Nowhere in Africa 4/16/2003
What’s Good: A moving drama cluttered with rich meaning. A truly beautiful film.
What's Not: Twenty minutes too long and slow paced but that's not really a complaint. The pace mirrors the African rhythm (whatever that means). 
Directed by Caroline Link
Plot Outline: A Jewish family in Germany emigrate short before the Second World War. They move to Kenya to start running a farm... (sounds like a laugh riot)

The film that opened in 2002 and released wide in 2003 was a film that few people saw for obvious reasons. The title… sounds like the film is a feminist, post colonial downer (which it is). The running time (two and a half hours) sounds like the kind of feminist, post colonial downer that never ends. The subtitles (a more effective repellent to Americans than Anthrax) also don’t help the film’s case unless there are people doing Kung-Fu on the treetops. Also, let’s face it; the cinema of Germany hasn’t had much to offer since the Herzog’s heyday. And, well, to be honest again, if Reese Witherspoon isn’t listed in the cast then why would the average American filmgoer drive to that one theater in the fucking country that was dumb enough to screening this film? So, despite the most redeeming notice an art house film like this can get, a much deserved Oscar win for Best Foreign film, “Nowhere” has, at this point, grossed less than a million dollars according to Yahoo! Movies. Accordingly, “Nowhere in Africa” is the kind of masterpiece that is destined to be discovered on video which is too bad because to see the film in theaters is to succumb to its magical charms. It’s lyrical beauty. And it’s historically acute storytelling.  

Knowing that this film was out I jumped at the chance to see the unnoticed picture that Ebert awkwardly called: “the best film in the genre of settlers in Africa.”  And while the film relates to the subject of post colonialism on many levels, it is the kind of cinematic experience that caused me to quell my usual, not-so-smart-ass on-site analysis because I was so caught up in the narrative verve comfortably contained in Link’s vision. Once I gave the film a night to stew in my subconscious I realized just how taut with meaning and dramatically truthful the story actually was. First and foremost, this is a film about home. About displaced immigrants searching for a home in a seemingly hostile terrain. More specifically, the film is about immigrants who fled the Nazi rule before the war, went to Kenya, Africa only to realize that that their prejudices towards the “different” people in that land mirror the Nazi's abject prejudices towards non-Aryans in Germany and Poland. So right from the get go the premise is more audacious and refreshing than any other post colonial American film released in the last few years (I mean, after “I Dream of Africa” what American studio would release a film about white people in the Dark Continent?). This begs me to revisit Edward Said's pert question: “To represent Africa is to enter the battle over Africa.” And this film enters the battle, shooting its pacifist ideology from all cylinders.

First I must ask if one could call “Nowhere” a holocaust film? Yes and no would be my answer. With “The Pianist” and now this film taking a non-direct way of depicting the atrocious event in the most unorthodox of ways (Polanski’s “The Pianist” from the POV of a survivor and “Nowhere” from the POV of people who escaped the holocaust altogether yet still feel the effects of it). Perhaps the question we should ask after these two brilliant 2002 films such as “The Pianist” and “Nowhere” should be, do we need to go back to representing the actual holocaust at this point? After “Schindler’s List,” didn’t a film like “Jacob The Liar” resonate as redundant? The masterful “Grey Zone” excluded perhaps “Schindler’s List” represented the popular artistic end that chapter in the world’s interpretation of the Jewish holocaust? If that is true then as time gets further away from that event, will the next generation of films in this genre be more and more detached from the actual event? 

Regardless of where this genre is headed, the reason why “Nowhere” is so amazing and amazingly germane to the discussion of post colonial cinema is easy. Here is a film that is meaningful three times over. The principle characters are Jews… and Jewish women… and Jewish Women living in Africa. We see how they are at first overwhelmed by the indigenous customs; in one scene the dejected and homesick mother barks at the family’s gentle African cook, “If you want to speak to me speak do so in my language” just after she “redecorated” the house that was once filled with African trinkets and now filled with Western accouterments such as shiny picture frames and fine china. To me, scenes like this in a film like this represent all that is compelling about the post colonial genre. Meaning is derived by observing culturally assembled biases that are virtually impossible to step away from if you’re in any particular culture. This film taught me the following: as an American I am so culturally programmed that to thrust me into a continent like Africa would be to strip away a huge chunk of my identify. I too would want people to speak language. I too would make my home there look like my home here (up goes my Britney Spears poster). During one important scene in the film, I observed tribal African characters take a sheep, killing it and collecting it’s bloody innards. Now, my first reaction was a gag followed by a cringe followed by looking away. In retrospect, however, seeing a scene like this illustrates and all but highlights the question: why am I reacting like this? Indeed, why do the characters in this film act the way they do?   

