Movies I've Seen

This is a librarian's personality at work, cataloguing the movies and TV shows I've seen. The Internet Movie DataBase remains the best source of movie information, and I favour Rotten Tomatoes for movie reviews.

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The A-Team (2010)

One of the most notoriously cheesy TV series of the 1980s brought to the big screen. Not quite as cheesy, but just as dumb - if that makes any sense. I laughed and was entertained, so I have no major complaints.

2010, dir. Joe Carnahan. With Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Quinton Jackson, Sharlto Copley, Jessica Biel, Gerald McRaney, Brian Bloom.

Above the Law

I saw this back when it came out, and more recently (2010) on TV.

Seagal (in his first film role) plays Nico Toscani, a Chicago police officer investigating a massive drug conspiracy - despite being told to lay off the case more than once. He plays an arrogant asshole, but I guess that's not terribly different from most action heroes - but he's less likable than most. What sets him apart to some extent is his martial arts fighting. Unusually, he's brought Aikido to the screen, and apparently refused to make it more flashy for the camera. I can respect that, but it's a fairly un-flashy art, and watching him in action isn't as entertaining as Jackie Chan, Jet Li, or Tony Jaa. I spent the whole movie thinking that he was the titular character, "above the law" (he certainly acts it), but apparently the title was aimed at the CIA and FBI, agencies that are in some respects accountable to no one. An interesting payload for a crappy martial arts flick ...

1988, dir. Andrew Davis. With Steven Seagal, Pam Grier, Sharon Stone, Daniel Faraldo, Henry Silva.

The Accidental Spy

Chan plays Buck Yuen, a very fit but apparently unsuccessful exercise equipment salesman. Early on we see his intuition getting him into foiling a bank robbery. Shortly after that he finds out that his father (who he never knew as he was an orphan) may still be alive. His father dies shortly, but not before setting Buck on the trail of a lot of money and some deadly chemicals.

Unlike most Chan movies, this actually requires you pay some attention. But the action seems to be much more about Chan absorbing as much abuse as possible rather than being acrobatic as he was in his earlier movies. The grand finale is a straight (and rather poor) crib from "Speed," and the movie as a whole is just crap. See his earlier movies, pass on this one.

2001, dir. Teddy Chan. With Jackie Chan, Eric Tsang, Vivian Hsu, Wu Hsing-kuo.

The Accidental Tourist

I saw this shortly after it was released and remembered it as very good, but my tastes have changed a lot since then. So it was a pleasant surprise to find that in 2008 this is even better than I remembered it. I thought well enough of it to read the original book by Anne Tyler in the intervening years, discovering in the process that, as eccentric as Kasdan's characters were, Tyler's were much more so. The book and the movie are both really good, and have characters with the same names with similar story arcs: but they're very different. This is a very funny, very poignant movie. Highly recommended.

1988, dir. Lawrence Kasdan. With William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Geena Davis, Amy Wright, David Ogden Stiers, Bill Pullman, Ed Begley Jr.

Across the Universe

A musical done entirely with Beatles music. I'm not a fan of musicals, but I watched this because of the music. Whatever they paid their director of photography, it wasn't enough: Every. Single. Shot. Was a thing of beauty. Nevertheless I left the movie a little disheartened: the story isn't very good, the references were stretched to breaking (they sang "Dear Prudence" to Prudence and that was fine, but "where did she come from?" "She came in through the bathroom window" was just stupid), the song interpretations are a bit uneven (Izzard doing Mr. Kite was possibly both the worst and the most interesting), the large middle stretch of surreality may fit the Sixties but was irritating, and it doesn't hold together particularly well. Still, there were some very good ideas and brilliant cinematography.

2007, dir. Julie Taymor. With Jim Sturgess, Evan Rachel Wood, Joe Anderson, Dana Fuchs, Martin Luther, T.V. Carpio, Eddie Izzard.

Adam's Rib

The trailer (which is on the DVD) claims this is a "romantic comedy." I didn't find much humour in it, and very little romance. Most of the humour consisted of the lawyer couple (Tracy and Hepburn) bickering constantly over the court case about a woman attempting to shoot her philandering husband and how it was all about equal rights for women.

1949. dir. George Cukor. With Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn.

The Addams Family

A cartoonist drew sick and twisted images of a family he named after himself - back in the 1950s, some of the comics didn't even run. But in the 1960s a somewhat toned down version became a TV series that won lasting fame. I don't remember anyone really expecting this movie to live up to the TV series, but it did: Julia and Houston were absolutely wonderful as Gomez and Morticia, and Ricci pretty much stole every scene she was in as Wednesday. The humour is twisted, but not sick enough to significantly change the audience demographic from the TV show. A lot of fun.

1991, dir. Barry Sonnenfeld. With Raul Julia, Angelica Houston, Christina Ricci, Christopher Lloyd.

Adventureland

That summer job you hated when you were in university ... this is it. James Brennan (Eisenberg) is headed for grad school in the fall, but needs money and can't get a job waiting tables, so he ends up working at the local amusement park with a mixed bag of perpetual losers and other caught-in-between university students far too intelligent to be working the jobs they're in. Mottola wrote as well as directed, and has pulled out a very funny movie. There's a bit more humour-of-humiliation than I like, but certainly no more than you receive in that part of your life, and it's not played simply for the humour. Eisenberg was good, but I particularly liked Starr, who was charming as the over-educated, nerdy, likable, and less-than-gorgeous Joel.

2009, dir. Greg Mottola. With Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Margarita Levieva, Ryan Reynolds, Martin Starr, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

We see a theatre company performing part of the Baron Münchhausen stories in a besieged city in the late eighteenth century. They are interrupted by an old man (Neville) who claims to actually be Baron Munchausen, and takes over the stage to continue the story (which we see in flashback). After his stories are interrupted by shelling, the Baron and Sally (a very young Polley) take off in a balloon made out of women's silk underwear for a series of outrageous adventures - pursued (as he always is) by Death himself.

Utterly absurd and very funny, and in many ways the quintessential Gilliam film.

As it turns out, M¨nchhausen was a real person (1720-1797) who developed a reputation in later life for telling tall tales of his war years - which were eventually collected into a book. Gilliam has clearly modelled Neville's appearance on Doré's 1862 caricature of the man.

1988, dir. Terry Gilliam. With John Neville, Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Uma Thurman, Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed, Robin Williams.

After Life (orig. "Wandâfuru Raifu")

When you die, you are given one week to choose a single memory that you will live in forever. And then the team of people who help you choose that memory will film it, recreate it for you. The premise is thin and absurd, but Kore-eda filmed a bunch of people, actors and non-actors, talking about their favourite memories from their entire lives - and it's mesmerizing. In many ways the second half, which has slightly less talking, is not as good as the first half. A quiet and fascinating movie.

1998, dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda. With Arata, Erika Oda, Taketoshi Naitô.

Æon Flux

Lots of special effects. Lots. But guess what, that doesn't make a movie. I kind of enjoyed this science fiction extravaganza, but it's really not a good movie. Based on a graphic novel (or a series), look to the animated TV series for better material.

2005, dir. Karyn Kusama. With Charlize Theron, Pete Postlethwaite.

After the Sunset

Beautiful scenery and beautiful stars can't save the kind of dog's breakfast Rattner likes to serve. Brosnan and Hayek play a pair of jewel thieves newly retired to a Caribbean island when Harrelson (the FBI agent who has followed Brosnan for years but never caught him) and a particularly tempting gem arrive on the island simultaneously. It's not a bad idea, but Rattner mangles everything so badly it's painful to watch (except perhaps when Hayek is on-screen).

2004, dir. Brett Rattner. With Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek, Woody Harrelson, Don Cheadle, Naomie Harris.

Ah! My Goddess

Mildly bizarre, kind of complex, targeting teens, doesn't make a lot of sense, and ultimately sickly sweet. Set in the future, with "gods" and "goddesses" walking around in both "heaven" and earth. A goddess and an human fall in love, and their love is tested - with a threat that might destroy the earth as we know it.

1993. dir. Hiroaki Gôda. With Kikuko Inoue, Masami Kikuchi, Yumi Tôma, Aya Hisakawa.

Akeelah and the Bee

Incredibly pedantic ("face your fears," and "be nice") and often overly sweet, this movie manages to be emotionally moving on the strengths of Fishburne's and Palmer's performances. Palmer, at age 12, is something of a miracle. Reminiscent of "Searching for Bobby Fischer." Enjoyable and uplifting.

2006, dir. Doug Atchison. With Keke Palmer, Laurence Fishburne, Angela Bassett, J.R. Villarreal, Curtis Armstrong.

Alegría (live in Sydney)

Cirque du Soleil's show "Alegría" filmed live in Sydney. Very good. I got it at the same time as the DVD of their show "Dralion," and it's an odd comparison: "Dralion" is the better show, but "Alegría" was filmed better.

1999. Dir. Franco Dragone. Cirque du Soleil.

Alegría

Dragone brings us a bowdlerized version of Cirque du Soleil. One of the earliest images of the movie is a view of the main character of the movie, Frac, looking up out of a packing case. Whether the horrible pun "Frac in a box" was intentional or not, it sets the tone for the movie. It's awfully difficult to take drama seriously when most of the characters are in clown face. It's a poor story, and there's very little support from the artistry and acrobatics of the Cirque that I expected. Don't see this.

1998, dir. Franco Dragone. With René Bazinet, Frank Langella, Julie Cox.

Alexander Nevsky

Russian anti-German propaganda, but kind of fun. Prince Alexander - who is obviously a good prince because he fishes with his people - leads the defence of Russia against the evil Teutons. The evil people with money want to buy off the invaders, but the peasants (the good working people of the country) are roused to defend the land. They sing many songs.

The battle scenes consist of people milling about making chopping motions, the acting is poor, and it's all in the service of a political agenda. Despite which it's a well filmed and interesting movie. And it deserves considerable credit for better historical accuracy than most films - in the day-to-day stuff, if not the politics.

1938, dir. Sergei Eisenstein.

Alfie (2004)

Remarkably similar to its predecessor, a morality play dressed up as a sex comedy. Law talks to the camera (as Caine did in the original), a cocky sleep-with-anyone guy. But his indiscretions all catch up to him at once, what a shock. Wait, were we supposed to care for this asshole at the end of the movie?

2004, dir. Charles Shyer. With Jude Law, Jane Krakowski, Marisa Tomei, Omar Epps, Nia Long, Gedde Watanabe, Sienna Miller, Susan Sarandon.

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

This is roughly the 20th film/TV version of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton for Disney (an odd combination). Also odd was the decision to place extremely well known actors in the parts of the Mad Hatter, the Red Queen, and the White Queen (Depp, Bonham Carter, and Hathaway respectively) and an almost unknown actress (Wasikowska) as Alice at the core of the movie.

A frame story in the late nineteenth century has been added: we see Alice as a six year old with a recurring dream about the rabbit hole, then we see her again at nineteen at a garden party - where the current state of her life is made clear before she falls down the rabbit hole (again?). Many of the elements of Carroll's story are preserved - the Hatter, the Dormouse, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar - but the events aren't the same as the original and the Hatter is now a very major character.

I didn't think Wasikowska was particularly good as Alice. That may not be entirely fair when she's standing next to Depp, Bonham Carter and Hathaway, but the comparison is impossible to avoid. But despite that, and despite not having a lot to do with Carroll's original plot, I quite enjoyed this. The art is magnificent, most of the acting (intentionally over-the-top) is very good, and the story is a lot of fun (although I got rather less out of the frame story than "the dream").

2010, dir. Tim Burton. With Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Stephen Fry, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Michael Sheen.

Alien Autopsy

The film is about the making of a supposed documentary being filmed by Morgan Banner (Pullman) about British duo Ray Santilli (Donnelly) and Gary Shoefield (McPartlin). Ten years prior they had been in the U.S., and Santilli purchased an ancient film of the 1947 Roswell alien autopsy ...

"Ant and Dec" (Donnelly and McPartlin) are a British comedy duo. Santilli and Shoefield are real people, who show up for a couple minutes in the closing credits. The film details the multiple scams they ran through - how real any of it is is open to speculation. I found it mildly amusing, and at least as annoying - depends on your sense of humour. I kept hitting fast forward (very rare for me).

2006, dir. Jonny Campbell. With Ant McPartlin, Declan Donnelly, Bill Pullman, Harry Dean Stanton, Omid Djalili, Götz Otto.

Alien Resurrection

The fourth (and hopefully final) movie in the franchise. Of course we're still getting Alien / Predator crossovers. Weaver made a huge effort to have her Ripley character killed off at the end of the third movie as she was tired of the role. But this is science fiction, so we can do cloning (and Weaver was offered a huge sum of money for another sequel). Thus, Ripley is back. More or less. In many respects it's the same old story: the military wants to use the Alien lifeform as a weapon. So 200 years after Ripley died, they cloned her from DNA retrieved from the vat where she died in "Aliens 3." Except it was all mixed up with Alien DNA, so it took a few tries to get it right. Ripley is treated as a prisoner and experimental object - definitely not human. Also in the mix is a crew of mercenaries bringing human fodder in, a crew that includes Perlman and "Call" (Ryder).

While I think it's long past time this series should have ended, I also rather liked this movie - twice. And this time around I realized why: "written by Joss Whedon." That explained a lot. And being directed by Jeunet explains A) the presence of Pinon in an American movie, and B) the frequent amber lighting. Weaver and Whedon have come up with a particularly psycho version of Ripley, who is herself partly Alien - extremely strong, with acid blood, and can sense the behaviour of the other Aliens a long way away. There's a lovely twist on the android/cyborg thing from the first movie, and at the end, four people (it's the fourth movie in the series, see?) survive. (Although only two of them are fully human, but that's okay.)

1997, dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. With Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon, Gary Dourdan, Michael Wincott, Brad Dourif, Leland Orser, Dan Hedaya.

Alien vs. Predator

No, no, I wasn't expecting quality here. Pretty much by the numbers. People's chests explode, Predators kill Aliens, Aliens kill Predators, big Alien threat to all mankind. Yup. New record though: end credits clocked in at TWELVE MINUTES.

2004, dir. Paul Anderson. With no one you've heard of.

All About My Mother

I think "Talk to Her" is Almodavar's best, but this one's pretty good. He puts his characters in absurd situations, but the characters themselves are very good ... In this case, Manuela's son (her only family) dies. She returns to Barcelona to find her son's father and comes into the company of some ... interesting people.

2000 dir. Pedro Almodavar. With Cecilia Roth, Penélope Cruz, Antonia San Juan, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña.

All of Me

Martin plays a lawyer who plays in a jazz band in the evenings. Tomlin plays an incredibly rich and selfish woman who is on the verge of death after a lifetime of illness. She's convinced that a swami will move her soul into a bowl, then into Tennant's body. Martin meets her as a lawyer, and they don't get along well. Eventually Tomlin dies, and she does indeed go into the bowl ... and then, through an accident, into Martin. She and Martin split his body pretty much down the middle.

A lousy comedy with a few pieces of utterly brilliant physical comedy by Martin. When the two of them are jointly occupying his body and he's trying to get somewhere, he strides on one side and minces on the other. Martin is brilliant in these moments, but absolutely everything is overplayed and the outcome is pretty much inevitable.

1984, dir. Carl Reiner. With Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Victoria Tennant, Madolyn Smith Osborne, Dana Elcar, Jason Bernard.

All the King's Men (2006)

The story of an earnest, passionate man (Penn) who rises to power as the governor of Louisiana and becomes as corrupt as those he was trying to drive out, seen through the eyes of his assistant (Law). The tale of a whole bunch of morally bankrupt people told in bits in pieces with not-very-compelling speeches and heavy-handed colourizing (or de-colourizing) of the film. I understand the 1949 version was very good - if so, this doesn't live up to it.

2006, dir. Steven Zaillian. With Sean Penn, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson, James Gandolfini.

Aladdin

Disney's take on a classic story. Since the genie becomes a main character and is voiced by Williams, you can kind of guess where this one is headed: there's a lot of comedy. And, seeing it in 2011, I wonder if this movie didn't presage the sort of knowing, self-aware comedy that came into children's movies a decade later (with "Shrek" essentially being the vanguard). In the introductory segment, a peddler (also Williams) asks the camera "come closer," and it splats up against his face, "Too close! A little too close." I haven't always been a big fan of Williams, but when he's bright blue and can take on any form he wants, he can be pretty damn hilarious. There are a number of Eighties popular culture references that will go by a lot of people at this point (anyone remember Arsenio Hall?), but Williams is tossing out the jokes fast and furious, and nearly all of them are funny. And the rest of the plot is quite charming and has a positive message for the kids. Hell, I even liked Gottfried's voice work, he's quite funny here. This one is a real treat.

1992, dir. Ron Clements and John Musker. With Robin Williams, Scott Weinger, Jonathan Freeman, Linda Larkin, Frank Welker, Gilbert Gottfried, Douglas Seale.

Almost Famous

I saw this a long time ago, probably when it came out. I remembered it as good, but that doesn't begin to do it justice: this is brilliant.

Set in 1973, Fugit plays William Miller, a precocious 15 year old who writes a couple articles for Creem magazine and then is invited by Rolling Stone to follow, and do an article on, the (non-existent) up-and-coming band "Stillwater." Hudson plays "Penny Lane," a band groupie of indeterminate age (but roughly the same age as William) who has an affair with Russell Hammond (Crudup), Stillwater's guitarist. Hammond has also become William's mentor, while William has fallen for Penny. It's all set in the drug-addled world of rock-and-roll with occasional phone calls from William's exceptionally protective mother (McDormand).

Really a fantastic movie. Hilarious, touching, a little bit heart-breaking, with great performances all around - Fugit, Crudup, and Hudson are particularly good. See it.

2000, dir. Cameron Crowe. With Patrick Fugit, Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, Frances McDormand, Jason Lee, Fairuza Balk, Anna Paquin, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Zooey Deschanel, Noah Taylor.

Amal

Amal (Nagra) is an auto-rickshaw driver in New Delhi, scrupulously honest and eternally polite. One day he drives a rude old beggar (Shah), who turns out to be a multi-millionaire and later decides to leave his entire fortune to Amal ... if only it can get to Amal in a month despite the problems of locating an auto-rickshaw driver in a city of 13 million and the scheming relatives.

I picked it up at the library because it had a 100% rating at Rotten Tomatoes (admittedly from only five critics, but still impressive). It turns out that it's easy to get in Canada because, despite using all Indian actors and being set entirely in New Delhi, the majority of the funding is Canadian. Unfortunately, I found much of the movie dull, and the ending distinctly unsatisfying: setting aside other problems, they left a brand new murder dangling. Go figure.

2007, dir. Richie Mehta. With Rupinder Nagra, Naseeruddin Shah, Koel Purie, Seema Biswas.

Amélie (orig. "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain)

An incredibly charming movie about a young woman in Paris who messes with the lives of her friends and co-workers - and finds her own life changing. Hilariously funny.

Surreal and filmed in massively over-saturated colours. I think my favourite moment is when a four image passport photo of a stranger that Nino (Kassovitz) is carrying starts telling him about Amélie (who he hasn't met yet) and arguing between the frames about whether she's pretty or beautiful. It's utterly hilarious ... and gives some idea of the sensibility of the movie.

2001. dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. With Audrey Tatou, Mathieu Kassovitz.

