Austin Powers in Goldmember 7/27/2002
What’s Good: The brilliant movie within a movie subplot where the actor who is playing Austin jumps over a helicopter with two machine guns ("Mission: Impossible 2" style); Austin and Dad speaking their own Brit language, Austin's Japanese subtitle confusion, and a peeing statue scene are the only new jokes in the film. But they're good ones.
What’s Weird: The first film was funny, the second film only borrowed jokes from the first one and the third, well, Mike Meyers in the third now admits that he made a mistake last time yet still repeats himself, only now, the effect is, jokes about jokes in the second one that borrowed from from the first one but now the joke is being told by a character who is self-aware about his joke being dumb in the first place but since he knows this, the joke is funny because the joke teller and the audience knows its just an Austin Powers movie.
Directed by Jay Roach 
Plot Outline: Austin continues the fight of good vs. evil against Dr. Evil and Fat Bastard while falling in love with the beautiful Foxy Cleopatra and making a new enemy: Goldmember.

     "Austin Powers in Goldmember" is the most scatological and aware big budge comedy ever made. It is as if Felini and Kevin Smith's minds were melded into one intellectual satire about low-brow spy comedies, with a ton of dick and fart jokes delivered with that ever-present wink.

From Austin to Dr. Evil to Number 2, all the characters are back and then some. This time around we get Austin's sexually gregarious but absent Dad (a great Michael Caine), Austin's new love interest (an awkward Beyonce "are those boobs fake?" Knowles) and Austin's new foil, the pale skinned Dutchmen known as Goldmenber (played by Meyers of course). The plot in nonexistent, which is fine because whatever plot exists in these movies do so only to enable the cast (mainly Austin or Dr. Evil) to play off each other by blowing wind in each others general direction. The major difference this time around is that Austin isn't a fish out of water, he's a real superstar, worthy of a Spielberg movie within a movie about his likeness! It is this newfound comfort and assimilation to the modern culture (both in the film and outside now for Austin is imbedded in pop culture) that takes a little of the first movie's lovable magic away. But in the screwy tradition of this film, Austin is now a character that, when saying tired things like "yeah baby" or acting "randy" around women, actually seems to make himself sick because he too is now painfully "in" on the joke and knows that he should know better (I'm serious). I can't hate the film because just when I've had enough of Meyers' shtick as Sir Powers (he was knighted in this film), so, apparently did Meyers and his distain for all things Austin within the films own context makes for an unforgettable time.     

This film baffles me. I didn't laugh but I was constantly amused and absolutely fascinated at the deluge of knowingly unfunny bits. My grade does not reflects the film as a comedy, but rather Mike Meyers' deft deconstruction of the first unassuming Austin Powers movie and how it became a phenomenon blown out of proportion. Anyone who laughed may have missed the point because this is not a comedy! This is Mike Meyers heckling (and pandering to) a nation who laughs at monkeys smelling their asses on America's Funniest Home Videos.    

Grade: B

Read My Lips 7/23/2002
What’s Good: Emmanuelle Devos and Vincent Cassel are great together.
What’s Not: The thriller aspects are not as seamless as I hoped they would be.
Directed by: Jacques Audiard 
IMDb Plot: She is almost deaf and she lip-reads. He is an ex-convict. She wants to help him. He thinks no one can help except himself.

     "Read My Lips" is a modern version of that great disabled dame flick, "Wait Until Dark," that has also heavily borrowed elements of Hitchcock and those contemporary heist stories we love so much--something like "Sneakers" or "Sexy Beast." I must start by saying that this is not a great film like "Dark" or something, anything by Hitchcock and not even to the level of a "Reservoir Dogs," but I must also say that the film doesn't try to one-up past films like the two conceited European crime films, "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Run Lola Run" did a few years back. Far from that, this film celebrates the classics that came before it and it is smart in the way that it blends richly developed characters in high tension situations. What I loved about the French film, "RML" was what it didn't do. Which was go over the top.

      On one level, this is a story about isolation in the modern corporate climate where hostile people must fend for themselves. The film stars Emmanuelle Devos as Carla, a def secretary struggling to work in a male dominated environment that is more about politics and taking credit then it is skill. The pressure of the job is getting to Carla so her male boss recommends an assistant be hired. Carla only thinks they want to replace her but follows his advice. Carla does get help (in more ways than one) after a funny scene where she requests a male in his early twenties that looks cute be hired. But the new guy is not what she expected. Paul is that assistant and he is played by  the great Vincent Cassel ("Crimson Rivers" "The Messenger"). The new guy says he can type but in actuality just got out of prison. Carla soon finds out about Paul but still sees something in him, perhaps its his inability to conform. Or perhaps his total acceptance of her plain looks and lack of hearing. As outsiders in the society, the two soon embark on a life of crime. They start off small by stealing a file from a conniving co-worker but quickly move up to ripping off a mob boss that Paul knows. 
        I really took to the odd couple here. Devos is an actress that blew me away with her wounded personality. I really bought into this characters isolation and was overjoyed when she found someone. Even if that someone was a grimy criminal, I still wanted to see Carla happy and that's all because of of the actress' fine performance. And Cassel as a character that Devos' Carla secretly longs for, relays a contained manner of ferocious intensity that is as charming as it is intimating.
 
     There is a noticeable sexuality between the two but again, the film would rather not go over-the-top because it is possible to have a male and female in the same film and not automatically have them boning by the second reel. Though most are thinking that if this poor guy was in prison he could at least get a hand job, all we get is well earned sexual tension and fleeting looks. And that is all that is required. I was introduced to the couple in "Lips" after watching the two films reviewed below this one ("Crossroads" and "Who is Cletis Tout?")  and if every other audience member does the same thing, this will be a shoe in for a best picture nomination. That unfair juxtaposition only enhanced my respect for the difficulty of relaying on-screen chemistry. It is precarious at best;  magical when handled by two competent performers and laughable when handled by a nineteen-year-old singer with a concept of lust but not of understated eroticism. This film helped me understand that chemistry can't be forced and manufactured like so many Hollywood films try to do. And if chemistry can exist in characters that never so much as touch each other, then the actors have really done their jobs right. 

I suppose the film works because it could have contented to be a well made and realistic film about a solitary woman-- something out of the recent French film, "Romance"-- but instead of heartfelt drama, unrealistic film noir elements of shadowy evasions, late night spying, and stealing a fortune are introduced and executed with aplomb tension by director Jacques Audiard. What seems vital for Audiard is that his audience is still be with the picture by the time a heist came out of nowhere. I didn't particularly love the logistics of the heist, but the reason I cared about the film was because characters in the heist seemed to be flawed and deeply complex individuals rather than glib and expendable caricatures from "Out of Sight." I applaud the bravery of this confident director. But commended even more, the two actors who were willing to trust his decision to change the rules on us.

Grade: B+

Who is Cletis Tout? 7/21/2002
What’s Good: The film was above an D for approx ten seconds. This was during a joke about the Burt Remolds film "Deliverance."
What’s Not: Simply put, this is the kind of film that almost makes me wish “Pulp Fiction” never existed. And, folks, that’s my all time favorite movie.
Directed by: Chris Ver Wiel
IMDb Plot: Cletis Tout is a comedy about mistaken identities, a hit man who sees everything in terms of the movies and a twenty year old diamond heist.

