The Happening

There's a lot wrong with The Happening.

At base, The Happening is a nightmarish parable about our crowded society in modern times. We threaten the world, director M. Night Shyamalan seems to say, with our sheer numbers. On the other hand, being completely isolated isn't the solution either, creating a suspicious, isolationist attitude that leads to a self-destructive spiral.

But The Happening is mostly about watching people commit suicide in terrible ways. This ranges from terrible echoes of 9/11, when workmen jump from a building to their death, to the cartoonishly absurd, when a zookeeper taunts a lion and it tears his arm off. Anyone who watches the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet knows that big cats go for the neck first.

Anyway, The Happening's premise is spooky: what if something in the wind made people commit suicide in the most immediate and awful way possible? Where would you go? What would you do?

Night has all the elements of a good horror story: the aforementioned disaster, the strained relationship between Elliott Moore (Mark Wahlberg) and his distant wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), and even an innocent little girl (Ashlyn Sanchez) thrown in for good measure.

The Happening should be a great horror film. It's spooky. The premise that a gust of wind could bring about a fatal, nightmarish end lends an ominous shadow to the events. We can expect plenty of drama, morally ambiguous choices, and desperate survival tactics as our protagonists flee for their lives from an alien foe.

Actually, I was just describing Spielberg's War of the Worlds, which took the same premise and made a creepy, nuanced film about parents, children, and the distance between them. The two films have a lot in common: the insidious enemy that pops up out of nowhere, the little girl in distress, the long journey against all odds to a haven that might already have been destroyed.

The Happening follows the same script but fails miserably on almost all counts. Oh, Night's got the scary part down. But what carries a film like this is the emotional heft of characters brought to the brink. Wahlberg does a workman-like job of trying to be clever and sarcastic, but the script forces him to spew mouthfuls of pseudo-scientific gobbledygook at a rapid fire pace that he can't keep up. Deschanel, never a strong actress to begin with, is comedically awful. There isn't the slightest romantic tension between her and Wahlberg. And the little girl? She barely says a word.

The list of what's wrong goes on and on: citizens leave New York in an orderly fashion without snarling any mass transit; victims go to inordinate and improbable lengths to kill themselves; a father abandons his only child in a vain quest to find his wife; nobody seems to think traveling with a gas mask might be a good idea except two old ladies sitting at home.

They're the smart ones.

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.

Surrogates

Let's get a couple of things straight: Surrogates is not a bad movie. It is not anything like Gamer, and yet Rotten Tomatoes has a spread of under 10 points between the two. This is a crying shame. With Gamer and Surrogates coming out within months of each other, it's almost like Hollywood wanted desperately to make a Second Life movie but realized too late that Second Life is no longer cool.

Surrogates has a lot in common with I, Robot and yes, Gamer. Implausibly, the world is dominated by remote-controlled robots, a parallel to Internet avatars. Thanks to these robots, known as surrogates, crime is unheard of and the dream of a utopian society beckons. Of course, not everyone is okay with the status quo, including a radical group known as the Dreads. The Dreads are the underclass, people who don't believe in a robot-filled reality. Everyone else has become shut-ins, hiding in their bedrooms in their pajamas, living life through perpetually beautiful twenty-something robots.

FBI agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) and his partner Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell) investigate a pair of murders in which the operators died too. There's just one problem: there are safeguards to protect operators from being harmed by the death of their surrogates. If word got out that surrogates were not immortal, the social fabric of modern society would fall apart.

On screen, the surrogates are disturbingly perfect. Their teeth is pearly white, their eyes without any hint of veins, their stubble-free skin cheeks are as rosy as a newborn's. The robots (and thus, the actors portraying them) only move their heads when they talk, even when angry. Sights and sounds are softly muted. Until the real world hits and Greer is forced to come out of his shell.

Willis' skill playing a sad sack and a scruffy loner are on full display here. Surrogates is as much about the increasing isolation of technology as it is about the wreckage of a marriage. As the stakes get higher, the movie becomes about the broken relationship between a husband and wife who were disconnected from each other long before surrogates were invented.

If along the way it happens to involve some amazing special effects and a lot of cool action sequences, that's not such a bad thing.

Bolt

Take Homeward Bound's tale of three pets drawn together on an epic journey across America, mix in Toy Story's winking sense of irony at the faux world of toys, shroud it in the artificially-created world of The Truman Show and you've got Bolt.

Bolt (John Travolta) is a clueless acting dog who truly loves his "person," Penny (Miley Cyrus). In the movies, Bolt is a superhero, but Bolt doesn't quite grasp that he's actually in a movie. When audiences begin to tire of Bolt's heroics, the network decides to throw in a twist and separate Penny from Bolt. Distraught and determined, Bolt escapes the studio in a quest to rescue Penny from Hollywood.

Along the way, he meets a street savvy cat named Mittens (Susie Essman) and a chubby fanboy gerbil named Rhino (Mark Walton). Rhino's a lot like Kung Fu Panda's Po – overweight, hopelessly consumed by fandom, and relentlessly optimistic. Mittens, on the other hand, is the Bones equivalent; a beaten down cynic who thinks Bolt is completely insane.

Bolt is at its best during the film-within-a-film sequences; the motorcycle chase scene is just as thrilling as the one in Terminator Salvation. The catch is that though it's not real, the violence takes place on screen. In other words, does it really matter if CGI actors are pretending to be CGI dead? Helicopters explode, motorcycles flip, and bad guys don't get back up. In that regard, Bolt's pretty violent.

Where Michael J. Fox voice perfectly embodied Chance in Homeward Bound as a young pup, Travolta's throaty whisper seems an odd choice for Bolt, who's at least as clueless as Chance. He does a great job, but occasionally you can hear the weariness and maturity in his voice.

Occasionally, the movie glosses over its own moral arc; although it's critical for Bolt to reunite with his person and Mittens still nurses her own emotional wounds over the loss of her family, Rhino leaves his old lady without nary a look back. It's never mentioned that she might miss him.

But those are minor quibbles. Overall, Bolt's an entertaining, fast-moving action picture. It's just not on par with Toy Story as a parable that younger kids can enjoy.

Gamer

Dear Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor,

We appreciate your recent attempt to create a movie that would appeal to gamers by naming it after us. Really, we do. But now that we've stopped throwing up from all the motion sickness and our pupils have finally refocused from the flash cuts, we thought you might appreciate some tips to help you farm XP faster.

Stop with the static: Seriously guys. Stop it. Apparently in your version of the future all video games have terrible reception. We have lag, we have crashes, we have all kinds of problems, but the one problem we do not have is static. That's because our video games are not television screens. You'll also notice that our television do not have static either, and haven't had static for about a decade since they invented this thing called cable. Look it up.

Speaking of Kable: Cable is the name of a time-traveling cyborg in the Marvel Universe. Kable is the name somebody thinks gamers think is cool. Nobody thinks Kable is cool. Nobody believes Kable is the best killer in the gaming universe. You didn't even use 133t speak, so…fail.

Making Michael C. Hall an evil genius is…a stroke of genius. Go Dexter!

Stop with the red/blue colors: Ludacris is cool and all, but even his cyber cred is sorely tested by a blurry 3-D image on screen.

The teabagging gag was funny.

Your jump cuts suck: We notice when you replace rapid jump cuts with actual fight choreography. It's the movie equivalent of shouting and pointing, "LOOK! A KITTY!" every time a fight starts. You just look stupid and we feel embarrassed for you.

Dancing convicts are hilarious. Dancing to a Frank Sinatra song is vaguely creepy. But still hilarious.

Why is there still lag in the future? Bad guys can control other human beings by changing their brain cells into [INSERT STUPID MADE UP NAME] but we haven't solved lag? Is this future made of stupid?

Evil Villain Tip #58: Next time around, you might want to consider not making the guy who holds your deepest, darkest secret an international broadcast superstar.

Don't insult us: No offense, but portraying the gaming universe as nothing but "deviants and murderers" doesn't really make us want to watch your movie. Yes, the Internet has a dark side. But since you called the movie "Gamer" and not "All Gamers Are Disgusting Fat Perverted Slobs Who Watch Porn All Day," we'll assume you actually want us to buy a ticket. Please consider this the next time you name a movie after us.

And finally…

Thank you for killing John Leguizamo: That's not a tip. But thank you.

We hope that these tips prove useful the next time you level up as directors and writers. Incidentally, multiclassing as both might not be such a good idea.

Watchmen

Thanks to a string of successful comic book movie hits, directors are finally showing some respect for their original source material. In the past, it was clear that the director's vision eclipsed any fan interest, which resulted in the Batman series kicked off by Tim Burton eventually circling the toilet bowl before being flushed by Joel Schumacher. The tide has reversed, with fanboys-turned-directors like Peter Jackson, Robert Rodriguez, and Guillermo del Toro showing an almost slavish devotion to the source material. Zack Snyder can now add his name to that list.

Watchmen takes place in an alternate reality where the threat of weapons of mass destruction looms large, thanks in part to superheroes who range in sanction from government agents to violent outlaws. They are gods among men, these superheroes, but they are also deeply flawed human beings. Watchmen is their story.

There's remarkably little superhero-action in Watchmen. When you strip away all the distractions like the altered timeline and the murder mystery, it becomes clear that Watchmen is actually a character study. The film ping-pongs between each character's backstory, slowly peeling back each layer until we get to the conclusion: that people do terrible things for good reasons. Unfortunately, some characters are fleshed out more than others.

Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), the Question-like stand-in, is the most interesting character, an anti-hero filled with the rage of moral absolutism, right at home in a repressive society. He also provides noir-style narrative throughout Watchmen.

Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), who has an uncanny resemblance to a young Chevy Chase, is basically an alternative Batman in search of a cause. He's largely a cipher here, cast primarily as the potential love interest of Silk Spectre.

Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) provides the emotional center of the film but unfortunately doesn't do much for women's rights – she comes off as emotionally conflicted and petulant.

The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a Punisher analogue whose death at the beginning of the film provides much of the movie's structure, is also a relative unknown. His nickname is derived from his sociopathic detachment, killing with glee. Unfortunately, he just comes off as a murderous thug.

Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) is perfect as a mildly contemptuous superhuman, more alien and powerful than Superman. His mere existence can cause nations to go to war. Unfortunately, the film struggles with defining the limits of his powers – I half expected Manhattan to change time and space (like Superman did in the 1978 film) to "fix" things.

Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), perhaps the most important character in the film, is inexplicably both the most brilliant man on earth and a supreme martial artist. There's nothing in Ozymandias' background to explain why this is. His complete lack of development compared to the other characters is where Watchmen stumbles.

Watchmen is a really interesting take on superheroes. Unfortunately, it is no longer revolutionary as it might have been, because the 80s comic laid the framework for serious superhero comics that came later, which in turn spawned serious superhero movies like The Dark Knight. In other words, Watchmen might have been a genre-shaking film ten years ago. It's less successful as an entertaining film today. It's a museum replica of comic book history, faithful to its medium and appreciated more as a reference than a movie experience.

Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds is supposedly about Nazi-hunting in World War II, a revenge fantasy where Jewish-American guerillas (or terrorists, as the Nazis point out) are tasked with spreading fear and loathing throughout France. Led by the rustic Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), the Basterds have but one task: to each collect 100 Nazi scalps. Please note: this review contains spoilers.

One might think, given the title and the trailers, that this is an action film filled with the occasional machinegun dialogue Quentin Tarantino is famous for. It's quite the opposite: a series of measured vignettes in which the tension is ratcheted up to feverish heights, then explodes in quick, messy violence.

The opening scene sets the stage: Han Landa (Christoph Waltz), AKA "The Jew Hunter," does what he does best in France. As such, he is the nemesis of spies and revolutionaries hiding in plain sight. Landa hunts down Shosanna's (Melanie Laurent) family in a terrifying exchange that culminates in the death of her family. Out of mere whim, ego, or simply being true to his hawk-like nature, Landa lets Shosanna escape. Her survival will have grave repercussions for the German war effort.

These two plots, the Basterds and Shosanna's revenge, eventually intertwine when Hitler and his entourage arrive to view a special showing of a Nazi-propaganda film (Stolz der Nation) in Paris. The film stars Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), a Nazi war hero who singlehandedly killed dozens of enemies from a sniper tower.

Tarantino never just makes a film to tell a story, as evidenced by the obvious digressions from history he takes with Basterds. He films a vibe, an expression -- in doing so, Tarantion comments on the nature of the cinema and our own humanity. And this time, he's aiming his camera at the audience.

You see, this film isn't just about Nazi hunting, or Pitt's funny accent, or the tension between agents who know their social repartee will end in blood; it's about violence in the movies and how we glorify it. And Tarantino is merciless as he judges every person involved with the film guilty:

The producers are guilty: Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) is a simpering suck-up who is far too enamored with the approval of his audience to see how vile his film is.

The actors are guilty: Actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) is a duplicitous murderer who shoots an unarmed man in cold blood. Zoller, the star of Stolz der Nation, has no stomach to watch his own murders taking place on the big screen but is only too happy to bully a woman with his affections.

Even the projectionist is guilty: Shosanna is so consumed with her revenge that only in killing a man does she finally see his humanity.

But the most guilty of all is the audience in the theater watching Stolz der Nation. They are shot, burned, and blown to bits at the end. That was the goal, of course – to kill as many Nazis as possible, right? It's just a goal that doesn't seem quite so laudable if you happen to be a member of the audience.

From the images of soldiers dying in the Nazi propaganda film to the graphic scenes of Nazis being scalped, Tarantino holds up a mirror. Are you enjoying this, he asks? Because if so…

You're the basterd.

District 9

While searching for alien encounter videos, I discovered a little clip titled "Alive in Jo'burg" on YouTube by Neill Blomkamp. Fortunately for us, Blomkamp's ill-fated Halo movie was delayed, so he went back to his roots with the film that started it all: District 9.

If you've seen Alive in Jo'burg you know much of what's going on in District 9 (this review contains spoilers!). In essence, a giant alien saucer lands on Earth and its citizens are repatriated in Johannesburg. However, the aliens are ugly, uncivilized squid-like monstrosities and thus integration attempts (when they happen at all) go poorly. The movie begins with a battle with a telekinetic mech and ends with riots in the streets.

District 9 adds meat to the bones of this highly original film. The aliens are no longer blurry actors in masks but crustacean-like beasts in fully-realized CGI. The ship and the conflict in Johannesburg is still a major plot point, but it is explored through Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley). Wikus is a bigoted but cheerful company man who just happens to be married to the daughter of the head of Multi-National United (MNU). He documents the task of relocating the "prawns" (a racial slur for the aliens) to a concentration camp through video, with frequent asides asking the producer to remove particularly embarrassing shots in editing.

In this tightly scripted film, every detail is important: the fact that the aliens have powerful weapons technology only they can use; that the Nigerians take advantage of the prawns by selling them prostitution (and all that implies) and cans of cat food in exchange for said weapons; and that the Nigerians believe they can acquire the power of a prawn through cannibalism.

Blomkamp quickly achieves a sense of rising dread through documentary-style clips where various experts expound on "what Wikus did." The special effects used in creating the prawn are a critical part of making them utterly alien. This is counterbalanced by a horrifying scene where Wikus destroys prawn eggs by setting them ablaze, comparing the popping sound of the roasting babies to popcorn. As a new parent, when Wikus threatens a young prawn, I flinched. And just like that, I was now on the side of the aliens.

An important but unlikely plot twist brings Wikus around to the alien side of life. Betrayed by his company and his father-in-law, he has no choice but to work with Christopher Johnson, an alien who knows more than he lets on. Together, they unveil the depth of corruption in both the squalid slums of Johannesburg and the clean corporate offices of MNU. No organization or race walks out of this film unscathed.

Combining elements of Alien Nation and Enemy Mine, District 9 adroitly balances political commentary on apartheid with Peter Jackson-ian levels of violence. The movie ends with more questions than answers and the certainty of a sequel. I can't wait!

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.

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.

Splinter

Splinter is an indie horror movie inspired by John Carpenter's The Thing and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II. Like any good horror film, Splinter achieves the right balance to terrify its protagonists: 1) psychological tension between the characters, 2) isolation, and 3) a creature. This review contains minor splinters—I mean spoilers.

On the surface, our happy couple and soon-to-be-victims Seth Belzer (Paulo Costanzo, last seen on the failed Friends spin-off Joey) and Polly Watt (Jill Wagner, who took Jessica Biel's place in the Blade television series) plan to camp out in the woods for a romantic evening. The in-joke is that they are the reverse of a typical horror couple: Seth is a wussy botany student and Polly is a rugged outdoorswoman. Unfortunately, this difference is a little too extreme – Polly seems too sexy for a guy like Seth.

Another couple is thrown into the mix, and this is where the parallels between Evil Dead and Splinter begin. Dennis Farrell (Shea Wigham) is a convict on the run with his junkie girlfriend Lacey Belisle (Rachel Kerbs). They hijack Seth and Polly's car, ratcheting up the tension. We're never quite sure how trigger-happy Dennis is or how crazy Lacey will get in need of her fix.

The quartet runs over an oddly infected raccoon, which blows a tire. Seth pricks his finger on a strange splinter while changing it out and Lacey goes nuts when the dead raccoon she confuses with her long lost cat begins to move. The car repaired, they tear off, only to have the vehicle overheat. Polly stops at the nearest gas station, which just happens to contain an infected gas station attendant. We now have our isolated location.

All that's missing is our monster, a plant-thing that co-opts its host's body. The monster has a very specific biology that's integral to the plot; it's up to the survivors to figure out how the creature works. Which is why, when you're being attacked by a plant monster, it's good to have a botanist on your side.

Splinter never moves beyond the gas station and doesn't need to. The characters make dumb decisions, but they do so for good reasons – the convict and his junkie girlfriend are unstable enough to begin with. There are plenty of other parallels to Evil dead, which similarly confined the action to a handful of characters in an isolated location with killer plants (among other horrors), but that's a good thing.

There are some weeds in the plot. It takes awhile before the action really gets started as Splinter struggles mightily to convince us that Polly and Seth are a real couple. Wigham mumbles all of his lines, making some of his delivery impossible to understand. And the ending, while satisfying, is a bit off in its timing.

Still, Splinter shouldn't be missed by monster horror aficionados. It has all the ingredients of a great horror film – and a great salad.

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?

Drag Me to Hell

After being disturbed by Evil Dead and delighted Evil Dead II, I decided to host a showing of the two movies to share the madness with my friends. We then all went to the opening of Army of Darkness. We were confused (the three films vary widely in tone) but ultimately loved them all, adopting the Raimi clan and The Man, Bruce Campbell, as one of our own in geekdom.

Ever since then, Raimi's fans have been waiting for him to return to his horror roots. Oh, we've gotten hints that he hasn't forgotten us through the years. We caught the Evil Dead II homage in the chainsaw sequence from Spider-Man. Campbell is in just about every movie Raimi produces. And the Oldsmobile Delta 88 makes an appearance in Drag Me to Hell – a big appearance, actually – as it has in every Raimi movie since Evil Dead. The Oldsmobile's arrival signals that Drag Me to Hell is a quintessential Raimi horror film.

Drag Me to Hell harkens back to the golden age of 80s horror, an era Raimi helped spawn, when humor and horror were inextricably mixed thanks to Freddy Krueger's perpetual joke-machine. Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is a cute blonde loan officer in five-inch heels working at a bank – any social commentary is surely accidental (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) – and when she turns down an old gypsy woman (Lorna Raver), things go horribly and hilariously wrong.

Raimi has always been a master of scaring you with things you can't see. He knows how to use sound to freak out the audience, employing the same shrieks and creaks he used in Evil Dead II to represent something from another dimension crossing into our world. Raimi also knows when to use silence as a tool, which just ratchets up the tension – this is the first film where I could hear the movie projector clicking away in the background. He manipulates billowing curtains and floating handkerchiefs with the methodical calculation of a Universal horror theme park, shrieking "BOO!" when the tension is at its height.

Raimi expertly manipulates the audience's affection for Christine. On the surface she's an adorable girl from the country just trying to be accepted by her big city boyfriend's parents. But as we get to know her, Christine comes off as a mewling brat more concerned about her appearance while poor people like Mrs. Ganush are being thrown out on the street. There's a turning point mid-way through the film where Christine crosses the line from being merely pathetic to reprehensible, and from there on out cat-lovers may well begin cheering her demise (I know I was!).

The similarities between Drag Me to Hell and Evil Dead II are striking (SPOILER ALERT!): an unwitting protagonist is cursed; an evil hag attacks; his friends become demonically possessed, flying around the room cackling and dancing like marionettes; the evil "gets inside him" causing him to vomit a huge amount of nasty stuff; there's a fight in a tool shed; eyes show up in weird places; eyeballs fly into somebody's mouth; even the twist ending is similar.

I didn't love this film, though I desperately wanted to. It's probably because I'm not the target audience – Drag Me to Hell is a PG-13 film and although its scares are suitably disgusting, they aren't nearly as gory as other horror movies. In other words, it's perfect for teenagers out on a date. For jaded horror fans like myself, we've seen it all before. The only thing missing is The Man himself.

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.

Star Trek

The original Star Trek series took time to establish itself as the premiere franchise it is today. The movies steadily improved the characters and special effects, building on a large canon of established Trek lore. The best movies gleefully embraced this rich history; the failures ignored or contradicted it. Star Trek is simply too big to reinvent, and J.J. Abrams knows it. So he did the next best thing by tweaking the established universe of Star Trek just enough to carve out his own little patch for the movie.

This is the beginning of Star Trek re-imagined as a futuristic Earth that incorporates the go-go 60s with iPod style. We see Kirk as a kid on the farm, Spock struggling with his half-Vulcan nature and Bones becoming a crotchety windbag—which, it becomes quickly apparent, he always was. We witness Kirk’s solution to the Kobiyashi Maru, Spock’s acceptance to Starfleet, and the construction of the Enterprise. In short, this is a true and proper launch of a Star Trek movie, from the beginning, so that all those non-Trekkies won’t feel like they missed out…

But if you are a non-Trekkie, you missed out. There are so many nods to Trek lore that my head nearly exploded. SPOILER RED ALERT.

Sulu fences! There’s a splash of light over the captain’s eyes when he sits on the bridge, just like the original series. Red shirts die! The same sounds beep and bleep in the background, from the sensors to the transporters. There are several Wrath of Khan references, from Spock’s famous last words to creepy worms that take control of your brain. There’s even old-style Romulans and Klingons. Fans worried that Abrams was going to remake the series in such a way as to make it unrecognizable can rest easy; this is the Star Trek we know and love, dusted off and buffed to a 21st century shine.

