erikgloor Reviews

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Soulless, joyless, cynical.

[3/10 · 13 July 2023]

This movie is a little like making a dead frog kick its legs with electrodes until it spazzes its way off the table and into Phoebe Waller Bridges waiting mouth, and then trying to be entertained by the sight of her eating it.

There's exactly three valid Indiana Jones movies. The first three.

Hate-watch it if you're that bored. It's better than watching paint dry or Fox News.

But can't beat getting a life.

Ignore the following text. I'm adding it to fulfill IMDb's 600 character limit: dolor." ¿Qué es Lorem Ipsum?

Lorem Ipsum es simplemente el texto de relleno de las imprentas y archivos de texto. Lorem Ipsum ha sido el texto de relleno estándar de las industrias desde el año 1500, cuando un impresor (N. Del T. Persona que se dedica a la imprenta) desconocido usó una galería de textos y los mezcló de tal manera que logró hacer un libro de textos especimen. No sólo sobrevivió 500 años, sino que tambien ingresó como texto de relleno en documentos electrónicos, quedando esencialmente igual al original. Fue popularizado en los 60s con la creación de las hojas "Letraset", las cuales contenian pasajes de Lorem Ipsum, y más recientemente con software de autoedición, como por ejemplo Aldus PageMaker, el cual incluye versiones de Lorem Ipsum.

¿Por qué lo usamos?

Es un hecho establecido hace demasiado tiempo que un lector se distraerá con el contenido del texto de un sitio mientras que mira su diseño. El punto de usar Lorem Ipsum es que tiene una distribución más o menos normal de las letras, al contrario de usar textos como por ejemplo "Contenido aquí, contenido aquí". Estos textos hacen parecerlo un español que se puede leer. Muchos paquetes de autoedición y editores de páginas web usan el Lorem Ipsum como su texto por defecto, y al hacer una búsqueda de "Lorem Ipsum" va a dar por resultado muchos sitios web que usan este texto si se encuentran en estado de desarrollo. Muchas versiones han evolucionado a través de los años, algunas veces por accidente, otras veces a propósito (por ejemplo insertándole humor y cosas por el estilo).

¿De dónde viene?

Al contrario del pensamiento popular, el texto de Lorem Ipsum no es simplemente texto aleatorio. Tiene sus raices en una pieza cl´sica de la literatura del Latin, que data del año 45 antes de Cristo, haciendo que este adquiera mas de 2000 años de antiguedad. Richard McClintock, un profesor de Latin de la Universidad de Hampden-Sydney en Virginia, encontró una de las palabras más oscuras de la lengua del latín, "consecteur", en un pasaje de Lorem Ipsum, y al seguir leyendo distintos textos del latín, descubrió la fuente indudable. Lorem Ipsum viene de las secciones 1.10.32 y 1.10.33 de "de Finnibus Bonorum et Malorum" (Los Extremos del Bien y El Mal) por Cicero, escrito en el año 45 antes de Cristo. Este libro es un tratado de teoría de éticas, muy popular durante el Renacimiento. La primera linea del Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", viene de una linea en la sección 1.10.32

El trozo de texto estándar de Lorem Ipsum usado desde el año 1500 es reproducido debajo para aquellos interesados. Las secciones 1.10.32 y 1.10.33 de "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" por Cicero son también reproducidas en su forma original exacta, acompañadas por versiones en Inglés de la traducción realizada en 1914 por H. Rackham.

¿Dónde puedo conseguirlo?

Hay muchas variaciones de los pasajes de Lorem Ipsum disponibles, pero la mayoría sufrió alteraciones en alguna manera, ya sea porque se le agregó humor, o palabras aleatorias que no parecen ni un poco creíbles. Si vas a utilizar un pasaje de Lorem Ipsum, necesitás estar seguro de que no hay nada avergonzante escondido en el medio del texto. Todos los generadores de Lorem Ipsum que se encuentran en Internet tienden a repetir trozos predefinidos cuando sea necesario, haciendo a este el único generador verdadero (válido) en la Internet.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)

Why I hated 'The Force Awakens.' ( mega-spoilers ahead )

[3/10 · 19 January 2016]

If J.J. Abrams had stopped making sequels for 5 minutes, he might have read about how it was George Lucas's adherence to classical story-telling that helped make Episode IV so great. But then Abrams would have had to have accepted that story counts in movies. And having seen 'Cloverfield,' I have my doubts.

What do I mean by classical story-telling? Basically, a man named George Campbell wrote a book that Lucas credited, in part, for the great success of the original 'Star Wars' film. Lucas essentially maps his protagonist's trials to those of a hundred other protagonists before him, as described in ancient mythology. Lucas just added spaceships.

And obviously, a whole lot more.

George Lucas painted an entrancing tapestry of outer space and other worlds, filled with enticing characters and palpable menace. And more, it wasn't just ancient mythology Lucas was mapping to the sci-fi genre, but a uniquely American mythology: Luke was a farm boy who felt too much familial obligation to get involved in a global conflict -- until it hit home. Shades of Pearl Harbor. Obi Wan Kenobi, the war-weary mentor urging Luke to take up the fight is reminiscent of Churchill's campaign to bring America in to WWII. The technically-superior horde of storm troopers in bucket helmets seizing territory by force was undeniably inspired by Nazi Germany and the blitzkrieg. These stories aren't just in our blood as humans, they're in our blood as Americans.

But 'The Force Awakens' is bloodless. It maps to no particular struggle, narrative or theme that anyone could point to. It is magnificently -- almost criminally -- unimaginative.

Sure it's always fun to see the band get back together: Luke. Leia. Solo. Chewie. Yay! Let's take the Millennium Falcon out for a spin like old times!

Yeah, but then what?

And look, I'm not saying that a new installment would have to embrace age-old mythological themes or be particularly analogous to something important to be an effective film. But if it's not, you better do way better than 'The Force Awakens.'

First, isn't the Force already awake? I mean come on, the force helped defeat the Empire, baby! Not, what, 30 odd years ago?

And can someone please remind me what we were all cheering for at the end of 'Jedi'? The Empire was defeated! The Alliance won! Would that not have led to a golden age for the Light side of the Force? Why would Han Solo, HERO of the Rebel Alliance have ever gone back to smuggling? That would be like if George Washington, after winning the Revolutionary War got busted down to private. Wouldn't Solo and Leia have become awesome, democratically-elected governors of whole sectors of the Galaxy? Maybe living the high-life back at Cloud City? I mean what was the whole point if you're just going to let some new pack of fascists get a crack at galactic domination?

"First Order," indeed. God, I'd like to meet the dill-weed who wrote that tripe.

The characters:

Rey seems like a nice girl. But her ambitions don't seem to encompass much of anything beyond eating more instant cupcakes. We know Skywalker dreamed of bigger things because he kept going on about it. And there was a scene that lingered on him as he dreamily watches the suns set. Rey seems motivated by little more than survival and circumstance. Later, we're asked to believe that she could physically defeat a guy who can freeze laser beams in mid air. He would have popped her head like a Concorde grape and walked off filing his nails. Somewhere in the middle of that scene I wanted to raise 3 fingers in the air and do the Mocking Jay whistle. Ugh.

Poe Dameron ( Oscar Isaac's character ). Okay! The rebel cause goes on. Ya-ay? You know you guys had this fight won not 30 years ago, though, right? And here you idiots are still flying used X-Wing fighters around and getting your asses handed to you by men in capes. I think I would have become a bounty hunter at this point.

Finn. This was the film's one opportunity to create an interesting plot point and they mostly blew it. What? This is the first storm trooper to get a little blood on his helmet? Why is Finn the one to suddenly break ranks? Why do I care? Who is Finn and why do I give a sh!t? Never mind, look, there's Han Solo!

Kylo Ren. Wait. What? This is the bad-guy's name? Kylo Ren?!? Our last arch antagonist's name was just a couple letters away from being 'Dark Invader,' or 'Earth Raider.' Kylo Ren sounds like a character from Spongebob Squarepants. Regardless, Han Solo and Princess Leia turn out to be the worst parents in the galaxy because they manage to raise a neo-fascist boy-band member who likes to wear a mask for no reason. He pouts, he struts, he chops up control panels with his light saber in fits of pique. Seriously, who cares?

I'm speaking in terms of the characters mainly because the major plot points escape me. Ever notice how a good story stays with you? Suffice to say, Rey meets Finn and his robot or something after he and Poe escape from the First Order, blah-blah hook up with Han Solo, blah-blah, fly around, double back, get advice from a human gerbil, blah-blah, Solo killed, Rey and Kylo duel, blah-blah, cue the Death Star, boom! boom! Skywalker cameo.

The visuals are all top notch, but in the age of video games that look like Halo, nobody's impressed by effects any more. You gotta have a compelling story, J.J.

And Han shot first.

Skyfall (2012)

The Judi Dench Show

[2/10 · 16 November 2012]

Someone has decided to use my favorite fictional character to drive a plot he doesn't belong in.

Sure, the story of an aging professional woman coming to terms with the ethical sacrifices she'd felt compelled to make over a storied career sounds like an interesting one. You could tell that story by casting her in the role of metaphorical mother to two opposing sons, two outcomes, if you will. One good. One bad. Was her time on earth worth it? Were her sins forgivable? Has she engendered any loyalty? It all depends on which son wins the duel. Which of the two personified outcomes prevail would depend entirely on her objective worth in the world. Who will win? The good son or the bad? Both have reason to doubt her. Both fear and respect her. Both are defined by her.

Does this sound like a James Bond movie to you?

No.

Want to know why?

Because nobody defines James Bond but James Bond, that's why.

Because mothers and sons, family and regret, doubt and redemption are not what the 007 franchise was ever about or should ever be about.

James Bond movies are about what's possible when you subtract fear from the equation. About the value of knowing what to do in diverse situations. About all the intangible benefits of a little education and refinement. About how it's possible to act courageously and even violently without losing one's humanity or dignity. James Bond movies are about honor and duty, comradery and treachery, sex and decadence, greed and power, revenge and justice. They're about overcoming long odds through perseverance and cool-headedness. They're about the often unexpected shapes evil comes in, from the diabolical mastermind to the flattering seductress. They are about not allowing oneself to be impressed with evil, however monstrous its scope. It is escapist fantasy about living in the real world.

The joy in making new Bond films should come in adapting these themes to ever more modern sensibilities. Ever more modern circumstances.

'Skyfall,' the latest so-called installment in the 007 franchise feels as if it were written for someone's grandmother after a visit with a shrink. What does some aging mother's legacy turn out to be? Who gives a sh!t. I paid for a James Bond movie. You don't get to pepper a bunch of chase scenes into a film and expect me to let it pass as a Bond flick. No.

No.

In the present offering, we meet our protagonist, James Bond, hard at work as usual chasing some cat down who's boosted a hard drive that can expose secret agents all over the world. Better catch him! But because of a judgment call made by Dame Judi Dench's 'M,' Bond ends up shot and left for dead. She's sad but unapologetic. He's p!ssed enough to stay away from Mi6 HQ until it comes under attack by a master hacker named Silva, played by Javier Bardem. Bond comes in from the cold and proceeds to fail all the tests required to return to active duty.

Luckily, Mom's there to make it all better. This isn't my analogy, mind you; Bond actually calls her Mom or "Mum" throughout the film. She fudges his results for him so he can go run and play with the other boys.

There's so much wrong here I don't even know where to begin. Suffice it to say, James Bond does not miss on the shooting range. He just doesn't.

