Film

My Opinion
(out of 4 stars)

Comments

Archived Links, Notes

All the Matrix trailers and TV commercials, remastered and in Quicktime format.

Good overview of movie industry economics.

Humorous unused DVD commentaries from McSweeney's:

• Commentary by Howard Zinn & Noam Chomsky for The Fellowship of the Ring (Platinum Series Extended Edition) DVD: Part One, Part Two
• Commentary by Dinesh D'Souza and Ann Coulter for Aliens Special Edition DVD: Part One, Part Two
• Commentary on The Goonies Special Edition DVD: Part One, Part Two

Pauline Kael liked The Matrix! This and other insights from an interview with her from 2001.

For movie buffs: Invisibles--name that film based on a photo where the actor(s) has been Photoshoped out. Filmwise has a ton of these, and some people have compiled some of these in Excel workbooks: the first one I ever tried (1.79 MB Excel spreadsheet), and a couple more here at Liam Merlot's website.

Phunny site. Check it out for a fresh interpretation of films.

For those who caught Mulholland Drive, this in-depth dissection at Salon may help. Or it may not. Oh, just go read it.

Are you curious what happened in Memento? Salon has an excellent dissection from someone who's watched it numerous times, forward and back. And still can't figure it out.

Cool running series at the New York Times--famous folks from the film industry sit down with reporter Rick Lyman and watch a favorite film of theirs, discussing why they love it. Entries to date:

• Wes Anderson on L'Argent de Poche (or Small Change)
• Brian Grazer on Blazing Saddles
• John Travolta on Yankee Doodle Dandy
• Denzel Washington on Ordinary People
• Woody Allen on Shane
• Kevin Smith on A Man For All Seasons
• Julianne Moore on Rosemary's Baby
• Michael Bay on West Side Story
• Harvey Weinstein on Exodus
• Wolfgang Petersen on High Noon
• Ang Lee on Qi Cai Hu Bu Gui (Love Eternal)
• Steven Soderbergh on All the President's Men
• Kevin Costner on Cool Hand Luke
• Curtis Hanson on In a Lonely Place
• Ron Howard on The Graduate
• Janusz Kaminski on Vanishing Point
• Quentin Tarantino on The Golden Stallion

The best movies of 2001 (all orderable on DVD except for Lord of the Rings):

• Mulholland Drive
• Lord of the Rings (not on DVD yet, but will be out later this year)
• Waking Life
• Memento
• In the Mood for Love
• Ghost World
• Ocean's Eleven

I'd rate the BMWFilms:

• Ambush by John Frankenheimer Frankenheimer car chase scenes. See Ronin on DVD instead.
• Chosen by Ang Lee Not the most complex of films, but I love the Hulk reference.
• The Follow by Wong Kar Wai Leave it to Wong Kar Wai to emphasize style over the automobiles. Great music by Jeff Rona. Here's the full version of Unicornio (Windows Media file) sung by Cecilia Noel.
• Star by Guy Ritchie Best use of a BMW of all the films yet. A new M5 (thanks for the correction, Steven! I was getting my M's confused) gets put through the paces, even though they don't identify the car as such, maybe because no one can afford one. Madonna is no match for Mister Five.
• Powder Keg by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu From the director of Amores Perros. A bit heavy-handed as a story, about a reporter trying to escape a foreign country after having shot some incriminating footage. Cool deliberately washed out, grainy picture.

Director Neil Jordan channels the breezy sexiness of Monte Carlo, and Nick Nolte his inner drug addict.

Bob le Flambeur, on which this is loosely based, still surpasses this in the "thief making one last grand caper" canon, but this does it justice.

First-time director Catherine Hardwicke has worked with Cameron Crowe, David Russell, Richard Linklater, Costa-Gavras...they'd be proud. 14 year old Evan Rachel Wood (of Once and Again fame) plays Tracy, a thirteen year old girl from a broken family who struggles to fit in with the cool crowd at her new school while dealing with the resentment she feels towards her parents. Thirteen releases all of her rage and pain from the screen like a pure, primal scream. Wood gives an amazing performance, and Nikki Reed, the 13 year old co-writer of the screenplay and inspiration for the character of Tracy, is convincing as her Mephistophelean partner in crime Evie. One of the most authentic depictions of teenage angst ever; it reminded me immediately of several teenage girls in my extended family who've grown up in Los Angeles.

Hardwicke shot only two shots handheld; the rest of the time the camera sprints about in an effort to keep up with its two leads who are constantly trying to outrun reality. The hues of the film change from a realistic palette to a shimmering Technicolor to a grotesque over-saturation to a drab, colorless flatness, reflecting Tracy's moods. This movie will be a marketing nightmare, appealing to teenage girls yet R-rated, with subject matter which will appall many mothers. They'll leave scared, and they should be.

Director Gaspar Noé has the raw materials of a powerful movie but squanders them. Like Memento, its scenes play in reverse order to give the viewer a unique perspective on what would otherwise be a conventional tragedy. We begin with an act of brutality which I must confess to turning away from once or twice. Then we witness the tragedy that precipitated it, and it renders the first act of brutality even worse because of a case of mistaken identity. And from there we continue back to happier times which are clouded by the darkness we've already foreseen.

Noé causes us to squirm because each scene is shot in one continuous take, with a camera that does not flinch from the violence. This is the type of movie that many viewers will walk out on, which does not mean it's not good. But there are a few things which work slowly to weaken the movie, until it lost my sympathy altogether. The lead actors Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci, a real-life couple, are not great actors. They have a certain sexual ease with each other which is hard to improvise, but they won't win any acting awards, and a movie with such a severe theme requires acting of the highest order to earn our effort to watch it.

The other character who fails us is Noé himself, perhaps the most prominent presence in the movie. His darting, attention-gathering camerawork has a certain bold arrogance to it, but it seems to relish its own presence more than it wishes to mourn the fates of the leads. Its a movie which yearns for a more mature directing sensibility, but which might be too repugnant to all except an impervious younger mind like Noé's.

Movies about writing (Adaptation) and diseases of the mind (Beautiful Mind) have to confront the fundamental difficulty of capturing the inner consciousness with reflected visuals. Swimming Pool, about the process of fiction writing, chooses the method which probably works the best (for spoiler reasons I won't reveal what that is). An author Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling) goes to her publisher's summer home in France to get some solitude to work on the next installment in her successful mystery series.

She has just begun making headway into the next mystery book when into her life comes her publisher's daughter, one he never spoke of to Sarah. This girl, Julie, is played by French temptress Ludivine Sagnier as the archetypal bewitching, French, teenage, sexual temptress of English/American imagination. Her gorgeous nude figure intrudes on every other shot in the same way her presence invades Morton's imagination, and soon Morton is writing a novel about Julie instead.

Director Ozon provides enough clues to help the viewer solve the mystery, and along the way provides enough humor to keep the proceedings light-hearted. If some of the symbolism falls short (the removal of the cover from the swimming pool is blunt) and if the latter half of the movie descends into pulp drama, perhaps that's because the fiction process itself is oftentimes boring and unglamorous.

