from Hamilton's casino, Vaughn's had enough: he takes a four-foot hickory club and smashes the place up. That's just the first half of the movie.

Returning to reality, Vaughn's outburst causes him to be brought up on several charges, brought by the very people who cut him up the first time. Vaughn wins the case by appealing to squeamishness of the jury, who wince once he shows them the scars from the box cutter. "If you acquit me of these charges, I'll run for sheriff!" he shouts. And they do. And he does. What happens next is a good old-fashioned butt-whupping from a big man with a big stick.

I didn't expect much from an action movie headlined by a wrestler, but Walking Tall distinguishes itself in several ways that make it worth watching:

IT'S MULTIETHNIC: Vaughn's father is black, his mother is white; Vaughn's girlfriend is white. The movie doesn't make a big deal about it.

IT KNOWS ITS LIMITATIONS: The Rock is huge. This obvious fact is used against Vaughn when he's on trial, as the poor, beat-up thugs make him out to be a monster. And he sort of is...he's just a monster you want on your side. Ray is both pathetic and amusing, but mostly pathetic, as only Knoxville can play him.

IT UNABASHEDLY LOVES ACTION: This movie is about good guys beating up bad guys. Although Vaughn's Special Forces training is curiously absent from most of the film, he does get into fistfights and gunfights with everybody. The fighting is fast and furious but never overtly cinematic. There are lots of thuds, grunts, and crunches.

I like The Rock. He's handsome and sleek in a way that other muscle-bound stars are not, conveying both strength and speed. He doesn't come off as a brutal thug by just looking at him, unless he's standing next to someone else. And because Johnson is famous for arching his eyebrow in ironic "am I for real or what?" pose, he's able to pull off comedy by standing next to someone considerably smaller, like Knoxville.

Walking Tall has both heart and muscle, a feel-good tale about a tough guy who stands up for his hometown in an era when nobody seems to be standing up for anything anymore.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is another Jim Carey movie I wasn't too sure about. He's had a better track record lately with his more serious films, so I was willing to give it a shot. And I'm glad I did.

Combining all the mental hijinks of Memento and the mind-bending, "is this reality?" confusion of movies like Strange Days and eXistenz, the movie essentially posits one question: if you could erase any one experience from your mind, would you?

But before we get to that question, we see Joel Barish (Jim Carey) meet Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) on a train. It's supposedly happenstance, and the two hit it off immediately. These first five minutes carry the whole movie. The two actors exhibit just enough nuanced familiarity that it's alternately exhilarating and creepy-they FEEL like they've known each other their entire lives. The rest of the movie then swings back to the circumstances leading up to their meeting.

Joel has, in fact, met Clementine before and had a whirlwind romance that somewhere along the lines lost its whirl. They are strikingly different personalities who find attraction in their opposite: Joel is cautious, Clementine's a maniac. Joel is quiet (hard to believe Carey playing quiet, I know), Clementine is a bundle of energy. They alternately drive each other crazy and are crazy about each other. But unfortunately, the nature of the relationship is so tempestuous that the possibility of erasing one's memory is simply too tempting. Like a madman with a pocket nuke, it's inevitable that Clementine's personality will succumb to the lure of memory erasing...but the consequences have grave repercussions.

Hurt and desperate, Clementine's brash decision pushes Joel to do the same thing. If she's going to erase him, well he's going to do the same thing right back at her! It's a procedure that takes an entire night and it's only a few days into the erasing of her memories that Joel realizes he LIKES his pain, his angst, his embarrassment, and even his hatred of her. The ups and downs, the good and bad parts of their relationship, are ultimately inseparable, and Joel realizes he will lose a part of his soul along with Clementine should his memory of her be erased.