But the woeful "humanization" of the Bond character doesn't stop there. At various points in the film, he is taunted for his age by a lover, mocked as obsolete by a nerd (the new 20-something Q) and forced to feign homosexuality.

Seriously, who wrote this? It's not that he's challenged by friend and foe alike at every turn, it's that the challenges go largely unanswered. Bond as dumb lug who knows how to take his lumps like a good monkey boy. Ian Fleming is spinning in his grave.

Anyway, Silva's p!ssed at M and for good reason. No really, you'd be p!ssed and want to kill her, too. Honest to God, it was a total betrayal. M totally and willfully betrayed Silva and we're all supposed to just route for her on the grounds that that's just life in the intelligence business. Silva's just some weird gay guy with bad teeth after all and probably doesn't look nearly as good in a tailored suit as Daniel Craig. So who cares what his beef is. Right? Craig's the good son.

Are Silva's motivations explored further? Are the commonalities between Silva's and Bond's view of M's behavior explored? Are the ironies of the fact that the biggest new threat to the UK's national security arose directly out of M's leadership style explored at all?

No, no, and quite the contrary. In a scene remarkable for its lack of irony, M defends Mi6 to a governmental review board just as one of her own agents comes in to shoot up the joint.

The final confrontation between good son and bad plays out over about 45 minutes of retarded action sequences featuring Craig loping around in thousand dollar suits like a confused prom queen and bustling Mum off to the countryside to hide from the bad guys like a pair of useless weiners. If you've seen 'Patriot Games,' you've seen how this stupid movie plays out.

And last, but not least, Bond does not drink beer.

Vodka Martini, please. Shaken, not stirred.

You'll need one after this piece of crap.

Crazy Heart (2009)

Half a Great Movie

[5/10 · 25 November 2010]

Anyone here shocked that famous musicians take a drink now and again? That they often live lives of excess that lead to self-destructive habits that average people might find distasteful or even frightening? My problem with 'Crazy Heart,' Fox Searchlight's 2009 film about a fading country and western star and his romance with an average person is not that it wasn't authentic.

My problem was whether it was a story worth telling.

The arc of the film unfolds as we meet Bad Blake, an aging and alcoholic country singer in the vein, perhaps, of Don Williams, played expertly by Jeff Bridges. Blake's glory days have passed and he is reduced to playing bowling alleys, quibbling over bar bills and laying unglamorous fans. We observe him relying on the kindness of strangers and arguing with his agent over money until he is asked to give a budding young reporter an interview. The reporter, Jean Craddock, is played credibly by Maggie Gyllenhaal who at this point seems destined to play the loyal but unlucky girlfriend of the socially marginal. Their romance flares, fades, and fizzles as Blake struggles professionally and Jean tries to fit him into the life she's made with her young son.

We're expected to understand and care about this relationship even though we only see one character experiencing it. We learn all about Blake in the first 15 minutes of the film – down to what he does with his urine on long road-trips. But Craddock's story is told entirely in relation to Blake's. Her world, her ambitions and her history all go unexplored. That's an odd choice considering the plot credits her with changing the course of Blake's whole life. We learn that she's smart, she's got a little boy, she's got a nice body and that for some reason, she's got a soft spot for this physically unappealing singer easily twice her age. And that's – it! Her primary virtue seems to be not being one of a thousand bimbos out to attach themselves in some way to Blake's fame.

Big deal.

'Crazy Heart' wants to be an interesting story about lovers from two different worlds set to music. About characters from two distinct Americas separated by time and about all the interesting questions their union might provoke. Questions its audience can relate to, like can a woman raised on Sesame Street and Gloria Steinem find her inner Tammy Wynette and stand by her man? Should she? Can famous people ever let go of their need for blind adoration and make a real relationship work? Is Jean in a relationship with a man twice her age because she really loves him? Or is it just the fame after all? Will Blake's worn out notoriety always be a crutch he can't let go of?

We'll never know because this film reaches for its own crutch when it turns into a cautionary tale about alcoholism. That's right, instead of having the courage and creativity to face up to the complex questions it asks to get you into the theatre and halfway through the movie, it instead lifts you up, puts you on its knee and tells you a ghost story about mean old Mr. Jack Daniels. And there is no clue it's coming. When we meet Blake we encounter, yes, a hard-drinking musician but one whose life is controlled more by bad choices, ego-mania, and fading fortune.

Many important performers were and continue to be functioning addicts. Some of them, like Elvis, succumb to their addictions and many more, like Keith Richards, do not. In either case, what makes them interesting to us is their art, not their addictions. And in this case, Blake's art drives all the other provocative questions this movie could have been about. We know that. Why didn't the screenwriters for 'Crazy Heart' know that?

What Jean ultimately decides is the most important part of her relationship with Blake is his addiction. And again, as mentioned, authenticity is not this film's failing. In an America in which corporate values have supplanted traditional ones; where nobody is indispensable and child-worshipping soccer moms control middle-class family culture, Jean's verdict is absolutely true to life.

But the poster for 'Crazy Heart' is a romantic image of a handsome, thoughtful and earnest musician leaning over his guitar as a gentle breeze pushes back his hair. Makes you think this is a thoughtful movie about the truth of a man's music. Like Prince in 'Purple Rain.' If they'd wanted to make an accurate poster they should have shown Jean running Blake over with a stroller on her way out of Starbucks as he lay supine in the gutter in a pile of empty beer bottles.

False advertising. It's called 'Crazy HEART,' not 'Crazy Drunk.'

Blake's one hope for redemption, of course, involves facing his addiction like a good boy and making sure the money he earns from now on is used for anything besides his own personal enjoyment or welfare.

The accolades 'Crazy Heart' has garnered seem to be about what this movie almost was. What it could have been. It was almost an intergenerational love-story set to some decent country music. What it ends up being is yet another chance for the coffee-house crowd and Hollywood types to cluck their tongues and snigger as yet another worn-out symbol of American virility shatters against the prow of political correctness. The ending is there to make us feel less guilty for laughing: "See -- it was good for the old guy!"

Get a life.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

Arlington Road (1999)

Long buildup to nothing

[2/10 · 10 March 2010]

My friend and I are sitting here in the dark after having watched this odd little film and can't for the life of us figure out why it wasn't roundly panned when it was released.

In a slow-moving, humorless movie, one can only cling to the hope that there will be some brilliant plot twist to make it all worthwhile. There was certainly a plot twist and it was certainly hard to predict, but that was because it made absolutely no sense at all.

When a sequence of entirely improbable events unfold and are presented as the result of some evil genius's grand plan, you are going to have to provide way more clues than this film ever attempted to if it's going to be a satisfying experience for the audience. Explain how the genius could possibly have predicted the outcome.

How does the main character connect his suspicious neighbor to a fictional terrorist bombing in St Louis years earlier? We reviewed every scene leading up to that proclamation and could not find it.

How in God's name does he infer from the vaguest of statements the definite target of the terrorist's plans such that he arrives at that location at just the right time for a decoy to be in place? How did the bad guys predict any of the various actions taken by the main character, which were only coincidentally influenced by them?

This film isn't Hitchcockian it's block-headian.

To go out of our way to be even handed, we'll throw a short nod the film's way for making us wonder a bit about terrorist acts that have been blamed upon solo-acting psychopaths. It didn't do it gracefully or artfully, and certainly not entertainingly, but we'll give it a checkmark for containing a single vaguely original thought.

The only evil plot you'll care about after the long wait for the end of this film, however, will be that which got this film made and emptied your wallet of the price of its rental.

Two thumbs way down.

13 Tzameti (2005)

Frightening and Compelling

[7/10 · 24 August 2009]

To some degree, everyone understands that there are universes that run parallel to the more-or-less civilized reality in which most of us go about our daily affairs and that these parallel universes are often as near to us as the other side of a car door. Parallel realities in which various laws or social norms are ignored and in which everyone's general health and well-being aren't necessarily the top priority.

And while the shock value of '13 Tzameti' will depend on any given viewer's understanding of the sharp difference in sensibility that will so often characterize the inhabitants of these alternate worlds, newcomer Géla Babluani's second film is nonetheless a compelling parable about the other side of the car door.

It is rather a precipitous plunge into just such a parallel universe by a young French handyman that is chronicled in this picture's evenly-paced 93 minutes runtime. The handyman, Sébastien, is making repairs to a beach-front home in France that is owned by a man of some means who has just returned from a trip. But something is wrong: The man is in a state of near total exhaustion. The police are watching the mailbox and the owner's wife is fit to be tied. The only clue as to the man's considerable distress is a letter that arrives before the police can intercept it and which ends up in Sébastien's hands. In it, cash is promised to the recipient for following mysterious instructions requiring travel by train. When Sébastien's fee is jeopardized by the chaos, he endeavors to prove he is the world's stupidest Frenchman by pretending to be the intended recipient and following the instructions himself.

Without giving away the form Sébastien's nightmare actually takes in the film, suffice it to say that it is stark indeed.

A warped sense of accountability came to define the world of Enron's top officers when that company imploded.

Al Capone's parallel universe of speak-easies can be described as one in which Prohibition didn't matter.

In '13 Tzameti,' we encounter a culture of behavior more typical of the Roman Empire – one in which human frailty has become a matter for sport.

And like the makers of 'The Blair Witch Project,' and 'The Deer Hunter,' what Babluani knows about the horror of stories like these is not the physical peril itself, but its embrace by the weakened and beaten minds that could once have been allied against it. That's what really gets your skin to crawling: collaboration.

The French Resistance shaved the heads of Nazi collaborators after World War II and it is fitting that in this French film, the question of collaboration, ultimately, elevates the theme above one of a mere "ain't this awful?" Will Sébastien be a shaver or a shav-ee? A question made all the more important as we learn in the film's DVD release that the story is rooted in real-life accounts of actual events.

Shot entirely in black and white, '13 Tzameti' occasionally feels like the graphic novel Frank Miller might have authored had he grown some sense for nuance: The more intense a scene gets, the higher the contrast. At its best, the effect is one of universality -- at worst, an unpolished amateurism.

The director's young brother, George Babluani, plays Sébastien and this conceit could have cost the film its authenticity. Despite an expressive face that conveys an interesting mix of intensity and innocence, the younger Babluani is out-acted in nearly every scene that counts and especially by the more experienced Aurélien Recoing who has over 100 films to his credit. Perhaps it is by virtue of the fact that George is playing an inexperienced outsider in this story that he gets away with the performance he provides.

Ultimately, what '13 Tzameti' does best is what so many good independent films do and that is to consider topics and themes that go unexamined in the mainstream market.

At the very least, after watching this movie, you will think twice about which car doors in life you decide to open.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

Nothing But the Truth (I) (2008)

Barely Adequate

[6/10 · 24 May 2009]

In this brave new world of Internet news, sound bites, 24-hour news cycles and politicos masquerading as journalists, ANY popularization of the trade-craft of real journalism should be commended.

Inasmuch as this film accomplishes that general goal, it is a must see.

It's individual merits as an exploration of the rigors inherent to the journalist's profession, sadly, are another matter.

As entertainment, the film succeeds in the way Oliver Stone films do: It's main character is ensnared in an ethical dilemma and we all watch on in horror as their life gets ground into confetti. See it if you enjoy 'Law & Order,' on TV.

