How’s come the post-apocalyptic world always looks like the American Southwest? Or like the Australian Outback?

And how’s come everyone is always trying to walk to the Pacific coast?

I liked this movie better than The Road probably because it had 100% more ass-kicking in it. And I like Denzel better than Viggo. And there was no damned kid. And because Gary Oldman is one of the best villains of this generation.

All that being said, the entire damned movie made next to no sense.

Another one that I enjoyed and thought a little bit about afterwords but won’t have much drive to see again until somebody illegally uploads it to You Tube in five or ten years. That’ll do.

Hot damn. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – I would watch Robert Downey, Jr. read the phone book on screen if that’s all he did. And as an extra added bonus I thoroughly enjoyed Jude Law for the first time in my memory. But I don’t like Mark Strong for some incomprehensible reason. And I can’t say I honestly like the ass-whupping, steampunk Holmes. I like Rathbone’s reserved detective, shorn of emotion in favor of pure reason.

I think it’s a different Holmes and I think both have merit. This Holmes may give rise to a series of excellent buddy movies. Something like a less whiny Lethal Weapon. I would be OK with that.

Why are Gilliam’s movies always washed out? It’s almost like there have been no advances in camera or film technology since the Monty Python movies of the 70s. I noticed this when re-watching The Fisher King not too long ago and noticed it again watching this flick. Here it’s particularly a shame, a film about the power of imagination could really benefit from the sort of ultra-sharp, eye-popping colors that are readily possible in modern moviemaking. Instead it looks like the film stock got splashed with muddy water then loaded directly into the projector.

What if the entire human race became vampires?

That’s a hell of a concept. And the best part of the latest attempt to wring more dough out of the vampiric phenomenon was the clues on how modern society would cope: the daytime driving systems on the cars, the subwalks, the blood banks. That was all very cool.

The shame is that such a high-concept flick degenerated into a very typical vampire hack-n-slash. Coupled with an exceedingly ridiculous “cure.”

But since I’m a sucker for noir, I don’t feel I wasted my time.

Every year I look back through the movies I’ve seen and try to remember enough of them to make a decent attempt at compiling my list of the year’s best. Every year I have to scratch my head and think, “Did I actually see that? What did I think of it? Why do I drink so much before I go to the picture show? I barely remember any of it.”

This was an interesting year. I got to see a lot of limited release stuff early in the year and almost nothing of any redeeming value later in the year. Two movies that weren’t on the MUST SEE! list turned out to be the two best experiences of the year. And the only superhero movie to make the cut ended up down near the bottom mostly because I haven’t seen it since and really can’t remember it all that well. My assumption being if it didn’t leave a strong impression of, “Damn. That was two hours well spent!” I probably didn’t enjoy it that much.

13. Taken – There are a few actors who are worth watching no matter what the film: George Clooney in comedies, Johnny Depp in mind-trips are two. I think I need to add Liam Neeson to that list as well. Brother can be Jesus in a CGI lion’s, free Ireland, whoop up as a Jedi Knight and kick the ass of every two-bit Hungarian slaver in Europe. F**king A!

12. Zombieland – Twinkies, Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray. So lovely I can overlook the nebbishy kid. I am really getting sick of nebbishy kids. *cough*Michael Cera*cough*

11. Milk – Brother was queerer than a three-dollar bill and would almost certainly have me first against the wall come his revolution but I dug the whole scene. Maybe Sean Penn – as much as I despise his politics – needs to be added to the list of actors you always want to watch. And the assassination scene is exquisitely squirm-inducing. Just thinking of it gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies.

10. Watchmen – No impression. It was pretty. I think I’d like to see it again but I don’t know why. In all honestly, I never figured out what the hell was going on in the comic book. The movie’s no different.

9. The Wrestler – Got another candidate for the “actors always worth watching list” – Mickey Rourke. Plus I found out about the really nifty abandoned Casino in Asbury Park. A run-down place but well worth the visit.

8. The Reader – A bizarrely gentle film about the aftermath of Nazism. That alone is the formula for a memorable movie experience.

7. Slumdog Millionaire – I don’t know why this is so high on my list. I think mainly because I have a vague recollection of enjoying it more than the movies to follow. I don’t think I need to see it again. But I won’t regret seeing it the first time.

6. Pirate Radio – I laughed a hell of a lot. It made no sense, had no discernible point or purpose, but I laughed a lot. And sometimes, that’s all that’s required.

5. The Hangover – Here’s another one I barely remember. I’m sure the title was appropriate for me the next day. I remember it being funny but not uproarious like the first Harold and Kumar. Mostly I remember the nekkid Chinaman beating people with a tire iron. Now that’s comedy!

4. Star Trek – After overcoming my initial disgust that Budweiser survived into the 23d or 24th century I have only four words: Harold with a katana!

3. Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day – It ain’t often that more of the same is all you desire from a sequel. And, in getting it, find out the sequel is almost superior to the original. Although I could have done without the mexican.

2. District 9 – They sure advertised the hell out of this little movie but left no idea of what to expect. I went in without expectations and came away convinced I’d seen one of the best films of the year.

1. Gran Torino – Clint Eastwood is only slightly younger than God and yet he continues to make wonderful films. I laughed like hell all through this movie – even though nobody else was laughing – and my Dad had the same experience when he saw it on my strong recommendation. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t enjoyed it even if it wasn’t on their radar.

All right. So this is the movie that changes movies forever. Hot damn.

The best part of the whole IMAX/3-D/Digiwhateverthef**K fourteen dollar experience was that the glasses they gave me were the same kind the Visitors wore in the good version of V back in nineteen-eighty-something.

I’m old. I admit it. I realized today I’m old enough to have made a kid at 18 who’d now be turning 18. If I had. Which I haven’t.

I digress.

I can’t get used to all the CGI. I didn’t give a damn about this film. Didn’t care about the characters, didn’t care about the landscape. It’s all so gawd-awful unreal that it’s impossible to lose yourself in it. It’s like the new Star Wars movies: there’s no grease, there’s no blood, there’s not even any goddamned DIRT. Willing suspension of disbelief only goes so far. Especially when nobody gets dirty in the f**king jungle.

And I don’t like the 3-D. When I see 3-D I want to see something that wows me. Bullets flying at my head, spears and arrows and flying dinosaurs shooting out of the screen. Granted, this was far less gimmicky but it loses something. You were fully aware of the two dimensional plane – it was like watching a play on stage: nothing crosses the front of the stage but you can build in three dimensions between the front of the stage and the back of the theatre. That’s precisely what it was like.

Ho hum. I am just about as underwhelmed as I was when I first saw the trailer that was making every dime store retard cream his shorts. Big, blue, unrealistic things at war with rapacious humans. Like I said, ho hum, I’ve seen this before.

I suspect it’s a bad thing when you’re cheering at the final assault on the big blue hippies like it’s the chopper scene from Apocalypse Now. I was hoping and praying the blue hippies would all get wasted because nobody stands in the way of the US military. And hell, in humans vs. aliens – I’m always on the side of the humans.

Dunno how I feel about Cormac McCarthy movies. They’re bleak. They seem to lack any redeeming qualities. There are no simple answers. I suspect they’re the most realistic flicks ever made but they’re a damned sight different from what we expect out of movies.

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

My fondest hope is that I get to watch at least some of the end of the world. I took perhaps more delight than I ought to have in watching multitudes around the world watch the destruction of their pitiful little lives with doe-eyed looks of incomprehension. How could God/Allah/Government allow such a thing to take place? Shows what you get for putting your trust in anything. Nitwits.

Talk about a movie made for foreign sales, the Americans are mostly venal, stupid or lucky. The Chinese save the world because we all know only a totalitarian dictatorship could possibly muster the resources on short time needed to meet such a crisis. And mankind’s final home is in Africa. What did we miss? Antarctica and Australia got no mention. I think just about everywhere else got covered.

It’s a sad commentary on our current state of affairs that those necessary to save in case of the end of the world are politicians, scientists and billionaires. I’d think it would be much more appropriate to save people who actually DO things: farmers, mechanics, construction workers. Kill all the teachers, politicians, scientists, businessmen, etc. Like the ark full of telephone sanitation engineers in the Hitchhikers Guide trilogy. Let ‘em all drown. The world would be a much better place with doers. So says the man who maintains thinking machines for a living.

From now on, I need to do two things when I go to the movies:

1. Don’t listen to any music on the way back from the theatre, it replaces the movie in my head.
2. Write down impressions immediately

And don’t drink so much before going. Oh hell, that’s three things. Well, ignore number 3, then.

I loved this movie. Absolutely loved it. I haven’t laughed so much since the first Harold & Kumar. I think it might be one of the year’s finest. It certainly belongs in any top 10 list.

Coherent or meaningful – or even slightly believable – story be damned! I don’t go to the movies to think deeply, I go to the movies to have a few laughs and briefly escape reality. What better way to do that than sit through two surprisingly quick hours laughing at disconnected surreality and goggling at very attractive women?

It’s somewhat surprising how slowly I came to embrace several of the movies on what I’d deem my All Time list. Two in particular stand out.

I saw The Big Lebowski in the theatre. I wasn’t impressed. Had no idea what the story was about and, for whatever reason, didn’t groove on the dialogue and general weirdness. Maybe I just wasn’t a weird enough dude myself at the time. Years later, after hearing so much about it, I sat down and watched it again and fell in love.

The Boondock Saints was a little different. I’d never heard of the film until I saw the MacManus Family Prayer on my friend’s website. Seemed like my kind of vengeance. I think I picked the flick up for $5 at Wal*Mart and fell in love.

So I went to see the second Boondock Saints, ten years delayed. I suspect there’s a story there.

It’s the same damned movie. The only thing that’s different is that the FBI agent is incongruously dressed in Wild West gear during the gunfight/flashback scene. And there’s a Mexican without any obvious Mexican accent.

None of this detracts from the greatness of the movie. And it’s an interesting thing to note that if you have a good enough story you can make the same film, separated by ten years, and strike gold twice.

You know, Stephen Lang just does not get enough good roles in movies. The first scene where he determines to walk through walls is the finest bit of comedic acting I’ve seen in a long time.

And of course, McGregor, Clooney and Jeff Bridges should be teamed up in everything. Who would have ever believed that Mr. Sex Symbol George Clooney would turn out to be a brilliant comedy artist?

My one complaint is that I am absolutely sick to death of every friggin’ movie making the soldiers, sailors and people of the United States out to be ignorant, trigger happy rubes with a constant roiling undercurrent of self-loathing and disrespect for others. Just once I’d like to see a good, entertaining flick where there’s no self-doubt, no introspective questioning, just a good, old-fashioned can-do spirit and a genuine desire to do right by one’s fellow soldiers and the people we’re fighting for.

We do an awful lot of dying for others and never seem to get the credit. That’s messed up.

Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray are a comedy duo that ought be the featured more prominently in film. If those films involved zombies, so much the better.

So Zombieland had that going for it.

On the debit side of the ledger, the trend towards emasculated young actors (the curly-headed wanker, Michael Cena) has got to stop.

If this were the old days and I was out for a good laugh I’d have thoroughly enjoyed this. As it stands, upon reflection I see too much of the television roots of the concept.

Lesson learned: next time be more inebriated and find a movie theatre with closer bathrooms.

Whoever developed this concept deserves a prize. Then they deserve to be shot for inspiring some crackpot wanker here in the real world to actually work on this stuff. The time’s a-coming. No doubt about that.

Lots of big boom flashes. Mostly big boom flashes. In fact, the story gets nearly ignored because of the big boom flashes. I think there was a story about the boy and his flesh and blood videogame character. I’m certain there was a story about a framed criminal and his family. And something about an egomaniacal billionaire with plans to take over the world. But it was mostly big boom flashes.

Which is no reason whatsoever to miss out.

Who knew Gene Simmons could act? And I mean, really act? Granted, he looks like Wayne Newton. But brother can act!

And who knew Mila Kunis was so friggin’ hot when she’s not being an annoying Archie-Veronica bitch like on That 70s Show?

And I like Jason Bateman. He’s funny as hell playing the straight man. But his low key style infects everything he’s in. And I don’t think a Mike Judge joint is supposed to be low key.

Although I liked the country music, Office Space is still the king!

What if a monster from outer space started smashing up New York? What would the news coverage look like? How would the pathetic swine who live their cosseted little self-centric lives in Manhattan cope with their favorite dance club being smashed up?

Sorry. Got confused for a second. Meant to talk about District 9. Cloverfield, “New and Improved! Now with 100% less pathetic yuppie angst!”

Not to mention it’s an infinitely superior film: chock full of characters you actually care about – either with hopes for their success or with fond wishes for their dismemberment and disemboweling.

What if aliens showed up and needed a place to crash for a while has been done before. Alien Nation and V immediately come to mind. Where would they live? How would we interact? The beauty of modern cinematic technology allows us for the first time to ask the same questions about critters who look decidedly unlike us and don’t speak our lingo.

The result is somewhat unsatisfying. There’s no happy ending. There’s not really an ending at all. Just a promise and a possibility. All wrapped up in the best film of the year.

Here we go with another Pulp Fiction comparison . . .

Just kidding. This flick wasn’t nearly that good.

Surreal, yes. Wonderfully violent in an almost understated way, yes. Chock full of bizarre and interesting dialogue, meh not so much.

I think the film actually shows the evolution of Tarantino as a film-maker. It’s not as quick and simple as his earlier stuff. It’s much more complicated. Deep and silly all at the same time. It seems like the kind of film a middle-aged guy would make while trying to channel his twenty-something self. A magnificent missed target.

Kind of like this rambling babbling.

The rumor was that a movie about a Real American Hero wouldn’t play in the international markets where Hollywood makes the real dough. So GI Joe was going to be based in Brussels and be an international team of operatives preserving truth, justice and the multiculti way for everyone!

F**k that noise.

There was a predictable public outcry, after which it was announced that GI Joe would not be based in Brussels.

Yay!

I don’t want to ruin the movie for you. Let’s just say that the studio’s retraction concerning the focus of the Joe teams’ effort was very literal. It’s a sad state of affairs when studios cease to ask, “But will it play in Peoria?” and substitute, “Will they pay in Puli Khumri?”

Pronto Giuseppe!

You have to work pretty hard to make a boring gangster movie. It takes a true artist to craft a film full of evocative music, car chases, rapid fire weaponry and general skullduggery that makes you periodically check your watch.

You know you’re watching a truly elevated example of the filmmaker’s art when a nighttime Tommy gun shootout in a lonely stretch of Indiana forest seems like a good time to get up and stretch your legs.

But Johnny Depp was spectacular as always.

Mother of God. What have you done with my Transformers franchise? Give it back! Give it back!

The first flick was such a magnificent experience. In retrospect, there was a lot of stupid in it. The story didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense and the ending was pretty lame. And any movie that flogs secret government installations inside Hoover Dam is bound to be a little silly.

But at least it didn’t have a metal sea anemone as a bad guy. Nor a sex bot as an infiltrator. Nor a pot crazed mother.

The simple fact is, sometimes there is such a thing as too much action. Too many damned explosions.

Bigger, better, faster, more may be the American way. But it doesn’t always enhance stuff.

Funny, funny movie. As I don’t want to critique it too much I think I’ll leave well enough alone and focus entirely on nekkid Chinamen with crowbars popping out of the trunks of cars.

That’s an image that will stay with me forever.

I was robbed. I went to see a perfectly entertaining film about a grumpy old man that left a boy scout huddling on the porch of his house while said house was drifting along at 6,000 feet. Now that’s a film I can get into. Especially if he banks carefully and cackles as the kid goes spinning off into space.

Instead I got to see a perfectly entertaining film about a justifiably grumpy old man who realizes the error of his ways and becomes the surrogate father to the afore-mentioned boy scout. Aw hell. Can I get my ten bucks back?

Very pretty. Entertaining. Probably worth multiple viewings particularly if the 3D works on your HD TV. But dammit…I want my grumpy old man back.

I think I’d rather watch Gran Torino again.

I spent my D-Day watching the latest Terminator flick and walking around the Yuppie Mall. Hooray! What a wonderful day.

Somewhere in the middle of this flick I decided at last that I really didn’t like the Terminator franchise. The concept is intriguing. The latest installment almost breathtakingly pretty. But I am absolutely disgusted by a film (and TV) series that randomly tosses out any sense of continuity or reason when it gets in the way of infinite expansion of the franchise.

We killed off the Terminator. Skynet is impossible. Oh wait! We could make another movie. Quick! Invent a loophole. And again. And again. Ad infinitum. Quick man! Save Kyle Reese! Even though if he was dead John Connor wouldn’t be around to order someone to save him. Let’s invent multiple Terminators that may or may not have been/will be existing depending on our needs for a quick cash infusion.

Bollocks.

Enjoyable. But bollocks.

Wolverine fought at Antietam and Normandy? Who knew?

And mutants are held prisoner on Three-Mile island? How comes I never see fireworks from the Turnpike Bridge?

Aw the hell with it. Just go with the flow. It’s a damned fine comic book movie. Enjoy it.

And I did.

Whaf**k? Spock in fistfights? Spock and Kirk hate each other’s guts? What the deuce is going on here?

What the hell is Harold doing flying the Enterprise? Wasn’t he incapable of operating a Toyota Camry under the influence? Now he has a 24th century katana and knows how to fly a spaceship?

Profoundly silly. Profoundly entertaining. A weak ending and a little bit of the silliness that Star Trek has lately been infamous for. Damned fun. Damned loud. Damned good.

Damned irritating that Budweiser is still the beverage of choice 200 years from now.

Whatever happened to Romulan Ale?

By now the title of “Best Comic Book Movie EVER!” has been woefully overused. I won’t even try to come up with a superlative for this flick. I’ve never – and I think the world has never – seen a theoretically realistic, live action film that was a comic book. This material would actually work as well in reverse – the first comics adaptation of a film that might work even better on the page. Damned impossible to explain.

I don’t mean to brag. Ah hell, sure I do. I am writing this while sitting on a roof deck on the 6th floor of a hotel on the southside of Austin overlooking Lady Bird Lake and I-35 in 70-plus degree weather with an agreeable amount of humidity and a very pleasant breeze.

Pretty swanky digs.

So, Watchmen. Very pretty. Very pretty indeed. A good movie that dragged in parts and bore very little relation to the comic it was based on. I have two big gripes.

One, I don’t remember all the stuff with Nixon in the comic. It might just be the length of time since I’ve read it but as I recall all of that pretty much happened behind the scenes. I don’t remember the urgency of it all.

And two, I have no friggin’ idea what the ending was all about. This is my failing as I never understood the ending of the comic. Of course, I am Rorschach, or at least I look at the world in pretty much the same way. A threat of annihilation from another universe or an all-powerful glowing blue man might convince the world to put aside their differences for a little while but very soon human nature would begin to reassert itself. People are basically scum – deeply flawed and potentially evil creatures only held in check by fear and love. Fear of reprisal keeps most of us following society’s laws and love of family and friends makes us work and mow the lawn and all the other crap we do to try to make our lives a little more pleasant.

Permanent peace and love – particularly arising out of a shared threat – is crap. Peace and love always collapse under the weight of human nature.

It’s refreshing to see a superhero movie where the superpowers are secondary to the story.

The press always tries to inflate its own importance. Journalism has gone from being a slightly seedy job to a highly specialized career. Something has been lost along the way.

So I expected a loving tribute to David Frost and how wonderfully he constructed an interview that demolished Richard Nixon’s reputation once and for all. What I found was a relatively sympathetic portrait of Nixon and a Frost – who comes across as the poster-boy for 1970s excess – totally out of his league.

Good for Nixon.

It was interesting, and fun. Well worth the time and money. Now that all the award nominated movies are finally making their way into this cultural wasteland it looks like I’ll have an opportunity to see The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire, Revolutionary Road, Milk, etc. Ought to be a pretty nifty couple of weeks.

It all comes down to your perspective on Germany circa 1933-1945. If you believe that the German people can be divorced from the Nazi party then this movie makes abundant sense. if you believe that – in a democracy – the people truly are responsible for the crimes of the government than this flick makes no sense.

Who the devil thought it was necessary to make a film even partially exculpating the German people for Hitler’s crimes?

Hrm. It’s been a crappy year for movies. Nearly every eagerly anticipated flick turned out to be a piece of utter crap. A couple of low-expectation pictures turned out to the be the cream of the crop. And it was a good year for superhero movies. A bad year for almost everything else.

To top it all off, I spent almost six months on the road and only saw about five movies – rather than my customary one per week – during that time. I don’t think I missed much although I would have liked to see things like Death Race, Max Payne, Tropic Thunder, etc.

Maybe someday I’ll settle down long enough to rejoin Netflix.

In the meantime, here’s my annual run down. I’m shitcanning the rule where movies can only count against the year they came out rather than the year I saw ‘em. I don’t track when things came out and I can’t be bothered trying to sort out the studios’ machinations around Oscar nominations and the end of the year. New year, new rule.

13. I’m Not There – The Bob Dylan biopic with different actors doing Dylan during different stages of his life. Bottom of the list not because it was a bad film – it wasn’t – but because I am not overawed by the subject matter. It was one of those interesting little pictures that made the cut despite my expectations.