The plot involves time travel, a guest cameo, and references to the central conceit of the series: Spock follows the rules, Bones doesn’t, and Kirk floats above it all, waffling between the two ideologies and blazing his own path as his ego suits him. The movie has no qualms about portraying Kirk as a womanizing jerk or using him as the butt of some hilarious slapstick. It also isn’t afraid to push the envelope with the aliens, going beyond makeup to ensure they’re just unnerving enough for you to notice them even if the rest of the crew doesn’t. This is more than just a new Star Trek, it’s Star Trek done right with a bigger budget.

There are some flaws. The villain is one dimensional. Uhura’s headstrong personality has to carry the burden of embodying all females in Trek, which begins to grate. Winona Ryder (age 38) seems to have wandered onto the set to play Spock’s (Zachary Quinto, age 32) mother. And an uncharacteristically vengeful tactics from the good guys at the end of the movie borders on “ludicrous speed.”

But you know what? I forgive all that. This movie made Trek worth watching all over again and reminded us why it’s okay to travel through time and space, encounter green alien hotties, and bed them. Because it’s FUN.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I didn’t expect much from the Wolverine movie. Billed as X-Men 4 by the movie theater (says so right on my ticket), it is anything but. This is Wolverine getting the full Weapon X treatment, a mystery that took forever in comic-land to finally reveal. And with a few exceptions, Wolverine gets it right.

Whereas the previous X-Men movies became increasingly complex, with jumbled storylines and too many characters, a single character sharpens Wolverine’s plot to a knife’s edge. Nigh immortal and capable of regenerating from the most grievous wounds, Wolverine and his brother Sabretooth slash their way through the century, engaging in every major war and some minor ones too. For a little while, that’s enough, until Sabretooth’s propensity for raping and pillaging gets out of hand. A firing squad doesn’t do the job (that whole immortal thing), which is when General Stryker offers a devil’s deal.

There’s nothing new here with the exception of the movie’s primary x-factor: Wolverine. Jackman transforms Wolverine from a passive loner to an outraged spirit of vengeance as everyone he loves dies. And behind it all, pulling the puppet strings, is Stryker, channeling Hannibal from the A-Team.

Throughout his adventures, Wolverine is surrounded by a cadre of other mutants with their own abilities. Unlike the other X-Men movies, each mutant serves a very specific purpose. Nothing feels forced. Except for maybe the Blob, but he’s amusing enough in early and later incarnations to provide some much needed levity that borders on the game Super Punchout.

The real revelation here is Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. Reynolds did a great job as a sword wielding antihero in the last Blade movie and he’s largely the same wisecracking nut job here. Only he’s much cooler and plays a larger role (think Darth Maul without the makeup).

There are some odd points where the Wolverine movie isn’t sure where to go. Stryker, for all his duplicity, often seems content to pull the movie villain mistake of letting people just walk out of his grasp. Some twists are emphasized with a theatrical exclamation point as the character tells us in no uncertain terms exactly what their plans are. And a few feats of derring-do border on the ludicrous…

But then I remember this is a movie about a comic about a guy who has metal claws between his knuckles. If you can keep that perspective, Wolverine is a lot like the titular character’s signature move: it tears through crowded plotlines with deadly efficiency. And if you’re a fan of other members of the Weapon X program, stay to the end of the credits. You can thank me later.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Let me present my biases up front: I am a huge fan of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics. I found them by accident. My friend, Rob Taylor, gave me a bunch to read. I did not know who Alan Moore was -- never realized, in fact, that I had enjoyed so much of his work in other comics and stories. I was instantly hooked.

I have also heard just how much of a car crash this movie is supposed to be. So I was prepared for something really awful.

I'm happy to report that it's really not that awful.

The movie takes place in Victorian-era London. Well, it starts there anyway. The League is gathered together to fight a new, despicable evil -- in short, a new technology that threatens to ignite a World War. You know, THE World War that's supposed to happen a few decades later.

Anyway, a bunch of public domain characters are gathered together: Mina Harker (of Dracula fame), Alan Quartermain (of Diamond Mine fame), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man (sorta), Dorian Gray (the fellow with that portrait), Captain Nemo (that whole thing with the Nautilus) and...Tom Sawyer.

In short, superheroes for a different century. Neat idea. It works better in the comics, because Moore is insane and has such attention to detail that he immerses the characters in the era. And in that comic, Mina's not a vampire, she's a modern woman -- which is a pretty cool superpower in Victorian times.

I digress. Let me go over the characters and their differences, for those who are fans of the comic.

• Mina is cooler as a vampire. She just is. But she flips over from repressed gentlewoman to sexy, black-corset-wearing vamp a little too quickly and casually. It felt like they took a lot out of her character for the sake of shortening the film. She had great potential, but she doesn't realize it here. Still, Mina's fight scenes kick ass. And she is much more interesting as a semi-vampire. She also retains the scarf. Rating: 4
• Alan Quartermain is not the opium addict of the comics. He's just an old guy who lost his son and two wives to adventuring. Sort of like a retired Indiana Jones. Sean Connery brings some dignity to him, but not much. His "super power" is that he's a crack shot with a rifle. When he's wearing his glasses. It's a cute, Dark Knight-esque, damn-these-old-bones sort of character that made him more endearing than the frail whiner of the comics. I liked him. Rating: 3
• The Invisible Man is Rodney Skinner, not...well whoever that other psychopath was in the comics. I'm happy to say he's NOT a villain in this movie (although they want you to think he is). He's got the best lines and his matter-of-fact nature makes him a welcome addition. He's coolest when wearing his hat and trench coat (and nothing else, making him quite pervy) but alas, Rodney doesn't get much play here. Cool character, underdeveloped like Mina. Rating: 5
• Nemo is quite similar to his character in the comic, except he has an inexplicable fondness for the English that's very out of character for someone who has spent much of his life fighting British tyranny. The Nautilus is sleek, white, and marvelous -- his Indian crewmen are just plain cool. The whole thing is about presentation and it's really quite lovely. Unfortunately, Nemo loses points for having a very fake-looking beard. Visually, he's a mirror image of the comic. To make him more interesting, they gave him weirdo martial arts. And for some reason, Nemo never fires a gun, he always charges at guys wielding machine guns (!) with his saber. But you've gotta admire his moxie. Rating: 4
• Dorian Gray. Damn, I liked him so much I wish he was in the comics. Dorian can't be killed, so he's an immortal of sorts. Of course, that's a bit like Mina (in her vampire incarnation), which makes him redundant. But he fights with a walking stick. And he's a bored immortal. Imagine the Highlander without all that angst. Rating: 5
• I was really ready to dislike Tom Sawyer. But once I realized his entire existence was to show Quartermain's grief over his lost son, I got over it. That, and everyone else is so mopey and depressing that it's refreshing to have someone else in the movie who likes to blow crap up. And he does it with two pistols. Sort of like in the Mummy, only with no mummy. Rating: 2
• And last, but not least...Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Oh, the agony! Jekyll is suitably uptight. Hyde is...Hyde is...a freaky-looking gorilla. Visually, he looks like the character from the comics. But he moves with a weird, muppet-like quality. Somebody made a mistake somewhere in the visual effects department. You get the impression Hyde has no feeling in his arms. Indeed, his hands don't even seem capable of doing much. The transformation is also cheesy (flash transformations went out with the wolfman in the 1950s). Everything about Hyde is cheesy. Despite the fact he's one of the most interesting characters in the comic, here Hyde just sucks. And oh yeah, Jekyll has to drink a potion to cause the transformation (unlike the comics). Rating: 1
  

For fans of the comics, I'm happy to say the plot from the first series is reasonably intact. Indeed, the whole idea of the turn of the century bringing on terrible new technology is nothing new. It's been done before in movies like Sleepy Hollow. What is neat is the juxtaposition of these characters with change -- it's almost like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny getting together to lament the changes in the holidays.

Even better, the movie has the strength of its convictions. Some characters die -- and they SHOULD die. Yay!

The plot even makes more sense. The unique nature of the anti-heroes is what the plot is really about. So the plot of the story is not as much of a coincidence as it may first seem.

That said, there's so many inconsistencies that the movie threatens to unravel itself. How can the massive Nautilus sail through the canals of Venice? Did Nemo actually invent a launchable missile? As my wife pointed out -- why does Hyde always appear with his clothing torn when Jekyll intentionally swallows a potion to cause the transformation? How about taking your shirt off, doctor -- not to mention the pants. OOOOCH! If Dorian Gray dies upon seeing his painting (not true, by the way, it was destruction of the painting), then why was it HANGING OVER THE STAIRWAY, CLEARLY VISIBLE TO ANYONE ENTERING HIS HOME?

If you haven't read any of the books that detail these characters, LXG will either horrify you with the liberties it takes or amuse you with its daring. If you've read the comics, you'll be put off by some changes and delighted by others. If you haven't read either, this movie isn't going to make a whole lot of sense.

My wife though this movie was utter crap. I liked it. But I wanted to like it so much more.

Monsters vs. Aliens

Monsters vs. Aliens is an entertaining wrestling match for young children, an ironic take on society for older adults, and a delicious homage to 1950s science fiction movies for geeky parents.

Monsters vs. Aliens is one of those movies that's pretty explicit about what you get: a fight involving two critters that sometimes blur together. The thing is, while an alien could be classified as a monster, a monster can't always be classified as an alien. Although these monsters are, well, monsters, they're OUR MONSTERS, good old American-bred monstrosities created from science and evolution gone awry: Insectosaurus (Mothra), Dr. Cockroach (a riff on The Fly voiced by Hugh Laurie), BOB (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes + The Blob voiced by Seth Rogen), The Missing Link (The Creature from the Black Lagoon voiced by Will Arnett), and of course Ginormica (Attack of the 50-foot Woman voiced by Reese Witherspoon). The origins of these science fiction creations were completely lost on the audience in the theater I went to.

The story revolves around Susan Murphy's transformation into Ginormica on her wedding day. It's a thrilling tale of female empowerment – literally, as Susan transforms into an enormously powerful giantess – that seems more appropriate to a 1950s setting. After her transformation Ginormica becomes a pawn of the government, working for a secret agency dedicated to defeating supernatural threats. In other words: Hellboy and the BPRD. When a giant robot (sent by aliens, natch) shows up to destroy the Earth, it's up to this completely untrained and clueless team of monsters to save the world.

The movie is rife with in-jokes about classic science fiction movies, the current state of the U.S. government, and the complexities of global conquest that movies tend to gloss over (how does an alien overlord tell his clones apart?). The action comes fast and furious and in three-dimensions, the violence is definitely not for kids, and at various points things blow up. Although this is something of an action comedy, Monsters vs. Aliens plays for keeps.

The characters' lip-synching seemed off, but that might have been the theater I was in. Some of the characters were underdeveloped: BOB is a laugh-machine, but Link and Cockroach have little to do, especially in light of Ginormica's powers. And everyone conveniently ignores the fact that there's a bigger-than-even-Ginormica Insectosaurus wandering the countryside…but to go down that path is to question the basic premise of the movie.

Monsters vs. Aliens is a real treat for monster movie fans. For everyone else, it's a serviceable 3-D roller coaster ride. The kids in the audience (and it was almost all kids and parents) weren't bored, but they weren't laughing as much as my wife and I.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Seeing current movies these days is a challenge with a very active toddler. When Valentine's Day came around, we dropped our son off with my parents and I let my wife pick the movie. She of course picked the "vampire movie." Which is why I love my wife.

As a big fan of Kate Beckinsale and the World of Darkness role-playing game, the Underworld series quickly became a favorite. It featured big budget special effects, lots of PVC and leather, and plenty of pouty vampires. It also featured a battle between vampires and werewolves, a concept that was so prominent in White Wolf's World of Darkness series that it sparked a lawsuit.

Despite the lawsuit, Underworld continues to forge its own path, such that it now has prequels. You know your movie franchise has made it when executives are willing to pay to produce what is essentially a history book. Fortunately, this bit of history is actually worth watching.

Werewolves and vampires have always been a bit of a mixed bag in Hollywood. The fact that Dracula could turn into a wolf seems to be one of the less plausible aspects of vampirism that were dropped in favor of the Ricean pouty goth. Thus the ability to transform into a wolf is exclusively the domain of the werewolf. But it wasn't always this way.

The vrykolakas, draws its name from "vryk," meaning "wolf" and lakas, meaning "fur" in modern Slavic languages clearly meant "werewolf." Vrykolakas in other countries, however, is used to describe vampires. This is because of the aforementioned ability of a vampire to turn into a wolf, which can be strictly interpreted as meaning that all vampires are actually werewolves.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans turns this confusion into a plot. In short, vampires and werewolves are descended from the same bloodline, but the vampires have risen to the role of aristocrat while werewolves are little more than beasts. Or at least, that's what the vampires believe. To that end, Viktor (Bill Nighy) the vampire lord treats domesticated werewolf Lucian (Michael Sheen) as his foster son, giving him blacksmith duties that ensure werewolves don't transform with inward-pointing spiked collars. But Viktor's benevolence has limits, and when he discovers that Lucian is having a dalliance with his daughter Sonja (the delectable Rhona Mitra, who still isn't quite Beckinsale but comes pretty darn close), he teaches Lucian a terrible lesson. What Viktor underestimates is the kinship that Lucian has with his wilder brethren, a kinship that will spark class warfare.

Rise of the Lycans is basically what you get when you give a serious goth injection to the elves from Lord of the Rings, rehash the plot from Romeo and Juliet, and steal the feudal arrangement of vampires and their human "cattle" from the World of Darkness series. Nobody speaks in contractions. Everything is viewed through a dark blue lens. And lots of limbs get hacked off.

The real story here is the werewolves. It's their class struggle, after all, and the movie never shies away from the dire consequences of the characters' actions. There is a high enough body count on both sides to make Shakespeare proud.

Vampires. Werewolves. Vampires and werewolves killing each other. Two star-crossed lovers bound by their family allegiances and the curse of their blood. What more could you ask for in a Valentine's Day date movie?

Defiance

It's very easy to assume that Defiance is a wish-fulfillment revenge narrative wherein we finally witness stories of common folks who resisted the Nazis with tooth and nail. A certain entertainment magazine reviewer blithely dismissed the entire film as too "Hollywood," because Tuvia (Daniel Craig) murders the entire family who assisted in the Nazis in wiping out his family. The review's assessment couldn't be further from the truth.

Defiance is the true story of Tuvia and Zus Bielski (Liev Schrieber), two brothers who lived on the fringes of polite Jewish society by surviving in the deep woods, more akin to bandits than heroes. Where Tuvia is cool-headed, Zus is dangerously violent. The two soon discover a widening circle of friends and distant relatives seeking their protection, until Tuvia is moved to rescue Jews from a ghetto. Now he has to contend with well-bred city folks who know nothing about surviving in the Russian winter.

Defiance never glamorizes death. The Nazi attacks share less screen time, presumably because audiences need no convincing about the nature of their crimes. But even the Bielski retaliation against German troops is miserable -- Germans plead for their lives even as they are executed. War, Defiance tells us, is reprehensible, and it is a task for rough men. The question is if rough men are responsible for protecting the weak. Why should soldiers protect civilians?

Every ugly part of war is on full display here: defections, in-fighting, disease, starvation, alliances of convenience (between men and women, Russians and Jews), bigotry, incompetence, loss of faith, and yes, brutal, bloody revenge. By the end of the film, audiences are less likely to feel vindicated as they are disgusted by the places Defiance takes us. This is not a feel good film, not even as a revenge fantasy.

Defiance doesn't cover every angle. As criminals themselves, the Bielskis surely committed crimes we don't see on screen (see the Wikipedia entry on the Bielski partisans for more). But it is hardly a glamorized portrayal of their experience.

Transporter 3

Transporter 3's lead writer (Luc Besson) has a thing for redheads.

I came to this conclusion after watching Transporter 3. I'm a big fan of Besson's science fiction foray, The Fifth Element, and all I could think as I watched the slinky, thickly accented Valentina (Natalya Rudakova) was how Transporter 3 would have been so much better if it had been Milla Jovovich in the role.

That I was distracted by the stiff Rudakova's acting is a testament to how much the film insists on zooming in on her, letting her drone on and on in her broken English, and the endless patience that Frank Martin (Jason Statham) seems to have for what amounts to a rich brat in a miniskirt and heels.

Oh right, the plot. So anyway, Martin is a wheelman who does jobs with certain rules. These are all meant to ensure success in Martin's job as a wheelman. By the time we reach Transporter 3, every one of those rules has been broken.

And that's the problem. The rules made Martin interesting. In Transporter 3, Martin has become a walking parody of himself, fetishized by the director to strip away (literally) everything likable about him, only to replace it with beefcake shots of Statham with his shirt off, whip-cut fight scenes that don't let us see his martial arts prowess, and aggravating supporting characters whom the Martin we know from the first movie would have left on the curb.

The gimmick here is that Martin can't just run away from his job because a super-advanced device is connected to his wrist that will blow him up if he is more than 75 feet away from the car. For reasons that only make sense to movie villains, Martin is forced to drive Valentina to a variety of locations, during which they track him constantly.

That's right, the bad guys track Martin's every move. In fact, the movie is obsessed with keeping Martin in the car to the point that the entire universe seems hell bent on keeping him in it. Even the laws of physics are in on this cruel joke, which helpfully bends its laws to allow Frank to do ridiculous things like drive his car on two wheels, float it to the surface using air pressure from its tires alone, and land it on a moving train.

The generic villain Johnson (Robert Knepper) is a victim of the So Bads. As in, he's So Bad that:

• ... he kidnaps drunk college girls!
• ... he shoots his own men when they asks stupid questions!
• ... he's helping sneak toxic waste into Europe!

That's right, uber-villains can now hit a new low: they're not just mean to you, they're mean to the environment!

The movie just spirals from there. Valentina, patently unlikable, somehow seduces Martin, who doesn't show the least bit of interest in her. Given that the ransom picture of Valentina shows her in a schoolgirl's uniform, there's at least a ten-year difference between her and Martin. Ick.

There are so many logic fallacies that you have to wonder if Besson's just mocking his audience. Statham as Europe's answer to the Kung Fu martial artist is just plain awesome -- I loved him in The Transporter and was willing to forgive the silliness of Transporter 2 -- but this is too much. Frank Martin deserves better.

Chinese Super Ninjas

First, let's get something straight: this is the best martial arts movie ever. It demonstrates Real Ultimate Power in ways I cannot even conceive, and if I could my head would explode from the Sheer Ninja Awesomeness of it all.

What, you still don't believe me? Here's why this movie is the awesomest:

1. This movie features a war between Chinese and Japanese warriors. So we get kung fu vs. samurai and ninja! Because this movie has the Awesome Dial turned up to 11, it starts with a fight between two schools, each showing off their amazing martial arts with the most unlikely weapons ever. Who wants plot when you can see guys killing each other with pinky rings?
2. The five element ninjas are all color-coded for your convenience. Fire, Earth, Wood, Water, and Gold. Now I know what you're saying: Instead of the five traditional Asian elements of Fire, Earth, Wood, Water, and Metal, why go with Gold? Gold is wimpy! It's not even a hard metal! Why not Steel or Iron? I'll tell ya why: gold is glittery. And beautiful. Which is why Gold ninjas wear glittery gold parasol hats that can double as shields. They can use them to reflect light and blind opponents, and just like every good gold-digger, they can stab you in the back with blades that shoot out from the parasol-hats. Okay, I was stretching there but stop arguing because YOU SO KNOW THAT GOLD PARASOL HATS THAT SHOOT DAGGERS ARE AWESOME.
3. There are helpful credits that explain everything the ninjas do is based on real weapons. This movie isn't just a spectacular explosion of martial arts madness, it's educational too: You could write a book report about it and I bet your teacher would totally give you an ALPHA, which is better than the letter A because this movie is so amazing mere letters will not do!
4. There's a hot chick that dresses in fishnets. And when she's not in fishnets, she's taking off her ninja clothes! And when she's not taking off her clothes, she's betraying our bitter hero. Take that feminism!
5. The hero and his three brothers have some of the coolest axe/flag/chain/scissor/polearms/stilts this side of the galaxy. Their weapons can do ANYTHING. Including chop people, blow away smoke, cut ropes, tear off limbs, stab people in the gut, and avoid people stabbing you in the groin from underground.
6. At any point in time, our hero who also happens to be a ninja, flips out and kills people. And I mean a lot of people. He rips peoples arms off. He rips peoples legs off. And at one point he rips their arms AND legs off at the same time!
7. The big boss ninja bad guy uses a fan. He's THAT confident in his manliness! Don't mess with him, it takes four guys to even have a chance of taking him down!
8. The ninjas are totally silent. They can get past your stupid falling brick trap and your crazy rooftops bells trap with their eyes closed. Pretty sure they did that by turning the sound off BUT WHATEVER NINJAS ARE AWESOME.
9. The good guys wear capes. CAPES!
10. Two words: Super. Awesome. Dubbing.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Remember the old Journey to the Center of the Earth movie, with the optically enlarged lizards presented as dinosaurs (colloquially termed "slurpasaurs")? That was what passed for a nifty special effect in 1959. Today it's 3-D effects.

Of course, audiences of today are far too sophisticated to fall for lizards with horns and fins glued to them; in the age of movies like Jurassic Park, only a digitally animated Gigantosaurus will do.

This latest incarnation of Journey is surprisingly true to its roots: Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) is an absent-minded volcanologist who is spending ten days with his nephew, Sean (Josh Hutcherson). Trevor's brother and Sean's father Max disappeared a decade before looking for the center of the Earth. Max left behind sensors that detect geological shifts in the Earth's crust and a cryptic series of notes in a Jules Verne novel (guess which one?). When one of the sensors fails in Iceland, Trevor decides to go on an adventure in 1950s fashion, bringing along his plucky nephew for the ride.

Accompanying Trevor and Sean is the fetching Hannah Ásgeirsson (Antia Briem), the daughter of another volcanologist and the only person with any spelunking skill whatsoever. While checking on the device, lightning strikes, our heroes dive for cover, and from there it's a lot of falling, screaming, and running.

This is a 3-D movie, which means that at various times and for no reason whatsoever, something flies straight at the screen. Since you will likely not have invested in the expensive 3-D glasses and you may not have even had the good sense to rent the 3-D version, this makes the movie seem even dumber than it is.

The other surprise is that despite the dinosaurs and the hottie, this movie is aimed at a younger set. The dialogue isn't very good, although Fraser does his best. Sean is meant to be a wisecracking preteen modern hero, but he reverts quickly to type. Scenes that are meant to be scary are played up for laughs: giant venus flytraps get pummeled in wrestling-style fashion, flying killer fish get batted away like softball practice, and there's a long and pointless mine cart sequence whose sole purpose is to show off the 3-D effects of the glasses you didn't buy.