'Nothing but the Truth' was inspired by the story of Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who in 2005 went to jail for 85 days because she refused to reveal her source for an article she'd written in connection with the Valerie Plame affair. In the movie, Kate Beckinsdale stars as Rachel Armstrong, soccer mom and reporter for a fictional Washington D.C. newspaper. When she writes an article that puts her in dutch with the government, she ends up in the slam because she won't reveal her source. Matt Dillon stars as the less-than-progressive special prosecutor who's supposed to shake the name out of her. Alan Alda stars as the world's most ineffectual defense lawyer. And well-crafted supporting roles are played by Angela Basset as her editor, David Schwimmer as her idiot husband, and Noah Wyle, as counsel for her newspaper.

Anybody who enjoys true-to-life drama about the law as it relates to the rights of journalists to serve the public interest will enjoy this film the way a starving man might enjoy half a cheese sandwich: It's better than nothing, but doesn't quite do the job.

Why? A few things: first, there's just a little too much pulp on deck in this film and it takes three forms:

First, I just don't buy Kate Beckinsdale in this role. It's not that she's too hot to play smart girls it's that she's too dumb to play smart girls. This is an actress who is usually up against werewolves on screen, not nuanced matters of principle.

Second, the price she pays personally for her legal stand are portrayed far more often than the dynamics of the stand itself: As is par for the course in modern American media, Armstrong has a creepily friend-like relationship with her young son, whom she encourages to be more interested in her career than his own homework. That relationship devolves even further once she's incarcerated and we're treated to every inch of that process whilst getting only cursory runs at the actual matter of law involved. And instead of portrayals of the politicking that such a case would generate, we get the politics of conjugal visits.

Third, violence. Instead of portrayals, perhaps, of the violence done to the public trust and to the Constitution, we get pointless shootings, curse-laden flip-outs, and humiliating jailhouse smackdowns.

All that said, the film does veer occasionally into what an educated person might consider an engaging plot-line and some vaguely real-life drama. The state of the culture war is nicely illustrated by Dillon's exchanges with Alda's character as the cock-sure jingoistic southern boy squares off against a moneyed but aging liberal elitist.

Where this film really goes wrong, regrettably, was the ending. Just as so many cop films rely on cheap melodrama to pull you into the motivations of the obsessive constabulary du jour, so too does this film cut corners. Movie cops these days can never go that extra mile out of a sense of duty or professionalism. It's always because, "you killed my partner!" 'Nothing But the Truth,' similarly reaches for our heart-strings as an end-run around our gray matter. We learn that Ms. Armstrong's commitment to abstract principles of right and wrong may never be as important to her as her own personal motivations and that's a lousy way to treat a theme that had the common courtesy to drive your whole plot for you.

And finally, the Judith Miller case had ups and downs and if memory serves took many more an odd turn than did Ms. Armstrong's character, who's plight is essentially a relentless plunge into Dante's inferno. Just when we need more accurate portrayals in the media of the value of diligent journalism, we instead get a cautionary tale about everything you can lose by doing the right thing. Seems counterproductive.

If you want to see a real-life drama reflecting true newspaper journalism, allow me to suggest 'All the King's Men,' with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford.

Kate Beckinsdale, indeed.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

Star Trek (2009)

Great effects, good casting and a plot that didn't suck

[7/10 · 10 May 2009]

Visually dazzling.

Frenetically paced.

And amazingly, the plot did not suck.

These may be among the thoughts you'll be having after watching this sea-change in the Star Trek franchise from Bad Robot and Paramount.

As a fan of the original TV series, I was deeply concerned about how this universe and its characters would be handled by the studio, writers and director that brought us such turds as 'Cloverfield,' 'Transformers,' and 'Felicity.' 'Star Trek' is supposed to be the thinking-man's sci-fi. Oh sure, there's always the occasional bug-eyed monster, but the conflicts typically depicted in the TV show were of ideology, history, or conceptual science. In episode after episode, Kirk and his crew began their next adventure by having all their fancy weapons rendered useless by some overwhelmingly powerful set of circumstances and would invariably end up having to conceptualize their way out of a jam. That show's creators knew it was the human capacity for understanding that was the key to our future. Technical understanding, yes. But ethical and spiritual understanding, too.

So when I saw trailers for this supposed prequel with spectacular effects, collisions, and a young Kirk reinvented as Dennis the Menace, I was dubious to say the least.

And right away, my worst fears seemed confirmed. Ignoring any sense of pacing and story, we're dropped right away into the middle of some slam-bam action sequence jammed with quick-cut edits of people screaming, sparks flying, space-ships flopping around and big puffy explosions. In another opening sequence, a raffish, perhaps eleven-year-old James T. Kirk steals his step-dad's 20th century car and proceeds to drive it off a cliff – right after leaping out of it. Then a perhaps 20-something Kirk boozes his way into a bar fight over a girl and gets his clock cleaned.

No.

My Captain James T. Kirk was a daredevil only in his spare time. Always an ambitious climber, tactician, and scholar first. A 23rd century cold warrior who knew how to take orders as well as bend them. Oh sure, he might have raised a little hell at the academy now and again, but always more a grade-grabber than ass-grabber.

How did this film win me over? Everything it does right it does really right: Jaw-droppingly realistic effects sequences, smart casting, crisp acting and just the right tone for all the inside jokes and homages.

When our heroes are forced to parachute onto a titanic space-drill dangling in the stratosphere over the planet Vulcan, it's about as realistic and eye-popping a sci-fi scene as a movie-goer could hope for.

In case you missed the trailers, we meet all the original characters from the TV show as their careers begin aboard the USS Enterprise. Obviously, they could not have been played by the now greatly aged cast from the old TV show. A circumstance bound to breed hesitancy, especially among fans. But not only do we buy the new actors assigned to these old roles due to some uncanny physical resemblances, but we embrace them utterly the second they evince the slightest familiar affectation of each beloved role. When Karl Urban's updated Dr. McCoy winces and mutters "You pointy-eared hop-goblin," after a frustrating exchange with Spock, you buy it hook, line and sinker. We catch only whiffs of Bill Shatner's Kirk from the largely untested Chris Pine. But who really could adequately fill William Shatner's shoes? The real star of this film is Zachary Quinto's Spock. His performance never misses a note in capturing that character's inner demons and new challenges.

Where does this updated 'Star Trek' go wrong? First: pacing. Apparently it would kill the makers of this film to give us a breather or moment's rest from or reflection on the endless action sequences that crowd up this film like rowdy teenagers at a frat party. Give us a break already. Establish a scene. Set a tone. Gimme a chance to re-fill my Coke.

Second: Violence. Not just violent scenes, but the violence done to the vision of the Star Trek universe. In the 1960's, Gene Roddenberry envisioned a more evolved human race that had more fully embraced the virtues of calm reason, personal dignity, and unwavering good will. This film's fleet cadets routinely swear, misbehave, and otherwise act coarsely or callously. It's a little disheartening and I preferred it when we had Roddenberry's future to aspire to.

Third: theme. With the exception of 'The Voyage Home,' it seems like every Star Trek movie since 'Wrath of Khan' has involved some personal vendetta between a Starfleet commander and some ticked-off alien. Sadly, the present film is no exception. I understand Hollywood probably thinks it's risky to bet box-office returns on the intelligence of the average American movie-goer, but it can't be any worse than churning out the same silly vendetta story over and over. I'd prefer they challenge themselves to challenge us all with a fresh story more reminiscent of the old TV show.

What ultimately saves this film from its otherwise equal balance sheet of pros and cons? A little thing called story. Beneath all the glammed-up effects and winking Hollywood smart-assery, is an actual story about actual feelings involving conceptual science. And this (air-quotes) "story" actually manages to explain everything from Kirk's new raffishness to Spock's new humanity. It respectfully, almost reverently ties this new franchise to the old and we are left feeling eager for the next installment.

If this franchise's writers and directors can stay focused on the Star Trek tradition of stories that make its audiences think a little, it will hopefully live long and prosper.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Bond Reborn as 'Bourne' Falls Flat

[3/10 · 2 December 2008]

Attention! Attention 'Quantum of Solace' screenwriters and director! James Bond is a worldly, charismatic, English gentleman spy who's in to his job and uses his wits to win hearts and defeat enemies. Jason Bourne is a regretful American man-boy of an assassin moping his way from one violent confrontation to another in search of a solution to his identity crisis and squishing anyone who tries to stop him.

Two entirely different characters.

Sure, it's always a good time at the movies to see your hero best one or more faceless goons by out-driving or out-fighting them a la the 'Bourne' series. And the second installment of the new James Bond franchise starring Daniel Craig certainly delivers in this department. Craig, too, is a fantastic choice for a new, Steve McQueen-esquire no-nonsense less-cute Bond, and the film does not suffer for lack of an appealing central character.

What 'Quantum of Solace' does suffer from, however, will keep you suffering throughout the film.

'Quantum,' in part, is a continuation of the story told in 'Casino Royale,' about some freakily cabal of rich jerks who were squeezing a British Secret Service Agent by ransoming her boyfriend and causing her to seduce Bond, betray him and ultimately kill herself over the whole affair. Sad, scary and personal. At one point in this previous film, Craig's Bond sits with her character in the shower as she tries to shake off an evening's hideous violence. It was a clean break from the impenetrably cool Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan's Bond-as-bimbo. The highly personal aspects of the 'Royale' movie provided a motor that drove its story and made you care who was gaming whom in a high stakes tale of cards, collusion and counter-espionage.

Nice little movie.

'Quantum,' by contrast, is as cool and impersonal a film as could be made. It unceremoniously drops us into the middle of some car-chase in Italy and never quite lets us catch up. Apparently, Bond is out to root out the aforementioned jerks and hopefully avenge the death of the aforementioned agent. He comes across some weird French fat-cat out to control world water markets or something and feed some girl to the wolves in the process. The girl, Olga Kurylenko's "Camille," is on a revenge quest herself and she and Bond team up a la pretty much every Bond flick you've ever seen. Who is Camille? What is she about? What drives her? Beyond a brief soliloquy laying out her motivations, we're given nothing to work with. Camille is like a Cliff's-notes version of a role. Melina, the girl-out-for-revenge character in 1981's 'For Your Eyes Only,' played gorgeously by Carol Bouquet, had a sensibility and an origin and we understood her. Her character had an arc in the film, if a small one. Camille is hot, but we never get to know her and end up as invested in her plight as we would the cover girl for next month's Maxim.

Bond proceeds to uncover a pack of rich weirdos belonging to the criminal ring for which the film is named. What are they up to exactly? It's hard to tell because mainly, we get one mindless, pounding action sequence after another, causing each to come off as more meaningless and forced than the last.

Bond annihilates everyone in his path in scenes that seem matched shot-for-shot from the Bourne films. But traditionally, it's Bond's wits, not his physique that saves the day. When Connery's or Moore's Bond was having their clock cleaned by a more physically imposing henchman, they'd typically devise some clever means of turning their foe's advantage against him. Think Oddjob from 'Goldfinger' being electrocuted by reaching for the metal-brimmed hat he uses to wing people to death. It would have been possible to update the Bond character whilst retaining his brains-over-brawn M.O., but again, this new 007 franchise seems to think Jason Bourne is the new standard. The older films knew there's always a bigger bad-ass.

And as much as the violence is ramped up in 'Quantum,' the sex is dialed way down. Watching Bond spar with and seduce his leading ladies is half the fun of the 007 films but the ravenously beautiful Camille gets not even a flirt! Bond's one (yes, ONE) sexual conquest in 'Quantum' is essentially an office romance. Watching this 40-something Bond seduce a 20-something colleague with a non-committal one-line lame-o ploy free of humor, joy, or even innuendo was dopey, false, and vaguely incestuous. As dispatched by Judy Dench's new, motherly 'M' to assist Bond, the girl came off as his sister and their tryst as wholly perfunctory. As Bond's love-life goes, this new franchise, again, takes its cues from the Bourne series: joyless romances with colleagues -- Julia Stiles's Nicky -- and a wary but caring mother figure in the form of a superior officer -- Joan Allen's Pamela Landy. The fun and the life of Bond films is completely cut out of the 'Quantum' offering, making it loathsomely sterile and cold.

