Oklahoma Film Critics Circle

We've Moved!

2007-12-27T08:17:00.000-08:00

This is no longer the site for the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle.

Please visit us at our new location at ofccircle.org

"Putting Pants on Philip" (Clyde Bruckman, 1927)

2007-03-01T10:57:00.000-08:00

The first dialogue card in “Putting Pants on Philip” (1927) informs us that we are about to see “The story of a Scotch lad who came to America to hunt for a Columbian half-dollar -- his grandfather lost it in 1893,” but that’s not what the film is really about. Yes, Stan Laurel is Philip, fresh off the ship from Scotland, but the printed narration is a diversion. The real joke is Philip’s kilt. You’ll be relieved to know that he does sport underwear beneath. We know because at one point, he loses them.

This two-reel farce has frequently been billed as the first Laurel and Hardy picture, but that’s misleading, too. They’d appeared in over a dozen shorts together by the time this one was shot. If anything, PPOP is the first time they were beginning to develop the characters we know as The Boys. We see the famous nitwit duo here only in flashes. There are times when we can actually see them thinking. Stanley is much more aggressive in the film, and Ollie is more dapper and capable of living in the real world.

But is this the real world? The street scenes, of which there are plenty, look like a mid-sized, middle class area of Los Angeles or one of its near neighbors, but if Philip has just arrived by ocean liner from Scotland, he wouldn’t be docking on the west coast.

Of course, no subliminal message was intended by the filmmakers--it’s just the usual marriage of convenience and economics—but it presages the moments of mini-surrealism for which Laurel’s gags would become famous.

We open on the Hon. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Hardy), who is waiting on the docks to meet his sister’s son, Philip, arriving from Scotland. We see that sis has sent a letter by way of introduction and she warns her brother (hereafter called Hardy because if I have to type Mumblethunder too many times I may just forget the whole thing) that Philip (Laurel) has but one weakness—women.

Philip disembarks with another Scotsman, and the ship's doctor (an uncredited Sam Lufkin) insists on giving him a quick physical. As the doc probes and gropes him and tries to search his hair for lice or worms, the crowd on the pier begins giggling. This crowd includes Hardy who, despite the fact that he knows he’s meeting a Scot and Laurel is wearing a kilt, pities the poor sucker who's stuck with meeting his nitwit. Ollie's slow realization who the sucker is, is vintage Oliver Hardy.

Other than the kilt, there is no joke in their appearance. Hardy is in a natty sports coat and boater. Laurel is wearing a tam, but both of them have clothes that are clean and well-fitted, unlike the tight suits that Hardy will later adopt.

Pulling his nephew away from the chortling crowd, Hardy asks Laurel what he wants to do, when SHE (Dorothy Coburn, uncredited) walks by—and She is a leggy flapper with bobbed hair and a pert attitude. Laurel, instantly smitten, delivers the first of many scissor-jumps and Hardy has to grab him to keep him from pursuing her.

Walking down the street, Hardy insists that Laurel stays several steps behind him as he is an influential citizen and he doesn't want anyone to see him strolling along with a man in what looks like a dress. Every time Laurel catches up to him, he links arms with his uncle and the following crowd erupts in laughter. When Hardy asks a cop for help in keeping the crowd from ridiculing them, the cop laughs, too.

Then She passes by again, up jumps Laurel, and the chase is on. This time it ends with a slightly larger crowd gathered in the middle of the street.

Hardy drags Philip away again, and as Laurel walks over an air vent in the sidewalk, his kilt flies up (a la Monroe in “The Seven Year Itch”). This happens a couple of times before Hardy moves him away from the vent. Laurel then decides to take a sniff of snuff and when he sneezes, his drawers, unnoticed by anyone, fall down. Cut to the crowd. We can't see what happens to Laurel and his kilt, but several women pass out or move away in horror. Note that this action takes place in front of what I assume is a pub called "The Pink Pup." The boys could be risqué when it suited them. And it suited them more often than you may remember.

A passing stranger retrieves Laurel’s underwear—how times have changed—She returns, another scissor jump, more pursuit.

Hardy has had enough and he takes Laurel to a tailor to get him fitted for trousers. There is some foolery with measuring the inseam, with Laurel's reactions becoming more exaggerated each time. As the tailor (Harvey Clark, uncredited) becomes more and more frustrated, Hardy offers to help. Eventually, all three of them wind up rolling around on the floor.

Getting serious, Hardy removes his coat and follows Laurel through some curtains hanging in a doorway. He chases Laurel back and forth, the doorway being used as a frame for their action. Finally, Hardy emerges disheveled. His vest is pulled up and he has to straighten it.

Then Laurel emerges, also mussed up. His tie is loosened. Here Laurel indulges in some superb silent face acting. You can see his despair as his uncle has "undone" him. He has been seduced and betrayed. Laurel sits on a chair screen left, and Hardy stands beside him on his left. Their attitudes and expressions superbly parody melodrama of the she-is-more-to-be-pitied-than-censored variety.

The tailor brings them the pants, and Laurel goes into a dressing room to put them on. He sees HER legs pass by (he can see out a basement window at eye level), and he goes after her, still in kilt.

Once more, uncle, nephew and She end up together on the sidewalk. She has tried to slip unnoticed past the two men. She does get by them and when Laurel attempts pursuit once more, Hardy grabs him and, in an attempt to sooth his nephew's passion, asks him if he wants to meet the girl.

Yes.

Hardy strolls over to her as only he can stroll, and in that overly polite manner with which we will become familiar, is chatting her up when she thumps his nose and walks away. She marches to the place where the sidewalk meets the street at an intersection. There is a large puddle in the street. Laurel rushes over to her, takes off his kilt and spreads it over the puddle. "An old Scottish custom," he tells her. She makes a quick leap over the kilt and puddle and we cut to her on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. She performs a scissor-jump, and walks away laughing.

Hardy comes up to Laurel, chortling. When Laurel bends to pick up his kilt, Hardy stops him with one of his grandiose gestures and indicates that he will go first. "An old American custom," he says. When he steps on the kilt, we see that it covered a waist-deep pit and Hardy goes completely under before re-emerging, soaked to the skin top to bottom. As he stands in the pit, chastened, a crowd comes running over, this time to laugh at him.

He has become what he least wanted to become.

The film’s pace is brisk and the jokes run the gamut from the expected to the oddball. Clyde Bruckman directs with a sure hand. Now remembered only by aficionados of early comedy, Bruckman was once at the forefront of screen farce. He worked again with Laurel and Hardy on “Battle of the Century,” and with W.C. Fields on “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” and “The Fatal Glass of Beer.” He’s the credited co-director with Buster Keaton of “The General,” and he made three talkies with Harold Lloyd. The end was not kind. In 1955, after eating a meal in a restaurant that he could not pay for, he shot himself with a gun he’d borrowed from Keaton.

This film’s supervising director was Leo McCarey, who would win two directing Oscars. It was photographed by George Stevens, who would also go on to claim two Oscars for directing, and the intertitles were written by H.M. (Harley M. “Beany”) Walker, who wrote stories, titles and dialogue for 309 pictures.

Film historian William K. Everson once listed what each of the great movie clowns was best at, and he wrote that what The Boys did best was deliver more laughs per reel than anyone else. No sentimentalizing, no intellectualizing—just funny. This is where it started, folks. This one’ll kilt ya.

"Ab-normal Beauty" (Oxide Pang, 2004) from efilmcritic.com

2007-01-31T13:47:00.000-08:00

“Ab-normal Beauty” (Sei mong se jun), written by Oxide Pang and his twin brother Pak Sing Pang, and directed by Oxide alone, explores ground already investigated by Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell and, almost concurrently with “Ab-normal Beauty,” Takashi Shimizu (whose “Marebito” was released a few weeks before Pang’s film). “Rear Window” and “Peeping Tom” both present metaphors for our fascination with seeing on film things too awful to see in person. The camera, like a murder weapon, is neutral until a use is found for it.
Jiney is an art student living with her mother. Her best friend—and we come to suspect more than best friend—is Jas. They are both photographers and the roam about the city of Hong Kong snapping pix of whatever catches their attention. A young man named Anson (Anson Leung) has a crush on Jin. She rebuffs him gently; Jas tells him to bugger off.

Jin’s mother leaves town on a business trip, planning to be gone about a month, and left alone at home Jin allows her boredom with life to show. One day she happens upon a fatal car crash. The appearance of corpses on the street overwhelms her and she begins to take pictures furiously. Jas helps her develop them and is repulsed by the images of blood and injury. “Death,” Jin says, “is the ideal photo—scary and exciting.”

She starts to unravle. She makes a skin-tight mask—when worn, it is death’s face. She begins to see blood where these isn’t any blood. Visiting an outdoor market, Jin pays a butcher to kill chicken after chicken so she can photograph them as they die. Her darkroom becomes cluttered with shots of dead birds, dogs and fish. Her excuse to Jas is that she just wants to add a new element to her work.

She buys a collection of death photos gathered together in a book. She thinks the pictures are beautiful. “Pressing the shutter is like death in that it stops the subject.” Her greatest thrill comes from seeing a potential suicide atop a tall building. When the girl jumps, Jin follows her descent, snapping pictures all the way to the sidewalk.

Why, suddenly, has this passion for death seeped to the surface of Jin’s psyche? She tells Jas about the time when, as a young girl, she was molested by three boys and her own mother’s failure to believe her story. But is that enough to make the change we see in her believable? Is it just the sight of bloody death by traffic accident that sets this terrible change in motion?

When we hear, and see in flashback, the story of her youthful rape, we expect the film will move along with that new plot element to explain what is happening with this lovely and talented young woman, but suddenly the picture takes a sharp turn into more standard thriller country. Jin finds on her doorstep a video tape. “Take a look” is scratched on the box, and when she does she sees a moment right out of “feardotcom”—a young woman is chained to a chair, begging for release, when a masked man (we assume) beats her to death with a length of lead pipe.

We’ve been jolted as severly as Jin has. What has this movie become? Are we to think, as the girls do, that Anson is responsible for some kind of sick joke? Is Jas secretly a sadistic killer? Is Jin, or is the masked man on the tape a reflection of her own madness? Jin has already expressed the fear that she might lose control and really kill someone for the sake of taking pictures of the body.

The sudden shift in plot emphasis is jolting, but perhaps the Pangs are telling us that it takes a change from art to reality to shake us out of our routine existence.

The Pang Brothers insinuate themselves into the film by casting sisters in the roles of best friends/possible lesbian lovers. Race Wong, as Jiney, and Rosanne Wong, as Jas, are the two halves of the Cantopop music duo “2R.” As their characters become involved in reproducing life in photography and painting instead of living it, so have the Pangs made a similar choice.

Strictly on the level of thriller, the film has nice moments during the first story line as we watch Jin’s descent to madness and wonder what will happen to her, and others during the last third or so as the gore level increases considerably and the intellectual pondering of the first part give way to a more visceral reaction.

And the Wong sisters are superb as Jin and Jas. Apparently, Jin (the younger of the two) is having a more successful film career, although they have made films as co-stars. One made a year before “Ab-normal Beauty” is a parody of the international hit cop thriller “Infernal Affairs,” recently remade by Martin Scorsese as “The Departed.” The Hong Kong comedy is entitled, sublimely, “Love is a Many Stupid Thing.”

But here in “Ab-normal Beauty” the sisters are terrific. They are both quite lovely, but neither of them relies on looks to win our affection. More often than not, they just like students, attractive but not made-up or dressed to kill. They sell the friendship and, on another level of unease, the more-than-friendship convincingly. Jas is not just the disposable friend of the protagonist about whom we really don’t care too much. She works her way into our affection as completely as does the character with the interesting problem.

So many American horror films are concerned almost exclusively with dying and dying badly. “Ab-normal Beauty” is about preferring a bad death to an even worse life.

"The Red Shoes" (Kim Yong-Gyun, 2005) from efilmcritic.com

2007-01-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

“The Red Shoes” (Bundongsin) is one of the more difficult horror films from South Korea. It’s helped a little by being based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, but only if you know the original story.

(A young girl named Karen, who is vain and shallow, ignores the people who love her so that she may go dancing in her new red shoes. But once she begins to dance, she can’t stop. Finally, arriving at the home of a wood cutter, she begs the man to cut off her feet, which he does. The shoes, feet still in them, continue to dance. The man carves a pair of wooden feet for Karen, who then becomes so ecstatic in her new-found Christian faith, she dies of a joyfully broken heart and goes to Heaven, where no one questions her about her bewitched red shoes. In Denmark, this is a story for children. You know, like “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” is in America.)

In the film, written by Ma Sang-Ryeol and director Kim Yong-Gyun, a young, married optometrist named Sun-jae (Kim Hye-soo) finds a pair of red shoes abandoned on a subway platform. We’ve seen that the shoes cast a spell of possessiveness on any woman who finds them so we’re already mentally urging this pretty young wife and mother to leave them alone. She doesn’t.

When she takes them home, the shoes cast their spell on Sun-jae’s daughter (who appears to be eight-ish) Tae-soo (Park Yeon-ah). The child takes the shoes, insisting that they are now hers. The father thinks the resulting argument is over-blown and the next time Tae-soo goes to her ballet class, he insists that Sun-jae take the shoes to her. On her return home, Sun-jae finds her husband canoodling with another woman, and she and Tae-soo move into an apartment of their own.

The ownership of the shoes remains a sticking point between mother and daughter, and their relationship becomes even more incendiary when Sun-jae begins dating the interior designer, In-cheol (Kim Seong-soo), she’s hired to give her clinic a do-over. Tae-soo naturally enough sees him as a weak makeshift father figure.

None of this is hard to understand, but the contemporary story is frequently interrupted by moments of passion, violence, and ballet from the past, flashes that seem to have no connection to the central story. We’ve become accustomed to non-linear narratives, but we can usually see pretty quickly what’s going on and can connect the inserted material to the main story.

In “Bundongsin,” it takes about an hour for Sun-jae and In-cheol to figure out that something terribly wrong is going on here. The film begins to look like “Ringu” as we follow their investigation. We’ve known all along that the shoes are cursed, and when they find it out, and learn why, we’re able to put all the storylines together and form one cohesive plot. Characters and viewers arrive at the film’s moral together: “no emotion is more fatal than an obsessed love.”

The great pleasure of the Asian horror films imported to America by Tartan Films USA “Asia Extreme” line and other video distributors is that they were made for adults. The protagonists are aged beyond the first bloom of youth and are faced with personal problems more mature than where to spend Spring Break so you won’t run the risk of being ripped apart by some psycho hitchhiker. Yes, the pacing of these films is slower than is the norm in western horror movies, but even that indicates a more mature approach to the material. We expect psycho violence to happen in the blink of an eye, but curses and spectral vengeance take longer to develop.

“Bundongsin” contains a couple of unfortunately derivative elements—the single mom and her boyfriend rushing to understand the nature of the danger before a child is harmed comes from “Ringu,” just as a scene wherein mother and daughter go hunting for an apartment looks too much as if it were lifted from “Dark Water”—but the picture does slip in a few surprises and is weighted by the same moral seriousness that keeps the original fairy tale from being for children only.

“The Red Shoes” requires more patience than do most contemporary horror movies, but waiting for the payoff is made tolerable by two good performances from the lead actresses. Little Park Yeon-ah delivers the best performance from a child in one of these pictures since Eun Seo-woo in “Phone.”

Try on “The Red Shoes.” You won’t stop dancing.

Jim Chastain's Best Films of 2006

2007-01-03T13:38:00.000-08:00

Best Films of 2006

In any given year, there are always more films to see. Some never make it to Oklahoma. Some are screened at a time when you cannot go. Some appear briefly in a “metro area” theater, which may be forty miles away, then head off to some other limited release venue.

And sometimes your life is just too crazy busy.

So with that brief disclaimer, I give you my personal list of the year’s best films, in order. The list will change as I see the ten or so films I would have seen if the world was perfect and I had all the time in the world.

1. The Queen – It’s a quiet drama, the story of a dysfunctional family in crisis. Helen Mirren will likely win an Oscar for her portrayal of the ever stoic Queen Elizabeth II in the days following Princess Di’s untimely death. And the film is, as they say overseas, bloody brilliant.

