In this summer of bad movies, I suppose The Other Guys must be considered a great comedic success — and, I will freely admit, there is a lot of fun to be had in this film — but it’s not quite the home run I’d been hoping for from a cast and filmmakers of this pedigree.

Will Ferrell plays Allen Gamble, a quiet, bookish police officer who is more accountant than cop.  He’s been partnered with Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg), a tough guy who’s been demoted and humiliated after accidentally shooting Derek Jeter during the World Series.  The two men both must live and work under the shadow of super-celebrity cops Highsmith and Danson (the perfectly cast Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson).  While those two Lethal Weapon-type cops get all the glory (no matter how much chaos, violence, and property damage they might cause in their movie-style city-wide chases), when compared to them, Gamble and Hoitz are just “the other guys.”  But when Gamble’s eye for details notices some discrepancies in the financial reporting of Wall Street big-wig David Ershon (Steve Coogan), Hoitz sees a chance for glory if they can successfully make the big bust.

The Other Guys has a great cast.  I love the pairing of Ferrell and Wahlberg — that’s an inspired team-up, and watching the two of them bounce off one another is the greatest pleasure of the film.  There are some wonderful digressions over the course of the film (particularly during the first half) in which the story takes a back-seat for a minute for the two to engage in some sort of ridiculous debate, and those scenes are hysterical.  Steve Coogan is all smarm as the surprisingly pathetic Ershon, and he can wring a laugh out of a flummoxed look like nobody’s business.  I also really enjoyed seeing Michael Keaton as the put-upon police captain.  Mr. Keaton hasn’t had a lot of strong roles in the last decade or so, but the man is a riot.  It’s nice to see that he can still bring the funny when well-used in a film.

For the first hour, I was really loving The Other Guys.  The film was filled with zany scene after zany scene, but it was all anchored by a believable story about two good cops having to live in the shadow of the showboating super-stars of their department.  I’m not sure quite what went wrong, then, in the film’s second half, but in my opinion things seemed to peter out.  It might be that the story doesn’t seem to really go anywhere.  As an example, I felt that the momentum of the film grinds to a halt during the sequences in which Gamble and Hoitz get taken off the case.  It’s a familiar trope of these cop movies for the heroes to get temporarily thrown off the case they’re pursuing, but what’s weird in this film is the implication that MONTHS go by in the interim.  It suddenly takes all the urgency of what had been a frantic effort to stop the bad guy.  Also, as a bad guy, David Ershon proves remarkably simple to take down.  Once Gamble and Hoitz finally confront him, he crumbles immediately.  For me, that was a big let-down.  For these types of movies to have legs, the plot that surrounds all the jokes and craziness has to hold together as a compelling story, and this one doesn’t.

There is also an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink feel to the plot and the jokes in the film that seemed increasingly all over the place to me as the movie wound to its conclusion.  For every running joke that worked (like Hoitz’s repeated references to himself as a peacock) there was one that didn’t (the idea that Hoitz learned to dance perfectly just so he could make fun of others as a kid seems totally half-baked to me, and didn’t seem to go anywhere).  Same goes, by the way, for Mr. Farrell’s story-lines.  The running gag that, despite his nebbishy appearance, gorgeous women all find him unbearably attractive was a hoot… but on the other hand, I thought the trend of his slipping into pimp slang was stupid and, as with Hoitz’s dancing, didn’t seem to really go anywhere.

When the film ends, over the closing credits, there’s a whole series of animated graphics that illustrate various troubling statistics related to the recent financial melt-down.  The graphics are extremely well-done, and I thought those bits were quite fascinating.  But I found myself wondering just what the heck they had to do with the rest of the movie!!  Did the filmmakers think that, by making their villain a Wall Street guy, they were making a statement about the financial crisis?  (That would be sad, if they did.)  Again, this plays into the sort of desperate everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach that bothered me about the second half of the film.  Rather than a focus to the story and the jokes, it just felt to me like the filmmakers threw anything they could up at the screen, hoping something would stick.

It seems that they had a great idea for a film, and assembled a fine ensemble of comedic talent, but didn’t have a good plan as to how to actually resolve any of their character story-lines or comedic ideas in a satisfying way.  Compare this film to some other, more successful, zany Will Ferrell films such as Anchorman or Talladega Nights to see what I mean about having a focus to the story and the jokes.  Both of those films are also all over the place, and not afraid to take the time for bizarre comedic digressions (the “adult Jesus vs baby Jesus” conversation in Talladega Nights is a great example).  And yet those films were able to bring the threads of their characters’ stories, and all of the crazy jokes and running gags, together in the end to make a satisfying conclusion in a way that, for me, The Other Guys could not.

It’s a shame.  There’s a lot to enjoy about The Other Guys, but with a little more work (in the writing, in the editing), I think it really could have been great.

I was extraordinarily taken with Adaptation when I first saw it in theatres back in 2002, but I hadn’t seen it since.  I had been waiting for there to be a follow-up to the initial bare-bones DVD with nary a single special feature (save the film’s theatrical trailer) — if ever there was a film that left me desperate for a behind-the-scenes peek at just how the film came to be, it’s this one — but no special edition DVD ever arrived.  Shame!  Still, when I saw the disc in the five dollar bin at Newbury Comics a few months ago, I couldn’t resist.

Adaptation centers on screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s struggles with adapting Susan Orlean’s novel, The Orchid Thief.  How can he possibly make a movie out of the plot-free novel about flowers, without selling out by employing tired Hollywood cliches of action sequences and characters falling in love and learning important life lessons?

The above two-sentence summary really fails to do the film’s weird, complex, sprawling narrative justice.  The film swims deliriously in-and-out of real life events.  Adaptation is of course written by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who really was hired to adapt The Orchid Thief only to find himself totally stymied in his attempts, and he did decide to write himself into his screenplay (Adaptation is the film that resulted), as does the Charlie in Adaptation.  Still with me?  And yet much of Adaptation is pure fiction — Charlie Kaufman doesn’t really have a twin brother Donald (despite Donald’s name being listed in the film’s credits, a clever touch), and of course none of the insanity at the end of the film with Susan Orleans and her subject Laroche (in which drugs and murder come into play) has any basis in reality.

I can only laugh and wonder what the real Susan Orleans thought of this sort-of adaptation of her novel, or of her depiction in the film.  Former executive Valerie Thomas (played in the film by Tilda Swinton), told Variety: “I’m 10 pages in, and suddenly realize, ‘Oh my God, I’m in this.”  That Variety article goes on to comment that Ms. Thomas got off easy in the film, though perhaps they’re forgetting the scene in which Charlie masturbates to the thought of her having sex with him.

Nicolas Cage turns in one of his finest performances ever (well, two of his finest performances ever, actually), in the dual role of Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald.  It is astonishing to me how completely Mr. Cage is able to create and inhabit two entirely different characters despite their identical features.  Cage’s Charlie is depressed, anxious, and self-loathing, whereas Donald is happy, outgoing, and eager to please.  The visual effects that allow Cage to share the screen with himself throughout the film are terrific, but most of the credit really must go to Mr. Cage’s performance(s).  It’s hard to think of a film in which he has been better.  It’s a great combination of script, character(s), and actor.  Look no further than the spectacular opening credits, in which small white titles appear over a completely black screen, with no images whatsoever.  The whole sequence is carried by a hilariously rambling and self-hating monologue by Charlie, voiced by Mr. Cage.  It’s a riot, and tells us everything we need to know about this character — and also about the amazingly bizarre film that is about to unspool.

The cast that surrounds the two Nicolas Cage characters is spectacular as well.  I didn’t realize that I’d be having a Meryl Streep week at my house (when I popped Adaptation into my DVD player just a few days after having watched Defending Your Life), but I’m not complaining.  She’s terrific as New Yorker author Susan Orleans.  The arc of her relationship with Orchid Thief Laroche is played mostly in her face — as she moves from initial fascination to eventual disappointment — and she sells every moment marvelously.  Then there’s the sequence, late in the film, when she gets high on a sample of Laroche’s drugs.  The sequence is wonderfully unhinged, and Streep is hysterical.  The great Chris Cooper plays the bizarre, mysterious, front-teeth-missing Laroche, and he’s wonderful as well.  He’s able to give Laroche a lot of depth, without ever definitely answering for us whether the man is a misunderstood genius or a hick low-life.

There are also a lot of talented actors in small, supporting roles.  It’s a nice touch getting many of the cast of Being John Malkovich (including Catherine Keener, John Cusack, and Mr. Malkovich himself) to appear.  Maggie Gyllenhaal is fun in a tiny role as the make-up girl on Malkovich who starts dating Donald.  Judy Greer is beautiful and hysterical in the small role of a waitress which whom Charlie tries — and pathetically fails — to flirt.  (Re-watching this film today, I think it’s clear where the folks at Arrested Development got the idea for Ms. Greer’s character Kitty’s chest-baring proclivities.)  Ron Livingston is jovially smarmy as Charlie’s agent, and I totally loved Brian Cox’s scene-chewing role as writing seminar teacher Robert McKee (a real person, by the way).

All of this lunacy is held together with great confidence and grace by director Spike Jonze.  Adaptation is a film whose meta structure could have easily made it a distant piece of irony more than an engaging movie, but Mr. Jonze knows how to keep things moving and how to keep all of the insanity somewhat grounded by maintaining his focus on the very human Charlie.  Adaptation is a masterpiece, and I’m not even sure it’s Mr. Jonze’s best picture!  Check it out, if you’ve never seen it.

And so at last my little tour through the early films of Albert Brooks  concludes.  (Feel free to check out my reviews of Real Life (1979), Modern Romance (1981), and Lost in America (1985).)  Defending Your Life is probably the Albert Brooks movie that I’ve seen the most — but still, it had been many years since my last viewing, so it was great fun to take another look at the film.

In a brisk opening (a model of efficient story-telling), we’re introduced to Daniel Miller, a mid-level executive who, although he seems to be doing well enough at work that he’s able to buy himself an expensive car to celebrate his birthday, seems to live a fairly lonely life.  While taking his new car out for a spin, Daniel gets distracted and winds up driving directly into a bus.  When he next opens his eyes, he’s in Judgment City, and the movie is off.

Judgment City isn’t heaven or hell, as it’s explained to Daniel — it’s a way-station in which the recently dead are judged to see if they’re ready to move on to the next stage of their existence, or if their souls need to be sent back down to Earth for another go.  Everyone has an opportunity to defend their life in a courtroom-like setting (though Daniel is repeatedly told that it’s not really a trial) before the final decision is made.