     “Who is Cletus Tout” is a profoundly unfunny piece of postmodern, post-Tarantino garbage by which we pigs have been fed since 1994. From "Killing Zoe" to "Snach," all of these sentient films exist under the guise of irreverent cleverness and ironic detachments with wordy material that rarely connects because, as this film proves, clever dialogue alone wont get you a good film-- that just makes a film seem like a inept smart ass.      So here we are, 8 years later and full to the brim with irony and while the overt QT inspired films have died down (though a trifle of QT's genus still exists in every picture), once and a while a clumsy film like "Cletus" comes around and affirms why I don't want to see these kinds of pictures anymore.
 Though I find myself waning with these films due to the excessive randomness of quality. The QT genre is so influential that same year can yield the mindless overkill picture "Run Lola Run," or a sly comic masterpiece as "Go." One good can outweigh many bad but, come on, is it worth sitting through countless clones like "Run Lola Run" just to to get to a "Go?"

    In this film, Portia De Rossi, peppy to the point of nausea, as a supporting player (continuing the sad trend of abhorred female performances this year) who is the daughter of Richard Dreyfuss, a criminal who broke out of prison with con man Trevor Finch, played by Christian Slater as a man who, after he escapes with Dreyfuss takes on the identity of a dead man named Cletis whom the mob wants desperately to kill because he has incriminating evidence on the bosses son... (okay, I can breath now) The film is structured with flashbacks (how fucking original) as we see Slater who must talk his way out of the clutches of a film savvy hit man who, when he's not quoting films, demands Slater tell him, Arabian Nights style, his side of the story which, if compelling enough, would free Slater from the wrathful mob boss who thinks Finch is Cletis because he's never seen the real Cletis. The film visually retells Slater's dull tale with small scenes of the hit man played by Tim Allen intercut with the back story.

      "Cletus" contains countless... countless film illusions ("Breakfast at Tiffanies," Singing in the Rain," "The Great Escape") and even more quotations that don’t amount to anything more than an overused gimmick. Add to that the fact that this is a Tarantino inspired gangster picture and on top of that the fact that a better picture already combined gangsters, Quentin Tarantino , and movies and it was called “Get Shorty.”

     Bad lines ahoy too: the director/writer of the picture Chris Ver Wiel (while a passionate man who clearly loves films) has a no eye for slick visuals and seamless dialogue; the film is ugly and the dialogue is forced: “Justisce isn’t blind, its embarrassed” the imprisoned Slater dogmatically says to a detective in a scene that is supposed to be profound. That was what the film's serious dialogue sounded like, now here's an example of what Ver Wiel thinks is funny when one Vincent Vega wise gangster quips to another, “You couldn’t improvise a fart after a three been salad.” And if the serious stuff mixed with the comic stuff isn't painful enough, try sitting through a lame subplot where Slater, searching for the diamonds a now dead Dreyfuss hid away, must break into a minimum security prison to retrieve them (he does so by the use of carrier pidgins... which looks as stupid as it sounds). Allen, as another Vincent Vega sharp hit man (who loves films as much as Travolta, who played Vega once, did in "Get Shorty") is amused by this: “Now we have a tagline!” he says. “If you though it was hard breaking out of prison, try breaking in…” hold for laughs… none… okay, moving on.

     And that's the inherent problem with "Cletus." It has no consistent identity. The film exists to be either clever or endearing. At times its a dark comedy, then it's an all out in-movie satire and right after that it will shift to cheesy melodrama mode with the relationship between Slater and "the girl I love," Rossi. Whether one of these faces or another is being displayed before us, none are amusing and the film buckles under the pressure of an aimless screenplay.

      My grade for the film is best summed up here: In this day an age how, can anybody seriously get behind an obligatory verbal foreplay scene in which two circling lovers with zero chemistry debate his use of word clauses and prepositions?

Grade: F

Crossroads 7/24/2002
What’s Good: The film when the sound is off. Or watch this with friends and rag on it like its a Michael Bay film.
What’s Not: Makes the foul road trip movie “Doom Generation” look as good as “Y Tu Mama Tambien.”
Directed by: Tamra Davis 
DVD Commentary Grade (Director and writer) : B
IMDb Plot: Three childhood best friends, and a guy they just met, take a trip across the country, finding themselves and their friendship in the process.

     Why did I see this movie? Good question. Maybe it was for the same reason I paid to see “Freddy Got Fingered.” There’s just something intoxicating about seeing a train wreck at 24 fps. “Freddy” and a movie like “Charlie’s Angels” were glorious, transcendent, spotless train wrecks and “Crossroads” does them one better: a train wreck with fake boobs.

     Watching “Crossroads” seemed to be a test in how bad these days could possibly be. After seeing the singer Mandy Moore stumble her way through “A Walk to Remember” the odds of this film being worse were slight. I watched, knowing I would hate it, yes, but that’s how it’s been all year (even with "Star Wars: Episode II") so now my enjoyment comes out of how much I hate a film. The more the better; at least that way I have something to write about.

     In the end, I was surprised because the movie was worse than I could have imagined and Bravo Britney on that count, but not worse than Moore’s film because no mortal could have imagined how low that sentimental dud could go. This film at least is not preachy. Well, actually it is, but it does such a sloppy job at imposing a message on its audience that I can laugh this miserable teen drama off.

     I hate Spears and I love her. She’s a no talent fad that’s destined to fade out, but she has real presence for the time being. The girl is a exploited product…she knows it and sells her slut/virgine talent like no other. If anything, I applaud her belly baring business sense and her ability to cash in (three bad albums in a couple of years) on this teen pop trend. But Spears’ shelf life is of no concern at this moment because, god love films, they don’t forget even the worst of trends that rear they’re ugly heads into the movies. We still have them Elvis films to laugh at and we will always have this fine specimen of crap. Fuck the preservation of “Rashomon,” it is this film needs to be in a vault.

     Where the noticeably inexperienced Britney could have opted for a small role in a good film (lord knows Katie Holmes has done that) she went for the quick fix of hogging the spotlight as a leading lady and made this meaningless product that it has little reason for existing other than the fact that Brit looks cute in cardigan, and even better in that Christian safe granny underwear of hers. This film is just another article of Britney memorabilia that the young ones can consume—though, as I pointed out in my feeble “A Walk to Remember” review, last year’s “Crazy/Beautiful” was a meaningful, realistic, and passionate film about young people that didn’t do so hot and is totally worth renting no matter how young your are. For now, "Crazy/Beautiful" stands as the paragon of teen romances done right.

     Not that it matters, but in the film Brit plays a ___ who goes to ____ with her two ____ and a fetchingly mysterious ____ in order to _____ and they all learn a valuable life lesion of ___ in the process... and the script might as well have read like that because anything the characters do or say in this movie is purely perfunctory in an artificial teen movie sense. In “Crazy/Beautiful” we see teens struggling with identity and their unknown future whereas this marketable and MTV safe life-is-tough-but-you-always-got-your-friends formula is a trite and ultimately worthless unless, as I have pointed out, you watch with friends and laugh at a 100% serious BS (get it, BS?) trying to act her way through a hollow road odyssey.