So he fights it. Thus have another plot thread, as Joel drags his memory of Clementine with him through the dark hallways of his mind. All the while, Joel is pursued in the real world by the Lacuna Memory Erasure team. Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) leads the team, a kindly father figure who is not nearly as nice as he seems. Stan (Mark Ruffalo) and Patrick (Elijah Wood) assist the good doctor, making an on-site visit to Joel's house. Which is at least as horrifying as it is comedic, because while Joel is in a drugged coma on his bed, Stan and Patrick eat his food, drink his beer, get high, and practically have an orgy in his apartment.

Like Memento, Spotless Mind posits that when people aren't looking, the ethics of society don't just fall apart, they explode...whatever you imagine people might do to you while you're helpless is just the tip of the iceberg. Patrick proves just who unethical he is when we discover he has decided to take advantage of Clementine by recycling all of Joel's memories-memories that were supposedly destroyed to complete the erasure process.

As if that weren't enough, Dr. Mierzwiak's assistant Mary (Kirsten Dunst), is dating Stan. The secret she uncovers about herself and her work will shatter the Lacuna program and the lives of all those who it touched.

The director takes an innovative twist on how he conveys the dream world. Images become faded and indistinct. Sound crackles in and then whispers away. Some scenes appear to be lit exclusively by a flashlight, perfectly representing the selective memory of Joel's mind. Other scenes are lensed in distinct colors of yellow and blue. Still other scenes are nightmarish-people are faceless, bodies slide off into darkness, and as Joel's mind stumbles under the technological assault, structures and people literally collapse in front of him.

Ultimately, it's Charlie Kaufman's writing that perfectly blends what could be a horrible mess. Just when you think all the various plotline could not possibly be resolved...we're back at that train, and the thrill and awkwardness of that first attraction.

Spotless Mind is about the maturation of a romance and the decision every couple must go through when they realize that the "honeymoon is over." Joel and Clementine come to a crossroads and stumble horribly astray, just as so many couples fall apart every day without the benefit of erasing the memories of their exes. Love, Kaufman seems to say, is about the person you are after the honeymoon is over.

Carey is suitably restrained, which makes him seem all the more pathetic when the movie focuses on the happier, more energetic times. His hair is a mop top, is sweaters always rumpled. In short, he's a sad sack that Carey captures perfectly...a funny man who has nothing to laugh about.

Dunst plays a perfectly awkward, clueless young girl dealing with a technology she does not understand. Her characters growth, destruction, and rebirth steals the show. The other characters are suitably dazed and confused, not the least of which is Wood's not-Frodo-anymore Patrick. He's so fresh-faced, it's hard to believe he's doing such disrespectful things to Clementine.

But by far, Winslet plays the most compelling character of her career. Winslet not only adopts an American accent, she plays Clementine as herself (a sometimes whiny, neurotic mess), as Joel remembers her (erotically playful, maddeningly confusing, and sometimes just a shrew), and as echoes of Joe's memories. This is a lot to pull off for anybody, but Winslet never missed a beat.

Perhaps the biggest compliment I can give this movie is that I KNOW these people. See it, and you will too.

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

I've never read any of the Lemony Snicket series of books, but the basic plot appealed to me far more than the Harry Potter series, if only because it seemed more fresh than the recycled Arthurian-mythos-as-children's tale. My wife and I dragged our 10-year-old nephew to see it with us as our "beard" so people wouldn't wonder if we were some kind of freaks. Not that this stopped us from seeing the Power Puff Girls movie, but I digress.

The movie begins with an animated short titled "The Littlest Elf." I thought for a moment I was back watching the beginning of the Incredibles with that awful "Bound, bound, bound and rebound" Jackelope idiot. Fortunately, the movie's narrator, Lemony Snicket (Jude Law), immediately sets things straight. This is not a movie about a happy little elf. It is a movie about dreadful things happening to good people. He encourages us to leave the "theater, living room, or airplane" if we do not want to witness such things.

I haven't seen a movie actually tell me to leave in a long time. The reverse psychology works, of course-we did not come to see the Baudelaire children ride off into the sunset. We came to watch them be challenged and rise above those challenges.