It can sometimes be hard to have faith in a character that has been as roundly lampooned as James Bond has. The temptation to copy a similar and bankable character that's getting a lot of play lately understandably arises when a solution seems unclear and when the box office potential is paramount. But the creators of 'Quantum of Solace' could have used their imaginations to rescue the Bond character, update him, and restore him to his rightful place as the gold standard for movie spies by highlighting or improving the positive aspects of this legendary fictional figure and throwing out some of the sillier stuff. They might have given us a fuller Bond who still gets the ladies and still digs his job.

Instead, they just hacked Jason Bourne.

What chumps.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

The Dark Knight (2008)

Solid Installment in Batman Cinematic Series

[7/10 · 1 November 2008]

With a franchise so popular that serial remakes that started just eight years after the last installment of the original Tim Burton "imagining" are drawing record crowds, the temptation must arise among the new Batman filmmakers to skimp and just let the money roll in on anticipation alone. This reviewer is here to tell you that skimping on much of anything that makes good films good, is not among this picture's issues. With gorgeous location shot after seamless effects shot, this film lushly transforms my home town of Chicago into a cinematographer's Gotham for grown-ups, full of sinister intrigue and frightening violence.

After 2005's 'Batman Begins,' which pitted the Bat against third-string bad-guy, The Scarecrow ( probably because he was the only Batman foe that never appeared in the Burton universe ) we get a main event showdown in this installment featuring not only quintessential Batman baddie, The Joker, but the almost as legendary 'Two-Face.' They square off in an increasingly realistic Gotham devoid almost entirely of comic-book logic except for these three main characters and their methods. Gotham is more like a modern-day New York where monstrous calamity is no joking matter and crime-kingpins are more like terrorists. They variously ensnare each other in plots intricate enough to be really interesting but paced and edited too ungenerously to reliably follow. The pay-off is almost always some spectacular confrontation however, so you won't really care who's fooling whom. Basically, The Joker steps into the power vacuum created when the mob is weakened by Batman and especially by the new cracker-jack D.A., Harvey Dent. Dent is so effective, Bat alter-ego Bruce Wayne decides it might be time to hang up his cowl. And Assistant D.A. ( presumably ) Rachel Dawes helps drive the film's plot from her corner of the love triangle she inhabits with Wayne and Dent.

Christian Bale delivers another highly effective Batman despite a bat-suit that's making him look more like Robocop than acrobat; more cosmonaut than crusader. When doing the Wayne character, he is a breezy businessman with a babe on each arm and not a care in the world. But when he's Batman, he is a seething, fearsome spirit with a growling, gravelly voice reminiscent of Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry.

Aaron Eckhart is a near-perfect latter-day Harvey Dent and his unlikely transformation into the hideously re-imagined Two-Face seems unlikely mostly due to the script and not his acting.

Maggie Gyllenhaal plays love interest, Rachel Dawes, and does so via her usual every-girl-in-unusual-circumstances bit and one suspects you'd get a speech on the virtues of acting-by-reacting from her if you met her at a cocktail party.

Gary Oldman does another adequate James Gordon, overwhelmed police lieutenant, and probably ought to be applauded for letting Ledger and Bale hog the spotlight.

But the true star of this picture is Heath Ledger's The Joker and it is a long way from Jack Nicholson's mob-climber-turned-nihilist-poison-freak. This Joker delivers not one joke for the entire film, but wry snarkiness instead, along with sadistic irony. Ledger plays him more like a lower-case Hannibal Lecter in a purple suit and with more animate limbs. And sure, he'll probably get a posthumous Oscar and we're all sad Ledger accidentally killed himself with a bunch of pills he probably had no business ingesting. But what about the guy who originally envisioned the Joker character – what does HE get? He invented a really clever bad-guy, way back when, who was diabolical by virtue not of his anti-social sadism, but by the mere fact that it's occasionally very hard to hate a criminal who makes you laugh. One who is the perfect foil by being the antithesis of the Batman's gravitas, heroics, and law-and-order nobility. Watching Batman somehow overcome The Joker's mockery by showing he wasn't above a little self-humor was always the best shape I ever saw this contest take and one I've seen done so well in a number of comic books and one that Hollywood just can't seem to get right about this classic duel. Whoever originally wrote the Joker character would probably enjoy Ledger's Gen-Y method-actor interpretation about as much as Nicholson's Hollywood fat-cat offering.

Jokes, guys. The Joker tells jokes – it's right in his name.

Indeed this film's biggest failing is its humorlessness. Even in a serious retelling of this increasingly fabled tale, there's got to be a little room for some gallos humor – I mean it's about a guy who runs around dressed up like a big bat. Come on. It ain't Shakespeare.

I also didn't care for the Batman-as-Jack-Bauer scene where the cops let him rough up the Joker in an interrogation room – made all the worse by the fact that it yielded germane information. My Batman uses his noodle to anticipate and understand, not his biceps to bully and berate. I also could have used a few dramatic scenes that lasted more than two minutes. Why was Dent so nuts about Dawes? Their affections go completely unexplored. Remind me again why this zillionaire likes to risk his neck every night instead of playing Baccarat? Oh yeah, that whole thing with his parents. Batman is a haunted and flawed character made redeemable mainly by his ability to be less haunted than the bad-guys he catches – these motivations go unexamined.

All that said, 'The Dark Knight' is great fun at the movies and mainly deserves the accolades it's been getting. The story is crisp, the action fresh, the gadgets cool, and the atmosphere enticing. In a really effective ending, the humanity and decency of the average citizenry is affirmed and the Joker's plan to uncover some alternate truth is effectively dealt with.

Solid themes, good story, great cinema. If you only see this one film all summer, you'll probably have enough movie-fun to last you till fall.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

I Am Legend (2007)

Smith Saves Flawed Vision of Apocalypse

[7/10 · 1 November 2008]

Everything bad about this movie almost spoils everything that is good about it – almost. Will Smith once again saves the day by making sure we're at home in his latest effects-driven picture and invested in its story instead of feeling like the 20 we dropped for tickets might have been better spent on a new shirt.

Playing Colonel and scientist Robert Neville, Smith nicely updates the last-man-on-earth concept with his trademark humor and humanity. Only Smith could get a laugh from an audience while we watch him patrol an eerily sad and decayed cityscape overgrown with encroaching foliage.

But Smith's world is more than just eerie. At night, other survivors of the air-born virus that wiped out 90 percent of the world's population come out to roam the streets and feed on any person or animal unfortunate enough to cross their paths. For these survivors, the virus has twisted them into bald, sinewy, vicious and oddly acrobatic "dark-seekers" who'd just as soon eat your head as look at you. Smith is among the tiny fraction who survived symptom-free due to a natural immunity. The dark-seekers seek the dark because the virus has also cursed them with an inability to withstand sunlight and their skin starts to sizzle and smoke in the faintest of light rays. Being Irish, this reviewer felt an uncomfortable fealty with these poor creatures on this point.

Accompanied by his faithful companion, Sam, a German Shepherd, Smith's Neville wiles the days away watching three-year-old tapes of the 'Today Show;' chipping golf balls off the wings of flightless fighter jets; chatting with mannequins, and hunting deer in Time Square – now overgrown with tall grass. But he also replays in dreams his family's doomed flight from Manhattan; seeks other survivors by way of a daily radio broadcast and experiments on captured dark-seekers in an attempt to find a cure for the virus.

The sight of Smith fishing in corporate coy ponds and cracking jokes with his dog keeps the haunting solitude from overwhelming the film but we wonder in a number of scenes if that's such a good thing. Giving us a little more time to ponder the concept may have helped its weight. The sun sets in the distance over tantalizingly vacant skyscrapers but we're invariably tied to whatever shoot'em up action Smith is coping with in the foreground.

But then the film grabs you by the heart-strings and shows you just how invested in the plight of Smith's 30-something boy-and-his dog story you've become. While it's got you, Smith's youthful next-generation movie-star humanity steps in and does that thing it always does in his effects-driven films: makes you take it all just seriously enough. He puts you squarely in his character's shoes and then makes you proud to be there. Only Smith can embrace pop-culture crappola in one breath and put a lump in your throat the next. His sentimental soliloquy about life and love in which the film's title is tied to a beloved Bob Marley album ( instead of the more obvious, somewhat prideful interpretation ) marks an effective emotional crux. This reviewer has never seen the 1971 'Omega Man,' adaptation, but I expect Charlton Heston's Neville was significantly less satisfying in this respect.

What drags this film down is the usual Hollywood smart-assery that inevitably infuses major releases like too much bad cologne: The dark-seekers can't just be a pack of lost souls with a heightened form, perhaps, of rabies. They've got to be computer-animated vampires with lightning-fast reflexes and super-human agility. A character cannot just meet another character in likely fashion but must be rescued in the nick of time from certain death. You can't have just a likable scientist at the center of your plot; he's also got to be a muscle-bound hipster with a wisecrack for every situation and a blast of machine-gun fire for anyone who ticks him off. In a key opening sequence we accompany Smith on safari in midtown Manhattan where a lion – yes, a lion -- ultimately takes down Smith's intended prey. Despite the faith moviegoers have lately placed in computer animation, this film's makers are definitely abusing the privilege. This scene's "lion" looked like a refugee from Pixar's cutting room floor – circa 1998. Same goes for the dark-seekers. If someone at Warner Brothers neglected to compare the cost of paying some animators for a few months of work versus paying an animal wrangler and a makeup artist for a few weeks of work, they should have thought twice about it.

Major, major kudos, however, to the set designers and everyone involved in making you believe you're looking at a New York three years after every person on Earth has perished. Grass growing in the middle of Broadway and brackish water filling underground parkways definitely set the mood.

In the end, though, it's Smith's depth and star-power that land this film safely in the winner's circle. From everyday exultation to heart-breaking loss and everything in between, it's the rare note that Smith misses.

Good for him and see this movie.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Stupid, but not in a funny way

[3/10 · 7 September 2008]

Every now and then a movie comes out that leaves its audience asking how in God's name did this film ever get made? How did the pitch go to its producers ...? Let me see if I've got this straight: You want to make a comedy about some pampered actors making a Vietnam movie who are purposely thrown into an actual confrontation to lend some realism to the operation? Then you see who produced the film -- the actual film -- and then you start to understand: Ben Stiller, the star of the movie -- actual and fictional.

Ugh.

When I was a kid my friends and I would get together in my back yard and shoot comical karate movies with the video camera from the AV department of the school where my Dad taught high school biology. We'd ham it up and watch them over and over again, laughing hysterically each time. But even when I was 13, I knew that the reason these movies were so funny to us was because we were the stars and because we got all the inside humor. One wonders if Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr. and the assorted other Hollywood A-listers filling the supporting rolls in this film ever knew as much as I did when I was 13. As I looked around at my fellow moviegoers as the credits rolled on 'Tropic Thunder,' watching Tom Cruise on the screen dancing to some rap song and made up to look like a fat, balding typical Hollywood movie producer, I can tell you with the utmost earnestness, they do not. We all sat there in the dark, waiting for the rest of the laughs a movie with such talent available must surely provide, ultimately. But alas, it never did. Maybe 'Tropic Thunder' is funny to people who work in the movie industry, but I wouldn't know because I'm not one of them -- and neither is 99% of the movie-going audience.