2. An Inconvenient Truth – Horror films are all the rage these days, and there is no scarier film than this Al Gore documentary about the dangers we are facing due to global warming.

3. Wordplay – Okay, as a writer, I’m a sucker for books and films that focus on words. And I dearly loved this documentary about those word freaks who can knock out the New York Times crossword in less than five minutes.

4. The Departed – This was the best acted film of the year and it would have been in competition for the tops of my list had it not been for a few minor flaws in logic that kept nagging at me.

5. Little Miss Sunshine – It’s a great little road trip film with great characters who are as imperfect and flawed as, well, you and me.

6. Half Nelson – What a great film! An addict school teacher and one of his culturally-challenged students become fast friends, in spite of life.

7. Notes on a Scandal – Remember those strange knock-out high school female teachers who appear on the morning talk shows after being arrested for molesting their teenage male students? Have you ever wondered how things like that happen? Yeah, me too.

8. Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing – The third documentary on my list is a fascinating look at the economic crisis facing the popular country trio after they denounced President Bush and were then shunned by their fans.

9. Cars – I’m not a race car fan, which is why I’m still in shock over how good this Disney/Pixar film is. A great nostalgic look at life as it probably never existed in the 20th Century.

10. Stranger Than Fiction – While it is the first film that will be bumped off when I see one of the must-see films I missed, this film will always have a special place in my sometimes sentimental heart.

Michael Smith's Favorite Films of 2006 / The Tulsa World

2007-01-01T17:24:00.000-08:00

Before we get to the 10 best films of 2006, consider these five as alternates. Excellent films all, they deserve more than honorable mention.

Flags of Our Fathers
An intelligent look at the meaning of heroism, Clint Eastwood's film is a handsome, heartfelt story of a battle that changed World War II. The director's companion piece, "Letters From Iwo Jima" -- the battle told from the Japanese perspective -- that was originally scheduled for 2007 release has been bumped up due to the flagging box office for "Fathers," and it's already won a couple of critics' groups Best Picture awards. That film hasn't been released in Tulsa, but "Flags of our Fathers" stands on its own.

For Your Consideration
There's hardly a ritual more deserving of bashing than that of Academy Awards hype in a world of rampant Internet prognosticators and publicity machines run amok. Christopher Guest ("Best in Show") and his band of merry men and women (Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard are sensational) hilariously skewer everything from out-of-touch producers to vacuous infotainment shows.

Thank You For Smoking
Drawn from a best-selling novel by Christopher Buckley and written and directed for the screen by precocious freshman filmmaker Jason Reitman, "Smoking" is that rare satire that dares to be politically incorrect, piercingly insightful and caustically funny throughout. In a media-saturated Age of Spin, hustling lobbyists are the reigning princes of darkness, and Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) is a star, the glib national spokesman for the tobacco industry and a man who takes great pride in the fact that his job "requires a moral flexibility that goes beyond most people."

Cars
Pixar animators hit the highway -- historic Route 66, to be specific -- in this antic cartoon comedy about a hot-shot racing car marooned in sleepy little Radiator Springs and forced to slow down, reconsider his fast-track life and stop to smell the gas fumes. Tulsa writer and Route 66 guru Michael Wallis provides the voice of the sheriff and served as Pixar's guide along the Mother Road.

Stranger Than Fiction
This wonderfully high-concept head trip about changing one's life path is the kind of film that keeps percolating in your own noggin, conjuring up all manner of possibilities. Will Ferrell shows a new depth and humanity as an IRS auditor sleepwalking through life until a voice in his head wakes him up to a world of possibilities.

At times comic, touching and full of Big Questions with unusual answers, director Marc Forster and debut film scripter Zach Helm have fun toying with one man's existence. This meta-mad conundrum asks audiences to take a leap of faith for its clever love story -- Maggie Gyllenhaal is perfect as a sexy baker -- and you shouldn't think twice.

Preston Jones' Best Films of 2006 / Oklahoma Gazette

2007-01-01T17:16:00.000-08:00

1. "United 93," dir. Paul Greengrass
Riveting and raw, "United 93" accomplished what seemed nearly impossible to many: humanizing and dramatizing one of our country's most wrenching tragedies without once slipping into sentimentality or insincerity. An expertly mounted fusion of documentary technique and fictional conjecture, it's a disquieting experience that holds you in a vice grip until its breathless, inevitable climax. This doesn't unfold like a film, it plays like a searing collective memory.

2. "Borat: Cultural Learnings of American for Make Benefit Glorious
Nation of Kazakhstan," dir. Larry Charles
No mainstream comedy was funnier — or more satirically devastating — than Sacha Baron Cohen's full-bore assault on the American way of life. While Borat Sagdiyev became horribly over-exposed in no time flat, his endless parade of PR whoring couldn't diminish the side-splitting prowess of this fakeumentary which peeled back the colors that don't run to reveal some of the less savory traits of those living in the U.S. and A. Very nice!

3. "Pan’s Labyrinth," dir. Guillermo del Toro
A masterful synthesis of gruesome reality and limitless imagination, "Pan's Labyrinth" is a bedtime story for grown-ups; forget the smug pomposity of M. Night Shyamalan's farragoes — Guillermo del Toro is Hollywood's dreamweaver par excellence. Deftly mixing eerily tangible set pieces with a genuinely unnerving performance from Sergio Lopez, del Toro surveys the war-torn lands of post-Franco Spain with heart and humanity.

4. "Shut Up & Sing," dir. Barbara Kopple & Cecilia Peck
Ravaged by red-staters for speaking their minds, the Dixie Chicks found themselves adrift with an eroding fanbase and an uncertain future. Instead of calling it a day, Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie Maguire dug deep and re-connected with their passion. Far more than a portrait of a band in crisis, "Shut Up & Sing" is a penetrating, poignant examination of the fall-out from free speech.

5. "The Departed," dir. Martin Scorsese
Bullet-hard and drenched in sanguine kinetics, Martin Scorsese's Westernization of the HK cult classic "Infernal Affairs" feels like an overdue homecoming; with period pics and Dylan docs out of his system, Scorsese fires on all cylinders to plumb the lives and lies of these sons of Boston — Jack Nicholson's live-wire portrayal of evil incarnate elevates everyone's game and the sly final shot feels like floating on air.

6. "Little Miss Sunshine," dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris
7. "Casino Royale," dir. Martin Campbell
8. "Notes on a Scandal," dir. Richard Eyre
9. "The Proposition," dir. John Hillcoat
10. "The Queen," dir. Stephen Frears

Phil Bacharach's Best Films of 2006 / Oklahoma Gazette

2007-01-01T17:15:00.000-08:00

1. “United 93,” dir. Paul Greengrass

Brilliant, searing and gutsy, “United 93” is also that rarest of films: An amazing experience. To helm the first theatrical film to fictionalize aspects of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, director-writer Paul Greengrass set out on a daunting mission. He would handle the most sensitive of material while resisting the temptation to sentimentalize or whitewash. The movie that resulted is nothing short of electrifying. Greengrass employs a cast of unknowns and a no-frills, documentary-like visual style to offer a possible account of the hijacked United Airlines flight that crashed in rural Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board. Filmgoers stayed away from “United 93,” understandably hesitant to revisit the horrors of 9-11, but this is an extraordinary work that vividly captures a monumental time in our nation’s history. If “United 93” does not shake you to your core, check your pulse.

2. “Little Miss Sunshine,” dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris

Independent cinema needs another comedy about a dysfunctional family the way Mel Gibson needs another swig of bourbon. Even so, “Little Miss Sunshine” is eons above standard indie fare. The feature-length directorial debut of husband-wife team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the film was the belle of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and for good reason. Screenwriter Michael Arndt taps the time-tested on-the-road genre, but nothing is rote about this cliché-free blending of drama, comedy and sharp-toothed satire. It helps to have a stellar cast, of course, and the movie has one, with Greg Kinnear, Steve Carrell, Toni Collette and young Abigail Breslin as particular standouts. Alternately poignant and hilarious, “Little Miss Sunshine” is a wry and wise examination of our societal obsession with winning -- and all the ways in which families inadvertently screw us up.

3. “The Departed,” dir. Martin Scorsese

It took a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong flick “Infernal Affairs” for Martin Scorsese to make his best film since 1990’s “Goodfellas,” but “The Departed” is quintessential Scorsese – a gritty action-thriller spilling over with so much ferocious urgency, it practically induces vertigo. Leonardo DiCaprio shines as a Boston cop who infiltrates the crew of mob boss Frank Costello, played by a scenery-chewing Jack Nicholson. Matt Damon is every bit DiCaprio’s equal as a slick Massachusetts state detective with a secret allegiance to Costello. Against this maze of doppelgangers and doublecrosses, “The Departed” crackles with overcaffeinated energy and violence. Stylistically, the movie is as sharp and unnerving as the edge of a stiletto, but Scorsese never sacrifices a labyrinthine plotline for the sake of cheap thrills. It’s a thrill-fest, alright, but each and every one is earned.

4. “Pan’s Labyrinth,” dir. Guillermo del Toro

It’s tempting to summarize “Pan’s Labyrinth” as a Grimm fairytale for adults, but that doesn’t begin to do justice to this unique fantasy. Set in Spain after the end of Franco’s civil war, the story follows the travails of young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero). Life is hard for the girl. Her mother is in the midst of a complicated pregnancy and her stepfather, a sadistic military captain, is intent on starving out the few rebels who remain hidden in nearby mountains. Then magic intrudes in the form of a faun-like creature that tells Ofelia she is actually the princess of the underworld; he assigns her a series of mythological tasks to return to her rightful kingdom. Luring moviegoers into the purely fantastical, writer-director Guillermo del Toro unfurls a haunting masterpiece in which dreamscapes and heartbreaks are inexorably bound.

5. “Borat: Cultural Learnings of American for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” dir. Larry Charles

Not only did this monstrously outrageous prank of a movie produce more laughs than anything I’ve seen since “There’s Something About Mary” in 1998, but Sacha Baron Cohen, the twisted genius behind it, has almost certainly set an industry record for most lawsuits stemming from a comedy. As the titular character, Cohen portrays a blithely bigoted Kazakh journalist traveling across America. It’s a paper-thin premise for a movie, but Cohen -- who introduced the shtick on his HBO series, “Da Ali G Show” -- possesses a mesmerizing fearlessness. He is also riotously funny. In his encounters with unsuspecting folks who range from a bloodthirsty rodeo organizer to drunken frat dudes, Cohen exposes some eye-popping ugliness just below the surface of Everyday America. But this is no sociological experiment; Cohen is out to draw laughs, not blood.

6. “Little Children,” dir. Todd Field
7. “Water,” dir. Deepa Mehta
8. “Shut Up & Sing,” dir. Barbara Kopple & Cecilia Peck
9. “Stranger Than Fiction,” dir. Marc Forster
10. “The Prestige,” dir. Christopher Nolan

Doug Bentin's Best Films of the Year / Oklahoma Gazette

2007-01-01T17:14:00.000-08:00

The summer blockbusters may have left most of our blocks unbusted, but the end of the year has sent some pretty damn good movies our way. Looking over 2006’s offerings, here are the best films I saw.

“The Departed,” dir. Martin Scorsese

Scorsese, having crept away from the crime film ghetto for a few years, returned in a big way this year with a movie that showcases everything, except Robert DeNiro, that has made his name a pair of cineaste’s household words. Nobody removes the operatic romanticism of street crime to show us the worms under the rocks like Scorsese, and the fact that he can make these characters appealing without making them likable is remarkable. Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, Ray Winstone—if the Dallas Cowboys had this much testosterone, they’d end the season 16-0. Violent, funny, terrifying, “The Departed” is bewitching. It’s the snake and we’re the birds. Thankfully, Scorsese provides the pane of glass that separates us.

“Notes on a Scandal,” dir. Richard Eyre

You know you’re watching a pack of rabid sociopaths while you watch “The Departed,” and they can scare the hell out of you, but the icky derangement of the English school teacher played by the brilliant Judi Dench in “Notes on a Scandal” creeps in on little cat feet—make that “little bitch feet”—and you find yourself slyly checking out the women in the audience just to make sure that none of them are smiling too broadly. Not to say that the film isn’t supposed to be funny—it’s wildly funny in that patented Brit way of finding humor in the most tragic situations. Cate Blanchett costars as the new art teacher on whom Dench’s spinster develops a crush. You won’t find two better performances in any film this year. Seek this one out.

“The Queen,” dir. Stephen Frears

Bette Davis once said that the Brits produced the best actors, but American gave the best actresses to the world. Maybe then—not now. Helen Mirren stars as the present Queen Elizabeth facing a royal crisis on the death of Princess Diana. She thinks the royal family should grieve, or not grieve, as they always have—in private—while the new Prime Minister Tony Blair believes that the country wants a show of grief. Cue the news cameras and tabloid reporters. Like “Notes on a Scandal,” this film finds dark humor in a happening that is mostly melodramatic, if not a little tragic. Mirren is just so good doing what the greatest Brit actors have done repeatedly—holding it all in until it has to gush out. Think of Peter O’Toole in “Lawrence of Arabia” or Paul Scofield in “A Man For All Seasons.” It’s just a shame that Mirren had to deliver this performance the same year Judi Dench gave us “Notes on a Scandal.” Tie, anyone?

“Lady Vengeance,” dir. Park Chan-wook

Here’s my ringer. Every reviewer gets to praise one film at the end of the year that very few people have seen, and “Lady Vengeance” is mine. Directed by Park Chan-wook, this is the third part of his Vengeance Trilogy. “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and “Oldboy” came first, and this is the story of a woman who willingly goes to jail for a murder she didn’t commit in order to protect someone dear to her. On her release, she uses the services of the women she was kind to behind bars to go after the real killer. Beautifully photographed and artfully edited, this Korean thriller is funny and dangerous. It’s an art film and a white-knuckler both at once. Available now on DVD, this is one fans of real movies need to see.

“Pan’s Labyrinth,” dir. Guillermo del Toro

American fans of genre films know Mexican director Guillermo del Toro for thrillers like “Mimic,” “Blade II,” and “Hellboy,” but those willing to dig a little deeper—i.e., read subtitles—may know his superb Spanish-language ghost story “The Devil’s Backbone.” Know it or not, you should see this new one. Set during the Spanish Civil War, it’s about a young girl who may have found a way to slip into a darker version of Alice’s Wonderland. Or who may just need fantasy as a way of escaping from the horrors of her life. It’s beautiful and grim at the same time, hopeful and tragic. If you despair of ever seeing a film fantasy that was made with adults in mind, give this one a shot.

“Blood Diamond,” dir. Edward Zwick
“Flags of Our Fathers,” dir. Clint Eastwood
“Thank You For Smoking,” dir. Jason Reitman
“Hollywoodland,” dir. Allen Coulter
“Casino Royale,” dir. Martin Campbell

And let me give a special nod to a picture I liked a lot although very few of my colleagues have had much nice to say about it. It’s Terry Zwigoff’s “Art School Confidential.” Give it a try.

Kathryn Jenson White's Best Films of 2006 / Oklahoma Gazette

2007-01-01T17:12:00.000-08:00

1. “Pan’s Labyrinth,” dir. Guillermo del Toro
My 3-D theory of the qualities of really good films — dark, disturbing and difficult — finds full realization in del Toro’s magical mystery tour of the human heart in both its most inspiring creative purity and its most dispiriting destructive corruption. The story is of a young girl seeking escape from the horrors of her personal life under the control of a stepfather who is a sadistic captain in Franco’s army. Her reality is mirrored in that of 1940s Spain and a guerrilla movement attempting to defeat Franco’s fascist forces. Ofelia seeks refuge from life’s horrors in the rich world of a child’s imagination as defined and fueled by fairy and folk tales. The film stuns with its vicious violence and recognition of the evil of which men are capable. It uplifts with its visual beauty and its equal recognition of the redemptive and restorative powers of love, art and the imagination.