     Comparatively, is the film any worse than the gal’s music? I’d have to go with yes because at least the Neptunes can drown out the “singers” blemished voice in the studio while her acting can’t be concealed by good producing. Oh man, how it can’t. Take for instance, the scene where Britney, the school valedictorian, is to loose her virginity to her inept boyfriend of three years. Besides the outlandish fact that we must suspend disbelief and assume this chick is not only the smartest individual at this school but also that she remembers what it was like to be virginal (maybe at 5-years-old, yeah). In the scene Britney, er, I mean Britney’s character Lucy is apprehensive about that “sex thing” and she overemphasizes her concern to the point of silent movie embellishments when she says with shifting eyes, “this doesn’t feel right;” a line that must be the most obvious and colorless statement the character could have made at that point.
      Oh, but the fun doesn’t stop there because there are plenty more bad acting showcases for Spears-- a late night heart to heart with the creepy guy whose driving the teens cross country; a hilariously pathetic but earnest scene where Britney shares her beyond bad poetry with the ex-con she wants to be deflowered by; a clumsy reunion with Britney’s estranged mother; or how about the carokee contest where the three friends (two of which look to be in their thirties) lead by Britney, earn, like, thousands of dollars for being so fucking gifted that everybody in the bar throws money at them…now, in that instance I could have through up few more believable ways for the girls to earn some fast cash. It was in these moments where I felt that something was wrong with Spears. Something was… off. Off like Haley Joel Osment character in “A.I.” Off as in she seems robotic and inhuman. Plastic and shiny with her innocent, robo-Barbie smile but totally vacuous when it comes to relaying human emotions.

    It's funny to think that after all this criticism, it turns out that the only thing worse than the script and unfocused directing job by Tamra Davis is Spears' futile attempt at acting like a human being.

Grade: F

The Time Machine 7/21/2002
What’s Good: The irony that Guy Pierce went from a perfect vision (Memento) to a complete failure. 
What’s Not: If a projectionist lost the middle reels to "Battlefield Earth" the result would be a film as abysmal as this complete failure. Oh, and did I mention "Time Machine" is a complete failure. Well, its a complete failure.
Directed by: Simon Wells but not really because A) he's a piss poor director and B) he's a pussy and freaked out during the shooting so Gore Verbinski finished this complete failure.
Also Try: Watch "Stargate" because anything is better than this film (except "A Walk to Remember" of course).
DVD Commentary Grade (Wells and editor Wayne Wahrman) : B+
IMDb Plot: A man invents a time machine that allows him to travel 800,000 years into the future.

     Ah, science fiction where have you gone? Films have reached a point where flights of fancy are no longer about lasting wonder and only about entertaining a few for the weekend so the first week sales look good. Fuck long term quality the guys who made “The Time Machine” want your money now! (Sure Sci-fi is dead by even the new Star Wars film was more about characters than effects). I could still watch “Empire Strikes Back” or “Blade Runner” and be humbled by a vision that, when watched today, is not about the germane effects of the era or the best looking movie trailer possible but about the films attitude towards characters within those effects. Basically, I feel the durable films we watch today had special effects surrounding a real story and that is why I can tolerate the crappy effects of the original "King Kong" or “The Never-Ending Story.”

    “The Time Machine,” as directed by HG Wells’ no-talent grandson Simon Wells, is a film that disgraces the name of the original Wells—you know, the one with a speck of creativity. This new version is silly, sure, but not intentionally silly like the recent “Reign of Fire,” and not silly in a inadvertently humorous way like “Battlefield Earth,” but silly in its desperation for pleasing the audience. This may be the first film ever that is so appalling out of touch that it falls below cult film consideration. And, yes, the awful films “Freddy Got Fingered,” “Glitter,” and “Rocky Horror Picture Show” were good enough to be in that club.  

     The film takes place pre WWII when an idiosyncratic scientist, in love with all things machine related, is about to get married until his pasty lady gets shot by a mugger after she refused to give up her new wedding ring. Despite the dilettante Einstein and his flawed findings, the wrecked man proceeds to find a way to go back into time (albeit only a few years) to change the past.

     As we see the character Alexander Hartdegen (Pierce) using the time machine, we are treated to cool looking time lapse shots that would have been memorable if only the rest of the film contained a shred of substance. When in the machine, Pierce can literally see the fluctuating future. For instance, eroding rocks and changing fashions are visible as the metallic contraption fast forwards through epochs. And when Pierce lands 800,000 years from the present and when he gets to where he’s going (for reasons that don’t matter) the post apocalyptic production design is mildly inspiring but, sadly, every facet of the rest of the film is a miserable affair.
     Firstly, the beastly, underground villains of the future look as artificial and shabby as Amy the gorilla from “Congo.” And their bulky attack stance looks ripped from a Donkey Kong game boy game. Secondly, Pierces second love interest (the character forgets about wife and the reason he traveled to the future in the first place) is played by Samantha Mumba, an actress that is even more insincere and homely than the monsters. If Mumba becomes a star, she will be the ugliest one since Carle Malden. Thirdly, and most critically, the film lacks a middle act. A MIDDLE ACT!!! Though, even if there was one the film would have still sucked because the first third is awfully shallow and the last act is so pitifully lame and forced that the film's villain played by a ghostly white Jeremy Irons makes no more than a cameo appearance. That being said, even the bad films of our time disserve more of a story and set-up than this film got. As is, we get two unpolished acts with nothing to hold them in place and the result is a film that hits its climax faster than Judge Reinhold in “Fast Times in Ridgemont High.” Characters (including and especially the main one, Pierce) look like bystanders without a voice and are not even fit to exist in a Jerry Bruckheimer picture like “Pearl Harbor.”

     I guess in the end it also comes down to detail, or lack of it. Right after Alexander’s fiancé gets killed we see him fours years later as a shell of the former man. Time has found the man lost in work and idol thoughts. After a botched rescue attempt, he wants to know why he can’t change the past and is too thick to actually look for the answer outside of his office—apparently its easier to travel through time than ask around and on top of that, nobody could answer that question... he might as well have asked about the existence of god. Also, the scientist forgets that no matter how great our technology gets, humans are obtuse animals no matter year you talk to them in.
       Back to the detail part: In the opening scenes after the tragedy we see Alexander high up in his office and he is scribbling elaborate formulas on chock boards. The camera pushes back and we see dozens of boards filled with oodles of his hasty writings… a few moments later he jumps into a time machine that apparently he had been developing in the years since his love has been gone (though what may be years to him is minutes to us and thus we don’t give a shit about any of these people and thus again, don’t mourn their loss in the least). From that point, when he jumps into the machine so early in the picture, the movie kicks into dreary adventure movie mode and it occurred to me that the writings on the chalkboards had no real function other than to look cool. (If he had the machine ready, why make more idol scribbles so high up when he could have just done so on paper?) I find that a sad statement that is indicative of the problems of modern science fiction films… had Kubrick made this film the audience would have not only been forced to learn those scientific formulas but had a good time in the process.

     I couldn’t help but feel the film doesn’t care about science, reason, or even ideas for that matter. Any abstract notions caught on film are simply accoutrements in a background that is as one dimensional as the “action” in the foreground. With this premise, how about something like “Pi,” only exciting? More to the point, how about an exhilarating film where the director finds a way to make those numbers and formulas matter?