The tag-line of Defending Your Life is “the first true story of what happens after you die.”  One of my friends is fond of saying that he fervently hopes that that is true.  There is something appealing, I must agree, to the notion that we’ll all have an opportunity to defend our lives — the actions we took, the choices we made — in the afterlife.  Though he and I aren’t quite sure we agree with Mr. Brooks’ depiction, in this film, that whether one has overcome one’s fear is really the most important question on which one’s life should be judged.  It’s an interesting perspective, and it certainly provides for some fine drama in this film, but I tend to think that there are other, better ways in which one’s merit could be evaluated.  I’m sure there are some quite fearless people out there who are also complete jerks!

It’s a credit to Mr. Brooks’ ambitions that he has created a comedic film that can also prompt such serious questions and thought.  Defending Your Life is certainly a comedic film, though as always Mr. Brooks isn’t afraid to  let several minutes pass without any big punchlines.

The best source of laughs in the film is probably Rip Torn, wonderfully cast as Daniel’s defender, Bob Diamond.  Diamond is tasked with helping Daniel prove that he is ready to move on, and Mr. Torn is tough, gruff, and quite endearing in the role.  Lee Grant doesn’t get to have nearly enough fun, but she’s still solid as the Mr. Diamond’s foil, the prosecutor Lena Foster.  There are some fun cameos in the film (Shirley MacLaine plays herself, and Buck Henry kills as the nearly-silent Dick Stanley), and then there is Meryl Streep as Julia, the woman Daniel meets in Judgment city.  I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed Ms. Streep more in a film than here — she is luminous as the kind, free-spirited woman with whom Daniel feels an immediate intimacy when they meet.  The thumbs up she gives Daniel after taking her sweet time eating a loooooong piece of pasta is possibly my favorite moment in the film.

Defending Your Life may be the most heartwarming film Albert Brooks ever made.  It’s funny, but never bitingly so.  The humor is gentle, and Mr. Brooks has the confidence and the patience to allow the jokes to come at their own pace, when appropriate for the story.  (I’ve commented several times now that this isn’t a joke-a-minute film, but Mr. Brooks does know when to bring with the funny.  The montage of Daniel’s mistakes and misjudgments, when it comes, is a hysterical bit of business.)  The ending is more unambiguously happy, I think, than any of Mr. Brooks’ other films.  But it doesn’t feel like a cop-out — the film is strong enough that the happy ending feels earned.

I’m not sure I agree with the NPR quotation on the DVD case that Defending Your Life is “the best American comedy in years,” but it is a terrific, warm-hearted film.  I enjoyed revisiting it!

Back in May, after watching Albert Brooks’ 1985 film Lost in America, I wrote that I planned on re-watching his 1991 film Defending Your Life the next week.  Well, time got away from me, and I do still hope to find the time to re-watch that great film soon.  But a few weeks ago, when the mood struck me to again sample an Albert Brooks film, I decided instead to hunt down the last remaining film by Mr. Books that I hadn’t yet seen: Real Life, from 1979.

After having written, directed, and starred in several short films for Saturday Night Live during its early years, Mr. Brooks moved to the big screen with his debut film, Real Life.  He plays film director Albert Brooks (not for the last time), who, in the film, has seized upon an amazing idea: the subject of his next movie will be real life.  Rather than filming a movie with fake characters portrayed by actors and actresses acting out a fake story, he will choose one average American family and film their lives for a year.  Out of that footage he’ll be able to craft a movie more exciting and dramatic than any other motion picture, and it will have something that none of them do: it will be REAL.

Needless to say, Brooks’ “perfect” American family soon turns out to be anything but, and the family’s struggles to maintain their normal lives in the face of constant monitoring by film cameras — not to mention Mr. Brooks’ difficulties at avoiding any interference in their lives — lead to things quickly dissolving into chaos.

I always thought that Albert Brooks was a little bit ahead of his time, but this 1979 film is remarkably prescient in predicting today’s American fascination with “reality TV.”  In Real Life, Mr. Brooks was able to portray both the seduction of being constantly on display before others, as well as the inherent horror of such a situation.  He was also able to predict, with pinpoint accuracy, the way the act of filming someone’s actions will, without fail, cause subtle (or gross) alterations in that individual’s behavior.  (Call it the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Reality Television.)

Amongst the cast, the standout is Charles Grodin.  Mr. Grodin is at the top of his game as Warren Yeager, the beleaguered patriarch of Mr. Brooks’ perfect family.  Grodin is able to be sympathetic and rather pitiable all at the same time.

As with most Albert Brooks films, Real Life is a riot.  The sequence in which veterinarian Warren Yeager attempts to save an injured horse is a knock-out.  But, also as with most Albert Brooks films, there’s also an element of American tragedy in the story.  At the end of the film, after all of the ordeals that they go through, the Yeager family take a survey on their experiences.  When asked if they would ever again be willing to participate in a similar filmed-reality experience again, the family indicates that sure they would!  The moment brings a laugh, but it’s also rather sad.  And somehow, deeply true to the American condition.

The old DVD of Real Life that I found (released in 2000) has only two special features: a brief, skippable interview with Albert Brooks (which frustratingly keeps cutting away from the interview to play long clips of the movie which I had just watched), and the theatrical trailer for the film.  The trailer is hysterical.  It doesn’t consist of any footage from the film — instead, it’s a brief mini-movie made by Mr. Brooks about the film.  And if I thought Real Life itself was ahead of its time, I nearly fell off my sofa when watching the trailer, which mercilessly mocks another trend that has become huge in the last twelve months — 3D!  That a thirty-year-old trailer could be so perfect for today’s movie-going reality is quite astounding.  If you ever rent Real Life on DVD, be sure not to miss this trailer, it’s dynamite.

Even without the trailer, Real Life represents a phenomenal debut film for a powerhouse voice in American comedy.  If you’ve never seen it, check it out.

Hoo boy, this one was disappointing.

I’m a big fan of both Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, and I thought Dinner For Schmucks had a premise that was so weird it seemed to promise good comedy.  Rudd plays Tim, who is trying desperately to climb the ladder at the private equity firm at which he works.  When one of his ideas sparks the attention of his boss (the always-great Bruce Greenwood), Tim gets an invite to his boss’ annual dinner.  But this isn’t just any dinner: each guest must bring, as their guest, the biggest idiot they can possibly find.  The purpose, simply, is for the rich hosts to mock the unfortunate souls gathered for the meal.  When Tim accidentally hits the socially awkward, dead-mice-collecting taxidermist Barry (Steve Carell) with his car, he seems to have found the perfect guest to bring along.

I’ve got to hand it to the filmmakers for having the guts to go with Dinner For Schmucks as their title.  (I’m not quite sure how that one got approved by the MPAA while Kevin Smith’s buddy cop film A Pair of Dicks had to be re-titled Cop Out — do the suits not know what the word schmuck means?)  But that title is about the only edgy element to be found in this broad, obvious comedy.

There aren’t any real, human characters to be found in this film.  Despite being one of the two male leads, I didn’t feel like we really got to know Rudd’s character Tim at all.  He likes his girlfriend and wants to get ahead in business.  What else did we learn over the course of the film?  Tim is painfully middle-of-the-road — not nice enough of a person to be someone we really sympathize with while watching the film, nor enough of a jerk to have any sort of character arc in the movie.  Then there is Carell’s Barry, who’s a big giant goofy cartoon, full of all sorts of bizarre manners and idiosyncracies.  I guess it’s all supposed to be funny, but it didn’t really tickle my funny-bone.

Director Jay Roach has been involved in some very funny movies (such as Austin Powers films), but it seems that lately he’s tended to make overly simplistic, broad comedies (such as the Meet the Parents films), and Dinner For Schmucks exacerbates that trend.  The set-ups for the gags are tired and obvious.  Hey, two characters have the same phone, I wonder if they’re going to get mixed up?  Hey, Tim has an important lunch, I wonder if Barry is going to screw that up?  Hey, now would be the worst moment for Tim’s girlfriend Julie (the beautiful Stephanie Szostak) to show up, so I wonder if she’ll walk through the door?  And on and on.

I will say that things pick up in the final half-hour, when the titular dinner finally (finally!) takes place.  Some terrific comedic actors appear, and the anarchy builds to a satisfying crescendo.  But the film takes way WAY too long to get to that point.

The two bright spots in the whole undertaking are Zach Galifianakis and Jemaine Clement.  Galifianakis plays Therman, Barry’s boss at the IRS.  He’s even more insanely bizarre than Barry is, but whereas I found Carrell’s mugging to be more awkward than funny, Galifianakis’ weirdness hit just the right sweet spot for me.  Clement (from Flight of the Conchords) plays the artist with whom Julie is working to curate a big show.  I’ve seen pompous, full-of-themselves artists portrayed on screen many times before, but Clement steps beyond the familiar comedic cliche and creates a wonderfully mad character.  Every moment he’s on screen he commands the movie.  This guy deserves his own spin-off, a la Russell Brand’s Aldous Snow!

All the rest of the ensemble — including the usually reliable Ron Livingston, Larry Wilmore, and Kristen Schaal — are stranded with little to do.

My suggestion for the weekend: take a pass on Dinner For Schmucks, and go see Inception for a second time!

A Few Good Men is one of those movies that I saw countless times in the nineties, to the point that I knew the film so well that it bored me. But then I stopped watching it, and when I decided to pop the film into my DVD player earlier this month, it had been many years since I’d last seen it.

While there are a few moments that haven’t aged well, overall I found A Few Good Men to still be a powerhouse of a film – just phenomenally entertaining.

This film is part of Rob Reiner’s astounding run of films – This is Spinal Tap (1984), The Sure Thing (1985), Stand By Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally (1989). Has any other director had such a run of such phenomenal films, one after another? And what’s really astounding is how different they all are from one another – different genres, different styles. It’s unbelievable how good all of those films are (and how well they all hold up to this day).

Take a director at the top of his game, and mix him with a screenplay by the brilliant Aaron Sorkin (adapting his own play), and you have a recipe for an amazing film. As with much of the work of Mr. Reiner and Mr. Sorkin, the story has a strong dramatic core – but it is also filled with a lot of humor.