American Splendor

An HBO movie following up on the success of "Crumb." Looks at the life of cartoonist Harvey Pekar, a friend of Crumb's. Weird blend of reality and fictionalized biography. Spends a great deal of time taxiing down the runway, setting the stage, but when in finally takes off it's really good. The voice-over on the DVD is surprisingly good - a reunion of nearly all the actors and all the people they played.

2003 dir. Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini. With Paul Giamatti, Harvey Pekar, Hope Davis.

Angel (Season 1, Disc 2)

Contains the episodes "Expecting," "She," "I've Got You Under My Skin," and "The Prodigy." I suppose I was hoping for the equivalent of the first season of "Buffy," instead I got something that felt like it had already been running for six seasons. It tries to balance its humour and pathos the way "Buffy" did, but fails: the humour is too flippant, and the pathos doesn't really stand on a solid enough base to really affect the viewer. Disappointing.

2000. With David Boreanaz, Alexis Denisof, Charisma Carpenter.

The Ant Bully

Cute but predictable. Enjoyable, but you'll be thinking "it's all been done before:" this one doesn't really add anything new. Good voice work, decent animation.

Young boy (Tyler) is bullied by his peers, doesn't connect with his parents. In his frustration, he floods the ant hill in his yard. As revenge, an ant-wizard (played by Cage) changes him to the size of an ant. The ant queen (Streep) declares that he has to learn to live as an ant. He's mentored by Roberts' character. As the movie progresses, he finds that his bitterness and lack of teamwork doesn't work. So predictable.

2006, dir. John Davis. Zach Tyler, Nicolas Cage, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Paul Giamatti, Bruce Campbell, Regina King, Lily Tomlin, Larry Miller, Ricardo Montalban.

Antz

Allen brings existential angst to animated kid's films. Go figure. A lot of the humour is aimed squarely at adults, and a lot at kids - with little crossover. It's fairly entertaining, more than a bit didactic, and somewhat confused about its target audience. The line-up of actors is pretty incredible.

1998, dir. Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson. With Woody Allen, Dan Ackroyd, Anne Bancroft, Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Christopher Walken, Sylvester Stallone, Jennifer Lopez, Sharon Stone.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Anvil is a Canadian heavy metal band. In 1984 they were on stage at the Super Rock festival in Japan with the Scorpions, Whitesnake, and Bon Jovi. They were hugely influential on all the metal bands of the time ... but they've never had any particular success. Despite which they're still rocking out to small crowds in 2006 when the movie was filmed, despite having dull day jobs to pay the mortgage because Anvil doesn't pay for shit. But they refuse to quit, believing at every turn that the next concert will sell out, the next album will go gold ...

The movie is quite good, but kind of depressing as they go further into debt to record a new album that no record label is willing to distribute and their concerts sell 50 or 100 tickets. It's a fascinating character study. The irony of it is that the movie has put them back on the map: now they're opening for AC/DC and Saxon.

2009, dir. Sacha Gervasi. With Steve "Lips" Kudlow, Robb Reiner, Glenn Five, Ivan Hurd, Tiziana Arrigoni, Chris Tsangarides, Lars Ulrich, Slash, Lemmy, Tom Araya, Scott Ian.

The Apartment

I was fairly concerned at the beginning that I was going to watch a slapstick comedy with no real content - it took a good 45 minutes to get warmed up and actually put some emotion into the silliness. It was a bit late, but it was pretty good anyway. Lemmon plays a low ranking business man who loans his apartment to higher ranking business men for their trysts - an awkward circumstance at best, and now he finds he's fallen for one of the mistresses.

1959, dir. Billy Wilder. With Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray.

Appaloosa

Harris and Mortensen play enforcers hired to clean the bad elements (Irons and his men) out of the town of Appaloosa. As Mortensen's voice-over explains at the beginning, it might be a bit more complicated than that. While this is historically accurate and well acted, I thought that Westerns haven't changed much since the 1950s - except for the rather more frank inclusion of sex. Certainly the violence has always been there - brutal but actually somewhat underplayed in this one. While it was, indeed, well done, I found myself entirely unmoved by this one.

2008, dir. Ed Harris. With Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Rene Zellweger, Jeremy Irons, Timothy Spall, James Gammon.

Appleseed

After a massive world war, humanity sets up a single utopian city to live in. Of course, there are cracks and flaws in utopia, quickly discovered by Deunan when she's brought into the city from the outside world. The buildings and machines are all CG and generally look pretty good, but most of the people are hand-drawn. Not that the people look bad, but I found the mix a little disconcerting. The dialogue is awful and the story absurd.

2004, dir. Shinji Aramaki.

Arabian Nights

Hallmark Entertainment - had I known that up front, I probably wouldn't have watched it. Despite which, it's pretty damn good for a TV mini-series. Lavish production, some clever ideas, and famous stories brought to life in credible style.

1999, dir. Steve Barron. With Mili Avital, Dougray Scott, James Frain, Rufus Sewell, Jason Scott Lee, Tcheky Karyo, Alan Bates, John Leguizamo.

The Best Arbuckle Keaton Collection

A two DVD collection of two-reel silent shorts, directed by and starring Arbuckle, all of which co-star Buster Keaton. Arbuckle had his career totally destroyed in 1923 by a massive rape trial - he was completely exonerated, but his career was not.

Arbuckle was a physical comedian much in the style of Harold Lloyd and later stars Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Arbuckle had his moments, but I was more interested in watching this early view of Keaton learning his trade - before he became "Old Stone Face." That's right, he actually reacts to things in these ones. And he already really, really knew how to fall down. It was fascinating to see in the short "Back Stage" a stage facade of a two storey building falling on an oblivious Arbuckle who is fortunate enough to be standing such that he goes through a window in the facade without injury. Sound familiar? It's a gag that Keaton borrowed to greater effect in "Steamboat Bill, Jr."(?) in which he used a real house facade and probably would have died if he hadn't positioned himself correctly. It's one of his most famous scenes.

Titles: "The Butcher Boy," "The Rough House," "His Wedding Night," "Oh, Doctor!," "Coney Island," "Out West," "The Bell Boy," "Moonshine," "Good Night, Nurse," "Back Stage," "The Hayseed," "The Garage."

compilation: 2001, original dates 1917-1920. dir. Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. With Buster Keaton, Al St. John, Alice Lake, Jack Coogan Sr., Molly Malone.

The Aristocrats

One hundred comedians (or there abouts) and their takes on one incredibly filthy joke. Some of the view of how comedians work, their analysis of humour, was interesting - but I found the central joke relatively unfunny which left me kind of disinterested in a lot of the proceedings.

With Penn Gillette, Whoopi Goldberg, Gilbert Gottfried, Bob Sagat, George Carlin ...

Around the World in Eighty Days

I love Jackie Chan. I've become accustomed to watching stupid but entertaining movies based around his skills. In this case, all I got was stupid. Charming, but so silly it was pathetic and I didn't think much of the action, usually one of Chan's strengths.

2004, dir. Frank Coraci. With Jackie Chan, Steve CCoogan, Cécile De France, Jim Broadbent.

Arrietty

Apparently those with a knowledge of juvenile fiction recognize the name as that of a character in Mary Norton's old book The Borrowers, and indeed this is based on that book. It is, however, set in modern day Japan. Yonebayashi is with Studio Ghibli, and has pretty clearly studied Miyazaki's work. Miyazaki had a hand in the script.

Arrietty is about 10 cm tall, and she and her parents live under the floorboards of a house in the country. Trouble comes in the form of a sick young boy: he means them no harm, but when he spots Arrietty on a couple of occasions, their interactions begin to cause problems for her family.

The movie is quite slow-paced with utterly gorgeous visuals. It's not going to astound you with its pyrotechnics, but it's likely to stay in your mind as a thing of quiet beauty.

2010, dir. Hiromasa Yonebayashi. With Mirai Shida, Ryūnosuke Kamiki, Shinobu Ōtake, Keiko Takeshita, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Tomokazu Miura, Kirin Kiki.

The Arrival

I saw this first when it came out, and again in 2011.

Sheen plays Zane Zaminski, a radio astronomer for SETI who thinks he's heard an alien radio signal. As soon as he mentions it to his supervisor, he's shut down, and it's not just his job he loses. He starts "borrowing" other people's satellite dishes to make a composite radio telescope array, then goes to Mexico to visit the site of an answering signal.

Sheen has a lot of fun as the incredibly paranoid and slightly loopy Zane (with an arrogance that seems to have presaged his own later life ...) and a decent supporting cast and enjoyable script make this a lot of fun to watch ... although perhaps more for science fiction fans than anyone else.

1996, dir. David Twohy. With Charlie Sheen, Teri Polo, Tony T. Johnson, Lindsay Crouse, Ron Silver, Richard Schiff.

As You Like It (BBC, 1978)

A BBC TV production with a surprisingly untalented cast. Only Mirren is even halfway decent, and she's too old for her role (Rosalind) and rather subdued. It's not disastrous, and it does appear to include the entire text (rather unusual these days).

1978, dir. Basil Coleman. With Helen Mirren, Brian Stirner, Richard Pasco, Angharad Rees, James Bolam, Clive Francis.

As You Like It (CBC, 1983)

Filmed on the stage at the Stratford Festival in 1983, and superior to the 1978 BBC version also listed here. It's well acted, and well interpreted - meaning that someone spent a lot of time thinking about Shakespeare's meaning, and some physical hints are given to help us understand Shakespeare's more obscure language ... without going overboard or taking us out of the play. Besides, it's broad comedy. A good production.

1983, dir. John Hirsch. With Roberta Maxwell (Rosalind), Andrew Gillies (Orlando), Nicholas Pennell (Jacques), Rosemary Dunsmore (Celia).

Astro Boy (2009)

An animated children's movie based on the very old and often adapted work of Osamu Tezuka.

Toby (Highmore) is the brilliant young son of Dr. Tenma (Cage), who is killed - partly by his own curiosity and a little by the bad choices of his father and President Stone (Sutherland), for whom Tenma works. Tenma builds a highly realistic (but heavily armed) robot recreation of his son (also Highmore) ... and then rejects him because his behaviour isn't exactly the same as his son Toby. This young child robot has various adventures and eventually saves everyone and everything, and feels better about himself.

The target age group on this one is younger than I'm used to, although perhaps not out of line with the original Astro Boy material. There's very little in here for adults except the pretty visuals, and even seven year olds may notice this is a bit heavy-handed.

2009, dir. David Bowers. With Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell, Bill Nighy, Donald Sutherland, Nathan Lane, Samuel L. Jackson.

Atonement

Wright's follow-up to his very good version of "Pride and Prejudice," he chose to adapt another novel - this time a recent novel by Ian McEwan about Britain during the war. While the older daughter of the Tallis family (Knightley) falls for one of the servants (McAvoy), the younger Tallis daughter (played at different ages by Ronan, Garai, and Redgrave) accuses him of a crime he didn't commit, changing all their lives. Flashbacks and different points of view of the same event mean that you spend a lot of time patching the actual sequence of events together in your head. I found the eventual conclusion ... realistic, but unsatisfying.

2007, dir. Joe Wright. With Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan, James McAvoy, Brenda Blethyn, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave.

Attack the Block

A low budget science fiction thriller that starts out with a mugging in a low rent district of modern London. A young woman headed home is mugged, but escapes further injury when the muggers are distracted by a meteor hitting a car. The meteor has delivered some kind of small and nasty creature, which the muggers attack. Unfortunately, more (and larger) arrive shortly.

The set-up is unusual, and the cast of unknowns (Whittaker and Frost appear to be the only ones who've been in major movies before, and neither is hugely well known) attack the script with energy and intensity. Very entertaining.

2011, dir. Joe Cornish. With John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Alex Esmail, Frank Drameh, Leeon Jones, Simon Howard, Nick Frost, Jumayn Hunter, Luke Treadaway.

Avatar

Let's get this out of the way first: young man goes to new place, tries to infiltrate natives, succeeds, becomes enamoured of native culture, helps natives fight his own evil culture. The story is unoriginal. Although they do a reasonably good version.

That said, this is simply the most beautiful movie I've ever seen. Cameron has created an entire world, a stunning visual feast, easily worth seeing multiple times. See it in 3-D, preferably in IMAX if that's available to you. The sense of immersion is much greater in IMAX, having seen both.

Special Edition: The above is about the original theatrical release. The Special Edition hit theatres in late August 2010 with an extra eight or nine minutes of footage and immediately tanked - more because people had had enough "Avatar" than because it was a bad version. The added footage is scattered throughout the film in 10-30 second segments, and, while none of it is revelatory, I thought it added considerably to the film. The film is already incredibly long, but with reason: Cameron is world-building, taking the plot at a leisurely pace to help you understand an entire new world. The new material adds more context: not essential, but one of those rare cases where the director restoring footage is actually a good thing.

2009, dir. James Cameron. With Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Joel Moore, Giovani Ribisi, Michelle Rodriguez, Laz Alonso, Dileep Rao.

The Awful Truth

A Broadway play-turned-movie, and thus full of witty one-liners and caustic humour. But somewhat impaired in the common sense department ... not just the characters, but the screenwriters as well. Grant and Dunne play a married couple who get into a tiff and immediately decide that divorce is the only solution, and we spend the next hour and a quarter watching them reconsider. Silly, and, as mentioned, occasionally funny.

1937, dir. Leo McCarey. With Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy, Alexander D'Arcy, Cecil Cunningham, Molly Lamont, Esther Dale.

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B

Babette's Feast

A French woman of unknown origins prepares a huge feast for a group of religious puritans in a remote town in Denmark. Fairly good, but I found much of it emotionally cold - it doesn't draw you in or involve you much.

1987. dir. Gabriel Axel.

Bad Boys

A couple of really funny jokes in a long and tedious movie. Don't bother.

With Will Smith.

Bad Influence

Michael (Spader) is a young executive who is letting himself be pushed around in all aspects of his life. After an incident in a bar, he meets Alex (Lowe) and starts to learn from him not to let himself be pushed around. But Alex's wildness goes rather farther than Michael's conscience will let him, and their confrontations become extremely ugly. A psychological thriller of sorts, one I didn't like much although the two leads played their parts very well.

1990, dir. Curtis Hanson. With James Spader, Rob Lowe.

Ball of Fire

A group of professors labour over an encyclopedia "of all human knowledge." The youngest of them (also the leader), Bertram Potts (Cooper), goes out to do some research on current slang, and ends up with 'Sugarpuss' O'Shea (Stanwyck), a showgirl and gangster's girlfriend in tow. She shakes up the professors, and Potts falls in love with her - although she's only using him. Etc. Not terribly inventive, but the professors, while a bit clichéd, are incredibly charming. Stanwyck is very good too. It's a silly movie that had no right to be worth watching, but it's funny and charming and quite enjoyable.

1941, dir. Howard Hawks. With Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Oskar Homolka, Henry Travers, Richard Haydn, Dana Andrews, Dan Duryea, Elisha Cook Jr.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

This has a reputation as being one of the worst films ever made. In fact, I found it quite disappointing: it's not nearly bad enough to warrant that reputation. Sure, the director (who classically styles himself "Kaos") managed to pry incredibly wooden performances from the otherwise competent Banderas and Liu. Sure, it ignores physics completely, but most action films do that. And yes, it's tedious, with non sequiturs and a somewhat poorly structured plot. But where's the hilariously bad dialogue? It's all just tedious. And the continuity is fairly consistent. The fights are sequential, and most of the blows look vaguely as if they landed. Where are the blatant errors that entertain?

To me the most frustrating problem was the final fight between Liu and Park (finally wearing his own face, instead of Toad in "X-Men" or Darth Maul in "The Phantom Menace"). I'm sure Liu trained hard, but it was immediately and massively evident that Park was a far superior martial artist (he's done it all his life and he's a movie stunt man - he knows how to move). Of course Liu wins the fight: but a five year old child with no martial arts training would be left scratching their head and thinking "how did that happen?" after the fight was over.

My favourite part though is when Banderas tells his wife "we must run." The next shot is a slow-mo shot of their legs running through puddles. Then we have the clichéd speed-up to full speed. We all know what this means: they're fleeing from gun-men or an imminent explosion. And then the pull-back ... revealing that they're not running, they're going at a light trot under no particular threat. I fell out laughing. It was a shot that should have been in one of the parody movies, but it wasn't done here for humour (which is part of why it worked so well ...)

2002, dir. Wych Kaosayananda (listed as "Kaos"). With Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, Gregg Henry, Ray Park, Talisa Soto, Terry Chen, Miguel Sandoval.

Balls of Fury

Another one of those I'm a little embarrassed to admit I watched ... It's bad. On the other hand, it did have a couple of big laughs - albeit with far too big a wait between them. Reminds me a lot of the over-the-top, hit-or-miss approach to comedy that the SNL alumni seem to take to comedy: it's extremely uneven, and perfectly happy to go for the gross-out.

The basic premise has Randy Daytona (Fogler) coming out of retirement to play Ping Pong again, trying to get into a high stakes Ping Pong match run by the deadly Feng (Walken).

2007, dir. Robert Ben Garant. With Dan Fogler, Christopher Walken, George Lopez, Maggie Q, James Hong.

The Band's Visit

An Egyptian police band goes to Israel to play a concert. They take the wrong bus and get stuck in a small town with no way out until the next day and no hotels. Locals host them. ...... Yes, that's it. It's quiet, funny (extremely so in a couple places, but quietly so throughout), and charming. See it. The "Muslims meet the Jews" thing is there, but this isn't a preaching movie, it's just ... people.

2007, dir. Eran Kolirin. With Sasson Gabai, Ronit Elkabetz, Saleh Bakri, Khalifa Natour.

Baran

Iranian movie about a short-tempered young construction worker who discovers that the new youth (an illegal Afghan worker) on the site is female, not male. He becomes obsessed with her. They had essentially two filming sites: a skeletal building that they're trying to rebuild (and which quite a few of them live in), and a small village. Very poorly acted, good cinematography, fascinating chiefly because it shows something of Iranian life.

2001, dir. Majid Majidi. With Hossein Abedini, Zahra Bahrami, Mohammad Amir Naji.

Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy

More than anything you can see the influence of producer Dino de Laurentiis, who redefined "camp" every time he made a movie. We're talking about the man behind the 1980 version of "Flash Gordon." This movie is mostly about bad special effects and Fonda in slinky outfits (or nothing at all). And I now know where Duran Duran got their name, and where "Flesh Gordon" drew its primary inspiration. Sad to say, this is a landmark in SF film (not entirely a bad thing: SF film needed both sexuality and humour in a bad way). Ludicrous as it is, this is definitely worth watching.

1968, dir. Roger Vadim. With Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Milo O'Shea.

The Barbarian Invasions (orig.: Les Invasions Barbares)

Arcand brings back most of the cast of "The Decline of the American Empire" 17 years later. Once again, the topic of the day is sex. Last time it was sex and life, but now one of their number is dying so it becomes sex and death. I found it remarkably ... disposable considering its central pillar is a death - even if it is used as a confirmation of life. Still, enjoyable and with a fair bit to think about.

2003, dir. Denys Arcand. With Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau, Dorothée Berryman, Louise Portal, Dominique Michel, Yves Jacques, Pierre Curzi, Marie-Josée Croze.

Barefoot Gen (orig. "Hadashi no Gen")

A super cute movie about starving in WWII Hiroshima, right up until the bomb drops on them and most people die horribly. Then more people die of radiation sickness. Good fun for the whole family. Gen is a young boy who ends up trying to be a protector to his pregnant mother when the rest of his family dies. The combination of cute and horror didn't really work for me, even if the author did live through the Hiroshima bomb.