Grade: F

K-19: The Widowmaker 7/12/2002
What’s Good: A great looking sub. Decent performances.
What’s Not: If you enjoy watching boring films about Russians doing drills for two hours... dig in. And what's a sub film without the line "Contact, bearing down?" NOTHING I SAY!
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Also Try: Crimson Tide
IMDb: The true story of Russia's first nuclear ballistic submarine, which suffered a malfunction in its nuclear reactor on its maiden voyage in the North Atlantic in 1961. The submarine's crew, led by the unyielding Captain Alexi Vostrikov, races against time to prevent a Chernobyl-like nuclear disaster which threatens not only the lives of his crew, but has the potential to ignite a world war between the super powers.

     Films set in a submarine remind me of cinematic plays like “Hurley Burley,” “Death of a Salesmen,” or “Glengarry GlenRoss.” Everyone’s in an enclosed space, a colossal dilemma arises, grown men bellow at each other and in most cases of both types of films (from “Das Boot” to “The Big Kahuna.”) testosterone runs amuck. So it is for this reason that both sub films and closed room scenarios are among my favorite genres… the contained drama makes for a powerful message of claustrophobia, clammy hatred and swift problem solving. When you know that characters not only aren’t going anywhere, but can’t go anywhere; when you know the cornered men in this filmic reality must deal with the situation or die, then the film, if approached correctly, reaches a heightened state of drama that dispels my vast reality to for a few hours until I come out of the verbose experience sweating. That sounds terribly gay but you get the gist.

     But unlike cinematic plays, Sub dramas are as international as Chaplin films; everybody does them, loves them, understands them, and few of them sink too far into the abyss of B-movie suckdom (“U-571” being the rare exception). 

     That being said, the only major problem I had with this film was myself. The film never really clicked for me despite the fact that all the right components are present for a quality sub picture. The crisis is huge (and real, to some degree), the actors and their characters looked complex and never overacted, and the production design marks one of cinemas greatest sub interiors. Problem is I was bored. Bored, bored, bored. Bored. Due to the film’s subject matter I was way too aware of the fact that this was a reenactment, and a dreary one at that.

     Kathryn Bigelow  directed my third favorite film of all time. Specific, I know, but that was the millennium-set cult film called “Strange Days,” and it is a neo noir film stands as a misunderstood masterpiece (by those few who even saw it) that almost ended her career. With that futuristic tale of voyeurism and corruption in LA, she no only showed a propensity for compelling visuals (remember that tracking shot at the beginning? Hot damn!) but a knack for telling a lucid story about a world on the brink of disaster—though, through the cultures own arrogant and techno-muddled doing. In this film-- also set in a world teetering towards annihilation-- her scope gets bigger as she attempts a summer action film starring Mr. Summer Action Film, Harrison Ford. Problem is, the action us too utilitarian. Or maybe this wasn’t meant to be an action film at all. I wish I knew.

     The film exists in a historically real world (unlike the ridiculous political nuke thriller of this summer, “Sum of All Fears”) and although I don’t mind the fact that all we get to see is inebriated Russian soldiers (that worked in “Enemy of the State,” and only helped this film) the films attitude, when compared to “Strange Days” or any other Bigelow film is as lifeless as the iced over Russian sea. And folks, a dry film with no kitspa set in a claustrophobic space is as deadly as a blind man sitting through a Denise Richards film. Which begs the question: why not go the way of “Crimson Tide,” ditch all vestiges of reality, pump up the action-drama and make something fictional yet compelling. Make the film where the bomb does go off. Make anything but fucking endless scenes with Russians doing submarine "drills." And tests. And drills, followed by more drills. I’m all for realism in Oliver Stone type dramas, but sub action films based on historical truths seem to be missing the point of why we go to action film in the first place.

     Bigelow ’s heroes, from Swasyze in “Point Break” to Fiennes in “Days,” are dynamic men that, although flawed, prove to be bullheaded yet tenaciously lovable. In this film, the main character (Ford as Capt. Alexi Vostrikov) is an emotionless Russian that I just didn’t buy into. And no it wasn’t the phony Ruskie accent that kept me at arms length (although, believe me, you’ll laugh when you first hear it)… the flaw was in the character design. There’s a scene towards the end of the film when emotions are running high and soldiers in Ford’s boat (that’s what submarines are called in Russia) attempt to replace his authority at gunpoint. The comrades are fed up with a captain that may be trying to scuttle the sub. Thinking their leader is not of sound mind, they chain him up, hoping to replace him with a less austere mommy figure played well by Liam Neeson. So there’s Capt. Ford, all chained up and looking as angry he did at the end of “What Lies Beneath” and it occurred to me that my emotions were blank, i.e. I was indifferent to the outcome of this main character’s fate—though I didn’t dislike the man because that would require sentiment for a character portrayed in this frigid film.

Forget for a moment the fact that “K-19” is based on a real life, I didn’t care what happened to Ford, or the drunkenly irresponsible crew, or the “cursed” sub, or for that matter, not even this film’s all too real cold war world circa 1961. If the sub’s volatile uranium core blew… oh, well. And considering this shit really went down, and the goal of the film is to disquiet you in the way that nuke scare film “Thirteen Days” did so much better… well then, indifference surly cannot be the response the filmmakers were going for.

In summation, my attitude towards this summer film is in sync with most everything else I’ve seen recently: empty.    

Grade: C

Reign of Fire 7/12/2002
What’s Good: If anything, seeing this summer action picture has given me a reason not to shave for the next couple months. 
What’s Not: How does one justify their enjoyment of a film this bad?
Directed by: Rob Bowman
Also Try: Screamers
IMDb: A brood of fire-breathing dragons emerges from the earth and begins setting fire to everything, establishing dominance over the planet.

How can I begrudge a film so silly and absurd?
     “Reign of Fire” takes place in, get this, an apocalyptic future where mortars and dragon scales mesh together to form the best cheesy sci-fi romp since last summer’s “Planet of the Apes.” Characters who look like casting rejects from the third Mad Max picture have come together, WWF style, to end the reign of some nasty-ass dragons that have, in the last twenty years, killed just about every human and burned down every building in Europe (au revoir France). The mindless prehistoric creatures don’t seem to have a higher plan but they sure do like breathing fire through those glands made from “natural napalm” but of course. And it is in this fantasy world where the last vestiges of humanity issue the ultimate, machismo ridden ultimatum: “in the end, only one species will remain” the leader, Christian Bale says in a cockney accent of beguiling authority.

     The premise of this film is so robust from a B-movie standpoint that the fact that there is little scope outside of the main set, a dragon-free sanctuary in a camp surrounding a decrepit old castle, is of little consequence. It is in this castle area where a sullied group of human survivors are lead by the scruffy Bale and have been “dying slowly” and just waiting to be finished off by those above them. But again, what exactly the dragons want from the humans, even from a Darwinian perspective, is unclear (it is even said that these once hibernating dragons are the sole reason for the extinction of dinosaurs) but my guess is that all of this matters about as much as what those aliens in “Starship Troopers” ate. Just look at the plot outline, logic doesn’t really fit in this story so why nit pick? And with that attitude in mind, your either in our your out. I was in, so I really didn’t object to the ridiculous crux of the story where an fleeting army of American military commandos lead by the “dragon slayer” Van Zan (a gritty Matthew McConaughey) found a way to travel overseas to this British camp to enlist the help of the weary inhabitants to make one last stand worthy of a defective Mel Gibson movie. There is a plan, but again, if your looking for logic, rent “Black Hawk Down.”
     From what I gathered, the Americans intend to hunt some giant papa dragon responsible for fertilizing each and every one of his dragon ho's egg, but it’s never really explained how these humans figured all of this out; they just observed that all the attacking reptiles have been female. Then, from that given, the commandos assumed that one pimp dragon was solely responsible for the population growth and so this led them to England because, what, they liked the weather? Damn, there I go again. Every time I caught myself thinking and trying to make sense of this crap I got rid of a few thousand of them pesky "thinkin” brain cells by taking a giant whiff of some grade-A rubber cement. After that, the plot made a whole lot more sense.

