Movie Review Gerry

Gerry (2002) 

Directed by Gus Van Sant

Written by Gus Van Sant

Starring Matt Damon, Casey Affleck 

Release Date February 14th, 2003

Published February 8th, 2004 

There has always been a hunger for films that challenge traditional cinematic form. Films that break with convention and deliver something that is diametrically opposed to Hollywood filmmaking. For the most part these challenging films came from Europe where the avant-garde arose as an artistic movement and a reaction to the encroachment of Hollywood formalism into European film markets. These challenging films are still being made but the hunger for them has died down, beaten back by the invention of the blockbuster and the big business that is Hollywood.

These films, however rare, are out there and Gerry from director Gus Van Sant is one of the most fascinating.

The film begins without credits. We simply open with light classical score and a long shot of a car on a lonely highway. This shot lasts for three or four minutes before switching to a shot of our two protagonists played by Casey Affleck and Matt Damon as they continue to drive. No words are spoken. Finally, they reach their unspecified destination, a hiking trail through the desert. Still no words are spoken.

It isn't until the 8-minute mark that a line of dialogue is spoken but it's not very enlightening except as a minor sign of things to come. A sign that says this is not a film where dialogue is going to explain, enlighten or entertain. As the two friends continue their journey, they bail on the hiking trail for a supposed shortcut before finally becoming lost in the desert. All of the film’s dialogue act as conversations that have already started before we met the two characters. There is a joking conversation about Wheel Of Fortune, some odd conversation about what I think was a video game, but not anything that is going to lead to a conventional plot.

The lost in the desert situation is no Blair Witch exciting fight for survival or wacky slice of life ala some ridiculous sitcom. It simply is what it is, two guys lost in the desert looking for a way out. The two characters never react the way you would expect from a conventional plot. There is very little whining or carrying on. Indeed neither character seems all that concerned about surviving or dying. If they are concerned they keep it to themselves, it's up to us in the audience to fill in the blanks.

In it's minimalism of one handheld camera, sparse dialogue and characters, Gerry is a direct challenge and reaction to the typical explain-it-all-style of the Jerry Bruckheimer era. No obvious explanatory dialogue that leads the audience to obvious conclusions, no quips and no filler before the next explosion of bullets. Gerry has none of those elements and goes to the very opposite extreme. For that I was willing to stick with and feel rewarded at the end. Challenged to create much of the movie in my own mind I was mesmerized by the film and it's techniques.

The films title is odd and not just in it's spelling of the oft-used name. In the film, both characters refer to one another as Gerry but one suspects that it is neither of their real names. In fact, Gerry is an in joke amongst Damon and Affleck's circle of friends. A “Gerry” is a fuck-up, someone who constantly screws up. A fitting title for two guys who manage to get lost in the desert in this day and age when everyone everywhere has a cellphone, pager, blackberry, and any myriad number of other electronic leashes to the outside world.

In that sense, what if the whole film is one big in-joke? What if Damon, Affleck and Van Sant simply went to the desert, film absolutely random shit and called it a movie? They put it together professionally with technical prowess in editing, shooting and scoring to make it look legitimate. Then released the film so that people like myself could rhapsodize about it's minimalist genius and it's influences garnered from Bela Tarr and Fassbinder and other people only snobs have ever heard of.

Whether or not we have been made a fool of, we will never know. I for one don't care if I have been duped. I enjoyed the opportunity to so actively watch the film. To take my mind in odd directions in order to fill in the empty passages that are filled with shots of the two actors walking and the sound of rock under foot. Gerry is a form of film meditation and I dug that about it. 

Movie Review Gang Tapes

Gang Tapes (2001) 

Directed by Adam Ripp 

Written by Adam Ripp

Starring Darris Love, Trivell 

Release Date February 1st, 2001

Published October 20th, 2002 

It’s been called the movie “they” don’t want you to see. Some have compared it to the Blair Witch Project, for it’s shaky cam style and improvised dialogue. These are merely marketing concoctions that don’t do the film justice. What the film Gang Tapes really is, is the most truthful and shocking look at life in inner city Los Angeles.

As the film begins with vacation footage of some nameless white family, the audience wonders if they are watching the right movie. Then as quickly as the occurs the dread begins as the family on the tape begins to shed light on the situation, they are lost. Suddenly and violently the once happy family is gone, brutally car jacked, their fate unknown. The beginning of Gang Tapes is jarring enough but as the film develops, the shocks continue. The audience is given moments of calm, followed by horror that leads to more shocking realistic violence.

The film is the creation of Adam Ripp, a first time writer-director with more courage than talent. Ripp worked with actual gang members in the making of Gang Tapes, giving them a digital camera and a minimum of storyline to carry forward thru the film. The lone actor in the film is Darris Love whose minor television work is the experience amongst the amazing cast. A young man credited as Trivell is the film's focal point. Kris, a fourteen year old who has grown up worshipping the gang members in his neighborhood, is our eyes and ears behind the camera. 

As Kris gets deeper involved in gang life the audience is treated to more and more shocks and sadness. We witness Kris being beat into the gang, a ritual wherein the gang kicks and punches Kris until they feel he is tough enough to be a member. We see Kris and his idol Alonzo (Love) demonstrating how to make rock cocaine. And in the film's most shocking and hard to watch scene, Kris commits his first murder.

Gang Tapes is an amazing film, in style and subject. In style it is a likely unintentional homage to French cinema verite and the European Dogme 95 movement. Indeed Gang Tapes meets most of the requirements of a Dogme film, save for it’s use of weapons and director Adam Ripp being credited as the director. More than likely the style of the film has more to do with budget than obscure European film movements but the similarities are striking if you are a scholar.

In subject Gang Tapes makes every other film of the gang genre seem superficial in comparison.

Much like the best of early 90’s Gangsta Rap, Gang Tapes shines a light on inner city gang activities that many would like to ignore. People such as Los Angeles Congressional Representative Maxine Waters who would rather staple her eyes shut than acknowlege the gang activity that takes place in the very district from which she was elected.

The film could stand for a little more editing and a tighter pace but it is nevertheless challenging, shocking and sad. This is a brilliant and valuable work of art.

Movie Review Gacy

Gacy (2003) 

Directed by Clive Saunders

Written by David Birke, Clive Saunders

Starring Mark Holton, Charlie Webber Glenn Morshower, John Laughlin 

Release Date May 13th, 2003 

Published May 13th, 2003 

You have seen them all over your video stores New Release shelves over the last year, serial killer movies. Movies about real life killers that take the killer’s name as the film’s title. Films such as Dahmer, Bundy and Ed Gein amongst others. The latest addition to this growing genre is Gacy, about the legendary Chicago serial killer who stashed the bodies of 27 teenage boys in the crawl space beneath his home.

The film begins with Gacy as a young man on a fishing trip with his father played by Adam Baldwin. As this opening sequence goes on, the tension between father and son grows, with Gacy's Dad challenging his son’s manhood to provoke a physical attack. Finally young Gacy does fight back but can't bring himself to actually hit his father. This encounter haunts him the rest of his life.

Cut to 1976 in the suburbs of Chicago where the neighbors of John Wayne Gacy are complaining about the awful smell coming from underneath the Gacy home. John Wayne Gacy (Mark Holton) seems to be a gregarious, apologetic family man. On the surface he's a loving father of twin daughters who let's his doting mother live with his family. So just what is that awful stench coming from underneath his house?

Late at night after his wife and children are asleep, Gacy sneaks away from his home and into the city of Chicago. Once there he pretends to be a police officer and busts teenage runaways who turn tricks to survive. Part of his gimmick is to offer the kids a chance to not be arrested, if they do favors for him. Then he knocks them cold and either strangles or stabs them to death. Although occasionally, for some reason unexplained by the film, Gacy let's some of his potential victims go. One potential victim he merely has sex with then drops him off in the park, an act he would come to regret when the kid goes to the cops.