12. The Forbidden Kingdom – Another surprisingly enjoyable and memorable movie. Jackie Chan as the Drunken Master. A fairly literate Kung-Fu flick. Who’da thunk it?

11. The Spirit – I wonder if this shouldn’t be ranked higher than it is. I liked it, despite the deficiencies, and suspect it’s kind of like Punisher: War Zone in that it is a literal translation from one medium – comics – to the screen and in the case of The Spirit also a temporal shift from the 1940s to 2008 without any finessing at all. I know what Miller was going for, I’m just not certain he pulled it off.

10. Star Wars: The Clone Wars – The kiddiefication of Star Wars continues apace. In this case, however, that’s not an entirely bad thing. I had the lowest of expectations and came away pleasantly surprised. The TV show ain’t hateful either.

9. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian – I shouldn’t even rank this since I was drunk for the little bit I managed to stay awake during. I don’t count that against the film and I remember liking what I saw but disliking the completely extraneous love story. Can’t win ‘em all.

8. Persepolis – I saw this a long time ago. I dug it. Can’t say why apart from the style.

7. Leatherheads – Downright hilarious. Clooney is a minor comedic deity and the dude from The Office shows he’s more than a nebbishy wimp. Even Zellweger’s presence couldn’t make me hate this flick – and that’s really saying something.

6. In Bruges – Bizarre flick. Starts out as a black humor buddy flick and ends up a bloody mess. Even managed to stay bitterly amusing when the amped-up Shakespearean tragedy kicked in. I’ve recommended this over and over but doubt anybody but me’s seen it.

5. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street – Depp, twisted lyrics, cannibalistic pies and stylized filmmaking. Granted, it didn’t have the huge white sheet spattered with blood while someone screamed in the background like the stage play – but what movie has?

4. The Incredible Hulk – Finally, our long national nightmare is over. We can put the Ang Lee psychological Hulk behind us and groove on the reason the Hulk even became a popular comic book character. Sometimes that’s hard to figure out.

3. The Dark Knight – I can’t stand Heath Ledger. But the Joker rules.

2. Hellboy II: The Golden Army – Spectacularly cool. Made more sense and flowed more smoothly than the first one. And stayed kick ass. Steampunk robots rule.

1. Iron Man – Robert Downey, Jr. single-handedly makes a picture. Doesn’t matter what it is. Brother rules the roost. Plus you have a cool character in Tony Stark – amoral, alcoholic, brilliant and rich – my kind of cat.

That’s all folks. I could list all the nifty flicks I missed, but instead I’ll settle for warning all of you about the single worst film ever made – surpassing even Batman and Robin in its horrendousness. Do not, under any circumstances, see The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008). It would be better to critically analyze Vogon poetry. Trust me on this.

Lesson number 1: never make a comic book movie as a word for word translation from the page to the screen. That dialogue really sounds ridiculous when spoken.

My friends, we are living with an embarrassment of riches. I thought that after seeing the latest Hulk and think it even more so after seeing this wonderous flick.

Better than the first one in every respect. Obviously they had a bit more money to play with so things seem to be on both a bigger and more intricate scale. More story to back the action. More character driven episodes. Beautiful shots of what was supposed to be Ireland.

And the best movie line since Captain Jack in At World’s End:

Yep. You’re in love. Have a beer.

Wow. Just wow.

I am surprised at the vitriol this movie inspired. Yes it was fast. Yes it was basically incomprehensible. Yes it’s kind of a pity that such meticulously designed set pieces went by so fast that the viewer didn’t get a chance to appreciate the art.

What the hell did anyone expect??

I think this is the best cartoon movie ever made. It’s exactly like watching the original cartoon. And for the record, Speed Racer wasn’t exactly a good or interesting cartoon. It was basically repetitive crap – like all anime: no story, cheaply made with bad dubbing and recycled animation cels.

So if you get in the spirit of the thing, understanding that it’s a goofy, throw-away, nostalgic mind-trip it’s actually a hellaciously fun flick. And it’s got a monkey.

It’s impossible to make a bad movie with a monkey. Just impossible.

I knew a guy who bought two Pearl Jam box sets at a time when they only had two albums out. In response to the raft of shit I gave him he said he’d buy a box set of Eddie Vedder in the bathroom so long as Eddie talked through it.

If Robert Downey, Jr. read the phone book on film, I’d go see it.

This is certainly the best of the Marvel movies. It tops Spider-Man on account of Downey being an infinitely more charismatic personality than Tobey Maguire.

I wish they wouldn’t make a sequel. There are enough stories to tell, we don’t need to re-tell the same ones over and over again. Move ahead.

PS. Col. Fury? “But Dad . . . he black?”

• Harold & f**king Kumar!!!

• Who the hell is the guy that played the bald-headed DHS agent? He is insufferably annoying. Bad enough, in fact, that I need to start avoiding him with the same enthusiasm I usually reserve for Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell. In fact, if there is another Harold and Kumar movie – and he’s in it – I might seriously consider skipping it altogether. At least on DVD I can fast-forward every time he’s on screen.
• We need some ‘shrooms
• I’m thinking I need to make Amsterdam part of my European agenda next month
• Harold’s homage: Robert Smith or Flock of Seagulls?
• Man, I f**king love these movies. Even with irritatingly racist government agents in ‘em.

• This is the first Jackie Chan movie I have ever thoroughly enjoyed.

• I wanna be a Drunken Master.
• Jet Li is cooler than Chow Yun Fat. But Jackie Chan takes himself less seriously.
• How’s come Quentin Tarantino couldn’t fall in love with this sort of flick instead of the stupid-ass chopsocky crap he keeps trying to shove down our collective throats?
• Why is the American kid in Kung Fu movies always such a douchebag? (see Macchio, Ralph)
• What part of Boston looks like the set of Big Trouble in Little China? At least they got the ambulance graphics right.
• I need to sit down and watch Big Trouble in Little China again.

• George Clooney is the greatest comedic actor of this current crop. He’d do well to avoid all serious roles in future and just stick to high-quality slapstick-y stuff.

• The mournful, emo, sensitive guy from The Office is fun to watch but he’s going to quickly wear out his welcome.
• Zellweger has already worn out hers. But she wasn’t hateful in this one. Maybe she should stick to slapstick-y stuff as well. She’s pretty good at it.
• Dem fine movie. Dem fine. In the same spirit as, and immensely funnier than, A League of Their Own.
• And I don’t even particularly like football.

I think I ought to do all reviews as bullet points. Unless I perceive a need for a coherent narrative.

• Colin Farrell is way better in small indie roles. He was spectacular in Tigerland and equally so here.
• I always liked Ralph Fiennes. I sat through Quiz Show just because he was in it. And I can tolerate the first 2/3ds or so of Strange Days. How many of you monkeys have even heard of those flicks?
• Bruges is a damned fine looking city.
• The “gay beer” thing made me laugh. Chimay tastes like poxy shite, and the worchestershire tasting beer I had wasn’t that good either. The “blood beer” looked pretty good.
• Fat, bloated Belgian bastards.
• F**king Canadians.
• Jaysus. I don’t want to be less American, but I hope nobody I run across over there comes away cursing me for killing John Lennon.
• Bizarre flick to be a Harry Potter reunion film.
• “Two manky hookers and a racist midget. I think I’m going home.” That might be one of the top ten lines of all time.

Nifty movie. Kind of a cross between Mad Max and V for Vendetta.

I have disconnected bullet point thoughts.

• F**k Scotland. Stupid skirt-wearing, Robert Burns lovin’ pansies. Serves ‘em right.
• Did the Glaswegians turn into Lord Humungous imitators because of the virus, or was it just an example of humanity’s inevitable decline into a Hobbesian state?
• Medieval wot? ‘Splain please.

Fuck obsequiousness. Fuck servility. Fuck politics, intrigue, treason, the family name and all other inexcusable reasons for betrayal.

Fuck betraying human nature in the name of power, position and privilege.

Thank the Holy Lord for John Adams, John Hancock, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington.

Thank Christ for Nathanael Green, Anthony Wayne and Daniel Morgan.

I did have a thought: imagine if Henry had not broken with the Roman Catholic Church. Assuming Elizabeth was never in line for the throne, it could be argued that Jamestown was never founded. But what if it was anyway? What if Virginia – or whatever it was called – was founded as a Catholic colony on American soil?

Sadly, despite my great respect for Holy Mother Church and my deep sadness for post-Reformation world’s lack of moral absolutes, the Law of Unintended Consequences suggests that a Catholic England birthing a Catholic America would not lead to the great leaps of the Enlightenment that gave us the gift of liberty. That freedom of – or from – conscience that allowed us to become all the good and bad things we became.

As always, that Law of Unintended Consequences does tend to be a bitch.

Holy jumpin’ Jeebus! The Egyptians were all Quickie-Mart employees who used wooly mammoths to build the pyramids? Who’da thunk it? Like my pal said, “This is the part where the Air Force guys come out of the Stargate.”

But – as is becoming the pretty standard excuse for sub-par filmmaking – it was pretty.

And I had a thought: I’m a historian. I like to think there’s precious little we can’t uncover and know something about. But holy hell! We have pretty respectable history going back 250 years and some spotty history going back another couple of millenia and then . . . what? There were a lot of years of human existence between the emergence of homo sapiens and Abraham. Let alone the period from Abraham to George Washington. What the hell happened back then?

I hate having gaps in my knowledge. To discover I am only partly omnipotent is a real blow to my already fragile ego. This will have to be remedied.

If all the Rambo movies are this entertainingly pointless I may have to seek them all out for a viewing.

Somehow, in my long life, I’ve never seen most of the brainless action films of the 80s. I’ve never seen Predator, Commando, Rambo, &c, ad infinitum. Since I’m becoming more brainless in my old age, I may have to remedy that omission.

Blowing shit up for no apparent point or purpose is cool.

Iran has had a tough time of it. I know very little about the Revolution. It seems to me as if all the sins of the Twentieth Century were visited on Iran and, passing through a cultural filter, emerged as the great evil of the Twenty-First.

What is amazing about the process is the ability for people to retain their humanity and their sense of humor amongst senselessness. I’ve been told that the Cuban people don’t get uptight about their own tyranny. I’ve seen that people in Afghanistan and Iraq would rather tolerate their own oppression than take action against it. It seems that the law of inertia applies to politics and society as much as to a ball on the crest of a hill. So then, does it make it anyone’s responsibility to act? Or do we simply tolerate the difficulties of others as long as they don’t affect us?

What in the hell is going on here? I get that people can teleport. That’s way cool. I get that the kid wants to show off for the hot chick. Fair enough.

What the hell is with Samuel L. Jackson having white hair? What the hell is a Paladin? Why does the kid’s Mom live in a split-level in Antarctica?

What the hell is going on here?

I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people. … There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone. … I see the worst in people. I don’t need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I’ve built my hatreds up over the years, little by little, … I can’t keep doing this on my own with these… people.

–Daniel Plainview, There Will Be Blood

Good movie. Not great.

I think the biggest failing is the lack of a competitor for the protagonist. I know the preacher/huckster was supposed to be the foil. What I don’t know is whether the actor or the character failed to make himself able to meet Plainview eyeball to eyeball. It is pretty tough for anyone to meet any of Daniel Day Lewis’s characters on the same level.

Wouldn’t this have been a hell of a film if the huckster was as full of oily power as the oilman?

I thought the idea behind a monster movie was to root for the humans to win. Man, did I ever get that one backwards.

I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to cheer out loud when people get eaten. Or when people explode into pink mist behind a conveniently placed plastic curtain. Nor make gagging sounds over duress-prompted declarations of true love.

I’m also pretty sure that you’re not supposed to wonder why the Marines would be risking their own lives to save civilians. I mean, that’s what they do, right? Noble fellows.

Honestly, I’d have nuked ‘em from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

The civilians, I mean. The monster I’d have airlifted to L.A. for some more biblically righteous vengeance.

In case you didn’t get the point; it was a terrible movie: irritating, nonsensical, badly acted, improbably staged. Save your money. Go see Juno or Atonement. Hell, go see the Veggie Tales movie – it’s probably just as entertaining.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a contendah!

My general rule when determining my movies list is to include those films released in a given year. Therefore, if a film was released in December of the previous year but I didn’t get to see it until January or February of the following year it should count against last year’s list. Peter Pan fell into that situation. So did Chicago.

I am considering breaking that rule in this instance.

Atonement is so spectacular a film – so beautifully filmed, so wonderfully acted, so intriguingly written – that it really deserves the honour of my choice for best film of the year. However, after much soul-searching, the general brilliance and oppressive silence of No Country for Old Men must firmly cement that film in the top spot.

I’ll modify the list. I’ll push Transformers to number 3 and bump Hot Fuzz off the list (it was a mercy add anyway, out of respect for the filmmakers) and I’ll sadly, undeservedly, put Atonement down as number two.

It isn’t often there’s a tie. It’s more often the case that there’s no clear winner. What seemed at the outset to be a poor year for movies turned out to have an overabundance of wonderfulness.

Is this what all of the spoof movies are like: jokes beat into the ground, ridiculous situations, randomly inserted bits of genitalia? Wow. Am I ever glad I never bothered to see any of the other films that pass for comedy in our benighted age.

On the other hand, the flick had its moments – mostly involving the Beatles – but a few spoofing on incidents from the lives being lampooned hit the mark. I guess, if you want to get philosophical, this film tried to show that all the things we pity in the originally biography’d celebrities (Johnny Cash, Ray Charles) aren’t any worse than the stuff any one of us goes through on a normal day and that overcoming drug addiction, or standing by your family are not things to be celebrated – they’re the bare-minimum expected of a human being.

And the songs were pretty funny too.

Throats slashed, heads broken and infinite opportunity to thoroughly disconcert other theatre-goers with maniacal laughter during the most disturbing scenes – that makes for a good night at the movies.

That’s twice now that Kevin Smith movies have popped unbidden into my head while watching completely different flicks this week. Some years ago I went to see Jersey Girl with a young lady I’ve mentioned in the past. During that movie, there’s a scene where the precocious little brat of the title gets all of her Dad’s burly friends to put on a talent show representation of the song “God, That’s Good” from Sweeney Todd. My friend leaned over and told me that we had to see Sweeney Todd. How could I not love a girl like that? We did, eventually, get to see the show in Philly and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Likewise the film. It’s a little slow at times – there’s really not much of a story there to sustain two hours or so of play or film – but the music’s good, the plot is macabre, the characters are worthy of simultaneous revulsion and pity. And in the film there’s the extra-added bonus of seeing Sweeney’s hideous world fully realized and being able to comprehend every deliciously twisted lyric of every delightfully demented tune.

I’ll have to digest the viewing for a bit and see if I add it to the year’s finest movies. Even if it doesn’t make it to that rarefied plateau I am sure I’ll be happy to see it again.

It’s been a week for interesting but uncomfortable movies.

This was an interesting flick. It reminded me of a cross between Napoleon Dynamite’s irritating nostalgia-baiting and Kevin Smith’s painfully hip and rapid fire dialogue. Kids too cool for their shoes babbling on about situations only distantly related to what would be reality. It also made me consider one aspect of contemporary movie-making that bugs the hell out of me and a perspective on popular culture I never considered before.

For starters, when the hell did strong male archetypes disappear from American film? Has there been a full bore, manly man hero since Indiana Jones? Actually, I can think of a couple but the point still stands. Think about this year’s crop of blockbusters. Spider-Man was being a bad guy when he acted like a man. The hero of Transformers was a nebbishy git who happened upon some giant robots and won the girl. Same thing in Juno – the male “hero” is a lanky git with bad dress sense. A prototypical “sensitive” man. What a crock of shite.

OK, now that my alpha-male ranting is out of the way it’s on to the meat of the problem: the whole setup was entirely too cutesy. I am very glad the filmmakers opted to show the seamier side of abortion. I am supposed to believe that the parents were that mellow about the situation? I am supposed to believe that adoption is a no harm – no foul situation? That a sixteen year old girl could carry a child to term, give birth and then hand the kid over to some stranger without so much as a second thought? I will grant that in the context of the movie and in line with my own personal beliefs Juno’s solution was the best one possible but I cannot accept that going through the process as she did would be any less psychically scarring than actually going through an abortion.

It’s an interesting perspective on the abortion debate. One I hadn’t considered before. It’s not a valid argument for one position or the other. In fact, it makes both positions look like the proverbial rock and hard place.

And despite wimpy males, comically understanding parents, kids acting well outside their age group and a Hollywood-ized treatment of a serious subject the flick gave me something to think about. Maybe that’s the mark of a good film.

There are two possibilities here: either Dylan is a genius, or Dylan is the most psychologically screwed-up person in the history of the planet.

I suppose there is a third possibility: a very weird dude is blessed with real talent which thereby enables him to make weirdness and talent seem like genius.

This film embraces the first possibility.  Instead of appraising the man and his impact the filmmakers chose to do an homage to his image.  It’s an interesting take on a complicated dude.  Well worth watching despite being absolutely interminable.

This was a disconcerting film.  Made worse by the brain dead rednecks sitting behind me who laughed in all the places you were supposed to cry and crying in all the places you were supposed to laugh.

And there were lots of both kinds of places.

I think with anything less than a deeply sympathetic troupe of actors this movie would have fallen on its face.  Even with that troupe it required a stiff suspension of disbelief to accept the premise.

Who knew Wisconsin and San Francisco had tolerance for deviant behaviour so much in common?

Once again it’s time for the pantingly awaited annual Movie list!

Top 13 flicks of 2007.

13. National Treasure: Book of Secrets -My second-most anticipated sequel of the year.  Sadly it turned out to suffer from an overabundance of really good ideas.  Most movies can’t even muster one good idea.

12. The Host – Sometimes having a yuppie theatre in town comes in handy.  Who doesn’t like a good, family themed Korean monster movie?  I betcha it’s still better than Cloverfield.

11. Children of Men – I don’t buy the premise.  And I can’t recall being overly entertained.  But I do remember it was pretty.  And I figure a desire to see a film again means I must have liked it.

10. Black Book – Once again, yuppie theatre to the rescue!  I think this flick was Danish.  Nazis and Resistance leaders and Jews!  And nudity!  Oh my!

9.  Lars and the Real Girl – Weird.  Very weird.  Very good.  I think.  Although I am not certain I would want to see it again.

8.  Letters from Iwo Jima – Clint tries again.  Flags of Our Fathers was flat-out uninteresting, but despite worries that typical leftist sympathy for the enemies of America would turn this into an execrable metaphor for the War in Iraq he managed to turn out a hellaciously good treatment of the common soldier’s experience in the most useless of battles.

7.  300 – You gotta love a movie that single-handedly brings the leather codpiece back into the fashionable mainstream.

6.  Stardust – 2007 was a year for queer little films.  Gentle, pleasantly mellow, and wonderfully entertaining.  Of all the pictures on this list, this is the one I would most advise you to see if you missed it.

5.  Volver – Another one of those queer little films.  Less disconcerting that Lars, more believable than Stardust.  And with 100% more subtitles than any other film on the list.

4.  Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End – Man, was this ever a staggeringly beautiful picture.  When it was over the director said something about Will’s journey being over but leaving things open for Cap’n Jack.  Who the hell was Will anyway?  And do I care?

3.  Transformers – A big budget, explosion-palooza fueled by 80s nostalgia and toy tie-ins.  Who expected this to actually be a good movie?  I miss Soundwave and Starscream’s voice.  And what the hell was Megatron anyway?

2. Atonement – A tie for the best movie of the year. Not so hard to watch and worth multiple viewings. Wonderful shots of Dunkirk and Blitz London. A good story marvelously acted.

1.  No Country for Old Men – Best movie of the year.  Damned hard to watch.  And I’ll probably never need to see it again – which plays hell with the Coen’s residuals- but I am damned glad I got to see it once.  It was almost enough to make me reconsider my own path towards the Dark Side.  But nah, I’ll just stick to the lighter side of evil.

I expect this list to change over the next week or so.  I always count in this list films released in the given year even if I don’t always see them in the theatre until some time into the new year.

For instance, I just saw Lars and the Real Girl last night and it already won a spot on the list.  In the next week or so I have yet to see I’m Not There, Sweeney Todd and Juno.  Surely one or all of those deserve a spot on the list.

It turned out to be a tough year for movies.  So many really horrible flicks and yet I still ended up with many more than thirteen I felt deserving of special mention.

Update!! 1/24/08 – Atonement was just so good it earned a spot on the list. So, Honorable Mention goes to Hot Fuzz which had to go to make room. Sorry lads, please keep making good films.

I’d be curious to know the story of this movie’s scripting.  Were there two writers?  Three?  A secret script whose middle pages were burned and the scriptwriter assassinated leaving others to try to fill in the blanks?

The movie suffered from a surfeit of ideas.  Any one of the ideas would have done to make an excellent movie: the President’s Book, the lost city of Cibola, the involvement of the Copperheads in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, etc.  Instead we have a writer who thought of so many great ideas they couldn’t stand to abandon any of them and tried to mish-mash them all into a coherent plot.  Oops.