     Rob Bowman, director of the stylish “X-Files” movie, has certainly done his homework here… besides the dragon stuff, the films seem inspired by those dusty apocalypse films like the ultra dark Peter Weller film “Screamers” or the literally dark “Pitch Black.” Not to mention “Omega Man,” "The Postman," “A Boy and His Dog,” the Mad Max pictures and “Battlefield Earth.” I like Bowman’s prosaic style that doesn’t require him to excessively move his camera or cut footage like most of these new filmmakers, who abuse the avid like it was a Vietnamese prostitute circa 1968. Hopefully the director will either continue making enjoyable, think-free films like this or theatrical sequels to “X-Files.” Either way, he can be the next Roland Emmerich, except, you know, good.

     Hate on the film all you want, the mix of gloom, guns and dragons is at least something we’ve never seen before. From the great 80's “Dragon Slayer” to the mildly amusing “Dragon Heart” to last years god-awful “Dungeons and Dragons,” I was getting pretty sick of these Bronze Age films and like a breath of fiery air, “Reign” came at just the right time. Hey, I’ll take innovation where I can get it at this point, which is, as many have noticed, the worst summer for films in since 1981.

     The two actors, Bale and McConaughey, along with a female “love interest” (the dragon intercepting helicopter pilot played by “Goldeneye’s” Izabella Scorupco) who seems to have been thrown in for good measure but did a poor job at distracting us from the fact that this there is undeniable homoerotic subtext between the two shirtless male leads. But regardless of how this film will play in North Hollywood, I really enjoyed the main actors hamming it up in this one.  Hard as it must be to pretend like you care in a popcorn fable like this, Bale especially gives us a sturdy character who treats the material no differently as if it came from Edith Wharton… the decidedly literal actor can move from “Capt Corelli’s Mandolin” to “Reign” without missing a beat and I hope to see more of the guy (fully clothed for once) in projects befitting his ability; something like “American Psycho.” Plus, after a similarly themed disaster, “Battlefield Earth,” the cast gets bonus points for taking a mondo chance with this dark apocalypse material that hasn't sold well since, never.

     Oddly enough, the only problem I had with the film was its lack of detail when it comes to the fire breathing dragons. As is, the serpents are mostly seen at a distance, and thus remain a muddy special effect rather than a tangible menace. They’re big, sure, but big from afar. My enjoyment, however, came not out of the shabby horror aspects but from the unabashedly campy qualities. Call it a soft spot in my judgment but this film is so over-the-top that it achieves a magical quality of badness. At one glowing point in the film, Buffy (Van Zan) the shirtless slayer, with his trusty pick axe in hand and ubiquitous cigar in mouth (cigar, get it?), actually leaps from a rickety building onto a flying dragon while screaming like that nut from “Dr Strangelove.” Now, there’s an example of something so bad, so unredeemabley silly that based on the sheer nerve of McConaughey and his trust in the director, I had to give the film a pass. You're either laughing at this point or getting your keys out of your pocket to get to the car as fast as possible. To be honest, I was laughing. An internal laugh so loud, in fact, that I haven’t felt this good since John Travolta bellowed out “MAN RAT!!!”

Grade: B

Rode to Perdition 7/10/2002
What’s Good: Thinly drawn characters inhabit a richly drawn world and the end result is mixed. This, as a crime story, is nowhere near the level of a similar Conrad Hall photographed film like “In Cold Blood,” but it's fun if you discount all the meaningless drama.
What’s Not: The next mother fucker’s face when he tells me that this film was a well made drama. It’s not bro, it is a comic book of a movie just pretending to be. Also, I was so uninspired at all by this film that I set out to write a capsule review (less than 100 words) which means the review turned out to be almost 2000 redundant as all hell words. Huh? Me needs a life. 
Directed by: Sam Mendes 
IMDb: Bonds of loyalty are put to the test when a hit man's son witnesses what his father does for a living.

     From the opening image of a boy staring out into a mysteriously vast oceanscape, I was already thinking that the film may be trying too hard considering its genre. Then the narration kicked in with an obligatory line from a kid remembering his golden (or, rather, frozen) past: “I once spent six weeks on the rode with him (the kid’s father) in the winter of 1941. This is his story…” and I knew this was a simple gangster film that has been taken over by a self-important filmmaker who was bound to overshoot the target of the original graphic novel by Max Allan Collins. This shadowy film takes the pulp out of “Pulp Fiction.”

     And sorry, this is not the Hanks story we’ve been waiting for; he’s not playing a nut busting baddie or Val Kilmer (evil incarnate from what I hear), this is Hanks playing a flawed man who, due to circumstances, is wronged and the only way he knows how to cope with pain is to kill. As even the advertisements indicated, he eventually redeems himself (oh, like you didn’t know that already) through the innocence of his own child yada yada yada the sanctity of fatherhood bla bla bla—Royal Tenenbaum, now he was a cool film Dad, but instead of the exuberant miscreant Royal, we get this character, who is vacant even when he’s in the room and drinking a hot cup of coffee. Hanks is playing the secretive gangster Michael Sullivan as a chap that knows he’s going to “hell,” yes, but at the same time he’s a big, mindless teddy bear that knows he’s doomed and that kind of takes the fun out of it.

      The story takes place, as noted in the tidy opening narration, in 1941 in a very "Ice Stormy" Chicago. Very quickly, through, we are give a Coppola-esq party sequence (though this film offers a wake instead of a wedding… wow, thanks for that fresh air) as are introduced to all the characters and their one track personalities which basically never change. Paul Newman plays John Rooney, the conflicted father figure to Hanks and his own family (Jennifer Jason Lee as the mother with no name, Liam Aiken as the youngest child and the central character, Tyler Hoechlin playing Michael Sullivan Jr. is the oldest son in this family). With what little he has to work with, Newman does a good job here, relaying the troubled personality of a ruthless man who has failed his son as a father and betrayed, Hanks, his adopted son even more so—though, rent “Gladiator” for a better execution (no pun there) of this similar storyline. 
     Also at the party is Newman’s biological son Connor Rooney (played by a promising Daniel Craig) who is a menace from the get go as we learn, when one of Hank’s sons asks why he’s always grinning, he says something to the extent of “because the whole world is a fucking joke.” Gee, anyone who thinks like that must be evil. But alas, all the characters at the party, from the kingpin Newman who basically owns the quiet and scared town to the thugs in Newman’s arsenal, exist to play off of Hanks, who, for reasons unclear but kind of implied, pisses off his little maniac brother after the guy looses his temper and kills a couple of innocent guys with the strongman Hanks, only to have Hanks’ oldest son witness the whole thing. Enter the conflict.   