It’s fun to watch this movie now and to see just how young Tom Cruise and Demi Moore are in this film. Cruise is just great – you can see his star-power shining through, bright and strong, in his protrayal of hot-shot young lawyer Daniel Kaffee. Moore is a little flatter, but still does well in the role of the stiff Lt. Cdr. Joe Galloway. I think this is one of her best performances. I feel the same way about Kevin Bacon. I tend to think that he’s a much better actor than Demi Moore, and there are certainly plenty of other films in which I’ve really enjoyed his performance. But still, I would argue that his role in A Few Good Men is one of his very best. I love the way he plays his relationship with Cruise’s Kaffee. There’s deep friendship, but also some rivalry and antagonism, between the two young men. In the hands of less-skilled actors, the relationship could have so easily tipped over to one side or the other – but Cruise and Bacon walk that fine line perfectly. I find their characters’ interplay to be endlessly fascinating, and one of the secret treasures of this film.

The great Kevin Pollack is amazing, as he always is. He gets quite a number of the best lines in the piece, but he’s also able to more than hold his own in the meaty dramatic scenes that he gets to play.

Then, of course, there is Jack. Mr. Nicholson’s iconic performance has been much parodied, and with good cause – it is over-the-top in the way that only Nicholson can be. And yet, somehow, it all works within the confines of the film. I find the climactic courtroom scene to be a show-stopper, wonderfully written, directed, and performed. Even though I know exactly what’s going to happen, each time I watch that scene I still somehow find myself wondering just how Lt. Kaffee is going to get Colonel Jessep to admit that he ordered that Code Red.

The only off moments for me in the film are a few instances in which Mr. Reiner veers just a little too closely to schmaltz or cliché. I found Kaffee’s making-his-decision night-time montage to be pretty silly, as was his rain-soaked confrontation with Joe (in which he declares his intention not to give up, and to put Jessep on the stand). I also thought that last salute, at the end of the film, was a bit much. I know that these are the little touches that seem to help make movies like these become real crowd-pleasers, but I like a little bit more subtlety (and a little less soaring music to tell me that this is an emotional moment), thank you.

Still, these are tiny complaints about a few moments in an otherwise top-notch film. A Few Good Men has aged well, and I look forward to revisiting it again in the future. I don’t think I’ll need to wait a decade this time.

Thank goodness – finally a good movie! I was beginning to think that Toy Story 3 was going to be the only bright spot in this rather dismal summer of movies.

With Inception, writer/director Christopher Nolan reunites a great many members of his Batman ensemble (Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe) with some terrific new faces (Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, and Marion Cotillard) to create a wonderfully mind-bending twisty-turny dream of a movie.

I went in knowing practically zero about the plot, which I think is the best way to approach Inception, so I’m going to avoid even a hint of a plot summary here. I will tell you that Mr. Nolan and his team have been able to create yet another tense, fun piece of summer-movie entertainment that is also sophisticated and adult. There’s some great action in Inception, but this isn’t one of those check-your-brain-at-the-door summer blockbusters.

I’ll be interested to see how well Inception holds up to multiple viewings. Will I remain as entranced by the layers-within-layers narrative structure, or will the movie become boring once I know how things unfold? It’s hard to say, but on this first pass I found the film’s M.C. Escher staircase-like structure to be a hoot.

Right now, Christopher Nolan’s greatest competition is with himself. He’s directed so many wonderful films that I adore with such fervor, that I can see it starting to become a challenge for his new films to stack up to his previous work. Indeed, underneath all the pyrotechnics and special-effects wizardry, Inception is actually a much simpler film that the brilliantly complex Memento. And, while exciting, it lacks the edge-of-your-seat-shit-is-going-DOWN intensity of The Dark Knight.

But that still leaves Inception as a superbly entertaining film. I must again praise the cast, who really are terrific across the board. I was particularly taken with Tom Hardy as the forger Eames. He brings a toughness and a humor to the role that I found very compelling. (Hard to believe this is the same actor who was in the abominable Star Trek: Nemesis.) I also really enjoyed Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance as Dom Cobb (Leonardo Dicaprio)’s loyal partner. I really wanted to know more about this guy!

It was fun seeing Ellen Page (Juno) in this type of film, though her character’s arc was probably the weakest part of the film. No fault of Ms. Page’s, but it seems to me that the film never really sold her friendship with Cobb. I didn’t really believe that he opened up to her about his history because he had connected with her – it just seemed like that was the point in the movie when the audience needed to learn more about what was really going on.

Quibbles aside, Inception is another winner from Christopher Nolan. Drew McWeeny over at hitfix compared Inception to Nolan’s Batman films, stating that they’re both about broken men trying (unsuccessfully) to fix things. I think that’s a fascinating way to look at these last several films that Mr. Nolan has created. I can’t wait to see what Nolan has next for us. (Dare I hope to dream that it will be The Dark Knight Returns?)

It’s not that the folks at Pixar are incapable of making a bad movie.  (I, for one, never cared for Cars.)  It’s just that it’s so very very rare that they do.  But after watching the marvelous Toy Story 3, it’s easy to believe that Pixar can do no wrong.

It’s been eleven long years since Toy Story 2.  One can perhaps be forgiven for doubting that even the mad geniuses at Pixar could recapture the magic of Toy Story after such a long hiatus.  But I am pleased to report that Toy Story 3 continues Pixar’s powerful winning streak.  It might not be quite the masterpiece that Toy Story 2 is (that film still stands as one of my all-time favorite movies), but I found it to be relentlessly entertaining and deeply moving.

At the end of Toy Story 2, Woody and the gang gave up the possibility of a lifetime of preservation (behind glass in a toy museum in Japan) in favor of a few more years being played with by Andy.  Toy Story 3 follows that decision through to its painful, inevitable conclusion.  Yes, Woody, Buzz and friends got a few more years being loved by Andy — but at the beginning of this film, he is all grown up and heading to college.  This leaves the toys facing the prospect of either years of storage in an attic, or being taken out with the trash.  Both prospects are devastating to the toys, whose main desire is to be played with and loved by a child.

Pixar could have easily kept Andy — and the rest of the characters — forever frozen in an ageless state, like Peter Pan or Bart Simpson.  I could easily imagine Pixar making sequel after sequel featuring the gang’s adventures in Andy’s room, without feeling the need to allow real-world issues like the realities of time and aging to intrude on the fun.  God bless the folks at Pixar, then, for not taking that route, and instead grappling head-on with the tough questions raised by the end of Toy Story 2.  The result is a film that — while still absolutely hilarious in parts — I found to be surprisingly melancholy.  This is not a criticism, it is a powerful complement.  The artists at Pixar haven’t created another simplistic, cookie-cutter franchise-extender.  They’ve produced a poignant fable that wrestles with issues that have no easy solution.

That statement leads me to consider (as I have many times since walking out of the theatre), the film’s marvelous ending.  (I’m going to be vague here, to try to avoid major spoilers — but nevertheless, please beware.)  I gladly admit that this film had me fooled — I really was expecting a thoroughly dour ending.  No, I didn’t believe the toys were all going to get incinerated.  But I just didn’t see any way out of the characters’ predicament that wouldn’t be a total narrative cheat.  Once again, god bless those geniuses at Pixar.  They managed to create an ending to the film that could be called a happy ending, while still remaining emotionally true.  (And I wrote “could be called a happy ending” because, despite some upbeat turns, I still found the end of the film to be powerfully bittersweet.  Again, this is a strong compliment, not a criticism.)

The core group of voice actors have all returned for Toy Story 3 and are as entertaining as ever.  Tom Hanks (Woody), Tim Allen (Buzz), Joan Cusack (Jessie), Don Rickles (Mr. Potato Head), Wallace Shawn (Rex), John Ratzenberger (Hamm), Estelle Harris (Mrs. Potato Head), are, of course, all just phenomenal.  They’re joined by a few great new additions.  The amazing (and woefully under-used for the past few decades) Ned Beatty (who I’ll always think of first as Lex Luthor’s bumbling assistant in the Richard Donner Superman films) knocks it out of the park as the villainous Lotso (as in “Lotso Hugs Bear”).  I was also thrilled to see the long-awaited introduction of Ken to the Toy Story films.  Ken is voiced by Michael Keaton, who is so perfect for the role that after seeing the film I couldn’t possibly imagine any other actor in the role.

Toy Story 3 may be an animated film about toys, but make no mistake — it is an adult, emotionally rich and complex piece of work.  If this is the final Toy Story film, it provides a fine conclusion to the story.  But it’s so good, that I sure hope it’s not!

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is a French film that lovingly parodies the 1960’s Sean Connery era James Bond films.  It got very little play here in the U.S., but if you’re a fan of the Connery Bond films then this movie is not to be missed.

OSS 117 actually began as a serious series of spy novels and films in the 1950’s (predating Ian Fleming’s secret agent by several years).  However, Cairo, Nest of Spies is anything but serious.  Now, this film isn’t total insane lunacy like the Austin Powers films.  Rather, this film represents a gentler form of parody.  In many respects, the filmmakers have lovingly recreated the world of 1960’s James Bond — through the sets, the costumes, the colors, the score, etc.  But when it comes to the story, everything is nudged several directions towards the silly.

Jean Dujardin stars as the titular OSS 117, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath.  He’s a well-dressed, highly-trained secret agent, able of besting a skilled foe in hand-to-hand combat and wooing any lovely lady he sets his sights on.  Sound familiar?  But he’s also rather dim, ludicrously devoted to France’s president, and totally condescending to any culture and religion that is not French.  Dujardin is a riot, and the film succeeds primarily because he’s able to walk the tightrope between being an imbecile, but a lovable one.  He’s able to handle witty reparte as well as broad physical humor (the pose he strikes any time he fires his weapon made me laugh every time).

It can be challenging for a comedic film to work even when watched with subtitles, but despite that I still found Cairo, Nest of Spies to be very, very funny.  I’m sure there were a few jokes that would have worked better if I spoke fluent French, but not many.  It helps that many of the film’s best gags are visual ones.  My favorite moment: a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gag about OSS 117’s bed-hair when he wakes up in his suite about mid-way through the film. (Though I will comment that I was disappointed that there were several spelling mistakes in the subtitles.  That’s unfortunately amateurish.)

This is an obscure film, but for a Bond nut like myself I am so glad to have seen it.  To any fellow Bond-fanatics out there, I highly recommend you track this down.  (And luckily, a sequel has already been made — OSS 117: Lost in Rio.  It hasn’t been released yet here in the States, but I eagerly await its arrival…)

I’m behind the eight-ball on this one, I know.  Movie-related web-sites across the web have been showering praise on this small-budget Swedish vampire film for the past two years, but I only recently got around to seeing it.  It’s just as terrific as I’d heard.