So here are these Jewish refugees, trying to survive and make a living (and home) on the foreign land despite the turmoil going on in their native Germany, a country that has “betrayed us.” Around the corner, after war is declared the British army come in and put the Jews in a camp but, get this, not because they are Jew but because they are indeed, “enemy Germans.” At this point in the film my head is reeling. Though this situation is ironic the film makes light of the British because their camps look like country clubs where it’s “prisoners” get treated to tea and garish meals. Sometime later, after the family finds a way out of the internment camps and starts up a maize farm, the parents send their child (a precautious performance by Lea Kurka as a young Regina: and Karoline Eckertz playing the teenage Regina) to school, a British education of course. Within this forbidding African continent if the British faculty treat the Jews as Others one can only guess as to how low they think of the native Africans. During one Christian prayer session, for instance, we see the teachers curtly request that the “Jewish students leave the room.” Later we see this separation by the authorities caused, indirectly, the young Jewish protagonist to be mistreated by the students at the school. This makes sense for The Jew is considered separate and, indirectly again, the film is telling us that the girl is not seen as fully human to the others—the ironic parallel being that even the Jewish characters in this three person family have treated indigenous African’s as less than human… and, on top of that, yet another ironic parallel is that the Germans treated the Jews as subhuman. And yet one more parallel shows how Africans sees these white people as being odd and naïve to the ways of the land. All of this is a form of binary oppositions for every culture then and, sadly now, considers itself to be separate and in possession of a higher truth than those from others cultures. Hell, if Americans hate Canada think of how we feel about anybody whose not a neighbor (I guess that’s why we scoff at the UN). But in this film there’s a glimmer of hope. In a pivotal scene towards the end when the white Jews visit an enchanting African religious service, the film seeks to reconcile the eternal differences between these conflicted cultures to inform us that we can all be one, if we’d only let that happen.  

Throughout this languidly paced drama we get to know the four main characters (the three family members and the cook played by Sidede Onyulo) not through lengthy exposition or cumbersome flashbacks but through an observance of their immediate reactions to the land. In other words, we learn what these characters are like by how Africa changes them. As such, the arc of characters could be intended to represent mankind need to fear that which he does not know. Visually speaking, there is a mélange of meaningful motifs that call upon relevant post colonial notions. The first thing that stood out was the signifier of a bed. Each major character in the film is seen sleeping in a bed, worrying in a bed, sick in a bed, reading novels on the bed, engaging in lovemaking on the bed etc. The beds in the refugees’ house at first contain one of those ethereal looking white mosquito nets. The nets literally stand for a need to keep bugs away but obviously, connotatively, represent the white character’s fear of letting Africa into their hearts. And, so, the loaded symbol of a bed in this film could represent ones homeland (Regina is never comfortable in her own bed and is seen jumping into many other beds to find solace). The second important visual symbol occurs close to the climax of the film when the Jewish farmers find themselves under siege with a swarm of locust that seek to ravage their maize farm as they move from one crop to another; the locust obviously representing unwanted foreigners.

“Nowhere In Africa,” unlike the noisy (but virtuous) “BHD” and “Zulu” is the kind of film that can only resonate with time. It chooses ideas over violence. But perhaps what makes the film so intriguing is that this spiritually moving picture contains an epic narrative bravado (think “Out of Africa” meets “Lamerica”) yet works its magic on a close, personal level. The exotic foreign locals of a sun swept Africa and enchanting Westernized portrayal of the African tribes all but hypnotizes the viewer (and, no doubt, the characters within the film too) with it’s exploration of the fathomless mystery and earthy energy of Africa. Characters that were resistant at first soon “lost the need for words like tax invoice” and become entranced with the customs of the land and soon, as the popular post colonial term goes, “go native” by seeking to become one with the land and people. The film raises the timeless post colonial question of where is home? What is this land to us? And how can any land belong to one type of person over another? Questions like this obviously can’t be answered but this film’s thoughtful exploration of those themes comes close.