     Within minutes of the film's brazen starting point, everything and everyone in this amoral universe is established but Hanks is no Michael Corleone. This is a film where Hanks can almost attain salvation and rescue the last vestiges of his “soul” but as usual, this is not Hanks acting. Not really. This is Hanks in another role that, once again, is interchangeable with every other good role he has played in the last decade. I wouldn’t consider this actor one of the greats simply because he’s incapable of going where Denzel did in “Training Day”… and even if he did, the actor would no doubt find a way to cling to something that redeemed the moral center of his character. It should be noted that I’m not really complaining here because Hanks, the aplomb everyman, has always been the go-to good guy and he’s talented beyond all belief at doing this... one... thing. For that I will continue to enjoy watching the actor in theaters during major holidays and/or summer breaks. I’m just saying that I can never adore or fully respect a performer that, despite being quite talented, lacks the ability to surprise me. When Hanks is in “American Psycho,” then I’ll change my tune.

    The film, as directed by Sam Mendes is… fuck it, this review is going too long anyways. Forget I said that, just note that that the director has style but seems to contain none of his own style; all of his methods seem borrowed.

     Like the recent “A Walk to Remember,” this is a Christian themed film, but one done right. Or, rather, a Christian themed film that is not a completely clueless testament to the pitiable and wretched human race. I’m not saying “Rode” has tact or is even spiritually insightful but unlike Mandy Moore’s insulting piece of teen drama, this film does illuminate the dichotomy between gangsters and their prayer—the John Woo like nature of a man who prays then contradicts his faith by killing everybody in the room in slow motion. The film is about how confused characters use religion to justify their existence… Michael Sr’s attentive father tells him that everybody in this “business” is bound to go straight to hell only to have Michael Sr. tells his foster father something about his own son, like “Michael could see heaven” which, I suppose is a cool scene considering Hanks’ line could also be referring to himself at one point since the characters bear the same name.

      Later, after Hanks turns into the Terminator for reasons I shant go into at this junction, he comes to the door of a rival crime boss played by the hellishly fashionable Stanley Tucci and asks the man for a respite from his own family who is now hunting the poor sap. Hanks tells Tucci that his only caveat for joining this new gang is that he be allowed to kill his evil brother. Tucci tells him, in a very well delivered scene, “Is one more body going to make a difference?” And that’s the film in a sentence. Indeed, what does one more dead body mean to the fatalistic noir hero who is already in the lowest depths of hell?  

    The director chucks a surfeit of grand notions at us, but they basically go nowhere… the fragile trust between fathers and sons; a growing American industry that is halted by a depression and prohibition (national blockages that are perhaps mirrored in the family’s dysfunction); religion; or degrees of morality, from Michael Jr. stealing a candy bar to his father murdering two dozen people. These are all surface level examinations of worthy topics and this director’s sophomore work is nowhere near as deftly entertainingly as the complex if slightly overrated family satire named “American Beauty.” Na, I wasn’t fooled by the Spielberg-like attention to soggy family drama and I didn’t cry because the film is undeserving of any higher emotion; For instance, two people very very very close to Hanks die a most brutal death at the hands of a crazy family (cough, his brother) member. Yet Hanks’ character and even his son seem to forget this close to home tragedy all too soon—I guess these guys are real MEN worthy of a mention in Maxim magazine. For anyone who says they were moved by this film, ask yourselves why Mendes tries to distract us and its own characters by focusing on the revenge aspects of the story instead of the grief stuff. That's not emotionally moving that's action that's no more worthy than a Chow Yun Fat flick. I should note that I don't believe that the dead were ever mentioned again, and this leads me to believe that the scapegoats simply died to further the story and get Hanks in that non-blubbering Terminator mode. 
Surly if Mendes wanted to make a true drama he would have taken a note from Sean Penn's "The Crossing Guard" (about a drunk driver that kills Jack Nicholson's child) and made a film about the hardships of living with grief and the redeeming nature of forgiveness. I would have preferred to have seen that film but its not fair to review what "Rode" should have been so I'll stop there.

      Despite my better judgment, I suppose I allowed myself to enjoy this film. Not sure why, but I did. While the story is somber and violent and the gorgeously under lit visuals by the legendary Mr. Conrad Hall (who is the real director of the piece) are affecting, I never took what the film was saying seriously and that’s why I was able to smile. Forget the family oriented setup during first forty minutes-- this is not “The Godfather” after all-- once the boy and his father hit the road, the story stopped trying to win an Oscar and turned into something light and goal oriented—or at least that’s what I thought I saw. Characters range from ethereally innocent (the kid) to the ambiguous (Hanks, the loving gangsta number 1 and his weary father, Newman) to the “evil” (Hank’s bitch of a brother who set the dude up, and Jude Law as a nasTAYE, yellow toothed, long nailed, photo taking hit man hired by the family to do some laundry) but despite it's attempt at high drama, the film never felt like more than a well drawn graphic novel and my thumb goes up because it is this comic book mentality of crude but amusing characters doing crude but amusing things (in a violent B-movie sort of way) that allow the film to crawl out of cinematic purgatory and barley (BARLEY) reach its own escapist heaven.

     Fact is, this is a specific genre film that’s entertaining on a basic level. It is Lee Marvin (or Mel Gibson) in “Payback” killing everything in sight after being dogged by life; it is also a beautifully classical noir picture with as much feeling as a B-gangster flick with James Cagney; something like “Angels with Dirty Faces.” In other words, it is everything but real.

     I can't condemn the picture wholeheartedly because on some level it knew that it had the paper thin characters that I have been talking about… but on another level, Mendes illustrated that he doesn’t care that I (we, you) knew of the shallow nature of the film’s relationships and character depth because for every person that doesn’t buy into the tear jerking off treatment where father-doesn’t-know-best- but-he-still-loves-his-son routine, a hundred others will be balling by the time those credits roll and screaming that this is, as one confused critic put it “the best American film of the year” (I guess that old phony liked “Y Tu Mama Tambien” better. Yeah right). To be redundant one last time, I say that “Rode” is a well made revenge picture posing as a morality tale but, hey, I’m not going to bitch any further because at least it got the revenge part right.  

Grade: B-

Men in Black II 7/3/2002
What’s Good: A few clever jokes and Tommy Lee Jones. 
What’s Not: Truly a step back. Totally unoriginal; the title "Men in Black Redux" is more fitting.  
Directed by: Barry Sonnenfeld 
Also Try: The original Men in Black (1997)
IMDb: Agent J (Will Smith) needs help so he is sent to find Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) and restore his memory.

     Yeah, okay, the original was a great novelty. I loved every alien busting, joke cracking, Elfman composing, Tim Burton jacking minute of that film and I felt that critics were too hard on it. Logic be dammed, the first "MIB" was an unapologetic summer action film that didn’t take itself seriously, not in the way that something big and clumsy like “ID4” or “Spider-Man” did anyways. Sonnenfeld and his actors, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, got perfectly into that kooky sci-fi ethos that eluded even Tim Burton when he attempted the kitschy and numbing (yet still quite addicting) “Mars Attacks” back in 1997. Now, however many years later and however much money, hype, unearned acclaim (from Smith’s awards and ragging ego and lame music and screeching wife and annoying kid and whatever else I’m missing) here lies a film that not only fails in its ability to be a decent stand alone film, but the gravity of it's awfulness has retroactively managed to worsen the quality of the first "Men in Black."