On the bright side, much got added to the storyline: more great characters, more backstory, a wider timeframe for historical exploration.

I’m hoping for National Treasure 3.  Then I can assume this is just a – Empire Strikes Back, Mallrats, Temple of Doom – sophomore slump.

2007 was a very fast year.  I can’t even remember if I suffered through Silent Hill in ’07 or ’06.

As long as it was Ought-Six, I am satisfied.  One horrible movie per year is my quota.

If it, however, was Ought-Seven, then I have seen two abominable films in the same year and the sorry son of a bitch who dragged me to both will pay.

Oh, how he’ll pay.

Let this movie’s name never be spoken again in my presence.

Happily, only the prosperity – and not the survival – of the human race is the only thing riding on the protagonist’s exploits because the last supposed survivor of the human race is a complete and blithering idiot.

Sadly I can’t enumerate all the things that make me want to tear out what’s left of my hair – I want you all to have the opportunity to witness such head-slapping stupidity for yourselves.

This whole experience reminded me strongly of the latest reincarnation of War of the Worlds: the first half was very possibly one of the greatest films of the year, the second half blissfully and mercifully forgotten.

I mean, really, we are supposed to believe that there are urban Brazilians who have never heard of Bob Marley?  Suspension of disbelief is one thing, this is ridiculous.

It’s the steampunk Star Wars!  Now with a whopping 50% less coherence than the prequel trilogy!

Come on.  Do you really expect me to think this trilogy is anything less than a blatant rip-off of Star Wars or has any point or purpose in existing as an independent work?  The number 1 bad guy is the mother of the plucky hero who finds out she has special powers to use a mystical device and is fighting against an evil totalitarian force trying to conceal the existence of a mythical force from the populace.

What a crock of shite.

On the plus side, it’s very pretty.  Very pretty.   That alone might rank it as one of the top films of the year.  And I’m a sucker for steampunk design.

Handy note: There are a few infallible means of detecting the bad guy in movies : bald people, men with soul patches but no moustache or beard, and people that smack their souls around.  Never fails.

Those wacky Coen brothers.  Another smash movie.  Bizarre, tense, riveting.  One of the very few movies where you don’t notice any score.  No music.  The silence is overpowering.

Man, that picture really spooked me.

A good, damned good film.  I think it’s the best film of 2007 – although I reserve judgment until I’ve  gone back over what I saw this year.  I don’t have anything to say because I don’t think I’ve processed the beauty and intricacy of the thing yet.  I don’t think I ever need to see it again, but I am damned glad I got the opportunity to see it once.

When the first scene of the hitman’s skills shows a miss, it’s a sign.  Dunno whether it’s a sign that the movie is going to be dopey or a sign that the character is.

What happens when you dumb down James Bond to fit an American attention span?  You either get Casino Royale – which was good – or Hitman - which was OK.

I liked it.  I might pick it up on DVD.  But I did go home and watch Payback for a similar story with a much more fulfilling experience.

Pleasant, lite, pre-Holiday fare.  Complete with rotting flesh, cartoonish sexual innuendo, extreme violence and drunken nudity.  And I’m not describing my Remembrance Day weekend.

For some reason it cost an extra two bucks to see the flick in 3-D; same theatre, same projection equipment (with a small addition), and you don’t even get to keep the glasses.  I guess a gimmick is a good thing and ought to be milked for all that it’s worth.

The film was acceptable although it bore virtually no resemblance to the actual tale.  Call it Beowulf: the Hollywood Years.  The 3-D was a nifty gimmick but nothing more.  I expect, if the 3-D is as easy to generate and project as it seems, movie makers might start to experiment more with it.  The flip side is that this technique requires films that still look good in 2-D.  So, nothing too fancy.

Good film.  Neat gimmick.  Probably worth the ten bucks.

Aside from the vampires, Alaska looks like a pretty neat place to visit.  Do people go bat-shit crazy in the perpetual night like they do in the perpetual daylight?  Is it like the South Pole?  All partying all the time?

Crazy Russian vampires.  That must be why they sold Alaska to us.  They felt bad about eating other Russians.

The best thing that can be said about this movie is that the close ups of Vegas looked pretty good.  Relatively accurate.  Of course, the question “Where the hell was the rest of the city?” could be raised.

What a bummer.  First movie since the playoffs started and I got to see this turkey.  It had to be done, but I don’t have to be happy about it.

It’s a very pretty movie that doesn’t make any sense.  I don’t know how to explain the nonsensical evolution and ending of this story without giving away the whole shebang.  And maybe it’s just because I’ve taken to going to the movies when sleepy and half in the bag.

Maybe the original makes sense.  Maybe we’ve lost something when everything has to be so whizz-bang and technically proficient that we forget about things like story.

And Russell Crowe’s hat?  No self-respecting bad-ass would wear a hat like that.

I guess watching a 90 minute TV show isn’t a bad thing. Especially when there aren’t any commercials.

It was funny. Had me laughing fairly constantly throughout. I wouldn’t say it was a South Park Movie-like achievement but ought to be good enough for a sequel. Hell, I read they’re making a sequel of the execrable Pink Panther. If they can haul that piece of unremitting shite out for another go round the Giant Love Toilet of Doom they can damned certainly do another Simpsons.

Maybe after we can’t watch ‘em for free anymore?

Any movie that can make me eager to visit Paris and wonder if there are any decent French restaurants in the area is a damned fine one.

If there is a movie upon which it is absolutely pointless to comment, this is it. All of the Potter films are it, in fact. What is there to comment upon?

You can bitch about what’s in, and what’s left out. You can complain about costumes, set design or characterization. But that’s about it.

So I’ve got nothing to say. I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I’m looking forward to finishing up Einstein so I can start the HP series over at the beginning in anticipation of reading chapter seven sometime after this weekend.

Sing, fatty, sing!

What is this? The G-rated Die Hard or something? Whatever happened to “Yippie Ki Yay . . . ?”

It was good. Fair enough. Good in the same way Shooter was good. Enjoyable. Lots of stuff blowing up, lots of preposterous situations, lovely shots of Baltimore pretending to be DC. And yet unworthy of purchase or further viewing.

That’s probably the definition of a perfect summer movie: fun while it lasts and instantly forgettable.

Man! Whatta rush.

Anybody out there that didn’t expect this movie to suck serious monkey bone? Michael Bay, a “re-imagining,” big budget, live action, character redesigns? The list of probable catastrophic failures goes on and on.

Surprise! The old sumbitch made a first-rate movie. For one thing, he seems to have gotten a real writer to do the script. And let his casting department make intelligent choices. The end result was less a movie about talking robots that turn into cars and stuff than a movie that just happens to have talking robots turning into cars at opportune moments.

How frigging amazing is that?

This is flat out, hands down, the best pure comic book movie ever made.

Comic books are not art. I don’t care how pretty you make them, how much you infuse them with meaning and how technically proficient the creators are. Comics are entertaining stories for boys.

So, you can make a movie like Sin City or 300 and make a comic book on the screen, precise in every detail, with the same colors, same action scenes, same episodic nature but while they’re spectacular comic book movies they’re not entirely faithful to the root of the medium.

Fantastic Four is. From the stilted witty banter to the sugary life lessons learned. From the bizarre action to the utter disregard for property damage (speaking of which, when will they make a Damage Control movie? You could tie all the franchises together.) FF is the ultimate example of what a movie about a comic book should be.

The Anglo-Irish War and the Irish Civil War were horrible catastrophes where men did horrendous things. But one does not need to see the sin to know man is a sinner.

There is an argument to be made for modern historical interpretation: for showing the rough reality of war and peace, politics and diplomacy, or showing the sorrow of a mother who lost her sons on D-Day or the twisted side of treason. Something gets lost in the translation, however. There is an indisputable glory in war. There is brotherhood, self-sacrifice, the stunning ability for one man to change the course of the world. All of that gets lost when you focus on the carnage and the fear.

That is why human memory works the way it does. The means get forgotten when the ends are worthy. And it is the ends that must be remembered. Not only that good and noble men sometimes do terrible things to achieve good and noble ends.

Shrek belongs in that odd category of movies that I thoroughly enjoy while watching, would drop everything and watch again if the opportunity offered but are otherwise eminently forgettable and not worthy of purchase. Others in this category are films like Dave, the Toy Stories, and most Disney cartoons.

They’re great movies. Tons of fun. Lots of laughs. But they’re just popcorny bubblegummy stuff.

This particular iteration of the franchise, however, is worth a look just for Snow White’s Zeppelin moment.

Now that I might pay to see again.

Now I’ve seen a Korean monster movie and a Dutch Nazi movie. I think I’ll start wearing a beret and black turtleneck and smoke Gauloises. And snap my fingers at poetry readings. Bah.

Interesting flick. Supposedly based on a true story. I dunno. There were so many twists and turns it almost strains credulity. But, in war, I suppose things will tend towards confusion. I could probably do without so many stereotypes – the fat Nazi sadist, the kindly Resistance fighter, the beautiful Jewish girl, the stupid Canadian.

Actually, I kind of like that last one. I think we need more of them in films. As comic relief, of course.

OMFG! Go now. No, seriously. Quit your job. Take a ten martini lunch. Bash and batter your way through the lines, kill the people in front of you, crash your car on the freeway and run the rest of the way to the cineplex. Go-and-see-this-movie.

It’s that good.

If you don’t know the backstory, it’s useless. If you do, it’s the greatest movie ever. It surpasses Curse of the Black Pearl. It’s so good, in fact, that I hope to Christ they never make another. Anything that comes after would dilute the pure yummy wonderfulness.

Go now. Do it. Bring rum. Then come home and prepare to watch all six Star Wars films and celebrate that auspicious day. Then go see Pirates again.

Oh Spidey! Why have you gone and left me? What the hell happens next? Mysterio? The friggin’ Trapster? The Rhino, Kraven, a Punisher cross-over? Why have you fallen into the Batman trap? Will it take a reboot like Batman [Year One] Begins to bring you back to your senses after 10 years of languishing in the worthless property bin?

Spider-Man had one villain. A good villain. Spider-Man 2 had one good villain and allusions to two more. Spider-Man 3 had three villains? With no use of the previously alluded to bad guys? What the deuce? And Venom? I knew Venom was coming, had to, but cripes – what an idiotic bad guy.

On the bright side, although we all know it’s bad, it’ll make mountains of cash meaning there will be a fourth installment to set things back on the right track. It’s too much to hope for, I know. Number 4 means four (count ‘em) four villains. I’m thinking as we descend the quality scale it’ll be something like Trapster, Shocker, Kangaroo and Scorpion. With goddamned Carnage thrown in just to annoy me.

Dammit.

Bampf is wrong. Shaun of the Dead it is not. But it manages alright on its own merits: the overwhelming preposterousness of the whole situation carries things along.

If all Korean monster movies are this funnycreepyhappysad I need to see more Korean monster movies. Or maybe just more Korean movies. It looks like an interesting place.

Due to circumstances beyond my control I damned near missed this flick in the theatre. In the end, I drove 90 minutes to see it. And you know what?

It was worth it.

Auto-activated Barrett-y goodness.

What the hell is wrong with the British?

I went to see The History Boys. Looked like an entertaining story about some lower-class kids trying to get into Oxford. Something like the Dead Poets Society with less suicide and funnier accents. Instead I had to sit through a homo-erotic paean to kindly intentioned paeodophilia and the love – in the Humpty Dance sense – between teachers and students.

So I went to see Venus. I knew it would be a bit disconcerting, a tad Lolita-ish. Little did I know that, these days, imagination won’t suffice. Allusion, indication, possibility are all out the window and we have to go for the full monty. Why leave something up to the viewer’s imagination when you can flat out show it on screen? People aren’t nearly intelligent enough to come to their own conclusions!

Despite it all it was a pretty fine little film. I’d just like a bit less heavy-handed exhibitionism and a bit more titillating allusion please.

I don’t know what to make of slavery. The entire concept is so alien and so horrific it is easy, as a modern man, to say “Oh, slavery is terrible. Those who eradicated it are heroes. I would have supported them whole-heartedly.” But if I were fighting in the American Civil War, or listening to an abolitionist of the Wendell Phillips variety how would I feel? I like to think I’d feel the way I do now: I always judge by the group but react to the individual. I might swallow the propaganda and care little or nothing for those in bondage. I might be generally in favor of gradual abolition but turned off by the crackpottery of extremists pushing immediate and unconditional freedom.

In fact, I am almost certain I would despise all abolitionists as I would despise all fire-eaters, know-nothings and other uncompromising demagogues.

Actually, as wonderful a film as this is, what struck me was what horrible people abolitionists were. How full of righteous moral fervor, how unpleasant, how lacking in humour. They remind me of your average modern left-winger. Not a funny bone in their entire body. Hopeless people.

I went to see this flick with great trepidation. I assumed – given the current state of the world and Hollywood’s over-inflated self importance regarding said state – that this would be Clint Eastwood’s contribution to the noble self-aggrandizement of the celebrity anti-war movement. I didn’t think much of Flags of our Fathers and I was afraid this would be even worse.

Instead it turned out to be the best war film since Saving Private Ryan. There’s nothing here making the Japanese heroes or the Americans naive barbarians. No long, introspective sequences musing on the futility of war. It’s very matter-of-fact, in your face kind of film and well worth seeing. The scenes offering a glimpse into the American way of making war in 1945 is alone worth the price of admission.

I remember seeing the photos of Robert Hanssen after the story broke. I couldn’t figure out why it was such a big deal. The guy just looked like a salesman to me. Blonde hair, a winning grin. I pegged him for some sort of middle management type who sold secrets to pay for his Jag.

After seeing the flick, I went back and looked at the same photo again. There’s a sickly edge to the smile – almost like it hurts. There’s weariness and disgust in the eyes.

Funny how knowing more of the story can so swiftly change your perceptions.

Meh. I’d like to go back and re-read the comics I have – not the old 1970s series on which the movie was largely based, but the 1990s rebirth stuff – and see if it really is as weak a premise as it seems. On paper it sounds great: dude with flaming skull who rides a tricked out chopper wreaks vengeance on cowardly evil.

But then, like all comic book movies, somebody makes some damned bad decisions and it all goes awry. Like casting Ben Affleck as Daredevil. Or telling Nic Cage to affect a southern accent.

Word to the makers of future comic book movies: cast unknowns, or relative unknowns, in the title roles. Let them create the character rather than trying to shoehorn somebody well-known into the role. The Fantastic Four was great, partly for that very reason. Ditto X-Men in most respects. Colin Farrell could never play Bullseye now but he did a bang-up job back when.

Maybe comic books are really too thin a premise for movies. Maybe there’s just not enough there. Or maybe it’s just Marvel comics, written for slightly stupid, easily bored, self absorbed baby boomers that are the problem. I dunno. But I’m not ever getting my hopes up for a mainstream comic movie again.

Wow! Talk about a flick that has it all: pedophilia, homosexual longing between students and between teachers and students, sexual harassment, and lots of creative f-bombs.

If you didn’t already think English schoolboys were a bunch of nancys, you will now. Yeesh.

“Picture this guys. We’ll hire all the people that made the best caper flicks of the last ten years. We’ll cut and paste pieces from a Guy Ritchie flick with chunks from a Michael Mann film. Then we’ll get one of those painfully hip production houses to hack together a fast cut trailer to build enthusiasm. Pure gold, I’m telling you. A license to print money!”

I think somewhere along the line that poor bastard’s plan went awry. I have one question: when did Jeremy Piven, of all people, become a first rate actor? I mean, Christ, that’s almost as plausible as Pig Vomit from Private Parts getting an Oscar nod.

I think there is an absolute dearth of good movies out there. More and more, my visits to the flickering temple cause me to channel Jack Sparrow and ask, “to what point and purpose?” Why the devil did anyone need to make a movie about Marie Antoinette? And if making such a film is deemed a necessity of life why reinforce the historical stereotypes? Why not film her years in captivity? Her final surrender of her son? Or at least make a complete film, encompassing all the phases of her existence: both those sympathetic and those antagonistic.

From what I hear, Sofia Coppola seems to be on an “every other is a hit” plan. Does that mean her next film will be half so excellent as Lost in Translation?

Who the hell is Bill Sullivan? That was my first clue that the entire meticulous and slowly developing film was a steaming pile of crap. Once again, our dear friends on the Left Coast took a whopping good story and fictionally twisted it to make a very long, mildly interesting flick instead of the taut, intriguing thriller it could have been.

What a load of bollocks.

The problem isn’t that it’s a bad story, it’s that there are so many glaring annoyances as to distract you from the story and leave you shaking your head in wonder. How many scenes of grown men jumping around in grass skirts and bawling out oaths of allegiance to each other while loudly congratulating themselves on ruling the world can one really stomach? How utterly miscast is Angelina Jolie in anything that doesn’t require her to be – in essence – Angelina Jolie? How freaking ugly was the beanpole son? How amazing is it that his level of stupidity matches the level of his looks? When was Grant’s Tomb the Air and Space museum?

Oh wait, they meant “Wild” Bill Donovan. Now that story would make a movie worth watching.

There are many photos of me, as a kid, dressed out in full 1970s pimp-daddy fashion: polyester vests, wide collars over jackets, knee socks, Pumas, mother of pearl snap shirt buttons. The whole nine. I thought my surviving Seventies fashion was fortunate enough. Now I wonder if I’m lucky to have gotten out of the decade alive.

Was the entire decade this self-absorbed? Were people really this twisted and narcissistic? I would have thought there was only so much damage head scarves and hideous yellow housewares could do to one’s self-esteem. Apparently I misunderestimated those effects.

Bah. What a rotten flick. Stupid me-me-ME! people.

It seems odd to call a depressing, post-apocalyptic movie pretty. But man, was it ever.

There’s a lot of stuff in this flick and not all of it is the typical, knee-jerk, Hollywood crap. The fact that the British military was generally dressed in American equipment and that the immigrants were all Muslim and badly treated and that the terrorists and the hippy were noble – that’s Hollywood crap.

But I dug the concept and what blew me away was my own reaction to the film’s premise. What would I feel like if the world was going to end, not with a bang, but a whimper? I think that’s brilliant. An excellent idea. Given the current state of the human race I fail to see any benefit to its continued existence. And given my generally sociopathic disposition I’d take a perverse glee in the idea that the human race wouldn’t outlive me. In a self-centered universe, when the sun goes out the planets die too.

But I still found myself cheering for the survival of the kid and realized that as bad as it gets, there’s always the hope that it will get better. Even if we all know good and well that it won’t.

It must be impossible to tell the life story of an artist. I’ve seen two films about Beethoven and both told his story through a woman or women. The latest through the eyes of an invented woman.

And it isn’t just Beethoven. There’s a flick out right now about a photographer which completely falsifies her life. There’s Amadeus which invents facts and inserts them into the lives of historical figures to make some sort of point, although I’m not sure what it is.

Nor is this horrifying trend restricted to biography. In The Patriot the story of a sickly, slave holding, aristocrat is twisted into standard Hollywood action fare complete with amazing feats of woodsman marksmanship, confused but elegant battle and the imposition of modern morality on the eighteenth century reality. Braveheart bedded the future Queen of England. U-571 had both a black man and an ethnic German on an United States submarine tasked to a top-secret mission. Pearl Harbor had . . . well, let’s just say that 1941 was about as accurate a portrayal of that time period as Pearl Harbor

The truth is always better. The truth is always more exciting. We are not a stupid people. We don’t need muscular heroes with stolid expressions howling hopelessly over the bodies of their dead children to pique our interest. Give us the reality of the past and see how we respond.

Stupid Hollywood.

I forgot my old rule not to read books before seeing the movie. Which rule only applies if one was inclined to do both. The shame of the thing is that it is such a pretty film, but things go by so fast that the important stuff is skipped in order to get to the big, loud Hollywood stuff. Damned pity.

It was like old home week: shots of South Philly, the Art Museum, the new whatever-it-is building out by 30th Street.

It was even more like old home week: wild ideas, quick training, holding his own and getting beat in the big fight.

Having now looked around and read some reviews this seems to be a love it or hate it kind of film. I loved it. I loved it enough, in fact, that although I haven’t seen a Rocky film in probably 20 years and I’ve never seen IV or V I’m considering buying the collected works just so I can see them all, again and again.

And I’ll buy Balboa when it comes out as well.

Damned fine movie.

Twelve heads a’rolling
Eleven heartless corpses
Ten Mayans running
Nine children crying
Eight Spaniards looming
Seven monkeys howling
Six pigs a’roasting
Five nose piercings
Four glassy knives
Three long spears
Two dead wives
Makes a Mel Gibson mo-o-o-vie!

I ought to know better than to watch films involving things French.

I thought Fall was a dead time for films. Instead I come back from almost three weeks of constantly moving to find out I’m hopelessly behind on film-going and may never catch up. What’s a fellow to do?

Naturally, pick the film that can’t be missed but probably won’t be around next week. Bonus points if said film involves beer, extreme states of inebriation and other tomfoolery.