The lead role in this movie, based on true story, is played by an amateur actor but real-life strongest man in the world, Jouko Ahola. At times, this results in appropriately unmannered acting which fits the story of a Jewish strongman named Zishe who believes that strength can save the Jewish people from the upcoming Nazi invasion which he intuits but doesn't fully understand. At other times, the acting of Ahola as Zishe and his young brother in the movie (Jacob Wein) is so bad as to be distracting. Fortunately, the movie is not dependent on Ahola's performance (Herzog is not famous for guiding his actors to virtuoso performances) to carry the movie but on Herzog's genius with the medium.

Herzog movies always seem to tap into the transcendent power of moving pictures. He is a myth-maker whose movies tap something subconscious in the viewers mind, like an opera (and Hans Zimmer's score is appropriately Wagnerian), and at times Invincible displays those powers at work. The true illusionist here is not Hanussen (played with the usual fervent gusto of Tim Roth) but Herzog himself.

But many of the visuals only remind you of how much better Herzog was in the past. In one image, we see thousands of red crabs moving to and fro over a set of train tracks, and a giant train approaching in the distance. The crabs as the Jews in Poland, oblivious to the approaching Holocaust? Or as the Nazis, about to be swept away by Hitler's superhuman memes? It works, but Herzog has been better.

Franc Reyes is a first-time director, and apparently he's one who watched Scarface one too many times growing up. This is supposed to be the Latin gangster Greek tragedy, following a heroin dealer from the South Bronx (played by the Latin jack terrier John Leguizamo). Even the storyline is dated--immigrant protagonist loses his way when he abandons his homies in the old hood and enters into a deal with the white man. It's a storyline that's been showing its age since the time of the American Indian. Reyes is like a wide-eyed teenage boy given the keys to a Ferrarri--the camerawork sputters and starts, tossing the passenger/viewer around like a rag doll. Characters change personalities from one scene to the next simply because the script calls for it; Reyes doesn't give the characters enough time to evolve on screen, though actors of the caliber of Denise Richards probably can't handle the responsibility.

Lequizamo has charisma and almost holds the picture together. Unfortunately, he's also forced to provide a near constant voice-over which gives the movie the feel of a high school morality play. It's a crucial mistake. Peter Saarsgard is suitably creepy as the white devil here. His line readings are delivered with such boredom and ennui you think he's a non-actor conning you out of something, perhaps your admission money.

The acting is solid. Jeff Bridges is one of the great American actors working today, Chris Cooper pulls another amazing transforming act (though his Tom Smith is given corny horse empathy lines like "He's forgotten what he was born to do. He just needs to be a horse again."), Tobey Maguire convinces us as usual that untold depths of thought and emotion are occurring below his placid eyes, and Elizabeth Banks is radiant as Charles Howard's second wife. And the horse racing scenes are exciting, with cameras swooping in amongst the horses.

But if you enjoyed the movie, you really owe it to yourself to read the book which is even more amazing. Whereas the book spends time elaborating on the intricacies of horse racing and the main characters' lives, the movie must, in the interest of time, settle always for the obvious stirring highlights. In doing so, the movie actually dampens the impact of those moments when they arrive. The historical impact of the War Admiral/Seabiscuit race, the miracle that is Red Pollard and Seabiscuit's comeback victory, all of those are much more dramatic in the book because of the back story. You never learn, for example, that the reason that last victory in the Santa Anita Derby is so dramatic is that they had tried and failed to win that race so many times before.

The faux documentary style was a bad choice. It's obvious this is not a documentary, and reminding the users that the truth would have been even more compelling than fiction only amplifies the flaws of the movie. Better choices--make the movie longer to give it enough time to really tell the story thoroughly (mini-series on HBO?), or take a different direction from the book altogether to capitalize on the unique advantages of the film medium over the written page.

As a child, I loved the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney Land. Even now I have most of it memorized. The movie isn't quite as good (the movie is 143 minutes long and could have been edited down to about 120 minutes, to good effect), but it recalled for me that sense of pleasure I felt on the ride, in sitting back and letting the boat take you into another world of harmless fun. There are skeletons and pirates and ghosts, but in true Disney spirit none of it scares you one bit; it's all intended to make you smile. Seeing giant pirate ships swaying in harbors taps some inherent dopamine receptors attuned to swashbuckling archetypes. When Geoffrey Rush gets to sneer a hearty pirate "Aaarrrrgggghhh!" I couldn't help laughing.

And of course, there's Johnny Depp. He plays his character, Captain Jack Sparrow, like some sort of drag queen. I don't think the character was written that way, but Depp seized it and made it all its own. Truly an original, especially coming in a Bruckheimer action movie.

Let's hope Disney doesn't take this as a sign to convert all their theme park rides into movies. I couldn't stomach It's a Small World After All starring the Olsen twins.

The whole Jackie-Chan as goofy, naive China man with a somewhat ignorant American sidekick (e.g. Rush Hour) is not worthy of the talents of either Chan or Owen Wilson. Some of the silly ethnic gags, most of them pointed at England where much of the movie is set, are cringe-worthy. Chan is also getting old, so while his Buster Keaton impressions are fun, they also pale in light of his Hong Kong work. Hard to imagine a movie starring both Chan and Wilson being so banal.

Still, it's a hoot to listen to Owen Wilson's breezy line readings, even if the script provides him with such dull dialogue. He could read a pasta recipe and make it funny. I'd much rather see an entire movie of outtakes from the making of Shanghai Knights than the actual movie itself.

As unoriginal as the trailer foreshadowed. Take the first two movies, copy everything, package, ship, and hope for box office receipts. The only redeeming feature is that they avoided the pat ending. This might be the most blatant cash-in sequel ever (do we really have to sit through another scene in which Arnold teleports in naked from the future and has to visit a dive bar where women ogle him and he scans everyone and finds someone in a black leather jacket with the exact same dimensions and then has to find some cool dark sunglasses?). Why is it that the evil Terminator can regenerate her leather jacket everytime she's blown up but yet teleports in from the future naked? Why couldn't she just be naked the whole movie? At least straight-to-video sequels like Lion King II: Simba's Pride have original plots.

Hulk look and move funny. Why not look real like Gollum? Sometime Hulk show some emotion. Why Eric Bana no show emotion? I no believe Bana mad enough to be Hulk. I no believe in love story. I no believe in Banner father-son relationship problem. I like Danny Elfman music. Elfman do all superhero movie soundtrack. Ang Lee cut screen up like comic book page. Sometime work, sometime I can't see all panels at once. Too confusing my puny brain.

Not so simple as other comic book movie. That good. But Hulk too complex so I feel nothing. Should be complex and feel real too. Make sense?

Coburn abuse Nolte in Affliction. Nolte abuse Bana in Hulk. Maybe not so surprise Bana turn into Hulk. Big killer French poodle funny. Jennifer Connelly pretty. Why always date big crazy guy like Russell Crowe and Eric Bana? Should date me.