1992, dir. Mori Masaki. With Issei Miyazaki, Masaki Kôda, Yoshie Shimamura.

Barney's Version

I was less than sure about this movie adaptation of a Mordecai Richler novel, but it won me over. In a big way. Never bet against Giamatti - he can bring the worst script to life, and handed a good one (like this), he'll leave the audience awe-struck.

Giamatti plays Barney, a heavy-drinking Montrealer. We see his life from his twenties all the way to the very sad ending, and his relationships with his father, his three wives, his best friends, and his two children. Barney is a bit of a loudmouth asshole, but like anyone he has redeeming features. His love of his third wife (Pike, luminous as always) is one of his biggest - particularly after his sorry second marriage. Highly recommended.

2010, dir. Richard J. Lewis. With Paul Gimatti, Rosamund Pike, Dustin Hoffman, Minnie Driver, Scott Speedman, Rachelle Lefevre, Mark Addy, Bruce Greenwood, Saul Rubinek, Anna Hopkins, Jake Hoffman. Cameos by Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Paul Gross, Denys Arcand.

Batman (1989)

I saw this when it came out and loved it, so it was a surprise to me to find that I hate it in 2011 - quite a reversal. The effects in the movie have aged poorly (the most direct comparison being the first of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies), and Burton's visual sensibilities really wore on me this time. I didn't like Burton in 1989, I have no idea why I liked this movie ... As I remembered, Keaton is considerably better than you'd expect in the role - but then, he was spectacular in "Clean and Sober" so I suppose it shouldn't be a big surprise. Nicholson sets the right tone as the Joker, but the facial prosthetics are incredibly distracting. Burton successfully takes the tone from the goofiness of the Sixties Batman TV series and movie to the much grittier feel of the comic books. It's not a bad movie, but it's far too Burton for me both visually and emotionally..

1989, dir. Tim Burton. With Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger, Billy Dee Williams, Jack Palance, Robert Wuhl, Pat Hingle, Michael Gough.

Batman Begins

Another shot at Batman's origins, and a fairly good one. The final dénouement is massively over the top, but that's no different than any other action movie these days.

2005, dir. Christopher Nolan. With Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Katie Holmes, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Linus Roache, Morgan Freeman.

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

Animated. Slightly better than the 20 minute TV cartoons it's based upon. A "Phantasm" begins killing off local crime figures, contrary to Batman's desire to adhere to the law. Simultaneously, a woman that he had considered marrying as Bruce Wayne resurfaces in his life. No attempt is ever made to explain the Phantasm's magical abilities: he just does what he does.

2005. With Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Dana Delany, Hart Bochner, Abe Vigour.

The Battle of Algiers (orig. "La Battaglia di Algeri")

Shows the Algerian revolution against the French Colonials from 1956-1962. The style verges on documentary, and is fairly unbiased - and all the more depressing for it, as it shows the French torturing prisoners and the Algerians bombing cafés with children and babies in them. The plot, coming as it did mostly from an account of the war, doesn't tie up its loose ends quite as neatly as a fictional movie, but this is a hell of a portrayal of war. A creepy and depressing piece of work that everyone should see. Filmed in Algeria by an Italian in French and Algerian. Several nominations and awards ... and wasn't screened in France for decades.

1967, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo. With Brahim Hadjadj, Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi.

Beauty and the Beast

I saw this when it came out, and again now in 2011. One of Disney's most famous productions, and one of their most overblown. Full of musical numbers, and some of their most obviously CG animation. All the characters are caricatures, with the loss of charm that accompanies that. I realize I'm disagreeing with 92% of the critics (according to Rotten Tomatoes) when I say this, but I think this is one of their poorer outings.

1991, dir. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. With Paige O'Hara, Robby Benson, Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Steirs, Angela Lansbury, Bradley Michael Pierce, Rex Everhart.

A Beautiful Mind

John Nash is a mathematician who received the Nobel Prize for economics in 1994. "A Beautiful Mind" is the story of his life, as interpreted by Howard. I'm usually unimpressed by Howard's more manipulative sentimental notes, but he uses it to excellent effect here - I was hugely impressed with this movie.

An interesting follow-up to this is the one hour PBS documentary "A Brilliant Madness," a biography of Nash. Howard strayed in the details of Nash's madness, but ultimately "A Beautiful Mind" was quite an accurate portrayal.

2001. dir. Ron Howard. With Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris.

Becoming Jane

An attempt to reconstruct the early life of Jane Austen. The first half was clever and extremely funny (even though I didn't believe a word of it had actually happened ... they recreated the history, but no one knows the conversations), but the second half had to dig into the romance that almost certainly formed her life, and the reasons that it didn't quite happen. Some of it was a little too pat (such as the reason Jane decides to leave Tom Lefroy), but for the most part it was very enjoyable. The closing scene includes one hell of a wicked jab that you won't be expecting: yes, Lefroy really did name his child that. Hathaway and McAvoy were excellent, which went a long way to making this one good.

2007, dir. Julian Jarrold. With Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy, Julie Walters, James Cromwell, Maggie Smith, Joe Anderson, Lucy Cohu, Laurence Fox, Ian Richardson, Anne Maxwell Martin.

Bee Movie

I was never a fan of Seinfeld: either his stand-up comedy or his show. But he has almost redeemed himself with this incredibly charming film (he wrote and did the voice work for the main character). Perhaps having kids has reduced the cynicism that got on my nerves so much.

The main premise is a fairly typical one: Barry B. Benson, a bee, has just graduated from bee college and is now required to choose a job that he'll hold the rest of his life. But he refuses, and then goes out into the world beyond the hive - and ends up mixing with the humans and causing all kinds of havoc. It's very funny, the animation is good (especially the flying sequences which work particularly well), and there are a bunch of entertaining cameos to keep the adults paying attention.

2007, dir. Steve Hickner, Simon J. Smith. With Jerry Seinfeld, Renée Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, Patrick Warburton, John Goodman, Chris Rock, Larry King, Sting, Ray Liotta.

Before Sunrise

Linklater does like his talk. That's all this is, endless talk and negotiation of ideas. Hawke plays the American and Delpy the French woman who meet on a train on the way to Vienna and spend one evening and night together ... talking. Hawke plays the brash, annoying but kind of charming American to the hilt - a stereotype I've never liked. Much of the blame goes to Linklater's writing and direction - many people love this movie, but I don't really like the script. But the characters are intelligent, and the dialogue has occasional moments of insight.

1995, dir. Richard Linklater. With Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy.

Beginners

We first meet Oliver (McGregor) cleaning out the house of his recently deceased father. We see Oliver's life in flashbacks, including his father (Hal, played by Plummer) becoming actively gay shortly after the death of his wife, Oliver's mother. And we move forward in his life, with him inheriting his father's dog (an important character in the story) and starting a relationship with Anna (Laurent). Oliver is bad at relationships, always sabotaging them, and Hal - although he had known he was gay for over 40 years - had never acted on his gayness before. Thus the film's title.

Well acted (particularly Plummer as the newly freed gay man) with an interesting aesthetic. The story is charming and good, but never quite reaches the heights. Worth seeing.

2010, dir. Mike Mills. With Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Mélanie Laurent, Goran Višnjić, Kai Lennox, Mary Page Keller, China Shavers.

Bella

When his brother fires a waitress (Nina, played by Blanchard) at their restaurant for being late, José (who is the chef, played by Verástegui) walks out to make sure she's okay, and spends the day with her. In their day together her reason for being late comes out, as do his secrets: the smaller of which is that he used to be a football star, and we later find how he fell from grace.

The movie is very well meaning, but both the structure and the acting are mediocre. I enjoyed it more for it being filmed entirely in and around New York City, and for its portrayal of a Mexican/Puerto Rican family there.

2006, dir. Alejandro Gomez Monteverde. With Eduardo Verástegui, Tammy Blanchard, Manny Perez.

Benny and Joon

Benny (Quinn) lives with his intelligent but slightly crazy sister Joon (Masterson), who isn't entirely stable. At one of Benny's bizarre (and hilarious) poker games, Joon loses a hand and is required to house Sam (Depp). Personal interactions get complicated, and Benny in particular has trouble adjusting to the changes. Depp does his best to emulate Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, and Charlie Chaplin, and is spectacularly funny. I found Benny's explosion at the climax of the film a bit excessive for his character, but in all other respects this is a hilarious and wonderful film, highly recommended.

1993, dir. Jeremiah S. Chechik. With Aidan Quinn, Mary Stewart Masterson, Johnny Depp, Oliver Platt, Julianne Moore.

Beowulf and Grendel

Beowulf, but with massive embellishments, redrawn to cast everything in shades of gray. Grendel is no longer an evil monster, and Beowulf is still a hero, but his actions are seen in a very different light. Polley plays a substantial role as a witch who never appeared in the original poem, and there's a sub-plot about a recruiting Christian priest that's new. The Icelandic scenery (and weather!) is spectacular, and the historical reconstruction is good (it convinced me, but perhaps that's not hard). Very not Hollywood, always a plus.

2005, dir. Sturla Gunnarsson. With Gerard Butler, Ingvar E. Sigurdsson, Stellan Skarsgård, Tony Curran, Sarah Polley.

Beowulf (2007)

Borrows from the 2005 version ("Beowulf and Grendel") - once again there's a strong tie between the community and the monster, and this time also between the mother and Beowulf's later life. But this version is animated, sort of. On top of the actions of real actors. What this primarily does is utterly destroy the acting. Why hire good actors (Hopkins, Wright Penn, Malkovitch, Gleeson) if you're going to obscure the subtleties behind artificial masks? There's a circularity to the story (in part by Neil Gaiman) that's annoying in its cleverness. Despite all of which it's quite a spectacle to see.

2007, dir. Robert Zemeckis. With Ray Winstone, Brendan Gleeson, Robin Wright Penn, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Crispin Glover, Alison Lohman, Angelina Jolie.

Beowulf (1999)

Solid B-movie gold. Lambert plays the titular hero in a post-apocalyptic world with major medieval elements and a touch of technology. Relies fairly heavily on the "Beowulf" myth, although they did make some mildly interesting changes: Beowulf isn't entirely human, Hrothgar's right-hand man isn't a snivelling traitor - his story was actually kind of interesting, if poorly acted (like everyone else). The outpost/keep they're in actually looked pretty good except when they added their awful special effects. It's an atrociously bad movie, but ... I kind of enjoyed it.

1999, dir. Graham Baker. With Christopher Lambert, Rhona Mitra, Oliver Cotton, Götz Otto, Charles Robinson, Brent Jefferson Lowe, Layla Roberts.

Bend It Like Beckham

Has a lot in common with "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," re-written for an Indian family in the U.K. This is a very funny and up-beat movie about a young Indian girl whose parents don't want her to play football (aka. "soccer"), which is pretty much the only thing she wants to do.

2002. dir. Gurinder Chadha. With Parminder K. Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

The Best of Not the 9 O'Clock News

A very influential TV comedy show from Britain, starting in 1979 and running into the early 80s. This two DVD set compiles the best bits from quite a few episodes, and runs about three hours. Like Monty Python before them (Python gets an explicit nod in one of the skits) they're very uneven. But definitely worth a look. Of course if you don't know who Margaret Thatcher or the Royal Family are, a fair chunk of the humour will be lost to you. Atkinson went on to fame most notably as Mr. Bean, and Smith and Jones went on to the very long-running series "Alas Smith & Jones."

1979-1982. With Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones, Pamela Stephenson.

The Best of Youth (orig. "La Meglio Gioventù")

A six hour epic following the lives of two brothers from Rome and their family and friends over nearly 40 years. It takes over an hour to really get interesting, but once it does you're in for the full run. A real Italian history lesson for the rest of us: from floods in Turin to communist rebels to mafia assassinations of judges - but most of the film centres on the smaller things, the lives of the main characters. I was frustrated in a couple places where it became obvious from small clues what the characters were going to do ... but not why. How can we have seen so much of their lives and know so little about their motivations? But that's another aspect of the movie not preaching to its viewers, and ... it's really good. Have a look.

2003, dir. Marco Tullio Giordana. With Luigi Lo Cascio, Alessio Boni, Adriana Asti, Sonia Bergamasco, Fabrizio Gifuni, Maya Sansa, Valentina Carnelutti, Jasmine Trinca, Andrea Tidona, Lidia Vitale, Claudio Gioè.

Better Off Dead

The "Airplane" of 80s teen comedy, with Cusack at the centre, the main reason the movie doesn't fall flat on its face. Armstrong plays the same stoner he played all through the 80s and into the early 90s - overtaken by Jack Black, and now possibly Michael Cera (although he's not usually portrayed as being on drugs). But back to this movie ... Cusack plays a high school student dumped at the start by his dream girl. He makes a couple half-hearted attempts at suicide, tries to become a skiing star, tries to race the Korean Howard Cosell kids, avoids his mother's cooking, avoids his seven year old brother's evil genius inventions and schemes, and is pursued by an insane paper boy (repeatedly). If you like scattershot surreal humour, you'll like this. Not entirely my thing, but I did enjoy the soundtrack by Rupert Hine.

1985, dir. Savage Steve Holland. With John Cusack, David Ogden Stiers, Kim Darby, Diane Franklin, Scooter Stevens, Laura Waterbury, Dan Schneider, Yuji Okumoto, Brian Imada, Amanda Wyss, Curtis Armstrong.

Better Than Chocolate

Two young women start a romance just before one's mother moves in with her. Genuine Canadian content - Vancouver/Port Coquitlam, relaxed attitude about sex and underage drinking. Erotic. Mediocre acting. Passable but not great script.

1999 dir. Anne Wheeler. With Karyn Dwyer, Christina Cox.

Beverly Hills Cop

Apparently they had originally cast Stallone to lead this one! And he wrote out most of the humour and add huge heaps of action. They dumped him gently and he took the action scenes and made "Cobra" while they hired Murphy to replace him.

There's still quite a bit of action left, and some comedy - mostly based around Murphy being annoying. It's what he does. And then there's the soundtrack, possibly one of the most memorable ever written, by Harold Faltermeyer. I didn't say "good," just "memorable." Reinhold and Ashton are amusing as the actual Beverly Hills cops (Murphy is supposed to be from Detroit), fall guys for Murphy's pranks. The full reversal of the entire department to thinking Murphy is okay despite his trashing entire neighbourhoods to get the bad guy is a little difficult to swallow.

I'm not a huge fan, but this was possibly the most successful action-comedy movie ever made.

1984, dir. Martin Brest. With Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Lisa Eilbacher, Ronny Cox, Steven Berkhoff, James Russo, Paul Reiser.

Bewitched (2005)

Ferrell plays a movie star whose career is in a tailspin, now starring on a TV remake of "Bewitched." To ensure he gets the majority of the attention he insists on an unknown as his co-star. He scouts Kidman himself - the big "joke" of the movie being that she is, actually, a witch.

There were a bunch of clever ideas and some really good casting that went into this film. Unfortunately, the script is incredibly uneven and Ferrell does what he always does: shrieks and falls down, and expects people to laugh. They're actually targeting meta-humour here: Ferrell playing a failing and unfunny actor, and we're supposed to laugh at him NOT being funny?

The casting of Kidman was brilliant: she's cute, charming, naive, everything she's supposed to be. The script is occasionally over-the-top, where it would have gotten more laughs by treading more lightly. Caine is hilarious as her father, who appears at random to mock (or simply disbelieve) her attempts to be normal. MacLaine's character is so deliberately over-the-top that she's not really a lot of help. Caine and Kidman's moments together almost made the film watchable, but ultimately the blundering and ever-present Ferrell completely torpedoes what could have been a passable comedy.

2005, dir. Nora Ephron. With Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine.

Beyond Silence (orig. "Jenseits der Stille")

The child of two deaf parents chooses to play clarinet like her aunt, who is estranged from her father. A little too sweet in places (particularly the ending), but intelligent and well filmed.

1996, dir. Caroline Link. With Sylvie Testud, Tatjana Trieb, Howie Seago, Emmanuelle Laborit, Sibylle Canonica, Matthias Habich.

The Big Bounce

A comedy of sorts, in which everyone is scamming everyone else. It's hard to care about any of the characters, and since the humour is pretty limited and this sure as hell isn't a drama, what's left to watch? Pretty poor.

2004, dir. George Armitage. With Owen Wilson, Morgan Freeman, Charlie Sheen, Sara Foster, Gary Sinise.

The Big Chill

I saw this when it first came out, but haven't again until now - 2008. It's a relief to see that it's as good as I remembered, possibly even better as there were some nuances I missed back then. Kasdan really did bring together the right cast with a very good story about friendship, trust, and growth. A group of college friends come together for the funeral of one of the members of the clique who committed suicide, although none of them know why. And strange things happen as the result of their reunion. It looks a bit dated, but it remains a damn fine movie.

1983, dir. Lawrence Kasdan. With Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, JoBeth Williams.

The Big Easy

Quaid puts on a Creole accent (irritating, and while I can't say if it's accurate, it was at least consistent) as a New Orleans cop on the take who falls for a district attorney (Barkin) who's after corrupt cops. The two leads look sexy, and nobody acts badly, but no one is great either. And the plot is split between corruption and romance in such a way that neither quite comes together right. Not bad, but ...

1987, dir. Jim McBride. With Dennis Quaid, Ellen Barkin, Ned Beatty, John Goodman.

Big Fish

I always have mixed reactions to Burton's movies. Crudup plays a thirty-something coming to the bedside of his dying father, who has told him tall tales all his life. He tries to get his father to tell him more of the truth of his life, and the movie is partly a view of the past, a retelling of the stories he's heard, and partly his attempts at reconciliation. It's a strange movie, but pretty good.

2003, dir. Tim Burton. With Billy Crudup, Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham Carter, Alison Lohman, Matthew McGrory.

The Big Lebowski

I tried ... I just couldn't. It wasn't funny. Bridges plays "The Dude," a stoner who shares the last name of Lebowski with a very rich man who owes a lot of debts to people dumb enough to mistake the Dude for the Big Lebowski. Goodman (over the top, but acting quite well) and Buscemi play the Dude's equally clueless friends and bowling buddies. I didn't see the whole movie because my thumb developed this nasty tic and kept hitting the fast forward button.

1998, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. With Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, David Huddleston, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tara Reid.

The Big Sleep

Probably the movie that made Bacall a star, although that honour could arguably go to "To Have and Have Not" (also with Bogart). This is based on Raymond Chandler's first novel, also his first novel starring Philip Marlowe (played by Bogart). For the first fifteen minutes I greatly enjoyed the rapid-fire witty banter, but it becomes tiresome and annoying: it happens occasionally in life, but is never as continuous as this. Bogart and Bacall play well, but an incomprehensible plot leave you rather befuddled. Occasionally enjoyable to watch, but very hard to follow.

1946, dir. Howard Hawks. With Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers.

Big Trouble in Little China

One of the cheesiest movies ever made. Russell plays loud-mouthed trucker Jack Burton, who gets mixed up in black magic in Little China in San Francisco over a gambling debt. The plot and dialogue are absurd, and the end product hilariously funny.

1986, dir. John Carpenter. With Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun, James Hong, Victor Wong, Suzee Pai, Al Leong.

The Bishop's Wife

Niven plays a Bishop who spends so much time trying to get his cathedral built that he's in danger of losing his wife (Young). When he prays to God for help an angel (Grant) comes to his aid ... but appears to be about to take his wife away from him.