The film doesn't get much into the police investigation of Gacy's activities, only that detectives were following Gacy and at one point, even camped out on Gacy's lawn as they waited for cause to search the house. The film focuses mostly on Gacy's real or imagined relationship with a kid he hires to work in his house painting business. When the kid confesses to Gacy that he is having problems with his father, Gacy offers him a room in his home, taking the room of his daughters who by this time have left with Gacy's suspicious wife.

Mark Holton, best known as the fat guy from Teen Wolf, or Pee Wee Herman's nemesis Francis in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, plays Gacy as a troubled, closeted homosexual. The film posits the theory that Gacy killed teenage boys as some kind of psychic revenge on his father. The psychology of the film is somewhat muddled to the point where armchair psychiatrists will have a hard time coming to any conclusions about Gacy's mental health except for the obvious, he's a nutball.

Clive Saunders wrote and directed Gacy and doesn't bring much to it other than a couple stylish camera setups and narrative inertia. As a movie, Gacy fails to interest audiences because it plays as a mystery with no mystery. We know going in that Gacy murdered 31 people, we know going in that most of the victims were buried beneath his home, the only mystery is why Gacy did it and the film brings no new insight to that mystery. 

Movie Review Mischief

Mischief (1985) 

Directed by Mel Damski 

Written by Noel Black 

Starring Kelly Preston, Doug McKeon, Catherine Mary Stewart 

Release Date February 8th, 1985

Published February 8th, 2015 

There is a reason that the pleasant and quite entertaining movie “Mischief” is mostly lost to time. The film simply lacks any ambition. While it has entertaining performances, a terrific soundtrack, and an easy to relate to coming of age story, the film is stubbornly small in its ambition. There is no wont in the film to be anything more than a very slight teenage romance.

Doug McKeon is the ostensible lead of “Mischief” as Jonathan, a teenage horndog with a longstanding crush on Marilyn (Kelly Preston) that is seemingly doomed to be nothing more than a crush. Then, Jonathan meets Gene (Chris Nash) a classic other side of the tracks, James Dean loving, fellow outcast who becomes his guru with the ladies. It is Gene’s mission to help Jonathan get laid, a classically 80’s notion of teen comedy.

Together, Jonathan and Gene endure the pitfalls of smalltown life with rich kid bullies and indifferent adult figureheads aiming to keep them on the straight and narrow path to squaresville. Their friendship, while unlikely, is nevertheless well rendered and we can’t help but feel for both guys, even as we’ve witnessed this story more than a few times. McKeon and Nash work well together and with the aid of Preston’s smoking hot Marilyn and Catherine Mary Stewart’s more thoughtful Bunny, we find a group of characters that are easy to like and root for.

It’s just a shame that “Mischief” doesn’t have a little more ambition. Unlike the characters of another 1985 teens coming of age comedy, “The Breakfast Club,” the characters of “Mischief” are simply too narrow and singular. They have no ambition to be characters who define a generation. That comes in part from the film’s 1950’s setting which removes it from the modern experiences of teens of the time, but also from the narrow notions the film has about love and small town life. There is no grand statement to “Mischief” only minor, humorous incident.

If “Mischief” has a legacy now it’s only due to Kelly Preston. Her young, nubile, nudity was long a staple of the porn site “Mr. Skin,” home of celebrity nude stills from movies. Does “Mischief” deserve a better legacy than that? It might if the film had more ambition. As it is, I guess, it’s rather fitting.

Movie Review Fulltime Killer

Fulltime Killer (2001) 

Directed by Johnny To, Wai Ka-Fai 

Written by Wai Ka-Fai, Joey O'Brien 

Starring Andy Lau, Takashi Sorimachi, Simon Yam, Kelly Lin 

Release Date August 3rd, 2001 

Published June 9th, 2003 

In this country, we make a big deal about violence in films and television. In other countries, however, the reaction to violence in films is quite different. Especially a place like Hong Kong where violence has become it's own artform.

With the films of Chow Yun Fat and especially those of John Woo, violence in Hong Kong films was accorded the respect and artistry that we in America attribute to a Meryl Streep performance. The tradition of highly stylized violence in Hong Kong movies continues today even as many of it's most well known stars and directors have moved onto American films.

Fulltime Killer is one of the latest in a long line of artfully violent Hong Kong movies. While it may not be the equal of a Hard Boiled, it's as slickly blood-soaked and entertaining as the number of films it references. There is a long in the tooth cliche in Hong Kong action films about top assassins killing other assassins to become the best killer in the world. Fulltime Killer plays this same theme, shamelessly aping the number of films that have played this same plot.

O (Takashi Sorimachi) is the top assassin in all of Asia, a cold blooded killer who murders a former high school friend, after completing a contract, simply because that friend could identify him to the police. O lives in almost complete isolation as to avoid unsatisfied clients or fellow killers who hope to unseat him. Maintaining two apartments, O's only connection to the outside world is a woman he hires to clean his apartment. As he watches from his real apartment across the street, the beautiful young Chin (Kelly Lin) cleans his apartment. Chin suspects he is watching and even toys with him by undressing in front of open windows before cleaning. She also suspects that her boss is an assassin.

Chin's suspicions are confirmed by the emergence of another assassin, the movie-obsessed Tok (Andy Lau). The two meet when the ultra charismatic Tok seeks out his rival’s new cleaning lady at her other job as a video store clerk. Wearing, of all things, a Bill Clinton mask, Tok seduces Chin into a date, which he leaves halfway through to do a job. He then returns all the while still wearing the mask. Once the mask comes off, the truth comes out. Rather than be put off by the killer, Chin is even more intrigued and takes to being the girlfriend of an assassin.

There is far more to Tok's motivation to kill O, not only the pride of becoming the top killer but also vengeance for the death of his girlfriend, O's former cleaning lady. She was the victim of one of O's rivals.

None of this story is new, but the stylish self-referential Fulltime Killers never feels stale. Directors Johnny To and Kai Fai Wai revel in their homage to various films. Occasionally referring to the films by name such as Leon The Professional and El Mariachi. The stylishness of the floating camera's and over the top use crane's and dollies keeps the film moving at a breakneck pace. Slowing down for only moments for minor exposition, it's the exhibition of stylized violence that fascinates the directors. It has certainly been done before and it's been done better but the enjoyment that permeates the edge of every scene gives it all a freshness.

The film’s stars are two very charismatic young stars in Andy Lau and Tokashi Sorimachi. The confident attention grabbing performances provide the spark the film needs to separate itself from its various influences. It is the performances of the two leads as well as Kelly Lin and Hong Kong veteran Simon Yam as a cop on the trio's tail that makes Fulltime Killer an exciting, energetic thriller.

Movie Review Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th (1980) 

Directed by Sean S. Cunningham

Written by Victor Miller 

Starring Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Kevin Bacon, Laurie Bartram

Release Date May 9th, 1980

Published August 17th, 2003 

It seems many horror fans have been operating under great delusion for a number of years. That delusion is that Jason Voorhees was the star of each of the Friday the 13th films. That is not the case. Nine sequels with Jason as the focal point have colored the minds of many fans of Jason's high body count. In fact the first Friday the 13th film could be considered a stand-alone picture. It operates as a revenge movie/psycho horror film. Jason is merely a plot point, a motivation.

What is far more interesting though is how much you miss the Jason of myth as you revisit the first Friday the 13th. Over time, that myth has become a charming little joke of over the top beheadings and implausible returns from the grave. The first Friday the 13th is quite tepid in comparison with it's quasi realistic violence and complete lack of the supernatural.

The story has been copied numerous times in numerous knock off's, and of course the film itself was in fact a knock off but I digress. A group of nubile camp counselors has assembled at Camp Crystal Lake at the behest of the new owner Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer). But not without having been warned by the nearby residents that the camp is cursed. It's seems that in 1957 a young boy drowned in the lake. The following year, two counselors were brutally murdered. Each time the camp was reopened a new tragedy befell the new counselors. Nevertheless, our intrepid counselors move ahead with renovations.