This is like watching my mid-twenties on Biography. It’s like what my flashbacks will be in the seconds before I hit the ground. And it’s an equal-opportunity offender.

A new challenge: watch this movie and Harold and Kumar back to back participating in the respective characters choice of inebriates when appropriate. That’s a recipe for an excellent weekend. Which might also call for a Bill and Ted viewing.

What happened to the “Vice” part? A globe-trotting duo in subdued clothes and improbably hairstyles does not a Miami Vice make. Pastels, collars above jackets, tieless shoes without socks – these things are coming back into style. How come they got left out? Who the hell wants to watch two plus hours of mullet boy whinging over a damned commie while goat-bearded boy mopes about his blown-up girlfriend? Since when do people just jet in and out of Havana? How did Russians, Chinese and fecking skinheads – skinheads! – manage to pull off such a complicated plot? More importantly, who cares?

F’ the 80s. They’re dead and good riddance. If you’re going to dredge up the well-buried past, at least have the good sense to run on pure nostalgia and don’t try to make those sorry times relevant to today.

What a profoundly bizarre movie. Like all deliciously odd films it was good right up until the moment it felt it had to draw a “meaning” from the madness.

Why not leave well-enough alone? Tell the story, confuse us all with the gratuitous rotoscoped nudity, mindf**k us and leave us all gaping like addled goldfish at the end. How much would that rule?

True to form, the film actually altered real reality. I left the theatre in a bit of a daze, trying to figure out what exactly I had just witnessed. While I ambled back to the house I found an apartment building that had sprung up from nowhere and an absolutely deserted storefront where only that morning had been a fully functioning souvenir shop. As one of Keanu’s wiser characters stated many years ago, “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.”

I want to hear a round of responses from the Jersey/college people – did we like it? Was it good?

My opinion is best expressed as a horrifyingly Gallic shrug.

There’s a great exchange in Trainspotting discussing the ravages of age:

SICK BOY
All I’m trying to do is help you understand that The Name of the Rose is merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.

RENTON
What about The Untouchables?

SICK BOY
I don’t rate that at all.

RENTON
Despite the Academy award?

SICK BOY
That means fuck all. The sympathy vote.

RENTON
Right. So we all get old and then we can’t hack it any more. Is that it?

SICK BOY
Yeah.

RENTON
That’s your theory?

SICK BOY
Yeah, Beautifully fucking illustrated.

Poor Kevin Smith. You’ve declined to the level of ridicule reserved by ex-heroin addicts for Sean Connery.

It’s a terrible shame. I grew up with the Clerks. I was their age when the first flick came out. I’m their age now with the second. I savvy what they’re struggling with. I whine and moan as much as they do and I’m just as pissed off at a life which seems to be running away with me as they are. Dammit! I go to the movies to avoid contemplating my meaningless husk of a life, not to confront it!

Good for them. It all turned out sunshine and roses up the merry arsehole. How delightful. Now, I would like my cynical, anarchic, devil-may-care escapist Kevin Smith back, please. Sir Sean wants his lame-o throne back.

Seems like two out of every three movies I see has an identity crisis. They just don’t know what kind of movie they want to be. Will they be a sweet, redeeming coming of age story, a black comedy of corporate back stabbing, or a biting satire on the state of our image-obsessed world?

This flick took the easy way out: do all three, concurrent or consecutively and see what happens.

You get a few laughs and a gaggable ending. Good enough for summer viewing. Possibly good enough to consider a DVD.

But probably not.

“Did you ever get the feeling you’d been cheated?”

Part of the beauty of the first Pirates was that it was – believable isn’t the right word – but at least the actions of the principals were physically possible. There was some far out Crouching Tiger stuff in the blacksmith’s shop but mostly it was run of the mill, Errol Flynn swordplay. Believeable.

Dead Man’s Chest threw all the rules out the window. Plausibility? Who needs it? Consistency? For the birds. Exposition? Hwa??

What comes out of all of this is a mish-mash hodge-podge of a flick without the rollicking jollity of the first or even the bizarre kitsch value of the Pirates property. And it has a second part. Did everyone but me know this was a goddamned cliffhanger?

If numero tres is half so bad, adventure movies may be set back to Cutthroat Island days. And that’d be a damned shame.

Silence, heathens! I’ll tolerate none of your barbaric imprecations regarding myself and my taste in movies. Keillor and his heavy breathing drives me absolutely batty. And I can’t stand his sly digs at the sort of people he routinely parodies in his shows. But amidst the detritus of the summer movie season, not even saved by a new Pirates of the Caribbean this is the best flick I’ve seen yet.

How can you not love a movie with two cowboys singing a wholesome sing-song full of dirty jokes? Or anything that contains Lilly Tomlin declaring “It’s time to get plastered”? Man, that’s a movie tailor made to be fun for the whole family.

Hell, I might even buy the DVD and just skip past old flat-faced Keillor. Cut directly to Guy Noir doing his best Kevin Kline bit and savor the happiness.

Ah heroes, those horrible people who have the audacity to perform beyond the ability of the common man. Those whose capabilities cause fear and envy, leading our sick, self centered society to cut them off at the knees and “make them human.” After all, since we’re all strictly and literally created equal and all values measurements are relative we can’t have a group of self-appointed saviours running about showing up their ostensible equals.

Superman is the latest victim of this modern malaise. He doesn’t stand for “Truth, Justice and the American Way” anymore, merely “Truth, Justice, all that stuff.” Hell, he’s no moral paragon: he buggered off for years, left behind some distinctly amoral residue and drinks beer during the working day. What the hell do we need Superman for? He’s no better than us!

It’s a sorry state of affairs when the greatest hero in the comics pantheon is brought so low because a sick society can’t bear to witness greatness – even in the movies.

It seems to me that all I ever do is watch movies. I’m not certain this is a bad thing. Movie night involves copious quantities of booze, bad food and beautiful women. And then you get to watch a movie.

But this movie? I should have thought about it. A new film by the guy that brought you Napoleon Dynamite. I didn’t get that flick. I didn’t get this one either.

However, I’ll watch just about anything Jack Black does. He and his fans annoy me; but if the close-up shot is the pinnacle of the film actors’ art, this man is the greatest actor ever to grace the big screen. He has the greatest gift for facial expressions I’ve ever seen. The screen could just be filled with his mug and in the space of seconds he can send me into paroxysms without ever speaking a word. In fact, given the level of dialog in the flick that’s a good thing.

I think I might get into lucha libre. Does ESPN2 carry it when they’re blacking out my goddamned baseball games? Men in masks and tight pants beating each other sillily bears a certain appeal. Especially when they’re Mexicans.

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. The book and movie basically say two things:

1) Jesus was a human being who was married and had children.
2) The Roman Catholic Church left some of the facts out of His story.

And for this we’ve sold billions of dollars worth of books and movie tickets, confused an entire generation and enraged the Church? Huh? To which ignorant, bone-headed morons is this news?

As for me, I thought the humanity of Jesus was kind of the point. Here’s a fully human man who also happens to be divine. That’s perfectly in keeping with the tradition of the ancient gods. I do not think anyone has attempted to assert that Jesus was an eternal virgin. He was a Jew of the First Century. Why wouldn’t he have been married? Why mightn’t he have had children? Why is this a big deal? There’s no implication that divinity is a biological trait, nor is there any reason to think there would be some sort of “royal bloodline” passed down. He was of the House of David but surely so are many others.

And the Church, my dear Church. Of course they picked and chose what facts to use. In fact, nobody is or was sure of the facts. What the Council of Nicea did was choose the most consistent information to include in doctrine and attempt to create a unified faith that could – and did – sweep the world. Thousands of years and billions of followers later the base beliefs are still in place, indicating – at least to me – that there must have been some truth in it.

The end result of all this is to demonstrate that the inclusion or exclusion of one side of things does not imply the negation of the other side of things. The fact that Christ was fully human does not make him any less divine. The fact that the Church left out some of the story does not make what’s left any less true. Life is lived in absolutes but it does not have to be absolutely exclusionary.

I give the whole experience a big fat, “Meh.” I think that a rollicking adventure story was absolutely butchered by the principals involved in the making of the movie. I just kept thinking back to National Treasure and wishing the folks involved in that one had been drafted to make this one. What a film it could have been!

That was 100 minutes I’ll never get back. At least Titanic lived up to the promise of its first three letters. Poseidon seemed mainly to consist of very pretty people wetly dying. Here’s what ran through my head during the film:

00:00: I wonder how the Sox are doing. Schilling is the man!

00:05: That’s the hero? He looks like a date rapist! What the hell is wrong with modern movies?

00:10: Holy crap! Is that Fergie from the Black-Eyed Peas? I wonder if she’ll piss herself on film?

00:20: When you spend the first 15 minutes of a given movie hoping every single man, woman and child in the flick will die unceremoniously and quickly, that’s probably not a good sign.

00:30: Do the tops of all elevator shafts have conveniently placed punji stakes?

00:40: They have propellors in the bow? WTF?

00:50: Wait, one screw? There’s only one screw? What kind of hatch only has one screw? That can be undone with a crucifix? WTF?

00:60: I wonder what happens to all the unattractive people in disaster movies. Are they all afflicted with the red shirt curse from Star Trek?

01:10: I wonder if the two other weirdos in the theatre are fetching off when the girls get wet. Creepy.

01:20: That chick bugs me. I wish she’d just choose between her too-intense attachment to her Dad and her utterly unloved boyfriend. I hope the blonde one dies.

01:30: That’s the most hackneyed ending I’ve ever seen. I miss Ernest Borgnine.

01:40: Holy crap. That was 100 minutes I’ll never get back. I wish I had written down my thoughts so I can post them on the website.

There was a Mission Impossible 2? Or 1? Christ. Where have I been?

Just once I’d like to see a film where the bad guy does precisely what he says he’ll do in precisely the timeframe he proposes to do it in. No explaining your master plan. No skiving off on your dastardly deed because of a sudden attack of humanity. None of that bollocks. Hard core, cold blooded nastiness. I want to see the heroes suffer without the swelling musical chords that indicate hope’s still alive if only you’ll stay tuned for the sequel. I want dead loved ones to stay dead and the hero of the hour to have to figure out how to slog on when there’s no particular reason to do so. I want the bad guy to win. For after all, “evil will always triumph because good is dumb.”

And that is why, despite it’s insanely annoying characters, 24 is infinitely superior to anything in the Mission Impossible genre. People die. This is the “really, real world. There ain’t no coming back.” Evil is human nature, it’s the root of our being. Our capacity for goodness is unbounded but it’s deeply unnatural. The universe tends toward entropy. So, apparently, does human society. Why can’t we have that reflected on screen? Are we all really that desperate for escapism?

Meh, I saw it, I enjoyed it in the moment and I shall promptly forget all about it. How long until Pirates of the Carribbean?

Yes, I’ve seen it.

No, I’m not ashamed. I’m pissed.

Yes, you should be ashamed if you wanted to see it.

We shall never speak of this again.

Wow. I totally forgot I saw this until I read Bampf’s comment that he has yet to see it.

Hell, I don’t even remember what it was about. I just remember I was keen to see it because spending two hours watching Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis chock full of badassery can’t possibly be a waste.

And I’m sure it wasn’t. Fleeting memories trickle back. Hartnett is turning into a first rate leading man. Lucy Liu is spectacularly annoying and not in the slightest bit attractive. No internationally rated hitman would ever let two marks slide off the way Willis did. How much we need more flicks like Payback where unapologetic evilness gets its due.

Meh, movie nights in PA ain’t about the movie anyway. They’re about entertaining barmaids and seeing how many ounces of beer and overfried foods can be downed before the flick starts.

But what the hell is there to see in the three bloody weeks I have to spend in Hell’s black heart?

I told myself not to bother with this flick. God himself tried to tell me to take the night off by filling my typical pre-movie stop with filthy yuppies at 6 PM on a Thursday night. But I muddled through and very nearly stayed awake for the entire movie.

I’m just a little weary of very pretty, spectacularly forgettable films. Especially ones that masquerade as issue pictures. Hell, only this year I’ve sat through two of these, counting Ultraviolet. Anyone else remember Aeon Flux? Nah, me either.

I think that this particular picture may have suffered from a very interesting and unique flaw. I think the filmmakers were trying to make a live-action anime and never really intended for the movie to play well with American audiences. The action sequences certainly back me up, the society was that sort of asian dominated futuresque place we all expected growing up in the mid-80s, and the dialogue sounded like a poorly dubbed kung fu movie. I’ve seen movies with bad dialogue before but I’ve never seen one where every line would have sounded better if the actor’s lips were comically out of sync with the words.

No sir. I didn’t like it. But if the involved parties were trying to make a flick for Japanese audiences and were forced into a US release I will offer grudging respect and sincere sympathy.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” — Thomas Jefferson

I bet lots of people watch this film and perceive similarities to the imagined religio-fascism of our current administration. More educated and insightful folks might make comparisons to the anti-com, nucleo-wingnut era of Thatcher and Reagan.

That’s all bollocks, of course. But what is the message of the book and the movie? Obviously not that government is a good thing. Rather that We the People must always be conscious of our duties as an oversight committee for our government. It’s a message of responsibility: “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” It’s the same thing Thomas Jefferson – insano-wackjob that he was – advocates in the passage above. Know what’s going on. Take responsibility for the actions pursued in your name. Even if it only means showing up to the polls to vote for the lesser of two evils, someone has to win and they’re going to act as if the mass of the people supports them so you had better have a hand in their rise or fall.

Plus, as Bampf says, it’s the best comic book movie since Sin City.

I’m not entirely sure what the point of this film is. I suppose that Hollywood, given our current cultural battles, just loves playing in the Restoration to show that there’s nothing new under the sun. There is certainly enough familiar to modern ears to make you occasionally think you’re in one of Larry Flynt’s salons.

Ah, but you’ve got to love a film where the main character introduces himself by announcing that you won’t like him. You may not, but by God that’s the signal an interesting film lies ahead. And it’s one of the most happily quotable films in recent memory. I may have to find the play just to record some of the choicer ones. There’s only one that sticks in my mind: scolded by his mother that “Any man can drink,” the title character replies that “. . . few can do it with my dedication.”

I think I want that carved on my tombstone.

It takes a great deal of skilled filmmaking to take the premise of an idiot Frenchman getting himself into a series of increasingly ridiculous situations and converting it into the most spectacularly unfunny movie ever made. That requires not only a complete misunderstanding of why the premise is funny in the first place but also the enthusiastic participation of a normally excellent comedian, a miscast tough guy and a wonderfully expressive actor phoning in his performance.

What a waste of the reels of film needed to project this onto the screen. Sadly I can’t even comment on the entire film, after forty-five minutes of not even smiling or reluctantly snorting at some piss-poor joke, I slept through the climactic central portion.

Cripes. What a waste of my time. I actually had to force myself to re-watch A Shot in the Dark just to see how even a bad Pink Panther movie is vastly superior to this steaming pile.

I’ve never had any sympathy for Native Americans. A culture that seems to respect strength ought to understand and respect the conquest of their culture by a stronger one. The only thing I regret about the conquest and displacement of American Indians is the constant lying they endured from all quarters. Americans have always tried to make everyone like us, we’re reluctant to unsheath the sword when needed. Why sign treaties than you intend to break? Why not be honest? We’re bigger, we’re badder, we’re taking over – you can submit or die.

It’s wonderfully refreshing to see the Irish kick the English in the teeth for an hour and a half, rather than the typically other way ’round. What a world this would have been if the Irish had remained in charge. I suppose God wouldn’t have invented whiskey, though. That would have been a damned shame.

Just think, we’d have been Irish colonists, good Catholics all. Sir Arthur’s mystical brew might have been drawn from the roiled waters of the mighty Mississippi. American syle pilsner would still be the backwoods bavarian swill it ought to be. Oh, what a world!

On another matter, why are filmmakers unable to allude to things anymore? Does everything have to be right up in your grille? Have people sacrificed their imagination? Am I the only person who thinks a look or a stolen touch is infinitely more romantic than sodden grunting on animal skins? Meh, maybe it’s just my hermit’s lifestyle.

You’d think it would be possible, just once, to produce a historically oriented film without making the Catholic Church out to be the villians. If Holy Mother Church was and is as bad as moviemakers would have us believe would she really have existed as a beacon of moral strength for two millenia?

I ask so little of the movie making industry. Give me something emotionally stirring yet believeable and as accurate as possible without ridiculously gratuitous nudity or negativity about the United States or the Roman Catholic Church. What’s so hard about that?

At least they gave me some decent belly laughs and not too many slap the forehead at gross anachronisms moments. Sometimes you just have to hope the grins outweigh the grimaces and go with the flow.

Hrm, goth-y *blah blah blah*. Rubber suits, dark spaces, underdressed vampires, gratuitous sex scenes. Yep, all the elements for a perfectly formulaic vampire movie. It’s a bit of a shame that the most originally plotted monster movie series has to shlock it around with the boring standards of the genre.

Would you really want to go into combat in a rubber suit and corset? Or wearing high-heeled boots and an ankle length coat? Fer chrissakes, you’d trip and get your gullet cranked open before you could mumble something vampirically monotonous. And when was the last time you saw an immortal scholar humping two women at the same time? Does vampirism really change everyone into an inescapable sex magnet?

Why can’t we get a movie with vampires like Cassidy in The Preacher? I have a one-shot where he slaps the shite out of another vampire in New Orleans for acting like a gothic ponce. Then he goes to the bar. My kind of vampire.

I can almost see why this was such a hit on Broadway. Sadly, the transition to the big screen wasn’t kind. The gold standard in musicals translated to the movies is Chicago. That film took all that’s good about stage musicals – the size, the depth and the staging – and applied to them the benefits of movie magic. What came out was something better than either medium could produce alone.

The Producers didn’t pull it off. I think the problem lies in how you treat the musical numbers. If you try to integrate them too tightly into the story line you lose all believability. People don’t just spontaneously break into song in the midst of a conversation. I guess Chicago created such an air of unreality from the beginning that the transitions from dialogue to song didn’t jar. In fact, they made perfect sense.

I wish someone would do a straight remake of the original Producers with Nathan Lane and Gene Wilder. Leave out the obnoxious and obvious gay jokes, the sex, the stupid ending and combine Lane’s manic energy with Wilder’s gentle insanity. That would be a perfect film.

And what happened to my favorite line? “You fish-faced enemy of the people!” Travesty!

I can think of two ideal – ideal meaning very appropriate and bizarre – places to see a movie about Jews. One could go to Brooklyn. Or, one could go to south Florida.

A sold out show of blue hairs. You’ve never seen so many cheap, kvetching, tracksuit wearing, large-spectacled folks in all your life. And – except for the lady right behind me who’d apparently left her hearing aids at home – they were entirely silent during the entire film.

I have no problem with killing to avenge wrong. I have no problem with killing to promote right. There are great philosophical debates to be had over whether doing wrong in the pursuit of right is still wrong. Does the executioner in the State Penitientiary go to hell for breaking the Sixth Commandment?

The real question is: where does it end? In any war the question is the same: can we kill enough of them so they quit before we run out of us? Should butchery be repaid with butchery? Is it right to become the evil in order to combat it? Is there such a thing as a moral high ground in war? I’d answer yes, yes, and yes. In fact, I’d go so far as to recommend Biblical vengeance on enemies: kill them, their wives, their children, their parents, their entire family down to the most distant cousin and sow their land with salt.

Happily – except for the bullets and sodium industries – I’m not in charge of such things. But where does it end? And how do we end it?

How come no critic has yet released the comment: “A gripping tale of sweet monkey love.”? Unoriginal buggers.

The film was twice as long as it ought to have been. I could argue that the original was too long at 105 minutes, this one clocks in at nearly double that. How much movie can you really squeeze out of the already overdone “Beauty and the Beast” concept when the Beast doesn’t talk? I kept thinking of my friend’s famous Lord of the Rings comment.

Oddly, while I complain about the length, I thought the biplane scene at the end was just right. Rather, I thought much of the Skull Island adventure dragged.

I would rather have spent three hours immersed in the meticulous recreation of New York City ca. 1933 watching Jack Black scheme and Naomi Watts pratfall than watch three minutes of the oversized insects of Skull Island.

Man, if I ever get this flick on DVD, I’m fast forwarding through that part.

Perhaps being the only man in the theatre should have told me something. Maybe I should have sympathized less with the supposedly evil guy quoted above and more with the ragtag collection of drug addicts and squatters offered as the heroes. I do believe Bohemia’s dead. In fact, I think Bohemia is a myth. Not in the “conspiracy of cartographers” sense but as an imagined golden age where truth and beauty and those who sought them were celebrated.

Bollocks. Never happened. Everyone has to make a living. Leonardo turned out unfinished works by the hundreds for the folks that paid his bills. Michelangelo worked for four years to complete his Sistine Chapel commission.

My brother thought the movie – and by extension the show – seemed dated. I think it did but didn’t have to. I think that the artists who created the show and movie want it to be a rallying cry for the present rather than an excellently crafted portrait of the past.