Grant and Niven are good, Young seems terribly bland - but I think the fault there lies more with the script than the actress. Charming but not overly romantic or funny. I did like Wooley as the somewhat Bohemian history professor.

1947, dir. Henry Koster. With Cary Grant, David Niven, Loretta Young, Monty Wooley, James Gleason.

The Black Cauldron

One of Disney's poorer outings, and a blundering insult to the source material. Lloyd Alexander wrote a series of children's books called "The Prydain Chronicles," very good books. The Black Cauldron was the second of five, and possibly the darkest of the lot. The Horned King and his legions of dead soldiers are a horrific threat in the book, and they kill quite a few people. Does anybody die in this movie? Not even a single bad guy. The characters are as quirky as they are in the original, but this is actually a liability - without back-story, it makes little sense that they should be so weird. All is reduced to cuteness and overwhelmed by trite. Even if you haven't read the original, this is going to be a pretty poor movie.

1985, dir. Ted Berman and Richard Rich. With Grant Bardsley, Susan Sheridan, Freddie Jones, Nigel Hawthorne.

The Black Hole

I loved this when it first came out ... Even at that age I thought my taste was better. I guess the effects looked okay back then ... This is appallingly bad. Any movie that gets five lines into the dialogue and says "It's mission, to find habitable life," you know you're in trouble. "Habitable life?!" Bad science I expected: but English that bad was a bit of a surprise. Hell, the robots acted better than the humans and they didn't even have faces.

1979, dir. Gary Nelson. With Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Foster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Roddy McDowall, Slim Pickens.

Black Snake Moan

If you've seen the trailer but not the movie, it may help to know that one of the producers (in the DVD extras) referred to the movie as "a fable." Old black man chains young white girl to his couch in rural Tennessee - yeah, that's believable. Leave that behind and enjoy the movie: it paints with big strokes, but it's pretty good. Not least because of Jackson and Ricci, both of whom are excellent.

Ricci plays Rae, whose boyfriend Ronnie (Timberlake) goes off to join the army. Rae promptly goes on a sex, alcohol and drugs bender, and ends up beaten and left for dead in a ditch. Jackson finds her there, and decides to cure her evil ways.

The story is absurd, but gets that way by over-emphasizing highly accurate points about unhappy people we've all met to make its point. Jackson and Ricci, under Brewer's direction, take what could have been the ultimate in B-movie trash and turn it into an astonishingly decent movie with good help from Timberlake, Cothran, and Richards.

2006, dir. Craig Brewer. With Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake, John Cothran Jr., Kim Richards, S. Epatha Merkerson, David Banner, Michael Raymond-James.

Blade

This is the best action horror movie ever made. Snipes plays a half-human-half-vampire Vampire hunter, assisted by Kristofferson (in a role that probably saved his career). Humour, violence, and lots of action. See it.

1998. dir. Stephen Norrington. With Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff, Kris Kristofferson.

Blade II

The darkest of the three movies, finds Blade teaming up with some other vampires to fight a new breed of uber-vampires. While there's plenty of action, this is the closest to pure horror that the series got. There's a lot of leaping about in the fights, for which they chose CG over wirework. Unfortunately, it's very obvious.

2002, dir. Guillermo del Toro. With Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman.

Blade Trinity

Humour was what was needed to liven up the overly serious "Blade II," but they added too much, with Snipes still taking himself way too seriously. Posey is supposed to be scary and funny, but manages neither. She's just annoying. Reynolds, who's a fairly capable actor, was let loose with his own brand of humour in this movie, and is nearly as annoying as Parker. Purcell is reasonably good as the ultimate vampire. But the addition of Oswalt to the mix tells you what direction they were headed in. Some of the action is enjoyable, but this is a bad movie.

2004, dir. David Goyer. With Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Biel, Ryan Reynolds, Dominic Purcell, Parker Posey, "Triple H," Callum Keith Rennie, John Michael Higgins, Patton Oswalt.

Bladerunner

One of the greatest science fiction films ever made. Only the director's cut is available on DVD (unless you buy the super-Deluxe six disc version). I preferred the original with Harrison Ford's voice-over (I'd seen it something like nine times), but this is still excellent. Based on a Philip K. Dick novel, the movie follows the story of Deckard (Ford) as he hunts "replicants" (very human androids). The setting is the 2019, in a brilliantly conceived dystopian Los Angeles.

1982. dir. Ridley Scott. With Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, Edward James Olmos.

Blast from the Past

In 1962, a brilliant but paranoid physicist (Walken, of course) takes his pregnant wife (Spacek) down into their bomb shelter just as a plane crashes on their house. Convinced that "the bomb" has gone off, he locks them in for 35 years. So when his son Adam (Fraser) emerges in 1997, he embodies early Sixties values in the modern world and knows nothing of modern technology. He meets Eve (Silverstone) and hilarity ensues. More or less. Unbelievably cheesy, but I have to admit I kind of enjoyed it.

1999, dir. Hugh Wilson. With Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley, Joey Slotnick.

Blue Submarine No. 6

I think this was originally a TV miniseries in four parts, only a half hour each - so about movie length. The Japanese don't have quite the same sense of plotting, or good and bad, as we do. This one leaps into the action with no introduction and never fully fills you in on the backstory. The ragged blend of CGI and hand-drawn cell animation is actually fairly attractive, but the plot and conclusion are ... unsatisfactory.

1998. dir. Mahiro Maeda.

Blue Thunder

Scheider plays Frank Murphy, a police helicopter pilot and Vietnam war vet. He and his observer (a very young Stern) get assigned to a secret military helicopter project, which turns out (predictably enough) to be thoroughly rotten. There's intrigue, mayhem, and chases. As action movies go, fairly good.

1983, dir. John Badham. With Roy Scheider, Malcolm McDowell, Daniel Stern, Candy Clark, Warren Oates, Paul Roebling.

The Bodyguard from Beijing

One of Li's Hong Kong movies (and the better for it). Passable action, something vaguely resembling romance. The tape has better subtitles than the DVD.

dir. Cory Yuen. With Jet Li.

Boiler Room

Ribisi plays a college drop-out who runs his own illegal casino at the start of the movie, and is shortly recruited for a questionable stock brokerage. No one in this is particularly good, and, while the plot is good, it's not enough to make this a good movie.

2000. dir. Ben Younger. With Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, and Nia Long.

Bollywood Hero

This is an intensely frustrating piece of work, a TV miniseries of 2 hours 45 minutes that could have been really good. A good idea and good plot fall to Kattan's mediocre acting and general foolishness.

Kattan plays Kattan - literally, his character is called "Chris Kattan" and was in all those fine movies: "Corky Romano," "A Night at the Roxbury," and of course SNL. And he's sick of playing small and/or really bad roles: he wants to be a leading man. In his desperation, he accepts the lead in a movie in Bollywood.

The idea is sound, and the plot is excellent. Some of it is obvious: musical numbers, cultural fish-out-of-water, romancing the beautiful girl. But the plot about the director and his sister and their struggle to keep their dead father's movie theatre afloat and live up to his name is pretty good. Unfortunately Kattan is Kattan: his humour is, as always, unfunny - although somewhat muted. He makes an effort, but he's just not enough of a leading man, not charismatic enough. Too bad.

2009. With Chris Kattan, Pooja Kumar, Ali Fazal, Julian Sands, Neha Dhupia, Rachna Shah.

Bolt

It's extremely predictable, but damn it's funny! And cute and charming too. Bolt (voiced by Travolta) is a dog who stars in a TV show. He believes everything on the show is true, including his own superpowers. So when his "person," Penny (voiced by Cyrus), is "kidnapped" by the villain of the TV series and Bolt escapes, the real world comes as something of a surprise. He captures an "evil" cat (Essman) and is joined by an adoring hamster (Walton) in a ball as he struggles to get from New York back to Hollywood. I'm guessing you can fill in 90% of the remaining plot from this short summary, and I'm not saying you're wrong. But remember what I said: it's funny. See it.

2008, dir. Byron Howard, Chris Williams. With John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Susie Essman, Mark Walton, Malcolm McDowell, James Lipton, Greg Germann.

Bon Cop Bad Cop

Yes, it borrows heavily from the Hollywood buddy cop genre, and that's a little disappointing for a Canadian movie. But it's entertaining, isn't that what we're aiming for? And besides, it reeks of Canada: half the dialogue is in French, the references to "Ontario," "Quebec," "Montreal," and "Toronto" are extremely frequent, and, above all, the motivating problem is HOCKEY murders. It's a seriously Canadian film. It's not great art, but it's funny and entertaining and that's a good thing. There are some bad sections, but whenever Feore and Huard are on screen together it's worth watching.

2006, dir. Erik Canuel. With Colm Feore, Patrick Huard, Rick Mercer, Erik Knudsen, Sylvain Marcel.

Bon Voyage

A big line-up of some of the best actors in French cinema struggle with a mediocre script and the bizarre idea that the Nazi invasion of France at the beginning of the Second World War would be a good time to stage a romantic comedy. In one sense it is: people of all classes and backgrounds are packed into hotels and boarding rooms with regard only for expediency, and that gives rise to opportunities for humour: but around every corner is the horrors of displacement, invasion, and war. And the script still needs work. Adjani plays a reprehensible actress who uses her beauty to manipulate men, Derangère a childhood friend who loves her desperately, and Depardieu the vacillating government minister who is Adjani's latest target.

2003, dir. Jean-Paul Rappeneau. With Grégori Derangère, Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu, Virginie Ledoyen, Yvan Attal, Peter Coyote, Jean-Marc Stehl´.

The Book of Eli

Washington plays Eli, a wanderer in a post-apocalyptic world. The apocalypse is never explained, but it's mentioned that it's been about 30 years. Eli heard a voice shortly after the apocalypse and found a book (the Bible, no big surprise) - possibly the only one in existence because most were destroyed as having been the cause of the apocalypse. He's been travelling through a decimated world, headed west, for this whole time. But now he encounters Carnegie (Oldman), who is impressed to find that Eli can read like himself, wants Eli's skills at self defence ... and wants a bible, with the idea that with those words he could build an empire.

Washington is good, as you'd expect. Oldman plays something akin to his regular character, but happily not spot-on - enough different to be at least somewhat interesting. Beals hasn't registered on my radar since "Flashdance," and she's very good here - nice to see. There are a couple nice twists in the plot - around the nature of the book itself and a couple other details - that keep it from descending into cliché. The movie is filmed in extremely high contrast with very little colour, more a palate of browns - a convincingly grim world of violence, starvation, and lawlessness. Good for fans of the genre, but unlikely to captivate others.

2010, dir. Albert and Allen Hughes. With Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kuniz, Ray Stevenson, Jennifer Beals.

Born to Defence

I think there's a factory right next to the fortune cookie factory that cranks out bad martial arts movie titles. Hong Kong product, Li's directorial debut. Bloodier than most of his, fights are okay but not great. I like elegant fights, but these ones are messy.

1986, dir. Jet Li. With Jet Li.

The Bourne Identity (1988, TV)

I had no idea that Matt Damon's version of this wasn't the first. This made-for-TV movie holds that distinction, but I only found out about it in 2009. While I would undoubtedly do better reading the book, I found watching this movie to be quite an education: I suspect it's more accurate to the book than Damon's version, and the plot line is significantly different. The start is much the same with Bourne being pulled from the sea comatose (and awaking amnesiac), full of bullet holes and with the number of a Swiss bank account surgically implanted in his hip. Elliot made the drunken but fatherly doctor who removed his bullets and aided in his recovery a much more significant character, and I wish he'd had a larger part. This may be the character he always plays, I don't watch much TV; but it fitted well here. Chamberlain and Young play Bourne as having a worse temper and being more willing to use others than Damon's version. This version has its share of TV cheese, the love scene being truly appalling. Other than that, I would highly recommend this to fans of the genre, and especially of the Damon version. Be warned it runs three hours.

1988, dir. Roger Young. With Richard Chamberlain, Jaclyn Smith, Anthony Quayle, Donald Moffat, Denholm Elliot, Yorgo Voyagis.

The Bourne Identity (2002)

A man washes ashore full of bullets and without memory. He shortly finds he's a target for several people who want to kill him - and that he's pretty good at killing people himself. It's predictable in the sense that he unravels his own history while fighting off bad guys, but it's better done than most movies of the type: you're always a little off balance, and (with the exception of the five storey drop at the end) they obey pretty much all the laws of physics.

2002, dir. Doug Liman. With Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles.

The Bourne Supremacy

Damon is back as Bourne. After two years of a quiet life, he's attacked and his friend killed. He sets out on a vendetta to assure they never bother him again (apparently he's not successful, as there's another sequel). How they manage to make a single man successfully taking on a large portion of the CIA convincing, I don't know - but they do. Again, Bourne is entirely efficient and effective ... but haunted by his conscience. Urban hardly has any speaking lines, but is on screen a lot and quite good as another highly efficient assassin (who obeys the laws of physics). Greengrass' perpetual hand-held filming manages to maintain the sense of always being a little off balance without making the audience seasick. Another very good movie.

2004, dir. Paul Greengrass. With Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles, Karl Urban.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Back again, Bourne once again accused/threatened with doing something he had nothing to do with. And again, he sets out to clear his name (or just get rid of the people causing problems) - leaving a trail of bodies behind him. Greengrass again offers his unsteady camera work, and Allen, Stiles, and Strathairn are along to add some class.

2007, dir. Paul Greengrass. With Matt Damon, David Strathairn, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles, Scott Glenn, Albert Finney, Joey Ansah.

The Boys Are Back

Owen plays Joe Warr, a sports writer struggling to connect with his young son after the cancer death of his wife. He does his best while enforcing almost no discipline - a thing that haunts him when his older son by another marriage comes to visit. It's very good for what it is, with an excellent performance by Owen - but you'd better want to watch an Australian family drama.

2009, dir. Scott Hicks. With Clive Owen, Nicholas McAnulty, George MacKay, Laura Fraser, Emma Lung.

Brazil

It would be simple to say this is 1984 meets Monty Python, and that's certainly true on the surface. But there's a bit more to it. Sam Lowry (played by Pryce) lives in a dystopian world full of broken duct work and a bureaucracy that combines the worst aspects of the current (2008) U.S. government and that of the former U.S.S.R. He works for the government and has, shall we say, a very active fantasy life. It's extremely surreal, occasionally very funny, brutally depressing, and absolutely brilliant.

1985, dir. Terry Gilliam. With Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin, Ian Richardson, Peter Vaughan, Jim Broadbent.

Bread and Tulips ("Pane e Tulipani")

A woman with a husband and family is accidentally left behind at a rest stop on the highway when her family is on vacation. While waiting for them, she abruptly decides to hitch a ride, ending up in Venice where she stays rather longer than she had planned. Fitting the plan of comedies everywhere, she encounters and becomes involved in the lives of a bunch of local eccentrics. It's charming and somewhat funny.

2000, dir. Silvio Soldini. With Licia Maglietta, Bruno Ganz.

The Break-Up

I'm not sure why I dragged myself to or through this one. Aniston? Of the "Friends," she's the only one with any acting talent - but it's not really that much. And here she doesn't particularly stretch herself playing opposite Vaughn, who has only the one tired old routine. Not funny, not romantic, and not even interesting. You know you're in for trouble when everyone else is a walking plot device.

2006, dir. Peyton Reed. With Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston, Joey Lauren Adams, Cole Hauser, Jon Favreau, Vincent D'Onofrio.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Watching this was an interesting exercise. Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, and (to borrow a phrase from "EdTV") "she's damaged goods, Bro!" To believe a romantic comedy, you have to be convinced that the leads would appeal to each other and I definitely wasn't convinced.

Rooney played "Mr. Funyoshi," the stereotyped Asian landlord: an incredibly obnoxious and unfunny role usually reserved for the deservedly maligned Jerry Lewis.

1961. dir. Blake Edwards. With Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Mickey Rooney.

The Breakfast Club

One of Hughes's most clichéd - and best - efforts. Hughes has always been heavy-handed, and so his movies are riddled with clichés and stereotypes. But he was successful because from this he usually manages to pull some achingly accurate moments of truth. This movie swings even further in both directions than most of his productions.

Saturday morning finds five students in high school detention. As is admitted in the movie, they represent stereotypes: a brain (Hall), an athlete (Estevez), a basket case (Sheedy), a princess (Ringwald), and a criminal (Judd), attended by a fairly contemptible teacher (Gleason). After some initial stereotypical interactions, they start to talk and eventually there are full confessions and an understanding is reached. And yes, it still sounds clichéd, but it's funny and offers insights into both the people and the stereotypes. Nelson is particularly good, managing to make Bender ("the criminal") both reprehensible and sympathetic - but all the actors do well.

1985, dir. John Hughes. With Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Paul Gleason, John Kapelos.

Breaking Away

Strange to see this again, 27 years after seeing it in the theatres ... Quaid looks so young, and Stern is pretty funny in a minor role, not yet having fallen into his later stereotype(s). But the main story of this group of four recent high school graduates focuses on Christopher, a talented cyclist who should (perhaps) be in college. Yes sir, another coming-of-age tale ... done with a little more wit, intelligence and compassion than usual. Pretty good.

1979, dir. Peter Yates. With Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley, Robyn Douglass, Barbara Barrie, Paul Dooley.

Breathless (orig. "À bout de souffle")

The movie that probably single-handedly started the French New Wave. Belmondo's character steals a car, and ends up killing a police man. He spends most of his time on the run in Paris flirting with Seberg. The shooting and editing are incredibly choppy - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. If that's the charm of the movie, I failed to see it.

1960, dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg.

The Breed

Low budget science fiction story about vampires living among us openly. Cop buddy movie with one of the partners being a vampire (Paul) and the other human. I enjoyed it despite it being fairly cheesy.

2001, dir. Michael Oblowitz. With Adrian Paul, Bokeem Woodbine, Ling Bai.

Bride and Prejudice

Since I've seen two versions of "Pride and Prejudice" and read the book, I'm not even going to try to look at this separately. I think my favourite character has always been the father - he's very smart and funny, and just doesn't get enough airtime. But that's not really what the movie is about, just a personal thing. It's funny, and the musical numbers are pretty good and very colourful.

2004, dir. Gurinder Chadha. With Aishwarya Rai, Martin Henderson, Naveen Andrews, Namrata Shirodkar, Anupam Kher.

Brideshead Revisited (2008)

A whole bunch of miserable people (Catholic and atheist alike) wallowing about in their badly written guilt. What, precisely, was the point?

Charles Ryder (Goode) plays a young man befriended by the alcoholic and probably homosexual Sebastian Flyte. Ryder falls in love with the Flyte family home of Brideshead, and eventually also falls for Sebastian's sister Julia (Atwell). Thompson plays the extremely religious family matriarch, Lady Marchmain - who initially hopes Charles will be a good influence on Sebastian, despite being a proclaimed atheist. But she later warns him off Julia, who must marry a Catholic. It all ends badly, and without a rewarding moment anywhere.

2008, dir. Julian Jerrold. With Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Hayley Atwell, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

This won seven Academy Awards in 1957, but didn't particularly enchant me in 2004. It's good but not stunning. Being Lean, it's 2h40m - fairly restrained for him. Guinness plays a British officer leading prisoners of war under the Japanese in Ceylon. Holden plays an American unimpressed by Baldwin's determination to live honourably at all costs.

1957. dir. David Lean. With Alec Guinness, William Holden.