Sure there are a few giggles and guffaws here and there, but 'Tropic Thunder,' can never quite make up its mind about what it is. Is it satire or slapstick? It tries for both but achieves neither. Mostly it's just a lot of crude humor and hammed-up bluster.

I'm no expert, but it seems to me satire works best when you can really focus on the material you're sending up and not distract by randomly introducing strange, unique elements to your story. For instance, in what universe would the head of a jungle-dwelling, gun-toting Asian heroin ring be a 10 year old boy? What are you lampooning? Heroin rings? And its weird enough that a movie director would allow his actors to be set up for real danger on the orders of the movie's producer, so you really don't need the author of the book the film's based on to be a fraud, too. We understand some actors go a little nuts and don't break character, but you needn't conjure up some fictional surgical procedure that allows white people to become black to drive that comic point. You keep all the other constants constant, see, so you can focus on the core humor.

And having no core humor is not an excuse -- though that would surely be the one this film's makers would offer if pressed by an angry mob of moviegoers each seeking a refund. If you've seen the TV trailers for this picture, you've already seen much of the few decent one-liners. And watching Stiller once again set himself up to be hilariously humiliated over and over grew tiresome somewhere around the middle of 'Meet the Parents.' Jack Black's comic talents are squandered. Robert Downey Junior never quite delivers as a Russell Crowe type perpetually lost in a Shaft-esquire black militant role he's playing for the movie being made in the story. Uh, yeeaahh ... that's sooooo Russell Crowe. Matthew McConaughey phones in some whacked out Hollywood agent. Nick Nolte forgettably mumbles up the book author role. And Tom Cruise's performance, as the movie producer, is notable mainly for its clumsiness and bad taste.

Things blow up, people blow up, bats are eaten, disgusting, distasteful things happen. There's a lot of tortured movie-about-movies humor that never really gets any traction. But the problem is you never really care about why any of it's happening and that's often the difference between good comedy and bad. It stands to reason clowny things will happen to a bunch of clowns and that's all this movie's characters are ever shown as. Who cares? Staying in and checking the latest stand-up act on Comedy Central's a better bet than dropping your 9 at the theatre on this one.

This movie review by Erik Gloor.

Cloverfield (2008)

Nauseating for all the wrong reasons

[1/10 · 25 January 2008]

The little puddle of vomit in the hallway leading from the auditorium back out into the cineplex when the credits rolled about said it all for 'Cloverfield,' the latest effects-driven thriller from Bad Robot and Paramount.

I remember it well: It was 1985 and my high school chum and I were talking about the latest Pepsi ads which featured the very first "shaky-cam" shots meant to imbue scenes with authenticity. As if anyone with sense enough to bring a tripod for their video camera was almost certainly setting you up. We knew even then that this was the worst kind of artifice and we both concluded that anyone who had tripods available but didn't use them for said purpose was DEFINITELY setting you up.

And setting us up huge was what the makers of 'Cloverfield,' have done with this picture about a giant monster that decides to take a bite out of the Big Apple and totally ruin the evening for a bunch of no-name 20-something hockey-pucks. Shot entirely point-of-view with the world's sturdiest pretend home-movie camera, we watch said hockey-pucks variously fleeing said monster or questing for the rescue of some hottie impaled on rebarb somewhere.

I think I would have suggested lending the film a little authenticity by hiring some F-ing AC-TORS!

Along the way, and with admittedly eerie and downright compelling realism, we are treated to a 21st century version of Godzilla with really nice images of army guys blasting away at the creature and dropping ordnance on it from Stealth bombers. Fun stuff and definitely a recipe for a good time at the movies. Technically, the film misses not a single note.

Unfortunately, rather like the technically savvy but depth-free characters in this film, the story-tellers got lost on their way to a decent theme and decided to substitute the always asinine, "Dude, what if this were real," approach. See if it's kinda real, then you don't really need a theme, dude. No, for real! Otherwise these filmmakers would have to face the fact that the default theme for this picture is as follows: "My girlfriend is so totally hot, I would totally fight a giant iguana to sleep with her again." And naturally, as if this were "Survivor New York," each character dies, one by one, in hideous fashion, in order of significance, as if voted off by the audience after each scene. Once again, only the extremely cute and cuddly survive.

Good monster movies are good because the monster becomes a metaphor for something. Screen writing 101, guys. Come on.

And lastly but not leastly, all of the above criticism will only matter to you if you somehow survive the colossally stupid and ceaseless jiggle-cam cinematography. See, someone forgot to tell the pea-brains who made this film that even though the jiggling didn't bother THEM watching it on a 19-inch video monitor in some editing suite somewhere where idiots edit movies, when the film is done, it is packed off to be shown in these places called "theatres." At these "theatres," a person's entire field of vision will be filled with your stupid footage and when the camera doesn't stay still for a single instant, it can make the average audience-member a little NAUSEATED.

So thank you, Matt Reeves, director of 'Cloverfield,' for making a movie so bad it made one of your audience members puke. I've got you to thank for the dizzying headache I suffer still, nearly 24 hours after watching it. Thank you SO much.

Go back to directing episodes of Felicity.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Mr. 'Old Men,' you're no 'Fargo'

[3/10 · 3 December 2007]

What if the Terminator was real but this time took the form of an infallibly clever, spaced-out-looking Mexican cat hell bent on retrieving the $2 million he lost in a drug deal gone bad? In 'No Country for Old Men,' the Coen Brothers follow up the engaging meditation on evil depicted in their groundbreaking 1996 film, 'Fargo.' In a hyper-real bleak-scape of rural Texas circa 1980 we variously follow the adventures of parallel protagonists as they quest either for the lost loot, the whereabouts of the Mexican, or an escape from the latter with the former.

Along the way we are treated most notably to heart-breaking murder scenes in which Javier Bardem's spaced-out Mexican, Anton Chigurh, slowly drains innocents of their dignity and then pitilessly snuffs out their lives in that winkingly ironic fashion so popular in modern American film-making. It's a real laugh-factory.

Additionally, we get long-winded, mind-numbing soliloquies from Tommy Lee Jones's Sheriff Ed Tom Bell about very little having to do with the actual plot. These speeches might have had a home in a film that connected them to anything going on in the story, but they seem variously lost and smug in this picture.

Gluing it all together is a dreary and nihilist sensibility that loses all authenticity in its attempt at super-authenticity, not to mention story-telling that too often forgets its audience.

Granted, the violence is visceral, mostly consequential and each scene in which it occurs is effective. It's not let-you-off-the-hook A-Team violence. It's all frightening and real. But you know what? So's my tax bill -- what else ya' got? Just because you've larded it up with ultra-realistic violence does not mean you've made an important film. Fargo wasn't great because the violence was real, Fargo was great because everything else was, too. No matter his methods, anyone leaving a trail of bodies this long would have inspired a dragnet of epic proportions -- especially in Texas. And especially considering Chigurh's first victim was a policeman.

And for the coup de grace, we land on an infuriating, art-film ending that will leave you wishing upon the Coen brothers the same kind of pitiless death they'd portrayed throughout. Granted, there's some poetic logic that comes into focus at the end, but be assured it will render cold, cold comfort.

The Coen boys were clearly trying to make something more than your average thriller, but it comes off like a snuff film pretending to be a parable.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

300 (2006)

Pretty Pictures, Ugly Message

[3/10 · 15 August 2007]

A Western head of state breaks his own laws and sends an inadequately small but highly-skilled army away from the homeland to battle Middle Eastern jerks and force a military stalemate.

But enough about current events.

If you were hoping for something a little more uplifting in "300," the second cinematic adaptation of a Frank Miller graphic novel, I'm here to tell you it's pretty much another deep-sea dive into the black Id of our basest instincts.

Yay.

First, some quick kudos to those in charge of the visuals in this film: Bravo. Truly. Watching this film was like seeing a Frank Frazetta painting come to life. Gorgeous action sequences. Luscious costuming and set design.

But in terms of plot, the film's tone is set early when a diplomat from the Persian Empire comes to visit the Spartan King Leonidas to suggest the Spartans surrender or be invaded. The diplomat's a black guy with a lot of freakily jewelry and lip-gloss. Not quite the olive-skinned Greeks one might imagine, all the Spartans in this movie look as though the cast of "Desperate Housewives" decided to have a toga party. The cynical symbolism zooms off from there like some kind of Nazi propaganda film.

Based on true historical events, King Leonidas proceeds to mobilize the Grecian world against Xerxes I and the Persian Empire by bravely leading the small fighting force for which the film is named until they are ultimately overwhelmed by superior numbers. We all certainly owe a debt of gratitude to the real Leonidas for his part in repelling a culture that may have otherwise devoured the very basis for our democratic traditions. Bravo, my brother.

But if it's an accurate dramatization of these events in their true historical context you're looking for, be prepared to be disappointed big-time. If you're in the market for a lot of dubious implied parallels between this ancient struggle and the current state of relations between the Judeo-Christian West and the Muslim Middle East, however, you're in for a rare treat.

In the present version, King Leonidas responds to the Persian diplomat by killing him and his entire entourage in cold blood. It's okay, though, because the diplomat, as we mentioned, was just some fruity black guy and the entourage were all dressed like modern-day terrorists. The parallels being implied stand out in stark relief when Gerard Butler's Leonidas waits for permission from his wife to murder the diplomat. You could see even the hardest Gulf War vet waiting for a nod from the wife to shoot a burglar. But I bet the real King Leonidas didn't ask his woman if he could declare a war. The willowy Lena Headley's Queen Gorgo, of course, gives the nod and later cuckolds her husband to score him some political points. She's clearly a real lady. As security mom simile, she all but drives from one scene to another in an SUV. The comparison couldn't have been more complete if she were sitting in a Spartan Starbucks spouting self-serving tales about the trials of being a full-time queen while raising an eight-year-old prince. We naturally never see the horde of slaves the real Queen Gorgo certainly had at her disposal night and day.

Like some kinda neo-con suck-up's wet dream, the film proceeds to demonize nearly everyone who isn't a statuesque white guy with really nice abs. These white guys strut around in cod-pieces and red capes with their pecks hanging out like some kind of Chippendale chorus line with spears. Of course with rare exception they annihilate everyone in their path until they are betrayed by a hideously-deformed warrior wanna-be they wouldn't let in their club.

Poor, poor us.

Here's a quick reality check:

First, Persia eventually became Iran and in 1953 the CIA helped engineer a coup in which a democratically elected prime minister was deposed and a monarch, the Shah of Iran, was installed as the head of state and this was all done to protect Western oil interests. NEVER MIND the Crusades.

Second, Western-style democracy is on the march all over the face of the planet. Even communist China has embraced western-style capitalism.

Third, no Muslim state exists which could hope to match America's military or economic might.

But gosh, that's no fun, is it? I mean without some big enemy juggernaut with which to spar, we might actually have to sit down and think about what to do with the unprecedented peace and wealth all our forefathers, from Leonidas to Bill Clinton, have bestowed upon us. Should we ensure health care for all? End poverty in our lifetime? Address global warming? Explore the depths of the sea? Build high-speed rail? Go back to the moon? Challenge ourselves to forever raise the bar for all our noblest aspirations?

Naaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.

Let's demonize everyone who isn't just like us and make them all look like a pack of corrupt, deformed, homosexual religious fanatics. Let's lump them all in with the rag-tag network of Muslim malcontents that manages to slip a bomb by us every now and again.