As a history lesson Rent is great. I burst into laughter when I saw the storefront for “Nobody beats the Wiz.” Man, I remember that from my childhood. But I also remember going to New York for the first time to see the Radio City Christmas show in the show’s time period. I remember the graffitti, the bums, the stolen watches and pirated movies being sold on cardboard tables in Times Square. I remembered it so well, in fact, that I didn’t go back to New York for almost fifteen years: in a large group, with guns.

As a requiem for a lost past Rent doesn’t work as well. There may be honor in poverty. There may be solidarity in starvation. But New York is now a fine place to spend time. If the cost of that improvement was the loss of housing for wistful dreamers and starving artists, so be it. After all, nobody but glassy-eyed utopians “. . . really want a neighborhood where people piss on your stoop every night[.]“

Since this film was announced I’ve wondered if I could make it to release day. I even contemplated buying one of the new iPods just so I could carry the two trailers around with me and watch them at my leisure.

I’m happy to say that my expectations are entirely fulfilled. It’s a hell of a movie and only falls short in the way that any filmed production of a much-loved book will fall short of the entire promise of the book. Fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy quibbled over what was left out and what was altered or presented from a different point of view – as a fan of the Narnia stories I have no such complaints. Everything was as precise as possible. Nothing was excluded and that which was added only enhanced the story – particularly the relationships between the brothers and sisters. I won’t attempt to spoil the very best added part.

What a wonderful film. What an excellent birthday present. If only my replacement copy of LWW would arrive I could start working my way back through the books again. In the meantime, the very ridiculous BBC series and repeated viewings of the film will have to do.

A very queer little film about a very queer little man contemplating a very queer little crime. If Truman Capote made people half so uncomfortable in real life as watching the recreation of him made me in the theatre it’s amazing he accomplished anything. There must have been something to him aside from being a sideshow attraction for the New York jet set.

As a film I can take it or leave it. It was overly long, dragged interminably at times and left you decidedly squeamish regarding both Capote and the crime. It did, however, make me add In Cold Blood to my reading list, convince me to watch To Kill A Mockingbird last night and lead me to do a little bit of reading on the man and the whole affair.

And perhaps that’s what the best films do; they make you think about their subject matter and arouse a desire to learn more. The classics reading list is getting mighty long. Daily I pray that nobody makes a film which impels me to give a second look at Native Son or Babbit. But man, if such a thing existed it would be the greatest movie ever made.

I am sorely tired of Sci Fi flicks that take the press’s latest scientific panty-wadding advance and try to turn it into a very pretty, post-apocalyptic, negative utopia. When said film then compounds the offense by stealing freely from the “spandex-clad, big pecs, big tits, big guns” school of movie-making you’re on your way to obscurity.

At least they remembered the eyelash thing. In truth, that’s the only thing I remember from the very peculiar animated shorts. I remember a lot of running, weird action close-ups and bizarre japanimated speed lines.

How to make a completely incomprehensible cartoon into a full-length flick: pack it chock full of thinly veiled allusions to “important issues of the day” and throw stylish haircuts at the main characters.

If you haven’t seen this film get up off your ever-expanding arse, go out right now and see it. Don’t bother about work, real life, traffic or any of the other silly concerns that may occur to you. Go see the film, then come back if you like and tell me what you thought.

If you didn’t enjoy it thoroughly, I reserve the right to ridicule you ceaselessly until I die.

It’s a hell of a good try at a modern noir film. The patter is right, the attitude is right, the characterizations are right. It’s got dumb gangsters, a hotten totten moll, a bad good guy and plenty of smart ass dialogue. The only things missing are the atmospheric qualities of the best old flicks: the geometric photography and the moody lighting.

It could be better. It could leave more to the imagination. It could be less obvious in places.

Suspend your new millenial oh-so-clever sensibilities and enjoy it you jaded wankers.

I have to stop reading movie criticism when I plan to see the film. When it comes time for me to consider my own reaction I end up mentally nodding in agreement to most of what the critic says.

Makes me feel like an uncreative twit. I hate being a sycophant.

My only original commentary is that the film is fast. Damned fast. It roars by at such a pace you barely register the beginning before it’s over. Most of what was cut out and glossed over was extraneous – Rita Skeeter, Ludo Bagman, the teenage mopey stuff – but the speed did come at the expense of exposition. And they robbed the Irish of their moment in the sun! Damned Englishmen.

Given the length of this book and the two to come it would be advantageous to stretch the films into two installments: put one out now and one at Christmas. At two hours each you ought to be able to linger a bit over the Quidditch World Cup, or spend more time on the various personal conflicts. With things rushing by at such a dizzying pace you don’t even get time to worry about the return of the uber-baddie before he’s come and gone.

Are films about artists all alike because there’s some sort of filmmakers’ formula? Or they all alike because they’re all about artists?

Yes, the film was predictable. In fact, apart from different styles of cattin’ around and the presence of a father in one case Walk the Line is damned near indistiguishable from Ray.

Early loss of a loved one? Check. Rubbing shoulders with the look-at-’em-now crowd? Check. Descent into a haze of drugs and alcohol? Check. Final redemption and ascent to artistic godhood? Check.

I loved it. A friend once proclaimed he’d buy a box set of Eddie Vedder on the loo provided Ed talked during the deed. I’d watch a film of a Tennessee snowstorm if Johnny Cash sang during it.

And I won’t take back all the bad things I said about the two pansies playing giants but I will give Reese Witherspoon mad props for her performance. I’ll even refrain from complaining about the way her chin stole every scene and distracted from the film. And Joaquin? He ain’t a bad singer.

But Johnny was better.

When did we actually start offing major characters in movies? There was a time when – cliche as it might have been – nobody important ever died. Hell, Indiana Jones was faced with imminent and unavoidable demise ten times every fifteen minutes through three films and he never even lost his hat!

I blame reality TV.

I read some commentary that said Serenity was made only for the cultish fans, that unless you were some sort of mega-fan of the old Firefly TV show you wouldn’t understand or enjoy the flick. Being a fan of the old show, I can’t comment without bias but I think Serenity is possibly the best science fiction flick since Star Wars. It’s the answer to the question, “What would happen if you let Han Solo carry a film?”

I have only one complaint. I think the success of Star Wars is due to the creation of the entire universe. The filmgoer saw the whole vast scope of “a galaxy far, far away” and was drawn into the events therein – caring as much about the causes as the characters. Most sci fi since then focuses on the characters and expects the viewer to invest heavily in the personalities rather than the broader picture. I suspect it’s because Serenity came from TV and its creator is used to that medium that it is more susceptible to this fault than most. I’ll still go see it aqain.

Once in a while even I am up for some nonsensical, pointless, cartoonish violence. Especially if there are mind-bogglingly attractive naughty schoolgirlish chicks with guns contained therein.

Honestly, I remember almost nothing about the first flick. I’m pretty sure I enjoyed it but I suspect the second blows it away for sheer tomfoolery.

There’s precious little to comment on. I hate overly pretty bad guys with silly accents. I dig Audis doing stunts that would reduce the General Lee to shredded steel and oil slicks. I hate distraught mother characters. I dig a brother whupping ass in a suit and tie.

Some critic said Statham ought to be considered as the next Bond. I heartily agree.

Finally! A lead character who shares my philosophy of life!

The events of last month in New Orleans have proved me – and the main character – right. People are animals. Their default mode is to do evil, not good, and absent the normal bindings of family, law, and church they’ll revert to a Hobbesian state almost instantly.

The “Lord of War” knows this too and takes it another step further: if people are like to kill each other anyway, why shouldn’t I profit from the transaction? Morally it’s an untenable position: just because humanity has a tendency towards self destruction doesn’t mean you need to speed the process. Still, it’s an interesting thought. Even if it is only rationalizing one’s part in greasing the treads of the blitzkreig.

I wonder if I ought to have laughed the whole way through the film?

Anyone who didn’t – at some bizarre, childhood level – dig this film obviously can’t cope with Terry Gilliam. I’ll admit to having difficulties with some of this films – Brazil for instance – but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see everything he makes just for the sheer brilliant weirdness factor. Go ahead, try to tell me that Peter Max on his most hallucinogenic day had the weirdness in his little finger that dripped from every frame of one of Gilliam’s animated Python shorts.

Bah. Fuggin’ hippies.

I will happily bitch and moan about the leads. I thought pretty boy, whatshisname-not-Orlando-Bloom was damn good. Absolutely perfect for the role he was expected to play. Matt Damon was not teeth-gratingly terrible but not nearly working up to his admittedly limited potential. But British Accents? On German storytellers? Is that just some sort of catch-all “Look! They’re not American!” accent? How brilliant would it have been to hear some serious gutteral Bohemian or whatever the hell they were claiming to be? I give major props to the all purpose filthy European bad guy dude, at least he retains his nigh-unintelligible accent in everything he does. Even, oddly enough, American prison shows.

But I suppose the two pretty boys speaking Bostonian and Aussie would have been even weaker. Although it’d have been a hoot to hear the one dude stammer something about the bad sheila.

Remember what I said about War of the Worlds? The same holds true for The Dukes only you have to reverse the halves.

The beauty of the old TV shows – CHiPs, The Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team – was that the actors attempted to take the source material seriously. They knew it was ridiculous. You knew it was ridiculous. Still, bizarre material played straight is the best recipie for satiric comedy there is. The problem with the movie adaptations of the old TV shows is that everything is played with a wink and a nod – and it just ain’t funny. Most of the time.

The blessing of this flick was that once the writers got the wink/nod out of their system and finally stopped making the characters talk at all things really started rocking. All the beauty of the old show – fast cars, hot women, stupid cops, hilbilly hijinks – leapt to the forefront and carried you bodily across the finish line.

Hot damn! I went in expecting a sore disappointment and I was sorely disappointed: from the casting choices to the cheap gags to the political correctness. But you know what? Hearing the tinned notes of Dixie as the General Lee goes roaring through another impossible stunt can make up for just about anything.

There is a very fine line between a bad movie and an offensively bad one. Batman Forever could be considered a bad movie. Batman & Robin was an offensively bad movie. Stealth falls into the latter category.

What’s sad is that I haven’t the time or inclination to point out all the things that royally pissed me off. What’s even more a shame is that the dead-nifty flying sequences and swanky CGI didn’t make up for the utter suckitude of a story that had such immense potential for asking some very interesting questions but settled instead for a short monologue by the character least likely to think deeply.

Pretty goddamned poor.

And next in my series of potentially or really horrible films that piddle all over my deepest convictions or shite all over my childhood: Dukes of Hazzard. Man, I can’t wait.

Where to start? Shall I start with the totally gratuitous sex scene? How about the subtlety-of-a-sledgehammer product placement? The music that kept me flashing back to Pearl Harbor as the bile raised and I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair? The Clockwork Orange meets Total Recall setting and fashions?

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. For the first half of the flick there was a lot to consider. The first thing that popped into my head once the scope of the scenario became apparent was, “My God. That’s what slavery was like!” When humans are treated as commodities, humanity ceases to exist. Scary stuff.

But then suddenly Michael Bay seems to have woken up, slapped himself on the forehead and said, “Dammit! I’m on the verge of making a decent film here! Quick, ignore all realities of plot and pacing and throw some big goddamned explosions in there! This is a Michael Bay picture after all! We have a piss poor reputation to uphold!”

What a load of bollocks. I had a few flashes of inspiration during the flick and one or two insights but by the very long end I was perfectly disgusted with myself for bothering to discover some nuggets of goodness and truth in such a steaming pile of consumerist shite.

Occasionally I see throw-away films. So sue me.

There’s not much to say about this flick – it is a throw-away film, a summer popcorn movie. It’s funny as hell but I doubt I’d ever need to see it again.

But goddamnit, I hate Will Ferrell. That overacting sumbitch can ruin just about any movie. Generally comedy requires subtlety. At the very least it requires the comic to play it straight, not constantly telegraph his moves to the audience and jab them in the ribs every ten seconds going, “Nudge, nudge. Funny, eh?” No jackass, that ain’t funny. It might have been funny if you’d let me make up my mind but you bumrushing me into supposed fits of hilarity just ain’t cutting the mustard.

Wanker.

Anybody who can make Owen fugging Wilson look like a halfway decent movie star is a putz.

Finally, Vince Vaughn is funnier than hell but when is that act going to wear old? Brother’s got to find a new schtick. Someone once said, “There’s nothing sadder than a newly fat comedian.” Bill Murray handled getting older by showing that he really had some chops: he still plays the same character but he spins the character out in lots of different ways. Do you think Vince has that in him?

Roger Ebert says Johnny Depp channeled Michael Jackson in this flick. Disconcerting. Damned disconcerting. And I can’t say I disagree.

That is not to say I didn’t like the film. I certainly didn’t get the willies like I did from the 1970s version. The Oompa Loompas were probably the best characters in the film rather than the number-one reason never to see the film again. Still, I wonder if there are certain books that simply cannot translate onto the screen. Nothing the movies produce can match the Willy Wonka in my head, or the sight of the chocolate waterfall.

So, meh. Wake me when they ditch the idiotic backstory with the wanna-be Sith Lord, give Willy his whiskers back and get ready to make the Great Glass Elevator.

What makes a good comic book movie?

Most, I think, can agree that Spider-Man 1 & 2 are good comic book movies. Likewise, Batman Begins, Sin City and possibly X-Men 1 & 2. On the other hand, Hulk, Daredevil, Elektra and that sort are probably not good comic book movies. Or even good movies.

So, is Fantastic Four a good comic book movie?

Not in the sense that Spider-Man is, but then Fantastic Four isn’t a good comic book by comparison.

Ah, so that’s the trick! It takes a good book to make a good movie. That means I got out of Fantastic Four precisely what I expected and wanted: a little bit silly – but not ridiculous – rollicking good film about the Marvel World’s only set of super-heroes without secret identities.

But dammit, I miss the Thing’s prominent brow-ridge. The costume in the flick made the Thing look like a shaved ferret with a bad skin condition.

War of the Worlds is the best half a movie you’ve ever seen. Take this advice: if you haven’t seen the film yet, leave just after the scene on the Hudson Ferry. Go back and see the flick again if you really want to know how it all turns out but do leave halfway through the first time and savor how great a summer movie can be.

So we all get old and then we can’t hack it any more. Is that it?

That conversation from Trainspotting pretty much sums up Steven Speilberg. Maybe Tom Cruise too.

Damn it. I wish someone would have told me to leave halfway through. I was on the edge of my seat, anxious to see what would happen next, and in the space of about two minutes went from forgetting what a timepiece was to staring endlessly as the second hand forgot how to move. Painful. Exquisitely painful.

When Brad plays slightly crazy, he has no parallel. Unfortunately for him he can’t do much else. Fortunately for us we don’t get tired of the act.

I never though Angelina Jolie was particularly attractive. She’s got that frightening anteater/Mick Jagger look going on that always reminds me of the Bloom County strip with the Venusian face-sucker. For those who do find her attractive, you get lots of chances to see her in virtually nothing looking better than most any common housewife you can imagine.

And another thing, do suburban families actually eat by candlelight in a cavernous dining room? Is it common practice for husband and wife to share the evening meal from either end of a large dining table? Personally I enjoy sitting across from a beautiful woman while dining but the table is usually no bigger than three feet across. Anything else seems too royal. How about either eating in the kitchen, getting a smaller table or sitting cross-wise to get down to the three feet or lesser rule?

Meh, it’s summer. It’s a popcorn flick. It’s fun. It provided some genuine belly-laughs. Who am I to bicker?

Poor Spider-Man. It just lost its crown as best comic book movie ever.

The problem with comic book movies is their tendency to rely on the spectacle at the expense of all the things that make a great movie. Slowly, Hollywood types are learning that the little things like story, character, and dialogue are as important as flashy whiz-bangs.

X-Men, for all its fun, is not a very good movie. The backstories are interesting but there’s too much going on: too many characters, too many powers, too many whizzy things. The Hulk and Daredevil tried the opposite tack: focus on the story of one hero. Their problem was that those heroes’ stories are damned boring. Batman Begins manages to combine whiz-bang energy with compelling characters, good dialogue and an excellent story. It doesn’t hurt that they got some real actors to flesh the thing out and make it believable.

My only complaint is the glaring stupidity of the e-ville plot against Gotham. Am I wrong in thinking that microwaves are a focused line of sight, rather than area-effect, weapon? If that bloody thing had worked the way indicated I would imagine it was a nigh omni-directional beam of immense energy and certainly would have cooked anyone near it – not to mention melt the train – long before causing any serious harm.

But who am I to nit pick? I suppose it’s no less believeable than a scientist manipulating a small sun with attached mechanical arms in a New York City loft or or computers being intelligent and reliable enough to not only enslave the entire human race but create an infinitely layered programmatic construct to keep us all pliable.

I think, in the future, less science is warranted. Suspension of disbelief will cover beloved childhood heroes and villains but fiddling with modern realities doesn’t cut the mustard.

Consider the following in light of my movie-going experience the night of the premiere: planned to go to the midnight show, spent the preceding hours drinking around town, etc. These are first impressions, they may or may not be revised once I’ve actually seen the movie while I’m somewhat coherent.

First impressions are usually correct, anyway.

It was shite. We all expected shite and our expectations were roundly fulfilled. Anyone who ranks any of the modern trilogy or speaks their names in the same sentence with the original “Holy” trilogy is an idiot. I don’t mean to imply that Lucas is some sort of apostate or that he somehow doesn’t have the exclusive right to do whatever he likes in film – I just mean to imply that the brilliance of the Holy Trilogy has been proven a flash in the pan, a bit of beginner’s luck, never to be repeated. I’ll continue to buy Star Wars books, DVDs, comics and other paraphenalia. I’ll watch the forthcoming TV show although it scares me like hell.

But I’ll feel dirty doing it.

The flaws in this film were not as glaring as the flaws in the first two: Less forthrightly silly and/or too-time-specific dialog, less obvious CGI, more action. The only thing that really made me want to projectile vomit in the general direction of the screen was the ridiculously melodramatic Vader animal cry immediately after his creation. We now know, contrary to what we thought we knew, that Vader isn’t a bad-ass, he’s just a whiny little bitch who hides his angst behind a mask and the ability to remotely crush the windpipe of anyone who sees him weeping softly into his downy pillow in the evening.

Wanker.

Obi-Wan comes off the best. A hard-core, wizened bad-ass who’s depressed about the way things turned out but still perfectly comfortable doing what needs to be done. No shades of grey here, very black and white.

I’m glad the horror is finally at an end. I wish these films had never been made, but having been made, I suppose I can find some solace in the fact they’ve introduced a new generation to these stories and characters. What’s funny is that some of these kids who loved Jar Jar will look at the Holy Trilogy in a couple of years and think, “Man, what a piece of crap.”

It’ll still be funny when I punch them in their stupid, infantile nose.

Aw hell, we all know it’s going to suck but we’re all going to see it anyway.

And since the world is awash in wankers and punks I happen to have an extra ticket to the midnight show next Wednesday night/Thursday morning in bee-yoo-ti-ful Hanover, PA. If anybody actually reads this hogwash and wants to go, let me know. Be happy to set you up.

And anybody else, we’ll be at the Damon’s around 10:30 trying to get drunk enough to actually enjoy the train wreck.

No movie will ever be as good as the book. Some can very nearly approach the pure goodness of the literary form (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Peter Pan) but most pale in comparison (Jurassic Park, Around the World in 80 Days).

Hitchhiker’s Guide pales in comparison but ends up being a pretty decent flick in its own right. After all, how many stories made into movies have gone through so many media interpretations as this one? I suppose the filmmakers ought to be given a pass and allowed to present this as a work in its own right, an interpretation for a new media and age rather than a strict adaptation.

There were bits that annoyed me mightily, even giving the lads the benefit of the doubt: the sidetracks caused by the romance angle, Zaphod’s head – although admittedly this was explained rather creatively, the apparent channeling of Kevin Branagh’s performance in the afore-mentioned Harry Potter being passed off as Zaphod’s personality, Marvin’s voice, the utterly superflous Vice-President of the Galaxy, etc.

But I liked it. And I did carry a towel. And I did have three pints of what passes for bitter in this blighted land.

And yes, the peanuts do help.

Geez, talk about being late. At least I’ll get this commentary posted before I go see more films.

Allow me to echo the critics who said this was good but mindless and blow a big, fat rasperry at the rest of the world.

It was good.

It was mindless.

Steve Zahn is a god. Matthew McConaughey is generally watchable even though his mealy-mouthed southern accent always reminds me of Weird Al doing Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit (It’s hard to bargle fargle zauss with all these marbles in your mouth). Penelope Cruz is a boil upon the buttocks of far more attractive, talented and intelligible actresses.

You have to work very hard to suspend your disbelief. Windsurfing using the remains of what looks like a silver Piper Cub with curiously intact and air-filled wheels was bad enough but firing a recently buried 150 year old gun at a modern helicopter and suddenly causing an entire army of African dictatorial bad boys to abjectly surrender was a bit much. Thankfully the bad flavor that left behind was shortly absolved by the certainly unintended hilarity of Penelope’s bathing cap.

Damn. That was a funny hat.

In case all of this sounds unappealing, trust me, it’s not that bad. And it has good music. And that will save any film.