Did I mention the irritating glow-in-the-dark mascot? There's a bird. It follows Sean around. Only he can understand it. And it glows in the dark.

Ultimately, Journey is more an amusement park ride than it is an actual movie. Because amusement park standards are much more family-friendly, Journey to the Center of the Earth is heavy on the Journey, light in the Center.

Swordsman

It seems the notion of magic books that best Real Ultimate Power are something of a trend in martial arts cinema (the awful Forbidden Warrior is still fresh in my mind). Here too is a tale of a warrior, Ling Wu-Chung (Sam Hui) and his girl-posing-as-boy sidekick whom he calls Kiddo (Cecilia Yip). They become embroiled in a battle over a ... you guess it, sacred scroll. Mixed in with the machinations of the two royal families fighting over the scroll is an old pirate and his younger companion, who have written a melancholy song (also on a scroll) that they cherish ... together, if you get my meaning. Or maybe you don't, because I'm not sure the "close" relationship between the two pirates was intended for that interpretation.

Anyway, everyone's after the scroll: Zhor (Yuen Wah) with his high-pitched feminine voice that I only realized later was a eunuch, Ah Yeung (Jacky Cheung) a soldier who is willing to go undercover to find the scroll, and Ngok, Wah Mountain School leader and Ling's master.

At some point, the massacres that ensue over the scroll are blamed on the Sun Moon Sect. So even weirder people get involved, including the whip-wielding Chief Ying (Cheung Man) and her snake hurling lieutenant Blue Phoenix (Fennie Yuen). You read that right: Blue Phoenix uses snakes as a martial arts form, tossing them out from beneath her robes to poison and ensnare people.

There is an implied relationship between Ling and Kiddo, but it's never realized. Kiddo bristles at being called a boy when she's obviously an attractive young woman, but Ling doesn't seem to notice. Ling himself seems to be something of a smirking doofus, excelling in martial arts but mostly unaffected by the horrors that ensue over the scroll. It's like the actor can't bring himself to take Ling seriously.

There seems to be multiple threads running throughout the storyline, chock full of characters who can barely fit on screen much less in the plot. SPOILER ALERTS: Ah Yeung discovers his true lineage, Ling discovers a new martial art from an old man (the aforementioned Swordsman, I'm guessing) and uses it to defeat Ngok, who turns out to be Kiddo's father. There's the hint of a relationship between Chief Ying and Ling, and Ling and Kiddo, but this is all so subtle it's hard to be sure. And of course Zhor gets his comeuppance in an explosive and well-deserved finale.

There is a stab (ahem) at bringing the story full circle in at least two ways. The Sacred Scroll gets repeatedly confused with the Song Scroll the pirates wrote. The implication seems to be that the true sacred scroll is the melancholy song these two guys on a lonely ship wrote together. They lyrics translate into something rather melancholy, but the actors all seem to be smiling as they sing it, so my guess is the subtitles are missing context. The other plotline is that of the martial arts style of the drunken Swordsman, which involves twirling people around like tops and using other people as yo-yos by snapping them out from their belts. The yo-yo martial arts doesn't quite have the gravitas of the philosophical question of Which Scroll is Better, but you get the idea.

The Swordsman is a brutal, violent film that makes the most of its limited special effects budget with innovative camera tricks, featuring martial arts that can punch holes in wood and people with the flick of a finger, burst through ceilings, blow an army of soldiers off a dock, and yes send snakes flying. It has to be seen to be believed. Watch it for the wildly imaginative martial arts styles, but don't expect much in the way of a plot.

Forbidden Warrior

Forbidden Warrior sounds interesting at first. Hot chick? Check! Mystical powers? Check! Martial arts? Check! It has all the right ingredients to be awesome ...

But it is so the opposite of awesome. It is, in fact, the anti-awesome.

The plot, what little there is, involves two brothers and a pirate on a quest to find Seki (Marie Matiko), the magical girl who can read the magical book that will unlock the Secrets of the Land. She is raised by a blind flying Anglo hippie who speaks in SLOW. PLODDING. SENTENCES, and spends much of her time in the wilderness, picking flowers and eating berries.

Into this idyllic lifestyle wanders an Asian pirate and his hot white chick companion (Musetta Vander, who seems to have no purpose other than to glare at people). The pirate instantly falls in love with Seki. What this plot has to do with anything, I have no idea.

The real story is about the two brothers, raised to be ruthless by their overbearing father. They're seen as kids fighting against each other, and then again decades later, only nobody has aged one bit except the two boys. Ah, movie magic!

Each brother has his own henchmen. The Good Brother has a group of misfit white guys: a fat guy who speaks gibberish named Jibberish, a Jerry Lewis imitation named Mouse, and a big guy named Tall Tall. Did I mention Tall Tall interprets everything Jibberish says? Are you laughing yet?

Fortunately the Bad Brother has some cooler bad guys, including Yang Sze (played by Al Leong, who has been in every American film featuring martial arts as every moustached Asian bad guy). Lots of time is spent establishing how bad the Bad Brother is and how Good the Good Brother is. SPOILER ALERT: These two are going to fight over the girl!

And then she will use the magic the flying white hippie taught her!

And there will be a big sword fight!

And then there will be very little actual martial arts!

And now that I think about it, there wasn't all that much magic either ...

In short, Forbidden Warrior lowers the bar for chop-sockey flicks down to its toenails, then trips over it. On the upside, it will make a hilarious drinking game.

Zu Warriors

I saw the subtitled version on KungFuHD (which alas, no longer exists). I didn't take notes while watching the movie, so I'm sure I got some of the names wrong. I would point out that the below review contains spoilers, but really, the entire movie could be watched backwards and it would make as much sense as what I'm about to reveal, so I'm not giving away that much. Here's what I can figure out...

The immortal land of Zu consists of three different nations. There's the warrior monks led by White Eyebrow guy, which includes the super-powered fighting team of Thunder (a male) and Lightning (a female), some guy named Hawk (Wolf's buddy) with metal wings (like Archangel from the Marvel comic series), and some other sword fighting guy I will call Sword. White Eyebrow guy wields a powerful Shield of Heaven, which shines light on things and can destroy them. Then there are the peaceful bald monk types, who preside over the balance of Heaven. They are generally non-combatants. Finally, there's a nation of two people: the lone wolf protagonist (no clue what his name is, but let's go with Wolf), and his mentor/love interest (lets call her Moon). Wolf wields the power of the sun, Moon wields the power of the uh, moon, which manifests as a flying crescent blade.

These are immortals, remember, so everyone can fly, wields powerful magical weapons, and sneers at humanity.

One day, Mordo, the bad guy who consists of a huge flying stream of screaming skulls, decides to return to power and attack Zu. Mordo is basically a guy in a Cthulhu-mask, which really ruins the cool effect of his screaming skulls. Anyway, Mordo begins systematically destroying each of the Zu lands, killing Moon. Upon dying, Moon bestows the floating crescent blade to Wolf. Mordo is finally driven off by the White Eyebrow Superfriends.

Mortally wounded, Mordo hides in a Blood Cave, where he is able to absorb everyone's magical weapons, including White Eyebrow's Shield of Heaven. Now it's a standoff - White Eyebrow's team can't fight Mordo without losing their weapons, but Mordo is still recovering, slowly gaining energy to unleash his evil wrath on the world. So Hawk gets the sole duty of watching the cave to ensure Mordo doesn't escape while White Eyebrows comes up with another plan.

If that doesn't seem colossally stupid enough, White Eyebrow's plan is to merge Thunder and Lightning into one person. But they must both be one hundred percent confident as they ram into each other. Failure means they explode. If you're missing the symbolism, Thunder wields a long, giant blade that he thrusts forward when he rushes into Lightning ... you get the idea.

Anyway, Wolf is pretty miserable now that his mentor is dead. When Thunder flinches as he tries to merge with Lightning, they're both destroyed. Thunder is reborn as a childlike moron and Lightning seems to be unaffected - but in truth, White Eyebrows rebuilt her with a piece of Moon's spirit. Fortunately, because Thunder is an idiot, there's no danger of any sort of love triangle.

Hawk, in the mean time, gets fooled into feeling sorry for a little faerie that escapes from the cave. It turns out the faerie is actually a demon that ends up possessing poor Hawk. So Hawk goes on a killing spree, wiping out most of White Eyebrows' team.

Somewhere along the line, Sword falls for a human female soldier, who doesn't have much to do but stand around in awe of all the flying immortals and their amazing incompetence.

By now you've figured out how the story ends, right? No? This isn't clear enough for you? Sheesh, some people need everything explained ...

White Eyebrows decides to try to find the secret of the universe. He leaves Super Team Defense to Wolf, infusing him with some mystical knowledge. This knowledge is encased in one of those sparkly glowy crystal things that float over the Sims. Then, in the tradition of Ben Kenobi, he fades away, as all white-haired guys must. Only in the ensuing battle with evil, Wolf dies. Fortunately he is reconstituted when White Eyebrows discovers the secret of the universe, healing Wolf.

Thunder finally remembers who he is (his irritating dialogue is supposed to be hilarious, I gather), gets it on with Lightning, and their Wonder Twin Powers activate. So Thunder/Lightning and Superenlightened Wolf face down Evil Hawk (who does not have a goatee) and Mordo in the Blood Cave lair. Fulfilling his oath, Wolf kills Hawk and puts him out of his misery. Mordo is defeated. Moon's reincarnated spirit either leaves Lightning or manifests, but I can't remember because I didn't care at that point.

The end.

It's telling how many people praise this film without providing any detail as to the plot. That's because this hyperkinetic mess is a tangle of poor special effects, bizarre storyline plotting, and far too many characters to follow. Some of this can be chalked up to differences in culture and translation. But a lot of it can't.

It should have been an anime.

Pi

When my parents came to visit to celebrate my father's birthday, my wife rented Pi, an "indie sci-fi" film as described by Netflix. When I used those two words to describe the movie, he said, "oh great, I've never seen an Indian science fiction movie!"

Pi was not made by Indians. And it's not really a science fiction movie. It's more of a weird fiction movie, extrapolating a single idea and obsessing over it. Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) is a brilliant, eccentric mathematician who is convinced he can apply the laws of mathematics to nature, and by proxy, the stock market. Since the stock market is a reflection of humanity, which is a reflection of nature, he believes there is a pattern that can be mathematically predicted. Predict the stock market and get rich, right?

From the beginning, we're never sure why Max wants so badly to pursue this path to power. Is he sick of being poor? Perhaps it's to succeed where his mentor, Sol Robenson (Mark Margolis), failed. Sol's stroke stopped him from puzzling out of the answer, which is precisely 216 characters long.

And so we have two philosophies that are actually one and the same: that mathematics of sufficient scope IS nature. Or in other words, the entire universe could be predicted if we just had enough computing power to handle it. Which could be interpreted as the definition of God. This dichotomy manifests as the Kabbalist Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkman) on one side and the corporate goon Marcy Dawson (Pamela Hart) on the other. Meyer seeks to reclaim the connection with the heavens through the Tetragrammaton, the name of God, and he believes it's 216 characters long. Dawson just wants Max to figure out the secret of the stock market, presumably to make a lot of money. It's the old religion vs. science debate.

The stark black and white film further delineates Pi's either/or approach. It's so washed out that it begins to induce the migraines Max experiences as he gets ever closer to the truth. Aronofsky is a master of translating human misery through visceral images, and the whip-snapshot sequences of Requiem for a Dream's drug addiction are in full evidence here. Even the soundtrack sounds similar, which plucks at the nerve endings in your gums with ever-increasing urgency.

Pi isn't a bad film, but it's intellectually challenging. There's precious little science in Pi, or valid mathematics, or even an accurate portrayal of Kabablism. It uses artistic license to make its point -- that the nature of God is beyond human ken - and ultimately beats the viewer over the head with it in the end. Literally.

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.

10,000 B.C.

Ten things I learned from 10,000 B.C. (spoilers beware!):

1. Nobody speaks in contractions.
2. Everybody is dirty.
3. Nobody speaks the same language except for one guy in Africa, and yet the translation of "Mammoths" is "Mannak."
4. The way to get a bull mammoth to stampede is to stand up in the middle of the herd and scream your head off.
5. Even isolated arctic tribes have tremendous racial diversity.
6. The pyramids were built either by space aliens or Atlanteans.
7. Egyptian pharaohs were white guys who spit a lot.
8. 10,000 B.C. had its own versions of velociraptors: giant angry chickens.
9. For some reason only white men can lead the more powerful and numerous African tribes.
10. Blue-eyed girls are hot.

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").

Futurama: Bender's Game

I'm the target audience for Bender's Game. A lifelong gamer of over two decades (yeeck, I'm getting old), I also know and love the book by Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game. With the title alone, the Futurama writing staff is clearly letting me know this is the movie for me.

Bender's Game starts promising, with jokes about the rising cost of fuel prices. There's also a sly joke about Leela's anger issues, which are controlled by a shock collar. A shock collar Leela starts to find ... titillating. Just when things get interesting and this plot point could turn into something awkward and funny, it's dropped.

Bender discovers that he has no imagination and, aggravated that he can't participate in a game of Dungeons & Dragons, flips out Mazes & Monsters-style, renaming himself Titanius and wandering the sewers. He then gets sent to the HAL institute, Arkham Asylum for robots. This plot point is pursued to a point and then dropped.

Meanwhile, Mom (that's her name) has been controlling dark matter prices for years, but there is a means of invalidating her stranglehold on fuel prices. Professor Farnsworth accidentally invented "anti-backwards matter" which, should it ever encounter dark matter, would render dark matter useless. It just so happens that this anti-backwards matter is a 12-sided die. Hilarious, right?

As our lovable misfits build towards a confrontation with Mom and her Killbot goons, reality shifts and suddenly everyone's in a parallel fantasy dimension. And then we get, in descending order of comedic value: D&D jokes, Greek myth jokes, Lord of the Rings jokes, Star Wars jokes, Call of Cthulhu jokes, and did I mention the Lord of the Rings jokes?

There's actually more interesting material on the extras, covering all the allusions to D&D that have appeared in Futurama and confirming that the guys who write the show are hopeless geeks themselves. Unfortunately, they're not really boosting their own geek cred with this movie.

Look, I love Futurama and I love D&D. But this movie is all over the place, using tired, easy jokes for fantasy. I always identified Futurama as a series of in-jokes for sci-fi and tech geeks, which is a much broader category than fantasy gamers. The bizarre diversion into the fantasy realm isn't well thought out, isn't particularly funny, and not all that interesting.

Sorry guys. This is one D&D adventure that doesn't give out nearly as much XP as it should.

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs

I was already unhappy with the first Futurama movie, so I didn't have much hope for the second. I was surprised to see that this installment of Futurama is actually two awkward subplots mashed together: Lovecraftian horror for the first half, and a meditation on religion on the second half.

On the Lovecraftian side, throw in tentacle attacks, slimy ancient gods from beyond time and space, and the nihilistic view that Heaven is a fabrication and you've got a pretty depressing, semi-creepy, not really all that funny first half. Bender finally makes good on his threat to destroy all humans, Fry conveniently forgets his entire relationship with Leela, the Robot Devil shows up for a one-note gag ... I could go on but I'll stop there.

Judging by the reviews so far, the second half went over a lot of peoples' heads. Yivo is a parody of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which is itself a parody of religion. Basically, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a mental construct posed to challenge the notion of a divine being; if you can disprove that the Spaghetti Monster was responsible you win the argument. "Win" being a pretty subjective word, as anyone knows who has argued about religion or politics.

As one big joke about relationships and religion, Beast With a Billion Backs works pretty well. But for reasons known only to the writers, the plot shambles forward well beyond the Big Revelation by Leela about Yivo, the aforementioned Spaghetti Monster. It's like the drunk guy at a party who tells a joke, discovers no one thinks it's funny, then tells it in a slightly different way that STILL doesn't make it funny. We get it: relationships with people can be just as ridiculous as relationships with God. But this is Futurama, and while I appreciate the depth of meaning the show strives for with this movie, it feels forced. A multitude of guest appearances doesn't make up for it.

Still, I can't be too harsh on Futurama. You won't find many animated shows that are willing to take on topics like relationships and religion at the same time, so Futurama gets points for trying. I just wish it didn't try so hard.

Futurama - Bender's Big Score

When Futurama first came out, I was convinced it would never last. Unlike the Simpsons, Futurama makes you feel a bit like a moron when you watch it, with perpetual in-jokes to science fiction and fact that you may only catch years later. To my delight, Futurama had a very successful run.

One of the last episodes involved the Robot Devil, a favorite character of mine, and the burgeoning romantic subplot between Fry and Leela. Fry, having traded his hands in for the Robot Devil's hands so that he could play the hypnoflute ultimately has to give the hands back and the episode ends with a sweet but sad little tune imagining Fry and Leela together. Filled with clever banter, excellent music and choreography, plot twists, and a bittersweet ending, this was Futurama at its finest.

Bender's Big Score is not Futurama at its finest. All of those plots have been discarded.

Mind you, it's not bad. It's just not fantastic. Bender's Big Score is a series of muddled plot points, pointless cameos, and a lot of "hey, look, we gave you what you wanted!" fan service. It's great to have a DVD comeback of a great show, but I expected better from a feature-length movie. I mean, Internet scams? That's so ten years ago!

That said, I'm a huge fan of Hypnotoad. Twenty minutes of Hypnotoad. TWENTY. MINUTES. That's right, twenty glorious minutes of HYPNOTOAD. ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!

So for that, it gets an extra star. But only because Hypnotoad compels me.

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.

I Am Legend

I Am Legend, the novel, spawned the vampires-as-physical-phenomena genre. Vulnerabilities to religious icons were merely psychological holdovers from victims of a disease who believed they were vampires. But the thirst for blood was very real. It established the post-apocalyptic fear of contamination.

Since I Am Legend is a Will Smith vehicle, I figured it'd have some wisecracks, a lot of action, and Smith saving the day. So I was surprised to get exactly that - but not delivered in the way I expected.

I Am Legend is very much like a A Boy & His Dog in that our two protagonists are Robert Neville (Will Smith), a virologist responsible for finding a cure in New York City, and his dog Samantha, wandering a world gone mad. What's interesting about I Am Legend is the question posed by the title. Why is Neville a legend?

The most obvious answer is that Neville is immune to the disease that has converted 90 percent of humanity. As such, he believes he holds the cure within himself. In that regard, if Neville can succeed in stopping the plague, he will be a legend to all of humankind. But there's more to I Am Legend than that.

It's fitting that his companion is a dog. With only Sam as his companion, Neville is truly a legend; the only other living being idolizes Neville, just as dogs idolize their masters. Neville also creates a fictional community of people out of mannequins in a DVD rental store, where everybody knows his name. Neville is indeed a legend in his own mind.

There's also the possibility, posited in the original story, that Neville isn't famous as a savior, but infamous amongst the new breed of humanity as a mass murderer. In that regard Neville is legendary not because of whom he saves but whom he kills. Neville sacrifices countless of the infected in a quest for a cure, and in the process loses a little bit of his own humanity.

I Am Legend could easily have been an egotistical macho romp in a world gone mad in the vein of Mad Max. Instead, it is a thoughtful meditation on how communities define ourselves, even if your only friend is a dog. Although the director flinches at the uncompromising ending that could have been (and is on the two-disc special edition), I Am Legend is a serious entry in both science fiction movies and Will Smith's string of blockbusters.

The Dark Knight

It took a long time for me to get around to seeing Batman, but thanks to the second-run theater near me, I was finally able to see it. It was worth the wait.

This movie has been reviewed enough to make going over the plot pointless, so instead I'll focus this review on The Dark Knight's symbolism. In chess, the Dark Knight (Batman, played by Christian Bale) is opposed by the White Knight (Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart). They are powerful pieces in chess, capable of skipping over other pieces, striking from behind Pawns to attack opponents and then jumping away. In that sense, Knights are somewhat more chaotic than the other pieces; every other piece moves in a linear fashion, but the Knight moves forward and to the side. Although it may seem to be one of the weaker pieces of chess, when combined with any other piece it is one of the most powerful.

In a similar fashion, Harvey Dent and Batman are more powerful because of their pawns. Dent's pawns include the media, Gordon, and a mostly corrupt police force. For Batman, it's the corporate boards, Gordon, and yes even the police force. Which is the first hint that the simple dichotomy between Batman and Dent isn't quite accurate. Dent isn't the flipside of Batman, he's the same version with different characteristics illuminated. Dent is Batman as a civil servant, minus the angst.

Batman's true nemesis, the real White Knight, is of course the Joker (Heath Ledger). And now we truly see the opposite of what Batman stands for. Where Batman is cold, measured, and consistent the Joker is brutal, offensive, and chaotic. And yet they are two sides of the same coin: "You crossed the line first, sir," says Alfred, referring to the criminal organizations Batman hunts. "You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation they turned to a man they didn't fully understand." Just like the police turned to Batman. Joker is a criminal form of vigilante justice.

If there's an overriding message in The Dark Knight, it's that in a war of escalation, everyone loses. The ultimate response to the Joker is a massive show of force, a sacrifice of values, and then ultimately a withdrawal from the public. Superheroes and villains taken to an extreme are basically just terrorists blowing up a neighborhood. The human cost is too steep for anyone to operate like that out in the open, a lesson the Joker teaches Batman the hard way.

Caught in the middle are the victims: Rachel Dawes, Lucius Fox, and Dent's sanity. When Two-Face arrives, it is the cracked mirror of Batman, a hero-turned vigilante who, instead of the Knight that strikes from the shadows, moves in a straight line from one victim to another as judge, jury, and executioner. Two-Face is finally done right in this movie (better than even the cartoon, and that's saying something), and his horrific appearance is so disturbing that my wife felt it pushed the film to an R-rating.

The Joker is so unnerving, so malevolent in action, and so utterly amoral in his goal of protecting the Batman-ideal, that Ledger and Nolan have made their indelible mark on the character. This is the Joker comic book fans always knew from "The Long Halloween" and "The Killing Joke." And he's nothing to laugh about.

Yes, it's long. Yes, it's violent. But ultimately, Nolan's masterpiece is both a meditation on the comic book genre and modern day society. To stop a terrorist, are we willing to bend every civil liberty, burn down every forest, no matter what the cost? It's a bold, uncompromising vision that will haunt you long after the movie ends.

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.