The Bridges of Madison County

We start with two adult children meeting a lawyer about their mother's will, then jump back to see (through the children reading journals) the most important time of their mother's life. Streep plays Francesca, a housewife in Iowa who meets a travelling National Geographic photographer (Eastwood) while her husband is away. She shows him around the area, and they fall for each other.

I found it very drawn out. This was intentional, but to me it was kind of tedious. To my surprise, I really liked the ending with the children. But overall, I wasn't too impressed.

1995, dir. Clint Eastwood. With Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood, Victor Slezak, Annie Corley.

Brokeback Mountain

A good movie that I didn't like, despite having Lee at the helm. Gyllenhaal and Ledger were both excellent.

2005. dir. Ang Lee. With Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Randy Quaid, Anne Hathaway.

Brokedown Palace

Two friends fresh out of high school decide to go on a big adventure together. They end up in Thailand, and an encounter with a friendly Australian leads them on a weekend trip to Hong Kong. They're arrested and thrown in jail when drugs are found in one of their backpacks. Most of the movie is about their time in a Thai jail and their attempts to get out. Not a happy movie, and not particularly good.

1999, dir. Jonathan Kaplan. With Claire Danes, Kate Beckinsale, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jacqueline Kim, Bill Pullman.

Broken Flowers

It's the journey itself that matters, not the destination, right? Don't expect any answers from this film - but it's an interesting trip, I guess. Murray plays an ageing Don Juan who receives a letter from a woman saying that she had a son, his son, that he didn't know about, 20 years before. Rather involuntarily, he sets off in search of the woman. The word "sparse" comes to mind.

2005, dir. Jim Jarmusch. With Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Julie Delpy, Sharon Stone, Chloë Sevigny, Jessica Lange.

The Brothers Bloom

Steven (Ruffalo) and Bloom (Brody) are brothers who have been con artists from roughly the age of 10. It's made clear that Bloom is the actor, always playing roles written by his older brother who is very clearly the leader. Bloom has tried to leave a number of times, but doesn't know what the hell to do with himself when he's away from Steven. Now Steven has assured him "one last con, then we're done." The mark is Penelope (Weisz), a lonely, charming, eccentric, and staggeringly rich young woman.

The characters and presentation are eccentric. All the leads act well, and I found the movie hysterically funny. Kikuchi as "Bang Bang," their almost entirely silent explosives expert, brings some of the biggest laughs. Unfortunately, as it builds toward its climax, it becomes fairly clear that it has to end in tragedy, which doesn't sit well at the end of a comedy ... See it for the actors and the humour, but brace yourself for an off ending.

2008, dir. Rian Johnson. With Adrien Brody, Rachel Weisz, Mark Ruffalo, Rinko Kikuchi, Robbie Coltrane, Maximillian Schell.

The Brothers Grimm

Ledger and Damon play the brothers, who make their money scamming people into believing their area is haunted and then they come in and remove the problem - for a fee. They are shortly recruited, involuntarily, to take care of an actual enchanted forest. It's not Gilliam at his best - typical of Gilliam, he has requested massively over-the-top performances (and a bunch of bad accents), and the ending in particular is irritating, but there's still a lot to enjoy in the movie. It's a great vision of where the Grimm brothers might have started out.

2005, dir. Terry Gilliam. With Matt Damon, Heath Ledger, Peter Stormare, Jonathon Pryce, Lena Headey, Monica Belluci.

Bruce Almighty

Bruce (Carrey) complains at God. God (Freeman) lets Bruce take over his job temporarily. If you like Carrey, you'll probably like this movie. To me, the only thing that made it worth watching was Freeman, who's a whole lot more charming and has a lot more presence than Carrey. Anniston as Bruce's girlfriend was wasted - she's not a great actress, but she's not bad and could have helped.

2003. With Jim Carrey, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Anniston.

The Bucket List

Freeman and Nicholson play two terminal cancer patients who set out to check off items on "the Bucket List," things they want to do before they "kick the bucket." Of course Freeman is an unassuming mechanic, and Nicholson is, well, Nicholson (asshole billionaire without friends in this case) so we're really mixing it up with the elements of a classic buddy movie ... (that's sarcasm) Off they go to the Great Wall, the Pyramids, etc. But of course we bond and get emotional over the more human elements on the list. Two of the better actors in the world today could only bring a modicum of life to this doddering cliché. Perhaps Reiner is feeling his age?

2007, dir. Rob Reiner. With Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson, Sean Hayes, Rob Morrow.

Buena Vista Social Club

A charming but not particularly exciting documentary about a group of mostly forgotten Cuban musicians brought together by Ry Cooder to make a (highly successful) album and play a couple concerts.

1999, dir. Wim Wenders.

Buffalo Soldiers

A very cynical movie. What do soldiers do in time of peace? Especially if they're soldiers because the alternative was jail time? Phoenix plays a Ray Elwood, in charge of supplies at a U.S. army base in West Germany just as the Berlin Wall is falling. He steals stuff and deals drugs. But things get ugly when he comes by a large supply of weaponry that he tries to sell, and a new Sergeant appears on base intent on making his life difficult.

2001, dir. Gregor Jordan. With Joaquin Phoenix, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Anna Paquin, Elizabeth McGovern, Michael Peña, Leon Robinson.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer [movie]

The concept is a pretty good one: the horror movie cliché of the pretty blonde girl walking into an alley and being slaughtered is turned on its head: Buffy walks into an alley, the vampire(s) die. It has its moments, but the TV series it inspired was actually quite a bit better.

1992. dir. Fran Rubel Kuzui. With Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Luke Perry, Rutger Hauer, and Paul Reubens.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 1 (TV)

Put in as a mid-season replacement, Buffy was probably a surprise to the networks. I suppose it should be classified as a "horror-comedy," but it's not actually very horrifying. It is pretty funny though. 12 episodes on four DVDs. The series picks up where the movie left off, with Buffy and her mother in the town of Sunnydale trying to start a new life. She ends up with a team of companions that help her fight evil from episode to episode. I've always been partial to Giles the Librarian, even if it is his last name. The series is better than the movie, and Gellar is definitely a better Buffy.

1997-1998. With Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Head, Nicholas Brendon, David Boreanaz.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 2 (TV)

Darker and funnier than the first season. Season two weighs in at a more regular 22 episodes on six DVDs. While some of the necessities of TV plotting kick in (don't kill off those recurring characters, illogical things from people's pasts haunt them, good people/creatures become evil, evil becomes good, blah blah blah), this is really entertaining stuff.

1998-1999. With Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Head, Nicholas Brendon, David Boreanaz, James Marsters.

Bull Durham

A season in the life of the Durham Bulls, a minor league baseball team. Sarandon is a dedicated groupie, who spends each year with one of the players, who she chooses at the start of the season. Her choice is between the unfocused hotshot new pitcher (Robbins) or the veteran catcher (Costner) brought in to get Robbins on track. She chooses Robbins, but as the movie proceeds it becomes clear Costner is a much better choice.

About talent, dreams, and sex - not necessarily in that order. The critics loved this one, but I found it mildly amusing at best. It's raunchy as hell if you like that kind of thing.

1988, dir. Ron Shelton. With Susan Sarandon, Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins, Robert Wuhl, Trey Wilson, Max Patkin.

Bulletproof Monk

Terrible, terrible movie. Such a waste of Yun-Fat. The idea that Scott has charisma is completely laughable - I think that's what they were going for, but the guy who played Stifler would have to be a damn fine actor to pull it off, and he isn't. King was terrible. Yun-Fat added a bit of charm and looked pretty good in this tale of an eternally youthful monk protecting a world-shaking Buddhist scroll, but the only redeeming feature I found (and it ain't much) is that huge chunks of the movie were shot in Toronto.

2003, dir. Paul Hunter. With Yun-Fat Chow, Seann William Scott, Jaime King.

Bullitt

If they hadn't named the movie "Bullitt" you might mistakenly have taken this to be a police procedural with elements of action and mystery. Certainly, McQueen as "Frank Bullitt" is central to the movie, but it doesn't play like a character study. Watching it in 2007 I'm probably just not getting it because I can't appreciate what a star McQueen was at the time. Despite the odd naming, the movie itself is pretty good, if rather ambiguous about a couple major elements. The famous car chase is, while not as intricate or as crazy as modern ones, all the better for feeling (and being!) real. McQueen is good in the lead, and the cinematography is very good - and was probably ground-breaking at the time.

1968, dir. Peter Yates. With Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Don Gordon.

Bulworth

Beatty's magnum opus, stomping all over American politics. Very funny, kind of dark. Beatty plays a politician up for re-election who finds himself representing everything he hated in the political process. He gets a whole bunch of life insurance and then takes out a contract on his own life. Then he proceeds to crash and burn, and starts rapping at political gatherings. It's bizarre, but hilarious. "All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color."

1998, dir. Warren Beatty. With Warren Beatty, Halle Berry, Oliver Platt, Don Cheadle.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Famous, but not my thing when I watched it in 2007. Fictionalizes the life of two of the U.S.'s best known Old West bank robbers. Robberies, shooting, machismo, and Bolivia.

1969, dir. George Roy Hill. With Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross.

---

C

Cadillac Records

A history lesson about Leonard Chess (Brody), Chess Records, and the rise of Rock and Roll. Chess opened a studio in Chicago, and the colour of your skin didn't matter so long as your records sold. He was also a bit of an equal opportunity exploiter, although he did try to take care of his artists. Fascinating stories of Muddy Waters (Wright), Little Walter (Short), Chuck Berry (Def), and Etta James (Knowles). It's the kind of film you hope is true (as it claims to be). Well acted.

2008, dir. Darnell Martin. Adrien Brody, Beyoncé Knowles, Jeffrey Wright, Gabrielle Union, Columbus Short, Mos Def, Cedric the Entertainer, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Eamonn Walker.

The Caine Mutiny

An ensemble movie, although Francis is perhaps a bit more at the front than the rest of the cast. He plays a young navy officer assigned to a sloppy ship, initially enthusiastic when the ship is assigned a new captain. That new commander is Philip Francis Queeg, played by Bogart. Queeg is detail-oriented, and somewhat worn down by command. Given the title of the movie I guess I'm not giving away much when I say that his ways eventually lead the crew to consider that he may endanger their lives.

Bogart was fairly good, but I thought the really good performances were by MacMurray, Johnson, and Ferrer.

1954, dir. Edward Dmytryk. With Robert Francis, Humphrey Bogart, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, José Ferrer, May Wynn, Lee Marvin, Tom Tully.

Cairo Time

Clarkson plays Juliette Grant, a woman arriving in Cairo to visit her husband who works with the U.N. He's tied up in Gaza and sends his friend Tareq (Siddig) to pick her up at the airport. As her husband continues to stay away, she sees considerably more of Tareq and a certain amount of attraction grows.

I didn't much like Clarkson's character (we started off badly when she completely failed to prepare herself for Egypt: she clearly didn't do her reading), and while I thought Siddig was excellent, there's not a lot of plot. It reminded me a lot of "Lost in Translation," but without the humour or the interest. I was good with watching Cairo and Egypt go by, but as a movie ... not really.

The DVD is from "Mongrel Media," and includes both an ad for Egypt tourism that I fast-forwarded through, and an ad for Mercedes Benz - which I could not fast-forward. The DVD also didn't have subtitles. I don't think Mongrel has ever had subs, which I don't like, but the addition of ads - especially ones that can't be skipped - is revolting.

2009, dir. Ruba Nadda. With Patricia Clarkson, Alexander Siddig, Elena Anaya, Amina Annabi, Tom McCamus.

Calendar Girls

Based on a true story, several middle-aged members of the Women's Institute in a small town in Britain decide that their yearly calendar should be more interesting than in the past: they pose (discretely) nude for it, to raise money for a local hospital. Mirren leads a good cast. Funny and charming.

2003, dir. Nigel Cole. With Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, John Alderton, Linda Bassett, Annette Crosbie, Ciarán Hinds.

Caligula

Take the sex content of your average 70's porno movie, the violence of one of the recent Korean revenge flicks, add a bunch of very well known actors, and edit out any sense of plot continuity while letting the movie run to two and a half hours, and voilà, you have "Caligula." I only managed to watch the first hour, I took to skimming after that - seriously foul stuff.

1979, dir. Tinto Brass, Bob Guccione. With Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, Guido Mannari, John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, Giancarlo Badessi, Bruno Brive, Helen Mirren.

A Canterbury Tale

Three strangers get off a train in the town of Chillingbourne. As they walk to the centre of town, someone dumps glue into the hair of the young woman and rushes off. And so we have our central mystery, and a charming movie that moves at a glacial pace. I found it interesting for its portrayal of World War II Britain (although I've seen several before), but the characters are charming, and the dialogue is both intelligent and charming. The three each work toward their own goals, but also keep their eyes open and work to figure out who "The Glue Man" is, as he's done this multiple times in a rather small town. The big climax of the movie is in the nearby town of Canterbury and its cathedral. I think what astonished me most was a walk around Canterbury: dozens of holes in the ground where buildings used to be, each with large careful signs explaining where that business had relocated to. Life goes on even in the face of devastating bombing.

1944, dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. With Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price, Sgt. John Sweet.

Captain America: The First Avenger

Evans plays Steve Rogers, a short, thin, and unhealthy young man on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II. Utterly determined to join the army, he applies at five different places until he's evidently allowed in for "heart," and put in a "super soldier" program. Which magically doubles his weight and triples his muscle mass, or something like that.

Evans is good in the lead and his team-mates have fun. The rah-rah patriotism gets a little old, but Evans, Atwell, and to a lesser extent Jones, carry it on personality. Not a great movie, but immensely enjoyable.

2011, dir. Joe Johnston. With Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, Stanley Tucci.

The Captains

A documentary under the auspices of Movie Central / The Movie Network, in which Shatner jets about interviewing all the other Captains from the Star Trek franchise - up to and including the new James T. Kirk from the 2009 "Star Trek" reboot.

Shatner is a mediocre-to-weird interviewer who likes to talk about himself. Be prepared for a movie that's almost half Shatner. Bakula's big into musicals. Mulgrew is as wound-up as her on-screen character. Stewart said some interesting things about his life. Brooks is off-the-charts weird. Pine was charming but a bit dull. And Shatner went to where he started, the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, where he through in some Canadian content by interviewing Plummer - who didn't play a captain, but did have a major part in "The Undiscovered Country."

Brooks and Shatner singing to each other over Brooks' playing jazz piano was either the high point or the low point of the movie - in fact, it may have been both. An interesting movie for dedicated Trekkies, but not for anyone else.

2011, dir. William Shatner. With William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula, Chris Pine, Christopher Plummer.

Cars

This was a terribly frustrating movie for me - I desperately wanted to like it because Pixar has produced such excellent movies in the past ("Toy Story," "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles ..."), but this doesn't live up to that. Instead, I found some hysterically funny moments embedded in a sickly sweet syrup of American family values. Pixar has always delivered family values, but in a more subtle, much more palatable form. And, unfortunately, Larry the Cable Guy does get to deliver several bodily function noises. Despite which there are some truly inspired moments: the Ahhnold SUV, Jay Limo the talk show host, the Japanese news show, the passing reference to Pixar's own short "For the Birds," ditto with "ET," and the truly inspired closing credits (reminiscent of the equally brilliant closing credits in Lasseter's own "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 2").

Since writing the above I've bought the DVD, and, while it's mostly true, it's pretty harsh. It's a very funny, very enjoyable movie (but yes, it is sickly sweet).

2006, dir. John Lasseter. With Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy, Paul Newman, Cheech Marin, Tony Shalhoub.

Cars 2

I've never reviewed a full-length movie on 15 minutes of footage before. This is a reminder for myself (all of these reviews are, but some of the others might actually be helpful to others) that I did give this one a try. This movie looks very pretty, with gorgeous animation supporting the adventures of a James Bond-like spy car, followed by Lightning McQueen's return to Radiator Springs to see his friends. But the writing is incredibly insipid, plodding through the spy stuff by the numbers and then playing up Mater's cluelessness without actually hitting a single comedic note. Most direct-to-DVD authors would be embarrassed by this script.

In a way, seeing this was a relief. Pixar has finally done a bad movie. It made me sad too, but a bad movie from Pixar was inevitable, and I'm glad that's out of the way. Now we won't expect the world from them every time.

2011, dir. John Lasseter and Brad Lewis. With Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Jason Isaacs, Thomas Kretschmann, Eddie Izzard.

Casablanca

A truly great movie. The main character is Rick (Bogart), the owner of "Rick's Café Américain" in Casablanca, a disillusioned man who "sticks his neck out for nobody." This is Casablanca in 1941(?), a purgatory, marginally safe ground during the second world war that people flee to while trying to escape to America. Rick's life is badly shaken with the appearance of Ilsa (Bergman), the love of his life - who has her politically active husband with her and is looking for safe passage. The story is great, but what really makes it work is good cinematography, good acting, and a sly wit. It's also the origin of several iconic quotes in modern society: "Play it again, Sam," (even though nobody ever actually said that in the movie), "Here's looking at you, kid," and "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

1943, dir. Michael Curtiz. With Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre.

Casino Royale (2006)

The Bond movies have always been financially successful, but almost never critically so. After a wave of franchises re-inventing themselves (Batman, Superman ...) the Bond group decided to have a shot at it. New Bond, less reliance on technological toys and bad puns, very good action, a real sense of danger in what Bond is doing, and real live acting and emotion add up to an excellent movie. I was particularly impressed with the parkour (the chase through the construction site) near the beginning, and the scene when he breaks into M's house (also early on). It shows remarkably well that she's dealing with a group of men (the "double-0s") who are extremely capable, above the law (she put them there), extremely dangerous, and borderline psychopaths. Not a view of Bond we've had before. And because this is the very start of his career we see him change from someone almost human into the character we know (when has Bond every changed before?). And there's a very real possibility he could leave the service or even die. This is the best of the Bonds - by a wide margin.

2006, dir. Martin Campbell. With Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench.

Cast Away

Tom Hanks is a workaholic FedEx employee who is the sole survivor of a plane crash. He's stranded on a deserted island for a several years. Too long, somewhat overblown, but a good performance by Hanks.

2002. dir. Robert Zemeckis. With Tom Hanks.

Castle in the Sky

Another surreal and beautiful world from Miyazaki, carrying many of his favourite themes: caring for nature, young girls coming of age (although the male character is equally important - unusual in a Miyazaki movie), and lots of flying things. All the characters are wonderfully developed and entertaining, and the visuals are fantastic. A great movie.

Anna Paquin's pseudo-British accent as the main female character was awful. I would have listened to the Japanese audio anyway, but that sealed the deal.

1986, dir. Hayao Miyazaki. English voices: Anna Paquin, James van der Beek.

The Castle of Cagliostro

Brings the famous anime character (and, further back, a famous French literary character) Lupin III to the big screen. I was interested in this because it's directed by Miyazaki, but nothing about it really shows his touch. It's conventional, passable anime.

1979, dir. Hayao Miyazaki.

Casual Sex?

A movie about two women looking for the titular "casual sex." Or so they claim, and promptly go look for regular relationships. This is supposed to be a comedy, but for those with any memory of the Eighties, the presence of Andrew Dice Clay in a major role should tell you just how funny it is. We didn't take the warning, and sat through an hour and a half of tripe.

1988, dir. Geneviève Robert. With Lea Thompson, Victoria Jackson, Stephen Shellen, Jerry Levine, Andrew Dice Clay.