YES!!! I feel so much better, now. I no longer need to worry if my abs are the tightest or tannest! I can just align myself with this cabal of hatred and everything else will just fall into place. Sig Heil!!!

If you want to see a good historical drama about courage colliding with politics, might I suggest 'Serpico,' 'The Hunt for Red October,' or 'All the President's Men.'

If you want to see a good movie about dutiful and honorable warriors realistically dispatching enemies, I'd recommend 'Gladiator,' 'Glory,' or 'Saving Private Ryan.'

As for '300,' the people who crafted this ugly little ball of snot masquerading as entertainment ought to be sent to walk foot patrols outside the Green Zone in Iraq.

Transformers (2007)

Beyond Brainless but Mostly Good Fun

[6/10 · 23 July 2007]

Let's face it, when working for Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay could make an entertaining movie about a guy peeling a potato. We're into some serious trade-craft with these guys. From effects to casting to pacing -- as something to take your mind off your troubles for a couple hours, you could do a lot worse than this spectacle based on a children's TV show.

The new Michael Bay film "Transformers" chronicles the adventures of a race of alien mechanical lifeforms and their human allies as they seek to deprive less enlightened Transformers of control over a magic cube that can turn a toaster into a terminator. Sound stupid? Oh, you bet it is.

But when a Blackhawk helicopter lands at a U.S. military base and then "transforms" into a giant lumbering robot that lays waste to everything in its path, with effects so realistic as to be eye-popping, the menace was palpable and frightening.

Along the way we get your standard boy-and-his-dog, boy-and-his-Camaro, come-from-behind Woody-Allenesque tale of some dippy nerd who manages to woo the hottest hottie away from the football jock in an earnest v. yearnless 2-scene battle of puny proportions a la every Hollywood script ever written.

But if you pair your giant killer robots up with an absurdly appealing Megan Fox as the hottie in question, you are gonna have a hard time making a movie 99 out of a hundred American men are not going to enjoy. And goofy though it was, I'd have to count myself among the 99. It was a good time at the movies and there's just no two ways about it.

Here's a few things I think they could have done differently:

First, the volume and mass of the robots seems off when they "transform" into vehicles and back again. When they're robots they seem much bigger than the vehicles they can turn into. If you stood a Camaro on end and give it some legs, it seems you'd only achieve half the height of the robot we're seeing. But I'm probably just being picky.

Second, I understand it's desirable to have expressive faces of some kind, but if these alien creatures can morph into roughly any manufactured piece of equipment, wouldn't they just grow speakers instead of anthropomorphic mouths with which to speak? Just splitting hairs, here.

Third, the processes and scope of evolution are probably far vaster than even our smartest smart guys can fathom but it seems HIGHLY dubious that a race of machines could evolve without, presumably, the impetus of some organic life form initiating it. But hey, I guess in a nearly infinite universe, the possibilities are similarly infinite.

And last but not least, these machine warriors, sadly, are probably playing heroes to a segment of the U.S. population's children growing up without a lot of moral or intellectual curiosity around them. These kids will grow up asking themselves what would "Optimus Prime" do when Billy from the trailer next door steals my Slurpee at the NASCAR trials. You know, when dad's passed out on Meth and mom's working her third job, kids face these dilemmas. And this is why you have to be careful with what you show these potential heroes doing and how they treat their enemies.

And THIS is why you probably don't want to include a scene in which, after subduing a group of humans, a giant robot pees on one of them by way of compelling cooperation. And though it's played for laughs, like it or not, this is a real way the coarsening of our culture happens -- one mean-spirited movie scene played-for-laughs at a time. It's funny when it happens to a bad guy in the movies. It's not so funny when you're being mugged or car-jacked and the perpetrator decides he'll throw in an homage to the latest Transformers film and starts unzipping his fly. State Farm can replace your Lexus, but not your dignity. Spielberg oughta know better.

Did I mention the movie has Megan Fox?

Shooter (I) (2007)

A Total Gas

[8/10 · 16 April 2007]

Prepare to not be bored by a single scene in a movie.

That seems to have been the guiding principle in the making of the latest Mark Wahlberg vehicle, 'Shooter.' Wahlberg plays a Rambo-like uber-sniper who can shoot someone's head off from a mile away. And as grisly as the kill scenes are and as appalling as the body-count gets in this film, you'll never be able to accuse it of having not kept you riveted.

In a twisty plot that addresses, if not engages one's intellect ( as well as one's apparent need for gratuitous violence ), Wahlberg's Bob Lee Swagger is coaxed out of retirement to help that "hidden hand" part of our government that's always up to no good in the movies. They tell him the president's been threatened with assassination and they need him to plot a defense. Turns out he's been set up to be a patsy in the way a lot of conspiracy theorists suppose Lee Harvey Oswald was set up for the JFK assassination.

But what if Oswald somehow escaped the hidden hand and set out to expose everyone involved? Swagger assembles a working-class team of three to take on a Colonel-turned-spook; a fearsome Russian defector; a comically Machiavellan U.S. Senator; their assorted goons, and a federal bureaucracy overrun with the kind of cynical, self-serving jerks everyone supposes it must be. Along the way, stuff blows up, people get their arms shot off, innumerable heads explode and I must admit, it's a total gas.

Somehow, Wahlberg strikes just the right note in another understated blue-collar hero and is almost totally believable as an expert marksman, survivalist, commando, and dude who can beat anyone in a fight.

What disappoints is the standard Hollywood hokum that crops up inevitably: Guys sprinting through a hail of automatic weapons fire without injury; life-saving rescues just in the nick of time; unmotivated and often absurd heroics; gunshot wounds that heal in a weekend with no lasting effects. This film is smart enough not to need any of this junk, but embraces it out of habit, apparently.

You probably won't feel good at the end of this movie in the way you don't necessarily feel good after a looping, high-velocity roller coaster ride -- but you definitely won't be sorry you saw it.

Music and Lyrics (2007)

Too fun to condemn

[5/10 · 22 February 2007]

What if a comically washed-up 80's pop star and an aimless, flaky 30-something hooked up and tried to make something of the rest of their lives? I know, I had my doubts, too.

Somehow 'Music and Lyrics,' is just engaging enough a chick-flick to keep you conscious assuming you've brought a date.

In fairness, a couple scenes are downright inspired -- particularly the opening in which we see a supposedly younger Hugh Grant bopping around an oversaturated 80's-style music video with fellow "musicians" in a fictional 1980's hair-band which seems a cross between 'Wham!' and 'Duran Duran.'

Dang amusing. Especially for those of us who were teen-aged fans of similar silliness way back when.

Hugh Grant as Alex Fletcher again plays himself as the boyish big-shot Brit with silver tongue, impeccable manner, but appallingly nihilist behavior. Women are never more pleased to be screwed over entirely than when it's Grant turning the screw.

Drew Barrymore's our 30-something aimless girl, Sophie Fisher, who appears out of nowhere shortly into the film to water Fletcher's plants. Fletcher's got a shot at avoiding further humiliation by writing a hit song for a Brittney-Spears-like pop star, but he's having trouble writing the lyrics -- he's a melody man. Fisher's got a small talent for rhyming phrases, so of course Fletcher hires her on the spot.

In a series of scenes veering from the contrived to the almost- amusing, they learn about each other's sordid past, make love, write sophomoric lyrics, sing unmemorable melodies and end up selling their tune to the Spears-like pop-queen who proceeds to ruin it with heavy bass and writhing dance numbers.

In one plot turn that constituted this film's one shot for substantive character interplay, we learn Fisher was the inspiration for a fictional character her college professor wrote about in his best-selling novel and it's not a flattering portrayal. She promises Fletcher the story's unfair and that the professor was a lecherous cretin who used her and demolished her sense of self worth.

Of course within 48 hours they all happen to be dining at the same restaurant and Fletcher encourages her to confront him and reclaim her dignity. Campbell Scott plays the professor-turned-author. Scott's contribution to David Mamet's 'The Spanish Prisoner' is near legendary in sophistication and understatement so he is perfectly cast. In the face of Scott's imposing gravitas, Barrymore's Fisher is utterly helpless and we learn later the professor's characterization of Fisher's flaws may not have been entirely off-base.

But is this explored? Of course not! We've got way too much chick-flick tear-jerking to do! That whole plot-line is dropped and what a disappointment. No just-desserts for the professor. No unveiling of a darker side to Fisher. Just prat-falls and dippy dialogue.

Naturally, Fisher wants Fletcher to stand up to the pop-queen for ruining their tune and Fletcher wants to cash out and sides with the professor by way of forcing the issue. The rest is the standard chorus-line of absurdly unlikely happenstance and motivations that only occur in the movies. They dance us inevitably toward the standard predictable ending.

So why was I smiling at the end? Grants' laser-sharp one-liners and the few scenes that worked.

Plus my date was happy and I was happy she was happy.

I guess chick-flicks are good for something.

This review by Erik Gloor

The Queen (2006)

God save 'The Queen'

[9/10 · 30 January 2007]

When celebrity, family, and majesty collide, who will be left standing?

And it is with the terrible collision that abruptly ended the life of Lady Diana that the story begins of the worst crisis in the British monarchy since before the War.

That story is revealed in the Stephen Frears film, 'The Queen,' in what feels like quite a faithful dramatization of those real-life events.

At the start of the film, we fear we've been dropped into one of those quick-cut MTV-style Euro films which machine-guns us with over-saturated edits like 'Crank,''Snatch,' and 'Millions.' But after this rough start, thankfully, the story takes over and is told in a brilliantly concise ensemble performance headed up by Helen Mirren as QEII and Michael Sheen as Tony Blair. Not a note is missed through to the end of the film after this screeching start.

Scarcely does one encounter a film that resists the temptation to take that bait which might endear itself to a wider, dumber audience, and joyfully, 'The Queen' is just such a film. By telling the WHOLE story, the present film redeems not just Diana, not just the Queen, but to my mind, Western society in general – and at a time when it is gravely needed. 'The Queen' also wonderfully reacquaints us with that oft-maligned magic of just being British and does so in far better a fashion than any new James Bond genre ever could.

Shortly after Tony Blair is elected Prime Minister of the UK, the movie recounts, he is faced with the daunting task of playing middle-man to Queen Elizabeth II and her subjects in the wake of Diana's untimely death. Diana was divorced from Prince Charles when she died and participated in royal life only when mothering her sons.

With the notable exception of Prince Charles, the reaction of the royals to Diana's death, the film shows us, grows quickly to a level of indifference that verges on the monstrous. But is it indifference or dignity which steels the Queen and her court against the worldwide outpouring of emotion for Diana's passing?

When she goes out of her way to lovingly stroke the decapitated head of a favored deer, but rejects the popular vigil for the mother of her own grandsons, what is it we're witnessing? Wanton, pitiless, disdain? Those trappings of formality which infuse the royalty? Leadership in some form too antiquated for modern sensibilities to surmise?

A case is made for all three, but what this film does so brilliantly is leave it up to us to decide. Mobs of mourners outside Buckingham Palace complain into cameras that no flag hangs at half-mast on its flag-pole. But we learn that no flag is flown at Buckingham when the royals are not there (they reside at a place called Balmoral in the countryside when not in London, apparently). The crowd complains that the Queen won't come and console them. But we learn the Queen hasn't mixed it up with a crowd for any occasion since the War. Is Diana's rejection of Prince Charles causing the Queen to hold fast her pity? Or is it precedent which governs her heart? It is left to poor Tony Blair to translate the position of the pressing mourners and their defenders to the Queen and vice versa. In a truly dramatic climax, Blair must face the prospect of countermanding the "Sovereign," a task anathema to any Brit assuredly. In this day when dignity and tradition seem to have been labeled obsolete and thrown overboard in favor of expedience and sympathy, watching Sheen's Blair handle his task should be required reading for any businessman, negotiator, diplomat, Westerner, or adult human being. Sheen's performance is absolutely perfect. By showing this white-hot diamond of a crisis from every angle, 'The Queen,' reacquaints us with what is good and noble in all of us and it respects us enough to divine these for ourselves.