This film ends with what is perhaps the most meaningful image a film in this genre has given me in a long time. Spoiler ahead: after the war, as the optimistic family goes back to their native Germany to help create “a new Germany.” The mother is on the train. She sees a peasant African woman selling bananas to folks rich enough to ride on the train (a Western invention standing out amidst this non-westernized land). The mother, having been transformed by Africa, smiles at the peasant and says “I’m as poor as a monkey.” The present smiles and hands the mother a banana. The image we then see is the white hand reaching down from the train to accept this “gift” from an up reaching black hand. The hands touch. The meaning hits us. To me, the hands represent the respective cultures and the banana represents, perhaps, the wealth of a land. The two cultures have, in essence, learned from each other through equality—both hands belonging to both people are seen as one organic entity. So, then, being given an image like this one can only assume that this film is all about the struggle for equality in a world that is artificially constructed to be unequal. Optimistic rhetoric to be sure, but “Nowhere in Africa” is uplifting in its earned sentimentality. We should call it “Everywhere in Africa.”

Grade: A-

A Mighty Wind 4/16/2003
What’s Good: Guest, as usual, delivers a quirky and subtle comedy. 
What's Not: I don't know folk music. I don't like folk music. So, sure, perhaps the humor here went over my head. If you read my review you'll discover that I don't really get into specifics regarding the individual gags of the film. There's a good reason for this. The film just isn't memorable.
Directed by Christopher Guest
Plot Outline: Mockumentary captures the reunion of 1960s folk trio the Folksmen (Guest, McKean, Shearer) as they prepare for a show at The Town Hall to memorialize a recently deceased concert promoter.

As it stands, "A Mighty Wind" is an uncomfortable and habitually unfunny piece not because the talent involved doesn’t have a knack for this kind of comedic verite but because the teetering and, if you will, winded plot of a three Folk singing bands making a “long awaited” reunion does not remain consistently funny. After the first ten minutes the plot offered no new wonders or insights, just more of the same whereas I never got tired of seeing those warped dog owners yak about their love of the their furry canine lovers. Interestingly, the audience I saw “A Mighty Wind” with seemed to be caught up in the spirit of the humor and, unlike me, laughed louder as the film progressed. Guest clearly has a cult following that respects, nay, worships his offerings but even so I have to wonder aloud if this was a case of the comedian with no clothes on. Of wishful thinking and an eagerness to see something, anything that’s funny this year regardless of the fact that this film was not funny. Knowing what we know about Guest I cannot believe anyone would think this film is on par with something like “Waiting for Guffman” which surprise even the most cynical of filmgoers and deluged with every odd ball inch of its being. That being said, there are a number of laughs contained in this film (I loved the line about one character's participation in the Jewish Youth Polo Liege) but as with all of Guest’s films, for every joke that works there is a proportionate number of jokes that don’t. Such is the nature of improve. The hit or miss qualities of Guest’s works have always been a bit thrilling --I don’t know if the impending bit will endues stitch popping laughter or sullen silence-- and since the actors try so hard and so often in their quest of being funny in the most unassuming of ways they end up hitting a lot by the film's conclusion. With this film the ratio leans, sadly, more towards the miss side. I’d say for every one joked that worked wonders I sat in silence, un-amused --but not unhappy-- approximately five times.
Okay, so considering I laughed more often and much harder within the first forty minutes of Sandler’s latest film and hated that one with a malicious glee I see I should explain why this overall less funny material (if one can even quantify humor) garners a higher mark; the difference between a C and a D is significant in my book. The reason: This film may not be as funny but it’s consistent. That means a lot to me. Regardless of whether I was laughing Guest and Co. say what they have to say, with a wry yet unassuming cadence that mocks the character but never shows signs of loathing the character. I guess(t) I appreciate the sincerity but that doesn't mean I was laughing.

Grade: C+

Anger Management 4/11/2003
What’s Good: A comically dazzling first half that's full of wonderful possibilities.
What's Not: The second half is worthy of a seat in the Adam Sandler hall of pain. Boo!
Directed by Peter Segal
Plot Outline: Sandler plays a businessman who is wrongly sentenced to an anger-management program, where he meets an aggressive instructor.