It's not long however before the bodies begin to pile up. First, it’s the camps new cook Annie (Robbie Morgan) who never actually makes it to the camp. Then a couple, Jack (Kevin Bacon) and Marcie (Jeanine Taylor), who make the classic horror film mistake of having sex. After a few more murders, including the offscreen slaying of the camp’s owner, it's down to young Alice (Adrienne King) to fight off our heretofore unseen assailant.

Director Sean S. Cunningham, a veteran horror producer, doesn't bring much style to the film, though his effects and makeup are quite good. Cunningham lacks mostly in his building of suspense. The decision to leave the killer offscreen seems similar to Steven Spielberg's trouble with the shark in Jaws. It's not that he wanted the shark off-screen, it just didn't work. The same could be said of Cunningham. That keeping the killer off-screen for most of the film was not a creative choice, but one of necessity, as if he wasn't sure until late in the game how he would play it. His choice of killers is a debate for the ages.

Some horror fans claim that the killer is a great shocker that plays off stereotypical archetypes in an ironic surprise twist. I say the producers couldn't think of anything better and what they came up with is lame and horribly contrived. I am of the school of horror fans who believe that the series didn't really begin until the second film when Jason arose from the grave, not wearing the hockey mask by the way. He began a legendary run that continues soon with the recently released Freddy Vs Jason. 

Movie Review Freak Out

Freak Out (2004) 

Directed by Christian James

Written by Christian James 

Starring James Heathcote, Dan Palmer 

Release Date October 15th, 2004

Published April 11th, 2004 

In the tradition of low budget horror trash from Troma films comes the British import Freak Out, a gory horror parody that spills as much blood as your average horror films with twice the laughs. Unlike most horror films, these laughs are intentional and delivered by a terrific cast of first time actors working on a budget that only Kevin Smith and the Blair Witch guys could appreciate.

The story, such as it is, is about Merv (James Heathcote), a bored Londoner with a passion for horror films. His bedroom is festooned with horror posters and he makes daily trips top the local video store to claim every new and old horror title he can get his hands on. Merv knows all of the old horror tropes and hopes to one day direct his own real horror film.

Fate smiles on him and Merv gets his chance when he captures a real life escaped mental patient hiding in his shower. With the help of his best friend Onkey (Dan Palmer), Merv trains the gentle mental patient, who only wishes to become a killer at Merv’s behest, to become a serial killer straight out of one of his favorite movies.

It’s slow going at first since the killer is a vegetarian who is terrified of the sight of blood. His idea of a scary killer outfit is a potato sack over his head, a tennis racket and a tutu. With the help of Merv and Onkey, the killer adopts the name ‘The Looney” because he escaped the looney bin and begins to take to killing Merv and Onkey’s friends and neighbors.

This movie is wildly all over the place with humor that flies between Scary Movie-esque quips and puns and Troma-style over the top gore. There is also scatology to spare, especially in a wacky subplot about the killer’s obsession with Dallas star Larry Hagman.

Writer-Director Christian James and his cast clearly enjoyed every minute of this low budget production and that joy flies off the screen in torrents of fake blood and over the top humor. James also shows a very professional flair considering the film’s low budget. Freak Out is surprisingly well shot and edited. Troma has been in this business for more than 20 years and their venerable director Lloyd Kaufman has yet to direct a film that looks as good as Freak Out.

It’s a tough film to find, independently produced out of Britain, but if you can get your hands on a copy, do it. Freak Out is the perfect “get your friends together, drink beer, and laugh your ass off movie.”

Movie Review: Cassandra's Dream

Cassandra's Dream (2007) 

Directed by Woody Allen

Written by Woody Allen 

Starring Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, Hayley Atwell, Sally Hawkins, Tom Wilkinson 

Release Date January 18th, 2008 

Published May 22nd, 2008 

Someday this will be referred to as Woody Allen's London era. Whether this period of Allen's career will be remembered well is still in question. His Scoop was a cute, quick witted comedy that never caught on with audiences. His follow up, Match Point is a devastatingly smart thriller likely to be remembered by Allen fans as a masterpiece.

Now comes Cassandra's Dream another London set thriller that ups the ante on Match Point by going for big stars but comes up short on the smart thrills that made Match Point so brilliant.

Two brothers turn to crime to solve their financial problems only to find themselves not exactly adept. Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell are Ian and Terry Blaine. Ian is a dreamer who aspires to high finance. For now he lives the life of a playboy without the actual means. Terry is more honest of his working class roots. He lives modestly with a longtime, loving girlfriend. His one indulgence is gambling and when we meet Terry he is on quite a hot streak. He eventually strikes it big at the card table to the tune of 30 grand.

Hot streaks however, never last. As Terry risks the 30 grand to get the money he needs to buy his girl a house he winds up 90 grand in the hole. Naturally, Terry turns to Ian for help. Ian for his part has fallen head over heels for a young actress named Angela (Hayley Atwell). What little money he has he hopes to use to keep Angela in the comfort she aspires to. Now however, he must help Terry. With their options limited the brothers turn to their uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) a highly successful businessman. Howard has one condition for a lone, the boys must murder a man who threatens to tear down Howard's multi-million dollar empire.

To say Howard is asking alot is an understatement and that is at the heart of the issues with Woody Allen's latest tale of chance, chaos and morality. Allen has always been fascinated with cause and effect and the idea that while one action may lead directly to another there is no such thing as fate. In the end, Allen's world view is that we are the arbiters of our fate and our consequences. That view certainly plays out in Cassandra's Dream where Terry and Ian are not forced to do anything but decide to do something and then decide their own punishment until the random nature of the world intervenes in all it's unintentional irony and strange ordinariness.

The last shot of the film with the world in order but an emotional shitstorm in the offing is a strong, almost devastating conclusion. Unfortunately, the central crime is so outlandish that you are unable to truly invest in it emotionally. Yes, Terry and Ian are both desperate but are they really so desperate to do what they do? I didn't buy it. I especially didn't buy Ferrell's Terry who turns ashamedly from an average guy into the worst type of Ferrell character, the weepy, whiny mess well displayed in Phone Booth, far less interesting in Alexander, The Recruit and now in Cassandra's Dream.

Ewan McGregor on the other hand is right at home as Ian. With charm that intimates a certain moral flexibility, McGregor's Ian is more suited to the central story than is the caricature that is Ferrell's Terry. It is Ian and his relationship with Amanda that brings home the central themes of the film, the randomness of life, the luck, the chance and the lack of any real grand design. Also, in Hayley Atwell's Amanda we get Allen at his self deprocating best. In the film's best scene, Allen goes meta and breaks down the very existence of her character in the film.

The failure of Cassandra's Dream is unfortunately Allen's inabilty to craft a solid thriller plot to tentpole his favored themes. The Allen intellect, his philosophy on life, death and movies is on well display but fail for not having a structure on which to hang them. Thus Cassandra's Dream is a film of ideas with no driving narrative force that could have, with a little more care, been a devastating dramatic piece ala his previous London set masterpiece Match Point. That film delivers the same themes with a thriller plot that is involving, shocking and purely Allen-esque in how it underlines its ideals.

Rent Match Point and Cassandra's Dream off your Netflix cue.

Movie Review: Christopher Robin

Christopher Robin (2018)

Directed by Marc Forster

Written by Alex Ross Perry, Tom McCarthy, Allison Schroeder

Starring Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett 

Release Date August 3rd, 2018 

Published August 2nd, 2018

Disney has had remarkable success taking their animated properties and repurposing them for live action films. And somehow, they’ve done this with no one accusing them of recycling or calling out the nakedly calculated marketing strategy that was the inception for each of these movies from Cinderella to Jungle Book to Beauty and the Beast and now to Christopher Robin, the live action take on Winnie the Pooh.

Much of the reason that we’ve given Disney a pass on such criticism is because the quality of this strip mining of our nostalgic memories of childhood have been so very good. Exceptional filmmakers such as Kenneth Branagh and Jon Favreau and now Marc Forster have turned this cynical nostalgic cash grab into something genuinely, lovingly artful. Marc Forster has even made, arguably, the most loving and artful of all of these cynical cash grabs.