The makers of this documentary spent four years shooting footage of birds in migration all over the world. Many of the shots are stunning, as if a camera was floating in the air next to the birds in mid-air, and yet no special effects were used. There is comedy (some of the movements and sounds of birds are like performance art) and pathos (birds plunging from the sky when pierced by hunter's bullets, or left behind by their flock when they encounter all manner of misfortune). The migrations of these birds are life's most basic urges manifest as physical journeys.

I would have preferred some more narration or subtitles to clarify where the birds were in their migrations at each point in the movie. The plot seems to bounce back and forth a bit in the middle, as if out of order, dissipating the narrative momentum.

Disclaimer: while watching this movie, I was trying to finish a project for work on my laptop, and I received three phone calls, all of which meant that I missed what might have been some key plot points. I sense, though, that it's a movie that needs to be watched a second time anyway to truly comprehend what happened.

With that said, even one partially distracted viewing left me somewhat mesmerized, and not just because all the really attractive actors are getting naked and jumping each other in every other scene, or because of the intoxicating soundtrack. The movie does not move linearly; it jumps back and forth from past to present, from reality to imagination to dreams, and it's hard to tell which is which. Yet it is precisely this unconventional structure that breaks through our familiar means of contemplating relationships and heartbreak and renders the anguish new again. Lucia wonders what went wrong in her relationship with Lorenzo. The answer is much more complex than anticipated.

A Johnny To production, starring Andy Lau and Lau Ching Wan. Learning that he has only four weeks to live because of terminal cancer (wow, his doctor is amazingly precise!), a thief named Wah (Andy Lau) embarks on a crime spree whose motivations are unclear. He draws into this game a skilled cop and negotiator named Ho Sheung-Sang (Lau Ching Wan). They develop one of those relationships so popular in HK cop thrillers, in which the cop and his adversary develop a chummy rivalry and mutual respect.

Pop stars like Andy Lau are usually insufferable as actors, but this role suits Lau. He gets to smirk, crack a few jokes, and stand around looking like, well, a pop star idol. The movie is stylish and quickly paced, but it has a light-hearted spirit which doesn't descend into goofy Chinese slapstick. No one of consequence ever dies in a movie like this, but it isn't really detrimental to your health either. Like chewing on sugarcane.

When this movie was released in Thailand in 2001, it broke all the box office records there. The version I saw at SIFF was the Francis Ford Coppola cut, supposedly shorter and tighter than the original Thai cut. Suriyothai was a heroic queen in the 1500's who sacrificed much for her country, but the title is somewhat of a misnomer as this sprawling tale covers a long period of political power struggles in Thailand in which Suriyothai was just one participant.

These are some good looking Thai people. The young Suriyothai has a fresh face while the older Suriyothai has a still beautiful but more fierce countenance. Unfortunately, the script is too sprawling to carve a smooth dramatic arc, and the battle scenes, while they include an impressive number of actors, lack the realism which has become a standard in the past decade.

This was the biggest budget movie in Thai history, and it shows in the beautiful, elaborate costumes. It taught me more about Thai culture than the previous Thai box office king, Nang Nak. Still, a big budget has little correlation with quality. This movie would have been far more entertaining with a smaller budget and more ingenuous storytelling, focused on the life of Suriyothai. As it stands, the movie ends with her motivations still quite enigmatic.

A clever twist on the good cop/bad cop or good bad guy/bad good guy storyline so popular with Hong Kong movie directors (The Killer, Face/Off, City on Fire). Stars two of HK's biggest movie stars, Andy Lau and Tony Leung--not quite De Niro and Pacino in Heat, but the star power quotient is similar. The story concerns two moles, one planted by the Triad in the police department, and one planted by the police in a Triad gang, whose lives become inextricably intertwined during a sting operation.

This movie could be drastically improved by some more critical editing--remove an extraneous romantic plotline with a shrink (similar to the Amy Brenneman romance in Heat) and kill some of the goofy Canto-pop interludes from the soundtrack and you'd have a tighter, more suspenseful movie. Another problem is the acting imbalance--Leung can act circles around Lau, and that weakens the mirrored motivations they're supposed to share. We understand why Leung wants out, but why Lau wants to cross over the other side is more of an enigma.

But outside of that, it's one of the more inventive plots I've seen in a long time, and the scene where everyone is spying on everyone else is carried off with bravado.

Remake of the 1948 movie of the same name, and the movie starts with a dedication to China's former directorial greats. It's especially touching because director Tian Zhuangzhuang was banned from making movies for 9 years by the Chinese government. The type of story very suited to the Chinese style of moviemaking. Quiet, slow camera movements; long takes; many long and medium shots, though fewer long shots than a movie like Yi Yi; few closeups; minimal scoring, and many long stretches with no music at all. The overall effect is to focus the viewer's attention on the subtle emotions hidden beneath the surfaces of everyday life of a Chinese family just after the end of WWII.

Liyan is ill, and the woman to whom he had an arranged marriage, Yuwen, is bored, depressed, and irritable. Liyan's little sister is the only happy member of the family, perhaps the only one holding it together. Then an old friend of Liyan, a handsome young doctor named Zhang, shows up after some 10 years studying medicine. He also happened to have once been in love with Yuwen, and he brings both hope and jealousy and temptation in equal measures. The type of movie which American audiences, used to the overblown bombast of Bruckheimer, often find slow.

A movie/documentary adapted from the autobiographical comic book by Harvey Pekar, a grumpy, dumpy dude from Cleveland. Starring both Harvey Pekar and Paul Giamatti playing Harvey Pekar. This meta-documentary, in which Harvey Pekar himself comments on his life on screen (he even shares a few scenes with Paul Giamatti on faux sets--or are they the actual sets used in the movie?) feels right because Pekar's comic books are unflinchingly honest depictions of the not-so-glamorous events of his own life, so why even try to maintain the fictional illusion that Paul Giamatti is actually Pekar? As noted in the movie, every artist who's drawn Pekar in American Splendor (Pekar's own artistic skills peak with stick figures) draws him in a different way; Giamatti is just another in a long line of representations, and a good one at that.

One wonders, at the movie's end, if his wife even loves him. But the fact that all his friends stick with him despite the fact that he might depict them unfavorably in his comic books is proof of the appeal of an honest telling of a person's life story. The filmmakers eschew the usual Hollywood sugar-coating and remain faithful to their subject's spirit.

Not a very original plot, and unfortunately in horror movies the first mover advantage exists. After all, if you've seen the story before (I won't mention which other movies this one steals from, but it will be fairly obvious to even moderate movie fans), it takes a lot of the suspense and fun out of it. To compensate, this Hong Kong movie resorts to sneaky blasts of sound accompanying rapid cuts to spooky images. The soundtrack is a strange mix of sentimental synthesizer tunes and tribal bongo drums and Herrman Psycho screeches.