And then we have the antidote to the afore-mentioned sissyfying of Western Civilization – Sin City.

The critics are right on all counts: it’s a towering achievement, the “. . . direct transfer of comic to film,” but also a “NPR-style parody of the noir detective voiceover.”

It’s a great film whose myriad flaws are thoroughly overshadowed by the mindboggling images and sheer depravity of the storylines. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this flick: it’s just believeable enough – unlike Sky Captain – to be worth infinite viewings.

Next week, I think I’ll see Sin City again and then – horror of horrors – willingly subject myself to two hours of Fecking Jimmy Fallon and Fecking Drew Barrymore to see maybe two minutes of pure Red Sox delight.

Why couldn’t they have made a movie about the goddamned Detroit Tigers or the ex-Expos?

Aw hell, I’d have probably gone to see those too.

There are days I pray fervently for war. Real war – not the unmentionable psuedo-war we don’t actually believe we’re in right now – but the old fashioned, total mobilization, civilizational effort sort of war. A good, proper war would do much to rid the world of the peculiar species of half-queer, 90s pansy man exemplified by the likes of Jerry Seinfeld and Ben Stiller.

Watching nearly two hours of Ben Stiller whinging his way across the screen is not exactly my idea of a good time. I will admit I got a couple of full-on belly laughs, generally at the antics of Dustin Hoffman and Bobby DeNiro. But Barbra “No extra A please, I’m Jewish” Fecking Streisand! God Damn It!

Streisand and Stiller.

Feck.

Film adaptations of stage musicals are a tricky business. Adhere too closely to the stage show and you lose sight of the possibilities of the cinematic medium. Stray too far from stage roots and the necessary suspension of disbelief becomes impossible.

I think the best example of a perfect melding of stage and screen is Chicago. All the advantages of being a film are there: big sets, immersive environments. All the advantages of being a stage show are also there: the production numbers, the knowledge that it’s not a pure story – people don’t just suddenly burst into song in the middle of real life.

Phantom couldn’t find that happy medium. In fact, at times it had trouble deciding whether it was an opera, a musical, or a movie. For whatever reason you never sympathized with the characters or their predicament. I think the filmmakers tried to do a pure adaptation: take a stage show and put it up on screen. You’ll find though, that the screen is a good bit smaller than the stage, it’s easily overwhelmed. That might have been the biggest problem.

In hindsight, it’s a damned shame when the best part of the movie experience is a preview for a jag-off romantic film with less than five seconds of footage of Papi and the rest of the “idiots” last season.

That’s some sorry shite.

The year is young but I’d be willing to put fair odds on Be Cool being my worst cinematic experience of 2005. Where do I start? Last night I started another viewing of Get Shorty; easily one of my favorite films of all time. What does one say about a sequel so interminably long that by the midpoint one is hoping out loud that someone would shoot the protagonist – Chili Palmer – right in his smarmy guinea mouth.

Maybe it’s just me but I don’t think that’s the fate one ought to wish for the ostensible hero.

And the music! The fuggin’ music! In Get Shorty we get Booker T, in Be Cool we get Christinia Milian, in Get Shorty we get Us3, in Be Cool we get Sonny and Frickin’ Cher! Someone just shoot me.

My God, I could go on for hours: the ridiculous re-warmed scenes, the horrible characterizations, the stupid sterotypes. Jaysus wept. He really did. And not because the goddamned nails hurt, either.

There is only one relatively unscathed survivor of this train wreck: who would have imagined that in a film with John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Cedric the Entertainer and Harvey Keitel that “The Rock” would have been the only person worth watching. That guy makes me laugh. He could read from the fecking phone book but if he did it with some flair it would be well worth the time spent listening to, “Adams, Mabel, 555-3838, Adams, Mathilda, 555-6452.”

When The Rock, as entertaining as he is, is the bright spot of your star-studded sequel that’s some pitiful shite man. Just pitiful.

Hitch is one of those nice movies. You know, the ones like Dave or the Toy Stories. You enjoyed them in the theatre and sit glued to the telly whenever they come on but even though you think about picking them up on DVD every time you pass them in the bargain bin you just can’t bring yourself to actually spend money on them.

I suppose it’s because they’re just common movies. A shade above the typical American fare – Legally Blonde, Bring it On, American Pie – but set apart by slightly better writing, acting and class of cheap tricks. As I absolutely despise typical American movie fare this sort of film is as close to the proleteriat’s taste as I’ll get. Light-hearted, simple-minded romps are good for a laugh but they’re not the sort of thing likely to stick in the memory.

Much better than it had a right to be – definitely don’t let the previews or Keanu’s presence scare you away.

I wish I had a small voice recorder. Alchohol does marvelous things to the efficiency of the synapses and coming out of this film my brain was bubbling over with thoughts on the nature of God and the Devil, the reality of heaven and hell and the roles of demons and angels. There’s some heady stuff in this film if you care to think on it.

For instance, the characterization of the Devil was the best thing I’ve seen outside of old “The Demon” comic books. No pathetically oily, well-groomed, Harvard MBA Prince of Darkness here; instead you have a fallen angel in all his glory and agony prowling like a caged beast. Damned good even if “The Demon’s” characterization of him as a still-angelic being was better.

Couldn’t really tell you why the filmmakers picked Gabriel as the angelic adversary. I suppose they figured that was the only angel people know.

I was very pleased to note several points consistent with my own developed philosophy: the more or less lassiez faire attitude of God and the Devil, the insistence that evil is more effective because it has fewer restrictions, the absolute notion that suicide is a damning sin – that it is, in fact, murder. Good stuff. Especially if you’ve ever wrestled with the reality of the world behind the world.

Certainly better than it ought to have been and far more worthy of serious discussion than the spiritual overtones of Groundhog Day.

If you, like me, aren’t a fan of the UN, the French, the Belgians, President Clinton or any of the other trans-national types who spent the last decade working not at all to make sure our world was presently screwed up – this is the film for you.

I guess you could call this the black Schindler’s List. Hell, the guy even bought his people, just like Schindler. But the thing that struck me most was the utter disregard for those people and their plight exhibited by the usual suspects. Watching this film should make you embarrased to be a citizen of the world, embarrased to have voted for the previous administration, embarassed not to have spent your energy fighting for those people.

It would be nice if folks could see this film and channel their protesting energy into helping the Sudanese, or the Iraqis, or the Chinese, or any of the other down-trodden folks around the world. Instead we’ll condescendingly mumble concern for our little brown brethren and go right ahead worrying about ourselves.

Occassionally I watch the exiting crowd to measure their reaction to the film just seen. Man, I would have loved to see people’s faces after this one but I was too shell-shocked to pay attention.

There are a great many issues churned up by this film, many of which I tend to disagree with and most of which can’t be discussed because it would spoil the film for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.

Hell of a film. Clint Eastwood deserves an Oscar for channelling Burgess Meredith from Rocky. I don’t think Hilary Swank earned this one but I didn’t get to see Annette Bening’s performance for comparison.

And I’ve finally seen every single Best Picture nominee. The Academy picked a good crop of films this year for a change.

My pal leaned over during the flick and said, “This is Harold and Kumar Go to Napa Valley.”

It’s funny, ’cause it’s true.

So now we have the perfect road movie for oenophiles (Sideways), we have the perfect road movie for potheads (Harold and Kumar), we have the perfect road movie for general abuse of the body and various legal and illegal consciousness altering substances (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).

I think we need the perfect drinking road movie. Just drinking. Not so much whoring, no drug abuse, just boozing. Any suggestions or do I have to start working on that one myself?

Back to the movie. Hell of a good flick. I have no stomach for infidelity which played a large role, nor do I have much sympathy for nebbishy losers who get the girl in the end. Despite these flaws, I had a good time laughing at the two schmucks who never had it so good.

I hate those kind of flicks.

It’s really not as bad a film as it seems: even after the first twenty times you’ve checked your watch, wished the obnoxious little tweener was dead and begged for merciful death yourself. No really. The problem with the flick is inherent to Marvel Comics and requires an exceptionally skilled director to avoid: the film – and most Marvel comics – takes itself entirely too seriously. The same pitfall nearly damned the X-Men franchise but was avoided by skillful direction and relatively good acting. Spider-Man could have fallen into the same trap but that director kept things whimsical and made us empathize with the hero.

Elektra doesn’t do anything to try to avoid a deadening seriousness. It’s all sturm und drang, very important people doing very important things and so forth. In a superhero movie, that’s the kiss of death. It makes things boring and nobody wants to see a boring superhero movie.

Dr. Kinsey’s failing was the failing of modern man; the extraordinary arrogance that proclaims that anything old is bad simply because it is old. I’ll give you that there were some pioneers who did have to fight conventional wisdom in order to make great strides on behalf of humanity but few are the adventurers who really think through the consequences of their actions.

Columbus, God bless him, opened the New World and blazed the trail which eventually led to the founding of the United States – but he also destroyed many ancient civilisations. Does the good outweigh the bad? In that case, I think so. Kinsey opened up sexuality and destroyed a social order. Does the good of demonstrating the real damage done by some societal taboos make up for the real damage done to society by his research? I don’t know.

By studying mans’ sexuality on a purely physical level divorced from emotion and societal bonds Kinsey reduced us to the level of animals – biological specimens to be dispassionately studied and exploited. The film never quite comes to terms with whether Kinsey is a hero or a villian. They’d like him to be a hero but there is a great deal of real villiany in his studies. At least one character perceived the trouble and blasted the doctor for his detachment – it’s all bound up together, sex and emotion.

Hell, go watch the first half. Have some good laughs. I liked the flick and it defintely made me think; more than any film in recent memory.

Who knew the Spruce Goose flew like a bird?

That’s at least one thing I learned from The Aviator. That Howard Hughes was an odd cat we all knew but that he was severely injured in an airplane crash? That Kathryn Hepburn was the love of his life? Sure. We all knew that.

Now the question is: how much is the truth and how much is invented garbage on the scale of the ridiculous costumes in Gangs of New York?

Meh, Scorsese has his moments and despite its length this was a fine film. I probably could have done with a few less moments of groping Ava Gardner and a few more moments of flight but it wasn’t an entirely wasted evening.

One of the first books I clearly remember enjoying thoroughly was The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted. It’s a delightful little story – part of a series – about a slightly foul-mouthed, slightly alcoholic, very stylish interstellar thief. Ever since, I’ve wanted to be an interstellar thief. Since we’re all still earth-bound I’ve had to settle for being a sucker for incredibly stylish caper films. The two recent Ocean’s films are excellent examples of the genre.

It’s been a long time since I saw Ocean’s Eleven and for anyone who hasn’t seen it at all you’ll be even more lost than I was. No backstory, no character introductions, no exposition, just straight into a story of betrayal, egos, thievery and celebrity worship all done with swanky tunes and tongue-in-cheek acting worthy of the Rat Pack.

I am definitely making it a point to not only buy Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven but to check out Frankie and Deano in the original.

It’ll have to sustain me until someone finally discovers the pure genius of The Stainless Steel Rat and puts him up on screen.

Movies made from children’s books are always hit or miss: witness the pitiable failures The Cat in the Hat and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, but for every badly realized bit of kiddie-poo you have a Harry Potter franchise. I think Lemony Snicket falls somewhere in between.

I suspect this is yet another case of needing to release a film while the books are still hot regardless of whether the film is fully realized or not. Apparently the filmmakers cobbled together three of the stories to come up with something of a disjointed, badly paced bit of very peculiar entertainment. Then, not satisfied that the script alone could damage the film they committed the cardinal sin of movie-making and put Jim Carrey in the lead role.

There are two things I will always hold against the American people: spending lots of dough on Ben Stiller flicks and making Jim Carrey a huge star. I loved the guy when he did In Living Color but that was his niche: the token white guy in the background of a sketch comedy show. Pity that his big screen shenanigans have ruined even those early bits for me.

Thankfully the addition of Billy Connolly and Meryl Streep took the edge off and someone absolutely brilliant cast the three Baudelaire children.

Good, but uneven.

Superhero cartoons. There are not two more pleasant words in the world, especially given the current generation of cartoons starting with Batman: The Animated Series up through Justice League and The Teen Titans. Good stuff. The Incredibles very neatly fits into that generation. In fact, although I didn’t see his name credited, I’d be very surprised if Paul Dini didn’t provide some mentoring to the designers. From the vaguely 40s styled cars to the square, jutting chins this flick had his hallmarks all over it.

But best of all was the rollicking good story. Good triumphs over evil, families are families even in the most trying of times. All that good stuff and more. If there was a fault it was the idiotic bad guy – not that he was stupid but I hated his look: freckles, stupid chin, bad hair. Us redheads might be hot under the collar but we don’t all look so ridiculous.

I hope.

I have an odd relationship with Wes Anderson’s films. I’ve seen them all but Bottle Rocket and have hated Owen and/or Luke Wilson in every single one. I enjoy them all but, having seen them once, have no desire to ever see them again.

So it is with The Life Aquatic. Good film. Quirky. Peculiar. Dialogue oriented. But basically just an exercise in auteur filmmaking without any specific purpose or point to get across.

Some films are meant to purely entertain, some films are meant to illuminate some great injustice, some films are meant to illustrate specific moments in time, Anderson’s films are apparently just meant to allow him to make movies. That doesn’t make them bad. On the contrary, they’re almost always enjoyable. It just kind of makes them pointless.

OK, it’s been discussed before. I am a sucker for Peter Pan. This is a semi-recent development. When I was growing up the only Peter Pans we knew were Mary Martin and Sandy Duncan – not exactly the sort of thing to inspire admiration and devotion to a character. But then there was Hook. As goofy as it was it brought some of the meanness back to the Peter Pan story, which is after all a story about the perils of growing up. Then we had the excellent adaptation in last year’s Peter Pan and now we have the story of how the story was created.

Be warned, it’s a bit of a melodramatic tear-jerker. Folks were weeping openly as the credits rolled. But for all its manipulative aspects it’s a hell of an interesting films about a very strange fellow: J.M. Barrie. I knew the guy was odd but I don’t think I knew he was Scottish nor did I know that he was 1903′s equivalent of a Michael Jackson scandal – although Barrie, unlike Jackson, actually was innocent. I have to say, the film makes me consider seeking a biography of Barrie and for any stimulation to make me consider reading a biography of someone other than a great general or politician means it struck a chord.

Meh. It was good – but not that good. The most obvious problem was a change of directors. Gone are the dark atmospherics of Norrington and del Toro, instead we have the simple straight-forward superheroey stylings of David S. Goyer. Who? Apparently he’s been a writer on many similar films and a director of a few interesting flicks. Funny, I have the same feeling about Trinity as I do about The Crow II and Dark City: enjoyable but eminently forgettable. It is interesting the same director is involved in all three.

On the big plus side, the character of Hannibal King cat saved the flick: silly patois and all. Every Blade film has to have a street-smart, wise cracking character and this time they got the best of the best. Between The Token Girl’s wooden characterization and Blade’s stoney grimaces this thing could have gotten old fast but Mr. King saved us all from another silly goth film and took us into a silly Marvel superhero film. Thank the gods above.

OK, so I did see Ray twice actually. I think it was better the second time although I would have to be pressed to want a third viewing.

But the real story of the week was the not-so-appalling-as-the-critics-would-have-you-believe Alexander. We agreed that there is something to be said for reading all of the very highly critical reviews of the film before seeing it so you expect the worst film ever and can be more or less surprised.

It wasn’t the worst film ever, but I have no need to ever see it again.

The main problem was that the flick was obviously rushed into production to head off all the other fellows who were working on an Alexander movie. As such, Oliver Stone never really figured out what kind of a film he wanted to make or what he wanted to say. As near I can figure it he was trying to implicate the government and the CIA in a plot with a grassy bowman on a Babylonian knoll wounding and killing Alexander the Great? No? You could have fooled me.

Two things leap up and repeatedly try to ruin this flick entirely: the stupid movie cliches and Colin Farrell. Angelina Jolie is an example of the first, she’s got the total wicked witch voice coupled with snakes slithering all over the place. I kept waiting for her to ask the mirror who was the fairest of them all. Colin Farrell is, well, Colin Farrell. He’s great in bad boy roles, in small character parts, etc but he does not have the hint of madness in the eyes that the role of a great leader needs. There’s one scene lifted entirely from Braveheart with Alexander riding along his ranked troops doing one of those “blood and liberty” speeches which were so emotionally rousing in oh – just about every other movie ever made. In this one, it fell totally flat, you felt nothing, you didn’t care.

And that’s really the epitaph for this stunningly beautiful but badly written film. You just don’t care.

11/23/2004

It suddenly occurred to me that I’ve seen some movies lately and that I haven’t bestowed upon the wide-world my feelings on same. Blame it on the holidays. Since I’m not going to cheat with the timestamp I’ll just date the post above.

So, National Treasure. It pretty much kicked ass. I’m a sucker for history, obviously, and in my current fevered state of mind an even bigger sucker for Revolutionary history. I loved every minute of this film: sappy, stupid, cliched, implausible – I don’t care. I loved it all.

While watching the various scenes in Philly I kept commenting to my pal, “That’s a great bar.” “My bro lives just around the corner from there.” Etc, etc, ad nauseum. Even in the very short scene in Boston I had a pint across the street from where the film was staged and met a lad who’d briefly gone to the same college as me.

Small world.

I will admit to one small dissappointment. I kept hoping and praying that the treasure at the end wouldn’t be real, that the hunters would enter a palatial room and find only a note attached to long-lost copies of our founding documents saying:

“You found the treasure. It’s all around you. We’ve given you this Republic –

If you can keep it.”

Now that’s a real national treasure.

Ray Charles was one screwed up cat. It is amazing how genius can transcend even the worst of circumstances – blind, addicted to heroin, sleeping around more than Wilt Chamberlin, standing idly by while your brother drowned in a washtub – nothing can hold back true genius. I guess one shouldn’t think too much about potential in those who can’t hack it; those who die unloved and unknown. It seems to me that if you are really meant for great things you’ll get there regardless of the obstacles. If you waste away, you were never really meant for great things at all.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve seen some damned funny movies but nothing since Harold and Kumar can even hold a candle to Shaun of the Dead: partly because it’s British – and I dig dry British humor – and partly because it’s so brilliantly written.

Who would have thought you you battle zombies with cricket bats and field hockey sticks, then upgrade to a Winchester rifle which nobody knows how to use? Or madly drive a Jaguar around the zombiefied streets of London and finally lock your z’d stepfather in the car? Or wander hung-over through the streets of your own neighborhood and never realize things are not entirely right?

Brilliant. Just brilliant. And well deserving of the accolades.

Just the sort of thing to capstone an amazing week of sleep deprivation and overexcitement. Damn, I needed a laugh.

Better than Orgazmo, worse than BASEketball, and not even in the same league as South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.

There’s been a lot of static tossed over what Trey Parker and Matt Stone really think, what point they’re trying to get across:are they libertarians, republicans, anarchists? If I had to guess I’d pick the former. They obviously hate hippies – but who of my/our generation doesn’t? They just as obviously hate overly law and order types. Anarcho-libertarian would be my terminology.

The flick was funny in most of the right places, revolting in the right places and downright disturbing in several places. Naturally, it’s not to be viewed as political commentary although it makes many more astute points than anything the film’s lampooned lefties have ever produced. For instance, the lads don’t hesitate to show the usual parade of lefty loonies as actively fighting against America. Not merely loyally dissenting but actively campaigning for the other side; an important point. Also, America may come across as a smash-fisted bully but who else is there to keep the mad bombers at bay? It’s an ugly, unrewarding, nigh impossible job but someone’s got to do it. Like it or not, that’s us.

And Team America.

I have a strange affinity for mopey, existential sort of films. Maybe it’s part of being irish: the world is filled with sadness so all that’s left is to drink and sing and laugh while you can.

Naturally, I dug the flick but am left with very little to say. The ending was typical, happy slappy schmalz. No surprise there. The rest of it was quirky. It was good but not great.

Like I said, this sort of emotionally manipulative movie always gets to me but leaves me without the ability to formulate a statement of reaction. I liked it, I might buy it when it becomes available, end of story.

I am a movie snob. I am happy to admit it. I am proud of it.

I’m not a snob on the order of your run of the mill critic who thinks anything that was lauded at Cannes is brilliant and anything that makes money at the box office is tripe for sheeple. I saw Magnolia. It sucked.

Needless to say, my snobbery means Without a Paddle is a film I might enjoy but wasn’t likely to actually see. It’s a throw-away movie; nothing uplifting, nothing enduring. For a throw-away movie, though, it wasn’t all bad. It had some laughs – none on the order of Harold and Kumar but maybe I wasn’t drunk enough – but some of the gags fell flat. Take all the stereotypes of Deliverance, combine them with Stand By Me and mix it together with 90s sentimental schmaltz and you’ve got yourself a film!

Hey, it made me laugh and it passed the time. We have got to get Matthew Lillard and Vince Vaughn together in a movie. Now that would be a throw-away film worth watching.