2. “United 93,” dir. Paul Greengrass
To all those who have said this film came too soon after the horrific, based-on-reality story it depicts and that they could not/would not see it, I say, ‘You are wrong.’ Everyone should see this film. Greengrass takes a beautifully spare, almost documentary approach to exploring what happened on the 9/11 plane on which passengers nobly struggled to overcome their terror and stop the madmen in the cockpit from carrying out their hateful plan of destruction. The film pays heart-wrenching tribute to the human spirit. As the passengers rush the cockpit, no one watching can escape the piercing pain of the inevitable or the aching empathy of watching ordinary people respond with complete humanness in all its complexity to an extraordinary situation.

3. “The Departed,” dir. Martin Scorsese
With amazing performances from Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson as well as a rich, complex supporting cast, Scorsese’s film shows a master at work. This compellingly complicated, convoluted story of betrayal looks at love both noble and selfish and loyalty both admirable and misplaced. Based on the 2002 “Infernal Affairs,” a Hong Kong film directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, Scorsese’s re-visioning is as American as they come. Scorsese has moved from New York to Boston and expanded his cinematic world to include the family of law enforcement as well as the family of organized crime. The mob boy undercover as cop and the cop undercover as mob boy mirror each other in always surprising but never unbelievable ways. Nicholson is no cartoon joker as the baddest of the bad mob bosses; he’s flat-out scary.

4. “The Queen,” dir. Stephen Frears
Helen Mirren’s astonishing performance as Queen Elizabeth II elevates a fairly simple little character study of a film to something much more significant. As a grace note, it also makes human the seemingly cardboard figure who occupies the British throne. The queen of England owes Mirren big time; her husband, Prince Phillip, not so much. Using the death of Princess Diana in September 1977 as its fixed point, the film wanders around big political issues like governing as opposed to ruling and big personal ones like responding as a human rather than as an office or position or type. The stupidities of traditional behavior that no longer has relevance and the way slavish adherence to ideas can limit our abilities to be fully human are major concerns here. Frears takes them on boldly but not brashly.

4. “Little Miss Sunshine,” dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Who could not love Olive, the embodiment of the hopes and dreams we all have as children, the unspoiled innocent who believes, sincerely, the adult line about hard work leading to inevitable success, dreaming all that you can be and the rest of the hogwash generated by the American Dream-inspirational/motivational industry complex? Who could not equally love her dysfunctional family representing all the oddities of human behavior and absurdity of human interaction? A stellar ensemble of actors led by Abigail Breslin as Olive and including Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, Paul Dano and Steve Carell delivers unto us a family with flaws and follies with which we can all identify. One part theater of the absurd, one part slapstick comedy and two parts sincerely touching human story, “Little Miss Sunshine” is truly illuminating.

5. “Shut Up and Sing,” dir. Barbara Kopple
6. “Little Children,” dir. Todd Field
7. “Half Nelson,” dir. Ryan Fleck
8. “Volver,” dir. Pedro Almodóvar
9. “Notes on a Scandal,” dir. Richard Eyre
10. “Casino Royale,” dir. Martin Campbell

Gene Triplett's Best Movies of 2006 / The Oklahoman

2007-01-01T17:11:00.000-08:00

Four-star quality movies seemed few and far between in 2006, but there were enough gifted filmmakers getting the green light to make a foray to the multiplex worth the effort on a fairly frequent basis. Some of their works have yet to arrive in Oklahoma City, but patience will be rewarded. Ten of the best reasons for spending precious hours in the dark this year eating expensive stale popcorn soaked in fake butter were as follows:

1. "The Departed” — Martin Scorsese directs a high-caliber cast in this gripping, gritty crime drama of a good cop (Leonardo DiCaprio) working undercover within Boston's Irish-American mafia and a bad cop (Matt Damon) serving as the mob's mole in the upper ranks of the Massachusetts State Police, each seeking to discover the other's identity. Jack Nicholson's over-the-edge performance as the criminal mastermind who runs both their lives will make him a wanted man in the Oscar race, while Scorsese may be up for a long overdue payoff as well.

2. "Little Miss Sunshine” — A hopelessly dysfunctional family of oddballs discover the true definitions of winning and losing when their little girl is tapped as a pageant contestant, and they all rally behind her in a hilariously disastrous cross-country rush to get her to the contest on time. Uniformly excellent and engaging performances from an incredible ensemble cast (Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carrell, Alan Arkin) make this heart-grabbing comedy-drama from first-time feature directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris the most pleasant sleeper surprise of the year.

3. "Little Children” — Director Todd Field goes "In the Bedroom” again, this time for an intimate examination of desperate housewives and husbands and one pathetically doomed sex offender who lives uneasily among them in this complex and absorbing psychological study of illicit sex, dirty secrets and silent suffering in suburbia. Deftly adapted by Field and Tom Perrotta from Perrotta's novel, it is seamlessly acted by a choice ensemble cast including Kate Winslett, Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connelly and Jackie Earle Haley.

4. "The Queen” — Helen Mirren is majestic as Queen Elizabeth II, bravely weathering the storm of negative opinion that erupts when the proudly private royal family refuses to put on a public display of mourning over the death of Diana. Michael Sheen is also stalwart as Prime Minister Tony Blair, conjuring all his diplomatic skills to persuade Her Majesty that compromise is essential to the future of Buckingham Palace's residents. Stephen Frears' solid direction from Peter Morgan's smart script puts this film and its regal leading lady in line for some Oscar crowns.

5. "The Last King of Scotland” — As Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, Forest Whitaker is a raging, sweaty force of nature amid a harrowing historical thriller that's as blistering as the African heat. Under the direction of Kevin MacDonald, working from yet another royal writing exercise from "The Queen's” Peter Morgan (and Jeremy Brock), Whitaker plumbs the frightening depths of this playfully eccentric, murderous monster with fiery brilliance and courage. Another best-acting crown is due here, and the "King,” no doubt, will rule.

6. "World Trade Center” — Instead of the politically loaded, epic conspiracy tale many expected from Oliver Stone, the director's dramatization of 9/11 is an intimate, inspirational and deeply moving true story of courage, survival and heroism, told from the perspectives of two Port Authority Police officers (Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena) who were trapped beneath the rubble, the rescuers who risked everything to save them, and the families who waited in agony at home. Eschewing his usual operatic camera work and over-the-top storytelling, Stone points his lens where there was light on one of America's darkest days.

7. "The Prestige” — Writer-director Christopher Nolan ("Memento,” "Batman Begins”) pulls some awe-inspiring narrative and visual sleight-of-hand in this tale of two magicians (Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale) locked in a bitter war for supremacy on the stages of Victorian-era London. Steeped in the shadowy atmospherics of the gaslight period, Nolan and co-writing brother Jonathan's story of obsession, deceit and jealousy thoroughly mesmerizes and doesn't miss a suspenseful trick. And watch out for David Bowie, who makes one of the most electrifying entrances of the year as real-life mad scientist Nikola Tesla.

8. "Miss Potter” — Renee Zellweger sparkles in this biopic of Beatrix Potter, the early 20th century author and painter who created "The Tale of Peter Rabbit” and some of the best-selling children's books of all time in an era when young women of the British upper class were expected to "marry well” and make a home. As told by director Chris Noonan and screenwriter Richard Maltby Jr., Potter's story is as enchanting as her animal tales, from her family-defying romance with a young publisher (Ewan McGregor) to her preservation efforts in England's Lake District, which fill the screen in breathtaking, painterly fashion. Potter's drawings frequently come to animated life, enhancing this irresistible charmer even more.

9. "Pan's Labyrinth” — Writer-director Guillermo del Toro fashions a grim yet wondrous fairy tale of young Ofelia (a hypnotic Ivana Baquero), who endures the brutal realities of post-war Spain's fascist regime and the unspeakable cruelties of her stepfather (Sergi Lopez) by escaping into a dark dreamworld of her own. The violence is often shocking, but the grotesque creatures and surreal effects conjured in Ofelia's private fable are visually arresting, and the devastating denouement in this war between innocence and evil leaves a lastingly haunting impression.

10. "Superman Returns” — Director Bryan Singer's towering take on the Man of Steel purposely plays just like a sequel to Richard Donner's 1978 original, from the swooping opening credits and high-gloss production to Brandon Routh's uncanny resemblance to the late Christopher Reeve, nailing the voice, mild mannerisms and heroic demeanor with super-human accuracy. And all of that is fine, since the Donner-Reeve collaboration was the only entry in the series to get it right. Once again, you'll believe a man can fly.

George Lang's Best Movies of 2006 / The Oklahoman

2007-01-01T17:10:00.000-08:00

In 2006, cinematic triumphs were less obvious than they were the previous year. The best films were ones that succeeded against odds and expectations. The chorus of "are we ready?” hand-wringing by political and social pundits over "United 93” gave way to a film that defied preconceptions. Similarly, the online movement to defame Daniel Craig on the eve of his first appearance as James Bond was proved to be premature and painfully inaccurate. This was also a year when, more than ever, finding great films often meant treading far from the multiplex and hoping against all odds that great but unheralded films would even have a one-week stand in town.

The following list of great 2006 films splits neatly down the middle between easy-to-find, undeniably great mainstream releases and films that almost required a spelunking excursion to see.

1. "United 93” — Paul Greengrass' towering achievement in cinema verite not only respected the memories of those who died Sept. 11, 2001, but captured the confusion and horror of that day in an uncompromising and harrowing real-time account. Greengrass ("Bloody Sunday,” "The Bourne Supremacy”) made "United 93” with New York stage actors and an impressive cast of airline, military and air traffic control personnel who contribute to the film's stark realism. It is "the impossible documentary,” a flawlessly executed story that could pass for nonfiction if not for the horrible knowledge that such a film could never have been made.

2. "Casino Royale” — By jettisoning the techno frippery of the franchise's past several entries, boiling the character down to his original essence, actually bothering to tell a compelling spy story and following through with the inspired casting of Daniel Craig as James Bond, "Casino Royale” became the first 007 film in more than three decades that truly mattered. Craig is phenomenal, infusing the role with raw wit and energy, and Eva Green as Vesper Lynd was the anti-"Bond girl,” an intellectual match for the spy who loved her.

3. "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” — It made sense that Sacha Baron Cohen chose "Curb Your Enthusiasm” director Larry Charles to helm this brutally funny, taboo-incinerating "mockumentary” about a deeply racist and disarmingly genial Kazakhstani TV reporter's disastrous American odyssey. Like "Curb,” "Borat” is so painful to watch because it cuts so close to people's most unseemly attitudes. Even the most jaded viewer will watch through splayed fingers — a sociological horror film.

4. "Superman Returns” — An epic reclamation project that thoroughly restored luster to the Man of Steel, Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns” succeeded as an homage to Richard Donner's "Superman: the Movie” and as a throwback to a time when summer blockbusters had to tell good stories, not just inundate audiences with visual spectacle. Looking as if he were engineered in a lab from Christopher Reeve's DNA, Brandon Routh captured the mythical burden of Superman and the light humor of his terrestrial alter-ego, and Singer directed with an honest affection for the hero and with genuine belief that the world needs Superman.

5. "The Last King of Scotland” — No other 2006 performance was as searingly believable as Forest Whitaker's portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland.” In this historical fiction told through the eyes of an idealistic young Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) who becomes Amin's most trusted confidant, Whitaker exudes the charisma that brought Amin to power and the psychotic bloodlust that sustained him. In "The Last King of Scotland,” he is the best friend who will give you everything, then turn on a dime and kill you to get it all back.

6. "Pan's Labyrinth” — Guillermo del Toro's unsettling fantasy "Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno)” returns the fairy tale to the adult realm in the story about a young Spanish girl who, after her widowed mother marries a fascist military officer, disappears into a frightening but mesmerizing netherworld. Del Toro's visuals are the essence of the most baroque nightmares, and "Pan's Labyrinth” is impossible to shake.

7. "Thank You for Smoking” — Writer-director Jason Reitman's debut improves on Christopher Buckley's comic novel about Nick Naylor, an unapologetically ruthless and rhetorically gifted spokesman for Big Tobacco. Aaron Eckhart's career-defining performance as Naylor could carry the film even if he weren't so ably abetted by fine performances from Maria Bello, David Koech-ner and a surprisingly great cameo from Rob Lowe as an egocentric, Asia-obsessed film producer.

8. "Little Children” — For his follow-up to "In the Bedroom,” director Todd Field delved into black-comic suburban malaise for "Little Children,” a film that makes "Desperate Housewives” look like "Spongebob Squarepants.” At turns darkly funny and just plain disturbing, the melodrama of infidelity and dark urges showcases the luminous talent of Kate Winslet as frustrated and straying housewife Sarah Pierce. But it also features a star turn by former child actor Jackie Earle Haley as convicted sex offender Ronald James McGorvey, a character whose inner repugnance surfaces to topple every furtive attempt at normalcy.

9. "Venus” — Peter O'Toole delivers his best performance in years as Maurice, an elderly actor who would still be a playboy if his corporeal self wasn't failing him. It is a brave, beautiful role in which a man at the end of his life invests the last of his taste and libido in a young woman (Jodie Whittaker) who scarcely deserves his ministrations yet benefits greatly from his attention and experience.

10. "Notes on a Scandal” — Screenwriter/playwright Patrick Marber ("Closer”) is a master at feel-bad morality tales, and "Notes on a Scandal” takes Lifetime TV movie material — a spinster blackmails a young teacher caught having sex with one of her students — and transforms it into a story worthy of Greek tragedy. Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench offer intense performances in a film that hurdles toward human disaster and then becomes ever bleaker.

Matthew Price's Best Movies of 2006 / The Oklahoman

2007-01-01T17:06:00.000-08:00

New faces on familiar heroes headlined 2006's top movies. Others of the year's top films found themselves in Mexico, in Uganda and even in the head of a mystery writer.

1. "Superman Returns” — Bryan Singer's respectful tribute to the Man of Steel was 2006's best endeavor. With a perfectly cast Brandon Routh, "Superman” soared with an exciting, engaging storyline that worked on a number of levels. Superman takes on new poignance in today's unsafe world, as he returns from space after seeking his home planet. Mixing spiritual allegory, cultural context and thrilling action, "Superman Returns” is a modern blockbuster that isn't afraid to respect the past.

2. "Casino Royale” — Despite complaints about the "blond Bond,” Daniel Craig proved a bulldog of a special agent in "Casino Royale,” an adaptation of the first 007 novel by Ian Fleming. "Casino Royale” takes a look at James Bond's first mission as a 00 agent and gives insight into how he becomes the cool, calculating superspy. Eschewing high-tech gadgetry for the most part, Craig's Bond brings the series closer in line with Fleming's original character, yet updates it for a post-Cold War society.

3. "The Last King of Scotland” — "The Last King of Scotland” follows the rule of Uganda's Idi Amin, through the eyes of a (fictional) Scottish doctor who becomes a close confidant of the dictator. Both brutal and charming, Amin manages to excite and terrorize his subjects. "King of Scotland” is recommended viewing for those interested in a portrayal of political power gone awry. Forest Whitaker, as Amin, delivers an Oscar-worthy performance.

4. "Volver” — Pedro Almodovar's "Volver” features a strong performance from Penelope Cruz as Raimunda. With echoes of "Vertigo,” Raimunda returns to her home village to find her aged aunt Paula speaking of Raimunda's deceased mother, Irene, as if she is still alive. When Paula dies shortly after, Irene begins appearing to other members of the family. The earthy, vibrant film showcases mothers and daughters and their relationships throughout their lives. The film does have some telenovela-style melodrama, but excellent performances throughout keep the movie entirely engaging. The title "Volver,” meaning "to return,” works on a number of levels.

5. "Pan's Labyrinth” — Directed by Guillermo del Toro ("Hellboy”), "Pan's Labrynth” is a visually sumptuous fantasy with the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) has gone with her pregnant mother to live on a rural military outpost commanded by her cruel stepfather (Sergi Lopez). She escapes her surroundings by delving into a fantasy world, where she must face monsters to claim her true heritage.

6. "Babel” — The latest from director Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu demands a lot from its audience but pays off in great performances, particularly from newcomer Rinko Kikuchi. Unfolding like a puzzle, the intertwined tales feature a young woman shot in Morocco, her children in Mexico, and a young Chinese girl dealing with her mother's death.

7. "Stranger Than Fiction” — Will Ferrell is IRS agent Harold Crick, who begins hearing the voice of a narrator describing his daily events. Harold discovers he's a character in someone else's story — and he must move quickly to avoid his own death.