Christopher Robin is the story of the young boy who found a door in a tree and bravely crossed it’s threshold into a world of wonder in the 100 Acre Woods. There he found magical creatures including a new best friend, Winnie the Pooh along with his pals, Piglet, Owl, Rabbit, Eeyore. Kanga and her son Roo, and the wonderful, bouncy backsided Tigger. Together they played and dreamed and had great adventures.

Years passed however and time came when Christopher Robin was forced to leave behind the 100 Acre Woods in favor of soggy old London and life in a boarding school. From there, Christopher would begin to forget his fuzzy former friends and start a real life. Grown up, and played by Ewan McGregor, Christopher met and fell in love with Evelyn (Hayley Atwell), they had a baby named Madeline (Bronte Carmichael) and he went to war.

Now home with his family, Christopher has begun to forget not just about the 100 Acre Woods but about fun in general. Christopher’s job at a luggage company consumes all his time and thoughts and even when he plans to spend a weekend away with his family, at his parents’ former cottage, he can’t get away from his work and the strain on his marriage is evident if only to us and to Evelyn.

Here’s where things take a turn. The scene shifts to Pooh Bear’s cottage. He’s just awoken and found that he has no hunny. He goes out seeking help from his friends and cannot find them. He finds the door in the tree where Christopher Robin always came from and decides to go through it into Christopher’s world. On the other side, Pooh emerges in London and finds Christopher anxiously hiding from a neighbor he doesn’t want to talk to.

Marc Forster is a filmmaker who knows a little something about gentle and pleasant kids stories. Forster’s Finding Neverland was an Academy Award nominee telling the story of J.M Barrie’s creation of Peter Pan. Christopher Robin feels a lot like that film with a similar whimsical, magical essence. Both Christopher Robin and Finding Neverland have an elegiac and plaintive pacing, an air of sadness slowly giving way to the joy of letting go. Forster worked with his Finding Neverland editor Matt Chesse on Christopher Robin and that may have contributed to the similarity in tone and pace.

What sets Christopher Robin apart is the screenplay which features work from three smoking hot properties. Indie darling Alex Ross Perry of Listen Up Phillip and Queen of Earth fame has a credit alongside Hidden Figures writer Allison Schroeder and Academy Award-winning Spotlight writer-director Tom McCarthy. Each contributes to the unique style of Christopher Robin’s story and the wonderful, whimsical way the characters interact.

Don’t misunderstand, these are still fully A.A Milne, by way of Disney, characters. Pooh still feels like Pooh, thanks to the legendary voice work of Jim Cummings and we still get to hear Tigger sing the Tigger song. But, the interaction between Christopher Robin and the rest of the world has a wit and liveliness to it that doesn’t distract from the classic source material. You can sense the respect that this creative team has for the source material, there is a loving care to the way Pooh and friends are presented, never with anything less than dignity; it's fun with a British sort of propriety.

Ewan McGregor is a wonderful Christopher Robin. I adored his stiffness early in the movie and the way his shoulders slowly go from up around his ears to fully at ease. He’s a man under desperate stress to do the right thing and he continually does the wrong thing until Pooh comes along and puts him straight. There is a lovely similarity to the recent Where the Wild Things Are when Christopher is in the 100 Acre Woods as an adult and realizes that he may, in fact, be the problem with his life and not everyone else.

McGregor is well matched with Hayley Atwell whose sympathetic care for her husband is only matched by her witty, self-protective, innate feminism. This is not a woman who will put up for very long with a man who doesn’t properly appreciate her, and especially her daughter, and you get that sense solely from Atwell’s manner and grace. She has a steely quality that easily gives way to softness and concern in the way only a great actress can show.

I have not even begun to praise the true star of the show, Winnie the Pooh. Earlier this year people were tripping over themselves to praise the over-hyped Paddington with his childish pratfalling and simplistic story. For me, Winnie the Pooh in Christopher Robin is my thesis statement on why Paddington doesn’t work. Pooh is charming in ways Paddington only hints at. He’s lovable in the ways that Paddington pretends towards. Most importantly, Pooh’s pratfalling antics and general mayhem are more well-explained and lovable than the destruction that Paddington wreaks upon his friends and family.

Christopher Robin is a lovely film, a gentle yet funny, sweet and harmless trifle that will make all audiences smile. Marc Forster is a director of immense talent and he brings that to bear in Christopher Robin with the lightest and most deft touch. The film is artful in how it is never flashy, you don’t feel as if you see Forster directing. The touch is light but effective, you sense how beautiful and well told the story is but it doesn’t feel as if you’re being steered and you sort of melt into the beauty and warmth of this story.

I feel as if, on a moral level, I should be upset about Disney strip mining my childhood for a quick buck. I feel like I should be annoyed that they aren’t developing original material and are instead basking in the dollars that existing products in shiny new packages can bring in. In the back of my mind, in fact, I am rebelling against these Disney products and their weaponized nostalgia. That said, up front and personal, Christopher Robin made my heart happy. The movie is completely adorable and a wonderful film for the whole family, proof that commerce and art can work together to create something beautiful.

Movie Review: Deception

Deception (2008) 

Directed by Marcel Langenegger 

Written by Mark Bombeck 

Starring Ewan McGregor, Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams

Release Date April 25th, 2008 

Published April 26th, 2008

Jonathan (Ewan McGregor) is kind of a loser. Despite a high paying job as an accountant in New York City, Jonathan has no friends and no real life outside of his work. That changes when he is befriended by Wiley (Hugh Jackman) a charming, self effacing lawyer for one of Jonathan's client company's. Though they would seem to have nothing in common, Jonathan finds Wiley's friendly entreaties irresistible, probably because he has no friends to begin with. 

Wiley invites Jonathan out for a night on the town, loans him a 4000 dollar suit, and works on getting him laid. When Wiley heads out of town for a few weeks he 'accidentally' switches cellphones with Jonathan. From there Jonathan begins fielding Wiley's calls and finds himself initiated to 'the list' a group of high powered men and women who get together to engage in anonymous one night stands.

Through 'the list' Jonathan meets and falls in love with a woman (Michele Williams) whose name he does not know. Breaking the rules of 'the list' he tells her his name and asks to see her a second time on a real date. She agrees but when the date moves to a tiny hotel room Jonathan finds himself knocked unconscious and the girl gone missing. Now he must find the girl and discover just how much trouble his pal Wiley and this mysterious list have in store for him.

Sleazy and slow witted, Deception is an erotic thriller that is not all that erotic and far from thrilling. This is a movie that believes watching a bank transaction against a ticking clock is somehow exciting. As McGregor sits in front of a computer screen hyper music underscores quick cuts from his sweaty brow to a clock on the wall to the computer screen with a helpful icon that counts down how long the download is taking.

If that doesn't get your heart racing there is chemistry free romance between McGregor and Williams so uninspiring, it pales in comparison to the oddly homoerotic bonding between Jackman and McGregor. In a ballsier movie the romance would have been between Jackman and McGregor but this is not a really ballsy movie, just a really bad one.

Deception was released by Fox as a favor to star Hugh Jackman who produced the film under his Seed Productions banner. The film likely would have been direct to video after an international release if Fox were not counting on Jackman to push the fall epic Austrailia and next summer's blockbuster tent pole Wolverine. That may sound cynical but that's Hollywood horse trading for you. Also, how else could you explain how such a terrible film as Deception found its way to more than 2000 screens? 

Movie Review The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer (2010) 

Directed by Roman Polanski 

Written by Robert Harris, Roman Polanski 

Starring Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton, Jon Bernthal 

Release Date March 3rd, 2010

Published March 9th, 2010 

Director Roman Polanski will be forever colored by the crime he committed that drove him out of America. His conviction on charges of statutory rape, he had sex with a 13 year old girl, will forever stain his reputation and whether he ever returns to America to face justice or remains in exile somewhere in Europe he will leave behind a tarnished legacy and a lifetime of movies that might have been.

Because of his crimes many people will forever avoid his movies as a form of protest. Those who make that choice will be the least for it as despite his crime Mr. Polanski remains a master behind the camera. The latest example of his genius is the political thriller The Ghost Writer starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan.