Awright, so it was a throw-away movie – but it was a good throw-away movie. Bernie Mac continues to grow on me. I dig his show – except for the parts when anyone but him is on screen and talking – got to figure a film where he doesn’t have to be nice and fatherly will be great.

I wasn’t entirely wrong.

For the record, can I state that I despise most dagos and particularly those who wear velour tracksuits and gold chains? Filthy spaghetti slurping swine.

I look back at my Mr. 3000 experience happily: I got to drink beer, eat wings and watch a baseball movie. That is the textbook definition of a good night.

Wow. I read a good deal before going to see Sky Captain and what I read was uncharacteristically unanimous: hell of a spectacle, no plot to speak of. I think the critics were unanimously wrong. What Kerry Conran did here was make a 1930s film using 2004 technology. Go, look at some old Flash Gordon serials or any Errol Flynn film and you’ll see the same throwaway lines, the same stilted delivery, the same lack of modern snarky, cynical, garbage spewing dialogue.

Sky Captain is a film out of time, a computerized carbon copy from the age when “Gee Whiz!” was a strong oath.

Two things crossed my mind at different points during this film:

1. “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

2. Well, that was a waste of time.

Despite all that I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the flick. Very peculiar. Indeed. Things I remembered from school days were scattered aimlessly throughout, which always helps. Despite the purportedly modern setting moon boots, woven keychains, Dodge vans and bad hairstyles abound. How 70s – or is it 80s? – of you. Even with all the time distorting fashions you couldn’t help but identify with the mouth-breathing hero. That always makes for a passable, if long, time.

I still want to know the purpose of the poor action figure at the beginning. It’s like the watermelon in Buckaroo Banzai sans witty comment.

It’s been a slow time for movies. I missed AvP but am not particularly sorry. I don’t think I could sit through Hero; and better flicks like Napolean Dynamite and Bright Young Things might as well not exist here in my cultural wasteland. So I’m jonesin’ for a flick and along comes the Resident Evil sequel. That will work to burn eight bucks and an evening out. Plus, the review writes itself:

Imagine the Thriller video with chain guns involved.

I’ve read they changed directors from the first to the second and it shows. The first flick built up a sense of dread and only alluded to the most gruesome bits. This film lets it all hang out and takes whatever sort of horror tension the first had and disposes of it in favor of an old school Schwarzenegger type shoot-em-up.

Still, it was 90 minutes of Milla Jovovich killing the dead and the other heroine has the best comic book body I’ve ever seen on film so it wasn’t a wasted eight bucks.

Wow. This is woefully late but here goes:

You know you enjoyed a movie when the snot-nosed teeny-boppers in the back row come up to the old guys (me & my pal) after the show and ask, “What are you guys on?”

High on life my friend, high on life. And several pints of Lager.

For some odd reason I find I enjoy goofy flicks this year. I still can’t stand the unceasing parade of Saturday Night Live alumi drivel flicks but stuff like Dodgeball and Harold and Kumar make me squirt half-chewed jujubees out my nose. Or would, if I ate jujubees.

Think of every goofy buddy road movie you’ve ever seen and then set it in New Jersey where I spent a fair percentage of my own college years. I’ve had nights like that: late-night runs for Taco Bell, 7-11 hot dogs at 3 AM, driving over an hour in search of a place that sells beer on a Tuesday night. Nostalgia and mind-altering substances, man. That’s the formula for cinematic gold.

Two words: Muad’De-too.

Actually, despite a whole lot of things that made little or no sense – beginning with the premise of the story – this was a decent little sci-fi flick in the mold of Minority Report. Again we have the theoretical future, life is pretty good although it’s no utopia and humans are about to once again give up the ghost to the machines. On the plus side, at least the three laws prevent a completely Terminator/Matrix style denouement.

Fast-paced, not too full of itself, complete with a reasonably satisfying ending but still just another summer popcorn flick. What else are you to do on a Wednesday night if you’ve already seen Spider-Man 2 twice?

And it did give me a chance to devise the moniker above. Best line I’ve had in many weeks.

Movies I’ve seen twice, actually. What can you do? Two different pals want to go see the flick and I’ve never anything exciting to do so I go and see this vaguely annoying yet mildly entertaining film twice.

It wasn’t better the second time.

Don’t let me discourage you. It really isn’t that bad. The first thirty minutes or so are actually pretty enjoyable. Soldierly banter, heroic drinking, bureaucratic betrayal and other typically Roman pasttimes keep your attention engaged. Then, as we get to the so-called meat of the story everything falls apart.

I won’t comment on the history involved except to say the filmmakers really ran away based on some very flimsy evidence. I wouldn’t mind except that the average moviegoer is apt to think this is historical fact – particularly in light of the text in the film’s opening which indicates this might be historical fact. Bollocks.

What I will comment on is Hollywood’s complete and utter inability to make a film that portrays the Roman Catholic Church as anything other than a cult of self-important slavemasters happily slaying dissenters left and right. The only “good” Catholic in the film, Arthur himself, is actually a follower of a Fifth century heretic – Pelagius – and breaks with Rome and Roman authority when he discovers his mentor has been put to death by those same Roman authorities. Funny, I can’t find any evidence the Pelagius was put to death, and anyway the best guesses of his date of death are twenty years before this film is placed. Not to mention that the only explanation of Pelagian doctrine in the picture is that all men are equal and have free will – delightful things which play well with American audiences but very nearly completely contrary to the actual thinking of Pelagius himself.

Watch the film as something mildly entertaining, a tolerable way to pass a couple of hours but do not think that any part of it – excepting the existence of a Roman Empire – is in any way associated with fact.

Better yet, time it so you can see the first thirty minutes and then duck out to go see Spider-Man 2 again.

Typically I wouldn’t review a video I looked at but Boondock Saints deserves a short mention. First of all, it’s a shite movie. No, let me rephrase that. It’s a throw-away movie. There’s nothing meaningful there no matter what the director and the less-educated members of our viewing society would like.

That being said, it’s a damned enjoyable film. Maybe you have to be Irish. Maybe you have to be inordinately fond of Boston or South Boston in particular (guilty on both counts) but it’s thoroughly enjoyable.

Be sure, however, if you do look at this film that you watch through the Deleted Scenes, particularly that of their mother’s telephone call. A funnier thing I’ve probably never seen in movies.

My God, I hope Friday proves a laid-back sort of day because looking at this sort of Irish film puts me in a mind to have a pint and a bottle of whiskey at my side – and Oh Look! I’ve got same! – and typically getting up early the next day isn’t a pretty sight.

I should play the time-shifting game with this one since I saw it last Thursday (July 1 for those who are counting) but then nobody would bother to read this since you’d have to wade through the entire text of the Declaration of Independence to see it. Not that you shouldn’t read the Declaration of Independence. Just wait until I post the Constitution of the United States – it might archive itself on posting due to length. Back to the film, two words:

Friggin’ loved it!

OK, three words. Spider-Man was a revelation, an object lesson on how you could translate comics to the big screen successfully. Spider-Man 2 is an object lesson on how you can create a translation sequel that was even better than the first. Lesson One: get a better villain.

Green Goblin was never all that interesting in the comics. He was, however, heads and tails over other Spider-Man villains like The Trapster and Mysterio. But the movie version of the Goblin was just ridiculous; come on, an armored suit? How pathetic can you get? At least Tobey Maguire buffed up so he could make the spandex look plausible. What’s the matter, Raimi? Spend all your dough on barely believable computer animation and had nothing left for some green makeup on Dafoe?

Spider-Man 2 thankfully doesn’t have that problem. In fact, Doc Ock – aside from the side story about him not really being a bad guy – comes across better than he does in the comics. He even looks better; but then again, anything would be better than a green jumpsuit with orangish highlights.

So we get everything we’ve come to expect, and more. We get angst, fighting, science, web swinging happiness, a good villain and a hell of a set up for Spider-Man 3.

Bonus points if you can pick up on the foreshadowing of the villains of the next flick. I can’t wait.

Yeah, well, I saw this flick last week but didn’t take the time to write about it until now. So sue me. It wasn’t actually on the list of must sees – very little is on that list actually since I’ve basically skipped Scooby Doo 2, Garfield, The Day After Tomorrow, The Chronicles of Riddick, &c. But when you find yourself done with work at 4 since you came in early it just seems right to go to the 4:30 show. How often do you get to go to a movie at 4:30 on a Thursday anyway?

So I went.

I liked the flick: funny in the right places, snarky, oddly endearing all that other critical jazz. The movie just rolled along – until the ending. It’s not that it was a bad ending, it’s just that the ending made the important bits of what came before completely inconsistent and logically impossible. I’m not going to say anything, I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anybody who wants to see it but hasn’t yet but, come on! How is what happened even possible?

I did hear that they were forced to reshoot the ending after test screenings panned it. If this ending is what made the screener audiences happy then my declamations about the knee-trembling idiocy of the American public are spot on.

I hate Ben Stiller. I dig Vince Vaughn.

What’s a lad to do?

All things considered, I pegged Dodgeball as a throw-away pic that ought to nicely align with my peculiar sense of humor.

Allow me to pat myself on the back, what amazingly spot on intuition.

Oddly enough, I have to give Stiller props for this one. For a change, he dropped the whiny schmuck role and did the exact opposite – made himself into too much a man. Vinny, on the other hand, sticks to what he knows: a bit less foul mouthed than usual but still your average guy.

This one goes on the shelf next to BASEketball when it comes out. The second best pseudo sports movie ever made.

Am I ever glad they sacked that sappy twerp who made the first two films and hired someone with some edge for the third. The Prisoner of Azkaban is ten times better than the first two Potter flicks combined – and it’s got Gary Oldman which improves anything ever put upon the screen. I fear for the next installment though, three kids that are obviously fifteen years old or older trying to play thirteen year olds just won’t fly. It won’t be the same without them.

Dark, fast paced, truly suspenseful: the book was my favorite of them all. The first book neccesarily delved into back story, examined the wonder of the world and set the stage. The second suffered from the typical sophmore slump, uninteresting, unengaging and nearly annoying. The third went on a tear, bringing out more of the secrets of the past and tearing into the story without slowing down for too much exposition – the fourth and fifth books have, so far, continued this trend.

The flicks have been much the same. The first dwelled on wonder, exposed the world and had lots of fun with scenery. The second was mostly boring, but the third – man, that’s what Harry Potter is all about. You know a film borders on greatness when even the end credits are worth sitting through.

There’s not much to say really, I am amazed at how critics can comment delightedly on every aspect of this film. I am even more amazed at how one critic noted some innocent laugh lines and turned them into inappropriate sexual innuendo.

Both Shrek and Shrek 2 were wonderful films: half the pleasure was picking out the references, the other half was just the sheer goofiness of the whole thing. Still, they’re eminently forgettable films. I loved the first one, I have enjoyed it more and more everytime I’ve seen it but I have never bought it. Like Chicken Run or the Toy Stories, even if I had bought them I probably would never think to look at them even though every time I looked at them I’d remember what excellent films they were.

Worth seeing? Definitely. Memorable? Not really.

This didn’t get a full-fledged Fellowship of the Ring, “My ass hurts!” but it did warrant a, “Well, that was butt numbing.”

I had to think long and hard about why this film didn’t work. Obviously, poor casting choices didn’t help. I’ll start with the least offending: Brendan Gleeson as Menelaus and Brian Cox as Agamemnon. Interesting but I’ve seen them too many times as British thugs and Irish hard men to suspend disbelief and see them as Greek kings. I was particularly dissappointed in Gleeson’s role as King of Sparta – and in the entire characterization of Sparta – he seemed more the celtic berserker than the king of a people that produced the 300. Next up, Brad Pitt as Achilles. He certainly looked the part and moved as he should have but there’s just something in his voice – something too quintessentially American surfer boy to convincingly do a Greek hero. Lastly we heap scorn upon Orlando Bloom as Paris. Was Paris in The Iliad really the whinging, cowardly little weasel he comes across as? I always thought Paris was supposed to be the make love, not war type which, in certain circumstances, can be an admirable stand on its own. Instead he’s a scheming, conniving wimp. Pathetic.

On the plus side you have Sean Bean as Ulysses and Eric Bana as Hector. I would love to see a big-screen version of the Odyssey just to see Bean in that role again. Amazing. And Hector turned out to be the most sympathetic character of the whole lot. He’s the only one you give a damn for and, even though you know he’s doomed, you still end up rooting for him.

So far we’ve got unsympathetic characters and bad portrayals. That’s bad, but it’s not always enough to sink a film – particularly one with such sweeping scope. Remember the sweeping scope – that’s what actually does the film in. It ought to have sweeping scope: these are acts of courage and heroism that have rebounded through the centuries. Instead we get a thoroughly post-modern view of the Trojan War filled with regrets, self-doubt, overly ambitious kings and arrogant warriors. Maybe that’s what makes Ulysses and Hector so compelling, they’re the only ones that are true to the story.

I have to add a word about the music. The battle scenes just weren’t gripping and I think part of the problem was the music. Either it wasn’t appropriate for the scene, or it was mixed at the wrong volume, or it just didn’t have the oomph required for the task. Pitiful. The director tried to make Braveheart with a Das Boot soundtrack. Everyone else knows that won’t work, how come he didn’t?

For a throw-away action flick Walking Tall was damned enjoyable. I even liked Johnny Knoxville – who is turning into a first-rate sidekick – and I usually can’t stand MTV types.

In general, I wouldn’t call myself an action movie fan. I probably haven’t seen more than half a dozen Schwarzenegger films in total and of those, probably only enjoyed three or four. If, however, all the films in the genre were as good as the Rock’s flicks The Rundown and Walking Tall I could be convinced to become a fan.

I like the Rock. He’s understated, self-deprecating, polite and confident without being arrogant. Contrast that to, for example, Vin Diesel who is the opposite of all those things in addition to having a nails-on-chalkboard-y irritating voice with a soupy dago accent. Who’s the new hot action star? I’ll allow you to make that decision but think of every role you’ve seen Diesel in (except for Saving Private Ryan, the casting of a muscle-bound type was totally wrong for that flick) and put the Rock in his shoes. Who’d have done better? Thankfully, Diesel’s career seems to be sinking under the weight of his own ego and he’ll soon be relegated to the direct-to-video shelves along with Van Damme.

Hooray for the new king of throw-away popcorn fare! May he long make uselessly damned enjoyable films.

After having read nothing but unremittingly negative reviews for this flick I went in expecting to see a mish-mash of Ishtar and Batman and Robin. It really wasn’t that bad. Trust me.

But it was still damned bad.

From wooden performances to tired one-liners to increasingly irritating attempts to inject a modern hip vibe into 1880s Transylvania, Van Helsing pulls out all the stops to make a bloody stoppingly inane summer popcorn flick. I can’t say I wanted to check my watch ala The Thin Red Line but after the glimmerings of a big climax I was kind of pissed to discover we were only halfway through the film. The flick was just too long, and just silly in a stupid, ignorant, patronizing way. I’m sure NASCAR fans will love it, it comes up to about their average level of intelligence.

Despite all that, I kind of liked this flick. I’d think about picking it up on DVD but I am positive it will not age well and after repeated viewings I’d grow to loathe it – kind of like what’s happening with me and Dogma. I will, however, offer major props to the filmmakers for two things: seeing Dracula played with the irrational temper of the Incredible Hulk and the fashion sense of Robert Smith was interesting, and this flick had one of the best ever filmed portrayals of Frankenstein’s Monster. He was a bit too sappy, a bit too nice, but he was also erudite and very human – closer to the book than Karloff’s portrayal in 1931. After all, Frankenstein’s Monster uttered what may be my favorite line in all literature:

I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear . . .

Now that’s ambition!

For a flick that was almost universally panned The Punisher wasn’t really that bad. As a matter of fact, taking into account the oeuvre to which it belongs, it was actually a pretty decent flick.

I never got into the Punisher comics. In thinking about this last night it occurred to me that I never got into most of the popular comics. Superheroes – with the exception of the Green Lantern – bored me and I’m not a fan of reality so stuff like The Punisher, The ‘Nam and the old GI Combat books didn’t do much for me either. Odd, for a dude who was as heavily into comics as I was I wonder what I read.

That’s all beside the point. The Punisher comics remind me of the first Terminator movie: big dude goes around killing people with no apparent point. Well, that sort of sums up the film if you add in a bit of neighborly comic relief. I give points to Thomas Jane for being both more believable and more intelligable than Dolph Lundgren. I give big points to Rebecca Romjin-Stamos for starting to turn into a very respectable female lead (while simultaneously deducting points for marrying John Stamos fer chrissakes).

Like I said, within its oeuvre – Bad Boys, The Terminator, &c – The Punisher acquits itself nicely. Isn’t that all we really expect from a summer movie?

This could be a very short commentary comprised solely of the words that came out of two mouths simultaneously as the credits rolled:

“God, did that suck!”

Yes. Yes it did. I thought Vol. 1 was a two hour paean to Quentin’s ego, imagine my surprise to find out that it was, instead, an artistic triumph of immeasurable proportions – at least in comparison to this steaming pile of poo.

At least Vol. 1 had some chop-socky stuff (not to mention a sweet Sonny Chiba cameo) to recommend it, Vol. 2 had roughly 5 minutes of fighting filled out with about 115 minutes of talking and it wasn’t even fun, Tarantino talking. I won’t spoil the so-called story just in case you have a burning need to piss away seven to ten dollars and two hours of your life that you can never get back but I will say this: imagine every crappy movie you’ve ever seen that tried to throw in plot twists and heart-string plucking moments, sum all those moments from all those films and then toss the entire putrid mess into Kill Bill and you still really haven’t reached the depths this flick descends to.

OK, two spoilers. I hate snakes. Any movie with extended snake scenes either has to be good enough I can mentally block the snake scene (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Hard Target) or gets automatically tossed into the dust-bin of bad flicks (Vol. 2, every damned snake movie I’ve never seen). Secondly, I’ve been sort of buried alive and I can’t bear to even watch that on screen. I damn near had to get up and leave the theatre it bugged me so much.

Stupid Tarantino. Even in his bad films there was always at least one good line, where’s this shite’s, “AK-47. When you absoutely, positively have to kill every M**er F**er in the room – accept no substitute.”?

Next week the bad movie marathon continues with a planned journey to see The Punisher at last.

Finished watching the first two of eleventy-hundred flicks I intend to view via the good offices of Netflix. I like the service, so far. I’m a little disappointed that the monthly rate went up the day after I subscribed – a coincidence I’m sure. Oh well, I get cool flicks that I’d never rent and almost surely wouldn’t buy.

Velvet Goldmine was good although generally slow and mildly disconcerting. I say disconcerting because the thought of a homosexual love affair between David Bowie and Iggy Pop doesn’t ring quite true. I say mildly because I suppose it’s entirely possible. One thing leaps up and slaps you in the face, however: the 70s were an exceedingly odd decade.

All else aside, based on my limited knowledge of Bowie’s career in the 70s I thought the portrayal of him (through the character Brian Slade), his wife and his manager to be spot on. The portrayal of his wife was downright eerie, they even got the voice right.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the real winner thus far. It’s a bit of a rambling flick with motivations and situations left largely unexplained but I dug it entirely, beginning to end. I’m not generally a straight-up rock and roll kind of guy and I hate ballad-y tunes but some of those songs are just so catchy you can’t help swaying in your seat. If I don’t go out and buy this flick I’ll have to at least pick up the soundtrack. The moral of the story – so far as I can ken is: Be yourself, but play the cards you’re dealt. A good message, one that ought to be more thoroughly absorbed by a lot more people.

Pieces of April is still sitting around from the first shipment and 24 Hour Party People should be winding its way through the mails as we speak. After that Hard Core Logo and American Splendor at last!

The trend in history these days is to humanize the actors of the past. In situations not dealing with the “great man” school of history the past can be humanized by letting events speak for themselves as in Saving Private Ryan. When, however, great historical figures are involved another method is needed. Sometimes this is accomplished by showing those figures outside of the context of the historical record: for instance see the portrayal of “Stonewall” Jackson’s interactions with his wife and child in Gods and Generals or Jesus’s interaction with his mother in The Passion. Other times this is done by emphasizing the humanity of the people involved in an effort to belittle their accomplishments. It’s a fine line and The Alamo ends up on the wrong side.

How much does it really matter that Sam Houston was a drunk, or that William Travis abandoned his wife and children? These things are motivation for the actions the characters take but they don’t necessarily make their accomplishments less worthy. Apparently we’re supposed to feel sympathy for the poor, tyrannized Mexican soldiery while feeling little but contempt for the rabble of drunks, murderers, and cowards who stood their ground in San Antonio. It’s odd, the Texians aren’t portrayed as having a particularly moral claim for their revolution but Santa Anna is shown as an uncaring, immoral devil.

It’d be nice if the filmmakers had made up their mind.

Another film that could have been great if it had been written by someone else, filmed by someone else and had nearly the entire cast replaced. I’d also like to single out the costumers for a great big rasperry of their own. Cold Mountain showed that with a little attention to detail 19th century styles can be well recreated on the screen. The Alamo really didn’t even try. Jason Patric is the worst example with his bad hat and even more badly fitted suit but examples abound.