8. "Hollywoodland” — Adrien Brody plays a private investigator looking into the death of TV's Superman, George Reeves (Ben Affleck), in this period piece. Affleck provides a nuanced performance as an actor who finds himself unable to escape his circumstances. Diane Lane is excellent as Toni Mannix, Reeves' older girlfriend who is married to a high-ranking movie executive.

9. "Little Miss Sunshine” — A quirky look into a dysfunctional family, whose youngest is set to compete in California's "Little Miss Sunshine” pageant. Greg Kinnear is true to form as a slightly slimy self-help guru, who could use some self-help himself. Steve Carrell turns in an understated performance as a near-suicidal professor who is "the nation's foremost authority on Proust.” It builds slowly but inescapably toward an embarrassing but hilarious climax.

10. "Little Children” — An outstanding performance by Kate Winslet highlights this adaptation of the Tom Perotta novel. As a sleepy neighborhood sparks with anger at a sex offender moving in, the quiet desperation of a suburban mother, played by Winslet, pushes her into an affair with an attractive stay-at-home dad (Patrick Wilson). Director Todd Field reveals uncomfortable truths about each character in this social drama; many viewers may also find uncomfortable reflections of themselves.

"The Good Shepherd," dir. Robert DeNiro (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-12-31T19:48:00.000-08:00

In fictionalizing the early days of the Central Intelligence Agency, “The Good Shepherd” dares comparison to a slew of great espionage flicks from past decades. To me, however, the movie it most aspires to be isn’t about spies at all, “The Godfather.” That isn’t to say that “The Good Shepherd” is a masterpiece, but its epic tale of secrets, deception and divided loyalties bears the sweep and depth of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic.

No wonder, then, that “The Good Shepherd” is co-produced by Coppola and directed by Robert DeNiro, who earned an Oscar for 1974’s “Godfather, Part II” in 1974. Hey, if you’ve got to model yourself after something, it might as well be the best.

The provocateur protagonist of “Good Shepherd,” Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), is the quintessential CIA spook. A buttoned-up Yale man and member of its elite Skull and Bones secret society, he is recruited in 1940 to help build a secret foreign intelligence operation in anticipation of the United States’ entry into World War II. Edward’s laconic, guarded nature makes him ideal for the job. He accepts the government’s offer, especially after he is forced into a shotgun marriage with a society girl (Angelina Jolie) he barely knows.

Edward goes to work, first in London, where he learns the spy trade from a scholarly British agent (Michael Gambon), and later in post-war Berlin. Spanning from the dawn of the Cold War to the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, Edward’s experiences provide a tableau for “The Good Shepherd’s” sharp and involving history of American espionage. DeNiro captures a pitch-perfect tone, from Robert Richardson’s solemn cinematography to a languorous pace that allows this universe of secrets and lies to percolate with intrigue.

Light and shadow are revealed through small details. A character’s seemingly innocuous comment or action can later take on critical meanings; alert moviegoers are likely to find themselves sizing up character right along with Edward. Despite the film’s lengthy running time (167 minutes), the screenplay by Eric Roth (“Munich”) has precious little flab.

Perhaps DeNiro’s considerable acting chops helped spur great performances. Whatever the reason, “The Good Shepherd” uses its star-studded cast to great effect. Jolie, Gambon, DeNiro and John Turturro are memorable in supporting roles, and Tammy Blanchard is heartbreaking as Edward’s college sweetheart.

But this is Matt Damon’s movie all the way. Quiet but with eyes flashing intelligence, he is devastating as a man who sacrifices a personal life for one without trust or intimacy. In fact, the picture’s success at breathing life into Edward Wilson proves to be a double-edged sword. It is difficult for a story to follow a reserved, emotionally remote protagonist without becoming reserved and emotionally remote in the process.

That’s the thing with ambitious projects: Sometimes you stumble. “The Good Shepherd,” whatever its missteps, has ambition to spare. Epic in scope and provocative in execution, the movie is a compelling examination of Cold War-era espionage. The Cold War is over, but the saga of Edward Wilson feels curiously relevant today, in the wake of faulty CIA intelligence on WMDs and questions about where interrogation ends and torture begins.

"The History Boys," dir. Nicholas Hytner (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-12-27T12:03:00.000-08:00

Caveat, cinephile: While you will find much to admire in Nicholas Hytner’s film version of Alan Bennett’s many-award-winning 2004 play, “The History Boys,” you might well, as do I, also find that with which to take exception.

First, that to admire. One of England’s most popular playwrights, Bennett is a writer of wit and emotional insight. The themes in this story of a diverse group of boys at a Yorkshire grammar school working for admission to Cambridge or Oxford are unimpeachable in their wisdom.

In teachers Hector (Richard Griffiths) and Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), Bennett sets up two opposing approaches to education and comes down heavily on the side of learning for learning’s sake. He scorns the idea of education as a mere means to the end of career success or financial security.

Middle-aged Hector, a portly, impassioned spouter of poetry and lover of lines from melodramatic films, sees learning in the arts and humanities as a never-ending process of life enrichment and character development.

Younger, thinner, hipper Irwin sees education as a tool to achieve goals, the most immediate of which here is acceptance at either Cambridge or Oxford. Irwin teaches strategy, how to spin what one knows and manipulate responses in entrance interviews and on exams to make of oneself a product one of the two prestigious schools will want. What one knows doesn’t matter as much as how one can use it to advance in life.

Hytner also directed the original play, and his filmed version of it is funny and touching and clever almost without pause. Most of the film’s cast comes from that stage production. Griffiths won an Olivier, the British equivalent of a Tony, for his performance. Although their characters are all clearly types — the thick-headed athletic one, the selfish handsome one, the sensitive gay artistic one, etc. — the actors are appealing and, for the most part, believable.

Now, the exception. Set in the homoerotic context of the British all-male grammar school tradition, “The History Boys” explores the sexual tensions inherent in boyish crushes on teachers and the difficulties to which denial of one’s sexuality can lead. No problem.

However, Hector daily takes a different one of his beloved pupils for a ride on the back of his motorbike so he can fondle the boy’s genitals. Problem. A teacher touching a 17- or even 18-year-old student sexually, no matter how vital a life force that teacher represents, just isn’t acceptable. If Hector were a straight man and the student a female, all would be outraged.

Irwin, too, struggles mightily with the desire to have a sexual relationship with a pupil. Problem. In a stagy final scene looking forward to what the boys become as men, the openly gay student explains that now a grammar-school teacher himself, he daily fights the urge to touch his boys. PROBLEM. Suggesting gay men struggle with unceasing desire for young boys feeds a dangerous stereotype unfairly linking homosexuality with pedophilia.

Bennett has expressed in various places his conflicted feelings about his sexual orientation. They show here, and they do harm.

Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Announces 2006 Awards

2006-12-24T08:36:00.000-08:00

The Oklahoma Film Critics Circle has announced its annual awards for the best and worst in film for 2006.

“This year saw Oklahoma’s film critics for the first time working as a group in deciding awards on a statewide level,” said Kathryn Jenson White, film critic for the Oklahoma Gazette and founding president of the critics’ organization. “We created OFCC in February 2006 so that we could work together to promote film and increase the visibility of Oklahoma’s film viewing community among filmmakers and studios. The film critics of Oklahoma see all the major films of any given year and write hundreds of reviews of them as individuals. They also choose their best-of-the-year films for their individual media outlets. These awards represent our consensus.”

Representing print outlets in Oklahoma with consistently active film critics — the Oklahoma Gazette, The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, Urban Tulsa Weekly, The Norman Transcript and The Edmond Sun — OFCC has 12 voting members.

“The voting was intense in this our first year,” Jenson White said. “While Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Departed’ and Paul Greengrass’ ‘United 93’ were clear favorites, the tally for the rest of the films we nominated for our Top 10 list included many great films just under those that got the most votes. The performance categories were particularly strong in 2006, with only two votes separating Helen Mirren’s amazing depiction of Queen Elizabeth II in “The Queen” from Judi Dench’s wonderful turn in ‘Notes on a Scandal.’ The Best First Feature category was also hotly contested, with the film that came in second to ‘Little Miss Sunshine,’ ‘Thank You for Smoking,’ gathering passionate support.”

While 2006 ended as a strong year for fine films and outstanding performances, the news wasn’t all good. OFCC critics named 27 films as contenders for Obvious Worst Film of the Year and another 25 for Not-So-Obvious Worst Film of the Year.

“As professional moviegoers, we can’t choose to see just the films we want to, of course, so all our members see many failed films,” Jenson White said. “And although we agree on many films, all of us also have individualized tastes. While ‘Borat’ made our Top 10 list, several of our voting members placed it on one of their worst film nomination slates. ‘Superman Returns’ and ‘Shut Up and Sing’ had champions, but not quite enough votes to make the best list. The Not-So-Obvious Worst Film category contains films that, like this year’s choice, ‘Bobby,’ tried nobly but failed, and films that had many good qualities but some element a critic considered a fatal flaw.”

Not all of 2006’s films opened in Oklahoma before voting for the year’s best took place, although studios provided press screenings and DVDs of many of their films so critics could assess and consider them for year-end awards.

“One of our goals with these awards is to help studios understand that enough Oklahomans love good film to make it worth their while to open films here,” Jenson White said. “We aren’t a major market, but we have a dedicated group of cinephiles in the state who hunger to see the best films made each year.”

OKLAHOMA FILM CRITICS CIRCLE 2006 FILM AWARDS

Top 10 Movies
“Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”
“Casino Royale”
“The Departed”
“Half Nelson”
“The Last King of Scotland”
“Little Children”
“Little Miss Sunshine”
“Pan’s Labyrinth”
“The Queen”
“United 93”

Best Film
“United 93,” dir. Paul Greengrass

Best Director
“Martin Scorsese, “The Departed”

Best First Film
“Little Miss Sunshine,” dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

Obviously Worst Film
“Basic Instinct 2,” dir. Michael Caton-Jones

Not So Obviously Worst Film
“Bobby,” dir. Emilio Estevez

Best Actor
Forest Whitaker, “The Last King of Scotland”

Best Actress
Helen Mirren, “The Queen”

Best Supporting Actor
Jackie Earle Haley, “Little Children”

Best Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, “Notes on a Scandal”

Breakout Performance
Jennifer Hudson, “Dreamgirls”

Best Documentary
“An Inconvenient Truth,” dir. Davis Guggenheim

Best Foreign Film
“Pan’s Labyrinth,” dir. Guillermo del Toro

Best Animated Feature
“Cars,” dir. John Lasseter and Joe Ranft

CONTACT:
Kathryn Jenson White
President
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle
405.820.3438 (cell)
405.366.1696

"The Pursuit of Happyness," dir. Gabrielle Muccino (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-12-20T14:28:00.000-08:00

Gabriele Muccino’s “The Pursuit of Happyness” so trumpets its uplifting message that whatever subtlety this story of a man’s triumph over adversity might have had gets drowned out in the fanfare. In fact, the title of this teachy/preachy film might just as well have been “The Happyness of Positive Thinking” or “Happyness of Closing the Sale” or even “Chris Gardner’s Pluck,” a nod to the American-dream writing machine who gave repeated fictional voice to what Norman Vincent Peale and Zig Ziglar later made marketable as a commodity: inspirational stories of those who grab the brass ring because of their hard work, faith and determination.

The Italian Muccino directs his first English-language film with a plodding literalism that proves, as it has in many such films, that too much solemn inspiration leads to the expiration of a film’s aesthetic spirit. In an attempt to lighten the lesson’s otherwise unremittingly leaden load of “I think I can, I think I can,” Muccino weaves a running joke involving hippies throughout the plot, but the humor is tone deaf. Equally inharmonious is the film’s self-referentially cute final moment.

Will Smith stars as Chris Gardner, a very wealthy San Francisco stockbroker whose rags-to- riches story — like that phrase — has cliché written all over it. The story is true, however, or at least has the Stephen Colbert-coined quality of “truthiness,” as close as Hollywood generally comes to what really happened under the rubric of “Inspired by a true story” or “Based on a true story.”

In the scripted version of Gardner’s life, we meet him as he is bottoming out financially in ’80s San Francisco — bad years for the economy as Reagan reigned and his trickle down theory led to an economic drought for many in the working and middle classes. Gardner’s wife (Thandie Newton), fed up with the salesman’s failure to support the family, leaves him and their 5-year-old son (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, Will Smith’s son). Gardner asks a man driving a very expensive red sports car what he does for a living. The man tells him he has found the Holy Hot Wheels by being a knight of the stock market.

Gardner undertakes a grueling six-month quest (an unpaid internship at Dean Witter Reynolds) to become a true knight. Along the way he slays the dragons of homelessness and jousts with despair. Because he is pure of heart — spoiler alert (just kidding) — he succeeds.

How close the film’s story is to Gardner’s actual experience is, of course, irrelevant. How close watching this film is to reading the advice in a Franklin Covey planner isn’t. Both the Smiths and Newton deliver solid, believable performances that result in a few true emotional moments. The social commentary on how close many in America are to homelessness rings just as true today as it did during the morning in America years.

Gardner’s real-life achievement is undeniably impressive. Combined, however, these grace notes don’t come together in a stirring symphony of the triumph of the human spirit. If Muccino had turned down the trumpets, they might well have done.

“Déjà Vu,” dir. Tony Scott (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-12-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

Past Mistakes

Living in the past tends to work out better in art than in real life. In moviedom, time travel has long been irresistible, a literal pastime ripe with the stuff of great stories – tragedy and romance, fate and existential crisis. As such, it’s all the more baffling that the action-thriller “Déjà Vu” manages to seem so bloodless.

Denzel Washington stars as Doug Carlin, a sharp-eyed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agent looking into the bombing of a New Orleans ferryboat. In the course of his investigation, Doug discovers that the corpse of a woman, Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton), has been found washed ashore in a neighboring parish. The body, covered in burns and the residue of explosives, appears to be one of the ferry victims.

Trouble is, Claire’s body was found an hour before the explosion. Doug concludes that the woman’s killer must be the bomber, and that solving Claire’s murder will lead him to the terrorist.

From this tantalizing mystery, “Déjà Vu” disappears down a rabbit hole of strained ideas. Doug is enlisted by an FBI agent (Val Kilmer) to help scan video recorded from a cockamamie device that can show everything in a specified location, and from multiple angles. The only drawback is that the data, ostensibly integrated from satellites, can only reveal what has occurred four days earlier. It isn’t long before Doug learns that the real explanation for what he’s seeing involves string theory, wormholes and the like.

Despite its sci-fi leanings, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced “Déjà Vu” is grounded in modern-day American disaster. The New Orleans location, of course, reveals a Katrina-ravaged metropolis, while the ferry explosion recalls the World Trade Center attack as well as the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. Oklahoma City, in fact, is referenced by Doug and his colleagues as a kind of shorthand for a shared tragedy -- sort of what Chinatown was to the 1974 detective film of the same name.

“Déjà Vu” must have looked great on paper, an action-thriller with a kick of mind-bending time travel. Alas, time-travel flicks invariably suffer from gaping lapses in logic. The successful ones (think “12 Monkeys” or even “Back to the Future”) overcome such handicaps by highlighting the romanticism of the exercise. But “Déjà Vu” fails to muster much humanity. Tony Scott’s direction is muscular but soulless. Like a speck of dirt on a white glove, the movie’s slickness makes it easier to spot the plot holes, none of which can really be discussed here without spoilers.

Inspired moments are compromised when the story can’t withstand even mild scrutiny. No one can deny the giddy fun of a chase involving an ATF agent and the phantom image of a car from four days earlier -- but it makes no sense, not even in the convoluted ground rules set up by “Déjà Vu.”

Still, truly bodacious movies deserve some praise. Mainstream Hollywood movies are not exactly renowned for taking risks, and so a flick willing to do so -- however flawed -- is worth an attaboy or two.

"Stranger Than Fiction," dir. Marc Forster (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-12-04T07:38:00.000-08:00

Literary Device

Recently a friend of mine was reading a bedtime story to his four-year-old daughter when she blindsided him with a question. Did the characters in the story, she demanded to know, realize they were in a book?