Former British Prime Minister Adam Lang has one of the most anticipated memoirs in the publishing industry. His controversial time as Prime Minister, encompassing the height of the war on terror, his good looks and charm should lend itself to a terrific story and a grand slam bestseller.

Unfortunately, the book stinks and the Prime Minister's original ghost writer, a longtime aide, has died. The book is a shambles and a major fix is needed. Enter The Ghost played by Ewan McGregor, an author for hire who specializes in puffery and wordplay. He will sit with the PM and uncover some details that might turn the book into the bedside reader that publishers look for.

While things begin rather simply, the job of the ghost takes a sinister turn when the former PM is charged with war crimes and he is pressed by his bosses to control the story and keep it all for the book. What the ghost discovers is linked to the fate of the previous ghostwriter, the CIA and the PM's wife, played brilliantly by Olivia Williams.

The plot of The Ghost Writer is intricate and endlessly clever. Roman Polanski adapted it from the work of author Robert Harris who modeled the fictional story on real life British Prime Minister Tony Blair with whom Harris was once close. When Blair began working closely with President Bush, Harris turned and The Ghost Writer was born.

The veiled attack on Blair hovers over the thriller story of The Ghost Writer and the real life conceits serve as a sort of magic trick to distract audiences while Polanski and Ewan McGregor work the thriller aspect for smart, tense and even humorous scenes.

This is a master at work, intriguing us with asides while leaving us gasping with plotting, pace and dialogue. The Ghost Writer is relentless in its smooth pace and enthralling storytelling. McGregor is well matched to the role of the clueless ghost who comes in with no interest in politics and finds himself immediately out of his depth.

Olivia Williams is the standout of the superb cast. Playing the jaded, jilted politician's wife she begins a tense and sexy flirtation with the ghost all the while hiding secrets that nag at the back of your mind until their superb payoff. Pierce Brosnan hasn't been this good since his clever turn in 2005's The Matador. Brosnan combines Tony Blair's boyish energy and charm with an undercurrent of menace.

Kim Cattrall rounds out the cast as Brosnan's loyal aide and likely mistress. The relationship is left tantalizingly off-screen while she flirts with McGregor's Ghost in one of many smart, funny, sexy subplots that keep the audience off balance and searching for clues to the big bad behind all the trouble.

Murder, mystery, sex and politics what more could one ask for in a good thriller. With Roman Polanski behind the camera everything comes together under the eye of a master filmmaker who knows just what buttons to push to keep an audience engaged and grasping for the next clue, the next revelation and the final gut punch finish. Some will find the ending of The Ghost Writer unsatisfying. I feel it was the perfect finish and really the only way this story could end.

Put aside Roman Polanski's crime if you can and you will find The Ghost Writer to be a fantastic movie going experience. A brilliant thriller from a brilliant director who has maintained a mastery of filmmaking even as his personal life has been an absolute disaster.

Movie Review: Doctor Sleep

Doctor Sleep (2019) 

Directed by Mike Flanagan

Written by Mike Flanagan

Starring Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Cliff Curtis

Release Date November 8th, 2019 

Published November 7th, 2019 

Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) took years to recover from his father’s rampage at the Overlook Hotel. His mother died not long after his father attempted to murder them both and her death led to a spiral of self-destruction for her son. Dan fell hard into alcoholism in his attempt to quiet the voices in his head, the voices that he could hear any time via his ‘Shine,’ the psychic abilities that he discovered as a child at the Overlook and has run from ever since. 

Now, several years sober, Dan has found friend, Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis), and a steady job as an orderly at a hospice in New Hampshire. Here, Dan’s Shine has a way of providing comfort to people when they need it the most, as they transition toward death. Dan becomes known at the hospice as Doctor Sleep as he shows up when it is time for the dying to enter their final sleep under his watchful and caring eye. 

Meanwhile, Dan is also allowing his Shine to reach out to a young girl named Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a fellow psychic, younger and more powerful than Dan. Their friendship is kind and Dan offers the kind of comfort, support and understanding that Abra’s parents cannot as they do not have her special ability. Abra fears her parents will not understand or worse, may fear her remarkable gifts. 

Abra’s powerful shine unfortunately catches the attention of Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson). Rose leads a cabal of supernaturally powered villains who’ve discovered their own version of the fountain of youth, one that centers on people like Abra. The group is genuinely scary and the movie underlines how fearsome they are with visual flair. The ways in which we witness their evil are a little hard to watch as the terror of their victims has a visceral quality. 

Abra proves to be Rose The Hat’s white whale, a shine more powerful than even her own. The hunt for Abra, and Dan’s attempts to protect her and guide her,  make for a surface level take on the plot of Doctor Sleep. Thankfully, Doctor Sleep has a few surprises in store for those who give it a chance. This sequel to both Stephen King’s The Shining (novel) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (Movie) looks like a debacle at first glance but turns out to be a brilliant gamble. 

Directed by Michael Flanagan, best known for such mainstream efforts as Oculus, Ouija: Origin of Evil and the Stephen King-Netflix adaptation, Gerald’s Game, Flanagan takes a big, bold step forward as a filmmaker in Doctor Sleep. Until now, Flanagan has been a rather mediocre horror director. Here, however, with Doctor Sleep, Flanagan arrives as a bold, risk taking filmmaker who is willing to bet big on a project that could have been his complete undoing. 

There is no margin of error in making Doctor Sleep. Flanagan was always going to be under intense scrutiny by intending to sequelize both the Stephen King and the Kubrick movie that King was not a fan of. That Flanagan brilliantly bridges the gap between King’s novel and Kubrick’s movie is one of the great strengths of Doctor Sleep. Even the author himself has acknowledged that Flanagan did the near impossible of pleasing the two masters of this sequel. 

Kyliegh Curran is a revelation as young Abra. A wonderful character, Curran infuses her with life, curiosity, humor and bravery. I loved how the movie allows Abra to be both youthful and naive and yet resourceful and more than capable of holding her own against Ferguson’s incredible villain performance. As a member of the Critics Choice Award voting mass, I can say for certain that I will be voting for Ms Curran in our Best Young Actor category. She’s just outstanding. 

Just about everything about Doctor Sleep is outstanding. Seeing the Overlook Hotel again, the remarkable recreation of the period detail of the overlook. Even the logic that help us arrive at the Overlook is solid and compelling. The script by director Mike Flanagan, quite smartly establishes Abra as every bit the equal in power and bravery as her adult co-stars. I especially enjoyed the earliest scenes between Curran and Rebecca Ferguson whose Rose the Hat is a terrific villain, especially when she underestimates our young heroine. 

Holding the whole movie together is Ewan McGregor as Danny. Though the when of the setting of Doctor Sleep is badly fudged so we don’t know how old McGregor is supposed to be, it turns out not to be an issue as McGregor melts into this performance. McGregor is a steady hand with strong instincts, the perfect leader for this movie. He has movie star good looks and charisma to draw in the mainstream and just the right amount of haunted conflict and a touch of madness needed for a great horror movie. 

I had low expectations for Doctor Sleep based on the fact of it being a sequel to a Stanley Kubrick movie without, obviously, Stanley Kubrick, as well as an underwhelming trailer. But, after seeing it, I am now a huge fan. The tone, the pace, the characters, the scares, they are all working in Doctor Sleep and I was excited and entertained throughout. This truly is the sequel to The Shining that I did not think was possible, an absolutely brilliant movie that lives up to the original book and movie in a big, big way. 

Movie Review: Changeling

Changeling (2008) 

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Written by J. Michael Straczynski 

Starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Michael Kelly, Jeffrey Donovan 

Release Date October 24th, 2008

Published October 23rd, 2008 

The title Changeling evokes images of little green aliens. I think director Clint Eastwood is going for alienation but the connection is missed until you actually see the movie. Despite the title Changeling, is really an affecting, thrilling drama featuring a performance by Angelina Jolie that is arguably an early lock for Oscar gold.