Fairly well made and acted, and it delivers some fun scares for the audience. Maybe the best way to enjoy the movie is to take a horror movie virgin and watch them wet their pants.

This is a review of the movie (which I caught at the Seattle International Film Festival) and not the DVD, which comes out on June 4.

9 animated shorts which flush out the Matrix mythology. Most of the shorts have such a threadbare plot and minimal time to build character that they're more sketches than stories. In the end, what you're left with is the animation, which is of high quality. This is best targeted at those who can't get enough of the Matrix mythology, which is a much larger population than one would think.

Plays almost like a wicked satire (the lack of any adult figures is a nudge in that direction), but doesn't ever commit to that strategy fully. As a realistic insight into the pressures of the overachieving Asian American adolescent, it doesn't provide enough context into why these kids end up the way they do.

Playing it as a satire would have made the atrocious acting more acceptable. Virgil was awesome, though.

Bryan Singer taps the best and worst of comic books in his second X-men movie. On the one hand, it's visually fun, a world inhabited by the types of sights and beings that escapist entertainment is all about. Singer's movies always have a glossy sheen, a sleek look of polish. It's one way to adapt the X-men, as valid as any other.

On the other hand, the characters are shallow, near caricatures, as two dimensional in motivation and emotion as the drawings in the comic books themselves. The protagonists, the X-men, are so good and noble as to be dull. The most interesting characters, not surprisingly, are the ones with any semblance of personality: Magneto, Mystique, and Wolverine. Watching the X-men is like watching an the NBA All-Star game. Lots of great athletes doing spectacular things, but with none of the emotional investment one has when watching your home team play for keeps in the regular season. In the end, one of the teams wins, but it's all of no consequence.

Eminently watchable because the dialogue is smart and snappy, the performances crisp. Shot mostly in tight close-ups that shove you into the barrel of the verbal machine gun that is Campbell Scott's Roger Swanson, a jaded Manhattan swinger who believes, in his job as in life, that he can talk people into anything because he understands and is willing to attack their emotional weak points. Even his nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) is fair game when he shows up at Roger's office looking for some advice on how to pick up women.

Scott is brilliant as Roger, Eisenberg plays a convincing and sexually naïve 16 year old, and Jennifer Beals (Flashdance) and Elizabeth Berkley (Showgirls) have great cameos. Visually somewhat claustrophobic, but if you close your eyes Scott's maddening invective will still carry you along.

Glides pleasurably over you like a sheet of silk. De Palma movies are often classified as guilty pleasures, and how else can one explain enjoying a movie in which Rebecca Romijn Stamos dances across the screen in a variety of revealing outfits? Well, I'll try.

The best De Palma movies are so pure; they shamelessly seek to please and send your moviewatching endorphins gushing (think The Untouchables, Mission Impossible, Carrie, Scarface). Femme Fatale is De Palma's ode to film noir, and in typical De Palma style he goes all out, opening with the not-so-subtle scene in which Stamos' character is watching Double Indemnity in her panties. The plot is convoluted, involving a jewelry heist and a series of double crosses, but the whole time you realize something strange is going on, and trying to read the visual clues and untangle the mystery is part of the fun (I won't give any hints except to encourage you to look carefully at everything on the screen). Stamos won't win any Oscars, but she plays the role of femme fatale gamely and with such gusto; it's almost tongue-in-cheek.

Okay, I give up. De Palma's movies are guilty pleasures. But it never feels as if he's pandering for your approval. When he splits the screen, uses slow motion, or sends his camera prowling up and down in long, unbroken voyeuristic takes, you sense he's in the moment, following his well-honed instincts. His is a unique voice.

Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, To Live, Shanghai Triad) follows Ang Lee in attempting a wuxia epic. While the talent assembled is undeniable (from actors Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, and Donnie Yen to composer Tan Dun to cinematographer Christopher Doyle), the undoing of the movie is Yimou's penchant for melodrama. The martial arts is weightless, but the mood of the movie is grim, serious, without joy or passion. Because the fighting is choreographed more as aerial dancing than true combat, it lacks physical presence and impact. There is no romantic chemistry between Leung and Cheung, and Yimou inserts one too many shots of water dripping in slow motion--it's cinematic Chinese water torture.

The cinematography is spectacular, Doyle dressing his fighters and scenes in a series of spectacular hues which jump off the screen against the sandy desert backdrops and dark red interiors. The movie's message, conveyed at the end, is an interesting one in this time of war. One can read it as Yimou's revisionist take on the traditional wuxia revenge movie in which independent warriors typically band together to take down the evil king or emperor.

Footnote: "All under heaven" is just two words in Chinese, tien xia. Hero is available on DVD if you can't wait for it to hit U.S. theaters in late 2003.

Greg Kinnear is pitch perfect as Bob Crane of Hogan Heroes fame, striking just the right note of likability in a character whose marriage collapses as he just can't resist the female attention his TV fame earns him. William Dafoe plays John Carpenter as a smarmy, life-sucking vampire as the hi-fi-geek wing man, teaching Crane how to videotape his sexcapades.

The movie evokes both the initial magic surrounding VTR's and their potential, skewed as it was by Crane and Carpenter's kinky ideas, and the pre-AIDS Playboy-Mansion-style availability of women in the 50's and 60's, but in the end Schrader remains so detached a chronicler that Crane's demise feels like the usual Hollywood cautionary tale.

When I was young, the local grocery store would hold occasional coloring contests, and inevitably some of the entries would contain a coordinated selection of colors, with not one color creeping outside the lines. Neat, impeccable, and definitely not great art. Bend it Like Beckham is that entry in the ethnic-clash-oppressive-parents genre. Better than My Big Fat Greek Wedding, not as good as Monsoon Wedding, it's a movie that panders eagerly for audience approval. And so you can't dislike such a movie, especially when it contains an actress as hot as Keira Knightley (who plays Natalie Portman's look-alike handmaiden in Episodes I and II).

But growing up as a child in just such a first generation context, you can wish for more than the usual platitudes and happy endings when trying to understand how to live between cultures. What of the kids who aren't so talented at soccer?

Almodovar has a unique ability to take a near ludicrous storyline and push it to the limits of irony without crossing over. And what's more, we're moved, though not in ways we'd expect, to a deeper understanding of the ways men relate, and cannot relate, to the women they love.

A fictional silent movie shown halfway through Talk to Her will go down in movie history as one of the more memorable and concise visual commentaries on the state of male-female relationships.

A grim depiction of corruption in the New York police force and its effect on Frank Serpico (Al Pacino), who transforms from an eager new recruit to a raving hippie crusader. Pacino plays Serpico as an angry martyr of his own obsession with cleaning up the corruption surrounding him. Sidney Lumet's direction seems loose, but Pacino's performance anchors the movie.

In an odd coincidence, Pacino comes back to play someone who tries to help out just such a dour informer in The Insider, with Russell Crowe as the Serpico character. Being an informant is just not sexy, healthy, or fun work.