It looks to be a summer of soaring historical epics. With a little luck they won’t all be this bad.

My good buddy Bampf is wrong on two counts: being generally unimpressed with Nirvana is not “blasphemy” and Hellboy was a great movie. It ought to be, in fact, the best comic book movie ever made. If it weren’t for my soft spot for Spider-Man I’d declare it as such right now.

The comics industry may be in a rut right now – leagues away from its heights in the late-80s and early-90s – but it’s a golden age for the comic book movie. Technology is sufficiently advanced that you can create the needed effects nearly seamlessly. X-Men showed that you can stay true to the story and still pull a wide audience. The convergence of the fans and the movie magic needed to bring these fantastical stories to the big screen has made comic art one hot property.

Not that all these flicks have been good. Daredevil and The Hulk were notable failures. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen should have been great but weren’t. X-Men, X2, Blade, Blade II, Spider-Man and now Hellboy have saved the genre from disaster, however, and The Punisher, The Fantastic Four, and Ghost Rider are waiting in the wings.

Get to the point already. What was so great about Hellboy? Mainly it was the absolute precision with which they stuck to the original book. Unlike The League which tinkered with the original story by making Mina Harker more than she was and added in Tom Sawyer for a bit of American color, Hellboy – to my recollection – followed the comics nigh perfectly. Even the costumes and equipment were identical to those pictured in the book – unlike X-Men for instance. The casting was note-perfect, the settings were indistinguishable from the comics page, the humor was spot-on. You just couldn’t ask for more from a film adaptation of anything.

Now, if only we could get Guillermo Del Toro to do adaptations of Arkham Asylum, Gotham by Gaslight, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Shade: the Changing Man and Transmetropolitan I think I could die happy.

I’ve really been a movie slut lately haven’t I? One might be tempted to think that’s all I ever do.

One would not be far off the mark.

Saw Cold Mountain this week. Back when the book came out my mother borrowed the audio version to listen to on a trip out to Indiana. I think we got through maybe half of the first chapter before popping the tape out. Probably the most boring thing ever written and compounding the problem was the writing style: always indirect, third person, uninvolved.

Fortunately the flick didn’t suffer from the same failings. The Home Guard was sufficiently malevolent, the War was sufficiently horrid, the characters were sufficiently believeable. In fact, the only bothersome thing about the whole flick was Nicole Kidman. She just didn’t blend – but then again, she probably wasn’t supposed to.

Naturally, given my extra-curricular interests I paid particularly close attention to the costuming and the staging of the battle scenes. Looked at in those terms it was probably the most correct Civil War period film ever made. Filmmakers still have problems getting the overall look just right (particularly the hats) but at least they’ve finally settled on spending the dough for the righteous kit made by knowledgeable folks. It makes a big difference.

Finally, I’ve got to bow to general consensus and admit Jude Law is one hell of a good looking dude. I’m more and more delighted with his acting as well. If he keeps picking good roles and keeps from falling into sinkholes like Enemy at the Gates and A.I. he might rank up there with Johnny Depp one day. Oh yeah, Jack White scares me. What a freaky looking cat.

This film has been described as a “cloying piece of hokum.” Hooooo-kay.

I tend to disagree. Maybe I’m just a sucker for the subject matter (I am, sorta) but I think this flick may be one of Kevin Smith’s best.

I’m not an Affleck fan. He ranks in my book somewhere between Jim Carrey and Pauly Shore. Oddly enough he was actually believable in this flick. It probably had something to do with the character: a spoiled rich guy who has to come down from on high and live among all us little people. Gee, wonder why he could play that part so well? Liv Tyler nearly ruins the flick – as she does in every film I’ve ever seen her in – and most of the View Askew crowd get their cameos: Damon, Jason Lee, the guy who played Coey in Chasing Amy, etc.

From time to time some of the old magic showed through, witty repartee and snide remarks. Mostly it was a quirky sort of love story between a father and daughter. Nothing wrong with that if done well and I think this one was done better than most.

It’s kind of sad to say it but this was one of the best flicks I’ve seen in 2004. All bets are on hold now with Hellboy merely three days away and The Alamo a week after that. Maybe the movie season is finally starting to heat up.

This film, I suppose, actually is profound. I think. At the very least it’s a profound mind-f**k. Does that count?

For starters, why the hell would that girl want to spend an evening, let alone two bloody years with that loser? Either the filmmakers didn’t flesh out Jim Carrey’s character enough or they just sort of skipped that part to get to the meat of the story. Secondly, why would anyone want to have any part of their memories erased? I can’t say I’ve ever hurt badly. I reckon I have, but things like that generally roll off with relative ease so maybe I’ve just forgotten. Still, I cannot imagine losing some chunk of memory. Memories make us what we are.

While we’re on that subject how in the hell would that process even be feasible? Since we can all pretty much agree that our experiences make us who we are how could you erase the experiences without radically changing one’s personality? How could you surgically remove all memory of a person without wiping out all memory of the entire time you’ve known that person? Surely all your experiences, even those while alone or with different people, would be colored and contextualized by your relationship with the person being erased.

Fine. Don’t read too much into it. OK, maybe the film wasn’t profound but it was cute. Sort of. I liked it. I don’t really know why. I guess I like quirky even if it’s basically stupid. This flick was definitely quirky.

Who would have imagined you could take an admittedly beautiful and haunting 17th century painting and turn it into a 90+ minute film?

I wouldn’t have thunk it and yet it’s been done. I suppose the folks in the “Ahi Tuna Envelope” think this is a very profound film. It’s always been my belief that people who think they’re deep always declare things profound and moving when they don’t have any more idea what’s going on than the rest of us. It’s an interesting film although one that just doesn’t seem to have a point. Oddly you’d think that folks in 17th century Delft never said more than half a dozen words a day unless they’re fat housemaids or randy old rich men.

In the film’s defense I will give major props to the cinematographer for a spectacularly shot film. I don’t know if the theatre showed the movie slightly out of focus or if it were intentional but there were times in some of the wider and some of the closer, more pensive shots where I swear you could see the brushstrokes on the screen. A very cool effect.

Drove home yesterday to see The Passion of the Christ in our old theatre. The theatre looks great. If you’re ever near Mercersburg on a weekend and want to catch a flick in a beautiful 1920s theatre check it out.

But on to the movie. Was it as soul-inspiring and mind-bending as the reviews say? No. Was it anti-Semitic? Certainly not. Was it as bloody as everyone says? Sort of, but there were only a couple of short shots where I thought the violence was gratuitous. I loved the Aramaic and Latin and was actually annoyed at the subtitles since you were forced to drag your eyes away from the scene to read the lines of text. Maybe the DVD will offer a choice. It’s not as if anyone out there doesn’t know the jist of what’s being said anyway. A good film, not an excellent one and not much more inspiring or affecting than any of the other cinematic recreations of the events covered.

So why is this film such a big deal? For one thing, I think spirituality and its expression has been growing more permissible in America over the past ten or so years. First it was angels, then aliens, now it’s old-fashioned spiritualists. Religion fills a basic human need and despite the societal strictures against open practicing of religious faith people always find a way to express their belief in something ‘other.’ The film helps fill that need by cloaking the expression of faith in a Hollywood style. You can go and see the film, even cry if you need to, and pass it off as just being affected by a work of art. Very simple and very clean.

Secondly, Mel Gibson has violated the first commandment of the left coast. As noted above, ‘Thou shalt not express thy faith in anything other than the needs of the flesh.’ He made a major faux paus. Here’s a Hollywood headliner making an overtly religious film and offering no apologies. He’s not trying to pass it off as merely art, he’s very candid that it was an act of worship and faith. Heavy stuff and completely contrary to the reigning philosophy in la-la land. I would not be at all surprised if he starts to be quietly black-balled from all but his own films. Fortunately Gibson has enough dough and enough respect he can make his own movies.

If you haven’t seen it I wouldn’t be in any particular rush. You’re not missing the great film of our age or anything like that. It’s not even neccessarily worth going to see as a work of art. I am glad I saw it, I was relatively impressed at the time but I’ve been more affected by other films. It did give me an interesting insight into Jesus’s reason for being though – might have to ponder that one and expound later.

A film about Irish immigrants to modern NYC? You can well imagine why I wanted to go see this one. It did bother me a lot that they crossed the Canadian border illegally. The whole time I was cheering them on and hoping for their final success in this great country, in the back of my head I kept hearing a little voice say, “Lawbreakers!” That just goes to show I’m not a hypocrite on immigration, even if they are Irish. Naturally, I blame the Canadians who obviously have no immigration controls whatsoever.

That aside, I left this film with tears in my eyes. As I have said many times before, there are few who can craft such beautiful love letters to this country as can immigrants. I wish I knew musical terms to express what I’m thinking. Basically you had the lead guitar playing a theme of love and death while underneath, the constant bassline was this little ode of admiration and love for the United States.

It is, I think, a typical Irish film. There’s hardship and loss, death as a constant companion but underneath it all the bonds of family and affection that makes it possible to get along despite it all.

I’d recommend seeing it, if only for the scene where you can actually see one soul leaving the Earth while another enters. Freaking amazing. And don’t miss Osama’s cameo, I laughed out loud.

Yep, had to update the Best Movies of 2003 list again. Wonder when we’ll get to see some films made in 2004?

I’ve never really been able to get into hockey. I think I should enjoy it thoroughly but it always seemed too much like basketball for white folks. Maybe the action is too fast, maybe there’s no discernable strategy, maybe it’s just because I don’t understand it.

But Miracle is a hell of a film whether you like hockey or not. Naturally it would help if you enjoyed the sport, the ice sequences are amazing. I actually had to stop myself several times from leaping up and cheering. At at least two points I did react out loud to amazing moves. The people sitting behind me really loved that.

Kurt Russell makes the film. For the first time I can think of the man actually acts. He completely becomes Herb Brooks and you really feel his pain when cutting players, his determination to win and his love of the game. Completely believable, totally Oscar-worthy.

I wouldn’t call it a “run, don’t walk” sort of movie but if you need to get out of the house during the winter doldrum season and you want some cheering up take the time to check it out. You’ll be cheering “USA! USA!” by the end.

Had to go back and modify the Top 13 Flicks of 2003 list as I finally got out to see Lost in Translation. I think moviedom has a new “big secret” plot point to quibble over. The whisper between Bob and Charlotte at the end should go down in history as being at least as intriguing as the contents of Marcus Wallace’s suitcase in Pulp Fiction.

Anyway, like I said in my mini-review in the list, you probably have to be in just the right mood to really dig this flick. Contrary to Leaving Las Vegas though, this is a film I can watch over and over again. It’s painful, but in a gentle sort of empty way. Very mellow, very realistic and totally engrossing. Now, dammit, I have to hie myself to the video store for the first time since Fight Club was released on VHS before DVD and check out The Virgin Suicides. If it’s half so good, Sofia Coppola’s a genius.

If you don’t walk out of this flick determined to catch the next plane to Tokyo then you’ve got no soul, man. No soul at all.

Wow. What a cool flick and how unlike all the previous versions. Peter Pan isn’t some happy go-lucky kid. Rather, it seems his inability to grow up is a severe failing. How radically different from what you know is that?

Just a spectacular movie. Naturally any flick that has Jason Isaacs in it is bound to be great. One the one hand he plays the slightly nebbishy Dad trying to gain some status in the world against his own better instincts and on the other the magnificently flawed Captain Hook doomed by his own ambition. Watching the flick it occured to me that I am Captain Hook, and that is not a good thing. Watching the Captain finally surrender to fate – and the crocodile – at the end really got under my skin. “Old. Alone. Done for.” Spine tingling.

Managed, finally, to sneak this one in at the crappy theatre in Hanover so if you haven’t seen it yet your chances are slim to none. I’d recommend at least a rental though when it makes its appearance on DVD.

Saw this flick last week and have been trying to digest it ever since.

I liked it. I think I liked it a lot. In terms of a Tim Burton flick it’s more in line with Edward Scissorhands than, say, Batman. Still, I’m not entirely sure Burton knew what he was trying to say because I didn’t come away with a vision impressed upon me. I guess it had something to do with fathers and sons and the divisions that develop between them but it also might have had something to do with the need some of us have to get out in the world and be the proverbial “Big Fish.” I know that part of the reason I’ve always stayed in small towns is that you have a chance to be a big fish there that you might not have in a city, despite all the charms and attractions of the city.

So is that it? Or is it just a thoroughly funny, somewhat touching story of a fellow’s journey through life? In the end, I don’t think the flick had much to do with the father/son thing at all although I think it intended to. Instead it was an old-fashioned story about the adventures life holds and spoke greatly to point-of-view. Sure all the stories were true. You weren’t there, how do you know they weren’t?

Damn fine film, even if it didn’t quite figure out what it was trying to say.

Hrm:

Philip K. Dick short story – good
Uma Thurman kicking slightly more plausible ass than in Kill Bill – indifferent
Ben Affleck – Danger Will Robinson! Danger!

The final verdict? Not as bad as it ought to have been.

I dig sci-fi that sort of kinda makes plausible sense. It could happen but almost certainly won’t. That pretty much covers this flick. The acting was generally bad but since everyone but Affleck and Thurman were b-listers (and those two ought to be) that wasn’t surprising. The FX were tolerable and the action sequences were nifty although not approaching John Woo’s typical heights. (By the way, what is up with John Woo? Windtalkers and now this??)

A popcorn movie it is. DVD worthy? Certainly not.

Alright, first things first. Full disclosure: I’ve never read the Rings trilogy nor do I ever expect to. Fantasy has never been very interesting to me. Swords and sorcery, knights and maidens, magic and mystery and all that bollocks doesn’t appeal much to me. My mother asked the other day why something like Tolkein’s masterpiece doesn’t appeal to me while I’ll eagerly devour every word of any pulpy Star Wars related book that gets put up on the shelves. I had to think a minute but I think the answer is: because it’s possible. Star Wars is largely possible, I think, given time and technological development. No amount of wishing by morbidly obese gits in tights and ill-fitting tunics is going to make a time of wizardry and fair maidenheads come true but there’s every reason to think one day we’ll have laser guns and faster than light travel. So much for Tolkein.

Nevertheless, I have enjoyed the Lord of the Rings flicks so far. I think I actually liked The Two Towers more than The Fellowship of the Ring. It had more action, more things I could understand and get behind. I did not particularly like The Return of the King though and I’m still not sure why.

I don’t know why the rest of the known world thinks RotK is the greatest piece of cinema since Edison’s Black Maria was retired and I don’t. I agree with them that the Matrix sequels are crap. Hell, I thought the first Matrix flick was crap. I agree the Star Wars prequels are crap. Why don’t I see what everyone else sees in RotK?

The best I’ve been able to come up with is that there was no mystery to the last film. In the first two, especially to someone with barely a passing acquaintance with the books, there were always new things to be discovered, new characters to be introduced and a world full of possibilities. You knew how it would all end, of course, you just didn’t know how they’d get there. The third flick had no anticipation to it at all. We all knew the main characters would live. We knew Aragorn would be King. We knew Frodo would pull it off, etc. RotK ended up just being an amalgam of the other two flicks. Big battle scene – oh well, been there done that. Nutty/evil king/protector – yep, saw that one too. Orcs, goblins, assorted nastiness and more Gollum – bloody *yawn*.

I’ve also just read an article which says Jackson Lifetime-ized the books when he made the flick. They say the whole scene where Frodo sends Sam home is bollocks, never happened, it was just tossed in to add “psychological tension.” Horseshit. I suppose showing a poor fellow carrying around the most evil object in the world and being buoyed up by his pal’s near-worship of him didn’t create enough tension. What a dink.

Pity. The LotR series did have the possibility of going down in history as the greatest trilogy of all time. It’s still in the running but I think the whole thing stumbled with the third flick. It was fine, a good enough way to pass an afternoon but it didn’t deliver the emotional high that one expects of a great climax.

Finally broke down and saw the new Lord of the Rings last night. Surprisingly enough, I enjoyed it. Kind of a strange flick, there’s no backstory so this film couldn’t possibly stand on its own as a movie and it seems to want to do too much. As a result you end up with a sort of mish-mash of seemingly unrelated stories happening all across the “globe.” I will say, however, I didn’t get up at the end and think, “My ass hurts,” like I did after the first one. A nifty trick that.

Some things are going to take some sorting out. I don’t understand exactly what’s happening with the elves. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. And Liv Tyler is not only not terribly pretty, she’s a fairly damned bad actress to boot. The chick from Rohan (Aowyn?) would have made a much better Arwen…even with black hair. I loved the scene of the trolls opening the gate to Mordor…nifty exposition. Gollum/Smeegle was in-freaking-credible and probably did more than anything else to keep the film flowing and interesting.

I have to say, I’ve never read the books and don’t even want to attempt them in the middle of the films for fear they’d ruin something but I have read a lot of articles passing the trilogy through the filter of Christianity and it’s a nifty experiment to try the next time you’re watching the flicks. It’s all there, the best elements of the old stories. Gandalf is a servant of the secret fire and dies fighting evil and defending his friends only to be “resurrected.” Gollum/Smeegle is all about forgiveness for sins and how it’s never too late to make the change back to good, etc, etc.

I reckon one can say the same about any film but given Tolkien’s background it stands to reason these flicks would be a bit more imbued than others.

OK, enough about long-haired geek flicks. And Happy New Year.

The words for the day:

Yep that pretty much covers it. I reiterate my points about Christmas shopping from some weeks ago. A useless bunch of pissants is humanity. No doubt.

Saw Gangs of New York over the weekend. Not a bad film, reminds me of where I came from. Bruisers and bangpitchers, that’s for sure. I actually have two ancestral uncles called Tacky and Sledge after the sort of hammer blows they’d land in a fight. All those bloodied and bruised irish scrapping for no reason and living on slops…that’s pretty much the way my family came up. By God I’m proud of my ancestry.

That being said, the costuming was nigh horrendous and the fact that a film ostensibly about the “creation” of America and the rise of American values was filmed in Italy very much detracts from what otherwise would be a tolerably good film. Damn sure not worth the years of blood, sweat and tears supposedly shed over its making and one of the final nails in Scorcese’s coffin. I am coming to the opinion that all the supposedly “revolutionary” filmmakers of the 70s (Kubrick, Scorcese, Coppola, etc) pretty much just suck. Maybe they had a good flick or two in them, maybe the drugs and free lovin’ made them creative but damn, the last flicks those dudes put out just blew chunks.

And now the greats of the 80s (Spielberg, Lucas (sorta)) are also winding down. Well, at least there are some promising up and comers although it sure seems like a lot of the new “auteurs” are hit or miss. We’ll see.

Two spots of three hours of sleep each and six hours of driving, waiting in line and viewing later and I’ve seen Episode II. When I finally got home (3:20 AM, I think the film is almost 2 1/2 hours long) I had to watch the oldest copy of Star Wars I had, unsullied by digital effects, newer sound tracks or digital restoration. Back to the original to restore my faith. My thoughts:

1. George Lucas is a terrible writer and an unimpressive/unoriginal director. Conceptually he’s brilliant but when it comes time to the put the concept into execution he fails utterly. The new trilogy (and Episode IV for that matter) would be much better off if he described what needed to happen in a given scene and perhaps even blocked or storyboarded it for a real writer/directoral team and then let the pros handle it. Isn’t it possible that the reason everyone thinks Empire was better than Star Wars is that Irvin Kershner rather than George Lucas directed?

2. Along with him being a bad director I am rethinking my very serious concerns about Jake Lloyd’s performance in Episode I. I thought he was terrible, part of the problem with Jar Jar wasn’t that character’s annoying traits in themselves but the fact they distracted from how truly awful Lloyd’s performance was. In retrospect, having seen Hayden Christiansen in Episode II and having reviewed Mark Hamill’s performance under Lucas’s direction in Episode IV I have to blame the director and not neccessarily the actors. In all three films the character (Anakin/Luke) acts like a spoiled little brat and has a wide eyed, whiny sense about them. Since it spans three actors and two characters and is almost exactly the same in all, it has to be the director.

Enough Lucas-bashing. All in all a decent flick. Like I said before it is long, very long and for most of the film you know exactly how long it is. I don’t mean like Lord of the Rings (My ass hurts!) long but it definitely plods. I damn near would have looked at my watch if I had such a device. Again, bad directing and a terrible sense of pace. The studio needs to force a good editor on Lucas. Too bad he’s above all sense of responsibility. At the end though, just for a minute, the magic was back. If I hadn’t been so damned tired of sitting in the theatre (and it was almost 3 AM by this point) I could very well have been four years old again, sitting in a darkened theatre as the Millenium Falcon “blasted its way out of Mos Eisley.” The middle nearly dooms the picture, I can even remember thinking at one point, “this is actually worse than Episode I.” But the ending nearly completely redeems the film.

So, I’m going to see it again. My first impressions of many films are often wrong and colored by expectation rather than reality. Final analysis? If you are a Star Wars fan or a red-blooded American who lives and breathes popular culture go and see it just because it’s Star Wars. If you just want to see a cool flick and come away completely satisfied go see Spider-Man.