Good question. My friend was stumped.

That sort of query likely inspired novice screenwriter Zach Helm to pen “Stranger Than Fiction,” which imagines what would happen if a flesh-and-blood man discovered that he was in a work of literature.

At first blush, one might assume the movie is the creation of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Adaptation”) Hollywood’s reigning master of absurdity. But this film plays more like Kaufman Lite. While Helm and director Marc Forster (“Finding Neverland”) have devised a plot that M.C. Escher would have loved, “Stranger Than Fiction” is more interested in tugging heartstrings than blowing minds.

Will Ferrell finally graduates from raucous comedy to quirky leading man as IRS agent Harold Crick, a painfully straight arrow who leads a painfully solitary existence. As an omniscient female narrator tells us, Harold eats alone, washes the dishes alone and sleeps alone. In the morning, he counts brushstrokes while brushing his teeth.

Soon we learn that this narrator also happens to be audible to Harold Crick. The internal voice starts to drive him batty, especially when he is sent to audit a free-spirited baker, Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), to whom he is strongly attracted.

The voiceover strikes an ominous tone after Harold resets his wristwatch and asks a stranger for the correct time. “Little did he know,” intones the narrator, “that this seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death.”

Afraid he has somehow been ensnared by fiction, Harold seeks help from a literary professor (Dustin Hoffman). The professor advises that Harold’s best hope for self-preservation might be to try ensuring that his story is a comedy. There’s only one hitch; Harold is trapped in tragedy. His author, Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) is renowned for killing off her main characters. Fortunately for Harold, she is paralyzed by writer’s block, unsure of how to snuff out her newest protagonist.

Ferrell gets to flex his acting chops here, playing a character so perversely guarded that even his apartment is an exercise in drabness. The entire cast shines. Thompson is terrifically neurotic as the chain-smoking novelist, and Gyllenhaal and Hoffman are typically excellent. Only Queen Latifah seems wasted in a pointless role as Kay’s assistant.

“Stranger Than Fiction” poses rarified questions about fiction, but in the end it’s a genuinely sentimental tale that revels in the pleasures of the real world. As Harold resolves to live the life he’s always wanted, “Stranger Than Fiction” finds much to love -- timeless literature, Fender Stratocasters and, in one memorable scene, milk and cookies. Such joys receive an ample boost from a stellar post-punk soundtrack that features Spoon and the Jam.

The movie also celebrates great storytelling. For all its winking postmodernist vibe, “Stranger Than Fiction” is a real crowd-pleaser. It toys with art and reality, but ultimately acknowledges that both realms have very different responsibilities.

"For Your Consideration," dir. Christopher Guest (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-11-29T14:47:00.000-08:00

Christopher Guest’s brilliance in conceiving of, writing, acting in and — with the exception of the first — directing four previous mock documentaries — “This is Spinal Tap” (1984), “Waiting for Guffman,” (1996), “Best in Show” (2000) and “A Mighty Wind,” (2003) — dims a bit in 2006’s “For Your Consideration,” but it still sparkles sporadically even in this lesser effort about a subject many might not find as compelling as he does.

A genius at opening closed systems to intense scrutiny and hilarious parody, Guest moved through rock music, community theater, dog shows and folk music before taking on film awards, a subject already so absurd as to be, perhaps, beyond the reach of parody. No matter the stated subject, however, Guest’s real focus is always a humanistic take on the seminal text of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Director, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

While the Preacher who speaks the words in the Bible takes on the bigger existential futility of human endeavor, the Director tackles the experiential foolishness of it all. In the films leading to “For Your Consideration,” the hits come fast and furious with little time for reflection. In this film, the pace is different and — this may not be a good thing — there is pathos I don’t remember in the others.

The pacing problem affects about the first half of the movie. Once the steam builds, this train wreck in the making becomes very funny; as Guest is shoveling on the coal, however, the laughs are sparse.

When the humor does start to build, that pathos frequently applies the brakes. Marilyn Hack (Catherine O’Hara) and Victor Allan Miller (Harry Shearer) are stars of a D-grade film called “Home for Purim” and veterans who have put in 30 to 40 years as struggling actors. Absurdly, someone posts on a blog that Hack’s performance deserves Oscar consideration. Neither Hack nor Miller has any sense of what the Internet is or how it works; neither does their clueless publicist (John Michael Higgins). Old media thinking about new media information is a disaster.

Desperate for recognition, three of the four stars of “Home for Purim” ultimately get sucked into the horror of hoping for an Oscar nomination. The third is Callie Webb (Parker Posey), a younger actor. As their publicist tries to convert the virtual into actual, all three become ever more emotionally vulnerable. While Posey suggests the real need behind her character’s silliness, Shearer and, especially, O’Hara play their emotional nakedness a bit too realistically for parody. Posey elicits sympathy and Shearer a gentle sadness. O’Hara, however, makes us pity Hack. Pity and parody don’t play well together.

That said, Guest does a great job skewering insipid shows like “Entertainment Tonight” and pretentious ones like “Inside the Actors Studio,” taking down ill-prepared television people asking pointless questions during publicity spots and driving home the absurdity of a thumbs-up/thumbs-down approach to judging films.

To everything there is an awards season, sayeth the Director. I’m just not sure how many non-cinephiles will care.

"Let's Go to Prison" dir. Bob Odenkirk (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-11-22T14:42:00.000-08:00

Doing 84-minutes of maximum security time watching Bob Odenkirk’s “Let’s Go to Prison” has turned me into a hardened critic: I’d kill someone before I let him or her put me back into any joint showing it.

Face it, prison comedy isn’t a strong genre.

Remember Sidney Poitier’s 1980 “Stir Crazy,” starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder and, even worse, Ted Demme’s 1999 “Life” starring Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy? This film, built around the inherently funny idea of prison rape, pretends it’s satirizing the prison justice system for its complicity in making career criminals out of young offenders. It isn’t. Narration lines like, “It costs $54 a day to keep a person in prison. When you think about it, wouldn’t it be cheaper just to let us keep your car stereos?” suggest the film has a social point to make. It doesn’t. It’s just playing homophobia, racism, sexual assault, murder, white supremacy, gang behavior, bureaucratic cruelty and human brutality for laughs. Amused yet?

The revenge plot centers on John Lyshitski (Dax Shepard, “Employee of the Month”), who ends up in the first of three incarcerations for stealing the Publisher’s Clearinghouse van. The 8-year-old gets caught trying to cash the big cardboard check. His next two crimes land him in front of the same judge. When Lyshitski emerges from the third prison stay, the now vaguely 20-something decides to kill the man who has sentenced him so unfeelingly because, he believes, it’s the judge’s fault that he’s become the loser he is.

Here’s where the film gets really funny. The judge dies before Lyshitski can off him. Not to be stymied, he sets up the judge’s son, Nelson Biederman IV (Will Arnett, “Arrested Development”), so that he ends up in prison. Obnoxious rich boy Nelson’s license plate reads “Nelly 1,” a piece of visual/verbal wit almost as clever as the poster with the film’s title carved into a bar of soap on a shower floor. I’ll bet the writers tossed around at least once the idea of naming Arnett’s character Ben Dover before coming up with the sidesplitting Nelly idea. Not satisfied with just sending the innocent to the slammer, Lyshitski gets himself sent back so he can make hell hell for Nelson.

The hilarity really starts to kick in now. This burly, bass-talking black man named Barry (Chi McBride, “The Nine”) approaches Nelly in the shower and asks, “So what’s a beautiful white boy like you doing in a place like this?” A sensitive soul, he romantically woos Nelson rather than roughly raping him, and they become — I thought I’d die laughing — partners not in crime, but — Spoiler Alert — in wine. In the end — as the wits who wrote this might say — everyone lives happily ever after.

Almost as hysterical as the film is its official Web site. On it, you can explore all sorts of interactive prison-related activities like, “What Kind of Prisoner Are You?” and “Scratch Tattoo Parlor.”

I was sentenced to review “Let’s Go to Prison.” You have a choice. Don’t make the bad decisions I made. Stay free.

"A Good Year," dir. Ridley Scott (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-11-15T14:38:00.000-08:00

“A Good Year” isn’t a very good film, but it seems a calculatedly good career choice for bad-boy Russell Crowe as an image-correcting vehicle. In it, he plays a bastard who finds his inner good guy through the love of a good woman, some good friends and a good glass of wine. That this transformation takes place in the Edenic glow of the softly golden sunlight bathing a vineyard in Provence, France, adds an almost sacred aura to this utterly earthbound story of redemption.

The Ridley Scott (“Gladiator,” “Black Hawk Down”) film is based on Peter Mayle’s 2004 novel of the same name — one of at least 10 Mayle books celebrating the south of France where the British author, himself, found not only a new life but a new career as the best-selling chronicler of this magical place: Monsieur Mayle, c’est Provence.

The magic of place makes it to the screen in the cinematography, but the story is an old trick. Ruthless bond trader Max Skinner (Russell Crowe) is a man who shags all the beautiful women and screws all his fellow traders. When his lusty, earthy Uncle Henry (Albert Finney) dies, Skinner inherits his chateau and vineyard in Provence. Through a variety of lesson-teaching flashbacks to boyhood summers spent with Henry that are about as subtle as Annie Green Springs and, once he leaves gray, wet London for golden, dry Provence, a series of human interactions about as complex as Ripple, Skinner becomes a better man. We know this primarily because he shucks his perfectly fitted bespoke charcoal suit and slips into light, loose linen in soft hues. He still shags the beauties and screws the bondies, but with better humor and more sincerity.

“A Good Year” falls into a group of films easy to write about for a specific reason: A critic cannot even inadvertently introduce spoilers into her reviews because these films have no surprises to give away. It has, shall we say, a deep bouquet of cliché.
As Skinner, Crowe has little charm. His attempts to show that beneath the bespoke is a decent, somewhat goofy guy come across as signals of the plot set-up rather than signs of a truly complex man.

Finney suffices as the wise old uncle, but he doesn’t have a lot to work with. Even a great actor seems less so when decanting clichéd words of wisdom. The women who help Skinner find his inner vintner make up an international bevy of beauties but provide little depth: Australian Abbie Cornish as American Christie, who may be Max’s cousin; French Marion Cotillard as Fanny Chantal, a childhood playmate who planted the seeds of redemption she now nurtures; and Italian Valeria Bruni Tedeshi as the notaire handling the legalities of the inheritance.

The film’s only two performances with legs are those of Freddie Highmore (“Neverland”) as young Max and Archie Panjabi (“A Constant Gardner,” “Bend it Like Beckham”) as Gemma, Max’s whipsmart assistant.

You’ll not find much veritas in this film about vino: Regrettably, this bottle is corked.

"The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause," dir. Michael Lembeck (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-11-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

Question: What to say about a holiday movie that gives the flatulence joke seemingly required in all commercial-grade children’s movies to one of Santa’s reindeer? Answer: Are you #$*!ing kidding me?

Sadly, an animatronic Comet passing gas may be the freshest moment in “The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause,” the repetitively titled and redundantly stale third installment in what is, clearly, an eternal seasonal franchise destined to produce ever less funny chapters in the story of the ordinary man who became Father Christmas in John Pasquin’s 1994 “The Santa Clause.”

While not hilarious, Pasquin’s film had its amusing moments in both concept and execution. Michael Lembeck, a television director who helmed “The Santa Clause 2” and is now responsible for “Santa Clause 3,” produces no such moments in the third film. On my Christmas list for 2002 was “Not to see ‘The Santa Clause 2’; St. Nick gave me what I asked for, so I can’t speak to the first sequel’s value. A check of rottentomatoes.com, however, shows critics on that site gave the 1994 film a 75 percent positive rating and the 2002 outing 55 percent. FYI, at press time, they had given the third 11 percent.

The most recent film, from which many in the audience will want to escape, begins as Carol Calvin/Mrs. Clause (Elizabeth Miller), the second, much younger wife of Scott Calvin/Santa Clause (Tim Allen), is about to give birth to their child.

All is not nice at the North Pole, however. Carol misses the family she has had to all but give up to maintain the SOS — Secret of Santa. In addition, she’s feeling a bit deserted by her really red-faced and chubby hubby: Santa baby is busy making toys and handling a problem in The Council of Legendary Figures, a kind of goofy guild that includes Santa, Mother Nature, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman and a bunch of other major characters in a child’s universe. It seems Jack Frost (Martin Short) has grown tired of being just an opening act for the big Christian holiday. He’s campaigning (and scheming) to turn Christmas into Frostmas, although he says he’d be happy with Frostgiving or even the Frost of July.

To make things better for his beloved, Santa enlists the Sandman’s help in putting Carol’s parents (Alan Arkin and Ann-Margaret) to sleep long enough to transport them trickily to his workshop in the North Pole, which he and the elves have disguised as a toy factory in Canada. Along for the sleigh ride are Scott’s ex-wife (Wendy Crewson), her smarmy therapist husband (Judge Reinhold) and their daughter, Lucy. In that role, Liliana Mumy provides the only halfway appealing and/or believable performance. The starring adults are silly. Cameos by — among other lesser-knowns playing Legendary Figures — Kevin Pollak as Cupid, Jay Thomas as the Easter Bunny and Peter Boyle as Father Time are, by and large, pointless and/or embarrassing.

This film is ho, ho, horrible. Sending your children to it is the equivalent of giving them a lump of coal; taking them to this carbon copy is the equivalent of forcing yourself to eat a lump of fossil fuel.

"The Ghost of Mae Nak"

2006-10-30T10:40:00.000-08:00

The legend of Mae Nak’s ghost has served as the basis for films in Thailand 20 times, and this ghost story seems to be as popular there as the one about the vanishing hitchhiker is in America.

The latest incarnation of the Thai tale comes via the 2005 film “The Ghost of Mae Nak,” in which a pair of young newlyweds finds the early days of their marriage disrupted by a vengeful spirit.

Mak (Siwat Chotchaicharin) loves Nak (Pataratida Pacharawirapong), and vice versa. They chant this refrain to each other frequently, but it doesn’t play as cutesy as it sounds like it would because they really seem to mean it. The film tends to play just a notch or two beyond the point of reality for western viewers—reactions are a little too big and some of the dialogue seems to be delivered too broadly, but this may be the norm in Thai cinema, as it is in Bollywood films.

We meet the two a week before their wedding. They’ve seen an ad in the newspaper for a house for sale and they meet with the real estate agent, Mr. Angel (Meesak Nakarat), who tells them the house is over 100 years old. The lovers like and trust Mr. Angel, but then they trust their lawyer, too. Obviously, folks in Bangkok are a little different than we are in this country.

As they inspect the house, Mak has a brief but frightening encounter with what is surely a ghost. Her appearance is preceded by the sound of a breathy sigh, like Joan Jett singing “Crimson and Clover.” Worse yet, Mak’s been having nightmares about this same vaporous woman. The waking sight of her unnerves him, but not to the point of disappointing Nak, who really wants to buy the place.

They buy it, fix it up, and move in.

After the wedding takes place, eerie visitations and frightening nightmares increase, but now Nak is experiencing them as well. She hears the name “Mae Nak” and mentions it to her grandmother. Granny tells her Mae Nak’s back story.

Around 100 years ago, a couple who loved each other very much married. Their names were Mak and Nak. Mak went away to war and was seriously wounded. Some monks nursed him back to health and he returned to his home. While he was gone, Nak (Porntip Papanai) gave birth to their child. They were happy together, but Mak couldn’t understand why his old friends avoided visiting with him at home.

I’ve probably already told you too much, so I’ll only say from this point on in the film writer/director Mark Duffield picks up the pace considerably as the ghost woman goes after everyone in the modern couple’s life who does anything to come between them. Duffield even tosses in a couple a gruesome death scenes that should bring a cold smile to the lips of even the most jaded western gorehounds.

There’s a nice scene in an operating room that is at once both surprising and silly, but it works because we’ve become used to the slightly overwrought feel of the entire film. I could do without the head-beating of having both sets of lovers bear the same names, but the film isn’t going for subtlety.

There are no overwhelming scares in the movie, but there is a building tension. If the first half of the picture intrigues with its moments of everyday life in an exotic setting, the second half ladles on a creepy disquiet that culminates in a kick ass ending you won’t see coming.