The Cat and the Canary

Based on a play, the movie is about the reading of a will at a British mansion in the country. The attendees are unpleasant and in some cases at each other's throats, and the will doesn't help. They must stay in the mansion overnight, complicated by the possible presence of an escaped mental asylum inmate in the area. Tries to be both scary and funny, but succeeds in neither.

1979, dir. Radley Metzger. With Carol Lynley, Michael Callan, Olivia Hussey.

The Cat Returns (orig. "Neko no ongaeshi")

The title refers to the appearance of a very similar cat character in "Whispers of the Heart," another anime movie.

Haru is a young woman lacking in self-assurance. When she saves a cat about to be run over by a truck, she finds herself offered the rewards for saving the son of the King of Cats - including being taken permanently to the Kingdom of Cats and marrying the prince in question. She's not entirely sure this is what she wants to do, and with some very odd assistance she attempts to sort things out.

While not a Miyazaki movie, this comes from the same studio (Ghibli) and that influence is obvious in both the primary setup and the attention to detail. I found much of it quite charming (and funny), but it was never as compelling as Miyazaki's best. It's a good start for a young director, probably worth watching.

2002, dir. Hiroyuki Morita. English voices by Anne Hathaway, Cary Elwes, Elliott Gould, Peter Boyle, Tim Curry.

Catch Me If You Can

Biography (of sorts) of a very good and very young con man, Frank Abagnale Jr. Quite a good movie, very well put together.

2002. dir. Steven Spielberg. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken.

Catfish

A documentary (more or less) about a young photographer (Yaniv, aka "Nev") in New York City who receives a painting of one of his photos by Abby, an eight year old girl - a very good painting. He's soon entangled in a relationship with several people in her family on Facebook ... Including heading for an intimate relationship with Abby's older half-sister.

Nev's two office mates (or is it flat-mates?) are filmmakers, and they start filming him about his relationship with Abby. They eventually decide to head out to Michigan to meet this family, and everything goes monumentally sideways. Nobody dies, nothing horrible, it's just ... not what it appears. A weird movie about the state of identity and trust in the age of Facebook.

2010, dir. Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman. With Nev Schulman, Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost, Angela Pierce, Vince Pierce, Abby Pierce.

The Cell

A visual extravaganza, lurid and bizarre. Lopez isn't much of an actress, although she did better than I expected. She plays a psychologist using an experimental process to enter the mind of people in a coma. She's asked to enter the mind of a serial killer to try to find the location of his last victim before she dies. I thought they did a good job with some of the wild visuals for the mindscapes, but ultimately the plot doesn't support it very well. May be worth seeing if you have a fascination with extraordinary cinematography.

2000. dir. Tarsem Singh. With Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D'Onofrio.

Cellular

About two minutes of intro and no extro at all, just action from end to end. Kidnapped woman manages to make a (long-lasting) phone call to a random guy (Evans) on his cellular, and his attempts to help her lead him into random acts of ... well, violence. Some major logical flaws surrounding the phone calls, but if you can ignore that it's not too bad.

2004, dir. David Ellis. With Chris Evans, Kim Basinger, Jason Statham, William H. Macy.

Chain Reaction

Where to start? The technological basis for this film is blurry at best. There are more logical flaws than the bridges of Chicago have rivets. Reeves plays a student machinist kicked out of school for blowing something up by mistake, but his machinist skills are apparently enough to take on or outrun huge numbers of thugs and cops. If he was more of a "MacGyver" it would have been easier to swallow, as absurd as that show was. Freeman and Weisz can't save this one - and don't blame it all on Reeves either: he may not have been brilliant, but this is hardly his fault.

1996, dir. Andrew Davis. With Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman, Rachel Weisz, Fred Ward, Brian Cox.

Chaplin

A mediocre movie, but a really good biopic, if that makes any sense. Chaplin surely did love his women young ... I'm afraid that's the main thing that stuck with me. If the movie is correct, he married four times, and the oldest of them was 18 - when he was in his fifties. (This appears to be fairly accurate.) Downey is, as reported, superb in the lead - he does Chaplin's slapstick incredibly well, and that's a hell of a trick. The problem with the movie is that Chaplin had a messy life, and layered on top of this is the idea that what we're seeing is a flashback of his life through the discussion of his biography-in-progress between Chaplin and his agent (Hopkins). Messy. But fascinating!

1992, dir. Richard Attenborough. With Robert Downey Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Geraldine Chaplin, Anthony Hopkins, Milla Jovovich, Moira Kelly, Kevin Kline, Diane Lane, Penelope Ann Miller, Paul Rhys, Marisa Tomei, Nancy Travis, James Woods, John Thaw.

Chaos Theory

About a man with an overly organized life. One thing goes wrong and his entire life falls like dominoes. Sweet and occasionally amusing, but forgettable and not very good.

2007, dir. Marcos Siega. With Ryan Reynolds, Emily Mortimer, Stuart Townsend.

Charade

Hepburn and Grant turn in good performances, but the movie seemed somewhat unsure about whether it was a murder mystery or a comedy. Eventually it decided on more of the latter, with a concomitant loss of menace. But the leads are charming and the dialogue is clever.

1963, dir. Stanley Donen. With Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Depp at his absolute weirdest - which is pretty damn weird - in a Burton movie, so you know the whole thing is going to be more than a little off balance. I think Roald Dahl would have been pretty pleased with this take on his work. The kids are appropriately over-the-top, the special effects are very good, and the whole experience is damn weird.

2005, dir. Tim Burton. With Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmore, David Kelly, Helena Bonham Carter, Noah Taylor, Deep Roy.

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

I don't think I've ever seen a more humiliating or embarrassing piece of film in my entire life. I cringed all the way through it. I ask myself why I watched the whole thing, and all I can think is "car wreck syndrome:" I just couldn't believe it was really that bad. Apparently the original was just as bad so there appears to be a market for it. The action was ludicrous in its even more blatant than usual disregard of the laws of physics (think "A Team"), and the whole movie was a sequence of vignettes attempting to put the three main women in more and more foolish outfits and positions. It made me begin to wonder if maybe the Austin Powers films are actually high art.

2003, dir. "McG" (Joseph McGinty Nichol). With Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Demi Moore.

Charlotte's Web

I think we have "Babe" to thank for the slightly less sentimental attitude about farm animals in children's movies. In any case, it's made quite clear early on that Wilbur is going to be bacon if something extraordinary doesn't happen. And of course that's where Charlotte comes in. Fanning is great - they couldn't have done this without her. The line-up of voice talent is staggering. The humour is wonderful - although it gets pushed aside to some extent in the second half to make way for a bit too much pathos and sentimentality. Still, definitely an enjoyable movie.

2006, dir. Gary Winick. With Julia Roberts, Dakota Fanning, Dominic Scott Kay, Steve Buscemi, John Cleese, Oprah Winfrey, Cedric the Entertainer, Kathy Bates, Reba McEntire, Robert Redford, Thomas Haden Church, André Benjamin.

Chasing Amy

Probably Smith's best work. It's meant for a young crowd - it's raunchy and has some scenes that'll make adults cringe, but it's an excellent piece of work despite that. Basic premise: male comic artist falls for female comic artist who turns out to be a lesbian. I suppose it's a romantic comedy, but hardly standard issue. And for once, Affleck turns in a decent acting job.

1999, dir. Kevin Smith. With Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Lee, Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes.

Chicago

Renée Zellweger is a want-to-be Jazz singer in the Twenties. She sees her life in musical numbers, and after she murders her nasty boyfriend, much of the movie takes place in jail. The director calls it a satire and the Academy apparently thought it was worth six Oscars, but a couple good numbers couldn't redeem this one for me.

2002. dir. Rob Marshall. With Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah.

Chicken Little

Chicken Little (voiced by Braff) is a small but very intelligent chicken in a town full of animals. Unfortunately, after a piece of sky falls on his head and he successfully encourages everyone to run for their lives, he can't find the piece of sky and becomes an outcast.

The movie was Disney's last animated film before they purchased Pixar outright. The animation style is deliberately chunky and crooked, a visual style I didn't like. The dialogue is clever and knowing, very much a la "Shrek" - a method that's been severely overused in the intervening years and is rather a mixed blessing here. There are some clever ideas and a few decent jokes, but overall the movie falls flat.

2005, dir. Mark Dindal. With Zach Braff, Joan Cusack, Steve Zahn, Amy Sedaris, Garry Marshall, Don Knotts, Fred Willard.

Children of a Lesser God

At this point (2003) it really screams "Eighties" - despite which it's still a pretty good movie. The two leads are excellent and the script is good, it's the peripherals that are dated. Matlin got (and deserved) a best actress Oscar.

1986. dir. Randa Haines. With William Hurt, Marlee Matlin.

The Children of Huang Shi

The story of an inexperienced but determined English journalist (Rhys-Meyers playing George Hogg) who manages to find his way into the middle of the Rape of Nanking. After being rescued by a small group of communists (led by Yun-Fat's character) from execution for taking photos of the Japanese atrocities, he's forced to flee and finds himself taking care of a bunch of a children in an orphanage. He wants to continue his work as a journalist, but the children rely on him and they become his project.

Well meant, reasonably well acted by very good actors, based on a true story with fascinating characters, well shot, and a hell of a recreation of war-torn China, the movie as a whole still manages to fall down. I'm at a loss to explain why: it's not bad, but neither is it particularly good.

2008, dir. Roger Spottiswoode. With Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Radha Mitchell, Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Guang Li.

Children of Men

Brilliant filming, brilliant SF. Fantastic world-building. In the near future (2027), there hasn't been a child born in 18 years. The world has pretty much gone to hell - the UK has soldiered on as they've often done, although under brutal military rule and detaining and deporting all foreigners. Owen plays Theo, a former political activist who has turned to the bottle and pretty much given up. Into his world comes his ex-, who dumps a huge problem into his lap: a pregnant foreigner. Don't look for light or cheerful entertainment here, but it's a really excellent film.

This movie's one failing (and it's fairly significant) is that the woman at the centre of the movie is incredibly important - and a complete non-entity. Cuarón concentrates so much on Owen and Moore that he ignores this essential character.

2006, dir. Alfonso Cuarón. With Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Chiwetel Ejiofor.

The Chinese Connection

Bruce Lee, see the alternative title "Fist of Fury."

Chobits

A relatively short (27 episodes, 22 minutes each) Anime series. Obscenely cute, fairly funny. Would be appropriate for ten year olds if it didn't mention (but not show) porn and breasts so often. Motosuwa can't afford a "persocon" (a personal computer / robot / significant-other-replacement), but finds one on a trash heap. She runs without an OS, and may be a "Chobits," an urban legend of an uber-persocon. He names her "Chii." The series is about her learning to be human, and the evolution of their relationship.

Chop Socky: Cinema Hong Kong

A hell of a lesson in the history of wuxia/kung fu movies from the 1920s through 2003. Talks to all the right people. The short run-time (55m) meant that it didn't have time for some things I would have been interested in (wuxia before film and in book form, wire-work versus no wires, relationship to the actual martial arts ...), but does a superb job of showing the trends in martial arts movies, including the pivotal movies and important people. Most interesting to me was the trend in the 1970s to show more blood, blood everywhere, dismemberment ... when all I want to see is the martial arts and maybe some drama. Utterly fascinating to fans of the genre, probably useless to others. Fans MUST see this.

2004, dir. Ian Taylor. With Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Sammo Hung, Jim Nicholson, John Woo.

Les Choristes (aka. "The Chorus")

Yes, it's a bit cheesy and perhaps undeservedly optimistic, but it's also incredibly charming and enjoyable. I'm usually not a fan of choral music, but even I found something to like in the music.

2004, dir. Christophe Barratier. With Gérard Jugnot, François Berléand, Kad Merad, Jean-Paul Bonnaire, Marie Bunel, Jean-Baptiste Maunier.

A Christmas Story

Something of a Christmas classic that I didn't see until 2006. Billingsley plays a 10 year old(?) in hot pursuit of a Red Ryder BB Gun prior to Christmas, while trying to survive the travails of school, parents, and the approaching holiday season. A friend pointed out that the kids do in fact act more like kids than in most any other movie, and it's amusing to compare the nostalgia of the voice-over of the adult to the out-and-out avarice of the child. The story is a bit episodic, All-American vignettes written by Jean Shepherd (who also does the voice-over) that remind me a little of Garrison Keillor.

An amusing side note: director Clark's previous movies were the "much maligned" (as he put it) "Porky's" and "Porky's II," without which (he notes) this movie could not have existed.

1983, dir. Bob Clark. With Peter Billingsley, Darren McGavin, Melinda Dillon, (voice of) Jean Shepherd.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Beautiful, not quite so heavy handed with the religion as the original, but unfortunately pedestrian in the interpretation. Oddly, the add-on intro that wasn't in the book was one of the better parts of the movie. The kids acted fairly well except for the youngest - who was nevertheless very cute. The talking animals weren't a huge success.

2005, dir. Andrew Adamson. With William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Skandar Keynes, Georgie Henley, Tilda Swinton, James McAvoy.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Peter: "You've seen him. I wish he'd just given me some sort of proof." Lucy: "Maybe we're the ones that need to prove ourselves to him." In Narnia, God manifests himself as a lion and occasionally provides miracles for the faithful. Although only after hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered.

I was fascinated to find that C.S. Lewis seems to believe that a person killing dozens in a war is fine, but killing a particularly evil enemy while he's on his knees (when, I might add, it could stop a war) isn't noble enough. That kind of logic baffles me entirely. (It's been a while since I read the books: I'm assuming the movie version of the hand-to-hand combat is reasonably close to the book, which it may not be. But I think Lewis's logic is pretty much like this.)

Once again the acting takes a back seat to the scenery and effects - which are absolutely first-rate. Dinklage was a stand-out, a very good actor limited in his choice of roles because he's 4'5". He plays a dwarf here, and perhaps it would have been better if he wasn't such a good actor as he made those around him look like fools. Of the children, Keynes held up the best this time.

2008, dir. Andrew Adamson. With Ben Barnes, Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Sergio Castellitto, Peter Dinklage, Warwick Davis, Vincent Grass, Eddie Izzard, Liam Neeson.

The Chronicles of Riddick

A really disappointing movie ... Riddick is Diesel's character from "Pitch Black," one of the best SF/horror movies of the last decade. The character of Riddick was a pretty compelling one, but they tried to expand on his background and threw in all kinds of nonsensical crap. The overall story of the movie itself was disappointing too (peaceful planet, evil alien invasion, blah blah blah), and Dench's performance was ... lousy. This was Diesel's project: he'd been dying to work with Dench and convinced her. I just wish he'd picked a better project, for both of them.

2003. dir. David Twohy. With Vin Diesel, Judi Dench, Colm Feore, Thandie Newton, Karl Urban, Alexa Davalos.

Cider House Rules

Caine runs an orphanage, Maguire is his favourite. Maguire leaves to see the world. A coming of age story set in the U.S. during the Second World War, based on a John Irving novel. It's fairly good, but it's also depressing, and if I watch a depressing movie, I want it to be better than this was.

dir. Lasse Hellstrom. With Michael Caine, Toby Maguire, Charlize Theron, Delroy Lindo.

Cinema Paradiso

The original was heavy-handed but powerful. The director's cut (released in 2003(?) on DVD) is heavy-handed and incredibly tedious with another 51 minutes of footage. Someone please stop directors from "fixing" the injustices forced on them in editing the film ... See the original version: it's good.

1989. dir. Guiseppe Tornatore. With Philippe Noiret.

City Hunter (orig. "Sing si lip yan")

Based on a Japanese manga, Chan plays a womanizing private detective (with a Japanese name, but speaking Cantonese ...) hired to ... oh hell, I don't remember. Anyway he ends up on a cruise ship where he flirts with women, has fights, and performs numerous pratfalls. This can be considered a spoof or a manga brought literally to life, your choice: someone falls a long way and leaves a person-shaped hole in the deck of the ship, that kind of thing. I was hoping for a bunch of Chan's signature martial arts fights, but they went mostly for a lot of humour that didn't particularly work for me.

1993, dir. Jing Wong. With Jackie Chan, Joey Wang, Chingmy Yau, Richard Norton, Michael Wong, Gary Daniels.

City of Ember

Lina (Ronan) and Doon (Treadaway) grow up in the city of Ember, the last of humanity in an underground city deteriorating and dying. But due to the sudden death of one of the mayors, the city's most important secret (the way out, to be used at 200 years) is lost. Lina and Doon both question the complacency and resignation of their elders, and begin to believe in a way out.

Based on the novel by Jeanne DuPrau, the film makers didn't aim particularly high: there's not a lot of deep meaning here, and it's not hugely complex. On the other hand, they did make a charming and entertaining film.

2008, dir. Gil Kenan. With Saoirse Ronan, Harry Treadaway, Bill Murray, Mackenzie Crook, Tim Robbins, Martin Landau.

The City of Lost Children (orig. "La Cité des enfants perdus")

Caro and Jeunet's second full length film after "Delicatessen," this one is so surreal and bizarre it makes "Delicatessen" look, well, "normal." And if you've seen "Delicatessen" you'll know that's one hell of an achievement. Evidently Emilfork's character "Krank" is unable to dream, so he kidnaps children from a nearby city to steal their dreams. Perlman plays the not-all-there strongman "One," whose adopted younger brother is stolen. Vittet plays a young girl who works for "The Octopus," a very nasty pair of women joined at the hip (Brunet and Mallet, identical twins). Krank is assisted by five copies of Pinon, all of whom deliberately over-act (along with the rest of the cast). The sets are quite impressive. Utterly bizarre. I'm not sorry I watched it, but I wouldn't really recommend it either.

1995, dir. Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. With Ron Perlman, Daniel Emilfork, Judith Vittet, Dominique Pinon, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Geneviève Brunet, Odile Mallet.

A Civil Action

Purports to tell a true story, the history of a personal injury lawyer (Travolta) who sees dollar signs on the would-be defendants of a town water poisoning case that (probably) killed quite a few children, but finds himself becoming personally involved and eventually very nearly bankrupting his own law firm in the pursuit of a bigger settlement - for the people rather than for himself. I found it amazingly uninvolving: Travolta's character is hard to like at the beginning because all he's after is success and money, but he doesn't become much more likable when he finds his conscience because he's blind to the facts that he can't win (at least not the way he wants it) and he's bankrupting his firm.

1997, dir. Steven Zaillian. With John Travolta, Robert Duvall, William H. Macy, Tony Shalhoub, Zeljko Ivanek, Bruce Norris, John Lithgow, Kathleen Quinlan, James Gandolfini, Stephen Fry, Dan Hedaya.

Clash

Trinh, aka "Phoenix" (Van) is a mob enforcer in this movie, hiring other criminals to assist her in a job she does under coercion for her boss who holds her daughter as collateral. "Tiger" (Johnny Nguyen) is one of the hired help. This is primarily a martial arts flick.

The acting is awful, the plot weak, and the martial arts mediocre (although slightly better than I expected). Van is a pop star and model - surprisingly, her fighting isn't significantly worse than Nguyen who makes his living as a martial artist and stunt man. Van is gorgeous, but that doesn't make a movie. There's betrayal and deception and lots of people die. Not recommended even for fans of the martial arts.

2009, dir. Le Thanh Son. With Veronica Ngo Thanh Van, Johnny Tri Nguyen, Lam Minh Thang, Hoang Phuc Nguyen.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

A remake of the notoriously bad 1981 film of the same name. I guess the thinking was that they couldn't produce a poorer product. I haven't seen the original, so I can't compare.