    Since when was it that just because a film had a number in front of it that this meant the people making the film didn’t have put any effort in or try anything different?  It bereaves me to report that “Men in Black 2” is embarrassingly flat. Joke after joke sat up there on screen like some alien turd. And to think, the film really didn’t have to try THAT hard to get me to like it? It didn’t have to be as exciting as the second “Aliens” or as different from the first as "Mission: Impossible 2," no, all that was required of the filmmakers was that they would maybe throw in a somewhat original plot (a la “The Lost World”) and some jokes in the spirit of the first one and I would have been placated. As is, the film is a ghostly shell of the first, with a fair share of witty satire, sure, but zero story and jokes that are desperate to remind you that this was once funny… Hold that thought, though. Considering the third “Austin Powers” movie is coming out soon and I’m going to need to heavily conserve my nobody -can-write-good-scripts-anymore ammo.

Poor Barry Sonnenfeld. The film industry is getting to a point where a director can wash up before they ever amounted to anything. After a streak of really kooky and inventive (if a bit shallow) films ranging from “Get Shorty” to "The Adams Family," he missteped once with “Wild Wild West” and the rancid curse from that bile ridden mess has not come close to wearing off for the director—I say curse because no sober human could fuck up a live action version of “The Tick” like Sonnenfeld recently did. Now, even when this forlorn “visionary” is going back to what he knows best (like Arnold going back for a third Terminator... let us pray), something is painfully missing. The man is no longer a good director so he just emulates his films in the same manner a blind Dadaist would a painting of a lake. Though I imagine this lack of imagination is why “Men In Black II” will make a lot of money in America.

The plot is more of the same... though, using the adjective “more” is giving this cold fish too much credit. Na, "MIB II" is less of the same. But even so, if you told me that a poor Kinkos quality of sci-fi replica would be vomited out by Columbia soon after the first one, I would have still been delighted to see 90 more minutes of Smith and Jones doin their thang. But today… not so. The there-are-aliens-among-us-and-they’re-New-Yorkers joke is soo spent. 
     It's not that the film is without redemption because there are indeed a handful of clever moments that must be residual smarts left over from the first films screenplay: the ratio of good moments is 1:20. For instance, I really liked a few of the smaller details, like a joke about a black driver getting pulled over; an homage to the Tool music video where aliens walk with their swinging heads low and asses high; or how about the microscopic Wookie looking things that are living in a locker in the airport (the same one from “Get Shorty” no doubt) who all looked upon Jones and Smith as giant deities--there’s a nice message about primitive/modern states of religion tucked away in there. Also positive is the fact that we get to see the deadpan Tommy Lee Jones at his cranky best (nobody in the free world can say "okay, slick" as well as Jones). I dug the way Jones approached his dim postmaster general persona and I liked how the film dealt with Smith trying to get Jones' memory back after his brain was deneuralized, big time, at the end of the first film. Oh, and this film gets mucho credit for somehow extracting a bevy of cleavage out of the film’s big bad played by the beyond anorexic Laura Flynn Boyle. Now that was the film’s only true “how did they do that?” special effect. 
But aside from one or two precious divergences, everything seems interchangeable here; instead of the unbelieving and cute civilian Linda Fiorentino we see an unbelieving and cute Rosario Dawson; instead of Sylvester Stallone being an alien/agent, Michael Jackson is an alien/agent; instead of a tiny, necklace sized universe that the malevolent aliens will destroy earth to get, we are given a tiny bracelet of glowing light that the aliens will destroy earth to get.... bla bla bla, its all the same. 

So aside from some well placed jabs at the strangeness of American culture, this “Men in Black” has lost every bit of that original’s spontaneous magic, wink-wink absurdness, and what I missed most of all was the sense of comic wonder. The new Hollywood assembly line version has replaced substance with artificial absurdness and most unfor-fucking-givably, added more talking dogs, more product placements and a Johnny Knoxville... with two heads!!!

Grade: D+

A Walk To Remember 7/3/2002
What’s Good: Umm, well I ate a really good bowl of Honey Crunch Corn Flakes while I watched. 
What’s Not: Everything. Everything. No, really. Everything.  
Directed by: Adam Shankman 
IMDb: The story of two North Carolina teens, Landon Carter (West) and Jaime Sullivan (Moore), who are thrown together after Landon gets into trouble and is made to do community service.

      Where’s “Not Another Teen Movie” when you need it? Man that great satire of all teen dramas would have had its way with this wretched piece of sappy teen shit. “A Walk To remember” piles on the platitudes worse than even “ Pearl Harbor .” Within minutes of the film we get the token black guy (he may have even said “now, that is whack”) and the pretty girl who is supposed to be ugly because she has un-styled hair and is smart. “Damn that Jamie Sullivan sure has style” a sarcastic student comments on Moore ’s average ensemble. And all I’m thinking was, oh please; Mandy Moore is as ugly as Rachael Lee Cook was in “She’s All That.” Hey, how about this, how about actually casting a plain looking actress? I know that sounds crazy but it worked in “Strictly Ballroom” so anything is possible in the shallow world of American teen romances.

    As most people under 30 know, the film stars Mandy Moore and it is second in what will hopefully not be a long line of films with popular singers (“Glitter” was the first). I say hopefully not because, seeing Moore or Spears or whoever is slapped together by a focus group, is not unpleasant on the eyes but because at this rate I might have to invent the grade F- to accommodate cinematic crap as deprived as pop music. The no talent songbirds are invading and all critics must prepare for a most unholy of battles.  

     Maybe I’m being too hard on the film and its star, Mandy Moore, but damn, is this bitch annoying or what? Condense all three of Charlie’s Angels and you have an approximation. Not only was Moore the kind of know it all that is anything but sympathetic or charming--the film was actually strident enough to include multiple scenes where Moore was tutoring brown people like some self satisfied missionary—but with each line the actress delivers, her cadence is so arrogant that I would go as far to say that Drew Barrymore sounds less annoying. When a recently love struck character (Shane West from “Whatever it Takes”) looks as Moore’s picture in the yearbook, her quote of things she wanted to do was actually “to witness a miracle.” Ug. Another fingers on a blackboard effect is the character’s ultra religious didacticism when she delivers countless cheesy-as-all-fucking-hell lines like “The more Einstein studied the universe, the more he believed in a higher power” in an haughty MTV friendly smile to a group of high-school hooligan atheists that are giving the poor girl a hard time. Ug. The story involves two characters that seemingly don’t like each other at first, but, ah shucks would you look at that, they actually do. On one side is the “cool” rebel played by West (who’s actually not so bad in this film, perhaps because he was standing next to Moore) and on the other side is the chick that nobody likes for good reason who is just itching to redeem the “lost” West.

     The two have many obligatory scenes together where they argue, rebel against their parents, or have that magical night, or argue some more… “I have beliefs, I have faith, don’t YOU?” she tells the apathetic West. But these I-hate-you-NO-I-love-you scenes are not only a clichés older than “Romeo and Juliet,” but they are useless, for, perhaps good actors could overcome even the worst of clichés (John Cusack certainly has proven that he could). But the film’s ultimate cliché, one that even trumps bad teen movie dialogue, is the dying girlfriend movie. And I’ve got to say, this shameless excuse for a film is the worst of the bunch. And, yes, I’m saying that after having done my homework by sitting all the way through the Keanu Reeves/ Charlese Theron film “Sweet November” and even the Richard Gear/ Winona Ryder film “Autumn in New York .”