Mirrormask

I came to Mirrormask with no expectations other than that the film was Neil Gaiman's pet project, and anything Gaiman passionately believes in is something I wanted to see.

Mirrormask's style is a combination of those psychedelic Beatles cartoons mixed with The Neverending Story, Legend, and Labyrinth - appropriate, since The Jim Henson Company helped create the virtual world where the movie takes place. At its heart, Mirrormask is about a girl, Helena (Stephanie Leonides) and her independence from her mother Joanne (Gina McKee). Like so many impetuous young girls in movies, Helena ranges from clingy devotion to her mother to feckless rage, and it's during one of her darker moments that she wishes Joanne dead ... which ends with Joanne in the hospital.

The guilt that this tantrum engenders in poor Helena is enough to send her on a Hero's Journey. And wrapped up in this journey isn't just a quest to save her mother, but to save herself; as an adolescent, there are clear signs that Helena is on the wrong path. Throughout the bizarre universe that Helena travels, she discovers the duality of self: between darkness and light, affection and possession. Windows are gateways to the real world. Creatures have bizarre features or none at all, and the few humanoids that live in Helena's fantasyland all wear masks, which they believe are their real faces.

And what a strange world it is! Labyrinth was odd, but the protagonist was grounded in reality. Helena comes from a junk pile universe of recycled material and garish display, and her imagination reflects her circus origins in every character and building. In that regard, Mirrormask is a breathtaking spectacle.

Story-wise, Mirrormask isn't quite as interesting. Helena discovers that she's not just in a dream world, she's actually switched places with her evil twin. While Helena is exploring her childlike fantasies her doppelganger is exhibiting, as child advocates say, "risky behavior" in her body. It's up to Helena to take back her real self, both physically and spiritually, and maybe save her mother's life in the process.

Mirrormask is a surprisingly feminine fantasy, all too lacking in a genre dominated by sword and sorcery. It's also marketed to a very specific niche, that of the tween heroine fantasy, and that might not go over well with everyone. My wife thoroughly enjoyed it; I was so caught up in staring at all the backgrounds that I didn't always track the plot.

Ultimately, Mirrormask is more of a tour of a bizarre universe than a movie, and worth watching with female company. You will never listen to "Close to You" the same way again.

Cloverfield

Like so many other monster fans, I was taken in by all the hype around Cloverfield. I incorrectly predicted the monster's appearance based on a sketch, I correctly predicted that the movie wasn't about Cthulhu or Voltron, and then my son was born and I forgot about movies for a year.

I finally saw it. And man is it good.

But you see, I'm a monster movie fan. Cloverfield's marketing was intentionally minimalist, relying on viral marketing instead. One of the dangers of viral marketing is that it's viral, and thus doesn't necessarily distinguish by target market. Indeed, the whole point of viral marketing is to get the word out to as many people as possible. And many of those people aren't monster movie fans.

Look. This is a monster movie. If you don't like the fact that attractive people run around screaming, maybe you shouldn't watch a movie about a giant monster. If you don't like the shaky cam effect, maybe the preview gave a hint that the movie wasn't for you. And if you don't like the unrealistic nature of characters running in high heels, people surviving horrible wounds, and the insane bravery/stupidity of the protagonist, perhaps you shouldn't see a movie about a giant monster that comes out of nowhere and rips the head off the Statue of Liberty.

The joke's on us: Cloverfield is a love story cloaked in a monster movie. It's about the lengths our hero is willing to go to save his true love, a girl he's only just recently met. In times of stress, our tenuous attachment to loved ones becomes all the more precious--if you lived in New York City during the 9/11 attacks, you knew that already.

Stripping away the complaints about the genre, as a monster movie Cloverfield knocks it out of the park. To Abrams' credit, it's just as scary as we feared. Only now we have real reason to fear the impact of a colossal assault on our city. The movie is filmed the way we experienced 9/11, and the floating papers and dust from the collapse of a building are a sign that we know exactly what a monstrous attack looks like.

When 9/11 happened, I walked home from work. I watched a cop stick his head out the driver's side window, so terrified of another attack from above that he was nearly drove off the road. Cloverfield invokes those fears: of confusion, of anarchy, of wanting to run but not knowing what's a safe place to run to anymore. It is a monster movie made when the charm of monster movies can no longer be appreciated by the audience - we now know that if a giant monster attacked New York, evacuations would clog the streets, people would be poisoned by the debris, stock markets would crash, and worse. It's not just about being afraid the monster will eat you.

Cloverfield has its giant monster and lets it eat too: it's an immediate physical threat and a mysterious menace, far more frightening than anything the Godzilla remake could muster. In the same way Godzilla evoked fears of the atom bomb, Cloverfield is 9/11 reimagined as a hideous, unexplained thing from beyond. The film is also fearless in facing the monster (literally) and reinforcing the helplessness we all felt in the face of such a huge disaster. Forget the boogeyman under your bed: it's hundreds of feet tall and smashing its way down your street.

For monster movie fans, it doesn't get any better than this.

Iron Man

It's been a long time since I've seen a movie in the movie theaters (having a one-year old will do that to you). I've scrupulously avoided any spoilers for just about every summer movie out there, although more than one reviewer has given away quite a few surprises (I'm looking at you, Entertainment Weekly). When we finally got a babysitter willing to take care of our little tyke for a few hours, we decided to given the second-run movie theater nearby a try. And that movie was Iron Man.

By now everyone knows the story of Iron Man: alcoholic weapons-merchant billionaire Tony Stark has a change of heart (literally) when shrapnel penetrates his ribcage and threatens to end his life. Instead of making weapons, Stark vows to make a power suit instead...that is loaded with weapons, but let's not quibble over details.

Iron Man is an adult's movie, which is to say it involves mature subjects like the fact that Stark is an inveterate womanizer, likes his alcohol, kills bad guys, and many of those bad guys look like Middle Eastern terrorists. All this drama is tempered by Robert Downey Jr., who rattles off quips with abandon. His keeper is Obadiah Stane (played by Jeff Bridges with suitable cranky menace). Stark's assistant is the alliterative Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), who runs the line between sweetly naïve and sleekly sexy in her five-inch heels and pencil skirt.

At its best, Iron Man features Stark uses his power suit to dodge jet fighters, kill terrorists, and rescue civilians. The theater I was in didn't have very good audio, so the (presumably adlibbed) one-liners that Downey constantly tosses off were often lost in the sounds of explosions and screaming. I imagine in a bigger theater or at home this wouldn't be a problem, but the movie lost some of its charm as a result.

There are plot holes. Vanity Fair reporters show up at important news conferences. Stark seems far more interested in building a power suit than removing the shrapnel from his body. And the entire premise of Iron Man revolves around "repulsor lift" technology, which is an infinite source of energy the size of a hockey puck that defies gravity. But if you didn't buy into the notion of a man in a flying suit, what are you doing watching the movie, right?

Iron Man keeps the plot tight. Unlike Spider-Man, there are no extraneous supervillains. Unlike X-Men, every character is there for a reason. But the big payoff for Iron Man is the ending. Iron Man flips traditional superhero conventions the bird and dares you to guess what happens next. Then it leaves you begging for more.

And there IS more, if you stay for the end of the credits. Unfortunately, I didn't read enough spoilers to realize I should have waited, so we missed it. So for the three of you who haven't seen the movie yet...stick around!

Kung Fu Panda

I was on a long flight back from California when I had the choice between watching Kung Fu Panda on a tiny television screen four feet away from me, or read the SkyMall catalog. I wisely chose to watch Kung Fu Panda.

I was curious as to how Kung Fu Panda would present itself: as a Lion King-style retelling of ancient Chinese myth, or as a love note to kung fu films from an American perspective. I'm pleased to report that it's the latter.

You know the story: Po (a restrained Jack Black) adores the Furious Five but is too fat and slow to ever hope to become one of them and then fate does precisely that. It's the heroes who have the real problem (each representing a different kung fu style and all voiced by a roster of celebrities, including Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, and Lucy Liu). Struggling most of all is Master Shifu - a bit redundant, if you know the definition of Shifu - played by Dustin Hoffman (wouldja believe?) who is still suffering from the betrayal of his first and best pupil Tai Lung (Ian McShane).

What's surprising about Kung Fu Panda is how adult the story is. The word "kill" is mentioned several times. Tai Lung and Shifu have a physical conflict that is much a battle of philosophies as it is a father and son having an argument. And the plot is beautiful in its symmetry, perfectly tying in every element: from the modified style of kung-food training that Shifu teaches Po to the revelation of Po's (we can only assume adopted) duck-father's secret recipe to the fact that Po is immune to acupuncture (because he's so fat, of course) Kung Fu Panda is tightly scripted and wrapped up in a beautiful package.

The movie itself (what I could see on the tiny airplane screen) is beautifully produced. It ranges from Chinese-style art to realistic but soft-colored tones, to bursts of color amidst pitch darkness. The fight scenes are all in exciting locations: in a prison, on a rope bridge, in an ancient temple. It's like a videogame, only you're watching the fat guy character nobody wants to play. It was beautiful enough that I had a pang of regret that I wasn't watching it on a big screen. Or even a medium screen.

For kids, Po is a great tale about overcoming obstacles by being yourself. For geeks, Po is a hilarious new hero archetype: the fanboy as hero, a fat, slobbering devotee who knows more details about the Furious Five than they know about themselves.

Hero

Red version: Hero is the story of one man's quest (Nameless, played by Jet Li) to destroy the three assassins (lovers Broken Sword played by Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Flying Snow played by Maggie Cheung, and Sky played by Donnie Yen) who tried to kill the King of Qin (Chen Daoming). Nameless bests Sky in combat, and Broken Sword and Flying Snow betray each other, all the while fighting off the King's entire army, until Nameless finally kills Snow. At least, that's the story Nameless tells the King, who is privileged with advancing within ten paces of him.

Blue version: The King disagrees. He knows the assassin lovers and doesn't believe the story. He instead believes that the three assassins sacrificed their own lives to allow Nameless the audience with the King, and thus a chance to commit regicide himself. He has developed a special move, the King theorizes, that can kill a man at ten paces.

White version: Now the truth comes out. Nameless explains who he is, where he came from, and why he is in the King's palace. Nameless has a technique that can skewer a person while missing all their vital organs, making the blow look fatal. He used it on Sky and he uses it again on Flying Snow. Surprisingly, Broken Sword is against the entire notion of assassinating the King at all, a decision that harkens back to the duo's first assassination attempt. It failed only because Broken Sword chose not to kill the King.

Throughout the movie parallels are made between calligraphy and martial arts, and specifically the symbol for the word "sword." There are deeper meanings within the brush strokes, a form of enlightenment that Broken Sword achieved and that the King discovers in his conversation with his would-be assassin. Nameless' decision and the effect it has on the other assassins provides the twist to the tale.

Hero is a breathtaking movie, filled with balletic martial arts, lovely scenes in vivid colors, and natural settings reflecting China's ancient history and beauty. It's entertaining and moving, and the relationship between Broken Sword and Flying Snow anchors the piece. The three different tales, each depicted by a particular color scheme, provides different backdrops for heroics, drama, and warfare.

On the other hand, Hero is a Chinese cinematic version of "Who Moved My Cheese" - it reinforces the status quo with a sinister charm. Killing kings is foolish, says Hero, because it only leads to more war. Nameless' decision is one of sacrifice, one for the many. Were this only a fable, the story wouldn't be politically charged. But the King of Qin went on to become the Emperor of China, who did a lot of great things. So, you know, killing him would be bad because China wouldn't be nearly as great without him.

The question becomes whether or not that matters on a greater moral scale. Hero clearly makes the point that we should feel sympathy for the poor King in his enlightened state. Revenge never gets anyone anywhere. And yet by reducing the course of history to the assassination of one man, Hero makes many assumptions: about the importance of said man, about the progress of China, about our own human failings. It's a very Chinese movie, which makes it either more authentic or less palatable to American audiences. It all depends on your definition of the term "hero."

Fantastic Four

As franchises go, Fantastic Four is relatively unexplored territory. There are probably good reasons for this: one of the characters is a cigar-chomping piece of rock, three members of the team are related to each other, and one of character's claim to fame is his amazing intellect combined with...wait for it...the power of STRETCHING. Which was pretty funny in the 70s when it was portrayed in cartoons (I can still hear the "stretching" sound like a vacuum played backwards) and is a little creepy today.

Given that comics are the new hot property for movies, it was inevitable that the good 'ole FF have their own film. And thus we have Ioan Gruffud (a less charismatic Jeff Goldblum) as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, the delectable Jessica Alba as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, gruff Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm/The Thing, and Chris Evans as the wisecracking pretty boy Johnny Storm/The Human Torch. Our heroic crew assembles in privately funded mission into space to explore...cosmic space gas. Only something goes terribly awry and the mutagenic mist transforms the four astronauts into super powered freaks.

The inherent silliness of the plot and characters has been spoofed so many times that it's difficult for the actual Fantastic Four to keep up. We've all seen the family squabbles of the Incredibles. But perhaps the most caustic send-up is The Venture Bros., who deftly skewers the FF by casting Reed as an outdated 50s stereotype, Sue as a liberated housewife, and The Thing as a mentally deficient monster.

Perhaps FF can be forgiven for its lack of focus as it tries to walk the tightrope between being superhero silly and deadly serious. Reed's romance with Sue is in its early stages here, complicated by a rival, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon)...

You! You in the back with the funny haircut! Stop laughing! That's the man's name, all right? It has nothing to do with his tendency for evil! Or fancy alliteration. Or that he happens to be a native of some country you've never heard of...that happens to send him a mask...that he just happens to wear...

Fine. Fine, yes, this is all a little ridiculous. But there's angst! Poor Grimm suffers as he struggles with his identity and his hot wife dumps him (while wearing a negligee in the middle of the street, of course). Will Reed propose to Sue, or will she stick with Doom? Will Johnny ever stop being such a card? Will Sue ever discover how to turn invisible without taking off her clothes? (!)

And so FF stumbles over itself in an attempt to be both true to the comic book's origins and cram in a plot that's really five stories into one film. Ben Grimm's angst as the unpleasant-looking Thing is diminished by a device that "cures" him. A device that didn't work without Doom's special powers, but mysteriously works in reverse without explanation. Alba is too sexy for the role; it's hard to believe the wooden Richards could romance her or that she'd find the stilted Von Doom any more attractive. And Richards' serious scientific efforts are undermined that he's basically a big inflatable balloon. In fact, much of the fight scenes in this movie involve members of the FF battling each other.

The special effects do a good job of displaying the heroes' powers, but The Thing simply looks like a guy in rubber foam. Chiklis is big, but he's not a huge man, and the film sometimes remember he's heavy and cumbersome (complete with thudding footfalls and exploding chairs) and then forgets when it's inconvenient (because a wooden bench can surely handle his massive weight, right?).

I think a lot of fans are just happy this film isn't the first attempt (that never saw the light of day but lives on in bootlegs). For my FF fix, I prefer the animated version, which manages to be both hilarious and action-packed while poking fun at the utter ridiculousness of a super-science team consisting of a talking rock, a rubber band man, an invisible woman, and a real flamer.

Bad Taste

Peter Jackson is best known for the The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong, but a long time ago he made his own cult film: Bad Taste. Watching it is a bit of cinema history, in the same way that watching The Evil Dead series is a prelude to Sam Raimi's later work. This whole movie reminds me of a role-playing game session from my high school days, where game masters and players made things up as they went along.

The first thing you notice is that Bad Taste is well, bad. The film and audio quality is terrible. The accents are a bit difficult to understand for Americans. One of the characters, Derek, appears to be mentally ill. And yet there's a certain rough charm to the whole thing.

The plot, such as it is, involves a crack team of government agents who work for the Astro-Investigation and Defense Service (AIDS) sent to investigate the disappearance of the citizens of Kaihoro, New Zealand. Your reaction to the in-joke name of the agency will dictate whether you find Bad Taste to be hilarious or stupid. An agency with an acronym like AIDS is something my high school buddies might dream up on a whim.

The AIDS strike force consists of Ozzy (Terry Potter), Barry (Peter O'Herne), Frank (Mike Minett), and the aforementioned Derek. They stumble onto an alien race of merchants who know all about "how to serve man," and not the butler kind of service. The film begins with the capture of one of the aliens, Robert (Peter Jackson), who is held captive by hanging him over the edge of a cliff by his ankle. While Barry explores the ghost town, Derek decides to torture the leader for information by stabbing him in the foot. This ultimately leads to the other aliens coming to the rescue, Robert escaping, and Derek falling off a cliff to his supposed death.

"Wait, Derek died?" asks Derek's player.

"Yeah," says the GM. "You had a good fight there with the alien sledgehammers but you slipped off the cliff."

"But," whines the player, "I was just getting started! You can't kill Derek off like that!"

"Okay, fine. Derek lands on seagull eggs and only some of his brain falls out, but he's still alive. Now he's crazy as a loon."

"Great! I stuff his brains back into his skull and keep going..."

In comes Giles player. "Hey guys. Is it too late to play?"

"Nah," says the GM. "You're a collector whose come to Kaihoro to collect. And the aliens abduct you and toss you in a stew!"

"Oh, great..."

Bad Taste pretty much devolves from there, leading to Derek attacking people with a chainsaw, Ozzy and Frank firing rocket-launchers at the aliens, and the aliens themselves turning out to be shoulder- and butt-padded monstrosities who can barely run much less pose a threat to anybody. It all ends with a house flying into space.

Bad Taste veers from thrilling action to long, boring pans of characters walking from Point A to Point B. There are random gags (most of them involving slipping on some form of excrement), over-the-top violence ranging from organs being stuffed into places to drinking someone else's vomit, and plenty of jokes about aliens and action movies. The action scenes are actually very well done, and there's plenty of people running as machine gun fire peppers their feet.

Bad Taste makes no bones about what it is - a cult film. Jackson's humor is evident here, but he would go on to do much more horrifying and humorous films. While Bad Taste is no Evil Dead, it's still enjoyable as a piece of film history over a couple of beers with your buddies.

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.

The Gate

When I was looking for some inspiration for a plot involving little monsters attacking people, I had several movies to choose from. The "little monsters attack" horror/comedy genre was a fad that started with Gremlins and continued on through Critters, Ghoulies, and Troll in the eighties, among others. I was looking for more horror, less comedy. You need look no further than The Gate.

The Gate's concept is straightforward horror: kids alone (Stephen Dorf as preteen Glen and Christa Denton as his big sister Al) at home inadvertently open a literal pit to the netherworld and all hell breaks loose. But that's oversimplifying the movie, because there's so much more here.

Despite its PG-13 rating, The Gate is rather disturbing. Two of the kids are kidnapped by demons, a dead dog is involved, and a parent's head explodes. At one point Al grabs her father's gun and fires it (!) at one of the monsters. Glen's friend Terry (Louis Tripp) comes back as a demon to bite our protagonist, who proceeds to poke out his eye with a Barbie doll's leg. There's no way this movie would get a PG-13 rating today!

Then there are the little demons themselves, who seem like every kid's nightmare. The director knew how to use "bigatures" to his advantage (a technique perfected in Lord of the Rings), giving the demons a disturbingly lifelike appearance since they're actually actors in suits on a larger backdrop. There are other great FX too, not the least of which is a zombie exploding into a swarm of little demons. And to the movie's credit, artwork seen early in the movie depicts the demon lord accurately - the stop-motion demon that shows up at the end is every bit as horrifying.

Although this is a kid's movie, The Gate pushes all the buttons kids are afraid of. The demons prevent the kids from calling their parents (shouting, "YOU'VE BEEN BAAAD!"). The dead dog shows up in the most frightening places. And long, clawed arms snake out underneath beds to grab at the unsuspecting. If this movie doesn't give kids nightmares, nothing will.

The movie is hopelessly mired in the eighties. The teens dressed with ridiculous big hairstyles. The next door neighbor Terry (Louis Tripp) learns how to repel the demons by playing his death metal record backwards. And the dialogue is hopeless: "Suck my nose until my head caves in," is Glen's taunt to one of Al's annoying friends.

But that's beside the point. This is a movie about a kid's love for his big sister and rockets, both of which help him overcome the forces of evil. With special effects ahead of its time, demons that are anything but cute, and a climax that is both terrifying and inspirational, The Gate is an entertaining piece of eighties horror history. After the hell poor Glen goes through, he deserves the sappy happy ending.

Cube 2 - Hypercube

Cube 2: Hypercube is actually a sequel to the highly successful if little known sci-fi exercise in hopeless existentialism, Cube. The premise is that a bunch of complete strangers wake up in a series of interconnected cubes. There are ladders and doors in all six panels of the room. Traps await the unwary, but the real danger is, as Sartre famously quoted in No Exit, "other people."

What made Cube more than two hours of torture was the mathematical puzzle that powered the environment. Because the cube was a three-dimensional environment, it came with certain rules that could be puzzled out. Hypercube adds a fourth dimension, time, and that changes the rules significantly.

The poor saps stuck in the cube this go round include: Rebecca Young (Greer Kent) who went missing into the Cube, Simon Grady (Geraint Wyn Davies) the private investigator hired to find her, Sasha the blind girl with a mysterious past (Grace Lynn Kung), Max Reisler (Matthew Ferguson) the gaming geek, Jerry Whitehall (Neil Crone) the architectural designer, Juila Sewell (Lindsey Connell) the hot attorney, the irritating Alzheimer's afflicted Mrs. Paley (Barbara Gordon), and finally Kate Filmore (Kari Matchett) a psychologist with a dark past and our protagonist.

Like the first movie, Hypercube dumps our mysterious characters right into the grand guignol. Unlike Cube, Hypercube explains how they got there. All of the characters have a past to an organization known as Izon. This nefarious organization doesn't take kindly to failure, and all our characters are flawed in some way. Without hope, our characters revert to their basest natures. For Max and Julia, it's lust. For Simon, it's violence. For Sasha and Kate, it's deception.

Unfortunately, there are long stretches of talking wherein Jerry explains how hypercubes (also known as a tesseract) work. Because it exists in more than three dimensions, just about anything is possible, including parallel realities. Which means there's no reasonable chance for our protagonists to escape, except for the distinct possibility that in another reality, they already DID escape. Once the parallel world concept is introduced, Hypercube really comes into its own. Remember, there's no food in the cube...

The special effects are minimal and the traps are less inventive than the first. Hypercube is more concerned about the possibilities of alternate dimensions than it is about killing people off, relying instead on the inevitable backstabbing. Although there is a tantalizing series of clues as to the true nature of the hypercube, it's a bit of a feint - figuring it out doesn't help the characters escape or give them much of an advantage. This is a refreshing twist for jaded moviegoers and a depressing downer for those who are looking for a satisfying conclusion.