Christine Collins never usually worked on Saturdays but with a girl calling in sick and her replacement MIA, she would have to work this Saturday. It was to be the day she took her son Walter to see the new Charlie Chaplin movie. Instead, Christine had to leave her 9 year old little boy home alone. After missing her trolley and having to walk home, she arrived to find her son missing.

The police refused to take a report in the first 24 hours, assuming the kid would turn up. Walter would be missing for 5 months until a break in the case. A little boy found abandoned on DeKalb Illinois claims to be Walter. However, when mother and child are reunited Christine knows the boy is not her son. Bullied into posing for pictures and taking the child home by a PR obsessed detective (Jeffrey Donovan), Christine refuses to admit the child is hers.

Based on the true story of Christine Collins who in 1928 was the victim of a Los Angeles Police Department so desperate for good press coverage that they bullied and cajoled her into taking home a child that was not hers and went out of their way to convince her he was even as all evidence said no. Eventually, the cops tossed Collins in a sanitarium where she met other women who crossed the LAPD.

It's an exceptionally compelling story and in the hands of a master like Eastwood the plot is transcendent. There are several moments in Changeling that will absolutely take your breath away. Most movies can barely manage one breathtaking, edge of your seat moment, Eastwood has at least three. One is glimpsed in the trailer and nearly pulls an out of context tear.

Another is a perfectly thrown punch and still another is a classic courtroom scene that acts as a collective catharsis for nearly 2 solid hours of breath holding tension. There is no gotcha moment, no simple twists, no hand of god, just great actors with great material and a director who orchestrates it all to near perfection.

I cannot say enough about Angelina Jolie's transformative performance. Jolie takes everything audiences have known about her and turns them on it's ear. Aside from those legendary lips, in bright red here, Jolie plays totally against type as a meek, mousy single mom. Yes, she grows into a character we recognize as Angelina Jolie but early on as she effects the voice of a woman for whom speech is a desperate effort, you can't help but be blown away that you are watching the star of Wanted and Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Even her characters in A Mighty Heart and her Oscar winning turn in Girl Interrupted do not compare to the highly original work Jolie delivers in Changeling.

The title sounds very Invasion of the Body Snatchers but the movie is truly a moving, often breathtaking drama. Far from one of Eastwood's masterpieces but still a work that shames most other directors. Changeling meanders from time to time and fudges some character motivations but with three scenes of truly devastating emotional power and an overall hypnotic air, there is far more to recommend Changeling than to nitpick.

Movie Review Following

Following (1998) 

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Written by Christopher Nolan 

Starring Jeremy Theobald, Alex Haw 

Release Date April 24th, 1998 

Published December 10th, 2001 

Christopher Nolan's Memento, starring Guy Pearce and Carrie Ann Moss, is a time-twisting, mind-bending, spellbinding ride of genre busting film history and by far the best film of 2001. Now, Nolan's first film, 1998's Following is available to American audiences and like Memento it's a trip. British actor Jeremy Theobold plays the unnamed lead, listed in the end credits as the young man, a writer who while struggling with writer's block begins an unusual search for inspiration.

The young man begins following random people on the street, just watching them go wherever they go shopping, for lunch, or home. At first it's a minor fascination but it soon grows to an uncontrollable obsession. The young man however is able to rationalize his actions with rules like never follow anyone more than once or never involve yourself in the subject's life. These rules are of course broken, and eventually he's not just breaking the rules, he's breaking into his subject's lives with help of one of his subjects named Cobb. Cobb caught the young man following him and invites him to follow even closer as Cobb breaks into homes not necessarily to rob them but more to paint himself a portrait of the people's lives.

Following, like Memento is not a slave to linear storytelling like most movies. Instead, the film flashes forward and backward and tells its story with little visual clues. Cuts and bruises of an unknown origin foreshadow a fight. Unknown until we are shown later in the film where they came from. To say anymore about the film's plot is to giveaway too much. Following is full of great surprises that should not and will not be ruined by this reviewer.

The performances by British actors Jeremy Theobold and Alex Haw are brilliant, with Haw especially effective as the sly charismatic thief whose justification for his breaking and entering are so enticing you might want to try it yourself. Following is a brilliant con game that you willingly fall for not because your stupid but because it's so enticing, you want to fall for it.

With Following and Memento, we can see the evolution of Christopher Nolan as an auteur who may be the next Scorsese or Coppola, a risky artist whose films can't be classified simply by genre. The kind of artistic filmmaker who respects his audience's intelligence and plays to it and that is all too rare in this day and age.

Movie Review The Flower of Evil

The Flower of Evil (2003) 

Directed by Claude Chabrol 

Written by Claude Chabrol 

Starring Natalie Baye, Benoit Magimel, Bernard Le Coq 

Release Date October 1st 2003

Published April 25th, 2004 

Master director Claude Chabrol first came to prominence during the nouvelle vague, the French new wave of the 1950's and 60's. In his long and illustrious career, Chabrol has directed fifty films. Each of those films mixes death, sex and family in ways that can be funny or disturbing or both. Mr. Chabrol's most recent work is no departure from his usual themes. In its familiarity and the director’s comfort with the material, it is a mellow, acceptable work of art from a master artist.

The Vasseur and Charpin families have a history that goes back more than 60 years. Sons and daughters of each family have married for generations and seem perfectly comfortable with what outsiders would find a more than a little disturbing. It's not just outsiders that have some trouble with this incestuousness, young Francois Vasseur (Benoit Magimel) ran off to America when his attraction to his cousin Michele Charpin (Melanie Doutey) became too much to bare.

It's important to note that the two are not necessarily blood relatives, his father Gerard (Bernard Le Coq) married Michele's mother Anne Charpin (Nathalie Baye) after their respective spouses were killed in a suspicious but little discussed accident. Now Francois has returned to the family mansion to find that his attraction to Michele has not changed and despite his qualms about continuing his family's dubious tradition, he and Michele fall into bed and back in love.

In the film’s opening tracking shot, a shot so long it could make Brian De Palma jealous, we see Michele on her knees crying in one room and a body on the floor in the next room. The story of how that body got there is entirely unexpected and involves the family's eldest and most secretive member, Aunt Line (Suzanne Flon). Aunt Line has witnessed the entire history of the Charpin-Vasseur family and holds every secret. She has watched for years as the families have repeated the same mistakes over and over and there are more to come.

The Flower of Evil has a distinct visual feel that seems like digital video but is in fact more a trick of lighting and film stock. Chabrol deliberately underlights most scenes, using only candlelight when he can get away with it. The lighting and cinematography give the film a timeless feel, it looks like it could exist at any time in history. The film looks as if it could have been made at any point in Chabrol's career because of its themes and look.

The acting is somewhat flat, save for Suzanne Flon as Aunt Line. Flon is elegant and heartbreaking, especially in her voiceovers that lay out the family backstory. Chabrol loves this character and lingers on her dialogue and memories. You expect a flashback but instead Chabrol holds on a close-up of Ms. Flon that is far more powerful than any flashback could possibly be.

The Flower of Evil is one of those films that could not be made in Hollywood. A strange amalgamation of suspense and family drama that doesn't fit neatly into any Hollywood package. The film develops as a straight drama but Chabrol drops in a film score from a Hitchcockian suspense film. It's a device that would quickly be axed by confused Hollywood executives, which of course means it works perfectly. A master stroke from a master director. This film is not on par with Chabrol's best work, which is admittedly some ten or fifteen years past. However, as compared to most of the hacks making films today, it's a terrific film.

Movie Review Flashback

Flashback (2003) 

Directed by Michael Karen 

Written by Michael Karen

Starring Valerie Niehaus, Xavier Hunter, Elke Sommer

Release Date January 1st 2000

Published March 24th, 2003 

I love bad horror films!

There is nothing funnier than a truly inept horror movie with ketchup for blood, goofy camera tricks standing in for special effects and acting that is on par with your local community theater. Unfortunately, truly inept horror movies that willingly except their ineptitude and go ahead anyway are few and far between. Flashback, a German horror movie dubbed into English by our friends at Lions Gate is a truly inept horror film, and it has a few truly hysterical moments.