Which brings us to Helen Mirren. What can be said? She utterly disappears into the role of Queen Elizabeth II and to my mind, an Oscar for best actress is a foregone conclusion. You will never see a role played more gorgeously or respectfully. It is truly, truly a stunner. Bravo!

This movie review by Erik Gloor

The Illusionist (2006)

Dim-witted plot and 2-dimensional characters doom potentially decent film

[3/10 · 24 August 2006]

A lush vision of turn-of-the century Vienna.

An occasionally haunting parable of love and loss full of imagery that tugs on your subconscious.

A dreamy, antique world of baroque architecture and ornate dress.

The 'Illusionist' is all these things.

So why doesn't it work? It's plot is dumb as a snake and its characters are as flat as paper dolls.

Whenever you see a period piece in which the protagonists act as though they've traveled to the age in question from our own to do battle with persons more defined by their times, it's hardly ever that hard to figure out who'll come out on top. See 'Titanic' for a textbook example (A notable exception is 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'). Hmm? Who'll win out? The young hipster who looks like he just stepped out of a Starbucks on his way to wardrobe? Or will it be the rich bastard with the slicked-back hair and the less progressive view of women?

In the present film we meet Eisenheim the illusionist, played flatly by Edward Norton, who is haunted by a childhood romance forbidden by class. He's a poor lout with a passion for card tricks. She's a duchess or something.

He runs off and becomes a guy who entertains people with feats of illusion so eye-popping, he'd have to be more than mere mortal to perform them.

His popularity grows and the emperor's son, Prince Leopold, comes to see the show and brings his girlfriend who turns out to be, you guessed it, Eisenheim's long-lost childhood sweety-pie, Sophie. Sophie, played forgettably by Jessica Biel, is pretty, earnest, and has a set of really nice lips. You know, the kind of chick dudes in the movies line up to risk their whole lives for.

Apparently having aged at two thirds the rate of Eisenheim, Sophie comes up on stage to help out in a trick only Jesus Christ himself could have pulled off. They recognize each other and later decide to try and be together.

But the prince, played handily by Rufus Sewell, is none too pleased. Not only has he got his heart set on keeping Sophie around, but she plays an integral role in his plot to overthrow his dad and assume the throne. What's more, the prince is threatened by Eisenheim's amazing tricks and wants to upstage him.

Nice set-up. Too bad the rest of the story relies on fairy-tale logic to proceed, but real-world logic to endear itself. I don't know much about magic, granted. But I do know that at the dawn of the 20th century, just as today, there is no way to conjure the ghostly form of a chubby little boy out of nowhere, have it toddle up to a stage in various levels of opacity, PASSING THROUGH someone's outreached hand in the process -- revealing it to have the consistency of a slightly gelatinous cloud (like all ghosts in the movies these days) -- and then have it stand triumphant on the stage.

David Copperfield eat your heart out.

And hey, whatever. Fairy-tales are often far more compellingly real than those that abide the laws of physics. Just make up your mind for cripes sake! If the ending relies on good old-fashioned science and cleverness PUT us in a universe in which these things hold sway.

Don't try and have it both ways.

But this sloppy universe isn't what dooms the film.

Like its effects, its plot is laughably implausible when it's not mind-numbingly predictable.

And its characters evince the emotional range of perhaps Punch and/or Judy. Eisenheim is morally perfect and professionally super-human. Sophie is the standard damsel-in-distress. And the prince is a mustache-twirling caricature of a bad-guy. All he doesn't do is tie Sophie to the train-tracks.

*** MAJOR SPOILER, next paragraph only ***

And sure, young lovers should be together but a real careful look at the plot-points reveals two people who fool some cat into thinking he's murdered his girlfriend, get the cops to believe it, and then stand silently by when said cat decides to blow his brains out over it. And sure, the cat is a power-drunk miscreant who MIGHT have killed his girlfriend if she hadn't micked him first and would PROBABLY have overthrown the emperor. But he's a square-jawed, alpha-male bossy dude and is presumed guilty by virtue of his appearance in a modern American film. The ending was twisty, but a real twist would have been for the prince to reveal himself as something deeper than the tin-horn dictator he is portrayed as throughout. Maybe he woos her back from the itinerant entertainer. Now THAT would have been original.

In the end, you've got a pretty standard love triangle/David vs. Goliath story wrapped in a slightly new brand of snazzy effects and really thick atmosphere.

Take your 13-year-old daughter to see this one, but man, bring your i-Pod.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

World Trade Center (2006)

Weak apology for 'JFK'

[3/10 · 21 August 2006]

It's dramatic when anyone is trapped somewhere, injured and thirsty, and then rescued from slow death in the nick of time by a determined emergency team.

And man, does this film know that.

'World Trade Center' is not about 9/11 per se. The terrible events of that fateful day provide merely the backdrop for a buried-alive tale of looming death and serendipitous rescue. But it does so almost half-heartedly, like someone telling you a joke with a punch-line he knows will disappoint.

We follow the fortunes in this film of two Port Authority beat cops as they get called to the towers that terrible morning, get confused, and then get buried alive in the twisted wreckage of the collapsed skyscrapers.

Bless the two real-life heroes whose true story inspired this film. These dudes put their lives on the line to save others. I just wish their story had found its way into a better movie.

Michael Pena and Nicholas Cage authentically play the two buried cops and some of their interplay works. But most of the dialogue throughout the film bores us so utterly it seems to curdle as it leaves the actors' very lips. The plot unfolds like a made-for-TV movie replete with dippy scenes of angst and hand-wringing amongst family-members. We meet them AS they come unglued instead of BEFORE they come unglued and then watch dumbly as the holes are filled in with clunky flashback scenes sopping wet with sentiment.

Zzz.

In an odd little sub-plot that seems like something right out of a recruitment film, the true story of USMC David Karnes is portrayed. Inspired back to active duty by the terror of that day, Karnes suits up, heads to New York, and finds the buried cops almost single-handedly. And if true, bravo indeed. But in the obligatory epilogue, we learn Karnes proceeds to serve two tours of duty in Iraq. Bless all our fighting men, of course, but whatever your politics, watching an Oliver Stone film in which the connection between 9/11 and Iraq goes completely unexamined was unusual to say the least.

In 'World Trade Center,' a director who's had a lot to say about recent history and what his generation called "the establishment," we seem to get a film that smacks of a highly public apology to the American mainstream for dumping so much doubt at its doorstep for so long.

As amusing as it is to watch my parents' Boomer generation tacitly apologize to their parents' Greatest generation for being so naughty, this disaffected Gen-Xer would have preferred blowing his 9 bucks on a decent movie.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

Miami Vice (2006)

Story and substance shot dead by action and atmosphere

[5/10 · 1 August 2006]

Sonny Crockett don't dance.

Michael Mann is one of this reviewer's favorite filmmakers. He's never afraid to tell unapologetically clean, stylish movies about unapologetically masculine characters relating to each other in ways traditional Hollywood films seem loathe to explore. Grown-up crime pictures that don't involve a lot of martial arts; or fairy-tale logic; or elitist judgment; or stoic female disdain; or impossibly brave and enlightened children; is something there will always be a market for because without all this sappy embroidery, you have a story that's always more interesting because it's inevitably a story that's far closer to reality.

Mann's latest picture, 'Miami Vice,' is similar to his groundbreaking '80s television show in name only. And let's face it, it was going to have to take bold strides to separate itself from a show that has become a punch-line for jokes about bad fashion and sleazy male egos.

And sure, the TV show had a lot of silly excessive atmosphere, but particularly in the first 3 of its 5 seasons, it additionally had some really well-written crime stories with authentic characters trying to care about one another in a duplicitous and violent world of drugs and corruption.

The movie is all atmosphere. It's an updated, high-tech, infrared atmosphere without a single pink T-shirt in sight. There's very little else to grab hold of except some really complex plot-flow that's hard for us law-abiding citizens to follow. Hand-cam shots and cop jargon and maneuvers alien to anyone not in the crime business all seem to conspire to make us not quite welcome in Mann's slick, high-tech world of players and low-lifes. We are treated, occasionally, to impressive gun battles and more often, to lush glamorous location shots but we're starved for the fundamentals:

Who are these characters? What makes them tick? Where do they come from? Why have they traded safe lives of stability for dangerous lives of chaos? Why do they care about each other? Why don't they? These questions weren't always answered in the TV show, but they were at least addressed.

In the movie, we are unceremoniously dropped into a Miami nightclub and perpetually made to feel as though we're on a ride-along with the film's two main characters, Metro Dade vice detectives, James "Sonny" Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs played by Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, respectively.

We follow their exploits as they go undercover in search of the collusion that has compromised a federal drug investigation and gotten an informant and his girlfriend killed. Why do we care? Who knows? Law and order? The police in this story seem as nihilistic about their trade as the bad-guys. If we're supposed to enjoy it as a competition of nerve or cleverness, there's a hundred other movies that do this ten times better -- Mann's 'Heat' among them.

Too much how and not enough why.

There's so little character development that we are completely numb to these men and their motives. Their lovers slink about in beautiful bodies but emote like clueless teenagers. Indeed, nearly every character in the film seems dead to anything but their task in life and ply it in morose if humorless fashion invariably. Jamie Foxx, recently embraced as an exciting new actor with depth, range and humor comes off as wooden and two-dimensional as James Bond -- a figure of limitless confidence and ability. Who ... cares?

And then there's Farrell's Sonny Crockett. Where to begin?

Don Johnson's Sonny Crockett, sure, was often a controversial figure -- especially among feminists and fashionistas. But he was written in a way that you could believe that his good qualities weren't just a veneer for a television audience.

Of course the character's rep as low-rent lothario, naturally, was what got the press. And with Farrell's appointment to the role, it's as if Mann has conceded that nothing else of what the Sonny Crockett phenomenon was really about counted for squat.

Pick-up artist? Sure. But Johnson's Crockett was also a rugged, charismatic, intelligent, eccentric and often articulate middle-class individualist with a heart of gold.

*** Light spoiler, next two paragraphs ***

Farrell's Crockett is a driven, but uncomplicated, mercenary dim-bulb who was still calling his lover "ma'am" after they'd had sex. A low-brow goon you'd sooner find working the door at some night-club for twenty-somethings. A nihilist lunk-head whose main shot for redemption entailed shielding a drug king-pin from justice just because she was his lover.

Johnson's Crockett would have turned her ass in and drowned his tears in bourbon a la Humphrey Bogart.

In one scene, Farrell's Crockett salsa dances passionately with Gong Li's Isabella.

Any real fan of the TV show can tell you. Sonny Crockett don't dance.

And it's not that the film suffers by comparison to the TV show. It just suffers. Times and tastes have changed, but good writing, story, and character development never go out of style.

In 'Heat,' 'Collateral,' and now 'Miami Vice,' Mann's true talent is his ability to put you in the moment. Especially visceral moments of high adventure in urban settings.

If these moments could sustain an entire film, 'Miami Vice' would be a masterpiece.