To the director's credit, Hypercube is relentless in its cynicism. If Cube was existentialist, its sequel is nihilistic.

The Simpsons Movie

There's a predictable path to pop culture icons that start on television. The Simpsons went from animated shorts on the Tracy Ulllman show to their own series and finally, to this movie. All that's missing is the live-action version and the Broadway play.

With a PG-13 rating, there's an opportunity for the Simpsons to stretch their legs a bit and do naughty things they couldn't do on television, like nudity, language, violence - you know, all the fun stuff. But there's got to be more than that.

The Simpsons is a richly detailed universe with characters that actually evolve, from the passing of Flanders' wife to Apu's massive brood. These characters are what make the Simpsons so much fun; there are stereotypes that are a reflection of every aspect of American life. They're us. Fatter, dumber, louder, uglier...but they're us.

What does the Simpsons movie do? It drops a dome over the city of Springfield and then separates the Simpsons from the rest of the cast. The rest of the film then involves a villain never-before introduced, a random helpful character (a busty Eskimo lady), and a love-interest for Lisa that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot.

The plot involves the EPA and pollution. Which is odd, since Lisa, arguably the biggest opponent of pollution on the show, doesn't have much to say or do here. In fact, she's occupied with her love interest. Bart's supposedly having a crisis over Homer being a bad father (unbelievable, given that Homer's behavior borders the insane). And Marge reconsiders her marriage. For the eighth time.

For some reason, someone thought the idea of Homer becoming obsessed with a pig was funny. This in turn morphs into Homer turning the pig into "Spider-Pig." And that one-off joke, which at most gets a mild chuckle, turns into the tent pole supporting the Simpsons. It's in Homer's dream quest. It's in the DVD menu. I mean, seriously, the idea of Spider-Pig is cute the first time. But it's hardly movie material. In fact, after starting the chain of events that are the crux of the Simpsons movie, the stupid pig disappears entirely. Even the writers knew the pig was a dumb idea.

It's not that the Simpsons movie isn't funny. It's that it's extremely uninspired, given the fine pedigree of writers for the show. The mutant squirrel that becomes the symbol of Springfield's pollution best sums up the lack of inspiration. There already is a mascot of Springfield's solution: the three-eyed fish. The fact that the movie didn't use it shows just how underutilized the Springfield cast really is.

Stardust

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a movie called Stardust based on Master Gaiman's popular work. And so it was that the film came to pass, and it attempted to stay true to its roots, and in doing so was actually three tales combined.

THE FIRST TALE was about a randy young man named Dunstan Thorn (Nathaniel Parker) who escaped the town of Wall, which also happened to have a wall, and was thus the reason for its namesake. On the other side of the wall (or Wall, if you prefer) was a kingdom known as Stormhold. The very first person that Dunstan met there was a princess, who was captured by a witch. Having discovered that she was held captive, good Dunstan promptly did what any good adventurer would do; that is, to sully her virtue and not call her for nine months. Thus it was that a bundle of joy named Tristan (Charlie Cox) arrived at his doorstep.

But Tristan was as unwise in choosing love as his father was lax in returning for his lady friend, which, by all accounts, means the adventuresome Dunstan left the princess to languish for something in the order of twenty plus years. Anyway, Tristan promised to win the beautiful but decidedly unpleasant Victoria's (Sienna Miller) hand in marriage by retrieving a fallen star. Except said star turned out to be quite the hottie herself (Yvaine played by Claire Danes) rather than a glowing piece of plasma, which complicated matters as you can probably imagine.

THE SECOND TALE was about a ruthless king (Peter O'Toole) and his backstabbing seven sons. These seven were all as ruthless as their father, and when the king fell ill they merrily offed each other in devious ways, until only one was left. But alas, the princes all were cursed to roam the earth as ghosts, and really had nothing else to do but comment on the events happening in the movie, as if the audience needed to be told when there were funny bits. The inclusion of these princes was largely superfluous, as those who have read fairy tales, and those who have had fairy tales read to them, most certainly knew who would end up with the crown in the end.

It just so happened that any prince-who-would-be-king required an amulet, which was tied to a star. And that the king, on his deathbed, sent the amulet into space, which turned the star into a woman, and then brought her back down to earth, which led to quite a few jokes about being a star. All that glowing and such.

THE THIRD TALE was about witches and pirates, an unbeatable combination when the primary witch, Lamia, was played by Michelle Pfeiffer and the primary pirate, Captain Shakespeare, was played by Robert DeNiro. And yet it was odd in that Lamia, who became uglier and weaker with every spell she cast, cast an awful lot of them, often with wild abandon. And it was also odd that Captain Shakespeare, a flaming fey pirate if there ever was one, was also an awful combatant, as evidenced by his sound trouncing by one of the many princes in pursuit of the star. And it was most certainly odd that a talented actor like DeNiro would play a gay pirate so outlandishly foppish, complete with a lisp, that it should devolve into offensive parody instead of humor. But that's pirates for you.

And so it came to pass that Stardust, which ran far too long, was the rare film with more budget than it knew what to do with. And thus the special effects were amazing, the acting pretty good, the plot not so much, and the conclusion, while thrilling, a little trite. So the adventurous critic, only somewhat amused by Stardust, watched Princess Bride instead, which while not having nearly as much of a special effects budget, had twice the charm.

And he lived happily ever after.

Day Watch

A few things you need to know about Daywatch: it's a dark urban fantasy made by Russians, a sort of World of Darkness (if you're familiar with White Wolf's eponymous game line) or, if you prefer, Underworld. In this version of urban fantasy, which now seems to be its very own genre, every Halloween-type critter coexists: ghosts, vampires, werewolves all live in unhappy harmony just outside human perception.

There are two factions at work: the Daywatch, the dark-type bad guys who lurk in the night, and the Nightwatch, the beings of light who watch over the evil that supernatural monsters do. The two sides have made a truce of sorts to keep the other in balance and avoid all-out war. Each side has its own Chosen One, and if these two Chosen Ones happen to fight, it will be the end of the world. Our hero, Anton Gorodetsk (Konstantin Khabensky) just happens to be the connection between the two: his girlfriend and partner, Svetlana, in the Nightwatch team and his son, Yegor, who is corrupted by the Daywatch gang led by Zevulon. The two forces threaten to tear Anton apart. Literally - at one point, Yegor and Svetlana pull on Anton's arms as the building splits apart beneath him.

The first mistake I made was assuming that I could watch Daywatch without watching Nightwatch. I didn't read the book. I have no idea if Nightwatch established more information about the characters, but I hope so, because I was very confused by the end of the film.

The second mistake I made was my assumption that Russians always sitting around in grubby apartments drinking Vodka is a stereotype. Either the director (Zuberbuehler) was intentionally pandering to the stereotype or that's how it really is there. Whatever the case: there's a lot of smoking, a lot of drinking, and a lot of partying in Daywatch.

What's so refreshing about Daywatch is the complete disregard for American film tropes. It reminded me a lot of Brotherhood of the Wolf, wherein a director takes his vision and sculpts it without kowtowing to the "way movies are supposed to be." Special effects are used on things no American director would even bother with: there's a thrilling scene where a car drives up a building that seemingly exists for the sole purpose of showing off how cool the driver is. At various times Daywatch is beautiful and grotesque, frenetic and achingly slow, overdramatic and subtle. The film starts, stops, and starts again with little regard to whether or not the viewer can keep up.

The subtitles deserve their own mention: this is the first film I've ever seen that animated the subtitles themselves, so that they do neat things to emphasize what's happening on screen: fading away, appearing in front of and behind objects, appearing in a particular order, and turning from red to white and back again.

Nothing's what you'd expect in Daywatch. For all the shapeshifters and vampires, there's just one shape shifting parrot (?!) and no neck biting at all. Baba Yaga is accompanied by a coterie of dolls mounted on spider bodies. There's some business with magic chalk. There's time travel. There's a whole sequence involving body- and gender-swapping. And the world nearly ends through the use of a really deadly yo-yo. No, really.

It's difficult to discern what the rules are that governs the supposed catastrophic war. Perhaps in the same way Godzilla embodied fears about the atom bomb, Daywatch seems to be more concerned about the apocalyptic event when the two Chosen Ones meet than the war that ensues anyway - Daywatch and Nightwatch regularly clash, mobilize troops, and destroy large chunks of real estate. For two groups supposedly trying to avoid a war, they sure don't act like it. Maybe that's a statement on the Cold War itself.

Ratatouille

I love just about everything Pixar puts out. What's so refreshing about their approach is the male-centric perspective the movies bring, be it a single father searching for his son (Finding Nemo), a single male learning the responsibility of raising a child (Monsters, Inc.), or male bonding between friends (Toy Story). And then there's Ratatouille.

Our rat hero, Remy (Patton Oswalt), is a rat who wants to be a chef. Our human hero, Linguini (Lou Romano), is a garbage boy for the fine French restaurant Gusteau's with a mysterious past who just wants to get the girl (Colette, voiced by Jeanine Garofalo). These two eventually cross paths and struggle with the boundaries that separate man from rodent, the untalented from the prodigy. Remy strikes out on his own and gets a job (of sorts), distancing himself from his family and friends. Linguini struggles to impress Colette in the kitchen under the devious watch of Skinner (Ian Holm). Throughout we hear the mantra: "Anyone can cook!" as espoused by the ghostly "figment of Remy's imagination," August Gusteau (Brad Garrett).

Unlike the other Pixar movies that are tightly focused on a single core message and convey it beautifully, Ratatouille is all over the place. Will Remy convince his family that striking out on his own was a good idea? Will he make it as a rat turned chef? Can he keep up his façade as a puppet master of Linguini's cooking talent? Speaking of Linguini, what is his mysterious background all about? Will Linguini convince Colette of his love? Will Skinner figure out Linguini has no talent for cooking? And what IS Linguini's talent anyway? Will Skinner get away with his plans to sully the reputation of Gusteau's restaurant through blatant commercialization?

But that's not what Ratatouille is all about. It's actually about the crypt-like critic known as Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O'Toole with creaky menace). He is a bitter, unlikable skeleton of a man, thin where Gusteau was fat. Ego doesn't like food; he claims that he loves it, and if he doesn't love it, "I don't SWALLOW." Somewhere in the course of Ego's career as a food critic, he lost track of what makes life enjoyable. It's up to our dynamic duo to convince him otherwise.

So the message isn't actually about whether or not anyone can cook. It's about remembering what matters about food: not the taste so much as the feelings and memories associated with it. Unfortunately, that message is muddled by all the other questions laid out in the film.

As a result of all the other plotlines, some of the characters become one-dimensional. The rats are more fleshed out than the humans. In fact, Linguini seems like such a doofus with no actual skill that it's hard to care about his plight or what Colette sees in him. It's implied that his true calling is as a roller-skating waiter, but that talent appears in the last few minutes of the film.

Ratatouille wraps up with Ego's epiphany, another human who isn't fleshed out nearly as much as his counterparts. The fairytale ending is a bit hard to swallow, but that probably depends on your opinion of rats in a kitchen. Overall, Ratatouille has a lot of heart but not a lot of art, and the film's lack of focus prevents it from becoming a true Pixar classic.

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.

Spider-Man 3

I still nurse a grudge against Joel Silverman for mucking up the Batman series by stuffing it with way too many villains in the belief that it somehow bolsters the franchise. And yet I understand: each supervillain means another toy, another lunchbox, another backpack that gets created. They are literally worth millions, and to justify the budgets of superhero movies, action figures and other returns add up.

But that's a cynical way of looking at it. What happened to just focusing on making a good movie?

Spider-Man 3, as you guessed, fell victim to the same problem. And that's a shame. At one point my wife turned to me and said, "you know, this movie isn't nearly as bad as everyone made it out to be." I agreed with her. It was the scene when Peter was talking to Aunt May about proposing to Mary Jane.

Fifteen minutes later, she changed her mind.

Raimi does an excellent job of taking the superhero foibles and following them to their logical conclusion. In a lot of ways, it's not unlike being a famous actor. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) learns that just because he's Spider-Man doesn't mean he can kiss girls in public while hanging upside from a web, ESPECIALLY if she's a hottie (the delectable Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy). When things are looking great for Parker, Mary Jane Watson's (Kirsten Dunst, seeming a bit deflated in this film) career is tanking. Sounds familiar, like something you'd read in a tabloid...

Raimi and his cast handle all of these issues with grace. And I don't mean Topher Grace, who plays Eddie Brock and later Venom. There are no less than three villains in this film, one being Sandman (Thomas Haden Church playing Flint Marko, and he nails the look), the other being Venom the alien parasite. And we can't forget Harry Osborn (James Franco) as the new Goblin. At various points in the film, it feels like bad guys just get thrown at Parker while he's driving down the street.

Mind you, the special effects are amazing. This is the first true, knockdown, drag out superhero battle that pulls no punches. Between Goblin's aerial antics, Sandman's shapeshifting, and the amazing acrobatics of Spider-Man, this movie is so action packed with amazing feats of strength and agility that it's hard to look away.

There's a convoluted connection to Marko that at least explains why he's in the film. But Venom is another story. He literally drops out of the sky, sneaks into Parker's room, and then takes him over. The concept of Venom is already ludicrous to begin with: an alien parasite that bonds with people but mimics Spider-Man's powers during the Secret Wars on Battleworld, placed there by a being known as the Beyonder. Hey, it was the 80s, give Marvel a break.

A lot of the back-story is jettisoned in exchange for...no back-story at all. The parasite just shows up in an asteroid. It bonds with Spider-Man's suit. It turns him evil. For no reason.

Other stuff like this happens. At one point, Osborn threatens Mary Jane, forcing her to break it off with Peter or he'll kill him. And she does. When Spider-Man defeats Goblin (and, near as I can tell, killed him), nothing further is mentioned. Doesn't Mary Jane want to explain what she did and why? How come the police weren't called, when the first near-death experience with Goblin ends up (realistically) in an emergency room? Don't even get me started on the amnesia that strikes Osborn at a convenient moment...

And so it goes. Sandman is practically invincible, so fights with him are pointless. We get an interesting back-story about his drive to save his daughter from illness, but then the film does nothing with it. And since Sandman can fly (news to me), he's like a ghost. You can't beat him. Which makes one wonder...why fight Spider-Man at all? And certainly, why would a powerful immortal-level being like Sandman team up with Venom, a crazy alien nutjob?

We don't get our answers. Spider-Man has an overarching theme of forgiveness, but I found it difficult to forgive the obvious cramming of too many ideas. I suspect this is the installment where principal actors bow out. I can't blame them.

Mel Gibson's Apocalypto

My father saw Apocalypto, bought the movie, and demanded I watch it. So on Christmas Eve, my brother, my father, and I gathered around to watch a heartwarming family movie about human sacrifice.

I knew a lot more about Aztec and Mayan culture than my relatives, so much of what happened (or was about to happen) took on special significance for me. When Jaguar Paw's (Rudy Youngblood) tribe is attacked by the Aztecs and carried off instead of killed, we know it's not to live a life of slaves. It's something much worse.

Jaguar Paw's pregnant wife and young child manage to evade capture by lowering themselves into a well, but they're trapped there. If it rains, they drown. If the Aztecs find them, they're sacrificed. And thus we have a race against time, as Jaguar Paw must both escape captivity and pursuit, all in an effort to save his young family from certain doom.

Apocalypto encompasses everything you ever wanted to know about Aztecs. It's all here: black panthers, Aztec martial prowess, steaming jungles, ziggurats, and a twist ending that ties it all neatly in a historical bow. If the movie wasn't so violent, high school teachers every would be showing this movie as a snapshot of history.

The violence is actually not that bad. A scene where an Aztec is mauled by a panther is more graphic than the heart sacrifices performed atop the grisly temples. Much more exciting are the thrilling chase and combat sequences, some of the best on foot.

Given that this is a film about a time before modern convention, it's amazing how Gibson fits in movie conventions usually associated with car chases. There are twists in Jaguar Paw's escape and his hunt by the Aztecs that are worthy of any action movie.

Did I mention that this entire movie is subtitled? The movie's so enthralling that you stop noticing it a few seconds in. Apocalypto's that good. Sure, it's a blood-drenched action thriller in another language. But what did you expect from Mel Gibson?

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.

Borat - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

By the time I finally saw Borat, every detail of the movie had been reported in detail in the media. Part of Borat's hilarity is that it matches our hunger for reality-show type interaction with candid camera type events and in doing so, exposes the bigotry of its unwitting cast.

The plot is almost beside the point, so I won't go over it in detail here. Suffice it to say that Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen) is a journalist new to America from Kazakhstan, making a film with his producer Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian). They film every experience, from Borat singing a national anthem at a rodeo to Borat hitching a ride with drunk frat boys, Borat running naked in a hotel to Borat attending classes on social etiquette.

Contrary to what the many lawsuits that arose from this film, most of the American citizens compose themselves admirably. Sure, there's the occasional bigoted jerk, but said jerks are easy to spot. If you're shocked about a gun shop owner not blinking when Borat asks for a "gun to kill a Jew" then you haven't been to a gun shop.

And perhaps that's part of the humor. Borat visits places we know exist in America but haven't been there ourselves, and it shows the worst and best we have to offer in typical American fashion...by pointing a camera at it.

But I don't buy it.

One of the key elements of a magician's art is deception. The magician will tell you he has nothing up his sleeve, but he most certainly does. People picked from the audience who supposedly don't know the magician are actually trained plants. In short, magicians lie and we believe them because we want to.

Similarly, Cohen's crafted a charade that this is all raw footage, and yet there's the omnipresent camera with its boom microphone and glaring lights. It's clear that the subjects, if they aren't in on the joke, are certainly pandering to the camera. Until we invent floating invisible cameras or simply violate peoples' rights to make good television, this will always be the case.

Borat is rude, crude, and hilarious. But the amount of navel-gazing it created on behalf of the nation due to its supposedly candid look at America is unwarranted. In the tradition of our reality TV culture, Borat is as authentic as...well, reality TV shows.

Pathfinder

A long time ago, a Columbus scholar came to my undergrad college to continue a debate about the significance of Columbus' discovery of America. I, being the snarky student that I was, asked a question around the Viking discovery of America: why didn't the Vikings mention battles with the skraelings (the Viking name for American Indians) more?

The professor's response: "They came from fish and ice and when they got to North America, it was more fish and ice. The skraelings were more of a nuisance than anything."

I always thought the notion of battles between Vikings and Native Americans would make a good movie. Sure enough, along comes Pathfinder about precisely that.

Almost.

Of course, Hollywood had to go and muck up the idea. So instead of the plot really being about a Native American warrior fighting Vikings, it's about a Viking (read: a white guy) raised by the natives. Instead of portraying the Native American warriors as worthy opponents, they're cast as complete morons incapable of detecting a simple pit trap constructed by our protagonist. Instead of crafting a compelling tale about a clash between two very different cultures, Pathfinder turns into every Hollywood cliché imaginable, from a lone warrior leading his enemies onto thin ice to skiing down a mountain slope on a shield.

Pathfinder is far more interested with its cinematography. The movie is shot like scenes from a Frank Frazetta painting, with faceless horned warriors and rippling muscles wielding wicked-looking axes and flails overhead. Great stuff for paintings, not so great for a movie.

300 did all of this, from the digitally inserted blood to the culture clash, heroic speeches to demonized villains, only better. By the time stock footage of an avalanche appeared on screen, my hopes for Pathfinder were dashed along with the Vikings on the rocks.

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.

Meet the Fockers

Meet the Parents is one of those Ben Stiller vehicles that's so slapstick in its hilarity that it can actually make you feel uncomfortable. It's funny, but it's almost disturbingly funny, such that if you make the mistake of imagining yourself in Greg "Gaylord" Focker's (Ben Stiller) shoes, you want to hide under your seat.

Meet the Fockers takes the conceit of the original movie one step further. Greg's already met his fiancée's (Pam Byrnes, played by Teri Polo) family, including Pam's pleasant mother Dina (Blythe Danner), her nephew Jack (Spencer and Bradley Pickren), and her domineering father Jack (Robert De Niro). It's now time for that momentous meeting that all engaged couples dread: the family meeting. It's time, finally, to meet the parents who named their son Gaylord Focker.

Thus begins a road trip down to Florida to meet Greg's parents, played hippie pitch-perfect by Barbara Streisand as Rozalin (a special kind of therapist for older couples who want to be more intimate) and Dustin Hoffman as Bernie, the over-supportive, super-pal of a dad. Mix the Byrnes with the Fockers and stir.

The additional twist is Little Jack, representing a flashpoint of parenting debate. Jack's childrearing is strict and disciplinarian one hand (the Byrnes hand, if you couldn't guess) and the free-love, do-it-if-it-feels-good empowerment of the Fockers.

Streisand and Hoffman are the real treat here. Their parental struggles and angst, or lack thereof, are what make the film. If you're a fan of either, you won't be disappointed.

If you are recently married or have a kid, the movie's struggle over childrearing is a very funny debate indeed. If you don't, then Meet the Fockers is probably only mildly amusing. Since my son was born the same month I saw his movie, it had particular comedic resonance, and my parents (who are definitely Focker-types) and my wife laughed all the way through.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters

If you're a fan of Aqua Teen Hunger Force (ATHF), you have very low expectations of the show. ATHF involves three symbols of fast food: the insane Master Shake (Dana Snyder), the lovably moronic Meatwad (Dave Willis), and the super-intelligent Frylock (Carey Means). They are exactly what they sound like: walking (sometimes floating), talking shakes, piles of meat, and boxes of fries. This is not an ironic fact lost on the producers; at various times, other people who encounter the Hunger Force (like Carl, the shut-in voiced by Dennis Franz) comment on the strangeness of these bizarre alien beings who happen to act like teenagers.

There are other beings who happen to harass our protagonists, including spiky aliens, aliens that look like they came from an Atari 2600 video game, and aliens that might be time traveling robot turkeys. But that's largely irrelevant, because ATHF isn't so much a universe as it is performance art, with the topic of the night playing out to its inevitable conclusion. In the vein of much British humor, plotlines and continuity are irrelevant. Characters argue with each other, fight with each other, and even kill each other. Sometimes, Frylock gets tired of his idiot roommates and just leaves. Sometimes, Master Shake's insanely far-fetched plans destroy the world. And sometimes, Meatwad kills Master Shake.

ATHF, unburdened by any real anchors to reality, is thus free to explore whatever, whenever, and wherever, the plot meandering to some illogical conclusion, often played for laughs but sometimes just to torture a particular character to death. 15 minutes of this is hilarious, and it's pretty obvious that ATHF is meant to be watched by college kids with short attention spans. And adults like me who have 15 minutes before going to work.