     The plot of "Anger Management" revolves around that timeless comic notion of a rivalry between two scoundrels except one’s not really a scoundrel and the other’s just pretending to be (forget I said that). Let me explain. Adam Sandler plays an even tempered man who is being punished as his benign disposition elicits the fury of a jaded modern, politically haughty American society. In one hilarious scene Sandler is told he is not patriotic because he asks for headphones from the flight attendant. He is soon being yelled at by a judge in court for crimes that he didn't commit. The pitch had me glowing, I loved the Orwellian (or Brazilian) idea of a sane man being made “angry” by society’s conventions, especially in these times of western colonialism. The hitch is that the film’s unacceptably sentimental ending betrays any sign of intelligence that was once there. Before I get into that let me lay out the two characters. Besides Sandler’s usual nice guy turned into an insane hot head persona, there’s Jack playing a court ordered and decidedly unorthodox anger management therapist who is either a demented masochist or an extraordinarily gifted prodigy. Due to two hilarious developments that involve Sandler physically abusing women (it’s funnier than it sounds) he get assigned by court to have the well respected Jack bunk with him and, of course, sleep in the same bed. Sandlers befuddlement at Jack's unhinged mania is amusing to the core. Jack plays an in-your-face nut job who, ironically, is more outrageous and angry then any of his patients. In an “Odd Couple” homage he throws plates against the walls, farts and blames it on “frogs” and dumps all of Sandler’s unsavory CD’s and explains why the Carpenters bring out more anger than happiness. The early odd couple scenes between are two iconic giants is the stuff of comic gold. They are dirty. They are rotten. They are great together.

     Throughout the first half of the film the laughs came hard and heavy. It looked for a moment that "Punch Drunk Love" reformed Sandler’s idiotic choice in movies but like a Michael Moore speech gone horribly, horribly wrong my allegiance was soon lost and even sooner I went from a state of comic euphoria to a listless scow— a reaction that’s not a good sign in a comedy. Not to put too fine a point on things but the last half of "Anger Management" made me angry.  Livid in fact. You see, the material goes from canny mean spirited situations (bar fights, making fun of the disabled, calling Heather Graham fat) and devolves into a third act that’s so implausible, so unfunny, so baffling, so stogy in Sandler’s attempt to be sentimental and pleasingly raunchy, so… well, so much like all of Adam Sandler’s other brain dead films. In a nutshell, the film lost me with it’s reversal of the Kafka-esq notion that society is making Sandler mad and insistence on making Sandler and his girlfriend (Marisa Tomei… battling it out with Cuba for winner of my take that Oscar back campaign) reconcile when they should have been split apart with seething hatred. In a shameless ode to New York baseball and patriotism and that fascist Rudolf Guiliani the films final moments contain the undeniable whiff of a film gone rotten with the need to be uplifting at the expense of humor.  

     I’m always saying I want films that are sorta mean spirited (the nice try “Office Space” and "Big Fat Liar") to be all the way mean spirited (like the brilliant “Fight Club” “American Psycho” and “Way of the Gun”) but with this film I would have settled for anything with a pulse. So here I iz, giving another Sandler picture a big fat D. To reference my top ten review once again "Even if the 'actor' never appears in a 'real' film again, I am eternally amused that "Punch-Drunk Love" is his fuck you to the world of critics. It's as if the man's saying 'see, I can do this if I want to now leave me alone.'."  

     On a final note, if Jack was really playing a crazy insane therapist, out to torment Sandler and his pacifist ways, then the film would have worked in a reverse “What About Bob” sort of way. As is Jack is crazy but not in the movie. He's crazy to attach his name to this chunk of unrefined comic garbage.

Grade: D

Femme Fetal and The Good Thief 4/14/2003

      To say the film reminded me of "Mulholland Dr." wouldn't be doing it justice. Fact is this thriller reminds me of a handful of classic genre pictures... most notably De Palma's own "Body Double" and, of course, any De Palma fan knows he's into Hitchcock as much as Adam Sandler is into making us not laugh, so therefore this film takes the best elements of "Vertigo" (the deja vu riddled notions of past and present colliding, fate, destiny, feminism) and deconstructs them into a sublime if pretentious movie thriller. Hell, the film opens with our femme fetal watching the classic femme fetal film, "Double Indemnity" so from the very beginning De Palma is commenting directly on what this film intends to be. Regardless of the film's pedigree, don't watch "Femme Fetal" for it's convolutedly fascinating story, watch this stolen gem for the sake of watching... well, just watch it for the sake of watching. This film is alive.