The film starts with narration about the defeat of the Titans by the gods Zeus (Neeson), Poseidon, and Hades (Fiennes) - this also introduces Hades creature "the Kraken," and sets up the rivalry between Zeus and Hades. Then we're introduced to Perseus (played as an adult by Worthington), a demi-god (son of Zeus and a human mother) who was raised by a human family and has no idea of his powers. But it shortly falls to him to prevent the Kraken from destroying the city of Argos - and thus we have a quest in which he sets off to find the means to kill the unkillable.

The movie reminded me a great deal of "The Transformers" (the first one) - an eye-popping special effects extravaganza in the service of an incredibly stupid but somehow entertaining story. There are a million problems with it, but somehow it's just fun. It won't work for everyone, but if you liked "The Transformers," you may enjoy this one too.

2010, dir. Louis Leterrier. With Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Jason Flemyng, Alexa Davalos, Mads Mikkelsen.

Closely Watched Trains (orig. "Ostre sledované vlaky")

A mildly surreal Czech comedy about sex, set during the Second World War. That latter part doesn't seem to make much difference - right up until the end. But this is proof once again that old comedy doesn't always translate well - I hardly laughed at all. Mostly it was just surreal. I suppose it's not as funny anymore because it's about sex and we've long ago brushed past all the mores it was sideswiping.

1966, dir. Jirí Menzel. With Václav Neckár, Josef Somr, Vlastimil Brodský.

Closer

A movie about four people abusing each other emotionally for two hours. A lot of people liked this movie, but none of the characters are even remotely likable - and even if that's okay with you I didn't think the dialogue was particularly realistic.

2004, dir. Mike Nichols. With Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

I suppose any animated film has a degree of surreality to it simply because it's animated: it's been abstracted from reality and any resemblance is constructed in our minds. But most of them occasionally make reference to reality. This one buzzes reality for a few seconds at the beginning and then heads off into deep space: it's extremely surreal. It's very funny in places, both verbal and visual gags. And it's got a couple sharp things to say about North American society and how we perceive each other - the kids will laugh right through it, but the parents will notice. Very good.

2009, dir. Phil Lord, Christopher Miller. Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Neil Patrick Harris, James Caan, Bruce Campbell, Andy Samberg, Mr. T, Bobb'e J. Thompson, Benjamin Bratt.

Cloverfield

Does for the Godzilla genre what "Blair Witch" did for lost-in-the-woods. That is to say, shaky POV. Fairly clever and well executed, although some people may get motion sickness. You've never heard of any of the cast, despite the budget. We have J.J. Abrams to thank for this over-the-top craziness. Reeves sounds like an intelligent guy and may actually produce some work worth seeing later.

2007, dir. Matt Reeves. With Michael Stahl-David, T. J. Miller, Jessica Lucas, Mike Vogel, Lizzy Caplan, Odette Yustman.

Clueless

A loose modern remake of Jane Austen's "Emma," this is amusing in places but its heavy reliance on the slang and fashion of its time have made it feel extremely dated less than ten years later.

1995. dir. Amy Heckerling. With Alicia Silverstone, Wallace Shawn, Brittany Murphy.

The Cocoanuts

Groucho plays the owner of a Florida resort that's making no money. Chico and Harpo fill in their usual roles of mixed support and trouble-makers, and Zeppo is the romantic straight man. Groucho is intermittently funny, and there are far too many musical numbers that I skipped through.

1929, dir. Robert Florey and Joseph Santley. With Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Zeppo Marx, Margaret Dumont.

Code 46

Ahh, the extraordinary Samantha Morton. Not beautiful, not ugly, not talented or untalented, just ... extraordinary. Her bizarre acting was great as the girl who saw the future in "Minority Report," but in this one I got sick of seeing her writhe, squirm, moan, and occasionally look confused. The movie amounted to a bunch of fairly standard science fiction ideas (papers for everything, language melding, elite city dwellers, memory wiping, control of genetics) and molds them into a poor plot around an unconvincing forbidden love.

2003, dir. Michael Winterbottom. With Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton.

Cold Mountain

Law plays a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, Kidman his fiancée, and Zellweger the ... farm hand ... who helps manage her farm after her father's death. Law, sick of war, and holding a letter from Kidman asking him to come back and help her, deserts and starts a very long trek back. We watch the trials and tribulations at both ends through most of a year and an excessively long running time (154m). The acting is good, and the story is both epic and personal ... and yet there's something lacking. That may just be me: it was nominated for several Oscars and won one (Zellweger).

2003, dir. Anthony Minghella. With Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Brendan Gleeson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi, Donald Sutherland, Rayi Winstone, Kathy Baker, James Gammon, Ethan Suplee.

Cold Souls

Giamatti plays ... Paul Giamatti. An actor that we first see rehearsing "Uncle Vanya," he gets seriously wound up over his characters - to the point that it interferes with his performance. So he decides to have his soul removed and stored. But now he has no compassion or empathy, his wife thinks he feels different, and his performance in the play is awful. Next he temporarily borrows the soul of a Russian poet ... etc.

As you might expect, this is a pretty weird movie. And not, I think, among Giamatti's best performances. Because they're trying to show that he acts differently with each soul, he's overdoing certain behaviours at different times. He carries it better than anyone else would, but it's still not an elegant solution or performance. It's amusing in spots, but mostly just weird.

2009, dir. Sophie Barthes. With Paul Giamatti, Emily Watson, David Strathairn, Dina Korzun, Katheryn Winnick.

Collateral

Foxx plays a cabbie who finds himself driving a contract killer around Los Angeles as he does a series of hits. It's an action movie, and as they go, it's actually a pretty good one. Both of the main characters act fairly well, and there's a bit more of a nod to reality than usual (although not a lot more).

2004. dir. Michael Mann. With Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith.

The Colour of Magic

Based on Terry Pratchett's first (and not best) Discworld novel of the same name. Since I've read it it's hard for me to say how this would fly with those who haven't read it - but it looks rather like chaos in the name of humour, too ludicrous to really hold together ... It sticks very close to the book (at least as I remember it), and that kind of ludicrous situational humour has always worked well for Pratchett ... on the page. It's hard to translate to the screen. But as someone who's read it, I found it quite entertaining - all 191 minutes of the original British made-for-TV movie. The effects are quite good, and the leads were mostly very good. I thought Astin as Twoflower was the weakest, but making Twoflower convincing is pretty tough. But right next to him was Jason in the role of Rincewind, which he did very well indeed (although I've always pictured Rincewind as in his thirties). My main dispute with the movie was the number of people that the Luggage ate: I really thought it should be higher. But again, what's funny on the page is less funny (and less family-friendly) when you actually see it ...

Pratchett has the closing line of the movie in a tiny role as an astrozoologist. A nice touch.

2008, dir. Vadim Jean. With David Jason, Sean Astin, Tim Curry, Jeremy Irons, Brian Cox, James Cosmo, Christopher Lee, Terry Pratchett.

The Commitments

The story (based on a Roddy Doyle book) of ten musicians from Dublin's poor north side starting up a Soul band. Very funny, and allowing musicians to play the part of musicians means that the music is fabulous. A very enjoyable movie.

1991. dir. Alan Parker.

Confessions of a Superhero

All I could think watching this movie is how weird my life would look if it were put on film. We follow the lives of four people in Hollywood, all of whom want to be actors, but have instead spent years on Hollywood Boulevard as costumed superheroes posing for pictures and working for tips - glorified panhandling. It struck me as a kind of reality TV show more than a documentary, although I suppose it can be considered as both. And no, I don't think my life is that strange, but we all have our quirks and ideas that make others scratch their heads and feel superior. The filming is awful (focus isn't always there, zooms are abrupt, subjects aren't always entirely in frame) and the intro by Morgan Spurlock wasn't merely gratuitous, it was actively bad. But the movie ... it's not bad. The director makes no judgements, although he chooses to end on relative high notes for each of the characters. Strange stuff.

2007, dir. Matthew Ogens. With Maxwell Allen, Christopher Dennis, Jennifer Wenger, Joseph McQueen.

Conspiracy

Kilmer plays a shell-shocked vet of the Iraq War. Back home in the U.S. he never leaves his apartment, spends what little money he has on a succession of prostitutes, and lives with his flashbacks. A veteran buddy eventually convinces Kilmer to move down to New Mexico to help him out. When he arrives, no one has ever heard of his friend, and he receives a rather poor welcome. Strangely enough, there's a conspiracy in town, and eventually Kilmer tries to take care of it.

If you took "Rambo," "Soldier," and about a dozen other movies of that variety and stuff them all in the blender, something just like this would come out. Minor oddities included illegal aliens (from Mexico) being the prosecuted group, and the bad guys all belonging to a company called "Halicorp" which is accused of the worst kind of war profiteering - a very clear knock-off of Halliburton. Cole plays the exact same bad guy he played the last time I saw him (I think in "Pineapple Express"). Like any movie, it had a few decent moments; but overall, it stinks.

2008, dir. Adam Marcus. With Val Kilmer, Gary Cole, Jennifer Esposito, Jay Jablonski, Greg Serano.

The Constant Gardener

Would have been an excellent movie if it wasn't for the music video editing, use of colour, and volume. It's an intelligent political intrigue, not a brainless action movie. Despite the editing and with the help of very good performances by Weisz and Fiennes, this is a good (albeit very depressing) movie about the evils of drug companies in the Third World. Original story by John le Carré.

2005, dir. Fernando Meirelles. With Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Bill Nighy, Pete Postlethwaite.

Constantine

Based on the DC comic "Hellblazer," "Constantine" stars Reeves as an attempted suicide who's been to hell and can see the angels and demons walking on earth among us. If you can accept that premise, you might enjoy this movie. Watch past the end of the credits. Fans of the comic will be disappointed in the choice of Reeves, who isn't blond and isn't Cockney. But Weisz is excellent, Swinton and Reeves are very good, the ideas are wild, and the action is great. Despite huge flaws, it's highly entertaining. I was particularly impressed with the ending, which someone worked out very well indeed.

2005, dir. Francis Lawrence. With Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Tilda Swinton.

Contact

A grand vision of alien contact from Carl Sagan. Foster and McConaughey are both excellent as the "driven scientist" and "man of faith" respectively. Don't let my titles put you off this one: it's a mystery and a celebration of humanity and a bunch of other things all wrapped in one. Really good.

1997, dir. Robert Zemeckis. With Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, Jake Busey, Angela Bassett, James Woods, Rob Lowe.

The Cooler

Macy plays the titular "cooler," a man whose luck is so bad he's employed by a casino to "cool" tables - his presence will destroy anyone's run of luck. That is, until he falls in love (with Bello's character). So now he's being paid to bring bad luck and is instead bringing good luck ... not exactly what his vindictive employer (Baldwin) wants. Definitely a bit on the surreal side. Macy is entertaining, Baldwin vicious, and Bello gets naked again. Weird, and I didn't like it much.

2003, dir. Wayne Kramer. With William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, Maria Bello.

Coraline

Coraline is a young girl dissatisfied with her parents, her life, and her new weird neighbours. Live action animation in the same style as "The Nightmare Before Christmas," with which it shares the same director. Coraline find a weird door that occasionally leads to a copy of her new apartment - complete with copies of her parents, who seem to be much nicer than her real parents.

The story takes a dark turn - as you might expect of both the director and the original author, Neil Gaiman. The animation is beautiful, the story reasonably good, the characters fun.

2009, dir. Henry Selick. With Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman, Ian McShane, Robert Bailey Jr., Keith David.

The Core

A modern Seventies disaster movie with modern tropes and good acting ... which doesn't prevent it from having painfully bad science. But this is one of those ones where you go into it knowing it's going to be really bad and enjoy it anyway. It was fun.

The basic premise is that the core of the Earth has stopped rotating, and everyone on the planet will die in under a year unless our intrepid (and very intelligent and antagonistic) heroes get to the core and detonate a bunch of atomic bombs to start the core rotating again. Against impossible odds and insurmountable problems and etc.

2003, dir. Jon Amiel. With Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, DJ Qualls, Tchéky Karyo, Bruce Greenwood, Alfre Woodard.

Coup de Torchon

A cop in French West Africa in 1938 gets tired of being insulted by everyone and takes it upon himself dispense justice in his own unique way - uninformed by much moral sense. I'm sure there were black comedies before this one, but this is very dark. Funny, nasty, and mesmerizing.

1981, dir. Bertrand Tavernier. With Philippe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert.

The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell

Cooper plays Billy Mitchell, an Army General who believed in the early 1920s that air power was the way of the future, and that the U.S. military services were ignoring it at their peril. As his advice is ignored and shunted aside, he eventually chooses court-martial to force a more public airing of his views.

The movie paints him a visionary, describing in a 1923 letter almost exactly the attack that was to come on Pearl Harbour (the movie was made in 1955). He was certainly more forward-looking than many of his peers in the military forces, and the movie does go for historical accuracy in other respects (the Shenandoah, his reassignment to Texas), but I very much doubt his description of the attack on Hawaii was that accurate. And unfortunately, accurate or not, this movie is rather dry going. Cooper is very good, but the subject isn't hugely involving.

1955, dir. Otto Preminger. With Gary Cooper, Charles Bickford, Ralph Bellamy, Rod Steiger, Elizabeth Montgomery.

Cowboy Bebop

Japanese anime series, this is a review of the entire year. Episodes have about 21 minutes of content when you strip off the credits, the total run was 26 episodes. 21 minutes is totally inadequate for any actual character or plot development - which is unfortunate because I really liked the characters and some of the plots would have been great had they not been so insanely condensed.

We first meet Jet and Spike, a pair of bounty hunters cruising around the solar system in Jet's big spaceship. Both of them have their own small ship for local travel and occasionally fighting, but Spike has the really cool ship. Within a couple episodes they've managed to pick up a dog (Ein), Faye (a gorgeous bounty hunter with a gambling problem), and the child Edward, an incredibly eccentric female(!) computer genius. They rarely manage to collect bounties as they often end up doing "the right thing" instead of the lucrative thing. We get filled in on everyone's back stories as things proceed. Some episodes are comedic (eg. Ed trying her hand at bounty hunting and feeding everyone else on the crew psychedelic mushrooms), some are sad (eg. Faye's massive memory loss and re-awakening with massive debt incurred by medical treatment/resurrection she didn't precisely request). But the ending is incredibly harsh and sudden - although not a total surprise. More of a wrap-up wouldn't have hurt.

It struck me as a mash-up of "Firefly" and "Trigun." Not that a lot of people would get that: you're likely to see "Cowboy Bebop" long before you see "Trigun."

1998, dir. Shinichiro Watanabe.

Cowboys & Aliens

A man (Craig) wakes in the desert with no idea where he is, or even who he is. Although some of his abilities become clearer a couple minutes later when three men try to rob him and he takes them all out with considerable ease. In town he tries to mind his own business but soon enough he's involved in everyone else's. And then the aliens attack, which leads to a couple discoveries: they're abducting people (surprise!) and the weird bracelet around our anti-hero/amnesiac's wrist is a weapon capable of taking out the alien flyers.

As usual, Favreau directs as if there's nothing in the world more fun than making a movie and blowing shit up. This was clearly fun to work on. But the "we're making a Western, ha-ha tricked you here's aliens" routine is decidedly uninspiring and merely passable acting from Ford and Wilde (although Craig was quite good) meant that an already messy script ("let's ride back and forth and toss in new characters and twists") never really got off the ground.

2011, dir. Jon Favreau. With Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Paul Dano, Clancy Brown, Keith Carradine, Adam Beach.

Cradle 2 the Grave

This movie is pretty bad - which is to say it's better than most of Jet Li's American movies. Jet Li is an extremely talented martial artist, and, while he's no actor, he's at least fairly charming. But his goofy Hong Kong movies look excellent by comparison to the tripe he's turned out since he was "discovered." I keep hoping he'll end up in something better.

2003. dir. Andrzej Bartkowiak. With Jet Li, DMX.

Crank

The basic premise is that our hero ("Chev Chelios," played by Statham) wakes up to find he's been poisoned by an enemy and the only way to stay alive is to stay cranked on adrenaline. That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the movie. I hope you can guess that it's intensely ludicrous. It's a bad movie, but ... pretty entertaining. Although I'm more than a little embarrassed to say that in public.

2006, dir. Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor. With Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Efren Ramirez, Dwight Yoakam, Carlos Sanz, Keone Young.

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Carell plays Cal Weaver, whose wife Emily (Moore) asks for a divorce at the beginning of the movie. He spends his time sitting in a bar bemoaning his state to no one in particular. Jacob (Gosling), a pick-up artist who takes home a different woman pretty much every night, takes Cal under his wing and tutors him. As Cal learns the tricks of the trade, Jacob unexpectedly falls hard for one woman (Stone). There's also a subplot about Cal and Emily's son Robbie (Bobo) who's desperately in love with his babysitter (Tipton) - who is herself in love with Cal ...

This is essentially the spiritual (and American) successor to "Love Actually." It's about being in love, and the value of that whether or not you can actually have the person you love or not.

Tipton's performance is excellent, but is much more surprising when you find out that this gawky, shy and awkward 17 year old is actually a 22 year old fashion model. Stone is also excellent, although the role is in many ways a more mature version of her character in "Easy A." Gosling and Moore are excellent, but no one is surprised about that. Carell continues to be a very decent dramatic actor. Bobo is great as the intelligent and obsessed young son.

Follows the comedy practise of characters being writ larger than life - some of the things that happen are a bit over the top. And there are a couple of major film-making contrivances in which the identity of certain players are deliberately hidden from us so it can be sprung on us later for laughs. I was mildly annoyed by this, but damn, they were big laughs. Setting aside the exceptionally high level of coincidence required for the big blow-up between the second and final acts (which is again brilliantly funny), the script is really good and supported by excellent performances. I bought it on disc the day it came out.

2011, dir. Glenn Ficarra, John Requa. With Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, Analeigh Tipton, Marisa Tomei, Kevin Bacon, Jonah Bobo.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

I think this was the first DVD I ever purchased. It's also one of the most influential martial arts movies ever made: the first time a well-known director tackled the genre, also for the first time with good actors, a big budget, and a huge world-wide release. This movie legitimized martial arts movies, and paved the way for big budget releases like "Hero," "The House of Flying Daggers," and several others.

The story opens with Li Mu-bai (Yun-Fat) and Yu Shu-lien (Yeoh). Li Mu-bai is considering giving up his sword, the legendary Green Destiny, and the warrior's life that goes with it. There are hints that this might even allow a long-postponed romance to blossom between the two. But the Green Destiny is stolen, and the two become entangled with Jen (a Governor's daughter) and Lo (a desert bandit). And to confuse things further, it appears that the Jade Fox - a woman who murdered Li Mu-bai's master - may have re-surfaced. And did I mention that the better-trained among them can fly and perform super-human feats?

It sounds like a cheesy martial arts movie because it's based on a Wuxia novel. And that might have been all it was, but Lee brings superb direction, excellent actors, and stunning cinematography to it, and produces a film that's enchanted millions who were never fans of the genre. Elegant, beautiful, and heart-breaking, this is a really wonderful movie.

2000, dir. Ang Lee. With Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, Chang Chen, Cheng Pei-pei.

The Crow

One of the earlier graphic-novel-to-movie translations, this time of a vicious revenge story. Lee died during the making of the movie. I still don't understand why the critics like this one so much: sure, Proyas has a great eye for sets and shots, but the story is over-the-top vicious, silly, and not very well acted. If you want to see Proyas really on his game, watch "Dark City." "I, Robot" is more accessible and has issues, but is still very good.