So why make a movie? Or to be more precise, why make a movie titled Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters?

The dodge is that it reveals the origins of the ATHF, but that's silly. For one, ATHF's comedic value is precisely in the complete and utter lack of explanation as to why fast food is living in New Jersey. For another, ATHF is about conflict between various characters for no good reason other than to dance for our entertainment. And that's precisely what the movie does, although it wears a little thin after the prerequisite 15 minutes normally allocated to the television show.

Explaining the plot of the movie is pointless, because it's not meant to be explained. It involves a talking watermelon, a mad scientist, Bruce Campbell voicing a chicken McNugget (of course), Space Ghost, the reincarnated soul of MC Pee Pants, the CIA, jazzercising giant robots that poop little jazzercising robots, and Abraham Lincoln's time travel shenanigans. Aren't you sorry you asked?

Your perception of all this is really dependent on your perception of the show. It won't turn you into a fan. In fact, the entire intro is a joke on those "let's go out to the movies" dancing food characters, with various angry incarnations of movie junk food screaming to thrash metal, "You came here. Watch it. Don't like it? Walk out."

I didn't walk out. If you're a fan of ATHF, you won't either.

Transformers

Michael Bay's reputation for non-stop action flicks that involve multiple explosions has given me pause in the past. I mean, too many high concept films have been ruined by this sort of lowest common denominator pandering, and when Transformers came out...

Wait a minute, what am I saying? Non-stop action flick? Check. Multiple explosions? Check! Big budget special effects? CHECK. Peter Cullen, the original voice actor of Optimus Prime in the cartoon series, playing Optimus Prime in the movie? OMG I AM SO THERE!!1!1!

Sorry, sorry, I reverted to my inner twelve-year-old. Screw high concept films, I wanna see giant robots beating the mechanical crap out of each other! I wanna see the military firing bazookas at said giant robots and then running in terror! I wanna see giant robots transform in all their mechanical, impossible glory and I wanna see them duke it out in the middle of a crowded street!

Transformers delivers like you wouldn't believe. What I didn't expect is how patriotic the film is. It's essentially a war movie, filmed with realistic shaky-cam effects from puny human point of view. It's like that first scene in Spielberg's War of the Worlds, when the tripods pop up out of the city street, only that's the whole movie. It's like the promise that Independence Day was going to be a blockbuster, patriotic movie, only Transformers actually delivers on that promise and doesn't make you feel like an idiot for getting a little misty when our troops fight back against all odds.

Or maybe that was just me.

Anyway, if you love Transformers, it's all here: the Allspark cube (I think it was called the Energon cube or something in the cartoon), Optimus Prime, Jazz, Bumblebee (not a VW Bug, but there's a reason for that), Megatron, Starscream, and a bunch of other Transformers nobody cares about. Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) is here, Scorponok is here...there's so much here that my head threatens to explode from the Transformerery goodness of it all. It's Transformers, written for fans who remember the series, with a deadly serious take on an invasion of giant transforming robots.

But of course, all this must be rationalized for modern audiences. So Megatron takes the place of Roswell, and true to conspiracy theories, a shadowy agency (Sector 7, instead of Majestic 12) led by President Hoover keeps Megatron locked up. And just like in conspiracy theories, all of our futuristic technology is derived from captured Decepticon technology. The Transformers project holograms of pilots and drivers to fool humans, and they've been among us for awhile, watching, waiting, for the right moment to retrieve the doohickey from the government and turn EVERYTHING into a Transformer. It's robotic terrorism at its finest!

Throughout, Transformers finds plenty of humor with the foibles of the humans the Autobots are assigned to protect. Be it the awkward dance between Sam and the lust of his life (Megan Fox), a hacker (Anthony Anderson) and his smoking hot Australian NSA gal pal (Rachael Taylor), or a military team struggling to survive in the desert (led by Josh Duhamel), Transformers is more than just giant robots and special effects. It's giant robots, special effects, and really hot chicks. This movie is rated PG-13 and aimed for those who remember when they were thirteen.

Transformers wants you to really, really like it. Some of the scenes, noticeably the "thing" (that's a lot like John Carpenter's The Thing) that I presume was Shockwave, are a little over the top. But then I remembered that this is a movie about giant transforming flying robots from outer space, and promptly gained some perspective.

From its breathtaking shots of desert combat, reverent scenes of our military in action, to an entire shootout on Air Force One, Transformers is truly a movie made for modern audiences. And it was a perfect film to watch on Fourth of July.

School of Rock

School of Rock is one of those films that's tailor-made for the comedian performing in it. This has become all the rage since Robin Williams played the Genie in Aladdin, Jim Carey in The Mask, or Will Ferrell in Elf. These sorts of films play to the comedian's strengths and minimize their weaknesses, and when they get it right, it's movie magic.

And so Black gets his moment in School of Rock. Black's been playing the overweight guy pining for the good old days of rock like geeks pine over the original Star Trek series, with pop-eyed enthusiasm far outweighing the energy that most people muster for just about anything. Black is truly the uber-music geek and the title is well earned through a film history of Black essentially playing the same guy: Bio-Dome (as Tenacious D), High Fidelity (as Barry), Shallow Hal (as Hal), and of course Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. In short, if there's going to be a film about kids learning about the pedigree of rock and roll, Black would be the guy who wrote, directed, and acted in it.

What's surprising is that this movie ISN'T Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. As a music geek, Black's tastes for music could easily alienate much of the audience. School of Rock isn't just about rock; it's about music appreciation, the lack of attention paid to kids in school, teacher malaise, and a society that no longer fights the Man. Or to put it another way, this is a movie made for the mainstream.

Which is what makes it so much fun. Our slacker hero, Dewey Finn (Jack Black), has been crashing at his substitute teacher friend's house (Ned, played by Mike White). When Ned's girlfriend (the lovely Sarah Silverman, playing a decidedly unfunny role) pushes for Dewey's ouster, the slob has to get a job. And so he does, by impersonating Ned at a private school for upper class kids. It's not long before Dewey throws out the curriculum and teaches the kids his own brand of history: good old, wholesome rock and roll.

School of Rock spends a lot of time struggling to justify the madness: the kids soundproof the room, teachers occasionally think they hear something, the uptight principal springs surprise visits (played by the delightfully naughty Joan Cusack), and parents start to get worried. Just about none of it is believable, most specifically when Dewey is finally caught by the police and ends up dashing down the hallway, two guitars in hand, without any further consequences.

But that's beside the point. Who cares if School of Rock bends the laws of time and space to allow Dewey's one chance in the sun, not as a rock star but as the aging patriarch of a band of insanely talented pre-teens? We came to see a rock show, and we get it.

Black flops around, he sweats, he tosses his head with manic glee, but most of all he passionately TEACHES. He teaches a large girl that her weight doesn't matter, teaches the geek that he should ignore the kids who make fun of him, teaches the brat some discipline, and encourages the brilliance of the lead queen bee to use her powers for good instead of evil. He makes a difference with the kids by bringing what he knows best to the room; not school learning, but plain old-fashioned street smarts. Dewey's, and by extension Black's, sheer enthusiasm makes up for his rough edges.

If only teachers were this enthusiastic about anything these days!

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.

Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End

There's a gesture I make in films that my wife knows well. It starts out with me slouching in my seat. As I get progressively aggravated with the movie, I sink lower and lower. And then finally, if the film really aggravates me, I drop my head on my wife's shoulder. The last time I did this was during the third Batman movie.

I thought a child being hung was a pretty disturbing tone way to start the movie, but then, he's a pirate and he's beginning "the song." Apparently the song is somehow significant to pirate lore. What the mournful song has to do with anything, I have no idea. It's not a big deal though, because World's End is so stuffed with ideas that the weird song concept is quickly dropped.

We then careen to a scene in an Asian bathhouse, where our heroes attempt to negotiate with Captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat). They need a boat, you see, to rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from Davey Jones' Locker, the equivalent of pirate hell.

This is a bit odd, since one character has already been brought back from the dead: the dread pirate Barbossa (played by the inimitable Geoffrey Rush). Why is Barbossa easy to return through the voodoo magic of Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) and not Jack? 'Cause "Jack's spirit was taken, you just died," she explains.

I guess being eaten by a kraken will do that to you. Speaking of the archvillain of the second movie, the poor thing is found dead in the middle of World's End, washed upon a beach. Unfortunately Verbinski doesn't show that merciless discipline to the rest of his characters.

If there's one overarching flaw in World's End, it's that there are too many characters. It's like watching an entire season of Lost over the span of two hours. There are so many plot points, so many entertaining leads, so many good (and not so good) actors, that the film is stuffed to the brim until it all becomes a soupy mess. Villains from the first movie has become good guys, good guys from the second movie have become bad guys, bad guys change allegiances, good guys betray each other, and after awhile you give up and wait for the big battles to arrive.

Only they don't. The huge armada battle between the English navy and a fleet of pirate ships never really happens. Instead, we get the equivalent of naval grandstanding, with single ships battling it out over a whirlpool while the others look on (the movie equivalent of ninjas hopping around in the background while they are dispatched one at a time by the hero). It struck me that World's End long decided that "normal" ship-to-ship battles are boring, and thus need to be utterly ridiculous to be entertaining.

And they are entertaining, to a point. There's just too much to do and too many plots to follow. Jack Sparrow is superfluous, which is a crying shame. His most entertaining moments are when he's having a nervous breakdown, talking to good and bad (or, depending on your perspective, bad and bad) versions of himself. Or shouting at a crew populated by his doppelgangers. Or arguing with a skeletal version of himself that "loses its brain." No, really.

Will Wil Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) ever get together? There were some misunderstandings in the second film that could arguably drive a wedge between them, but that wedge was named Jack. With him out of the picture, it takes much too long for the two to reconcile their differences. Fortunately, their reconciliation (a wedding performed by Barbosa in the middle of a shipside battle) is probably the best moment in the film.

Speaking of Barbosa, there's not just too many plots, there's too many captains. The Brethren Council, a council of nine pirates who each possess a Piece of Eight (Why not eight?) to free the sea goddess Calypso seems to have been made up on the spot. In about two minutes, Swann ascends to Pirate King, thus nullifying the whole purpose of the Council. At some point, Keith Richards shows up as a really scary pirate that tells everyone what to do. These pirates seem to have more ranks and nobility than the English!

By the time Tia turns into Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, I leaned my head on my wife's shoulder.

World's End doesn't give us happy endings. It doesn't wrap up Jack's story. And it shamelessly dangles yet another sequel to a series that's not sure what it wants to be when it grows up. Verbinski obviously is having fun at our expense, as evidenced by the audio playing from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, playing over Jacks' arrival to Davey Jones' Locker.

World's End is a wild ride. But I'd rather pay to see it at Disneyland than in the theater.

Shrek the Third

Shrek, like Harry Potter, is one of those entertainment vehicles that transcended the gap between target marketing groups. Harry Potter is appealing to both kids and adults, making it a huge hit. It's a difficult balancing act that is threatened by its own popularity...it's very possible for a name or product to be a victim of its own success, thereby turning off future readers/viewers.

Shrek's hit that point with Shrek the Third.

For kids, Shrek was fun to watch. The characters are either cuddly or blubbery, but never really mean (even the dragon's kind of cute). Shrek himself, supposedly a horrible ogre, looks like a green pile of Playdoh. He's not all that threatening, and he's not supposed to be. And since Shrek is gross, he's got a certain prepubescent boy appeal.

For adults, Shrek was packed with twists on old fairytales, winking nods to familiar voice actors in unfamiliar roles (I'm apparently the only one who got some of the Eddie Murphy jokes in the second Shrek film), and plenty of riffs on movies. Keeping a film amusing for the little ones without aggravating adults, or amusing for the adults without boring the kids, is high art. The path is littered with the corpses of movies who couldn't balance it well (see Chicken Little).

By the time we reach Shrek the Third, the producers had to figure out which he wanted to do: make a movie that's filled with more riffs on fairytales, or actually treat Shrek as a real personality who grows and develops. Shrek 2 managed this amazing feat by shifting locales: Shrek went to the equivalent of Hollywood, fertile ground for humorous allegories and wisecracks. He was also getting to know his in-laws, and certainly all the adults in the audience could appreciate the hilarity that inevitably ensued as two very different groups of people tired to get along.

So Shrek the Third tackles next logical step of having a baby.

The lovable cast of ridiculous misfit fairytale characters is barely in evidence. Taking up the task of mocking fairytale tropes are fairytale villains. Sort of. We've got the Evil Queen from Snow White, Hook from Peter Pan, some dwarves, the Headless Horseman, and a lot of evil trees. I don't know about you, but I don't think of evil trees when I think of fairytale villains. And oh yeah, for some reason one of the bad guys is a cyclops. Can't forget the cyclopes. They couldn't come up with more recognizable fairytale villains? THIS is the most hilarious it gets?

In the middle of this villainous rebellion, led by Prince Charming, Shrek goes off on a quest to find an heir to the king. The heir's a punk named Arthur (as in, King). Only he lives in a fairytale version of high school. Which would be really funny, if Shrek actually stayed there. High school jokes were a potential for comedy goldmine, like the Hollywood jokes. But alas, it's not to be. Shrek leaves, with Donkey and Puss in tow.

Speaking of which, Donkey is now utterly extraneous. Puss is hilarious and entertaining, Donkey is barely relevant. With so many characters, it's getting crowded in the Shrekiverse. And me being a cat owner has nothing to do with my bias towards Puss, I'm sure.

The movie wraps up with a Grrl Power counterattack, and finally we see the Shrek we came to see. Watching all the fairy princesses gather together to use their unique powers to finally save themselves is great. The Snow White scene made the audience laugh. But the rest of the princesses are barely used, and we're once again back to Adultsville.

In the end, we get a nice little sermon about everyone getting along, about how we shouldn't marginalize people by making them out to be villains, and about Shrek accepting that he's finally going to be a dad. Ironically, my wife is six months pregnant, so this movie was a lot more relevant to me than I expected. Worries about being a good father? Check. Concerned that the kids will be too much to handle? Check. Not sure how domestic life will become part of your own manly personality? Check. Man, Shrek really was hilarious...I was laughing out loud at several parts!

Then I noticed I was the only one.

You see, there weren't that many dads in the audience. It was stuffed to the rafters with mothers and their children though. And those kids were squirming through much of the movie, because...because dad jokes are funny to dads and dads-to-be.

The movie ends with Shrek asking Fiona. "The kids are in bed...what do you want to do now?" That's a decidedly adult joke, but don't worry...they end up falling asleep instead.

Yep. Shrek seems a bit tired.

Deja Vu

I heard a lot of bad things about Déjà vu, with words tossed around like "contrived," "unbelievable," and "Jerry Bruckheimer." My parents, with their big screen television, forced me to sit down and watch the movie at 11 p.m., when I was ready to go to bed. But instead, I watched right to the end around 1 a.m. It's that good.

Déjà vu entails a terrorist attack by a really safe-kind of terrorist, the now almost-quaint homegrown American type who doesn't like America because...well, just because. Back when we didn't have enemies lurking around every corner, for a brief time America was its own worst enemy, and it's obvious Déjà vu was created from that era.

Our resident terrorist Carroll Oerstadt (Jim Caviezel, who once played a famous carpenter you might have heard of) decides to bomb a New Orleans ferry full of Navy sailors. The incident is no less horrific despite Oerstadt's unspecified reasons for the attack. Enter our hero, ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington), invited to join the investigation by FBI Agent Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer). Since Carlin can't seem to find his partner and has the expertise to "examine the data," it seems like a good idea.

The plot thickens when Doug discovers the body of Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton), who appears to have been murdered before the bomb went off. That's when the science fiction piece comes into play. The FBI team has a device that allows them to track four days in the past. Of course, Doug figures it out soon enough--they're not just viewing the past, they're actually experiencing the past. And if one can experience the past, then maybe one can travel there...

This little restriction (only four days in the past, no more, no less) is an important plot twist. It lends a sense of urgency to an otherwise difficult concept for a thriller. Déjà vu makes the time travel element easy to accept, because the tantalizing possibilities spiral from there: other plot paths tie together (what happened to Doug's partner?) and there's even an amazing car chase where Doug must race in the present to view where Carroll goes in the past. It has to be seen to be believed.

Summaries of this film make much of Doug falling in love with Claire. But it's a borderline stalker relationship, as Doug knows Claire primarily through his time traveling surveillance. Fortunately, Déjà vu doesn't overdo it; there's not even a major onscreen kiss (more like a peck on the lips). And that's just as it should be...the events are too action packed, the pacing too frenetic. Anything more would border on camp.

Because Déjà vu is always moving, the actors primarily stay out of the way and let the action roll. There are a few clever lines ("We held hands once."), a few bad script rewrites ("I need more cowbell"? Come on guys, stop trying to be so hip) and plenty of gravely serious meditations on the existential nature of the universe. But mostly it's about blowing things up.

Déjà vu is an awesomely entertaining thriller with enough action, enough science fiction, and just enough skin to keep everybody interested. Don't miss it...again.

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.

Superman Returns

In an era of Batman Begins, Sin City, Spiderman, and 300, it's easy to forget that there was a time when a movie based on a comic book wasn't a sure thing. For an example of a spectacular misfire, Spawn comes to mind; the movie was so obsessed with making the film look like a comic book that it actually FELT like you were watching a comic book, complete with isolated panels, minimal movement, and jarring transitions between scenes. One moment Spawn's threatening some guy and the next he's standing on some building with his really fabulous cloak whipping in the wind.

Similarly, Superman is a visually beautiful movie that has nowhere to go. The iconic scenes of Superman basking in the sun's rays, or hovering about the Earth listening for crime, or when he's actually doing something heroic (which happens far too infrequently) fail to cover up the complete lack of a coherent plot. For example:

Superman's been gone for years...one assumes that whatever he discovered on his long journey would have something to do with the plot. Nope.

Lex Luthor has discovered Superman's Fortress of Solitude and plans to create an entire continent out of a hybridized Kryptonite. Surely that means Superman won't even be able to get NEAR the place, right? Nope.

Once said "continent" shows up, it's clear that the whole thing is patently uninhabitable. This is Lex's big plan, to create a rock formation and play cards while he waits for...people to call him and offer him money or something? Surely he must have more up his sleeve? Nope.

Heck, the world's changed a lot since Superman's been gone, right? Wouldn't it make sense to really pound home how different Earth is, with it's global warming, crazy politics, and pop starlets? Nope. Instead, the crazy new world is supposed to be summed up with a kid taking a picture of Superman with his cell phone--that's right, the kid scooped the Daily Planet with just his camera phone! ISN'T THAT WACKY?

Superman Returns is very much a movie in love with the original and, while visually faithful, it's a very poor imitation. Yes, Brandon Routh looks like a spitting image of Christopher Reeves, but he has no real acting chops to display since he barely speaks. Kate Bosworth is far too young and whiny as Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington) still wears a bowtie for some reason, and the rest of the cast is too caught up in being iconic comic book characters to be memorable. Even the amazing Kevin Spacey can only be a marginally cartoonish Lex Luthor, jarringly transforming into a murderous thug at the movie's climax.

The pacing is all wrong. Superman saving Lois from a plane crash is great. Superman fighting criminals with belt-fed chain guns is excellent. Superman drowning, Superman moping, Superman frustrated over Lois Lane, Superman convalescing in a friggin' hospital? NOT GREAT.

Superman Returns has its moments, and if you squint your eyes it almost feels like the magic from the first movie has been captured. But then it's gone and the movie drags, and drags, and drags. Superman has been co-opted to be a Christ-like father-son parable and on the way Bryan Singer forgot what made the first Superman movie so great: it was FUN!

I could have made a better movie with my camera phone.

RV

I've read reviews of RV, and they uniformly panned the movie as piffle; humorous tripe that reinforced family values and light humor, wasting the talents of Robin Williams.

Give me a break.

See, the implication that the family road trip movie is somehow a form of high art is fallacious to begin with. Although my family (and my wife's family) venerates the National Lampoon vacation movies as the ultimate in comedy, the truth of the matter is it's all a string of silly gags and ridiculous foils. It takes real skill to play a perpetually optimistic patriarch in the face of modern indignities and family squabbles. If anything, the family road trip movie is really just a condensed version of half the sitcoms on television. And there's a reason those sitcoms are still around, even though the critics patiently explain over and over how dumb they are.

They're right. It IS dumb. But then, so is having to deal with the inanities of modern life. RV is merely an update of a long established tradition of pitting a man (Bob Munro played by Robin Williams), his hot wife (Cheryl Hines), his teenage daughter (Joanna Levesque) and pre-teen son (Josh Hutcherson) against the world and seeing who comes out on top. And we root for Bob all the way.

What makes RV so appealing is that it doesn't deviate at all from the formula but cleverly updates all the trials and tribulations. Bob's affection for his adorable daughter at two years old is sharply contrasted by her wisecracking personality as a teenager. How many parents stare at their kids and wonder what happened to the darling who never wanted to leave their side? Bob's career hinges on finishing a presentation, and much of the movie is taken up with his personal struggle to find a signal for his Blackberry. Road warriors feel his pain. And as an older, funnier man, Bob constantly has to watch his back as younger, inexperienced climbers try to steal the spotlight.

In short, the Monroe struggles are the new struggles of the middle class. Sure, Clark Griswold didn't have these problems, but then the National Lampoon movies were made decades ago. RV brings it all up to date with one difference: unlike Cousin Eddie and his brood, the country folk are actually the wiser and more decent family. We could learn a lot from their home values, preaches Brother Sonnenfeld. Maybe he's right.

When RV was playing at my parents' house, we were waiting for my brother to join us to watch a DVD. Instead, we watched (and laughed at) RV all the way through.

300

I have tremendous respect for Frank Miller, having been exposed to his reimagining of Batman at an early age. Miller infused Batman with mature dignity, heavy with grief over what he was doing but doing it anyway. No wonder, then, that the tale of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae appealed to him enough to create a graphic novel.

I've heard that comics were originally movie story boards that someone decided to sell, so it's no wonder that, when the director has respect for Miller's material (as Robert Rodriguez did with Sin City), the end result is nothing short of breathtaking. But there's a lot of ego and a lot of money in Hollywood, and it takes a clear-minded director to subsume his own inclinations and stay true to Miller's material. Zack Snyder follows in Rodriguez's footsteps and the end result...

Well the end result was a theater packed with kids, who, five minutes into the film, become utterly silent.