     On the other side of the heist genre, the bad side... the dead side,  I saw the "The Good Thief" a good two months ago so pardon me if I don’t remember the film in all its glorious awfulness. It seems to have taken no time for a bad crime movie to crawl out of the swamp and bore us with it's cool indifference. I love the genre, the best rank up there as my favorite movies (I mean, just look at "Femme Fetal") but the bad ones, well, “Ocean’s 11” is all I need to say about that. Characters in heist movies are always too cool for he room but the trick is being slick and likable. And if not likable then likabley amoral as in the case of those sleazy thugs in "Way of the Gun." Vincent and Julius set the modern standard for pulling off the trick of being loved heavies, Nolte's character from this this limp French heist remake, however, does not. And there's the film's fundamental downfall, it's  main character who doesn't even seem to know he's in a heist movie.

     "The Good Thief" stars a browbeaten Nick Nolte (such a incoherent mess in this film that I'm inclined to assume he filmed this while he was going through withdraw in rehab) who pukes and coughs and smokes and overacts his way through this tired retread of so many forgettable heist pictures ("The Score" "Heist" were two recent casualties). Noltie growls like a hung over Tom Waits and looks even worse off. In the film he plays a, surprise, junkie who decides to go after, yawn, one last score which involves a casino full of priceless paintings and cash, a rag tag group of fellow thieves (colorfully drawn, of course) and one of those sultry noir girls whom we never know fully until the last frames of the picture—will she betray him or fuck him? Noltie's character doesn't seem to care about the outcome of the girl or the heist so why should I? I’m just so bummed out that a quality storyteller like Neil Jordan, who should have an instinctive feel for this genre at this point. Get this, Jordan directed "Mona Lisa" and won an Oscar for "The Crying Game" and, so, a man who is capable of doing crime stories of that high caliber simply could not have produced a product as washed out and from a narrative standpoint, indifferent, as "The Good Thief. "This means one of two things. Jordan, like Nolte, is also in need of some rehab or he took credit for someone else's work in directing and writing "The Crying Game." As is, every line of this pompously penned mess grated on my nerves. Sample dialogue: "One day at a time... isn't that what they say, Bob?" the temptress says to the addict/thief, to which he brilliantly replies, "Uh, yeah." Wow, dazzling. Or how about this Wellesian exchange: Bob says "You're being mysterious now." The girl coyly responds with "Isn't beauty always mysterious?" Ugh. If you want hammy dialogue encased in savvy neo noir romp material rent Kazdan's "Body Heat," Kazdan Jr's "Zero Effect" or Dahl's  "Red Rock West."

Femme Fetal: A-
The Good Thief: D

Phone Booth4/6/2003
What’s Good: A well structured thriller. Colin Ferrall makes this movie his own.
What's Not: A limp ending that says nothing substantial.
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Plot Outline: Stuart Shepard finds himself trapped in a phone booth, pinned down by an extortionist's sniper rifle.

     Again I’m going to say it: Hitchcock would have been proud to make this film. And if not make it then see it. But that is not surprising because Hitchcock was going to make a version of this long awaited Joel Schumacher film and any fan of Hitchcock’s cannon of works can see why. "Phone Booth," like last year's "Panic Room" and even "Signs," excels in one main area. It strips all the bull shit narrative threads and through some crafty filmmaking conventions (split screens and an endless array of camera angles centered on one place) delivers exactly what I was in the mood for: a timelessly simple yet truly exciting thriller that’s presented in a shrewd manner.  