Jeannette is our heroine, locked away in a mental hospital since the brutal murders of her parents by a serial killer. Now haunted by nightmares Jeannette can no longer recall everything that happened the night her parents were killed. She lives in the asylum by choice, but has now been convinced by her therapist that she is in good enough shape to rejoin the real world. Jeannette's therapist sets her up with a job as a live in French teacher for a group of spoiled rich siblings.

As soon as Jeannette arrives at her new home, strange things begin to happen revolving around Jeannette's visions of the man who killed her parents. The killer used a sickle and wore women’s clothing and suddenly the family's own sickle and one of Jeannette's dresses has gone missing. Of course soon after that, people start dying. Still, don't think you know where this one is going as Flashback has a twist for you.

It's not a great twist and your not likely to be surprised, but the fact that you guess the twist long before the idiots on screen do is part of the fun of bad horror movies. Of course, the best thing about bad horror films however is gruesome, brutal, poorly staged murders and their aftermath. Flashback has a couple of good murders including a girl who's body is dumped in a thresher and her remains are showered on a pair of workers trying to figure out what was jamming the machine. There is also an old woman crushed in the gears of a ski lift. Good times!

Flashback is not a good movie but as bad horror movies go, it's priceless. Ridiculous, forgettable and disgusting, if you like poorly dubbed German horror movies, Flashback is right up your alley.

Movie Review: Finding Neverland

Finding Neverland (2004) 

Directed by Marc Forster

Written by Marc Forster

Starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Freddie Highmore, Radha Mitchell, Dustin Hoffman, Julie Christie

Release Date November 12th, 2004

Published November 11th, 2004

James Matthew Barrie was born in Scotland in the late 1800's, moved to London just before the turn of the century, and ran in the circle of a number of well-known writers, including H.G Wells, P.G Wodehouse, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to name a few. Though Barrie is mainly known for one work in particular, he was arguably the most successful writer in his circle at that time. It is only the passage of time and the gloriousness of his best-known work that leaves so much of his other material forgotten. That one work was the seminal children’s fantasy Peter Pan and how Barrie invented this fantastic fairy tale is the subject of Finding Neverland starring Johnny Depp and directed by Marc Forster.

Coming off the tremendous failure of his latest play, writer J.M Barrie takes a walk in the park with his dog. As he sits on a bench attempting to find a new story to tell, Barrie meets the Davies’ family. George (Nick Roud), Jack (Joe Prospero), Michael (Luke Spill), Peter (Freddie Highmore), and their mother Sylvia (Kate Winslet). Llewellyn Davies takes an immediate liking to Mr. Barrie who entertains them with his imaginative storytelling.

Barrie begins going to the park every day to play with the boys and spend time with Sylvia. This, not surprisingly, causes trouble with his wife Mary (Radha Mitchell) as well as with Sylvia's mother Mrs. Du Maurier (Julie Christie) who worries what the unusual relationship will do to her daughter’s social standing as well as to her own.

Despite the tensions, Barrie can't stay away because the children have inspired him to write what will go on to be his masterpiece. While spending time with the Davies, Barrie begins to indulge a fantasy he has carried with him since he was a child: A story about pirates, Indians, fairies, and a place called Neverland. Even as real life grows more dramatic, the fantasy he's writing gets more and more fantastical.

Depp is extraordinary. In Finding Neverland, he has yet another of his lovable oddballs. Only this time, as opposed to his Jack Sparrow in Pirates of The Caribbean or his nutty writer in Secret Window, this character is both odd and believably dramatic. You believe that this character was this unusual but still a very real person. Indeed much of the script is historically accurate to the life of J.M Barrie and his relationship with the Davies family. What is unclear is how much of the odd behavior of the character is from Depp or from what was known of the real J.M Barrie. Either way it still works.

Director Marc Forster, with the help of cinematographer Roberto Schaefer and production designer Gemma Jackson, creates a world that is a perfect balance of fantasy and reality. They manage to illustrate J.M Barrie's reality and a believable illusion of his spectacular imagination. Writer David Magee, working from source material based on a play by Alan Knee, crafts a terrific script that builds from somewhat mundane at the start to beautifully moving by the films climax.

It's hard to believe that Forster's previous directing credit was the gritty, hard bitten Monster's Ball. But it's not hard to believe that just as he led Halle Berry to an Oscar in Monster's Ball he has led Johnny Depp to the possibility of one. In fact everything about Finding Neverland, from Depp's performance to Forster’s direction, Kate Winslet and Julie Christie's tremendous supporting work and finally the cinematography and production design, looks Oscar quality.

Documentary Review Fahrenheit 9/11

Fahrenheit 9/11

Directed by Michael Moore

Written by Documentary

Starring Michael Moore, George W. Bush

Release Date June 25th, 2004

Published June 24th, 2004

Say you have a job that pays you a coupla hundred grand a year. It's a good job, well respected. Now let's say you have outside interests, investments that stand to make yourself, members of your family and your friends more than a billion dollars but it requires that you do things in your job that are somewhat less than ethical, immoral even. Is it not fair to ask where your loyalty lies? That is one of the central questions of Michael Moore's brilliant and scathing documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, a title that implies the temperature at which freedom burns.

The above question asked more specifically is posed to the Bush administration and it's supporters. The President, his family and friends have and continue to, benefit from investments with Saudi businesses that have at least vague, often provable links to terrorists. Those investments make them more than a billion dollars while the American people only pay George W. Bush 400 grand per year. If Bush pushes foreign and domestic policies in specific directions, those investments are likely to pay off bigtime. So all that stands between corruption of the highest office and the ethical wielding of Presidential power is the word of George W. Bush. Sorry, but that is not good enough for me.

There is far more to Fahrenheit 911 than the above example. Things such as the flight that carried Osama Bin Laden's family out of the United States after September 11th 2001 without so much as a Law and Order style interrogation. The flight, arranged at the highest levels of our government left the country a week after Osama Bin Laden had attacked America, his family is allowed to leave the country without even being asked where Osama might be hiding.

Conservatives want to talk about Michael Moore's timeline of events after 9/11 and the opening of the skies to commercial and in this case private aircraft. Moore's timeline is in fact correct. What conservatives can't explain is how Muslims with an obvious tie to Osama Bin Laden, they are family for pete's sake, are allowed to leave a week after the tragedy, while other Muslims with no ties to Bin Laden were being held for six months to year until the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security were absolutely certain there were no terrorist ties.

Oh did I mention the Bin Laden's were one of the families that the Bush's have their money tied up with? Another sick irony exposed by Michael Moore in this film is how the Bin Laden families investments in American defense contractors made the family large sums of money as America built up toward it's military hunt for Osama and the subsequent war in Iraq.

Speaking of the war, Michael Moore has a few important things to say about Iraq. Recycled news footage shows just some of the innumerable contradictory statements that the administration made in order to make its case for war. The film also goes to Iraq and using never before seen video shows our soldiers, injured, disillusioned and angry, but also doing their job with bravery and commitment to the cause. They aren't sure what that cause is, but they do it anyway.

The finale of the film follows a mother from Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan named Lila Lipscomb. Ms. Lipscomb was a supporter of the war but letters from her son and his eventual death in combat changed her mind. She goes to Washington wishing to ask what it was her son died for. This is one of the film’s most powerful moments, one where you wish Moore might turn away, turn the camera off. However, when you think about it, Lila Lipscomb can't turn the camera off. Camera or no camera, her pain is there and that pain is what Moore captures and the fact that Lila Lipscomb is not the only mother who is mourning a son.

The film’s biggest headline grabbing sequence shows those infamous seven minutes after the second plane hit the trade center and it became clear America had been attacked. Those seven minutes in which President Bush sat there in that Florida classroom listening to a kid read a book about a goat. Seven minutes captured on a video camera by the teacher of the class, not the media. Bush sits and looks powerless, lost, far less than the leader of the free world.