“The Ghost of Mae Nak” is a nifty ghost story that may burrow deepest under the skin of people who think that ghosts, and ghost stories, are silly. It asks, along with Poe, “Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?” and answers, “I’ll let you know when I wake up. If I wake up.”

"We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes": Happy Halloween From Our Motel to Yours

2006-10-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

Here’s the thing about what you’re about to read, assuming that you don’t hate pieces that begin “Here’s the thing about what you’re about to read” and go on to something else instead. This is where I tell you that something you know about PSYCHO is dead wrong. I’m writing it, but I don’t know if I believe it or not.

Well, hell, it’s Halloween and if you can’t make a complete fool of yourself at Halloween, when can you? Oh yeah, St. Patrick’s Day. Okay, if you can’t make a complete fool of yourself at Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day, when can you?

Here’s the bit of revealed wisdom about PSYCHO, and I mean revealed repeatedly, in just about every critical essay ever written about the film: the least involving, most boring, most unnecessary scene in the entire movie is the penultimate one in which Simon Oakland, as psychiatrist Dr. Fred Richmond (you never knew the character had a name, did you?) tells the cops, Lila, and Sam that all is not well with Norman’s inner child.

Wait a minute—you have seen the film, haven’t you? If not, don’t read further, even if you can’t resist pieces in which the fourth paragraph admonishes you “don’t read further.” Beyond this point are spoilers. And I promise that I won’t use that gag again, the one in which I repeat at the end of the sentence what I wrote at the beginning, even if you tell me that you love it when I repeat at the end of the sentence what I wrote at the beginning.

Anyway, that scene in the movie is universally reviled as being unnecessary because it spells out in agonizing detail what the audience has already figured out, i.e., that Norman is a member-for-life of the Ed Gein Fan Club.

But I would like to suggest that in 1960, when the film was new and the world was still able to keep the mask of sanity in place, audiences may not have known as much about what ailed the kid as we do now, and that we know more about it today because Norman introduced us on a pop culture level to this type and degree of mental aberration. Putting oneself into the mind set of obviously historical characters is hard enough and yet still easier, in some ways, than recapturing the thinking of characters who were contemporary when the film was made but have retreated into history since. Norman looks, talks, and acts enough like us now that we see him as a 21st. century man, but he is far from that.

Okay, now we come to my particular hobby horse, the theory that appeals to me greatly while at the same time lacking in rational believability. For this it’s best that you watch the scene, but I’ll try to describe the relevant action.

Richmond enters the room in which his audience is gathered. He comes in from the left and crosses to a central position in the room. Over his right shoulder we see a picture on the wall and, above that, a light fixture. The fixture has two prongs for the light bulbs, reaching out to left and right from a sort of metal centerpiece.

Oakland doesn’t move around much because Richmond wants to remain in the center of our, and his listeners’ attention. He occasionally takes a step or two toward the camera to speak directly to Lila (Vera Miles) or to react to something Sam (John Gavin) says, but before he returns to his original spot in the room, he moves a little closer to the light, allowing us to see more of it. Then he will take a step toward us and resume talking.

His explanation of Norman’s peculiarities is loaded with psychobabble, but whenever he has a point to make that he thinks is particularly telling—“So he began to think and speak for her,” “After the murder, Norman returned as if from a deep sleep,” “These were crimes of passion, not profit”—the lamp on the wall appears directly over his head, sometimes even forming glowing horns.

Here’s what I see: a cartoon in which someone is expounding an idea he thinks explains the ways of the world, with a light bulb coming on over his head to let us know how bright he thinks he is.

It’s as if Hitchcock, whose earliest job in films was providing illustrations to adorn the dialogue title cards in silent movies, is winking at us, letting us know that he thinks all this psychiatric gobble-de-gook is just whistling in the graveyard to hide our fear of the boogie man.

As Richmond snaps a cigarette out of a pack to light up and take a bow, Hitch cuts to the outside of the room and follows a policeman carrying down the hall a blanket for the chilled Norman. We cut to the inside of the room where Norman, as Mother, sits before a blank wall. As Richmond delivered his monologue in front of a wall with a couple of items on it—one of which served to ridicule everything he had to say—Mother delivers her monologue in front of a wall that is blank, as empty as a serial killer’s conscience, as spotless as a freshly cleaned bath tub.

There it is. Do I really believe Hitchcock intended the scene with the doctor to be read this way? I wish, but no. I think it’s there to explain to the unworldly what the hell has been going on. But do I think Hitch was aware of the cartoon cliché regarding the light bulb over the head? Sure I do. Maybe he set and blocked the scene the way he did because unconsciously he wanted to suggest that Dr. Richmond was just too content living in his jargon of earthly delights.

You can’t have too many ways of looking at a film as rich as PSYCHO. And it is Halloween. Trick or treat.

"Lady Vengeance"

2006-10-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

What in American hands would probably be a “B” exploitation thriller becomes from South Korea’s Park Chan-wook a beautifully filmed story of redemption through violence.

“Lady Vengeance” concludes Park’s Vengeance Trilogy, films tied together not by narrative or character connection, but by their explorations of revenge and what extracting it does to everyone concerned. In the first film, “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” the revenger pays a terrible price for trying to find some degree of emotional satisfaction. In the second film, “Oldboy,” it’s the victim of the revenge plot who pays most decidedly.

In this final installment, “Lady Vengeance,” retribution may at last bring some peace, if a horrible peace it is, to the people whose lives have been devastated by continuing acts of evil.

We first see Lee Geum-ja (Lee Young-ae) as she leaves prison after serving 13 years for the kidnapping and murder of a child. The crimes were committed when Geum-ja was just 19.

Her story is revealed in the non-linear way that is so popular with filmmakers now. As she pursues her course of vengeance against the monstrous school teacher Mr. Baek (Min-sik Choi, whose terrifying performance in “Oldboy” is impossible to get out of the mind), Park cuts back to snippets of Geum-ja’s life in prison as she makes friends with the weak and becomes known as the “kind Ms. Geum-ja.”

But Park and co-screenwriter Seo-Gyeong Jeong begin playing with our heads early. Geum-ja is only kind to fellow inmates she plans to use later. The bullies that oppress them are dispatched with the same lack of conscience she will call on later.

There would be no vengeance to extract if Geum-ja, now wearing red eye liner and clothing to hide the gentleness others see in her, had really committed the crimes for which she was imprisoned, and although we quickly learn that she was innocent, it takes a while for us to find out why she confessed. That’s part of the need for revenge.

After you’ve begun piecing the narrative together it is all easy enough to understand. Even Geum-ja’s motivation, which at first seems so simple, becomes more twisted before it finally evolves into a clarity and is both inevitable and perfect.

And speaking of perfection, no other word comes as close to describing Lee Young-ae’s performance. Every facial expression, some of which are tellingly blank, and every body movement tells us a little more about this woman. In a matter of seconds she can transform from a modest girl to a killer, switch from a hard-boiled woman with something serious on her mind to a nearly-campy actress who wants to wink at the camera. It’s a chilling and, by film’s end, heartbreaking performance.

Cinematographer Jeong-hun Jeong makes the Korean cities and landscapes look like killing grounds of the mind, covered in leaves or snow grass or asphalt, but always shot with the pristine framing of a travel magazine.

Park ties all this up in a package that is sometimes creepy, often sad or black humored, but always completely convincing.

The emotional content of “Lady Vengeance” isn’t as noisily melodramatic as that of “Oldboy,” but is the more satisfying for that. It’s much easier to identify with the protagonist of “Lady Vengeance.” You may wish you didn’t have to, but I suspect in some ways you will.

"Half Nelson," dir. Ryan Fleck (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-10-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

Head of the Class

Genuine surprise is no small feat for a movie, particularly when the picture in question deals with an inspirational schoolteacher and at-risk children. It might sound like familiar stuff, but “Half Nelson” is an extraordinary achievement -- a film that subverts cliché in its meaty tale of drug addiction, life decisions and the competing impulses that drive us all. One of the year’s best movies, “Half Nelson” will screen Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s Noble Theater.

Ryan Gosling gives an Oscar-worthy performance as Dan Dunne, a history teacher and girls’ basketball coach at a Brooklyn middle school. Smart and roguishly charming, Dan strays from textbooks to bring history alive for his students, most of whom are African American and Latino. History, he tells them, is an eternal consequence of opposing forces, a never-ending struggle that spurs constant change.

Dan’s own struggle manifests itself at night, as he feeds a crack addiction that leads him through New York’s drug-infested underbelly. He is eventually found out by one of his students, a 13-year-old girl named Drey (Shareeka Epps), who happens upon the crack-addled Mr. Dunne in the girls’ locker room. The encounter develops into a curious friendship. For Drey, a latchkey kid whose older brother is in prison, the teacher’s habit is disappointing, if not shocking. Dan lamely tries to fill the role of the girl’s mentor -- even if he doesn’t seem particularly suited for it -- and he warns her to steer clear of Frank (Anthony Mackie) a drug dealer who is friends with Drey’s family.

Part of the brilliance of “Half Nelson” is how director Ryan Fleck, who co-wrote it with Anna Boden, consistently defies audience expectation. It would have been easy to serve up yet another story of an inspiring teacher and ghetto children, and it would have been nearly as tempting to make Dan a flawed man saved by a young girl’s life-affirming grace.

But the film avoids either route. “Half Nelson” doesn’t trouble itself with the root causes of Dan’s addiction or hinting at a salvation that viewers hope will arrive. Like Drey and Frank, Dan pulsates with the complexities of life. And yet in spite of the often-brooding universe these characters inhabit, the film’s humanity and understanding spur its own sort of uplift.

The filmmaking is self-assured and respectful of its audience. Boasting documentary style, “Half Nelson” employs a narrative that feels elliptical. Director Fleck does not always spell out the characters’ actions -- much less their motivations -- but rather he allows their truths to unfold with a seemingly uncalculated randomness.

Ultimately, a movie as subtle and sharply observed as “Half Nelson” stands or falls with its acting. No sweat. Mackie is sheer charisma as Frank, and newcomer Epps is terrific as Drey, conveying a fierce intelligence in the most subtle of expressions. Both are excellent, but in the end this is Ryan Gosling’s movie. In a commanding and nuanced performance, he proves himself to be among the most promising great actors of his generation.

The "A" List - White Heat (efilmcritic.com)

2006-10-02T19:12:00.000-07:00

Every so often I'll glance back at films of which I never tire, films that are to me must-sees. Let me start with my all time favorite.

Although he considered it just another throw-away gangster movie, James Cagney put everything he’d learned about acting into his performance in “White Heat”. If you’ve ever seen anything else like it in an American film, you must have been watching a movie made after 1949. “White Heat” is a black comedy for the ages.

By the time he made “White Heat,” James Cagney (1899-1986) was fifty years old and was sicker than ever of gangster and tough guy roles. He’d begged his home studio, Warner Brothers, for a greater variety of characters to play (they gave him a few—Bottom in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” zany screenwriter Robert Law in “Boy Meets Girl,” and hoofer Chester Kent in “Footlight Parade), but he’d washed his hands of Warners and walked away from his contract twice, the latest time being in 1943.

Working as an independent producer, he made four films between ’43 and ’48. None of them are spectacular, but three of them are worth watching. Avoid “The Time of Your Life.”

So by 1949, Cagney was back at Warners with a new contract in hand and a commitment to make yet another gangster movie.

He liked to hang out with the writers and the story is that he dropped by the office of scripters Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, stretched out on the couch and asked, “Okay fellas, what’s it gonna be this time?”

Goff and Roberts, working from an original screen story by Virginia Kellogg and borrowing mobster lore from the careers of Ma Barker and her brood, fashioned Cody Jarrett, easily the most brutal gang leader in Cagney’s repertoire since Tom Powers in “The Public Enemy” (1931). And Cagney, thinking that the entire enterprise was nothing but a pumped up “B” movie, added some touches of his own to the character. The result is the most stunning performance of Cagney’s career and a screen villain that still has the power to make jaws drop open over 50 years later.

The opening sequence gives us the Jarrett gang holding up a train. Cody is not a big city gangster, but an outlaw of the open road. Criminal gangs had moved to the Heartland during the Depression. Think John Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde. During the robbery, a member of the gang slips up and calls Cody by name, necessitating the cold blooded murder of the engineer and fireman. No time is wasted in letting us know that Jarrett is no decent guy forced into a life of crime, a la Eddie Bartlett in “The Roaring Twenties.” Jarrett has “thug” written all over him.

Cody travels with his “Ma” (Margaret Wycherly) and his wife, Verna (Virginia Mayo). Big Ed (Steve Cochran) is the most vocal member of the gang and the only one Ma and Cody suspect wants to take over—and that includes taking over with Verna.

To avoid going to prison on the train robbery and murder raps, Cody confesses to a hotel robbery in another state that occurred at the same time as the train caper went down. The authorities know he’s guilty of the more serious offenses, but they can’t prove anything. Hoping that Jarrett will let some self-incriminating word slip, they plant an undercover agent named Hank Fallon (Edmond O’Brien) in his cell. Fallon insinuates himself into Cody’s good graces, and when Jarrett breaks out he takes the spy with him.

On the outside, Big Ed has killed Ma Jarrett and taken up with Verna. Cody returns to settle the score and during the climactic robbery of an oil refinery Fallon is recognized by a hood he once arrested. In a fruitless bid to escape, Cody climbs a gasoline storage tank. As flames shoot up around him, Cody, wounded and hopelessly insane, shouts the Jarrett family motto to the ghost of his mother, “Made it, Ma. Top of the world!”

I know. Just looking at the plot synopsis it’s hard to see just how different the character of Cody Jarrett is from Cagney’s earlier mobsters. He’s more savage, and we get the feeling that even if he were not involved in crime, he’d still be a sadistic brute.

The surprises on screen come from a post-war atmosphere of despair—“White Heat” isn’t purely film noir but it’s frequently cited with films noir—from Cagney’s disgust at being given what he saw as the same old same old, and from director Raoul Walsh’s willingness to go along with his star’s crazy ideas for character development.

Cagney decided that if Jarrett was supposed to be crazy, by God, let’s make him crazy. He snarls, he growls, he pounds his forehead with his palms as he drops down with debilitating headaches. (To gain Ma’s attention when he was young, he pretended to have skull-splitting migraines, and as an adult the fantasy has become real.)

One of the film’s four unforgettable moments comes with the first headache. Out of reach of the law in a mountain hideout, Cody’s head begins to throb. He goes into the bedroom so the rest of the gang won’t see him in his weakened condition (Ma’s suggestion). As the pain recedes, Jarrett sits on Ma’s lap as she rests in a rocking chair.

It’s momentarily difficult for the audience to accept what it’s seeing. A 50-year old man, beginning to grow stout, sitting on his mother’s lap with his arm around her shoulders. What’s the reaction? Do you wince at the infantile pitifulness of the character or celebrate at the audacity of the actor?

Cagney later wrote that he didn’t tell Margaret Wycherly what he intended to do. Cinematographer Sid Hickox knew, as did Walsh, who approved. I don’t know what audiences in 1949 thought they were seeing, but I think it was the first step on the road to Norman Bates.

Another of the great moments comes in the prison mess hall when Cody first learns that Ma Jarrett is dead. Again, Cagney didn’t tell anyone but Walsh what he intended to do. He just asked that the biggest extras be dressed as prison guards and situated at the end of the dining table. Then, on having the bad news whispered in his ear, Cody emits an agonized, feral wail. He grabs the shirts of the men near him. He crawls up on the table and rushes toward the guards, kicking plates and bowels onto the floor. He leaps onto the guards and begins thrashing around like a starving coyote in a hen house. They carry him out of the room as he howls, “I gotta get outa here!” over and over again.

Sometimes when I watch this scene, I laugh. Sometimes I’m scared shitless.

My favorite Cagney moment comes after the prison break when the gang is leaving its hideout. A prison rat who tried to kill Cody at Big Ed’s behest has been brought along in the trunk of Jarrett’s car. The script called for Cody to shoot the man through the trunk lid, but that wasn’t macabre enough for the star.