But the fun doesn’t end there students. Just when I though the film couldn’t fall any further into a chasm of absurd sentimentality, it dishes out cinema’s first ever uber-cliché with the heart-wrenchingly insincere marrying the dying girlfriend moment. I literally did a double take because this scene is so far removed from real emotions that it should be considered science fiction. Yes, the two good looking high school kids get marred and it is at this moment that the despicable film finally hit rock bottom.

      “A Walk to Remember” proves that just because a film thinks its sincere doesn’t mean it will be effective. Bad pretentious films are much worse than bad mindless films because at least it’s easy to forget the “Bring it On’s” of the world. Whereas the underrated “Crazy/Beautiful” (and especially the film reviewed below this one) represented a careful look at the attraction between two young people despite the odds of everyday life, this film sinks under the tutelage of a sophomoric Moore and a soggy screenplay adapted from a trash novel. Fact is, no matter what this film was about, no matter how religious or irreligious it was, no matter who died or who didn’t get laid (or did he?), Moore would have not given the right performance. She seems inept and overconfident in a film that suits those traits. Again, she’s cuter than hell but what does that matter when you’re looking at one of the worst performances of all time.

     Not to be crass but the hardest I’ve laughed all year is when this blubbering line is delivered: “I have leukemia.” Now, only a film as silly as this one could make that normally sad line so hilarious. And I suppose that dubious ability is what makes this the most special F film ever made.  

And incase you don’t revile “A Walk To Remember” yet, here’s one of Moore ’s last, violin playing in the background, lines: “Maybe God has a bigger plan for me than I have for myself” 

Grade: Do I even need to say it? Okay, fine, Grade: F

L.I.E. 6/29/2002
What’s Good: A complex issue is handled with great acting. 
What’s Not: The film looses its nerve in the last few minutes.  
Directed by: Michael Cuesta  
IMDb: A 15-year-old Long Island boy loses everything and everyone he knows, soon becoming involved in a relationship with a much older man.

     Magnificent and grotesque, “L.I.E.” is bound to be labeled a crass film about child molestation with despicable characters, but it is so much more than that. Yes, the subject matter is taboo for our sensibilities but the film, by opening up fictional lines of communication on the difficult subject matter has actually done us a great service. Not since Todd Solenze’s “Happiness” or even Fritz Lang’s “M” has a movie about a pervert been so fascinating.

     “L.I.E.” stars Paul Franklin Dano as Howie Blitzer a young, confused teenager whose mom has just died and with a father (the cool Bruce Altman) a well meaning dolt on his way to jail. Young Howie has gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd and he and his friends – one of which he has a sexual thing going on with-- burglarize houses until one day they get the wrong one. The house is owned by war vet disturbingly named Big John (with license plates that say BJ) played by the great Brian Cox, a local retired man who is well renown by the unknowing locals but looks at kiddy porn on the internet and runs what might be a male position service. BJ, the kindly, smile faced predator that he is, soon catches up the kid and the two embark in on a non-sexual but certainly non-proper relationship. They are friends but not your typical, buddy movie types and not the “My Dog Skip” kind either.

     The performances by Billy Kay as Howie's friend, Altman, his dad and especially Big John are some of last years best. Cox seems to understand this character and not only his function to the story but his function to the world of film, which needs more complex and duplicitous personalities. We need monsters like this precisely because they put a human face to the madness of the real world. Of course we hate this guy for taking advantage of young boys but the man has personality and he too, perhaps was molested.  

     Choosing to ignore this film is just about the worst thing we can do as a society because one could argue that nothing should be ignored and everything should be discussed. Flaws aside, I put “L.I.E.” above most other films that came out last year because this is a work that at least doesn’t hide its creepiness like every other Spielberg film about young boys… “Minority Report” and “AI” I’m talking to you!    

Grade: B+

Lagaan 6/21/2002
What’s Good: Somehow cricket is made to look fun and exciting. A great love triangle too. 
What’s Not: A bit simplistic. Distracting dubbing during the music sequences.  
Directed by: Ashutosh Gowariker 
IMDb:

To be totally American I am now going to quote a scene from "Buffy" that relates to Indian cinema; bear with me...

• Xander asks: “Why is she singing?”

• Willow, understanding the movie, replies: “She’s sad because her lover gave her 12 gold coins. But the wizard cut open a big bag of salt and now the dancing minions have nowhere to put their big Maypole… fish thingey.”

• Xander: “Uh huh. So why is she singing?”

• Buffy chimes in with: “Her lover? I thought that was her chiropractor?”

• Willow: “Because of that thing he did with her feet? No, that was personal.”

• The scene end with Buffy twisting her head to the side and asking: “so how does a water buffalo fit in again?”

-Now, being that this is the smartest show on TV, the point is not to make fun, but to underline the notion that Indian films baffle us and we generally fear that which we do not know, or however Yoda said it. 

But amidst all this cultural confusion comes a great epic with a nice, breezy sweep to it. The film is “Lagaan” and it disserves to be one of the first Ballywood films to break into the harsh American market—we do, after all, need room for real cinema like a third “American Pie” and a dozen more “Scooby-Doo” films. It may perhaps be the first big step into the unknown world of Indian cinema.

And sure, from what I hear and see, Indian filmmaking is about fifty years behind in the cinematic evolution in Western society -- Vincente Minnelli did these kinds of big and happy, sing songey films years ago— but the film at hand is just so darn irresistible. Though I enjoyed “Lagaan” greatly, and though I enjoyed “Moulin Rouge!” even more so, still, seeing 200 musicals a year would kill me; I’ll settle for just one or two good ones like this no matter what country there from.

"Lagaan" is one of the only films to come out in a decade or so to have its main character deliver a trite line like, “And only those who dream can make them come true” and have it seem reasonable, given the circumstances. Indeed, the whole film contains nothing but moments like that, which are so traditional and simple that the film works on a retro musical level. “Lagaan” tells the story of a poor farming village (led by the energetic Indian legend Aamir Khan) that is not only experiencing a drought, but must pay unfair taxes to the English and elite Indian land owners. A chance for hope exists though, through the placement of an arrogant English ruler who proposes a wager, “You beat us at this game (cricket) and I’ll cancel your tax,” he says in English. Now, the survival of the village depends on this game, for if they don’t win, this already improvised town in an even more improvised province will have to pay triple taxes, which is impossible and would spell certain death for most. I suppose the hyperbolized racist portrayal of the moustache dwindling colonial English oppressors (who at one point almost forces a strictly vegetarian Indian to eat his land’s meat: “I just want to see you eating the meat” the Yankee tells him in a strictly non-homoerotic manner… or is it?) at least makes up for our embarrassingly racist “Gunga Din,” so I wont cry foul this time….  Plus, even Americans make fun of them Polo playin English and cast them as villains. There's just easy targets that wont ever complain I guess.

What I liked is that the film is so big and bright and expressive that the subtitles are hardly needed. The actors overact to the point where the effect is perfect for someone like me. Speaking of which, I almost don’t feel qualified to judge this film one way or another. Since Indian cinema is one great big mystery (along with Indian food) to me, who am I to say if this film is above the norm or behind it… who am I to say the somewhat catchy musical sequences need some work (the phony dubbing and bad lip syncing was quite annoying though)… and who am I to say the story is original? The only way to judge this film is on base emotions. Fact is I need to do my homework on this, the biggest film marked in the world, but that’s a big assignment and I’m a lazy fuck so for now, this film alone will now represent every Indian production ever made. Well, that is until I see the next one at least, which I hope is soon.

Grade: B+