     Though this film would have been perfect if a director like David Fincher added his gloomy imprint, I must never forget that Joel Schumacher, though criminally insane for slapping homoerotic nipples on that nasty new bat suit... TWICE!!!, created two of the most sublimely morbid neo noir thrillers of recent times. “Falling Down,” and “8mm” practically define pessimism. So how does this film rank? Well, I’m sorry to say that “Phone Booth” would have been a modern classic if only it had something to say. Let me explain that a bit latter. As I’ve said, though, the film is brazenly simplistic for a Hollywood thriller yet we are allowed to connect with the pounding narrative because the plot is so terse and complete. And because it’s lead, Colin Farrell, is so well suited and has such a vivid disposition and expressive face. Ferrall plays a fast talking publicist named, aptly, Stu. Good old Stu is a profligate slob, looking out for number one and nobody else. He cheats, swindles, steps over the weak… in other words, a true New Yorker. The film begins with a comment on the bloated cell phone culture that we are all drowning in (“Three million New Yorkers have one”) and observes what I have always thought; that people who talked to themselves on the street were once considered crazy and are now considered cutting edge. Anyways, we see Stu in his sleazy, 2,000 dollar Italian suit wearing milieu and before you can say Heart’s War the plot kicks in and we spend the rest of the film in the same location. A phone rings in a, surprise, the phone booth that Stu has been using to secretly call his girlfriend. Stu picks it up thinking it's his honey. Much to his dismay, a voice that sounds like the furthest thing from Katie Holmes' deliciously elfin voice--more like a disgruntled Jack Bauer (cuz he’s voiced by Keefer)-- tells him if he doesn’t do what he says he’s going to drop Stu’s ass with a high powered sniper rifle. I guess he saw "Die Hard With a Vengeance." Okay, so, long story short Stu listens, Keefer talks in that menacing bad guy voice and for obvious reasons the sweat stains stakes get raised with the introduction of a jumpy police presence, rifle toting swat team and all. New York's finest are lead by the reliably likable and clam mannered Forest “Leverage” Whitaker so, now, the danger of death is coming from both sides as the mad sniper and now the trigger happy New York officers are cluster fucking this poor, goateed sap into a tiny little corner where all he can do now is make James Deany squinty faces of personal terror and scream “I don’t have gun!” to the cops or "What do you want from me!" from the phone terrorist.
     By this point in the film I’m eating this shit up. Appreciating a film whose narrative momentum is unraveling so smoothly that I might as well have been watching an episode of this season’s “Angel.” And by the time came when Stu was asked to choose between the life of his wife (Radha Mitchell from "High Art" and "Pitch Dark") and his girlfriend (Katie Holmes. Wife, mother, child… fuck em’ all I’d choose this cutie over anybody) I was just totally into Schumacher’s groove (which sound gay so forget I said that). Like it or not, to watch and like “Phone Booth” is to appreciate Farrell, this borne star as he carries this decidedly claustrophobic thriller, which can almost be considered a stage play.

     Okay, enough ass kissing. The film is not as perfect as I’m making it sound. As Frank Costanza would say during a Festivus brouhaha “I’ve got a lot of problems with you people!” The ending, for one, is just sloppy in it abandoned intellectualism. If something had been said, some tangible moral reached, and I don’t care what, I would have gladly given this puppy a higher grade. The opening rant against the information boom had me thinking big thoughts and anticipating further moralizing but that was not followed up thematically, it was just a way of apologizing about making a film set in one of those antiquated phone booths that your average MTV viewer has never been in, let alone fart in a la Rain Man (these things are soon to be relegated to a museum). Okay, so the cultural comment on people using phones too much is rendered moot. I now feel the film would or should have been a Changing Lanes-esq morality tale where one jaded guy learns a valuable lesion in civic responsibility as his duplicitous deeds come full circle. And indeed this film does have morality tale tendencies running through it’s high pressure blood but the final moments do not hammer home any good will towards all man (or fuck it all, men are pretty fucking evil) message. So what we are left with --and do please pardon this mini spoiler-- is the revelation that the sniper is Kiefer Sutherland and he’s tormenting this to Stu for no discernible reason. No! Discernible! Reason! People go, “ah, yes, there’s Keefer” but what does this mean? Nothing. Just because we learn that Kiefer Sutherland is the baddie doesn’t answer any of the film's questions but we think it does simply because we recognize the dude. We have been fooled. Fooled by an otherwise great film. Fooled by an otherwise great film that I'd gladly see again.   

Grade: B

The Core 3/29/2003
What’s Good: I didn't like the film, I hated the premise but you got to hand it to the cast and crew for not making this dumb story feel like an F movie. I guess that's a compliment.
What's Not:  I don't even have enough room to get into it.
Directed by Jon Amiel
Plot Outline: Scientists discover that the Earth's core is about to stop spinning.

     A line from the maladroit new disaster thriller, “The Core” goes something like this: “The objectives are simple but the obstacles are enormous.” And that's exactly the kind of line I expected from this reverse engendered version of "Armageddon." In the film, what is essentially a submarine with sharp lookin' drills is required to go through seven miles of solid rock, molten lava and god knows what else to “jump start” the earth’s core by using a big fucking nuke and yet the biggest mystery this film evokes is not how can they do it but, rather, how does a big, lumbering, inconceivably sloppy B-movie with special effects more shoddy than that of "Spider Man" ever have gotten past the development stages? "The Core," as a concept was a dead in the water before it ever even crawled out of the water. I knew I would hate it and I did.