This is one of the most fascinating and powerful works of documentary art I have ever seen. It's also quite funny as well, which can be somewhat disorienting as occasionally during the film a funny, ironic moment is followed or preceded by something important or meaningful. That temporary disorientation is nothing compared to the feelings I had after the film which take a while to process and put into words. I am truly blown away by this film, not that I'm the least bit surprised that George W. Bush is a corrupt liar who manipulates his office for the betterment of his and his associate’s wallets. That I knew. What shocks me is how there are still so many that want this guy re-elected.

Movie Review Eye of God

Eye of God (1997) 

Directed by Tim Blake Nelson

Written by Tim Blake Nelson

Starring Nick Stahl, Martha Plimpton, Kevin Anderson, Hal Holbrook, Richard Jenkins, Margo Martindale 

Release Date October 17th, 1997 

Published July 13th, 2003 

In his relatively short career as a director, Tim Blake Nelson has shown a fascination with tragedy. In The Grey Zone it was the horror of the Holocaust. In ”O” it was teen violence by way of Shakespeare. And in Nelson's very first feature, Eye of God, it was a town in Oklahoma that seemed bathed in tragedy from economic depression to domestic abuse to suicide. Made with the help of Robert Redford's Sundance Institute in 1997, Eye of God was the first indication that the actor had the eye of a director.

Set sometime in the 1980's Eye of God centers on the small town of Kingfish, Oklahoma. A town suffering though a major economic downturn that has people moving away at the rate of a family a week. Into this tragic situation comes a former convict, Jack Stillings (Kevin Anderson). He has come to Kingfish to meet his prison pen pal, a young waitress named Ainsley Dupree (Martha Plimpton). At first Ainsley has cold feet and thinks of leaving but Jack convinces her to stay and that night they have their first date.

Running parallel to Jack and Ainsley's story is that of Tom Spencer (Nick Stahl) who's mother committed suicide, leaving him with his overbearing Aunt and with thoughts of taking his own life. When Tom is found wandering along the side of the road covered in blood, it's obvious he has been involved in something awful. Unfortunately, a shell-shocked Tom is unable to speak and can't tell anyone what happened.

As we learn from a voiceover provided by Hal Holbrook, who also plays the sheriff of Kingfish, Jack and Ainsley's story is being recounted in flashback, while Tom's story takes place in the present. The film shifts backwards and forwards much like Brian Singer's Usual Suspects. The time shifts in Eye of God are signaled by overlapping sounds and static camera shots. The camera pans slowly away from the characters to some various image as another begins to speak or a phone rings or a door slams. It's not a new approach but for a first time director it was a challenging choice and one that Nelson carries off very well.

The script, also written by Nelson, is part mystery, part character study. Unfortunately, the mystery unravels well before the film is over. It becomes clear which character is guilty and that takes some of the punch out of the film’s ending. What the ending does have though is well-acted tragedy that Martha Plimpton and Nick Stahl really hit home. Stahl's final scene is a real heartbreaker and shows the potential that he is finally beginning to live up to some six years later. It's a wonder we don't see more of Martha Plimpton, who has always turns in an effective performance in whatever she is in, even the God awful 100 Cigarettes.

The film’s only real problem is it's leading man Kevin Anderson. A true straight to video legend, Anderson evinces an east coast attitude even as he's supposed to be playing a down home Midwesterner. His portrayal done with a hint of bad Midwest accent turn Jack into a redneck caricature, a hypocritical bible thumper who never for a moment fools the audience into sympathizing with him.

As artful as Eye of God is, it's not entertaining. It's just sad. I loved the performances by Stahl and Plimpton and Tim Blake Nelson's risky directing style. However, the film’s sadness is overwhelming. When the mystery falls apart just past the half way point, the audience is left with nothing but the tragedy. That and Anderson's performance keep Eye Of God from rising to the level of Nelson's follow up features “O” and The Grey Zone, but that is to be expected from a first feature.

Movie Review: Around the World in 80 Days

Around the World in 80 Days (2004) 

Directed by Frank Coraci

Written by David Titcher 

Starring Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan, Cecile de France, Jim Broadbent, Arnold Schwarzenegger

Release Date June 16th, 2004 

Published June 15th, 2004 

History can be unkind to a movie. Take Mike Todd's immense vanity production 1956's Around The World In 80 Days. The film was the most extravagant and expensive production of it's time and was awarded Best Picture, beating Giant and The Ten Commandments. However, ask most critics about the film and you get a different picture altogether. The film is a God-awful mess for the most part.

Still it's a well-known title and has the Jules Verne name to back it up and thus we have a remake on our hands. Sure, it doesn't have the extravagance of original film but it does have the charm the previous film lacked. And there is a lot to be said for charm.

Phileas Fogg (Steve Coogan) is not one of those “head in the clouds” types and he's not a dreamer. He's just a scientist with faith in man's ability to accomplish any task. With his sometimes-unusual inventions, he pushes the boundaries of known human limits and pushes the patience of Britain's club of top scientists, led by Lord Kelvin (Jim Broadbent). Fogg's boundless imagination has yet to invent anything that impresses Lord Kelvin. In fact, Kelvin does all he can to prevent Fogg from becoming a full-fledged member of the club.

It is fate then that Fogg should meet a would-be thief who calls himself Passepartout (Jackie Chan), which is French-Chinese or so he explains. Passepartout, unknown to Fogg, has just robbed the bank of England but it's not what you think. Passepartout was merely retrieving an ancient artifact that was stolen from his village by the vial General Fang (Karen Mok) and sold to Lord Kelvin. While evading the police, Passepartout hides out at Fogg's mansion pretending to be a valet sent over by a service. It is Passepartout who hatches the 80 days bet as a way of getting Fogg to transport him back to China to return the artifact called The Jade Buddha.

The wager is thus: if Fogg can circumnavigate the globe in less than 80 days then Lord Kelvin will step down and name Fogg head of the Royal Academy of Science. However, if Fogg fails he must never invent again. With the wager in place we are off on a wild ride around the world with Passepartout being chased by the Chinese army of General Fang and both being pursued by the bumbling, Brit Inspector Fix (Ewan Bremner).

The guys aren't alone though. In France, they are joined by a sexy French painter Monique La Roche (Cecille De France) who basically exists as a function of the plot. After all what adventure movie doesn't have a love interest? It's in the movie rulebook so she's in the movie. It helps that she is easy on the eyes and quick with her spirited wit. Monique has an immediate attraction to Phileas who’s somewhat clueless, again, as the plot would have it.

Okay, we are not breaking new ground here and not just because this is a remake. There are a number of contrivances and shortcuts. This was after all directed by Adam Sandler's in house director Frank Coraci, so what else would you expect?

Still, the film does have a joyous spirit to it. It's funny and at times even exciting, especially Jackie Chan who has never been better. Some have said that Jackie Chan has lost a step but I didn't notice. If he's being helped by computers, wires or stunt doubles, it's well covered up and his stunt choreography is as good as it's ever been. Keep an eye out for his bench fighting scene against General Fang's men and the Statue of Liberty fight, two terrific, exciting fight scenes. Chan can also mug with the best of them and here he takes on an almost silent movie hero vibe as his face contorts into all sorts of exaggerated emotions. His facial expressions make up for his still nearly unintelligible accent.

Sadly, the wonderful Steve Coogan who was so memorable in 24 Hour Party People never really comes to life in this film. Coogan's Phileas Fogg is entirely too straight-laced and uptight to be interesting. His main emotions stem from his constant need to keep track of time. The rare scenes where he does spark are the romantic moments with the lovely Cecille De France, who has enough energy and spark for the both of them. She looks as if the French have cloned Brittany Murphy and given her an accent, and like Murphy, it's her boundless spirit that makes her so sexy.

As a family movie, Around The World in 80 Days will try the patience of young children with it's few dead spots. However, once Chan has some butts to kick the kids and some of the parents will be very entertained. Try and forget the original film and especially forget Jules Verne who deserves better and has yet to see his work fully realized onscreen. Around The World in 80 Days is not for purists or nitpickers, it is simply a brainlessly entertaining piece of pop candy.