Uneven. The beginning of the movie plays like a machine-gun montage of the most iconic scenes of brutality from Holocaust movies past. The random assassinations, offhanded brutality, mothers wailing for lost husbands and children. Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) wanders through the streets and encounters one scene after the other, as if Polanski is so haunted by his memories he can't help but pour them out in a litany of despair. Nothing here is new, and the audience has no clear, narrative path to follow.

But a fresh and evenly-paced story emerges once Szpilman is separated from his family and has to survive on his own in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. He survives through the human instinct for self-preservation, and neither Polanski nor Brody glorify it. Most people in the Holocaust died, and Szpilman survives through luck and the aid of a few kind Poles. A few scenes near the end, when he encounters an unexpected savior, have an understated elegance and power. The dialogue in those scenes is pitch perfect.

By the end of the movie I felt like Brody looked through most of the movie, which is perhaps Polanski's intended effect. What is in Szpilman's mind at the end, as he plays the piano? Brody does not let us in, and perhaps it is fitting, for none of us could truly understand what it was like to experience, let alone survive, the Holocaust.

Dazzling. Follows the transformation of an area of Rio de Janeiro called Cidade de Deus from a poor housing project into the war playground of rival teen gangs. Like a splash of cold water in the face, the same feeling I had the first time I watched Hard Boiled, or Pulp Fiction, or Goodfellas. As with many of the best foreign films, the story is born from the soil where it was shot. This movie could not be made anywhere else.

Director Meireilles used a cast of over 100 local residents, non-actors, training them for 8 months before beginning principal shooting. The result is a wonderfully natural and convincing acting style. These young boys revel in being in front of the camera the same way the gangsters of Cidade de Deus reveled in their dominion over their hood. The camera is alive, looking straight down from overhead at gunfights, or rushing along at street level while chasing a chicken, or dashing between shacks as it chases young men fleeing bullets.

After Moulin Rouge and Chicago, Hollywood should have no doubt that America has a lot of fun watching its movie stars sing and dance. Catherine Zeta Jones is sexy and vampish, Renee Zellwegger is both shy and sassy, and Richard Gere is surprisingly likable and winning when he admits and embraces his own smarmy nature. The music, lyrics, choreography, and dancing are toe-tappingly, head-boppingly good, and it's pulled off with a visual flourish and sharp rat-tat-tat-tat rhythm.

Improves on a musical in some ways--the ability to change the audience's perspective enhances their immersion and allows the director to edit in time to the music. For a director the control and variety of visual shots in a movie musical is far greater than in a staged musical. Also retains some of the weaknesses of musicals. In this case, the plot lacks suspense and substance. All the color and music and pretty people hang on a headless, heartless mannequin of a plot like a stylish, elegant outfit which looks beautiful in the store window but not at all the same when tried on at home in front of the bathroom mirror.

All sorts of lousy horror movies are described as disturbing; The Piano Teacher truly is. It's nearly impossible to imagine Hollywood putting out a movie so psychologically probing, emotionally harsh, and visually bleak. Isabelle Huppert truly inhabits the character of Erika Kohut, a severe, 40ish piano teacher who still lives with her mother. She demands that her students adhere strictly to the composer's intentions in their playing--no emotional flourishes or romantic seduction or melodrama. She seeks the same idealized standard in love, and not finding it, resorts to self-mutilation and voyeurism, always maintaining a distance.

Then she meets a young and handsome young 22 year-old student who happens to be infatuated with her, and she gets the chance to put her theory into practice. The results are uncompromising. Swept the 3 major awards at the 2001 Cannes film festival (film, actress, actor).

When a cop drama is described as "gritty", you know to expect extreme violence, cops breaking rules to terrorize suspects into confessions, grimy cinematography, terse dialogue, and lots of shouting. It's a genre that paints in broad brush strokes. In this case, though, the performances by Ray Liotta and Jason Patric provide the nuance that makes this movie more interesting than typical. A scene when Liotta breaks out in laughter when he hears Patric's theory on how a murder victim might have killed himself gave me an unusual shot of joy. It's wonderfully spontaneous.

I could have done without the obvious attempts at making the movie seem realistic: the handheld shots captured by a sprinting cameraman made me ill, the shots of Patric brooding alone in a park rolled my eyes, and the rapid flashes to the murder mystery at the heart of the movie actually draw more attention away from the story than it should. The camera needed only to stay on the two leads to keep my interest, and it does for most of the movie.

Somewhat silly serial killer mystery with a ridiculous concluding action sequence. But there's a joy in watching Clint Eastwood act--he moves with laconic, dignified grace and displays his trademark tough humanity.

Daniel-Day Lewis is awesome. Just purely awesome. If they relegate him to a supporting actor nomination for the Oscars, he should sic the Butcher (the character he plays in this movie) on all the voters. Everytime he was on screen I got goosebumps, from the way he spoke, to the way he walked and scowled. The best performance I've seen all year.

The script is overloaded and lacks focus. Is it a movie about Dicaprio seeking revenge for his father's death? About the corrupt politicians and class tensions of mid-nineteenth century New York City? About the battle between natives and immigrants that shaped America? It could be about all of the above, but this isn't the script to merge them seamlessly.

I admire Scorsese for sticking to his guns over the years and getting this movie made. Every one of his movies bears the unmistakeable mark of his vision. He is the Butcher--true to himself to the end.

I wanted to squeal with delight at the writer's block scene because it could only have been written by a writer who's experienced that curse. Nicolas Cage recaptures his old twinkling charm playing the Kaufman twins, and Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep, and Brian Cox round out what is just a top-notch cast of true professionals. Wickedly funny in parts.

The flaws are twofold. The action-packed ending, intentional as it may have been, was a letdown after the early skewering of the movie industry. And meta-movies always leave me emotionally cold. Is this really what Charlie Kaufman or Susan Orlean or Robert McKee are like? No, of course not, since this is more of an intellectual exercise. Still, I will pretty much see anything Kaufman and Jonze put out until they prove they can make anything other than entertaining stimuli for the brains in all of us.

So good I nearly wet my pants at the premiere.

Peter Jackson has figured out how to tap the majesty of the heroism at the heart of the books and channel it on screen with grandeur that pulls LOTR geeks and the average Joe and even film snobs' hearts out of their chests. The animation of Gollum/Smeagol is brilliant--what Jar Jar Binks wishes he could be as a fully-realized digital character.

Two flaws. One, this movie is clearly part of a trilogy. As a stand-alone movie it is exciting but would lose some dramatic tension. Second, as a rip-roaring action movie it lacks some depth and complexity of character. When Gollum is perhaps your most sharply conflicted character, you know it's a plot-driven tale. The rest of the cast have become almost character actors.

Still, every character's face is perfect for the role, and if the adventure and action tale are the heart of this movie, what a rousing payoff it is.