     The film posses a simple concept that never, not for one minute worked but I’m giving the flick credit (and the better part of a D) for not sucking outrightly. Instead of being totally retarded this film is merely just retarded. That is to say the film held the ridiculous action to a watchable level and the usually talented actors looking for a payday here (from Swank the maverick astronout to Eckhart and Tucci as geologists to Karyo as a guy that has no function other than being the buddy to the film's hero to Lindo the mechanic to Jenkins the tight-assed military commander and Bruce Greenwood) treated the material like it was Shakespeare’s long lost and most suckiest play. They make an utterly lifeless working script with laughable disaster scenarios (Oh my god!!! People with pacemakers are dropping dead as ominous music plays. What a great action movie idea.) seem real if but for a moment.

     The film is replete with those endless thinking man movie clichés. This is that overused convention that occurs when an insurmountable problem or task is faced by a character in the film. A dead end has been reached and the only surefire way to solving that problem is to frame the actor in a tight close-up (preferably their face but my favorite is a dozen inches lower on the female performers), have them look at something inconsequential like a falling pen then pause for a moment with a goofy look as we watch low wattage light bulb suddenly go off inside the overreaching actor’s head. Of course we hear them declare “Ah ha… I know how to…” cut to a half-assed explanation and followed by a montage of that problem getting solved with teamwork. There are a dozen such moments in the problem solving core of, um, “The Core.” Not a one of them is convincing. Not a one was ever intriguing or memorable. For that, rent the mediocre but nonetheless underrated Red Planet to see a successful version of this overused problem solving movie cliché in action.

     Okay, now to the logic part of the exam. Firstly, the earth’s core stops spinning. That I can grasp. But why, in one early scene, does this causes an outbreak of “attacking pidgins?” This……… … … is…neither scary nor cool. IT NEVER WILL BE, EITHER. I hate pidgins as much as the next guy but seeing them dropping dead by the hundreds and falling into car windows and granite statues as a whole city (yes, the whole city) screams in anguish is a painfully dull and meaningless thing to have to sit through-- I am angry I had to see that. Second, how does the vessel withstand the massive pressure from within the earth? Well, by being encased in a material called Unobtainium (fucking brilliant) and how is that fantasy substance invented? Easy, you find a crazy black scientist living in the Utah dessert. You see, any black guy with a beard that is insane enough to live in Utah of all places must be some sort of prodigious inventor. I could go on but I won't. Folks, the only this film could have been more believable is of the story told is that, yes, the characters in this film do in fact coexist in Harry Potters world of magic. Every step of the way I was being eaten up inside by the films utter disregard for logic—one could call this film the “A Walk to Remember” of disaster movies. Here’s one last gripe and observation: if you’re planning a mission to go down to the center of the earth using a glorified drill machine from Command & Conquer then maybe it would be wise to try and have a plan to have that said machine go up as well because, you know, the up part is kind of necessary. The film stars Aaron Eckhart as a brilliant geological scientist but missteps like that had me thinking otherwise... this guy is as dumb as James Spader in "Stargate" who figured out a way to get to another dimension but failed to come up with a way to get back. 

     Yes, I have an imagination. I can believe in illogically bad movies like “Resident Evil” or "Signs" despite their gaping flaws in reason. I also know that whole suspension of disbelief thing should have kicked in five minutes into a trivial film like this but the fact that it didn’t can most likely be contributed to a filmmaker who didn’t even try to create a film with any sort of relatable earthly logic (as Buffy would say, this film contains "insane troll logic"). Though I shouldn’t penalize a B-movie for wanting to be a B-movie I can’t help doing so this time around because this film, like the much worst “Armageddon,” wants to be that silly B-move while at the same time being presented in a realistic manner. I won’t let this film have it both ways. But, really folks, know that I tried forgive the film. To repeat the line “The objectives are simple but the obstacles are enormous” all I can do is respond to that with my semi-brilliant deduction in the vein of Aaron Eckhart's character: Instead of sending a 15 billion dollar (you heard me... BILLION) drill machine with a not as cool as it sounded on paper “laser tip” (the same kind that's used to “zap kidney stones” we are told by an actor with a totally straight face) why not have Eckhart jump in Hillary Swanks mouth and have those unruly horse teeth chomp away at the earth’s unforgiving mantle? That, I imagine, is the one and only way I'll ever pay to see the sequel.

Grade: D