On the day the scene was shot, Cagney had seen one of the crew members gnoshing some fried chicken for lunch. Cagney asked the man if he had a drumstick and, if so, could he have it. The fella was willing to oblige one of the nicest and most decent actors in the business, so Cagney got his drumstick. He saved it for the cameras and is seen nonchalantly gnawing away on the meat as he blasts a man’s life away.

The final scene, with Jarrett atop the gasoline storage tank, is the film’s most celebrated. It’s the culmination of the lead character’s rampaging insanity. There’s hardly anything human left in Cody Jarrett as he laughs hysterically and rushes doom so he can be with Ma once again.

But behind Cagney’s last bravura moment in the picture is Walsh’s genius in setting the scene on top of the tank—one that is round, like a globe. A murderous madman stands “on top of the world” as it is engulfed in an inferno of apocalyptic proportions. The atomic bomb imagery couldn’t have been lost on the post-war audience.

Do I sound like a fan of “White Heat”? Uh, yeah. It’s my favorite film and I never tire of it. Cagney’s performance provides the greatest delight for me. I know I haven’t mentioned those of any of the rest of the cast, and I don’t mean to disparage them, but if they are solid and believable, that of the star is astonishing. If you want to see a brilliant example of what can happen when script, direction and acting merge perfectly, this is it, Ma. Top of the world!

"The Black Dahlia," dir. Brian De Palma (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-09-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

L.A. Convoluted

Being a great moviemaker doesn’t always mean being a great storyteller. Take Brian De Palma, whose best work comes when he doesn’t have to worry about making too much sense. But give him a big, juicy story to tell, and he winds up lost. Adapted from James Ellroy’s novel and involving perhaps the most infamous unsolved murder in California history, “The Black Dahlia” ought to thrill and amaze. Sadly, it mainly just disappoints.

Set in post-World War II Los Angeles, the saga follows straight-arrow police officer Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert (Josh Hartnett), an ex-prizefighter who is paired up with another boxer-turned-cop, Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart). The two become friends, but when Bucky meets Lee’s sultry girlfriend, Kay (Scarlett Johansson), the three grow virtually inseparable.

Their lives are shattered the morning of Jan. 15, 1947, with a grisly discovery in a vacant lot downtown. The body of a young woman, Elizabeth Short, has been cut in two, disemboweled and drained of blood. The grotesque piece de résistance: the killer has slashed the mouth into a clownish grin. Lee and Bucky are assigned to investigate the death of the woman who is nicknamed “Black Dahlia” by the tabloids.

What follows is an orgy of incoherence. Lee suddenly obsesses over the case, while Bucky meets up with Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank), a vampy Dahlia lookalike who trolls lesbian clubs. The femme fatale has an even more interesting family, particularly her Loony Tunes mother (Fiona Shaw) and naughty nymphet of a younger sister (Rachel Miner).

The deeper Bucky digs into the Dahlia mystery, the deeper the movie sinks into incomprehension. De Palma and screenwriter Josh Friedman are too enraptured by stylistic excess to bother with simplifying the novel’s dense plot. Amid the period detail and De Palma’s fluid camerawork, it is nearly impossible to catalog the mounting backstories of characters with whom we have only a glancing familiarity. This is no “L.A. Confidential,” much less “Chinatown.”

Mucking things further is wildly uneven acting. Hartnett is too much a blank-faced lightweight to generate much interest. Eckhart fares marginally better, but he looks positively Shakespearean next to Johansson’s vacuous turn.

Still, De Palma is incapable of making a movie that isn’t visually arresting, and he has a terrific collaborator in cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. The camera sweeps and soars with elegance, and De Palma is at the top of his game in a set piece that involves murder on a staircase. The director also revisits some favorite themes of his -- voyeurism, pornography and the like -- but they feel stranded, like jigsaw pieces to a puzzle that was forgotten long ago.

It’s a shame. You sense what “The Black Dahlia” could have been in scenes where Bucky watches old audition reels featuring a sad and pathetic Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner). Macabre and mesmerizing, the images of this ghost woman are rife with spooky possibility. But then “The Black Dahlia” switches back to its absurdly complex story, and we’re back in a movie with more mysteries than clues.

"Flyboys," dir. Tony Bill (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-09-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

Flight Patterns

When someone describes a war movie as “old-fashioned,” it can refer to rip-snortin’ entertainment. It can also mean just plain old, as in stale and mawkish. “Flyboys” is old-fashioned enough to encompass both senses of the phrase.

The movie’s blandness is a bit mystifying in light of its rich source material. “Flyboys” details the exploits of the Lafayette Escadrille, a real-life squadron of mostly American fighter pilots who fought for the French before the United States entered the First World War. With the trappings of that romanticized period – roaring biplanes and aerial dogfights, square-jawed Yanks squaring off against dastardly German foes – what could possibly go wrong?

The script, for starters. Judging by the stock characters gathered here, France must have made it a point to recruit only cardboard cutouts. The Escadrille includes such one-note Johnnies as Nebraska-farm-boy-who-wants-to-be-a-hero (Philip Winchester), guy-who-can’t-do-anything-right (David Ellison) and religious guy (Michael Jibson). The filmmakers subtly convey *his* single character trait because he reads the Bible and sings “Onward Christian Soldier” in the heat of battle.

For greater depth, “Flyboys” offers Blaine Rawlings (James Franco) as its nominal hero. The young man hightails it out of his Texas hometown after roughing up a banker, but all traces of a potentially shaded -- and interesting -- personality have disappeared by the time he arrives in France to join the squadron. The only remaining mystery about Rawlings, in fact, is how his Texas accent comes and goes at will.

This is the sort of movie that telegraphs everything within the first few minutes. When a rich ne’er-do-well (Tyler Labine) balks at having to share quarters with a scrappy black soldier (Abdul Salis), you know it’s only a matter of time before the cad learns the error of his ways.

But lame characterization can be forgiven in a war flick if countered by solid action. Thankfully, “Flyboys” steeps itself in World War I’s iconic imagery of biplanes sputtering machinegun fire through skies of ash and smoke. The special effects are impressive, and director Tony Bill does a serviceable job with the aerial sequences, even if “Flyboys” falls short of the derring-do evident in classic WWI movies such as 1930’s “Hell’s Angels” or 1937’s “The Dawn Patrol.”

While there are some startling scenes -- German planes suddenly emerging from clouds like a swarm of wasps, the earth-rattling explosion of a zeppelin -- they add up to little more than momentary diversions. It also doesn’t help that the pilot garb of goggles and scarves makes it nearly impossible to know who is doing what.

Once on terra firma, there’s no such confusion. The screenwriters ladle on the clichés with subplots running the gamut from racism to shellshock, oppressive fathers to the war-hardened cynicism of a veteran pilot (Martin Henderson). Perhaps the biggest groan-inducer is a tacked-on love story in which Rawlings falls for a pretty French girl (Jennifer Decker) who is apparently smitten by the man’s inability to speak her language. Luckily, there is common ground between American cheese and French cheese.

The Maid (efilmcritic.com)

2006-09-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

I once told a friend that I found it easier to believe in the possibility of ghosts than I did in the possibility of good ghost movies, to which he replied that I was the only gullible cynic he knew.

This exchange took place during that wretched hiatus between the release of Jan de Bont’s “The Haunting” and the American DVD release of the revelation that was Hideo Nakata’s “Ringu” four years later.

Since then, the Pacific Rim film cultures have given us some of the scariest, most challenging ghost movies of all time. In the west, ghost stories are just another subgenre under the heading “Horror.” In Asia, ghost stories are taken far more seriously.

Billed as Singapore’s first “home grown” horror movie, “The Maid” is an intriguing blend of ghost movie staples with superior acting and a fascinating background which will be unknown to most western viewers.

A pretty Filipina (Alessandra de Rossi) arrives in Singpore on the first day of the seventh month of the Chinese calendar, the Month of the Hungry Ghosts. She is warned by the couple in whose home she will work as a maid not to offend these spirits.

She watches Mrs. Teo (Huifang Hong) place food on the sidewalk in front of the Teo house to appease the ghosts’ appetite. She and her husband (Schucheng Chen) burn paper offerings and scold Rosa when she innocently tries to sweep away the ashes. It’s something you don’t do, like look a ghost in the face, stay out after 5:00 in the evening, or respond when someone calls your name from behind you.

The Teos work with a Chinese opera company, and when Rosa attends one of the performances she sits on the front row. Soon a pale, wizened man forces her to move as she is sitting in his wife’s seat. He’s a ghost and so, Rosa discovers, is everyone sitting on the front row with her. The seats are reserved for spirits.

These episodes are unnerving for Rosa, but her encounters with the Hungry Ghosts soon turn much nastier. She has befriended Ah Soon (Benny Soh), her master’s and mistress’ retarded, adult son. In a quartet of outstanding performances, Soh’s is chilling in a way you almost hate to admit. So brilliantly does he recreate the facial expressions, movements and mannerisms of a retarded man, he makes you uncomfortable when you watch him. Rarely has that feeling of uneasy voyeurism you felt the first time you watched “Freaks” been generated so convincingly from the screen.

As she and Ah Soon play, Rosa notices that the unfortunate man insists on calling her Esther, the name of the Teo’s last maid, the one they tell her met a man a ran away. When? Oh, about this time last year.

But if Esther ran away, why does she keep turning up around the house?

Writer/director Kelvin Tong uses many of the standard tricks of the spookshow trade, but he uses them so well most of them seem new. If he borrows a little obviously from popular western films of recent years, I suspect he’s only finding his way.

And, to be honest, the film’s producer has admitted that he was aiming at making an “international” film, i.e., one that would appeal to a western audience. But western audiences don’t respond so favorably to the new Asian horror movies because they ape the American product. We like them for their different approaches to the material to which we’ve grown so bored from the overuse of cliches. In other words, we like best what’s most Asian in these films.

I think Tong is capable of some pretty eerie stuff in future, if he chooses to stick with horror for a few more movies.

“The Maid” isn’t the most frightening picture that’s come out of the east, nor is it the most original, but it promises much and uses its background well, introducing us to customs and beliefs we haven’t been exposed to before. That’s more than what we expect from a good horror movie—it’s what we should be able to expect from a good movie, period.

X-Men: The Last Stand (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-09-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

Oklahoma Film Critics Circle

Since it has just re-emerged, this time on DVD, “X-Men: The Last Stand” gets revived here as well.

If you read movie reviews other than mine—and I see no reason why you’d want to—you undoubtedly became familiar with the lament that Bryan Singer, the director of the first two X-Men films, was sorely missed at the helm of this one. Singer flew the coop to rescue “Superman Returns,” which he did fitfully. Or didn’t, fitfully, depending on your tolerance for heavy-handed Christ symbolism.

Anyway, control of X-3 was assumed by Brett Ratner, of “Rush Hour” and “Red Dragon.”

Is he as good a director as Singer? No. In this case, does that matter? No. This is a comic book movie. Yes, it’s a bit more serious than many, and more solemn than most, but its appeal is still in its sound and fury, in its visuals and in that “gee whiz” factor, and those qualities are found here in plenty.

This time out, the tension between mutants and humans reaches the breaking point with the creation of a “cure” for the mutant X-gene, derived from a mutant boy (the everlastingly creepy Cameron Bright). Charismatic evil genius Magneto (Ian McKellen) leads a band of militants who want to destroy the boy so no more of the serum can be produced.

It’s a new American Civil War, and I have to admit that were I a mutant I would join with Magneto.

Be that as it may, the peacenik mutant side of the conflict is led by Prof. Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who is supported by the good guys from the previous two films—Wolverine and Storm primarily (Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry), joined by a blue-furred escapee from a Disney animated musical called Beast (Kelsey Grammer).

Personal problems arise for our heroes when Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who died in part two, returns from oblivion as The Phoenix--pissed off, a little crazy, and more powerful than a speeding locomotive. Hold it. Save that reference for “Superman Returns.”

Several of these characters, especially Storm and Jean, play more significant roles in the plot than they did last time, but it’s still John Bruno’s FX team that carries the film. Some of the visuals are stunning, especially an admittedly silly sequence in which Magneto, whose power is the ability to move metal with his mind, scoots the Golden Gate Bridge in order to make a walkway to Alcatraz. I particularly liked the way Famke Janssen was back lit, with her hair blowing wildly. It looks a little like the cover of a comic book, but why shouldn’t it?

Simon Kinberg’s and Zak Penn’s script pulls some real surprises out of its hat, but they’re not surprising because what happens is implausible, but just because it’s stuff you don’t expect to find in light weight summer blockbusters based on this kind of material. “Fantastic Four” this ain’t.

I’ve never been a big Marvel comics fan so I can’t tell you whether or not the X-Men film trilogy, of which this is a good conclusion, is true to its source material, but I can tell you that “X-Men: The Last Stand” is a full bore, plow-pulling visual treat with just enough honest characterization to interest adults and more than enough yowza to keep the geeks clued to their seats.

Okay, my summer-movie-loving friends—“X-Men: The Last Stand” was the official kick-off to the season. M:I:3 lacked that certain something that satisfies all the way to a second viewing, as did “Poseidon.” “The Da Vinci Code” is a Ron Howard movie—say no more.

X-3 rocks. It’s not Aerosmith or AC/DC, but it isn’t Taylor Hicks either.

It is as silly as it sounds like it is. (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-09-27T13:06:00.000-07:00

It is a solid “B” picture that would have found its home on the Sci Fi Channel if Samuel L. Jackson hadn’t fallen in love with the title. Oh, the title should be spoken with a pause after the first word, and then the last three added as an afterthought.

And yes, “Snakes . . . on a Plane” is, if you love this kind of silliness as much as you should, more fun than any of summer 2006’s over-produced and over-long blockbusters. Just don’t ask it to make sense.Director David R. Ellis (“Final Destination 2” “Cellular”) seems to be fashioning a career out of turning highly implausible material into amusing entertainments. If SoaP doesn’t earn him a place in the “B” Movie Hall of Fame, I’m turning in my membership card.

A surfer named Sean (Nathan Phillips) inadvertently witnesses a mob killing in Hawaii and is saved from getting killed himself by FBI agent Nelville Flynn (Jackson). Flynn has to take his witness to L.A. and the mob boss whose butt is about to go in the wringer decides to kill agent and witness while they’re in the air.

And yes, he attempts this by sneaking 300 venomous snakes onto the plane, in a container with a time lock on its door. When the reptiles are released, ending up even in an air-sick bag to spring out and latch onto some poor woman’s tongue, passengers and crew, led by feisty flight attendant Julianna Margulies, must band together and protect themselves from Many Pythons’ Flying Circus.

Is the motivation for this inanity set up for us? No. Would anyone do this when he could so much more easily plant a bomb on the plane? No. If he saw “Red Eye” last year, wouldn’t the killer know that he could put an assassin on the plane? Sure he would.

Look, I know that one of the mottoes of “B” filmmaking is “Don’t explain, just keep walking,” but I would have liked for this snake schtick to have been set up better. Maybe we could have been told that the killer loves gadgets and complicated death traps.But does any of it matter? No, not if you can suspend disbelief for 106 minutes. If you can’t, go watch another movie.

Jackson doesn’t bring anything to his role but an obvious desire to play it. The story is, if you want to believe it—I think it’s part of the hype—that a web fan suggested a particular line of dialogue for Jackson, one with a double use of a word which Jackson uses a lot. When the line was delivered on screen, my audience broke into cheers and applause. Not bad for, “That’s it. I want these muthafuckin’ snakes off this muthfuckin’ plane.”

The rest of the cast is suitably energetic and the CGI snakes would look real if they were displayed from angles that didn’t scream out that the shot was faked. That also takes something away from the film’s shock value, but I suspect that if the attacks looked uncomfortably real, no one would be able to stand it. As it is, some of the places people get bit will make you, well, squirm. SoaP is good old-fashioned ghastly, dirty, horror comics fun—low down high concept.

Fangs for everything, guys.But my guess now is that every rip off picture that tries to imitate it will bite.

Come on, you know you awaited the opening of this picture either smacking you lips in anticipation or lamenting the fall of western civilization. Sure, like “Oedipus Rex” is the model of dramatic good taste and restraint.

"The Descent," dir. Neil Marshall (Oklahoma Gazette, 8/9/06)

2006-09-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

The most effective horror movies shred your nerves not with buckets of blood, but with that hidden threat, the monster just on the edge of your peripheral vision.