Give Jack the Oscar now. Proves that he's the king of actors of his generation still doing work today, putting some of his contemporaries to shame. Still, don't believe this "Jack as ordinary guy" talk. No one who's seen his movies will ever believe that Nicholson is an ordinary man. I did a double take when his wife showed up on screen because I thought perhaps it was his mother I'm so used to hearing about Jack with young lasses like Lara Flynn Boyle.

Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor are wicked satirists, but I couldn't help feeling a bit dirty leaving the theater. I've heard people claim that this is a humanist satire, but I felt that Payne and Taylor set the people around Schmidt up with the precise goal of riddling them with bullets.

It's a movie with such an odd tone. On the one hand it shows us these pathetic characters and ridicules them, and on the other we see Schmidt discovering perhaps a bit of humanity that was suffocated after years of marriage and insurance sales. Hard to describe the feel of the movie. A movie that's wicked, sarcastic, and yet somewhat sympathetic?

Delightful crowd-pleaser, full of love and life. Drops you into the midst of frantic preparations for an arranged marriage in an upper middle class family in Delhi, and you have to orient yourself the way you would if dumped into the midst of rush hour on a Bombay street. Examines the encroachment of global culture on the traditions of India, all with the emotional pomp and generosity of Bollywood soap opera or American musicals. The dialogue, a mix of Indian and English, reflects the multicultural quality of a world with fluid borders. Has some of the qualities of magical realism, what with everyone falling in love with someone else.

Puts that other movie this year about a multicultural wedding (the Greek one that made lots of movie) to shame. I wanted to laugh and dance during the musical numbers.

When John Woo moved to the US to make movies, he lost all his subtlety and style. I personally believe there's a cultural gap at the heart of it all. Deep character development has never been Woo's strong suit, but in the past at least his stock characters had a unique style and Zen-like intensity. In this movie, his characters are just props. There's the racist soldier who won't accept the Indians until one saves his life. The gung-ho soldier (Nicolas Cage) haunted by battle memories of the comrades he lost. And the Navajo code talkers who the movie is named after. What a great story this is in the history of war, Navajos used to create an unbreakable code, and yet this movie brushes them aside with a cliched string of battle scenes. One of Woo's worst movies to date.

When China took over Hong Kong and all of its movie talent moved to Hollywood, an entire national movie voice was silenced. All that's left is the fight choreography which Americans now insert in all their action movies.

Pierce Brosnan makes a good Bond, and this, the 20th entry in the series, is wise enough to parody the whole Bond mythology from time to time. Still, the weaknesses are glaring. You know Bond will win, that he'll escape every preposterous trap, and so there is no suspense. The best moments are not the action sequences but those when Bond exudes the dapper wit, sophistication, and snobbery that made the British such fetching cultural imperialists back when they were still a superpower.

It's enough, I guess. To create a franchise that has issued 20 movies, the formula must be fairly foolproof. By the way, does anybody besides me think that while Halle Berry is beautiful, she lacks sexy?

A definite improvement over the first Harry Potter movie. More moments of wonder, some of which left a big smile on my face. Still, at times the movie loses dramatic momentum and seems like simply a still portrait of random fantastic concoctions crammed in one after the other. It's those times when it shows its roots as a kids story. Also, that kid who plans Ron Weasley is more of an over-actor than Pacino in Scent of a Woman.

In the end, the generally top-notch acting talent and the remarkable production design redeem this movie.

Not a movie for those who favor stark realism, but director Todd Haynes creates a movie that is all artifice and then injects it with real emotions that tear through the sheen and emotionally and literally darken the bright Technicolor cinematography (at one critical moment the film literally changes hues). Julianne Moore is amazing in a role that requires lines like "Aww, shucks." The only flaw is the acting of Dennis Quaid

I've never seen a Douglas Sirk film (though I have two on DVD). I imagine Haynes has done him proud.

In the making-of documentary and in lots of positive reviews I've read, this movie is praised as the most realistic war movie ever made. Maybe I'm just a jaded moviegoer, but I didn't feel any more "in the trenches" than in other war movies with high production values, and the components of the movie--the characters, plot, and cinematography--all felt very familiar and simple. The movie doesn't seek to be a grand comment on the politics of the war. It simply depicts the first major battle between the Americans and the Vietnamese in what would become the Vietnam War using decent production values.

Perhaps because this was just the beginning of what would become a complex, confusing politically-charged lightning rod, it feels almost too simple and cliched to teach us much other than to commemorate the participants of this one battle. Characters utter lines like "I'm glad I could die for my country" and "I'll never forgive myself that my men died and I didn't''. If those types of lines bring a tear to your eye, you'll be moved by this movie. If they cause you to roll your eyes, take a pass.

Submarine movies consist of shots of men inside the sub, shots of the sub cruising through the ocean, and a few shots from the sky when the sub surfaces. They're almost like plays, all about the interaction of hard-headed men under extreme pressure (literally and figuratively). Common pressure situations include: sub going deeper than it's ever gone (will the sub be crushed like a sardine can?), a fire or rupture in the hull somewhere, depth charges from above, attack by another sub, young and inexperienced crewmen asked to grow up on the fly, and a lack of communication with home base means a crucial decision on whether or not to launch a nuclear warhead must be made without the benefit of complete information or orders from the top.

K-19 covers much of this and adds a few twists: it's based on a true story, the danger here is radiation (a frightening, deadly, invisible foe), and Liam Neeson and Harrison Ford sport goofy Russian accents.

Paul Thomas Anderson usually finds art in the odd tragedies of misfits and lunatics, but here he tries to manufacture it, and it feels contrived. Adam Sandler and Emily Watson are amazing as usual, though. I can't imagine a pair of people I'd rather hang out with for a Saturday. That needs to happen.

Also, this movie contains an outstanding cameo by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is pretty much always on.

Josh Hartnett, with his movie star looks, decides to swear off sex with gorgeous actresses (okay, they're playing roles, but whatever, they look like actresses) for Lent after his girlfriend dumps him. I'm supposed to have sympathy for him? Bastard. Shannyn Sossamon has no acting range (and neither does Hartnett, though not to the same degree)--what's with all this acting work being sent her way? She should go back to DJ'ing Gwyneth's birthday parties, where her placid smile and muted emotions will be more useful. Now imagine this movie in the hands of, say, Woody Allen, in his prime. That might have been funny, though Woody would have cast himself as the lead, and he's not all that attractive.

Very promising idea for a movie, with mixed results on the execution. About a young film editor (Jeremy Davies) who gets a chance to direct a goofy commercial movie starring a foxy young vixen when what he really cares about is a black and white artsy film which he feels really expresses his true self. But then he finds that he's being seduced by the more commercial movie, a campy space sci-fi adventure, and by its gorgeous lead actress, and sets his mind to injecting it with a bit of soul.

Lovely campy 60's style sets, evocative outfits like Davies' Godard suit and think black tie, but the limited acting range of Davies and the other actors in this film clip this movie's wings.