The movie's plot is somewhat beside the point. 300's really an experience, not a movie. It's everything cool about Gladiator's war against the barbarian tribes, everything amazing about Achilles' fighting style and six-pack abs in Troy, all the special effects of Clash of the Titans brought up to date for the modern age, everything terrifying about the villain from Stargate, and a whole heap of the Lord of the Rings' saber rattling wrapped up into one glorious, bloody fight to the death.

Squeamish about gore? This movie is not for you. 300 doesn't just show you death, it rolls around in it and makes it beautiful. Limbs, heads, entrails...all of it spatters and smears on screen.

Don't like violence? This movie is not for you. 300 kills and kills and kills, and when the bodies are heaped so high that you can make a wall out of them, it kills everybody else too.

Machismo annoys you? This movie is not for you. Men joke as they skewer their helpless enemies, make fun of Athenian "boy lovers," and keep a running murder tally for who can rack up the most kills. Gimli and Legolas would be jealous.

Want to be politically correct? This movie is not for you. 300 is a retelling of a Greek war from the perspective of the Greeks. Persians are the enemy, and they are demonized in every way imaginable, both figuratively (the Immortals wear demonic masks) and literally (yep, that's a goat-headed monster playing the flute).

300 is about a leader and his 299 best friends standing to the last to do what's right, to bow to no man when every logic dictates otherwise, to die for king and yes, country because history will remember you as a hero. Back when we remembered what heroes were. And you find yourself cheering, because this is how many men secretly wish they could die...not in a hospital, not walking across the street, but with a sword in their hand and piles of enemies at their feet.

I loved the movie. My brother loved the movie. My sister-in-law loved the movie. My pregnant wife loved the movie too.

And the other 296 kids in the audience? They gave it a standing ovation.

Primer

TRESCA-PRIME: Primer is a no-frills science fiction film that details a realistic portrayal of time travel. Like Donnie Darko, it examines what happens when humans discover they can influence time...and then just how little control they really have over it. Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan) struggle to create a magnetic invention in their garage, only to stumble upon time travel. And once Pandora's Box is opened, there's no going back. In no time (pun intended), they're sending themselves into the past. This leads to a perpetual struggle to avoid paradoxes that most time travel stories don't consider. When duplicate cell phones are in the same time stream, which one rings first? Can you really avoid changing the outcome of reality simply by avoiding your prime self? And who is really the "first" prime anyway? The film explores all these possibilities, which makes it an interesting "what-if" scenario that exponentially spins more and more questions. That said, I have to admit that my first viewing of Primer wasn't all that favorable. The dialogue sounds like it came out of Clerks, the film is often grainy and choppy, and there's almost no action whatsoever throughout the script. Perhaps my future selves will have a different opinion.

TRESCA-2: On second viewing, the term "Primer" takes on new meaning. Primer can mean an introductory textbook, and indeed we discover that Aaron was providing a guideline for future events to his Prime self--in other words, a textbook of sorts as to how to relive his life again without causing a paradox. Primer can also mean white paint, used coat something for the first time. As Aaron discovers he can go back in time, he begins to whitewash events, making himself look like a hero and giving himself the best possible outcomes. But are these changes merely cosmetic, like paint? Finally, there's the notion of Primer as an explosive, setting off a disastrous chain of events. And the end of the film leaves us with the certainty that something very bad is about to happen.

TRESCA-4: Another alternative my former selves hadn't thought of was Primer as being first and primary. Once Aaron discovers the ability to create multiple versions of himself, he becomes increasingly obsessed with controlling them. And of course, each Aaron in the past feels exactly the same way. So how do you become the prime? How do you become the person who is control of your own destiny? How do you become your own God? Aaron and Abe (Abraham) are Biblical names and their inclusion is certainly not an accident.

TRESCA-8: Seeing the movie again really makes you appreciate exactly how much work went into crafting Primer. Dialogue and scenes that seem odd and disjointed make perfect sense when you realize it's the time doubles tweaking the timeline. The more duplicates that get involved, the more the film becomes fuzzy and unfocused, a sometimes annoying but important visual cue. And always there is the suspicion that something is off, from the "rats in the attic" to Abe waking up laying face down on the floor, to the fact that Aaron doesn't want to "talk to those kids who hang out" with Abe. Why? Multiple viewings tie it together.

TRESCA-16: Primer is probably one of the most realistic portrayals of time travel science in recent memory, but that doesn't necessarily make it an engaging film. Primer strains our patience. Most of the time, the characters stand around chatting with each other from innovative camera angles. The climactic moment, a scene where an ex-boyfriend shows up with a shotgun at a party, is never even shown. And the grainy footage, the monotone dialogue, the talking-over-each-other style of acting, all make the film seem more like a reality show than a movie. It doesn't have the slick sensibilities of Donnie Darko or the neatly wrapped storyline of Groundhog Day. And yet, the nihilistic outcome of the film is too powerful to ignore, sticking with you through multiple future viewings.

In short, Primer is both a fantastic piece of thoughtful science fiction and a challenging viewing experience. By all means watch it. You owe it to your future selves.

Aeon Flux

Ever since I saw Peter Chung's creation mow down piles of enemies with her two Uzis, a leather S&M get up, and little else, I fell in love. Aeon Flux was bizarre, action-packed, and short on words (actually, almost none at all when she first debuted on Liquid T.V.). I watched it over and over, I drew Aeon multiple times until I got her right, and the breakneck pace that was established in the film still affects my writing to this day.

So it was with no small trepidation that I approached the Aeon Flux movie. How could they possibly do justice to a bizarre series that was as much a style as it was a cartoon, alternately ugly and sleekly beautiful all at the same time?

Taking place in 2415, Aeon (Charlize Theron sporting a brunette `do) is an agent of the Monicans. The Monicans wage a secret war against Trevor Goodchild (Martin Csokas), a well-meaning despot who struggles to keep the fragile city of Bregna together. The Earth has long since been devastated by a plague, and there are only five million survivors left in the city. And yet there's something rotten in the city of Bregna, for Trevor's brother Oren (Jonny Lee Miller) is about to stage a coup.

After her sister Una (Amelia Warner) is murdered, Aeon's out for revenge against the supposed despot. Assisting Aeon in her mission of revenge is Sithandra (Sophie Okonedo) who happens to have hands for feet. And yet when she finally faces her target, Aeon discovers there's something very familiar about Trevor that gives her pause.

Aeon Flux was directed by a woman (Karyn Kusama) and her sensibilities bring a refreshing touch to a genre that is all too muscular, boxy, and grim. Like The Fifth Element, Aeon Flux is an entry in a science fiction genre that avoids the standard futuristic tropes and injects new and bizarre technology into it. Body modification, as evidenced by Sithandra, is an accepted part of sciety. Technology is organic, ranging from killer grass to dart guns shaped like beehives, computers made of water to holograms formed of harp-like strings. All the Monican agents are linked by a telepathic connection that lets them visualize each other in a sort of World Wide Web of the mind. Fashion styles are reminiscent of French couture. A zeppelin computer that looms overhead has all the appearance of a monstrous jellyfish. Even the city looks like a giant carnation from above.

Aeon herself is played with deadly seriousness by Theron, who draws on her ballerina training to adopt a dancer's pose. Her martial arts is as much an art form as it is combat style, and the graceful leaps and jumps that the cartoon version effortlessly executed are much in evidence here; an amazing achievement, given that the original character's proportions barely conformed to reality.

So what's the problem? Critics lambasted the film, characterizing it as too complicated. It's difficult for me to agree with them, because fans of the show will know precisely what's going on...and yet the movie wasn't spoiled for me either. In fact, the biggest flaw of the film is the motive for Oren to "recycle" people in the city of Bregna. His "my way or else" proposition isn't really justified in the movie's narrative, such that we just have to trust that there's simply no room for compromise between the two ideologies battling it out on screen. But once you're past that hurdle, the film is as much eye-candy as it is an interesting post-apocalyptic entry into alternative sci-fi.

The backlash on this film is suspicious. Perhaps it was Theron's Oscar win. Perhaps it's simply that many critics don't like science fiction. Or perhaps it's that a truly feminist take on a science fiction world makes male reviewers uncomfortable. Whatever the case, sci-fi fans should definitely give Aeon Flux a chance.

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.

March of the Penguins

Babies die. Parents starve to death. And couples struggle to raise their children in a harsh world. This is March of the Penguins.

Penguins have been so personified as cartoon character stereotypes that they're nearly impossible to take seriously. Where they were once comedic inspiration (e.g., Chilly Willy) they have since morphed into too-cute-to-be-real creatures known for tap dancing and drinking bottles of cola. One viewing of March of the Penguins will dispel that perception very quickly.

March of the Penguins follows one of innumerable penguins on their journey to and from their breeding grounds. The challenge lies in the location of the ice floe. The penguins must lay their eggs in a place that is thick enough to not melt, and yet the terrain shrinks and grows, making the trip longer or shorter depending on the season. First the males, then the females, must protect the chicks against the elements, starvation and predators. Will they survive?

Some inevitably do not. This is not a sappy documentary, but an unblinking portrayal of just how harsh the world can really be. It's easy to relate to these creatures, so different from us and yet so alike. After all, they walk.

There are few anthropomorphic creatures that lend themselves to storytelling. Monkeys and apes are an obvious choice, maybe prairie dogs, and then there are the penguins. The film treats them as a tribe, and as they waddle slowly towards their inevitable destination of life and death, surrounded by ice that could be miles or feet high, we see our struggles in their own tribes.

An excellent, sentimental film that is never too cute. Penguins have never been so dignified.

Chicken Little

On my recent trip to my in-laws for Christmas, I got the opportunity to see quite a few movies with my nieces and nephews. Chicken Little was on the DVD player, so I had the opportunity to watch it.

Chicken Little is Disney's first fully rendered computer graphics animation, throwing in its hat to compete with the Pixar folks (who once worked with Disney, but no longer). Now that these kinds of movies have become ubiquitous--see any movies about talking fuzzy animals lately?--there's actually a standard to compare these films. Unfortunately for the competition, Pixar has set the bar very high.

We all know the story: the eponymous Chicken Little (Zach Braff, he of Scrubs fame) is outside playing when a piece of the sky hits him on the head. Freaking out in grand fashion, Chicken Little proceeds to tell everyone that the sky is falling. Only it isn't, and Little kind of looks like a fool, because he overreacted. It wasn't actually a piece of the sky falling, you see. And thus we have a simple fairy tale similar to the boy crying wolf: Don't overreact to potentially bad news, or people won't believe you when there IS bad news.

That's the first five minutes of Chicken Little.

Moving forward in time, we see that Chicken Little has it rough. His mom is nowhere to be found, and his exasperated dad, Buck Cluck (Garry Marshall), tries to keep up with his son's eccentricities. A huge geek, Chicken Little suffers a host of indignities that life throws at him (nearly getting run over, getting pummeled in dodgeball, losing his pants, the list goes on and on) but Little overcomes them with cheerful ingenuity. Facing the thousand cuts of school along with Little are his friends Abby Mallard AKA the Ugly Duckling (Joan Cusak), the very fat pig known as Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn), and the weird Fish Out of Water (Dan Molina). Their arch nemesis is Foxy Loxy (Amy Sedaris).

All Chicken Little really wants to do is make his dad proud. So he joins a baseball team and, like a typical feel-good coming-of-age sports parable, makes the winning play and earns the love of friends, family, and the community. It's like a film within a film.

Then the sky falls again. Finally, Chicken Little switches to the actual plot: a War of the Worlds-style invasion by aliens. Of course.

So what exactly is wrong with an underdog character overcoming an alien invasion, the prejudices of the community, poor past judgment, and did I mention an alien invasion?

TOO ADULT. Whereas the Pixar films speak to both adults and kids, Chicken Little talks down to kids and throws in stupid slapstick that feels pointless, just to keep the little ones entertained. Then it adds in awkward adult scenes in parts where it doesn't make sense. Do we really need a romance (and a kiss!) between Abby and Little? Or Runt singing, "If You Wanna Be My Lover"? Worse, many of the in-jokes are very dated.

TOO UGLY. Pixar characters are undeniably cute, be it a fish, a car, an ant, or a toy. Chicken Little is an ugly little toad; his feathers look like spines, his eyes are beady, and he has a tiny beak for his massive head. Runt is grossly overweight, Abby is literally an ugly duckling, Fish Out of Water is completely nuts...these are not characters you readily connect with. Braff's voice acting goes a long way in making Little a likable character, but it takes awhile.

TOO SCI-FI. I actually liked this movie a lot, once I realized it was a riff on War of the Worlds. How often do CGI cartoon characters run screaming from aliens? Okay, they did it in Jimmy Neutron too. The problem is that Chicken Little switches abruptly from a cute morality play to terrifying invasion scenario that involves characters getting zapped out of existence. They all turn out to be okay later, of course, but it sure as heck looks like the aliens killed the cute characters.

That said, my niece and nephews watched it twice. All three of them (my twelve-year-old nephew, seven-year-old niece, and my three-year-old godson) loved it. So perhaps where Chicken Little fails in its pseudo-appeal to adults, it succeeds with the kids. Or maybe they just like to see a fat pig run from alien tripods.

Dodgeball - A True Underdog Story

Let's get one thing straight: there really is, God help us, an International Dodge Ball Federation. That alone seems like enough of an excuse for a comedy about the sport. And lo, Ben Stiller saw that it was good and he made a movie about it with mixed results.

Ben Stiller usually plays sympathetic, frustrated nerds who lose their tempers when things don't go their way. In Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, the usual Stiller charm has been dropped and replaced by an arrogant, irritating character named White Goodman. He is the founder of an extremely popular gym that has plans to expand by taking over extremely uptight, fastidious Peter La Fleur, played by Vince Vaughn.

Just kidding! Of course Vaughn wouldn't play anyone uptight or fastidious. He's made a career out of playing easygoing regular Joes, sometimes with large vocabularies that betray a hint of intelligence, who don't work too hard and just want to get by in life. When Vaughn is paired with an even more mellow guy like Owen Wilson, it makes Vaughn look animated in comparison and the two become an excellent combination of mellow/acerbic. See Wedding Crashers for a more palatable mix.

But alas, Wilson isn't in this film. Instead, Le Fleur is backed by a cast of equally lovable idiots, including obscure sportsphile Gordon (Stephen "Red Stapler" Root), clueless Owen (Joel Moore), normal guy Dwight (Chris Williams), the appropriately named Justin (Justin Long), and for some reason that only Stiller understands, Steve the Pirate (Alan Tudyk). Le Fleur falls hard for the lovely Kate Veatch (Christine Taylor and Stiller's wife), a lawyer in the employ of Goodman.

How can our just-like-you gaggle of guys possibly beat the overcoifed, hyperactive Goodman? Why, with a little training from the dodgeball champion himself, Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn). Patches is the funniest character in the entire movie. That's not a compliment.

Like the ill-fated Anchorman, Dodgeball is actually more amusing to quote than it is to watch. Stiller is much funnier as an underdog and makes for a two-dimensional villain. Vaughn is unbelievable as a successful business owner and flounders without a foil to play off of. Taylor tries, again, to be the straight woman like she did in Anchorman, but she's too slickly attractive to pull it off convincingly.

Thing is, Dodgeball doesn't care if you like it. Jason Bateman, Lance Armstrong, Chuck Norris, William Shatner, and David Hasslehoff all make appearances, so it's obvious the film doesn't take itself too seriously. On the other hand, the amusement around these characters being in the movie depends directly on the cultural relevance to the audience. The Chuck Norris jokes are getting a little creaky.

If you watch Dodgeball with your buddies and a case of beer, it definitely earns five stars. Otherwise it's merely a passable entry in the goofy sports genre.

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.

Blade: Trinity

I didn't have high hopes for Blade: Trinity.

I loved the original Blade movie. It was innovative, stylish, and had an African-American half-vampire who took himself seriously. It was a serious comic book movie with an urban style about it. Watching it a few years later, the movie still holds up well. And the soundtrack really kicked it into high gear.

Blade II was an embarrassment. It had bad special effects (yes, I can tell when ninjas are entirely computer graphics), a lame rip-off of an Aliens plot, it killed off and then brought back a major character (BOO!), and most unforgivable of all...had wrestling moves.

Let me say that again: WRESTLING. MOVES.

The last time I saw a movie seriously incorporate wrestling moves into a film, it was Rowdy Roddy Piper spending way too much time pile driving the bad guy in They Live. It was ridiculous, but we expected nothing less from Roddy, 'cause, ya know, he's a wrestler.

When a villain climbs a sheer wall just to do a flying elbow to the throat of the hero, you can tell the director thinks his audience is made up of ten-year olds, confusing "comic book" with "kiddie fare." Thank you, Mr. Goyer, for giving Blade back his dignity. Of course, I just checked the Internet Movie Database and it looks like Goyer wrote the second movie too...

Anyway, Blade: Trinity injects a healthy dose of modern day skepticism into Blade's (Wesley Snipes) vampire hunting activities. When the vampires can't deal with Blade by killing him outright, they finally decide to manipulate the FBI and the news media by having one of their cronies sacrifice his life. In essence, Blade is tricked into killing a real human.

The result: he is treated like a serial killer by the public and by government agencies. But the vampires own them too, so it's not long before Blade is in seriously dire straits.

That's where the Nightstalkers come in, consisting primarily (but not exclusively) of Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel). Reynolds is like a buffed up version of Jason Lee. He's funny, he's insecure, and he just won't shut up. Biel, who has always had an unearthly, elfin appearance, plays a wildcat that enjoys unleashing her inner rage on vampires while she listens to her iPod.

Snipes plays the straight man in this film, which is just as well, because Biel pouts in the background while Reynolds has a manic energy that steals every scene. By far the best acting kudos must go to the iPod, which is a major character unto itself. It provides various soundtracks, it dutifully stays out of sight when Abigail puts the ear buds in her ears (she listens to music while she kills vampires, ya see), and it gets way more camera time than any MP3 player should.

The music is perfectly pitched, harkening back to the original movie's dance club beats. The director has fun with the movie by adding little touches, like advertising a future human crony of the vampires (a "familiar") by flashing his wrist tattoo on screen for just a second. There's a great scene where our heroes run through a mall, and the relentless pounding beat is replaced by...Muzak. And of course, whenever Blade jumps ten stories out of a building, he hits the ground so hard that car alarms go off.

But there is a big, ugly flaw in this movie.

It isn't Danica Talos (Parker Posy), who plays her Acid Princess role to the hilt, complete with having difficulty talking around her fangs and wobbling in her high heels.

It isn't Jarko Grimwood (Paul Michael Levesque), a wrestler of all things, who is actually appropriately menacing, stupid, cowardly, and violent.

It's Dracula. Oh, I'm sorry. In this movie they call him Drake (Dominic Purcell).

The movie takes great pains to separate itself from the image of Dracula, but by doing so robs itself of the entire point of having Dracula in a movie-so you know all about the original Hollywood vampire.

Purcell is a monster all right, in a smarmy Euro-trash sort of way. His penetrating gaze and his massive neck are entirely out of place with the ancestral being he's supposed to be. Purcell can't pull off the long dialogue scenes he has with Blade convincingly. Drake speaks in slow, menacing tones and he really hates the commercialization of Dracula. Which is ironic, because Dracula would probably really hate his portrayal in this movie.

By the end of the film, the climactic battle looks and feels a lot like Highlander than a vampire movie. We needed an elegant yet malevolent villain, not an overbearing thug-that's what Levesque is for.

Lurking somewhere in the background is a lame plot about a genetic virus that will kill all vampires "in the vicinity." And a little girl and a cute baby are endangered. And Danica and Hannibal have this hate/hate thing going back when he was a vampire. It's complicated.

And yet, I really enjoyed this movie. I laughed at most of King's lines. Even when his jokes fall flat, King knows they fall flat, and adds such self-effacing humor as, "I'm sorry, I had a lot of sugar today" or "he doesn't like me very much."

Ultimately, the real joke here is that very concept of vampires is ridiculous. Every vampire looks like a refugee from Stick Model Camp and acts like it, rolling their eyes, harrumphing in their pretty vampire way, or flexing and snarling at just the right moments. How can we possibly take them seriously? They're like, one step above zombies for sheer comedy!

Of course, the subtle humor will not sit well with vampire fans that think vampires should be cool. The movie comes down pretty firmly on the side of the good guys: the good guys look cool and the vampires look like bumbling idiots. Let there be no doubt, Goyer's having some fun at his own expense and mocking the vampire genre.

I mean, seriously, this movie has vampire dogs.

For that alone, it gets four stars.

Reservoir Dogs

When I saw Pulp Fiction, I walked out of the movie theater agog. I had witnessed a movie masterpiece that so proficiently weaved all of its elements together that it left me floored. I had never seen anything like it before.

Of course, I've since seen a lot more movies, including Tarantino's most recent Kill Bill series. Although flashes of brilliance are evident in his other films, Pulp Fiction was the maturation of themes he was clearly still tinkering with in Reservoir Dogs. But that does not diminish the tightly plotted beauty of Tarantino's first film.

Tarantino wisely created his film like he would a play, which forces more character interaction and less gun battles. Indeed, the actors must, you know, ACT and tell us the story that we don't see on screen. The movie also introduces the characters as complete strangers by giving each one a nickname. Thus, as they are strangers to each other, they are strangers to us.

These strangers have been assembled by Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) to pull off a simple heist. The fatherly Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), the reserved Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), the coolly psychopathic Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), the calculating weasel known as Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), and two guys who die early in the movie, Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino in his usual cameo role) and Mr. Blue (Edward Bunker). This ragtag team of strangers are led by Joe Cabot's son, "Nice Guy" Eddie Cabot (Chris Penn), sporting a blue jumpsuit like any good Mob goomba would wear. All of the other thugs wear black suits and sunglasses to make them difficult to distinguish to witnesses.

We never see the actual bank heist, which is part of the fun. Instead, it is told through the eyes of the characters, both in dialogue and through flashbacks identifying each of their backgrounds. The twist is that the bank heist has gone horribly awry and thus our rainbow colored team must rendezvous at a warehouse. In play-like fashion, the majority of the conversations and action takes place in this one location.

But what went wrong? It doesn't take long for the calculating Mr. Pink (who hates his name), to determine that there's a rat amongst them, and it's not until the latter half of the film that the plot is revealed as to which character is an undercover cop. Thus the characters begin their own witch-hunt, struggling to determine whom they can and cannot trust.

Things are complicated by Mr. White's loyalty to Mr. Orange, who has been shot in the stomach. A thief with honor, Mr. White treats Mr. Orange like his child, and it's only through deleted scenes that we discover Mr. White has been horribly betrayed before. Indeed, this is the second attempt at a bank heist, the first having gone equally wrong. Mr. White thus feels at least partially responsible for the younger man's agony.