Oskar is a twelve-year old boy whose parents are separated.  He doesn’t seem to have any friends, at least not any that we see, and he’s terribly bullied by a trio of boys from school.  Oskar likes to hang-out by himself in the courtyard of the building where he lives with his mother.  One night, he meets a girl, Eli, who has just moved into the building.  The two form a gentle friendship.  Of course, once we see Eli’s father/guardian Hakan murder a man in the woods and drain him of his blood, it’s clear that Eli hides a terrible secret.

That plot could easily describe a film that played into a whole lot of dumb, horror-movie cliches, but I was delighted that nothing could be further from the truth.  Director Tomas Alfredson, working from a screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist (adapting his own novel) has crafted a surprisingly gentle, tender film that is at once sweet and chilling.  Let the Right One In unfolds through a series of small, quiet scenes.  It’s a very still movie (though that stillness is punctuated by a few moments of intense violence).  The way the camera lingers on the frozen, snow-covered landscape reminds me in some ways of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, and also in the way the M. Night Shyamalan was unafraid, in his early films (like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable) to let a quiet long shot tell the story.

All of this would be irrelevant were not the film’s two leads, Kare Hedebrant as Oskar, and Lina Leandersson as Eli, so spectacularly good.  There is no over-acting to be found in this film.  Both Hedebrant and Leandersson are able to express a world of character through their small, underplayed facial expressions, often without speaking a word.  (Or when, as is often the case in real life, the words they are speaking fail to convey what’s really going on in their hearts and minds.)  Whenever I see great performances by child actors, I always credit the director as much as the actors themselves, and so kudos to Mr. Alfredson for drawing such restrained, naturalistic performers out of his stars.

I am not a big horror fan, but Let The Right One In quickly won me over.  I’m so glad to have finally given it a shot.  It’s hard to believe that one could describe a vampire movie as tender, but this one is.  I must also add that it has one of the most powerful final scenes of any film I’ve seen in a long time.  I thought I had the film figured out, but that final scene hit me like a ton of bricks.  It causes the viewer to completely re-evaluate one of the main relationships in the film, and I must admit I’ve been thinking about it ever since seeing it.  It’s hard to shake.  Wonderful.

(A note when watching the DVD or blu-ray.  I strongly suggest setting your disc controls so that  you watch the film in the original Swedish, with the subtitles set to English: Theatrical.  Let the Right One In was originally released to disc with notoriously terrible English subtitles.  You can click here for the full story. That has been corrected in later versions of the DVD/blu-ray, which contain the subtitle option English: Theatrical.  You want to be sure to buy/rent a version of this film with those subtitle options, and trust me that they’re the ones to watch.)

After re-watching Albert Brooks’ film Modern Romance a few weeks ago (read my review here), I decided the time had come to revisit some of his other films.  I started by tracking down Lost in America, his 1985 film that, somehow, I had never seen.

Mr. Brooks (who also directed and co-wrote the film, with Monica Johnson) stars as David Howard.  After failing to get a promotion at work — one that he’d been working towards for years — he tells off his boss in spectacular fashion (the explosion is just as much fun as you might think) and gets fired.  So he convinces his wife Linda, played by Julie Hagerty (Elaine Dickinson from Airplane!) to quit her boring job as well.  They sell their house, liquidate their stocks, buy a Winnebago and set out to roam America and find themselves.  Unfortunately, their first stop is in Las Vegas and, after only one night, they’ve lost all their money.  Left with only $800 to their name, David and Linda have to try to find jobs in the small, midwestern town in which they find themselves.

In my humble opinion, Albert Brooks wrote and directed far too few films.  So it was a great delight to get to discover, for the first time, an Albert Brooks film that I’d never seen.  Lost in America certainly isn’t my favorite Brooks film (that would be Modern Romance), but there’s a lot to appreciate here.  There’s a lot of comedy today that wrings laughs from awkward, painful moments (the original British The Office comes to mind), but Mr. Brooks was pushing those boundaries thirty years ago.  For a “comedy,” there’s a lot of real, human moments to be found in Lost in America (and in all his films, really!).

It’s clear from the film’s opening scene — a slow, slow pan through David & Linda’s home, while a Larry King interview with film critic Rex Reed plays on an out-of-sight radio — that we’re in the hands of a filmmaker with great skill.  It’s a very meta choice to start one’s film with a lengthy monologue from Rex Reed talking about films, and it indicates that Mr. Brooks was after more than just a few yuks.  Lost in America tells the story two people who both find themselves trapped in their lives — trapped by their go-nowhere jobs, by the expectations that they put upon themselves about what they “should” be doing, about the house they “should” be living in, and so forth.  It’s a situation in which, one presumes, many middle-class folk find themselves in at one point or another in their lives.  There’s a strong aspect of “wish-fulfillment” in the plan that David and Linda hatch to take all their money and “drop out” of society.  It’s an intriguing premise upon which to hang a film.

Mr. Brooks, as always, is a riot.  The man plays “neurotic” like nobody else.  His first scene in the film — in which he lies awake at night consumed by worries — is a classic.  But Brooks’ character in this film also shows a little more backbone than some of his other roles.  When he’s denied his promotion, David Howard doesn’t just meekly take it — his built-up frustrations explode in a movie-stealing scene.  Brooks has a terrific connection with Julie Hagerty, a gifted comedic actress who, I feel, has been sadly under-utilized in the three decades since Airplane!. The success of the film rests on our attachment to these two “normal” working Americans, and they make a great screen couple.

What prevents me from loving Lost in America is the ending.  For a movie that seems based in a “wish-fulfillment” premise, I found the film’s denouement to be surprisingly downbeat.  (Interestingly enough, I made a similar comment about the ending of Modern Romance.)  According to the film, it seems there is not, in fact, any way out of our worker-drone lives, and that’s a surprising conclusion for a comedy to come to.  I applaud Mr. Brooks for not bowing to standard movie conventions.  But at the same time, it means that aspects of Lost in America aren’t really that much fun to watch!

Still, I do love a movie that blazes its own path.  Albert Brooks has always had a singular voice.  I wish he’d made more films, but I am thankful for the ones we have.  Next week, I think I’ll take another look at his 1991 film, Defending Your Life…

See you soon!

I’m always chasing after that perfect cinematic experience — the rare movie where everything just seems to magically click, and I walk out of the theatre totally jazzed by what just unspooled before my eyes.  I felt that way when I saw the first Iron Man. I was really blown away by the confidence with which director Jon Favreau and his team (headlined, of course, by the amazing Robert Downey Jr.) pulled off their exciting, engaging, and all-around FUN first installment.

Best of all, while that first movie was certainly a complete story all its own, it ended on a terrific high-note that promised fertile stories ahead — Tony’s spur-of-the-moment “I am Iron Man” admission in the final scene of the film, and the end-of-the-credits button that introduced Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury (played by Sam Jackson, who was the visual model for the character in Marvel’s “Ultimate” universe created about a decade ago) and made mention of the “Avengers Initiative.”  I walked out of that theatre unbelievably pumped for the stories to come, and when Marvel announced, about a week after Iron Man’s opening, their plans for future films based on Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man 2, all of which would build to a movie-version of Marvel’s super-hero team The Avengers, it was clear that an extraordinary venture was underway.

But that venture was fraught with risk.  Both Thor and Captain America seem like characters who work great in comic books but would be fiendishly difficult to pull off believably in a movie version.  And while most of the key creative players behind Iron Man were returning for the sequel, well, I probably don’t need to list for you the many, many sequels that have been colossal disappointments, unable to capture the magic of the first installment.

Alright, already, so what did I think of Iron Man 2?

Mr. Favreau and his team have crafted another fun, engaging installment of the adventures of Tony Stark.  They haven’t reinvented the wheel.  They haven’t turned over the apple-cart in the way that makes some of the truly great movie sequels so notable (The Empire Strikes Back, The Wrath of Khan, The Dark Knight…).  I didn’t walk out of the theatre with that same tingle that I had after seeing the first Iron Man.  But that doesn’t mean that the film isn’t very good.

Robert Downey Jr. proves that his perfection as Tony Stark in the first installment wasn’t a fluke.  He’s once again phenomenal, totally magnetic whenever he’s on screen.  I was pleased that the filmmakers resisted the temptation to trim any of Stark’s rough edges — Tony is just as much a pompous egomaniac here as he was in the first film.  But in an endearing way!  Likewise, Gwyneth Paltrow is just ridiculously likable as Pepper Potts, the woman responsible for keeping Tony’s life in some semblance of order.  Much was made of the re-casting of Tony’s friend James Rhodes, replacing Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle, but I was pleased how well Mr. Cheadle fit into the role.  Five minutes into the film, and the re-casting is forgotten.  (Though I thought the “it’s me, deal with it” joke was unnecessary.  Too on-the-nose for my taste.)

One place where many, many super-hero sequels have stumbled is in the temptation to over-stuff themselves with too many new (usually villainous) characters.  When I read that this film was going to introduce two new villains — Whiplash and Justin Hammer — as well as the Black Widow, AND was going to feature Nick Fury in a larger role, I was a bit concerned.  Luckily, all of those new characters were very well-done, and integrated smoothly into the film.  I never felt that the narrative was bending under the studio’s need to sell new toys like some other failed superhero sequels I could mention (cough Spider-Man 3 cough).

Mickey Rourke is a lot of fun as Whiplash.  Mr. Rourke plays Ivan Vanko, a Russian thug/physicist who’s been nursing a planet-sized grudge against the Stark Family due to his belief that Tony’s father Howard Stark stole the arc reactor designs created by his (Ivan’s) father.  Rourke puts on a pretty crazy Russian accent for the role, which teeters just on the edge of ridiculous, but he brings enormous charisma and menace to the part, both of which help him create an intriguing, eminently-watchable character.  Also, I could listen to him say the word “bird” all day.  (Apparently, so too could the filmmakers, since he says it about a hundred times during the film.)  When Vanko’s first attempt to kill Tony fails (a thrilling attack during a car-race that is deliriously well-executed by the special effects team), he gets recruited by industrialist Justin Hammer.  Hammer is sort of a failed version of Tony Stark.  Well, not “failed,” really, since he is a wealthy supplier of weapons to the U.S. Military.  But as rich, smart, and successful as he is, he is less rich, less smart, and less successful than Tony Stark.  Hammer is played by Sam Rockwell, who imbues the character with bucket-loads of smug arrogance.  Rockwell’s off-kilter mannerisms are a good match for Robert Downey Jr.’s own particular brand of fast-talking mania — and also for Rourke’s quiet, hulking danger.