The plot of this novel almost always results in over-the-top movie melodrama, which can be fun. And in fact, this movie is, because when the topic du jour is revenge, everyone can ham it up. Throw in some swordfighting, hidden treasures, and Guy Pearce as the jealous villain (I'll bet that Pearce is like that in real life, like his character in L.A. Confidential), and you have something with the corny energy of a gothic romance.

Alas, is there any more dour actor than Jim Caviezel? Of course, this is the actor who refused to do a nude love scene with J. Lo because he's married, so that may exclaim the glum expression. He's the wrong choice for the lead--you never really believe he's out for revenge. Party pooper.

This schtick has run its course. After a hilarious opening chock full of megastar cameos announces just how huge this series has become, the movie falls flat on its face. I was surprised how bored I was everytime the familiar characters appeared on screen, doing their thing for the biiiilionth time. When the only jokes in your arsenal are spoofs of your own favorite jokes and picking on the Dutch (which is supposed to be funny because there's nothing funny about the Dutch), it's time to let go. This is just a Mike Myers love fest now. Of course, if you love to watch him strut in place...

See if you can sneak into the theater to watch the first 10 minutes and then head over to watch something else.

A spoiler free review--M. Night Shyamalan finally swings and misses. The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were held together by solid writing, solid acting by Bruce Willis, and an ability to capture the audience's sense of wonder. Signs is plain hokey in parts, and the central story of Mel Gibson trying to recapture his faith falls flat. Gibson isn't the right actor for that type of role--he's much better as the smirking renegade or slightly off-kilter do-gooder (Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, Braveheart).

I could forgive this movie its flaws if not for M. Night's arrogance in continually casting himself. He's not that good an actor, and while his role here isn't central, it's distracting. He should follow Hitchcock's cue and keep his parts small and silent, or even better he should stay behind the camera.

The long descent of Kevin Costner into melodramatic hell continues. I'm reminded of the myth of Orpheus, going down to Hades to find his dead wife, unable to resist a glance back on the way out. Come to think of it, Costner would be perfect for that part.

Oh yeah, back to this movie. Costner plays a husband who thinks he's receiving messages from the afterlife, from his dead wife. Or is he? It's not worth watching the film to find out the answer.

One thing you can expect from a movie with Sam Mendes as director, Conrad Hall as the director of photography, and Tom Hanks and Paul Newman as the two lead actors is that it is professionally done, through and through. None of the four disappoint. Mendes and Hall come up with some beautifully composed shots, including an evening shooting in the rain.

Based on a short graphic novel by Max Allan Collins, but thematically richer. The only problem with the film is that it's a gangster film set in the days of Al Capone, and that whole era has been done to death by Hollywood. Audiences bring all sorts of preconceptions to that genre and age, and Road to Perdition gives the audience no reason to believe this story inhabits anything other than a stylized, fictional universe. That constricts the film and prevents the human drama at its core from taking flight, but Mendes and company manage to make enough space to tell a small story about a father seeking a better life for his son.

Some people found American Beauty to be so immaculately staged as to be aesthetically pure and dramatically false. Those people will have the same problems with this film.

In the near future in Japan, teen rebellion has reached the level of anarchy. In response, the government enacts the Battle Royal act. Each year, one class of students is shipped to a remote island where they're each given a bag of supplies, one weapon, and 3 days to kill each other off. The lone survivor gets to leave alive. If more than one student survives, they all die (courtesy of a remote bomb inside a neck collar). Takeshi Kitano stars as the teacher turned ringmaster of this crazy operation, monitoring the shocking violence with his usual sardonic detachment.

Battle Royale is director Kinji Fukasaku offering social commentary with a blunt battle axe. The story and acting are melodramatic, rough around the edges, and so extreme as to be absurd. But there's something undeniably refreshing about hearing a shout ring as clear as a bell when American cinema is muted by censorship into a dull murmur. Think Heathers crossed with Lord of the Flies crossed with The Most Dangerous Game crossed with Survivor. But more violent.

After being thoroughly impressed by Cure at SIFF in 2001, I kept an eye out for any movies by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Pulse is one of his latest films, another entry in the psychological horror genre. Kurosawa tries to address all sorts of issues, from the urban loneliness of Japan to the cultural impacts of the Internet and technology to the cult following of the whole Ring film series. He bites off too much. The film meanders, and the constant atmospherics lose dramatic momentum.

Still, Kurosawa shows himself to be a master of achieving horror on a low budget using the tools Hitchcock would have appreciated: sound (creepy or absent), cinematography (grim shots of a desolate Tokyo in the near future), composition (deep focus allows the viewer to spot the onset of horror in the background behind the main character), and lighting (murky).

Like many Asian filmmakers, those of The Fast Runner avoid the rapid cuts that are so common in American film, lending the film the chronological realism and patient narrative pace of a documentary. You sense that this is true to Inuit sensibilities. Yet this Inuit story has the feel of an ancient Biblical fable or Greek myth, rife with adultery, murder, revenge, spirits, and love. The combination of the two creates a film with visceral visual weight.

At the Seattle International Film Festival, the filmmakers noted that most articles have gotten it wrong. This story wasn't based on a legend, it's a story that actually happened, and which has passed down through Inuit oral tradition. Maybe it feels real because it is.

Footnote: This film is exhausting to watch, for two reasons. One, it looks so tiring to run in thick snow, in thick clothing. Second, some of the shots in the film were captured in the most difficult conditions. Massive reflections of the sun off the snow. Bright backlit shots. Low-light shots inside cramped tents and igloos, with only light from oil lamps. Temperatures as low as -30 degrees Farenheit. The filmmakers turned to the Sony DVW-700-WS, the first digital Betacam 16:9 camcorder.

Even actors playing mentally handicapped roles need good lines, and unfortunately Sean Penn as Sam Dawson isn't given any in this crude plot. His dialogue is clearly written by someone who is trying to create a sympathetic retarded character. The three leads (Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Dakota Fanning) are clearly intelligent actors with lots of talent, but this story is an insult to their intelligence, and director Jessie Nelson's wobbling, jumpy hand-held camera shots annoy.

And of course, no reasonable human would believe that Sam could raise his daughter Lucy alone.

When they cast Ben Affleck in place of Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan, they shifted the entire series from gravity to caricature. The whole film is filled with ridiculous character sketches. The foreign politicians who speak English instead of their native tongue, but English with ridiculous Russian accents. Otherwise solid actors like Ron Rifkin and Philip Baker Hall scream and shout like lunatics as the President's senior advisers. What's with the infatuation with James Cromwell as American President? His President inspires less confidence in me than Dubya. I see him and think of the pig farmer from Babe. He certainly looks it in the scenes where he's debating nuclear war with his advisers and doesn't seem to have a clue what to do. Wait a minute. Hmm. Maybe his President isn't so preposterous after all. Maybe he was trying to channel Bush.

The bombing of Baltimore might be more devastating a scene if the rest of the movie were halfway credible. As it is, Sept. 11 exposes this film's mediocrity.