And how agonizing it is! Mr. Orange bleeds. And bleeds. And bleeds. Indeed, for most of the film, he bleeds, screams, or is unconscious. It is a tribute to Roth's acting ability that he makes it look so painful.

On the other side of the moral spectrum is Mr. Blonde, a killing machine. Having been imprisoned for years and never ratting on his employers, Mr. Blonde is alternately the ideal soldier and a terrifying thug, capable of the most brutal acts. Mr. Blonde vents his anger by taking a cop hostage, whom he graphically tortures off-screen-not to get the cop to reveal who the snitch is, but because "it's amusing, to me, to torture a cop." And after all that, the startling truth is the cop DOES know who the snitch is.

At heart, this movie is about honor, whether amongst thieves or cops. The "rat" kills people in his undercover role, as much a villain as he pretends to be. The stone-cold killer amongst the thieves is the most honorable, while the tortured cop is willing to die to protect the life of the snitch. And through it all, Mr. White does his level best to save Mr. Orange, a man he barely knows. The final twist in the end reveals who played who and in Shakespearean fashion leaves just about everybody dead. The twist isn't in the deaths as much as it is in the revelation: the honor between men who have risked their lives for each other and in doing so, willing place their lives in the other's hands.

The acting in the movie is superb. Keitel, who produced the movie, knew what he was getting into and is the star of the show. He expresses a full range here, from that of a sniggering thug to a fatherly protector to a weeping brother. Buscemi is calculating and freaked-out in his usual bug-eyed staccato-speak. Madsen is cool as ice and puts his cold-dead gaze to good use without over-emoting. When he dances to "Stuck in the Middle With You" as he tortures the cop, it's a devil's dance that is horrifying as it is cheesy.

Tarantino's voice comes through strongly in all of the dialogue, sometimes too strongly (in the interviews, he actually says he has a "God given gift for dialogue," which is a little too complimentary in my opinion). All the characters seem to elucidate and expound on everything at length in a way that sounds just like how Tarantino speaks. Fortunately, all the actors are up to the task-Buscemi can handle it easily, Keitel less so, and Madsen doesn't really need to speak at all (for an example of an actor having difficulty with Tarantino-speak, see Uma Thurman in Kill Bill). Still, the dialogue is engaging and amusing, and it established a distinct narrative voice that has marked all of Tarantino's films.

For all of Tarantino's genius in pulling this movie off as his entrance to cinema, the film loses some of its luster by failing to acknowledge its roots. The naming of characters by colors to keep their identities anonymous and the undercover cop twist was done first in the Taking of Pelham 1-2-3. But most egregiously, the movie has several shot-by-shot parallels with Chow Yun Fat's City on Fire. To be fair, George Lucas doesn't often admit any inspiration from Hidden Fortress or The Searchers...but the similarities between Reservoir Dogs and City on Fire are so close as to be outright criminal in not recognizing them.

With the advent of Reservoir Dogs, traditional cinema, with "thugs sitting around polishing their bullets" got a strong slap of pathos if not realism. While not technically as proficient as Pulp Fiction, it stands as a precursor of Tarantino's skill as a writer, director, and actor.

Okay maybe not as an actor.

The Incredibles

In the vein of Mystery Men and Unbreakable, the Incredibles is about modern sensibilities applied to standard superhero tropes. In this case, it's the golden age of superheroes in the 1950s. The timing is critical, because the government informally backs the superheroes and attitudes shifted in the 60s to skepticism and outright distrust of Big Brother. Several things happen at once as the plot is set up: Mr. Incredible (voice with kindness and strength by Craig T. Nelson) repeatedly rebuffs the preteen president of his fan club (Buddy Pine, voiced to perfection by Jason Lee), makes a date with his wife-to-be (Elastigirl, voiced by Holly Hunter's soft Midwestern purr), and saves a man who was trying to commit suicide.

All in a day's work, right?

Well, times change on the superheroes, but they don't change with them. The person he saved sues Mr. Incredible. The insanity of a man trying to commit suicide by plunging to his death and then suing a person who saved him from himself is an apt parallel for the madness of frivolous lawsuits. Soon, every superhero is being sued and the general populace doesn't WANT to be saved anymore.

So the government packs them all off to relocation programs, and suddenly the superhero personas are inversed. Their daily personalities are the masks they wear at work, while their superhero personalities are unspoken, dark secrets.

Fast forward to years later (late 60s maybe?). Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl now have three children: Violet (Sarah Vowell), a teen with the power of invisibility and force fields, Dash (Spencer Fox), a precocious preteen who can run at lightning speed, and the baby Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile) who...doesn't have any powers.

The family exhibits all the behavior of a normal American family - or at least, the normal family we wish we all had. Mr. Incredible, as Bob Parr, is frustrated by his insurance job and the inability to actually help people. As a superhero he seemed larger than life; as a working slob, he literally bursts from his tiny cube and can barely fit in his stuttering car. And of course, he has an irritating speck of a boss named Gilbert Huph (a character Wallace Shawn voices to irritating perfection) who harasses Bob at every turn for helping customers, not shareholders.

Bob's wife, Helen Parr/Elastigirl, has a different set of problems. She struggles to help her incredible children blend in a mediocre world. Dash acts out because he can't join any sports. Violet struggles to be noticed but hides in plain sight behind her hair. And of course, the two of them fight like crazy.

And thus Pixar has perfectly captured the American family tropes. How many parents have boys who they just wish would tire out? How many teenage girls wish they were invisible? What mother hasn't felt stretched in all directions? And every cubicle dweller (guilty as charged!) finds a Matrix-like connection with Bob, trapped by the most diabolical villain of all: real life.

Bob hangs out with his buddy, the very cool Lucius Best, AKA Frozone (Samuel Jackson) in a role as an African-American hero who has also been retired. The contrast between this role and Jackson as villain in Untouchables should amuse fans of both films. In the evenings, these two guys lie to their wives and go fight crime. It's the only thing that makes them feel alive.

Eventually, Bob's flirt with the dangerous life comes to a climax when he's finally had enough of his job. He takes on freelance work and finds a new zest for life. He loses weight, he starts wearing suits to work, he buys a new car, and he keeps Ms. Parr very happy. In other words, Bob acts like he's having an affair.

And in some sense he is. Mr. Incredible is doing what makes him feel young again. That there does happen to be a beautiful woman (Mirage, voiced by Elizabeth Pena) who lures him into that lifestyle only makes the indiscretion all the more riveting. When Bob disappears on one of his missions, it's up to the family to rescue him.

Throughout, there are a variety of threads that tweak the superhero genre. Edna Mode, voiced by Brad Bird, is the Dr. Ruth of superhero fashion designers. She repeatedly demonstrates the liabilities of wearing a cloak and opines about the challenges of crafting a superhero's costume. Superheroes are disappearing, literally, for reasons that become apparent later. And the government gets tired of keeping their heroes quiet. Indeed, there's a hint of Vietnam in the ambivalent relationship between the former superheroes and their keepers.

What's amazing about this film is the depth of the characters. By now it's expected that each animated personality will perfectly embody the mannerisms of the actors who play them. Syndrome is a masterful interpretation of the actor who voices him, with every mannerism and sideways glance. Only James Woods' Hades in Disney's Hercules comes close. Elastigirl manages to come across as strong, vulnerable, protective, fiery, and even playfully kittenish - Hunter has her down pat. Elastigirl, a stay at home mom mind you, has made such an impression that there are several threads discussing her on the Internet. No seriously, go check and you'll see what I mean.

Equally as important is the relationship between the characters. Elastigirl inadvertently flies her children into danger and then desperately struggles to keep them alive and calm. Violet worries about being grown up enough while Dash freaks out over - and then just as quickly embraces - fighting bad guys who want to kill them. Mr. Incredible's mettle is repeatedly tested and by overcoming each challenge we understand that he is a genuinely good, if frustrated, father and husband.

All throughout, the movie never stops taking itself seriously. Elastigirl tells her children to use their powers to save themselves and that the bad guys WILL kill them. Bad guys do not conveniently hop out of their aircraft, but rather go up in flames. That's right, they die. And there is a lot of tension (the good kind) between Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, early in their relationship and even years later. They love each other, like each other, and sometimes piss each other off, just like a married couple.

The part that made me laugh out loud the most involved Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, arguing over directions as they drive a battered RV through city streets on the way to battle a super menace. The kids whine "are we there yet?" Elastigirl shouts, "take the exit!" Mr. Incredible shouts that he thinks he knows a faster way. And for a brief second, despite the fact that the entire family is wearing bright red costumes and possesses superpowers, we understand that this is YOUR family, shouting, arguing, and loving each other.

With the advent of The Incredibles, it has become apparent that the last haven of quality filmmaking is to be found not in cable television, but in animation. Pixar consistently creates compelling stories that teach as well as entertain. Whether it's the joys and fears of fatherhood ("Finding Nemo"), the fear of children outgrowing their parents ("Toy Story"), or the pressures of being a creative person in a regimented world ("A Bug's Life"), Pixar has consistently demonstrated that they understand our greatest hopes and our worst fears. The Incredibles is Pixar at the top of their game and should not be missed by anyone who loves superheroes...or has a family.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, like Van Helsing, is a pulp film. The important twist is that it's a science fiction pulp film, which has long since fallen out of favor in an era of special effects and complicated scientific explanations. In sci-fi pulp, giant robots look like wind-up toys (actually, wind-up toys were supposed to look like giant robots), ray guns go "PEW! PEW!" and advanced technology doesn't require a lot of explaining. In pulp, there's non-stop action, the heroes are ridiculously well rounded, and a World War looms around the corner.

And oh yeah, dinosaurs. You can't forget the dinosaurs.

Sky Captain begins with the majestic view of a gigantic dirigible docking with the Empire State Building, and we know immediately that this is not the 1930s pre-World War II movie we're accustomed to. It is literally the World of Tomorrow, the kind featured at World's Fairs-utterly unrealistic and colored by the biases of the time. Thus, instead of planes ruling the air, we have massive blimps. Indeed, the zeppelin we see is titled "Hindenburg III." Presumably, the Hindenburg disaster did not take place in this future. This is the retro-futuristic era of the recent Batman cartoon and The Rocketeer, where dirigibles also rule the skies.

Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow), an intrepid reporter who always gets her story. She's like the Lois Lane of the 1930s. She receives a desperate message from a hunted scientist. The inimitable Dr. Totenkopf, played by none other than Laurence Olivier, is chasing him. Yes, THAT Laurence Olivier. The fact that the few scenes of the "bad guy" are actually digitally inserted footage of a man who has been dead for 15 years carries a certain resonance, given the inevitable plot twist at the end of the movie.

As Polly struggles to unveil the mystery of just who Totenkopf is, she meets her mysterious contact at Radio City Music Hall. What's playing? The Wizard of Oz, of course (another plot hint). And then just as this movie appears to be a film-noir rather than a pulp action film...

GIANT ROBOTS ATTACK!

That's right. Giant frickin' robots. I haven't enjoyed giant robots this much since the Iron Giant. They drop from the skies a fashion similar to the villains from the old Superman cartoons. Or, if you've never seen those, the animated footage used to demonstrate the potential of flying Nazi invaders in The Rocketeer. Their single eye is Gort-like (from the Day the Earth Stood Still), vaporizing the ineffectual police who fire at the five-story robots with their pistols. And yes, the eye rays make the PEW-PEW-PEW sound.

Enter our hero, the Sky Captain, Joe Sullivan (Jude Law). Apparently, zeppelins didn't completely overtake the skies because Sky Captain flies a fighter plane that's a bit like a James Bond vehicle. It can shoot missiles, whip around corners with grappling hooks (a nod to Batman), fly underwater, and drop magnetic bombs. Joe, in traditional pulp fashion, is absurdly well rounded: he is an incredible shot, a fantastic pilot, and is well versed in ancient astronomy.

But what do the robots want? They want our generators, our fuel supplies, and two samples of every living being on the planet. Why? Well, for the World of Tomorrow of course.

The plot gradually unfolds as the rocky relationship between Polly and Joe is revealed. Joe accuses her of sabotaging his plane, Polly accuses him of fooling around. They have a love/hate relationship that ranges from comedic to sincere. The two agree to team up after a mysterious female assassin (who shoots rays out of her hands and can leap file cabinets in a single bound) kills the remaining scientist.

Back at his not-so-secret base, Joe plots how to track the robot attackers to their home base with his resident Q-character, Dex Dearborn (Giovanni Ribisi). Dex manages to invent a gun that makes PEW-PEW-PEW sounds; it has a fin on top and everything, as if it were right out of a Flash Gordon movie. Then, while Polly and Joe discuss their next plans...

GIANT ROBOTS ATTACK!

Dex is captured, but not before leaving behind a clue as to the whereabouts of the robots home base. Joe and Polly fly off on a whirlwind adventure that will take them to Shangri-La, underwater, and to an island filled with dinosaurs. Giant frickin' dinosaurs!

The entire film is shot through a fuzzy, washed out lens that gives it the feel of an old movie or a pulp comic book. Architecture is art deco. The robots are strange, one-eyed impractical things with joints in all the wrong places, just like the covers of a thousand science fiction novels. And all of it is done through the miracle of CGI.

There's not too much for the characters to say, because this is a pulp film after all. Polly's there primarily to look pretty and occasionally punch a bad guy (or good guy) in the face. Joe swaggers and shoots things. And Dex is the anointed spouter of pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo.

Despite the special effects, Sky Captain retains its sense of humor. And whenever things get boring...

GIANT ROBOTS ATTACK!

This is a true rollicking retro sci-fi pulp film, in the tradition of The Rocketeer, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Van Helsing, and The Iron Giant. Fans of older science fiction films will thoroughly enjoy themselves. Everyone else will probably just get a headache.

Brazil

In Corporate America, screenshots of Brazil are great ways to make jokes about work. So I got the impression that Brazil was some sort of Corporate nightmare. Having seen the movie, I realize now that my original perceptions were only the tip of the iceberg.

The plot begins with a TV show of a kindly white-haired gentlemen talking about ducts and the loss of freedom of its citizens, government intervention, the quest for terrorists (the term "terrorist" is used often throughout the film) and the cost of all this information paranoia in the quest for a few individuals. The intro alone makes the film very relevant to America audiences and establishes that European countries have had to deal with the threat of terrorism long before tragedy struck the U.S.

The plot follows Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a programmer who actually knows how to program in a bureaucracy at the Ministry of Information (MOI), a monolithic governmental entity that has long since outlived its usefulness. Here, hundreds of clerks dodge in and out like cockroaches amongst papers and filing cabinets without actually doing any work; they immediately stop what they're doing whenever the boss goes back into his office. Here, teeming flocks of men in suits follow decision-makers in concrete hallways. Here, a wall divides a room to make for two offices, only the desk straddles the middle. And computers? Nobody really knows how to use them.

Sam eventually becomes entangled with the meta-plot: the search for a terrorist named Harry Tuttle (Robert DeNiro). The problem, however, is that the teletype machine entering Tuttle's name on the wanted list gets a bug-literally, a bug falls into the machine-and causes it to mistype "t" as "b". Thus, Harry Buttle (Brian Miller) is apprehended instead. Why is the MOI looking for Tuttle? Well, because he fixes ductwork without filling out any papers.

In the Brazil universe, ductwork is everywhere. Like the innards of some gigantic beast, they sprawl here and there, in every part of every person's home. They are plugged up in walls, tucked away in floors, and hang intestine-like from ceilings. They regulate everything from temperature to mail and getting them fixed is nigh impossible, given the amount of paperwork involved. However, the grappling-hook firing Tuttle achieves just that when Sam's cramped apartment needs emergency ductwork.

Throughout this drab existence is Sam's dream-life, as he flies with mechanical wings (Icarus?) towards a floating nymph-like woman wrapped in gauze. Unfortunately for Lowry, she has a nymph-like counterpart named Jill Layton (Kim Greist), who also happens to be the upstairs neighbor of the equally unfortunate Mr. Buttle.

Because terrorists are charged for their own interrogation by the Department of Information Retrieval (the DOIR, who specialize in torture), Buttle's death means Mrs. Buttle (Sheila Reid) is owed a refund. The catastrophic consequences of such an error convulse the entire MOI, but Sam sensibly decides to just deliver the refund check in person. Sam meets Jill when attempting to fix the typographical error.

It all goes downhill from there. Sam becomes fixated on Jill, such that he is willing to be promoted by his rich mother (Katherine Helmond, my fellow alumni from Dowling College) to the DOIR. Sam's behavior becomes increasingly erratic until it gets him in real trouble. The movie ends with a suitably frightening twist.

There is a lot to absorb from Brazil. A science fiction classic, it has the familiar hallmarks of a sprawling corporation gone mad (Robocop), the pervasive government in a quest to destroy threats to authority (1984, Equilibrium), and the horrors of urban sprawl (Judge Dredd). This jaded cynicism about society is rife throughout the movie, from the wicked children who set cars on fire to the awful "yes/no" gift that everyone gets everyone else for Christmas. Indeed, the whole movie takes place in one long Christmas; the holiday never seems to end, but at the same time only manages to make life in Brazil that much more pathetic. Even at a time when we expect the world to be a better place, Brazil merely covers it with tinsel.

The director (Terry Gilliam) has an amusing sense of humor, no doubt inherited from his Monty Python days. At first, the movie seems to be a light-hearted jab at our own foibles, as we watch Sam stumble his way through life. But to his credit, Gilliam never shies away from his message. When terrorists attack a high-class restaurant, the waiters merely move a screen in front of the carnage so as to not offend the wealthier guests. And yet people moan in pain, blood spatters the floor, and hands reach out for help.

When Sam is faced with the awful circumstances of Mr. Buttle's death, he backpedals with a barrage of excuses of how it's not his fault. Once he sees Jill, he forgets that he just delivered a reimbursement check to a grieving family over a clerical error and the audience forgets too. As he dashes into the street, he loses sight of Jill, only to be given her name by a little girl. He asks her what she's doing in the street.

"Waiting for my daddy to come home," she whispers.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll be along soon," says Sam, only to pause in shock as he realizes he was speaking to Buttle's daughter.

Brazil is like that. I found myself in mid-laugh at one moment, only to cover my mouth in shame at the next awful event. Sam's old friend Jack Lint (Michael Palin), a veteran of the DOIR, conducts torture in another room mere feet away from where his daughter plays with her dolls. A big-haired receptionist comically records all of the tortured confessions. Is it funny? Macabre? Vile?

Brazil serves best as a dire parable about the dangers of giving up too much freedom in the hunt for terrorism, a lesson our British friends have learned well. For that reason alone, any American interested in politics or science fiction should see this film.

Romeo Must Die

Tell me if you've heard this one from Joel Silver: a martial artist, a singer, and a comedian walk into a movie.

The punch line: Romeo Must Die.

Romeo Must Die is a slickly produced, big budget action flick that revolves around a gang war between two crime families, led by the African-American Isaak O'Day (Delroy Lindo) and the Chinese Ch'u Sing (Henry O). They are engulfed in a battle over the sale of Oakland-San Francisco waterfront property, the future location of an NFL stadium. Oozing all over the deal as The White Man is Vincent Roth (Edoardo Ballerini) who embodies greed in a corporate suit.

Isaak has a plan to stop his life of crime after the sale, but his second-in-command, Mac (Isaiah Washington), has other plans. Ch'u has his own lieutenant, Kai (Russell Wong), who doesn't seem to do much but wear sunglasses until the end of the movie.

As a result of all the skullduggery, things don't go as planned. Ch'u son (Po Sing, played by Jonkit Lee) is murdered, setting off what seems like a retaliatory strike against Isaak's son, Colin (D.B. Woodside). Word of the murder reaches Han Sing (Jet Li) in prison, who immediately breaks out and flies halfway around the world to avenge his brother's death.

There, he meets Isaak's daughter, the gorgeous Trish O'Day (Aaliyah). After Han steals a taxi and barges into Trish's house, the two decide to work together to discover who's really behind the murders. Why Trish should trust Han so quickly, given that he is the son of a rival gang leader, is never made clear.

Even more inconceivable is the supposed relationship that exists between the two. That's right folks, Li is supposed to be Romeo and Aaliyah is his Juliet. The two never even kiss. Somewhere, Will Shakespeare is spinning in his grave. With the high death toll, Romeo must Die has a lot more to do with Hamlet than Romeo and Juliet.

This movie is so grossly enthusiastic about its violent content that it actually has special effects to demonstrate how people die. In other words, instead of indicating that an arm has been broken by a loud crack, the movie shifts to an x-ray vision view of the victim's body, showing the bone break. It's like Speak n' Spell for action films, explaining in precise detail the damage inflicted just in case you didn't figure out how the bad guy died. This is alternately amusing and pathetic - now we have to dumb down our action movies too?

Li (the martial artist) has some amazing action sequences, including the most creative use of a fire hose and zip lock ties. When he's fighting, Li is in his natural element. When he's speaking...he's not. The considerably more handsome and understandable Wong should have had the lead role.

Aaliyah's (the singer) presence is breathtaking, but she has very little to do in the movie. Mostly, she complains about her father's criminal activities. Although Aaliyah's music floats in the background of most of the scenes, all evidence of her musical talent is subsumed under two extremely contrived dance moves. Worse, Aaliyah's dancing sucks.

Let us not forget about the comedian, Maurice (Anthony Anderson). Big and loud, Maurice is the bodyguard assigned to Trish. He's also a non-stop laugh machine, churning out joke after joke, sometimes mumbling punch lines that only he gets.

The movie's lack of romance, despite the title, is forgivable. The attempt at a plot (and the inevitable twist) is high-minded if misguided. But what makes this movie almost unwatchable is the rampant racist remarks.

The taxi that Han eventually steals is driven by "Akbar," an Indian man. Everyone calls Han "Akbar" with a sneer, because clearly that's a name for Indian people who drive taxis, not Chinese guys driving taxis. Then Han is called "Dim Sung," after he pretends to be a Chinese food delivery guy. The blacks have rhythm, swear a lot, and break out into random dance moves. The Chinese are unfailingly polite, grieve in private, and all know martial arts (a trait Han says, with a smirk, is "state law"). And the white guy is a corporate suit, with slicked back hair and his own crony.

Ever since the success of Exit Wounds, starring DMX (who made a guest appearance in this film) and Steven Seagal, Joel Silver has been trying to create more cross genre pictures of this type to attract the hip-hop and martial art crowds. Romeo Must Die simply doesn't have the guts to go all the way with its romance, with its plot, or by breaking any stereotypes.

Dog Soldiers