Unfortunately, they can not.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

The Best X Yet!

[8/10 · 30 May 2006]

No one will accuse the makers of the X-Men films of challenging the intellectual capacity of their target audience -- or any audience for that matter.

The notion that the subtle process of natural selection could spawn the kinds of mutations in human beings that would yield a sub-sector of the populace with powers that enable them to, for example, walk through walls and shoot lasers from their eyes is, of course, preposterous.

But this is comic-book reality and the stories are certainly not about mutations or evolution per se.

The stories are about being different. About possessing special talents and sensibilities. And most importantly, what to do with them. Whether one succumbs to the temptation to squander one's special talents or instead takes the time to discover how these talents might best serve society. Sure, the Cold War is over and the cultural pressures to conform are less homogeneous and institutionalized. But what people do about fitting in and what they do with unique power are both fundamental to the human experience and inasmuch as the X-Men stories draw on these, they will always succeed.

And let's face it, they're just plain fun. A more colorful and satisfying group of superheroes has yet to be articulated. What people love about Marvel superheroes in comparison to their DC brethren is their humanity. The down-side of being a super-dude is more fully explored. Sure Wonder Woman's got guy issues and Superman's gotta worry about glowing gravel from back home, but these are certainly more symbolic and less tangible heels for Achilles to have.

In the present picture, 'X-Men: The Last Stand,' the preternaturally gifted seem to have increased in number and political standing. We discover that mutations can range from the kind that can make you a superhero to the kind that just make you pesky. One new bad-guy can sprout quills like a porcupine and proves dangerous only to those standing a foot away or less.

But 'Magneto,' the head of the dissatisfied and violent wing of the mutant populace is on a recruiting drive and seems hell-bent on turning non-mutants into second class citizens before the same is done to himself and his constituency by those he disdainfully refers to as "home sapiens." The conflict builds as the government, still heading a vastly non-mutant majority discovers a way to turn mutants into normal people.

And then the real wild-card presents itself in the form of a resurrected Dr. Jean Grey, the powerful telepath who perished in the second film. She's back, but her sinister id is in control now and she can't be reasoned with and won't be contained. She has become 'The Phoenix,' a tricked-out, red-headed version of Grey, still played lusciously by the ever-beautiful Famke Janssen, and man, you do not want to mess with her. She'll drop a house on you.

With which side will her whirlwind of emotion find allegiance? Magneto and the forces of darkness? OR with Professor Charles Xavier and the other, more enlightened mutants? Adding to this delicious conflict of titans are a few new mutants to replace those who perish or become defanged: 'The Angel,' played by Ben Foster, 'The Beast,' played by Kelsey Grammar, and most entertainingly, 'The Juggernaut,' played by Vinnie Jones. In one of the most engaging scenes in the film, the Juggernaut must chase an X-Man -- in this case, X-girl -- who can walk through walls like a ghost, by crashing through the walls like a human wrecking ball.

Still occupying the center of the films, Hugh Jackman's 'Wolverine' serves again as ambassador to the audience and does so flawlessly.

In the end, 'X-Men: The Last Stand' does what sequels do best. It builds on the universe already established by its predecessors and does not try to duplicate them with formulaic story-lines. In true serial fashion, characters die, others move on, and new ones are introduced. It is a gorgeous film full of action and adventure and is never dull. It's the kind of movie for which movies were invented. I loved it from start to finish.

This movie review by Erik Gloor

V for Vendetta (2005)

'V' for wait for the DVD.

[3/10 · 23 March 2006]

A comic-book-inspired muscle-bound burn victim dons a cape, a mask, and a big chip on his shoulder. He proceeds to kick the snot out of anyone who ticks him off.

No, it's not 'Spawn.'

John Hurt twerps his way through a dark, Orwellian fear-scape of goose-stepping fanatics and HUGE television sets.

Nope. Not '1984.'

Hugo Weaving stars in a climactic duel in which an invincible revolutionary annihilates faceless stormtroopers in a graceful, slow-motion kung-fu dance of bullet-time choreography.

'Matrix?' Guess again.

A comely young maiden develops feelings for a murderous Gothic fruitcake in a mask.

'Phantom of the Opera?' Nay!

A man is wronged horribly and sets out to even the score through extreme cleverness and cartoonish violence.

Batman? The Punisher? Spiderman? The Crow?

No, no, no and no.

You could say 'V for Vendetta,' the latest offering from the Wachowski boys is derivative. But that'd probably be an insult to derivation.

Okay, well, maybe it's got something insightful to say about politics. You hardly ever get that in the movies these days. I mean you've got to hand it to filmmakers with the nerve, in this day and age, to develop a sympathetic hero who espouses demolition as political commentary.

Set in a Great Britain of an indeterminate near future, the film poses a rather unlikely protagonist: 'V,' who wears a Guy Fawkes mask and never removes it -- even when he's making breakfast.

V's mad and we're never quite sure why. Granted, anyone would be homicidally angry if they had to live in a world in which the government uses the media to lie and distract us from real problems.

Okay, wait. Bad example.

What if the government was really, really bad. What if they sent people off to gulags for being gay, or reading the Koran, or satirizing the president? And what if no blog was powerful enough to stop it?

Yeah, okay, that'd blow. What's the plan, V? Encourage citizens to be politically active? To get up off their behinds and vote for a change? Turn the TV off and hand out fliers for an hour or two down at the train station?

V: "Well, no actually, I thought I'd dynamite a few baroque old buildings of immeasurable historical significance. Then maybe I'll stab some folks."

Hmm. Well, I suppose that's one way to go.

'V' stands less frequently in this film for 'vendetta' as it does for 'vascillation.' Is it a revenge plot with political undertones? Or is it a political plot with revenge undertones? Whatever seems to lend credence to any given scene, apparently.

As best as anyone might put together through the flashback scenes, V was some poor slob who got caught in the middle of some incestuous collusion between a pharmaceutical company and the government.

This I can buy. Hell, it's happened to my grandfather thanks to this idiotic Medicare drug plan.

Anyway, V got sick or something and was used as a human lab rat or maybe that was how he got sick and it's never quite clear how he came to find himself sick and imprisoned and ultimately, a burned-up mutant. Conveniently, nearly every person we meet who was involved in the trickery that made him a freak occupies a position of supreme power in a new British plutocracy: the president himself; the head of the church; and a popular Bill O'Reillyesque TV personality. Heck, two of these big-shots used to work at the very government installation where V became a burned-up mutant! So rubbing them out is not only good for Mr. V's personal sense of justice, but for the commonwealth as well.

Methinks not.

And as a measure of V's capacity to justify poisoning old ladies in their sleep, we meet Evey. V's unwitting and often unwilling partner in crime, Evey seems to exist so V's got someone to educate in the hard realities of politics, government, and hypocrisy. Not wholly sophomoric, these lessons include a short journey into the kind of hell millions must have suffered at the hands of the KGB and other totalitarian agencies -- a hell in which political prisoners are held interminably and pumped for information.

Good thing America doesn't do stuff like that.

Evey is played by Natalie Portman, still proving an acting career can be built on being extremely cute. She phones in yet another doe-eyed every-girl but manages almost to be interesting when she gets her head shaved.

In a laughably implausible conclusion, we are asked to believe that a British police detective, upon discovery of a plot to level Big Ben, would stand there and let some punk rock chick throw the switch on the advice of some bozo in a mask. No. Even, or perhaps especially if the detective had just uncovered a cabal of government and commercial collusion. Police detectives just don't do things like that. Ever.

And lastly, we are invited to believe that the populace of London could be won over to the side of a weirdo resembling a walking marionette. That they would do so after viewing a frightening political manifesto televised by said weirdo. And that they would express their allegiance to this weirdo by dressing up like him and marching downtown to watch one of their most beloved historical landmarks explode. If Timothy McVeigh had somehow convinced us all that the UN was going to take away our bibles, I still very much doubt we would have felt compelled to put on Timothy McVeigh masks, march down to D.C., and watch him tip over the Washington monument. Populaces just don't do things like that. Ever.

So what have you got. An often depressingly violent revenge picture mixed in with a lot of wrong-headed and sophomoric political wisdom all tossed into a shop-worn vigilante genre.

'V' is for wait for the DVD.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004)

Like a snuff film with a plot

[1/10 · 23 January 2006]

I'm not sure, but I think Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and the makers of this film have conspired to depress us all to death.

'The Assassination of Richard Nixon' is a humorless, joyless, malevolent, ugly, sickening, mean-spirited, gut-wrenching plummet into an abyss of despair.

Why not save the four dollar rental fee and step on a mouse or pull the wings off a fly? In this chronicle and alleged, albeit loose, biography of the clown who plotted to fly an airplane into the White House back in 1974, we are not treated to an objective look at misguided political intrigue but instead invited to inhabit the crumbling sensibilities of yet another of Sean Penn's antiheroes.

Whoop -- ee.

I thought '21 Grams,' ( Penn, Watts ) represented the perfection of what I'm calling the new, "Ultra-Depressing" genre. But at least those films contained one or two light-hearted moments where this film has exactly none. Really. Not a one. This is where the keepin'-it-real mentality of whomever the idiots were who put this incitement to suicide on celluloid go astray. At some point, when a man who is clearly suffering from a mental illness of some kind gets one bad break after another and the poor chuckle-head is too lost to get the help he needs, at some point, you just have to laugh. You do. You really do. But this film takes it itself entirely too seriously for that, and an invitation to step back is never offered. For this reason, the film is just plain cruel. Unwholesome scene after unwholesome scene piles up like a huge, wobbly pile of excrement and then it all falls down on top of you.

Gee, thanks, guys. Maybe you can come over to my house next time and I'll show you an hour-and-a-half-long videotape of my colonoscopy or maybe my aunt Margie crying at a family funeral. Oh, wait, I've got too much taste for that. Oh, wait, ANYONE would.

David Lynch tackles some of the most melancholy material ever captured on film, and does so from the point of view of the damned, just like the present film. But unlike this picture, Lynch is careful to show you the flip-side, the absurdity of it all at some juncture. Fruitcakes driven by rage and alienation, true, often have a point worth considering, but mostly they're just silly, self-involved, and majorly in need of some psychiatric care. Lynch films make me sad, but somehow wondrous at the same time.

This film is too in love with Sean Penn and the ironies of his lost character's disdain for America's most loathed president: Like "dude, this guy's crazy, but maybe he's on to something, too;" as it takes zero responsibility in either direction. Mr. Penn's political views are well-known and you can be sure that this film's creators wouldn't have been embarrassed if a little Penn vs. Nixon hype had sparked up somewhere along the way in its election-year release. Indeed, so much of what Hollywood tends to convey politically is predicated on the notion that starting a discussion of American politics with anything less than woeful, shameful regret is unforgivable heresy. FEEL BAD!!! Howard Dean didn't get stomped to death politically because the REPUBLICANS hated his exuberance. He got stomped to death politically because a lot of so-called liberals hated his exuberance.

People are smarter than this movie gives them credit for. Compelling performances notwithstanding, they know the difference between pitiful and pitiless. And despite the acclaim downer clap-traps like this and 'The Pianist,' tend to garner initially, this film shall be forgotten. Perhaps already.

If Hollywood wanted to make a truly original film -- one that's never ever been made, it should make one about a middle-class, middle-aged heterosexual white man, living post-sexual revolution, who loses his way, makes some mistakes, screws up his life, but somehow manages to pull everything back together and win back the respect of his wife and kids without having to evolve politically or handle a weapon.

I'm not holding my breath.