Director Hideo Nakata is a modern master of horror. Using nothing but simple camera movements, eerie music, and everyday images, Nakata unearths horror in everyday Japanese life. Dark Water is more emotionally interesting than Ring and no less terrifying. Watch it with someone who you'd like to have leaping into your arms (or into whose arms you'd like to leap). The type of the movie which is so enjoyable to watch with a large audience because everyone's on pins and needles.

A mother in the midst of a custody battle moves into a new apartment with her young daughter. Soon, water begins dripping from the ceiling. Then I had the crap scared out of me.

I agree with Ebert on this film. Entertaining action sequences which you can toss away without a moment's thought once you leave the theater. The characters are as cold as the film's wintry hues.

The appeal of Damon's Jason Bourne in the post Sept. 11 world is that he is an American hero suited to this dark age we live in. Pragmatic, merciful, confused about the violence directed against him but willing to deal with it using the skills he's learned. Contrast him to heroes we once embraced, like James Bond, whose arrogance and wisecracks (he was the suave, sophisticated version of the ugly American) seem to personify those qualities which we suspect have placed us under attack by terrorists around the world.

Richard Linklater is one of the few directors exploring the boundaries of storytelling in film using new technologies. He explored rotoscoping animation in Waking Life, and here he shows that handheld video cameras can be used to film an entire movie in the confines of a hotel room, giving it the claustrophobic feel central to the story.

Based on a stage play by Stephen Belber, Tape explores what happens when three former high school classmates are brought together by one of them, Vince (Ethan Hawke), who has a score to settle. Things don't go quite as planned. Hawks is particularly effective playing a manipulative, vindictive smooth-talker.

A passable, conservative effort at interpreting the Spiderman mythology by a big studio and Sam Raimi. I was mildly disappointed.

The bad: some of the special effects were so clearly CGI--Spidey's movements were occasionally silly. The Green Goblin's costume was ridiculous. The story has none of the gravity of Batman or Superman, both of which were superior comic book origin films.

The good: CGI permitted some fun swooping camera shots following Spidey as he swung through the city. Tobey Maguire captures Peter Parker's somewhat offbeat, nerdish personality. J.K. Simmons is a hoot as J. Jonah Jameson.

Why does Tobey Maguire walk away at the end? Still doesn't make any sense to me.

The One. Star. Movie.

Can we all just acknowledge that all the greats of Hong Kong cinema (John Woo, Chow Yun Fat, Jet Li) have come to America to ply their trade and have been infected with Hollywood's worst artistic sensibilities? Jet Li is a great martial artist and a terrible actor and English-speaker. Why does anyone want him to act in any parts that require romance or English-speaking? Thank god he'll be in Hero where he'll be required to do neither.

What's even more disappointing is the fact that it was directed by Glen Morgan and James Wong, of X-files production fame. They wrote and/or directed some of the best X-files episodes.

Nominated for Best Foreign Film by the Academy. The first Bollywood film I've seen from start to finish, and this is a long movie, nearly 4 hours long. Contains the musical interludes (yes, these are the origins of Moulin Rouge) so common in Indian film, though I guess I'd forgotten that the Indian ones are lip synched.

The story is about a group of Indian villagers who must defeat their British oppressors in a game of cricket in order to avoid paying lagaan, the annual tax. Not a very original story--this is classic David vs. Goliath social commentary--but the film entertains with its clear storytelling. It has the soul of a Disney movie--not a mean bone to be found.

One of my favorite movies of all time, and the most personal of all of Spielberg's works. More than any other movie, puts you in the mind and vision of Spielberg the child. Brilliant performances from all the child actors--Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Robert MacNaughton.

Not much new footage, but not much was needed. The film has stood up well to the test of time. The digital replacement of the guns with the walkie-talkies was unncessary, but otherwise the changes to the soundtrack and picture were worthwhile.

The film borrows from the Christian story of a being from the heavens who dies for man's sins and is resurrected and returns to the skies. Memorable score from John Williams. When I think of movie magic, I think of E.T.

From France, a spectacular mess of a movie. On a positive note, in some parts the film was so bad I actually burst out laughing. To blame the poor dramatic timing of this supposedly historic account on cultural differences would be to ignore that this film contains movie tropes from Hollywood and Asia, reflected and perverted in a distinctly French style. What is the movie about? A wolf haunts the countryside, and I think, after seeing the movie, that it was to drive sales of some red hardcover book. It was all a big PR stunt!

On a separate note, glad to see the French can concoct as cliched an American Indian character as we can.

Shaolin Soccer (2001)
(to be released in the U.S. as Kung Fu Soccer on Apr 5 of 2002)

Takeshi Kitano comes to America, bringing with him his almost Buddhist view of the world. He also brings his Muzak soundtrack, sudden violence, black suits, dark sunglasses, and blank expressions. Arriving in L.A. after his gang in Japan breaks up, he takes his half-brother's minor drug operation and presses it forward until the violence spills over. Beat Takeshi's view of the world is distinctive. Because he treasures nothing in this world, he is immune to fear, love, hope. Even those who disagree with him are usually brought down by his ever-widening whirlpool of violence.

He covered these themes better in his earlier films, like Hana-Bi (Fireworks), his most accomplished film, and Violent Cop. It's said that he wrote Brother. I wonder, did he write all of Omar Epps hip-hop dialogue?

Jennifer Connelly was in my dorm when I was a sophomore. She always seemed very sad, aloof. She gives a strong performance in A Beautiful Mind, and she deserves more work in 2002.

The movie finds a clever way to depict Nash's schizophrenia. It chooses to deal with the problems of depicting mathematical genius by, for the most part, sidestepping it. The only real evidence of Nash's genius is that other people claim that he is one. A scene in a bar in which Nash achieves his breakthrough on game theory is absurd, an insult to Nash's actual accomplishment.

My biggest problem with this movie, which is alright in its own right, is that it massively distorts the facts around John Forbes Nash's life. And yet many viewers will leave the theater thinking it was fairly accurate. Nash had several homosexual relationships. He fathered a child with a woman he abandoned, for the most part, before he married Alicia, who later divorced him when his schizophrenia became too much to take, only to remarry him last June. Want the facts about Nash? Read the book. Not a bad movie, just not an honest one. I believe Crowe would have been up to the task of depicting the real John Nash.

I waited over a year and a half for this movie, and it was better than I imagined. It is not the book, and thank god it isn't. If you want a literal translation of a book, go watch Harry Potter and fall asleep. Lord of the Rings is an epic book, but not a great book. This film captures the spirit of the book in that it is an epic film, one that feels like an exhilarating quest.

Peter Jackson has realized all the potential he has flashed in his directorial career in an epic that will leave you wanting you to jump up and clap. It is a beautiful looking movie. New Zealand's landscapes are beautiful, mysterious, foreboding. The casting is fantastic. Gandalf looks great, as does Frodo, and Aragorn, and Saruman, and Legolas, and Galadriel, and Arwen.

It is cruelty to make us wake for The Two Towers and Return of the King. I need a better home theater to showcase the DVD.