Then there’s Scarlett Johansson.  She is terribly miscast as the Russian super-spy Natasha Romanoff (I’d be hard-pressed to think of a more American looking and sounding actress than she), but she’s actually not bad in the role (even though she’s way afield from the original comic book character).  She does quiet inscrutability well, and except for one off-key moment (her childish pout storming out of Tony’s office at one point late in the film) she’s well-used in the story.  She also looks ridiculously good in a tight black cat-suit, so there’s that.

The action in the film is tremendous — a nice quantum leap ahead of what we saw in the first film.  I’ve already mentioned Vanko’s attack on the car-race, which was stunning, and there’s also a lot of chaos in the film’s final thirty minutes which is filled with great stuff.  Watching Iron Man & War Machine face off against thirty Hammer drones was thrilling — a fast-paced, energetic sequence that was a good capper to the story.  As in the first film, I have absolutely no idea what effects were handled practically and what were CGI — the blending is seamless, and really helps to sell the reality of the world being created.

So what doesn’t work?  At the end of the day, why don’t I feel that this film was as across-the-board successful as the first film?

Well, despite everything that I enjoyed, there were a number of aspects of Iron Man 2 that didn’t sit quite right with me.  They boil down to three main failings.  First, there weren’t really any surprises in this film.  The story was pretty by-the-numbers, and doesn’t really tread any new ground for the characters.  One didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to presume, from the ending of Iron Man, that the sequel would focus on Tony’s having to adapt to suddenly being an in-the-spotlight super-hero, and that he’d have trouble dealing with that.  That’s exactly the story that we got, and it unfolds pretty much as one would expect — Tony arrogantly assumes he can handle all of the responsibilities he has taken on, which of course he can’t — so bad things happen and then he learns a valuable lesson.  That’s a pretty simple character arc, and not so dissimilar from what he went through in the first film.  Pepper and Rhodey don’t fare that much better — both characters feel like they’re being put through the same motions that they went through in the first film as well.  Pepper is put off by Tony’s boorish behavior and self-destructive tendencies, so she separates herself from him, but they make up at the end.  Rhodey is put off by Tony’s boorish behavior and self-destructive tendencies, so he separates himself from him, but they make up at the end.  Both story-arcs are predictable, and I sort of feel like we already danced that fandango with those characters in the first film.  (I was also a little bummed that Pepper — whose relationship with Tony was such a dynamic, central aspect to the first film — pretty much drops out of the story for the middle of the movie.)

The second major problem of the film, for me, is the way that the narrative takes the simple way out of all of the story’s conflicts.  The made-up element in Tony’s chest is killing him?  No problem, Tony will just invent some new made-up element to replace it.  Actually, strike that, he doesn’t even invent it, he just finds something that his father already invented.  Speaking of his father, I had assumed that Ivan’s grudge against Howard Stark had a basis in fact — that Howard HAD in fact screwed over his Russian partner.  But no, Nick Fury shows up to tell us that that’s not the case, Howard was really a great guy.  We know that Tony had a complex relationship with his father, and we assume that his father cared more about his work than he did for him.  But here’s a film-strip from twenty years earlier in which Howard looks straight at the camera and tells his son that he really loves him.  Come on!  It’s all very silly, and too easy.  Wouldn’t Stark’s conflict with Vanko be more compelling if Vanko really DID have a legitimate reason to hate the Stark family?  Wouldn’t the Stark family dynamics have been more interesting if his father really WAS a cold prick?  And what was even the point of introducing the plot-thread that the device in Tony’s chest was killing him, if Tony is able to solve that problem lickety-split once he’s given some magic secret info from his father?  And don’t even get me started on that.  The secret new element was hidden by his father in a model he built years earlier?  A HUGE model that apparently has been residing in Tony’s office all this time except that we never saw it in the first movie?  Weak.  Weak in the extreme.

Which brings me to the film’s third major flaw — there was really no sense of threat or danger to the proceedings.  I really respect Mr. Favreau and his collaborators for not imitating The Dark Knight and going all grim-and-gritty with their story.  I LOVE that they were able to preserve the sense of rollicking fun that the first film had.  But I do think this film would have benefitted from giving Stark some stronger adversaries, who would have presented him with a real THREAT.  It’s clear from the scene where we first meet him that Hammer is no intellectual match for Stark — Stark is clearly ten steps ahead of him, and humiliates Hammer at the Senate hearing.  But think of how much differently the movie would have played had Hammer been the one to embarrass Stark at that hearing.  Then we would have known, right from the beginning, that Stark was facing a dangerous man who was a real threat to him — and that threat would have hung over Tony for the rest of the movie.  But by going for a laugh during that Senate hearing sequence, I think the filmmakers undermined themselves.  Same goes for Whiplash.  Early in the film, Whiplash fights Iron Man — and gets beaten.  Then we spend the whole rest of the film building towards their rematch when — surprise, Whiplash gets beaten again.  If we learn in the first act that our hero can defeat the villain, there’s really no tension to be found in their third act re-match, is there?

Those are my most major problems with the film, but I have other complaints too.  It was nice to see Agent Coulson again (played by Clark Gregg) — I was worried that having Director Fury in the film would mean that we wouldn’t see Coulson — but he’s introduced only to tell us, in his next scene, that he’s been reassigned, and he exits the film.  I also didn’t understand how, when we first see him, he makes a big speech to Stark about how he’ll do whatever it takes to keep Stark confined in his home — and then five minutes later we see Stark in his car and driving away, with no one from S.H.I.E.L.D. making any attempt to stop him.  Huh?  I was also confused about how the events in this film square with Tony Stark’s cameo in last summer’s The Incredible Hulk.  In the scene in Hulk, it seemed like Stark was fully on board with Fury’s Avengers project — but in this film, it seems that S.H.I.E.L.D. is keeping him at a distance because they consider him a liability.  That doesn’t seem to jive .  I was also bummed that Jarvis wasn’t that heavily featured in this film.  I thought he was a wonderful creation in the first movie, and I completely loved the relationship that he/it had with Tony.  But in this film, Jarvis doesn’t have much do do other than spout a little exposition here and there about blood toxicity and new made-up elements.  That was a disappointment.  I’ll also mention how bummed I was that the 10 Rings organization, so subtly built up in the first film (and clearly connected to the classic Iron Man villain the Mandarin) was not mentioned at all in this movie.  I understand if the filmmakers weren’t ready to feature the Mandarin in this installment, but it would have been great to see that organization referenced (or at least to see even just ONE character sporting one of their over-sized rings) to keep that story alive.

OK, I’m starting to nit-pick, and I realize that.  But I think if the over-all story had worked more successfully in my eyes, those smaller problems wouldn’t be bothering me to the degree that they are.  But let’s not focus too much on the negatives.  There is still so much that I really enjoyed about Iron Man 2 that I haven’t mentioned yet:  I loved that Happy Hogan got more to do in this film.  I loved Garry Shandling.  I loved Stan Lee’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo.  I loved Iron Man’s fight with War Machine in Tony’s cliff-side home.  I loved Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury.  I loved the references to trouble in the mid-west.  I loved the choice of actor picked to portray Howard Stark (I won’t spoil it here).  I loved the look of Whiplash in his final confrontation with Iron Man & War-Machine (something that was, impressively, kept out of all the trailers).  I loved loved loved the way the filmmakers took the silly 1960’s comic book notion that Tony Stark kept his Iron Man suit in his briefcase, and turned it into a stunningly cool moment.

Iron Man 2 is a fun film, and over-all it is a successful second installment of this franchise.  It’s not a classic movie sequel, and it doesn’t surpass the first film.  But it’s a good time in a movie theatre, and it’s much more fun and intelligent than much of what passes for big-budget summer films these days.  I remain very excited for the expansion of the Marvel movie universe in next summer’s Thor and Captain America, and to The Avengers in 2012.  And hey, I’d love to not have to wait until 2013 for an Iron Man 3!

It’s funny — although I acknowledge that Peter Bogdanovich is a significant, influential director, I must admit with some embarrassment that I’ve seen very few of his films.  Many of his ground-breaking films from the ’70s remain, as-yet-unseen, on my lengthy “to-watch” list: The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc?, Paper Moon, etc.  I actually know Mr. Bogdanovich more as a knowledgeable film historian (his audio commentary on the DVD of Citizen Kane, for example, is magnificent and enlightening) than I do as a director.

But I’m a big fan of a film that he made in 2001, The Cat’s Meow.  The film is based on Hollywood whispers (”the whisper told most often”) about the events of a fateful boat cruise hosted by legendary media mogul William Randolph Hearst in 1924 that (might have) resulted in the untimely death of director Thomas Ince.

As the film tells the tale, W.R. Hearst invited an assemblage of show-biz folks (and a few gossip-writers) to join him on a yacht cruise in celebration of Mr. Innes’ birthday.  One of the guests was Charlie Chaplin (played by comedian Eddie Izzard), who may or may not have been involved at the time with Hearst’s very young starlet wife, Marion Davies (played by Kirsten Dunst).  (Of course, Hearst’s relationship with Marion Davies was most famously depicted — not in a positive light — in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, which resulted in Hearst’s attempts to block that film’s release.)  Though the weekend was supposed to be a fun getaway, it seems that almost every guest on Hearst’s yacht arrived with their own agenda.  The fun of the film is in watching these powerful Hollywood personalities bounce off one another, as each guests’s true ambitions bubble just below the surface.

There’s a lot of humor to be found in the film, although it shouldn’t be mistaken for a farce.  The Cat’s Meow is actually a pretty sad story — this boat cruise did not have a happy ending for many of its guests.

Mr. Bogdanovich assembled an interesting mix of actors for the film.  I really enjoyed Eddie Izzard’s performance as Chaplin.  He doesn’t really look like Chaplin, but still, the casting is inspired.  Izzard really nails the charisma of Chaplin, without falling into mimicry.  It seems to me that Kirsten Dunst isn’t that well thought of as a serious actress, but I thought she was terrific here as Davies.  Unlike Mr. Izzard, she really does look the part — and she brought a surprising amount of soul to the performance.  (You’ll have a lot more empathy for Marion Davies when watching The Cat’s Meow than when watching Citizen Kane!)  Edward Herrmann (whom my wife was excited to recognize as Richard Gilmore from Gilmore Girls) knocks it out of the park as W.R. Hearst, and I also really enjoyed Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride, Robin Hood: Men in Tights) as the unfortunate Innes.  The man can play smarm.