To whit, a fire has recently orphaned three wealthy Baudelaire children: 14-year-old Violet (Emily Browning), 12-year-old (?) Klaus (Liam Aiken), and their baby sister Sunny (played by Kara or Shelby Hoffman, twins). Each child has a special power that they use to survive.

The movie is something of a cross between League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Adams Family, and the A-Team. For Violet, her "super power" is the ability to invent things on the fly. For Klaus, it's his photographic memory and vast knowledge from reading thousands of books. And Sunny? Well, Sunny can bite through practically anything. A Mini-Jaws, if you will.

The Hoffman twins play Sunny with a...well, sunny disposition. Sunny never seems to get too upset by her situation, as if she knows the joke's on the adults. Sunny doesn't quite speak, but does make a lot of cooing sounds that are essentially gibberish. Fortunately for the viewers, we are treated to subtitles of what she's really saying-this clever device keeps the adults amused and often provides levity about what are sometimes decidedly grim situations.

Aiken is suitably dour and introverted. Klaus is the voice of reason, the person who starts screaming "this is insane!" when everyone else seems to be going along with the madness. He's primarily there as a foil for Violet, and in that respect, he does a workman-like job.

Browning is the true star of the show. With her full-lipped pout and wide eyes, she's a teen version of Angelina Jolie. Violet witnesses some horrible things and finds herself in awful situations, and it's a credit to Browning that she reacts in a believable fashion without whining or preaching. She rapidly becomes the adult of the family, and it's easy to forget that she's only 14.

The children are adopted by their new guardian, Count Olaf (Jim Carey). In general, I'm leery of Jim Carey in franchise movies. I loved him in Mask, hated him as the Riddler in the Batman series, and absolutely loathed him as the Grinch. What surprised me is just how perfectly matched Carey is for the part of Olaf. Olaf is an actor, you see, and when his overt attempts to snatch the children's inheritance fail, he switches to more insidious roles by creating different personalities. Olaf, backed by his acting troupe of misfits, oozes his way into each new guardian's life and ultimately offs them so he can bring the three orphans back into his clutches.

All the annoying Carey-traits are perfectly pitched here, as Olaf lies, sneers, chatters, and calls Sunny a little monkey. He's so eccentric he can't help himself, except when he is in disguise. When he's undercover, Olaf disappears and new characters emerge-characters the children can immediately identify as being frauds. The problem is that the adults are all oblivious to Olaf's scheming, which makes the plight of the children that much more desperate.

Olaf could easily become a harmless caricature, but his deeds speak for themselves. He abandons the children on railroad tracks. He gives them impossible demands. And at one point, he SLAPS Klaus. Once that happened, I started paying attention. Olaf is cartoony, yes, but he is definitely not harmless.

The other guardians are played by Meryl Streep as Aunt Josephine and Billy Connolly as Uncle Monte. Josephine is a neurotic mess, terrified of every appliance in her house, which ultimately turns out to be just as deadly as she warned (shades of Final Destination). Monte is a herpetologist who has a fondness for all manner of reptiles and amphibians, including three-eyed toads and giant pythons.

The director (Brad Silberling) does an excellent job in marinating a child's perspective. Characters loom above us, lean into the camera, and at other times are distantly off screen, talking but not saying anything of importance. This is precisely how I remember adults as a child...big, scary, and sometimes not particularly helpful.

The movie's score is perfect and the visuals all evoke a dreamy, Tim Burton-esque quality, without the obvious trademarks that make it so Tim Burton-esque. This is a relief, because Burton's creepy/funny work has started to become a self-parody in its repetitiveness (Big Fish being a big exception).

My nephew liked the movie a lot. Although it condensed three of the books, he said the movie removed a lot of parts that weren't very exciting. The ending is suitably climactic and uplifting, hinting at a long series that will hopefully live long enough to see the final end of Count Olaf.

This movie is not for everybody. But then, if you're a little quirky and have a tendency to think the worst of people, it may be just the palliative for you.