Writer/director Neil Marshall (“Dog Soldiers”) fully understands this notion and throughout his white-knuckled thriller “The Descent,” manipulates the darkness with the precision of a surgeon – his ghouls dance just outside of the light, terrifying in their abstraction.

A kinetic, visceral work that can’t sustain the unbearable tension of its premise – six fetching adrenaline junkies exploring an uncharted cavern system get way more than they bargained for – “The Descent” is undone by a limp ending, arbitrary character quirks and fitfully goofy CGI effects.

The gorehounds eager for anything of substance amid the teen-friendly multiplex schlock are pegging this as an heir to Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” which cheapens one film and oversells another – I’ll let you figure out which is which. Marshall’s lean, taut set-up seems all the more wasted once the climax unfolds; I’ll tread lightly with regards to spoilers, but let’s just say the finale feels like Marshall chuckling in your face. (It’s probably worth noting that the U.S. release has a slightly different ending than the already-on-DVD U.K. version.)

Spiking the already nerve-jangling narrative with a hefty sprinkling of “gotcha” moments, “The Descent” focuses on a thrill-seeking sextet of women – Sarah (Shauna McDonald), Juno (Natalie Mendoza), Beth (Alex Reid), Rebecca (Saskia Mulder), Sam (MyAnna Buring) and Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) – who’ve recovered from a brutal accident one year prior and are ready to tackle spelunking in the Appalachian mountain range.

That’s about as much as I’m willing to divulge – the less you know going in, the tighter you’ll grip the armrest – but suffice to say, Marshall wastes little time in raising the stakes; the situation escalates from bad to worse to unbelievably hellish, with barely a moment to catch your breath.

Marshall, working with cinematographer Sam McCurdy, makes the dust of the narrow cave passages catch in your throat, just as the giddily sanguine denouement is several minutes of blood-soaked release, alternately terrifying and nauseatingly gooey. There are a few sequences in “The Descent” where I’m genuinely curious as to how the actor, let alone a camera, fit into impossibly narrow spaces.

While the story gives out on Marshall, his cast is up for the challenge, but unfortunately, the six women, especially once the lights go out, are more or less interchangeable. None of the actresses here have an extensive list of prior screen credits, rendering each of them as a blank slate, making it difficult to sympathize when the earth begins to bite back.

“The Descent” isn’t the horror film home run some would have you believe, but it is an effective, eerily compact piece of terror that will fray your nerves and assault your senses. If you’re not afraid of the dark when you enter, you just might be when you leave.

"Jackass Number Two," dir. Jeff Tremaine (Oklahoma Gazette, 10/4/06)

2006-09-26T12:14:00.000-07:00

Indestructible comedian Johnny Knoxville, having wandered in the cinematic wilderness in the years since laying “Jackass” to rest, is trampled by a runaway bull not long into “Jackass Number Two.”

I’d like to think it’s a not-so-thinly-veiled assessment of his post-MTV solo career but in reality, it’s just the opening salvo in another 95 minutes of human tricks that go beyond stupid and into the realm of masochistic.

I don’t need to tell you that this film treats its stars like living, breathing punching bags – it’s a testament to the resiliency of the human body that these men aren’t in permanent traction somewhere. Whether it’s hopping into a rocket-powered shopping cart, withstanding a blistering barrage of crowd-controlling plastic pellets or dodging homemade wrecking balls on a BMX bike, the “Jackass” crew makes Jackie Chan’s bone-breaking stunt work look like child’s play.

Aside from the stupendous feats of numskullery, there’s also the “Fear Factor” element – few other enterprises rely upon a contingent of fearless risk-takers to do things that would make some puke just by suggestion. Quick slurp of freshly produced horse semen? Check. Chugging an entire bottle of beer through one’s posterior? Gotcha. Donning a contraption dubbed “The Fart Mask”? You betcha.

Most of the players, including Chris Pontius, Steve-O and Bam Margera, have gone on to second-tier fame of their own, mostly through MTV spin-off series (“Wildboyz” and “Viva La Bam”); while the shock of the new has worn off, “Jackass Number Two” still exerts a weird capacity to thrill – I won’t spoil the penultimate skit (“Terror Taxi”) but the core idea and its execution are both brazen and unsettling; it’s a fascinating application of a comedic ethos to subject matter that is difficult to handle in a straight-ahead narrative.

Cameos abound – Mike Judge, Willie Garson, Luke Wilson, Tony Hawk, Rip Taylor and our own Mat Hoffman (who also popped up in the first “Jackass”) all make appearances, mostly relegated to watching in awe as these emboldened fools wrestle anacondas and taunt bulls.

The question arises every time the “Jackass” guys resurface as to whether anyone in their right mind should pay money to watch grown men defecate, bleed and collect concussions like baseball cards – I’d argue that yes, like some perverse piece of performance art, “Jackass” has merit; a shred of merit, mind you, but merit nonetheless.

Inescapable homoerotic subtexts aside, “Jackass” functions best as a scream of unrepressed id – this gang is juvenile, well funded and queasily inventive. As “Jackass Number Two” winds down, however, you can feel the momentum fading; there are only so many ways to make yourself bleed, puke or urinate.

“God, I hope there’s not a ‘Jackass 3,’” Margera moans towards the film’s conclusion. I second that thought, but not because I wouldn’t raucously laugh my way through a third installment – I just don’t think these guys can take much more.

"The Science of Sleep," dir. Michel Gondry (Oklahoma Gazette, 9/20/06)

2006-09-26T12:07:00.000-07:00

A life lived primarily within the mind inevitably leads to heartbreak – being wrapped up in your thoughts closes you off somewhat from the outside world; you’re too busy inventing, dreaming and pondering to truly stop and enjoy what’s in front of you.

That very specific pain seems to be one that the unquestionably brilliant Michel Gondry knows all too well; “The Science of Sleep,” a heartbreaking, whimsical masterpiece that’s one of the year’s best films, feels uncomfortably autobiographical and searingly honest, a portrait of the artist as wistful lothario.

Following the mind-bending brilliance of last year’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” you might’ve wondered where Gondry would go next. After all, “Eternal Sunshine” was a perfect fusion of romantic comedy and wildly cerebral flights of fancy. He tops that work with this one, flying solo and penning his own screenplay for the first time, Gondry employs rough-hewn visual effects and a disarming naïveté to create the tactile world inhabited by his larger-than-life characters.

Starring Gael Garcia Bernal (“Amores Perros,” “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” the upcoming “Babel”) as the introverted illustrator Stephane, “The Science of Sleep” charts our hero’s futile attempts at striking up a relationship with the shy, creative Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The narrative isn’t any more complicated than that; it’s the layers and details added by Gondry that enriches this simple, closely observed tale.

Employing editing techniques worthy of Godard, smashing fantasy and reality against one another with glee, “The Science of Sleep” is a jagged, jump-cut affair that evokes the prime of the French nouvelle vague; echoing an earlier, more vital time, Gondry and his cast perform without a net, creating a film that will likely be met by an audience slightly unsure what to make of it.

Those who like their special effects seamless and slick will be greatly disappointed by the work here; Gondry’s affection for the process of imagination is evident in the handmade, rudimentary set pieces, strewn with rear projection and stop-motion animation. The crude effects not only heighten the surrealism, but they give the film a palpable sense of being.

“The Science of Sleep” would be a fascinating failure were it not for Gondry’s fearless cast: Bernal is superb, adroitly handling the sudden shifts in tone from farcical to raw and Gainsbourg, not likely by accident, evokes more than a little of Jean Seberg in her performance. While providing color and texture, much of the supporting cast is drowned out, as the film is essentially a two-character piece.

Those unwilling to give themselves over to Gondry’s vision likely won’t stick it out until the sweet, poignant finale but those who do will have witnessed a film obsessed with a life of the mind, but ruled by the maddening whims of the heart.

"The Last Kiss," dir. Tony Goldwyn (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-09-26T05:29:00.000-07:00

People Behaving Badly

You probably don’t need a movie to know that commitment can be a scary concept, but a motion picture as searing and insightful as “The Last Kiss” is well worth seeing. The film is populated with characters who are case studies in troubled relationships, but their problems and how they cope with them rarely feel clichéd.

Zach Braff stars as Michael, a 29-year-old architect who launches into a premature midlife crisis when his girlfriend Jenna (Jacinda Barrett) announces she is pregnant. Doubting that he is ready for marriage -- much less parenthood -- Michael is terrified that his youth is over.

It doesn’t help that his best friends are in relationship meltdowns. Chris (Casey Affleck) is in a marriage strained by the advent of a baby, while Izzy (Michael Weston) is reeling from being dumped by his girlfriend. The only seemingly happy one, Kenny (Eric Christian Olsen), is firmly entrenched in a succession of one-night stands. The most cautionary tale for Michael might be Jenna’s parents, Stephen and Anna (Tom Wilkinson and Blythe Danner), whose 30-year marriage has dissolved into bitterness and indifference.

The surfeit of misery pushes Michael into selfishness and stupidity. When he meets pretty college student Kim (Rachel Bilson) at a wedding, he knows no good can come from their flirtation -- but he doesn’t stop himself.

An English-language remake of a 2001 Italian film, “L’ultimo bacio,” “The Last Kiss” has a startlingly clear-eyed view of relationships. The men and women in the movie’s orbit are imperfect people given to bad choices. Michael appears to have it all – a good job, loving girlfriend, promising future -- but he can’t shake off a paralyzing fear of commitment. Jenna’s parents are lugging an airport’s worth of emotional baggage. Stephen, a therapist by profession, has little patience or empathy left over for his unhappy (and unfaithful) wife.

The picture is written by Paul Haggis, who directed and co-wrote the Oscar-winning “Crash,” and he employs a similar approach here, presenting a cross-section of characters plagued by selfishness, pettiness and casual cruelty -- but all of whom are too three-dimensional not to elicit sympathy.

The screenplay’s honesty is augmented by a superb cast. Danner and Wilkinson are excellent, but Barrett’s performance is riveting. Also first-rate is Bilson, who projects a vulnerability that keeps Kim from being a one-note vixen. If there’s a weak spot, it is Braff, but he still earns points for bucking the nice-guy persona he has built with TV’s “Scrubs.”

“The Last Kiss” is hardly without flaws. The filmmakers go to considerable lengths to follow the story threads of Michael’s buddies, but appear to lose interest about two-thirds into the flick. Moreover, director Tony Goldwyn, despite an obvious skill with actors, can be uneven with the mechanics of tone and pace.

But why quibble? It is rare to come across a movie that rings with such authenticity that it challenges our expectations of what its characters will do next. If that isn’t a sign of genius, I don’t know what is.

"Little Man," dir. Keenan Ivory Wayans (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-09-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Diaper Rash

I’m a decent enough guy. I love my wife and child. I pay my taxes. I vote in school bond elections. In short, I’m at a loss as to why the entertainment editor of this weekly you hold in your hands forced me to watch and review “Little Man.”

With “Scary Movie” and “White Chicks,” the Wayans brothers -- Keenan Ivory, Shawn and Marlon -- had come close to surpassing Rob Schneider in the crappy comedy genre. But the Wayans’ “Little Man” might push the brothers ahead in that dubious competition. Hell, Schneider even makes a cameo in the movie -- perhaps a sign of surrender.

The nominal plot involves Calvin (Marlon Wayans), a tough but pint-sized thief who teams up with his moronic partner (Tracy Morgan) to steal a huge diamond for a mob boss (Chazz Palminteri). In a close call following the heist, Calvin is forced to ditch the jewel in the purse of an unsuspecting bystander. The purse belongs to a career-minded woman named Vanessa (Kerry Washington), whose husband, Darryl (Shawn Wayans), is desperate for the couple to have a baby.

Needing to get into the couple’s home and retrieve the diamond, Calvin poses as a baby left on their doorstep. Vanessa and Darryl are not puzzled that the toddler has the mug of a fortysomething man, much less that he sports a tattoo on his forearm. A doctor who examines the mystery child is equally oblivious. This is the sort of movie in which stupid characters must continually do stupid things, thereby setting the stage for more stupid happenings.

In the universe of “Little Man,” not a single character appears to realize that little adults actually exist. Nothing seems to shake the young couple’s assurance that Calvin is anything but a baby, even after he steals Darryl’s car and is chased by police.

Why should the characters be suspicious? The filmmakers must not be familiar with dwarves, either. They evidently believed Calvin had to be a CGI creation, as Marlon Wayans’ head is digitally grafted on to a little person’s body (Linden Porco and Gabriel Pimental providing the aforementioned physique).

The special effect is presumably because no actual actor of small stature was suitable for the complexities of a role that calls for rubbing a chocolate chip cookie all over his crotch, swallowing dog urine and enduring the humiliation of an anal thermometer. From soiled diapers to buxom hotties offering to breastfeed, there is no joke too obvious or odious for “Little Man.”

Some talented people turn up here -- Palminteri, Alex Borstein, “In Living Color” alums David Alan Grier and Kelly Coffield -- and all, without exception, are wasted. Molly Shannon appears for a particularly torturously unfunny cameo. What gives? Do all these folks have huge gambling debts or something?

If you are determined to see a grown man dressed like a baby, you would probably be better served surfing the Internet. It’s certainly cheaper, and probably funnier, too.

"Idlewild," dir. Bryan Barber (Oklahoma Gazette)

2006-09-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

Empty (Zoot) Suit

Who doesn’t appreciate a good tussle between style and substance? The age-old enemies known as Form and Content, always itching to slug it out on the big screen, are at it again in “Idlewild,” a dizzyingly anachronistic musical featuring the hip-hop duo, OutKast.

This time around, it’s not much of a fight. With Form prancing around the ring and flexing muscles built from MTV-addled steroids, Content is cowered in the corner and peeing all over itself. “Idlewild” has energy and panache to spare, but not even the most eye-popping visuals can mask the hollowness at its core.

The nominal setting is the fictitious Idlewild, Georgia, circa 1935, but it’s a version of the 1930s as imagined by a C- history student. Writer-director Bryan Barber has fashioned a fantasy world where a sepia-toned past and hip-hop present do the bump and grind, where rappers sport zoot suits and fedoras, and where whiskey flasks jabber on like something out of “H.R. Pufnstuf.”

OutKast’s Big Boi and André 3000 (otherwise known as, Antwan A. Patton and André Benjamin) star as lifelong friends Rooster and Percival. Rooster is the rogue, a womanizing family man who raps nightly at a crazy cool speakeasy ironically called Church. By contrast, the painfully shy Percival works with his crotchety father (Ben Vereen) as a mortician. Their lives intersect at Church, where Percival plays the piano and dreams of performing his own compositions.

The feature debut of music video director Barber, “Idlewild” is packed with an orgiastic visual flair that ranges from adventurous camera movement to animated stick figures leaping across sheets of music. The excess of style recalls another first movie by a music video director, Julien Temple’s “Absolute Beginners” back in 1986. Like that long-forgotten flick, “Idlewild” is sumptuous eye candy, and Barber benefits from the magnificent work of cinematographer Pascal Rabaud, production designer Charles Breen and costume designer Shawn Barton.

No matter how dressed to the nines, however, “Idlewild” is a threadbare suit of movie clichés. Rooster inherits Church when his bosses (Ving Rhames and Faizon Love) are pumped full of holes by the vicious gangster Trumpy (Terrence Howard in another powerhouse performance), who quickly turns his sights to terrorizing the new owner. Meanwhile, Percival falls in love with a luminous torch singer (Paula Patton, no relation to Antwan). But this is simply a pretense of plot. More likely, Barber stitched together sundry pages from the screenplays of other, better movies. “Idlewild” is the sort of flick in which a character is handed a Bible, and you just know that book will end up stopping a bullet.

The soggy stretches of story get a much-needed break when the production numbers crank up at Church. Hinton Battle’s choreography is amazing, and it is further enhanced by Barber’s supercharged presentation, a mix of quick edits and momentarily freezing the wildly acrobatic dance moves. Patton and Benjamin might be merely serviceable actors, but their musical genius is not in dispute. In fact, when the music of OutKast takes center stage, “Idlewild” finally sounds as good as it looks.