The film was adapted by screenwriter Steven Peros from his play of the same name.  In many ways the film feels like a play, which is a strength and also a weakness.  The Cat’s Meow is very tightly plotted and tightly written, and it’s a joy to watch these actors move in and out of scenes exchanging snappy patter with one another.  There are also, unfortunately, some scenes that feel very “stagey” where the acting & delivery of dialogue just doesn’t work.  These moments just felt “off” to me — and once I realized that this film had been adapted from a play I understood why.  They’re moments that I could definitely see working in a theatre, but just didn’t play in a movie.  But thankfully, those off moments are few and far between, and most of The Cat’s Meow works like gangbusters.

This isn’t a GREAT film, and it surely pales before Mr. Bogdanovich’s earlier work (which I someday hope to see!).  But it’s a film that I’ve really dug both times that I’ve seen it on DVD, and it sits proudly on my DVD shelf.  If the cast and subject matter interests you, it’s definitely worth a shot.

As with Death at a Funeral (which I reviewed last month), The TV Set is a film that I’ve been wanting to see ever since it was released.  It was one of those films that sounded really interesting to me, and was very well-reviewed, but I just never got around to catching it.  I keep a little notebook with a long LOOONG list of all the movies that I want to see someday.  Any time I read about a film that sounds interesting, I add it to the list.  I’ve been very busy lately, but I’m really happy that I’ve been able to cross some great films off of that to-watch list lately, thanks to Netflix!

The TV Set stars David Duchovny as Mike Klein, a TV writer.  Mike has written and sold a script for a new TV pilot called The Wexley Chronicles, and over the course of the film we follow the process of casting and filming the pilot from Mike’s well-liked script.

I am a big fan of television, and as a result, The TV Set is difficult to watch at times.  That’s because this film dissects, with surgical precision, why so much television is so terrible.  Written and directed by Jake Kasdan (Orange County, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) and produced by Judd Apatow, the film is based on Apatow and Kasdan’s experiences making the brilliant-but-quickly-cancelled TV series Freaks and Geeks.  Over the course of the film we, along with poor Mike, watch with horror as the network takes his script — which they liked because of its originality — and, through a thousand small compromises that they force Mike to make, set about to eliminate all of the project’s uniqueness in order to create something that will offend no-one and appeal to the widest audience possible.  The process is summed up in an awkward confrontation between Mike and the network head-honcho Lenny (Sigourney Weaver), in which she tells him flat-out: “originality scares me.”

The cast is superb.  Duchovny is perfect as the talented but also sort of sad-sack Mike.  We can see, in his eyes, the quiet desperation with which Mike is trying to hold on to his vision for the project, and the anguish that each little compromise causes him.  Sigourney Weaver kills as the tough, take-no-prisoners Network boss Lenny.  She is a riot, and to describe Lenny as a formidable presence would be a grand understatement.  Ioan Gruffudd (Horatio Hornblower from USA’s series, and perfectly cast but then stranded by the execrable Fantastic Four movies) plays Lenny’s right-hand man Richard, brought over from England to head up the network’s TV development.  Whereas Lenny only cares about the bottom line (making money), we can see that Richard does want to make good television, but it’s quickly apparent that he can’t and/or won’t stand in Lenny’s way.  Judy Greer (Arrested Development) is Mike’s agent Alice.  Her insistence of trying to make it sound like two people are agreeing when clearly they are in total disagreement is hysterical, and, it seems, typical for Hollywood.  Fran Kranz (who I only recently discovered as the nutty Topher on Dollhouse) plays Zach, the bad actor cast in the show’s lead role at the network’s insistance, over Mike’s objections.  It’s tough the play “bad acting” without slipping into over-the-top silliness, but Kranz nails the performance.  Lindsay Sloan is also great as the female lead of the show who is forced to try to act opposite Zach.

I could keep going!  There’s Justine Bateman as Mike’s pregnant wife Natalie!  There’s Lucy Davis (Dawn from the original British The Office) as Richard’s put-upon wife Chloe!  There’s M.C. Gainey (Tom Friendly from Lost!) as the grumpy lighting-man on set!  There’s Philip Rosenthal (show-runner of Everybody Loves Raymond) as a network exec!  The ensemble is amazing, and every character has a small moment to shine over the course of the film.

I said that The TV Set can be tough to watch at times, and that’s true — but in the best way!  The very qualities of The Wexler Chronicles that Mike is fighting for — that there can be great comedy out of uncomfortable moments, that a show can have rough edges, that not every character needs to be likable, and that an audience won’t turn away even if some unhappy things happen to the characters — are also present in The TV Set.  Sure, Mr. Kasdan and his teams could have played down some aspects of Mike’s suffering as he watches his project unravel.  That might have resulted in a funnier, easier-to-digest film, but it also would have been a film that is much less interesting.

The TV Set is a great film.  It might not appeal to everyone — there’s a lot of inside baseball to be found here, and if you’re not interested in how the sausage is made — that is, the behind-the-scenes processes of  how TV shows are actually created — then this might not be the film for you.  But I found the film to be fascinating — and also very, very funny.  And also very sad.

It’s worth your time — check it out.  And thank the stars above for the few TV shows that actually wind up being GOOD.

Drew McWeeny (who has a terrific blog over at Hitfix.com) has a series called “The Basics,” in which he writes about a film that he considers one of the “essentials” — a film that anyone who takes film seriously should see — and then another, younger writer, William Goss, writes a response.  To read more about this series, click here and then here.  Recently he and Mr. Goss invited other writers to get involved in their film conversations.  Since the last film under discussion was Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979), I was really excited to chime in.  (Here’s Mr. McWeeny’s piece about Manhattan.  Here’s what Mr. Goss wrote, and here’s what I had to say.)

Now Mr. McWeeny is writing about Albert Brooks’ 1981 film Modern Romance. What a terrific choice!  It had been a few years since I had last seen the film, so I was happy to have an excuse to pull it off my DVD shelf and give it a viewing.

The great Albert Brooks (who also directed and co-wrote the film) plays Robert Cole, one one the most neurotically messed-up characters I’ve ever seen captured on film.  As the movie opens, Robert breaks up with his girlfriend Mary (Kathryn Harrold, who I always think of as Francine from The Larry Sanders Show).  From her reaction it is clear that this has happened before, and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying that this opening-scene break-up doesn’t exactly break that cycle.

Modern Romance is very leisurely paced, with long scenes that aren’t in a rush to get to the punchline.  But don’t let that lead you to think that the film isn’t funny.  Quite the contrary, it is hysterical.  This is one of the most quotable comedies that I know.  It might be my favorite Albert Brooks movie, and that’s mostly because of the script’s tremendous wit.

In his review, Mr. McWeeny comments that he loves the way that Mr. Brooks isn’t afraid to digress in the film.  That pretty well sums up one of the strongest aspects, in my opinion, of Modern Romance.  My very favorite moments in the film are the ones that have nothing at all to do with Robert’s on-again off-again cycle with Mary.  I’m talking about the glimpses at Robert’s job as a film editor, working on a lousy-looking science-fiction picture.  That the film takes ten minutes to present us with a scene that’s all about how editing works (as Robert makes an edit to the sci-fi film that he feels strengthens the suspense of a scene) is just wonderful to me.  It helps, of course, that the greatly-missed Bruno Kirby (When Harry Met Sally, The Godfather Part II) and James L. Brooks (the director of films like Broadcast News, here playing the crappy sci-fi movie’s director) appear in these segments of the film.  These are the scenes that I most look forward to every time I re-watch Modern Romance.

The only place where I disagree with Mr. McWeeny is in his description of the film’s ending as perfect.  I must admit that I always find myself deeply unsettled when the ending arrives.  I’ll tread carefully here, to avoid ruining the film’s conclusion for any newbies.  Let me just say that my sympathy for Mary, who I have come to adore over the course of the movie, overwhelms the humor a little bit for me as the final text pieces arrive.  Perhaps that’s the point, but for me the film — which to that point had perfectly balanced comedy with some frank, awkward moments — looses its balance a teensy bit.  (It’s hard to find a place to end a film that is all about two characters’ never-ending love/hate cycle.)  But any quibbles that I have about the ending do nothing to dilute my overall love for this very funny ride.

It would be overly simplistic for me to assert that they don’t make comedies like this anymore.  Surely there are still great, complex comedies being made that also have real dramatic heft.  (One might site Judd Apatow’s recent film Funny People as an example.)  But Modern Romance does, to me, feel like a type of film that is hard to find these days.  I’ll admit that there’s is a nostalgia factor that might be coloring my opinion somewhat.  As I re-watch it, I can clearly remember being in college and discovering this film (along with Lost in America, as well as so many other great comedies, such as Woody Allen’s previously-mentioned Manhattan, as well as Annie Hall, Zelig, I could go on forever…) and feeling like I had stumbled upon a whole new world of incredible films.  But even separate from those emotions, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone denying that Modern Romance is a comedy classic.  (Though I do know some people who find this film boring.  My heart weeps for them.)

If you only know Albert Brooks from Finding Nemo (which is a great movie, don’t get me wrong), you need to track down this film immediately.

I’ve been wanting to see Death at a Funeral ever since it was first released (back in 2007), so it’s a funny coincidence that it arrived in my home (via Netflix) the same week that the American remake (featuring a predominantly African-American cast) opened in theatres.

The remake has gotten some decent reviews, but trust me, friends — after watching the phenomenal original version you’ll have absolutely no interest in any other take on this material.

Directed by the great Frank Oz (the voice of Miss Piggy & Yoda and the director of films including Little Shop of Horrors, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, In & Out, and Bowfinger), Death at a Funeral features a mostly British cast.  Matthew Macfadyen (MI5, Pride & Prejudice, Frost/Nixon) plays Daniel, who is attempting to arrange the funeral for his father.  Friends and family are gathering for what is supposed to be a quiet, dignified funeral service at Daniel’s parents’ home.  Of course, you can be assured that an escalating series of lunacy quickly unfolds.  Death at a Funeral is a classic farce, and there’s great joy in watching the filmmakers carefully set up all of the dominoes, in the first 30-45 minutes of the film, that they will spend the rest of the movie knocking over to hilarious effect.

This film is a RIOT.  Mr. Macfadyen is great as the straight man trying desperately to hold things together.  He’s surrounded by a terrific ensemble, including Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) as an old friend of Daniel’s father with a big secret; Andy Nymen & Ewam Bremner as two of Daniel’s fairly hapless friends; Keeley Hawes as Daniel’s wife Jane (and, seeing as she played Zoe Reynolds in MI5, it’s great fun seeing her paired again with Mr. Macfadyen); Rupert Graves as Daniel’s more-successful writer brother Robert; and many more talented actors & comedians.  But the film belongs to Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly) who plays Simon, the nervous fiancee of Martha (Daisy Donovan), Daniel’s cousin.  At the start of the film, Daisy gives Simon what she thinks is a Valium to calm him down.  Of course, the pill isn’t a Valium at all, but a much, er, stronger concoction.  Now, that might sound like a hackneyed comedy set-up, and maybe it is.  But you’re really not prepared for the insanity that Mr. Tudyk unleashes in the film once the drugs that Simon has taken take effect.  This is  one of the great comedic performances of all time, and one of the primary reasons that I’m recommending this film so strongly.

I don’t really understand why Hollywood has chosen to remake an English-language film that was released in the U.S. only three years ago.  And, you know, I’m just not going to waste any brain-power thinking about it.  Just trust me when I say that you should ignore the remake and go seek out the original version.  Remember my motto: when there’s gold out there, silver sucks.

And Death at a Funeral is comedic gold.

“Why do you think nobody’s ever tried to be a superhero before?  You’d think all these guys talking about it online every day, at least one would give it a try.  Not everybody gets to be a rock star, but it doesn’t stop people buying guitars.  Jesus, man.  Why do people want to be Paris Hilton and nobody wants to be Spider-Man?”

That is the question posed by teenager Dave Lizewski to his friends in the fantastic new film Kick-Ass.  Originally an eight-issue comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. (read my review of the comic here), Kick-Ass the comic was juvenile, profane, hyper-violent, and absolutely wonderful.  I am pleased to report that the film adaptation directed by Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Stardust)is equally juvenile, profane, and hyper-violent, and also equally wonderful.

Kick-Ass is the story a strange, lonely kid who seizes upon a crazy idea: to become the world’s first real-life super-hero.  Dave Lizewski doesn’t have any super-powers; he doesn’t have a large inheritance that he can use to buy incredible gadgets; he doesn’t really have any special skills at all.  But he’s not going to let that stop him.  What unfolds is a quickly-escalating spiral of chaos, as Dave finds himself neck-deep in a bloody struggle between crime-lord Frank D’Amico (played by the great Mark Strong, who it seems to me can do no wrong after his great performances recently in Stardust, Body of Lies, and Sherlock Holmes) and two real-life super-heroes, Big Daddy (Nic Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz).

The casting in this film is superb.  Nobody plays a bad-guy better than Mark Strong these days, and Chloe Moretz has found herself an extraordinary break-out role.  Speaking of break-out roles, bravo to the filmmakers for their casting of Aaron Johnson as Dave Lizewski.  This relative unknown absolutely kills in the part.  I was also really thrilled to see Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad) well-used here as Chris D’Amico.  Again, perfect casting, and its nice to see Mintz-Plasse in a different sort of role that nonetheless takes advantage of his bizarre geekiness.

We’re living in a good time for comic book fans, as Hollywood seems to be getting the message that faithful adaptations of great comic books is a wiser strategy than complete reinventions.  (Then again, Mark Millar’s terrific comic book Wanted, about super-villains who have successfully taken over the world, was completely mangled into an Angelina Jolie vehicle about assassins who take their orders from a magical loom, and that movie made hundreds of millions of dollars, so maybe I’m being hopelessly naive.)  But I look at a film like Watchmen, and I look at a film like Kick-Ass, and I am delighted at the respect that these filmmakers have paid to the source material.

Sure, Mr. Vaughn and his co-screenwriter Jane Goldman have made changes to the source material.  (They developed the film while the comic was still being written, so this is no surprise.)  They’ve added in some loopy new ideas of their own (a whole bit of business with a bazooka, for example), but I was delighted that so many of the rough edges of the comic — the things that made it such a unique, idiosyncratic work — have been maintained by the film.  This is not your average all-ages super-hero film!!  Kick-Ass is filled with harsh language and tremendous violence that is guaranteed to shock (particularly due to the fact that much of both is delivered by the pre-teen character Hit-Girl).

OK, Vaughn & co. have on occasion bowed a little bit to audience expectations.  There are a few instances when they’ve made Dave a little less of a dweeb, and his relationship with his crush Katie Deauxma unfolds a bit more conventionally than in the comic.  But I can’t really say that I objected to either of those small changes, as I actually think that both adjustments helped the narrative.  (Frankly, my biggest complaint is a nit-picky bit of annoyance at the way that the filmmakers re-wrote Kick-Ass’ first big case — his encounter with a bunch of drug-dealers that turns into his first violent encounter with Hit Girl — as being set in motion by Katie.  Connecting her to those drug-dealers seemed totally out of place, and I preferred the comic’s original set-up of that sequence.  I’m also not sure I quite connected with Nic Cage’s weird, stilted delivery of his lines when in costume as Big Daddy, but what the hell, it’s Nic Cage, so I guess weird is on the menu.)

Kick-Ass bobs and weaves between comedic moments and scenes of great intensity and drama.  The film is somewhat of an homage to and a parody of super-hero films, without ever slipping into becoming a total spoof.  Rather, as Dave’s adventure unfolds, it becomes a kick-ass super-hero movie all its own (in the same way that Galaxy Quest mocked Star Trek films and then in its second half turned into an awesome Star Trek-like film).  I credit director Matthew Vaughn for maintaining that delicate balance of tone.  The closest thing I could compare this film to is Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill volume I, in the way that the film giddily moves from comedy to incredible, over-the-top orgies of violence.

This is not a film for everyone!  There’s no question about that.  Here’s a quick barometer: if you know which comic book movie the quotation “Wait’ll they get a load of me!” comes from, then this is a film that you’re going to love.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about then, well, I’d bet Date Night is still playing at a theatre near you.

I well remember my reaction upon watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time, many years ago.  The star-child appeared, and the end credits rolled, and I turned to my brother and started laughing.  ”What the heck was THAT???”  I had no idea what to make of any of the ponderous weirdness that I had just seen, and I wondered what exactly I had missed.

But even during that first viewing it was clear that there was something special about 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it’s a film that stayed with me.  I found myself driven to revisit the film (several times, in fact, over the years), and to read the novel by Arthur C. Clarke (which, interestingly, was written concurrently with the production of the film).  I can think of few other films about which my opinion has so dramatically changed based on subsequent viewings.  Each time I watched 2001 I found myself enjoying it more and more.  As I peeled back the layers of the onion of the film, to use a familiar but handy analogy, what was once perplexing obtained profound meaning.

It is a challenge to provide a summary of 2001.  If you’ve seen the film, no summary is necessary, and if you haven’t, I’d hate to spoil anything.  I can tell you that the film is divided into several distinct sections.  The movie opens in primordial times (”the dawn of man”) and then jumps forward to the year 2001, when a strange object is discovered on the surface of the moon.  That discovery leads (for reasons I’ll not detail here) to an expedition towards Jupiter.  The experimental space-ship Discovery is crewed by Frank Poole and Dave Bowman, and the computer HAL 9000.  Things go awry.  The final segment of the film is the most perplexing, and the reason for the film’s tag-line “the ultimate trip.”

Right from its opening scenes, it is clear that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a science-fiction film unlike most other science-fiction films.  This is a cerebral undertaking, one that is concerned with posing some BIG QUESTIONS for the audience.  The film spans the entire history of human-kind — that should give you a good idea of Mr. Kubrick & Mr. Clarke’s ambitions!!

In terms of “plot,” there’s not too much that actually happens in 2001.  This, I think (along with the ending, which we’ll get to in a few moments) is one of the chief reasons that this film might not work for many casual viewers.  To say that the movie is leasurely paced would be an enormous understatement.  Events unfold very slowly, and the movie is filled with stately, long shots in which Mr. Kubrick’s camera moves languidly through the extraordinary environments that he and his team created.  There is no dialogue spoken until about 40 minutes in.  The film’s most famous, and most exciting, segment — in which something goes wrong aboard Discovery, causing the HAL 9000 to turn against Frank and Dave, only encompasses about 30 minutes of the film, and we don’t meet Frank and Dave and HAL until over an hour in.

But I have grown to really love precisely those challenging aspects of the film that I have just described.  Mr. Kubrick is not concerned with giving us an “action beat” every 10-15 minutes.  The film’s careful pace and slow build are designed to immerse us in the new worlds which Kubrick and his team painstakingly created (both in man’s ancient past and in our near future).  Mr. Kubrick expends an extraordinary amount of time to present to us all the details of these environments.  Floyd Heywood’s journey to the moon (our first extended sequence once the film’s story shifts to the year 2001) is a prime example.  Kubrick & co. present to us with a wealth of detail about Heywood’s journey: we see how food is served, we see how the flight attendants move through the aisles despite the lack of gravity, we even get a hint at how one might go to the bathroom in zero-g, etc. etc.  These details do nothing to advance the plot but are, it seems to me, meant to illustrate how space travel might, in the near future, become as commonplace as air-travel is to us today.

This might be boring to some, but personally I relish the sensation, when watching 2001, of allowing myself to sink into the world created before me.  Kubrick combines his magnificent imagery with gorgeous music to create sensations in the viewer of other places and other times.  2001 is a staggeringly beautiful film.  The special effects are top-notch and have aged remarkably well for a film made in 1968.  I am continually amazed by the breathtaking beauty of the outer-space effects shots.  They feel “real” to me in a way that many modern films are unable to capture, despite the advanced tools available today.  And the sets are magnificent, particularly the fully-realized environment that Kubrick & co. created aboard the Discovery.  Watching David Bowman jog all the way around the Discovery’s spinning central axis is still a show-stopper.

And the music.  I mentioned that there is no dialogue for the first 40-or-so minutes of the film… and frankly there is very little dialogue even after that!  Thus, it is the music that is required to do a lot of the heavy lifting necessary to move the film forward and keep the audience connected.  Kubrick’s innovative choice of using a variety of classical pieces of music to score his film is one of the elements that elevates 2001 towards the realm of genius.  His choices were impeccable — just think about how irrevocably attached On The Beautiful Blue Danube (by Johann Strauss II) and Also Sprach Zarathustra (by Richard Strauss) have become to 2001: A Space Odyssey!

One of the more difficult aspects of 2001 (and something that frustrated me to no end when I first watched the film) is the way that Kubrick refuses to give the audience a character to connect with, emotionally, during the film.  When we first meet Heywood Floyd, it seems that he is being set up as the film’s protagonist.  But after the encounter with the Monolith on the moon, Floyd vanishes from the film.  When we finally meet Dave and Frank on the Discovery, one might think that, OK, here at last are our heroes.  But we hardly get to know either one of them.  Keir Dullea’s performance as David Bowman is particularly striking by the flat affect that he gives Dave.  We see very little outward emotion from him.  This makes it very difficult for the audience to ever know what he’s thinking — and it provides a powerful impediment towards our being able to connect with his character.  As many reviewers have noted over the years, the most “human” character is the computer, HAL!  He’s the only character, really, in the entire film who expresses human emotions: anxiety, fear, curiosity, etc.

It is clear that this is intentional.  Not only to I find that very concept (that the computer is more “human” than any of the humans) to be compelling and thought-provoking, but I also find myself engaging more and more with Dullea’s Dave Bowman each time I watch the film.  Perhaps it is precisely because of his flat demeanor that he seems like a blank slate onto which I, as a viewer, can transpose my own feelings as the film unfolds — making Dave Bowman an effective “everyman” character to take us through the film’s climax.

Which brings us, of course, to the ending.  As I discuss the ending, it’s difficult to avoid spoilers so please beware if you’ve never seen this film before.  (It’s amusing to consider “spoilers” in connection with a film that is over 40 years old, but I want to be sensitive to potential “newbies” to 2001.)  Bowman discovers the Monolith floating in orbit of Saturn, and one might start to think “Aha!  Now we’re going to get some answers!”  Instead, what follows is one of the most gloriously enigmatic sequences in film history.

The first time I watched 2001 I had absolutely no idea what the heck to make of that totally unexpected (and seemingly disconnected) sequence of imagery.  But subsequent viewings have, I think, allowed me to draw out the meaning of this sequence.  As we witness the rapid aging of David Bowman, we see him ultimately reborn as something entirely new, and at last we can understand the meaning behind the film’s lengthy prologue set amongst the (damn dirty) apes.  2001: A Space Odyssey is a film that depicts the story of the evolution of man, from the primitive apes who knew nothing beyond pure animal instinct, to the cerebral men of a future century whose efforts to create technological tools eventually resulted in a sentient machine almost more human than they were themselves, to the next mysterious stage in human evolution: the star-child.  There’s a certain powerful symmetry to be found there.

This is an adult, complex film.  Mr, Kubrick does not spoon-feed the audience any easy answers.  To the contrary, over the course of this review I have attempted to describe the many way in which he subverts and confounds audience expectations at every step along the way.  This created a very frustrating initial viewing for me (and, I suspect, for many others!), but it has resulted in a film that has grown ever richer and more satisfying each time I see it.

There are so many other little details of 2001: A Space Odyssey that I find myself appreciating, more and more, upon my return visits to this film.  The astounding beauty of our first glimpse of the Monolith on the moon.  The masterfully edited sequence in which Dave uses explosive decompression to re-enter Discovery.  The fascinating detail of the way the ever-older versions of Dave are slowly revealed in the film’s climax, in which each version sees the next, older version, and then once that older version has been glimpsed, the younger one is never seen again, and we (and Dave) find ourselves inhabiting that new, more aged figure.  I could go on.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a milestone of science-fiction, and of film in general.  An accounting of all the sci-fi films that have been profoundly influenced by the aesthetics of 2001 (either emulating those aesthetics, or attempting to respond against them) would be a monumental task.  But 2001 is not simply an important film because of its influence.  It is an important film because it is every bit as compelling and effective as it was when it was first released in 1968.  In many ways I would argue it has actually improved.

If you’ve never seen it, go watch it now.

Then, go watch it again.

Last week I wrote about Moon, one of the 2009 films that I hasn’t succeeded in catching before the switch-over to the Year We Make Contact.  Today I’m here to write about another 2009 film that I’m glad I found a chance to see before getting too far into 2010: Crazy Heart.

Jeff Bridges plays “Bad” Blake, a once-great country singer who, through a combination of bad luck and his own hard-living, has been reduced to singing in bowling alleys.  Bad is a pretty pathetic figure when we first encounter him in the film, pulling up to his latest small-town gig in his battered old pick-up truck and dumping out a jug full of his urine.  But drunk and washed-up though he may be, when he starts to perform we can see the embers of his greatness.  Until he has to run outside to puke, that is.

It’s not too hard to guess that, over the course of the film, Bad will be able to claw his way up to some small form of redemption.  But the pleasures of Crazy Heart aren’t in any big dramatic plot twists or emotional epiphanies.  They’re in the way that, through a million small choices, Jeff Bridges brings this broken-down man to fully-realized life.  Bad isn’t really a cliched scoundrel-with-a-heart-of-gold.  He makes a lot of poor choices, and we see him fully live up to the name he has taken for himself.  But Mr. Bridges brings such humanity to the performance that one somehow can’t help rooting for Bad nonetheless.  Can anyone deny that Jeff Bridges is one of our finest actors working today?

Maggie Gyllenhaal is solid, as she always is.  But I was really pleasantly surprised by Colin Farrell’s excellent work as Bad’s former protege Tommy Sweet.  It’s a very well-written part.  Tommy is talked about a lot in the film before we ever see him on-screen.  While Bad has hit hard times, Tommy has become a country music super-star.  I was expecting fireworks when these two finally met up in the film, but I was really pleased that the film went in another direction.  There’s friction between the two, but also reservoirs of affection.  I was quite taken with Mr. Farrell’s work, giving Tommy the arrogance one might expect of an on-the-rise mega-talent, but also a deep core of loyalty to his former mentor.  I’ve always been a big fan of Colin Farrell (I even love him in Daredevil!), and between this and his role in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (read my review here), it’s nice to see him getting some decent roles these days.

Crazy Heart has a heck of a soundtrack, featuring an array of classic tunes by Waylon Jennings, Lucinda Williams, Buck Owens, and many more, along with a number of new songs written specifically for the film (such as Ryan Bingham’s song “The Weary Kind”).  Both Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell do a lot of singing in the film, and they both acquit themselves rather well.

In his review of the film for the New York Times, A.O. Scott noted the strong resemblance between Crazy Heart and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, a resemblance only enhanced when Robert Duvall (who starred in Tender Mercies) makes an appearance in Crazy Heart late in the film.  My parents made the same observation.  I haven’t seen Tender Mercies (though I added it to my Netflix queue after seeing this film), so I can’t comment for myself.  But I tend to agree with Mr. Scott, who wrote: “There can never be too many songs about drinking, loving and feeling bad, and there is always room for another version of that old song about the guy who messed it all up and kept on going. Especially when that guy can play the tune as truly and as well as Mr. Bridges.”  Well said.

After months and months of reading praise for Kathryn Bigelow’s film The Hurt Locker, I finally was able to see the film on DVD.  (Once again, thank you Netflix!)  I am extremely pleased to report that, for me, the film lived up to its hype.

In the bravura opening sequence, we meet Delta Company, an elite unit of the U.S. Army serving in Iraq.  Delta Company consists of the men who get called in to disarm and/or detonate I.E.D.s (Improvised Explosive Devices) and all manner of other sorts of explosives before they can kill any U.S. servicemen/woman or others.  The tense, harrowing first few minutes of the film tell us everything we need to know about the incredible bravery and ability of the men of Delta Company who we’ll be following through the film, the excruciatingly difficult task that they are called upon to deal with every single day, and the high fatality rates of their assignments.

The Hurt Locker focuses on three men in Delta Company.  Anthony Mackie plays Sgt. JT Sanborn — a tough, by-the book officer of great professionalism.  Brian Geraghty plays Specialist Owen Eldridge, the youngest member of the team.  Eldridge struggles with the weight of the life-and-death assignments that he must take on every day, but we never see those concerns affect his performance in the field.  Then there is Staff Sgt. William James, played by Jeremy Renner in a phenomenal, star-making performance.  SSG James is assigned to head up Delta Company after the death of their previous field leader.  James is an extraordinarily talented officer, but we quickly learn that he is not one for by-the-book procedures.  This brings him into conflict with Sgt. Sanborn, who judges James to be reckless and dangerous.  Young Eldridge finds himself caught somewhat in the middle.

That could be the plot of a great movie, but The Hurt Locker isn’t really a drama about conflict within a military unit.  Though we see evidence of that conflict that I have just described over the course of the story, The Hurt Locker isn’t concerned with typical Hollywood war-movie character arcs or story-lines.  Rather, director Kathryn Bigelow has created a film whose main purpose, it seems to me, is to put the viewer right in the middle of the intense, every-moment-could-be-your-last job that these men serving in Iraq have been given.  Through careful direction, tight editing, and above all stupendous acting, The Hurt Locker consists of one nail-biting sequence after another.

The film is episodic in nature.  In less capable hands this could be a weakness, undermining the narrative thrust that a successful film needs to achieve.  But under the sure guidance of Ms. Bigelow, the episodic structure of the film becomes something extremely powerful.  In each new sequence, the men of Delta Company are confronted with yet another harrowing encounter, where death seems to be one small wrong move away.  I kept expecting some larger storyline to emerge.  About an hour into the film, Delta Company is traveling through the desert after having completed an assignment when they encounter a broken-down truck of English mercenaries who have captured two members of the insurgency.  One of the mercenaries is played by Ralph Fiennes.  Aha, I thought, this is going to be the story that takes us through the rest of the film.  Maybe Ralph and his guys aren’t what they seem.  Maybe the insurgents are going to get away somehow and our guys are going to have to track them down.  I’ve seen a lot of war movies, and I could begin to guess how this was going to play out.

Thankfully, I was totally wrong.  We spend an intense 10-15 minutes with Ralph Fiennes and his team in that difficult situation (in which the characters find themselves pinned down by snipers).  But then the film moves on to the next day in the life of Delta Company, and we never see those English dudes again.

As I wrote a moment ago, it would be easy for this episodic structure to fall apart by the end of the film.  I have seen similarly structured movies that are interesting for the first half, but after a while one gets bored by the assemblage of short, disparate adventures.  But in The Hurt Locker, not only did I find myself growing only more engaged with the characters and the film with each “episode,” I would argue that this structure is the very point of the film, and the key to its power.  It doesn’t matter how tough one particular day is in the life of the men of Delta Company.  The next day, and the next tough assignment, is just around the corner.  The Hurt Locker isn’t the larger-than-life story of movie super-heroes — it’s the true-to-reality story of the brave, talented, and very human men (and women) who take on this work.  And that makes it all the more compelling.

If it were about a fictionalized conflict, The Hurt Locker would still be a visceral, edge-of-your-seat action film.  That it attempts to capture the experiences of some of the men and women serving our nation in Iraq gives it an increased resonance that only adds to the film’s power.  This is a masterfully assembled piece of work.  It’s difficult to watch at times, but it is well worth your time.