1994, dir. Alex Proyas. With Brandon Lee, Rochelle Davis, Ernie Hudson, David Patrick Kelly, Michael Wincott, Bai Ling.

Crumb

Robert Crumb had a lot to do with starting the underground comics movement in the late 60s. He's still an active comics author. This movie follows him around for a while, talks to his family, looks at his comics, and looks into his past life. Crumb has no problem talking about his life in considerable detail: it's how he's made his living for the past thirty years. Many of his comics are his own bizarre interpretations of the events in his life. Many of his comics are about sex, and the movie spends time dwelling on his fantasies, and occasionally his actual sex life. Get ready for a really weird ride. He's a pretty strange individual, but as the movie progresses and you meet his brothers and mother, you realize he's the sane one ... Hilarious and extremely disturbing. I highly recommend it - you won't forget it for a long time.

1998. dir. Terry Zwigoff.

The Cup

About Buddhism, passion, and Tibet. Probably the only movie you'll ever see in Bhutanese (the Tibetan language?). Based on a true story. Several young monks at a Buddhist monastery in India are determined to see the World Cup football games, even though it's against monastery rules. The people in the movie are (I think) all monks, and not particularly good actors. But it's funny and enjoyable, and very educational about Tibetans and Buddhism.

2000. dir. Khyentse Norbu.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Pitt plays Benjamin Button, born a shrivelled up and ancient baby, abandoned, forever ageing backward. In love, permanently and from a very young age, with Blanchett's character Daisy. The story is told by Ormond, playing Daisy's daughter, reading Button's diaries to Daisy as Daisy lies dying. It's certainly an epic movie: it follows him from his birth in 1920 to her deathbed in New Orleans during what appears to be the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. The aging of Blanchett, and the reverse effect on Pitt, are managed very well. I liked it, but didn't find it terribly involving.

2008, dir. David Fincher. With Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, Julia Ormond, Elias Koteas, Taraji P. Henson, Tilda Swinton.

Curse of the Golden Flower (orig. "Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia")

"Lavish" and "Extravagant" don't begin to do this movie justice: the sets and costumes are spectacular. Too bad the motivations for most of the characters are ... well, opaque. It reminded me a great deal of "The Lion in Winter" (okay, I'm getting old: I've seen most of the predecessors): king and empress at odds, three sons, everybody scheming. The king is slowly poisoning the empress, the empress is sleeping with the first son (child of the previous empress), first son is sleeping with the royal pharmacist's daughter, second son is desperately trying to be loyal to everyone, and third son is young enough to be blithely unaware of everything. Look at the pretty scenery and forget the foundering tragedy plot. Or better: go see "Hero" or "House of Flying Daggers." Both of which are flawed, but very pretty and better than this.

2006, dir. Zhang Yimou. With Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Liu Ye, Ni Dahong, Qin Junjie, Li Man, Chen Jin.

---

D

The Da Vinci Code

A long-winded, muddled mess of a movie. I haven't read the book. There are only two types of scenes in this movie: long explanations of art or Christian conspiracy theory, or action. This leaves no time for acting by an otherwise excellent cast. Even with all the explanations, it's occasionally unclear what's going on and you probably don't care anyways.

2006, dir. Ron Howard. With Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Paul Bettany, Alfred Molina.

Dakota Skye

Tiny little indie movie about a young woman (Boylan), a high school student who has a "superpower": whenever anyone lies to her, she knows the truth. As she points out in her voice-over, this isn't quite as much of a blessing as you'd think. Having discovered that everyone lies, she's become apathetic, sleep-walking through her own life. Until her boyfriend's stoner best friend (Nelson) shows up: he never lies. And he's a pretty cool guy. His presence forces her out of her apathy and into making decisions about her life.

Boylan, Nelson, and Ghuman (Dakota's boyfriend) are all reasonably good. The script is decent. The movie has too many montages, too many long shots with music and no speech. It gets a little old, but they're used reasonably well to develop the plot. The movie is fairly good overall.

2008, dir. John Humber. With Eileen April Boylan, Ian Nelson, J.B. Ghuman Jr.

Dan in Real Life

Carell plays Dan, a widower who writes an advice column on family matters. At a gathering of his extended family, he falls for his brother's new girlfriend. Not a particularly brilliant premise, but workable with the good cast - Carell is actually a pretty good straight actor, in fact I much prefer it to his humour. But the movie fails because about half the time the director takes the easy route, goes for the cheap laugh. Dan acting like a petulant child and sabotaging his brother over family dinner was a particular low point: not because the humour didn't really work, but because it wasn't believable of the character. I was going to say "no bodily fluids jokes," but in fact there's about a minute and a half spent on masturbation, so it does get that low. On the good side there are moments like Dan telling his brother not to give the new girlfriend his (Dan's) book. You think initially that this is just Dan's belief that it's not that great a book, but over time you realize that it's because the book will be damaging to the new relationship. Carell is good, and the three girls playing his intelligent young girls are good and work particularly well with him. If only they hadn't aimed so low so often.

2007, dir. Peter Hedges. With Steve Carell, Juliette Binoche, Dane Cook, Alison Pill, Brittany Robertson, Marlene Lawston, Dianne Wiest, John Mahoney.

Dances With Wolves

Far too long at four hours, there's a passable movie lurking inside this behemoth. The cinematography was beautiful, doing justice to the prairie setting. Costner was wooden. The leisurely pace has some advantages, but for the most part left me restless. The main story concerns a soldier who has just escaped the chaos of the American Civil War slowly being absorbed into a Plains Indian tribe.

1990. Dir. Kevin Costner. With Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney A. Grant, Floyd 'Red Crow' Westerman.

Dangerous Liaisons

France, before the revolution. Not exactly the picture of courtly love. Brutal sexual and psychological manipulation. Excellent. Very depressing.

1988. dir. Stephen Frears. With John Malkovitch, Glenn Close, Uma Thurman, Keanu Reeves.

Daredevil

Not as bad as I expected after it received a lot of bad reviews. It varies between Ferrell in the ludicrous role of "Bullseye" (okay, the whole thing is ludicrous, but we're trying to suspend disbelief here and he makes that even more difficult) and the very entertaining playground fight. Not the best of the superhero movies, but not the worst either. The second disc includes a great deal of material about the making of the movie and the comic books which is at least as interesting as the movie itself.

2003. dir. Mark Steven Johnson. With Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Colin Ferrell.

The Darjeeling Limited

Definitely a Wes Anderson movie, with his great eye for visuals and penchant for family dysfunction. Falls squarely in the middle between the resounding success of "The Royal Tenenbaums" and the disastrous "The Life Aquatic." Same cast as always, very similar themes. Three brothers convene on a train in India, speaking to each other for the first time in a year.

2007, dir. Wes Anderson. With Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Amara Karan, Wallace Wolodarsky, Anjelica Huston.

Dark City

I own this one, and love it. It's weird, dark, and very hard to describe. Think of the paranoia of Philip K. Dick, throw in Proyas's directing style, and you have a story of aliens invading a city and experimenting with people's memories. Bizarre, but very good, and a visual feast.

1998, dir. Alex Proyas. With Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland.

The Dark Knight

Murphy (The Scarecrow) is wasted in what amounted to a cameo appearance, to my surprise Gyllenhaal is a poor substitute for Katie Holmes (although she's a better actress), and - if you have to die - every actor should go out acting as well as Ledger did in this one. He was superb. I'm about to bitch at length about the Joker, but none of that is against Ledger: it's all about poor writing and logical fallacies. Sure, I'm willing to suspend disbelief when watching a movie. But the movie should have some degree of internal consistency. And nothing about the Joker is consistent (except his intelligence). We first see him robbing a bank, and then killing all his henchmen. Later, we see him burning a huge heap of money because the things he likes ("gasoline, dynamite") are cheap. We see him recruiting by saying "we need one person" and leaving three people from a competing gang to kill each other so he can take the survivor: this doesn't promote loyalty, nor does it select for intelligence or even competence. And yet he executes multiple incredibly complex plans (interception of Harvey Dent in a very heavily protected police van, break-out from jail, Dent/Dawes and the explosives, hospital break-in and destruction, ferry hi-jacking) flawlessly. I don't question his intelligence: Ledger makes him an extremely convincing insane genius. But he has no talent at all for working with people, and his plans are staggeringly convoluted and require dozens of extremely good employees to set up and execute. In fact, this is very similar to the problem the Joker character of the first movie (Nicholson) suffered from. The first half of this movie was good, but the whole Joker thing really got on my nerves through the second half.

2008, dir. Christopher Nolan. With Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Monique Gabriela Curnen, Ron Dean, Cillian Murphy, Chin Han, Nestor Carbonell, Eric Roberts, Ritchie Coster, Anthony Michael Hall.

Dave Chappelle's Block Party

The critics loved this one, so I decided to have a look at it. I didn't find it funny enough to cover my disinterest in the music, but Wyclef Jean made it worth my time at the end: "Remember, the white man don't owe you shit. You're responsible for yourself. They got libraries in the ghetto. You need to go in there and educate yourselves. I couldn't speak English when I came to this country, but I went to the library and read. That's what you got to do." And he goes on to say "and if they don't have libraries, talk to your politician, talk to your mayor, make it happen." I think I like him.

2006, dir. Michel Gondry. With Dave Chappelle.

Daybreakers

In 2019 most of the human race have been turned into vampires by a plague. A few real humans remain on the run, and many more are held in pens, unconscious, and farmed for their blood. Edward Dalton, the head haematologist at Bromley Marks (the lead supplier of blood to the U.S.) is searching for a blood substitute, and bothered by his conscience. The rest of the world is bothered by the high rate of mutation brought on in the population by the blood shortage. He has a run-in with some free humans that he saves - and they take an interest in him because of his profession.

The society resulting from rampant vampirism is reasonably well set up. All the standard vampire limitations seem to apply: stake them or expose them to sunlight and they die (explosively). It was well done and mildly enjoyable right up until the end when they wallop you with an excellent twist that really makes you need to re-think how things are going to play out. Fun.

2010, dir. Michael and Peter Spierig. With Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Claudia Karvan, Sam Neill, Michael Dorman, Isabel Lucas.

A Day at the Races

Bringing the Marx Brothers special brand of mayhem ("anarchic," the critics like to call it) to a sanitarium and race track. Groucho plays a horse doctor mistaken for a human doctor, while Harpo plays a jockey and Chico plays a ... well, driver, con man, and gambler. I fast-forwarded through the three big musical numbers, but found myself laughing quite a bit through the rest of the movie.

1937, dir. Sam Wood. With Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Margaret Dumont, Allan Jones, Maureen O'Sullivan.

Day for Night (orig. "La Nuit Américaine")

Commonly referred to as "Truffaut's love letter to cinema," this is a movie about making a movie - and what a royal pain in the ass it can be. Enjoyable, but cluttered with too many characters, and an excess of scenery (the side effect of having movie scenery and equipment showing in a movie). I do love the original title.

1973, dir. François Truffaut. With Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Dani, Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Jean Champion, Jean-Pierre Léaud, François Truffaut, Nike Arrighi, Nathalie Baye, David Markham.

The Day of the Jackal

Far superior to "The Jackal," the 1997 remake. The plot revolves around an assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle. Fox is cold and systematic as the assassin. When Fox isn't on screen the movie is about the pursuit of this completely unknown assassin - hard to find when he has no name, no face, and not even a reputation, but they're pretty sure he's very good at what he does.

1973, dir. Fred Zinnemann. With Edward Fox, Michel Auclair, Denis Carey, Derek Jacobi.

The Day of the Triffids (1981)

If you can forgive the appalling special effects (it's the BBC), the unbelievably lurid 60s-esque intro, and the poor music, this is a very good mini-series. It sticks close to Wyndham's excellent original story, and the human drama is well played. So ignore the Triffids and watch the people.

Bill Masen (Duttine) wakes up in the hospital. He knows why he's there - he works with Triffids, a very nasty kind of plant that's temporarily (he hopes) blinded him - but not why he's been left entirely alone and the city is almost completely silent. Eventually he takes the bandages off his eyes himself and finds that almost the entire world was blinded by the beautiful meteor shower the night before.

This script happily jettisons most of Wyndham's unconscious 50s sexism, but kept every other element of the story - a good thing, because it's a damn good story. Coker (played by Colbourne) remains one of my favourite characters.

1981, dir. Ken Hannam. With John Duttine, Emma Relph, Maurice Colbourne.

The Day of the Triffids (2009)

Another BBC TV series based on the Wyndham book. The technical aspects were better: the CGI (including the Triffids themselves) and the music. And they had some interesting ideas about how to update the Triffids and why people kept them around (this is set in the modern day). But they heavily modified the plot, and chose a couple of very poor actors for the leads. Scott as Bill Masen could teach Keanu Reeves a thing or two about wooden. He had two expressions: a scowl and ... another scowl. Izzard is actually pretty good in his unrewarding role as the flat-out evil Torrence (set up from the beginning as the big evil of the series, and stripped of the motivations of his third act appearance in the Wyndham original). Cox is okay, and Priestley is wasted (not a favourite actor of mine, but looked like he could have helped here) in the very reduced and badly modified role of Coker.

The BBC usually goes for good acting and poor special effects on a thin budget. It looks like they spent more here to get better special effects, but the money they spent on big name actors has gone seriously astray. And the unnecessary plot rewrite significantly damaged a previously excellent story. Put up with the awful credits and special effects of the 1981 version: it's otherwise a far superior product.

2009, dir. Nick Copus. With Dougray Scott, Joely Richardson, Eddie Izzard, Jason Priestley, Brian Cox, Jenn Murray, Julia Joyce.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

One of the "classics" of science fiction. A spaceship lands in Washington, and the visitor is shot by a nervous soldier within thirty seconds of descending from the ship. The visitor turns out to be essentially human, and after healing (incredibly quickly) he slips off to try to meet real humans. There are a bunch of bizarre assumptions (he understands humans so well that he can blend in fine at a boarding house - and yet he doesn't know about money or the value of diamonds), but that's probably inevitable. While it shows some of the prejudices of the period, it also holds up remarkably well. (This is where the name "Klaatu" originated - he's the visitor - and his robot is called "Gort.")

1951, dir. Robert Wise. With Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Sam Jaffe.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

If your main character is an alien who has no emotions as we know them, who should you choose to play the alien? Reeves, of course. I like him and think he's an acceptable and often charming actor, but I still think the choice is kind of inspired. As was the rather strange choice of Cleese as a Nobel-winning physicist: he pulled it off.

But they almost immediately commit a staggering logical gaff: if you find a self-powered incoming extraterrestrial object hurtling toward Manhattan at a speed that's going to create a massive crater, you don't rush all your carefully collected specialists to ground zero just before the expected impact. Hello? There are other logical problems, but they all pale by comparison to this one.

For those who've seen the original, this is a fascinating exercise in what they've updated: they've updated a lot, and someone gave it a lot of thought, and got most of it right. I was impressed. But if you haven't seen the original I don't think this will be as good or as enjoyable. Can't say for sure as I've seen the first one: it's definitely dated, but it's still good. I was pleased to find that this one is almost as thought-provoking (although the kid is flat-out annoying).

2008, dir. Scott Derrickson. Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, Jaden Smith, John Cleese, Jon Hamm, James Hong.

Dead Again

Branagh's second directing gig after "Henry V." Branagh plays Mike Church, an private investigator who finds himself in possession of a woman (Thompson) without memories or a voice. After putting an ad in the paper to look for her family or friends, he gets instead Franklyn (Jacobi), a hypnotist who helps her regain her voice and then, through further sessions, some of her past ... lives. In fact, a large chunk of the movie is played out in the 1940s, in black and white, with a socialite couple (also Thompson and Branagh) whose history ended with the murder-by-scissors of the wife (apparently by the husband) and the execution of the husband. Williams plays a disgraced psychologist in a relatively small part that remains possibly my favourite of anything he's ever done.

Branagh's directing here fluctuates wildly between pretty good and wildly over-the-top. He knows he's doing it, he's doing it on purpose ... but it's still way over the top. I think he's reaching for the kind of visuals Hitchcock occasionally used, but with somewhat less success than Hitchcock. Nevertheless, it's an entertaining and enjoyable movie.

1991, dir. Kenneth Branagh. With Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Derek Jacobi, Andy García, Hanna Schygulla, Wayne Knight, Robin Williams.

Dear Frankie

Frankie frequently writes to his father who is in the merchant marine since the separation of his parents when he was very young. We soon find out that his letters end up in his mother's (Mortimer) hands, and she replies to them. Which works well enough until the ship Frankie thinks his father is on pulls into port. Rather than give up on the ruse, Mortimer hires someone (Butler) to play the part of the father, with substantial side effects. Charming, almost sickly sweet, with a very open ending. Mortimer and Butler are good.

2004, dir. Shona Auerbach. With Emily Mortimer, Jack McElhone, Gerard Butler.

Death Race

A remake - in spirit only - of Roger Corman's 1975 trash classic "Death Race 2000." Corman was on-board as a producer. Anderson brings us the story of an ex-race car driver (Statham) framed for murder by a prison warden so she can bring him in to drive in the televised and extremely lucrative "Death Race" inside her prison. This is of course just an excuse for a revenge movie with lots of cars, crashes, explosions, and (very) gory deaths. And don't forget the babes - Martinez is gorgeous. Pure trash, and highly enjoyable if you like that kind of thing.

In the past I've mostly encountered McShane as an animated bad guy - yes, I know he's done lots of other stuff, but that's what I've seen of him. It was a treat to find out he's a good actor and makes an appealing good guy.

2008, dir. Paul W.S. Anderson. With Jason Statham, Joan Allen, Tyrese Gibson, Natalie Martinez, Ian McShane, Max Ryan, Jason Clarke, Frederick Koehler, Robert LaSardo, Robin Shou, Jacob Vargas.

Death Trap

A well-known playwright (Caine) riding a string of flops is approached by one of his young students (Reeve) to review the student's play. He decides to invite the student over and murder him to get the play for himself. This is followed by a string of reversals and betrayals to stagger the mind. It's meant to be ludicrously funny, but to me it was just ludicrous. But it's odd to see Reeve so long ago: I've thought of him for so long as a wheelchair-borne quadriplegic that I'd forgotten he was a good looking actor when he was younger.

1982, dir. Sidney Lumet. With Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, Dyan Cannon, Irene Worth.

Defendor

Harrelson plays Arthur Poppington, aka "Defendor." Arthur isn't very bright, but is determined - as Defendor - to take out "Captain Industry." So he dresses up as Defendor and goes out nights to protect the world from evil. We see most of this in flashback, with Arthur being interviewed by Dr. Park (Oh) in a psychological evaluation.

The film has huge banners all over it proclaiming its Canadian-ness and its various Canadian funding, but three out of five of the main characters are American (Oh and Koteas being the Canadians) and nothing in the content suggests that the city is Canadian (nor is it indicated that it's American).

Harrelson is good, and the script remains fairly true to itself right through to the end (although things resolve a little too positively to feel real) - which, not surprisingly, isn't very happy. The movie is reasonably good, but I didn't particularly enjoy it.

2009, dir. Peter Stebbings. With Woody Harrelson, Kat Dennings, Elias Koteas, Sandra Oh, Michael Kelly.

Definitely, Maybe

After a sex-ed class at school, Maya Hayes (Breslin) demands her father (Reynolds) tell her the story of how he met her mother. He turns it into a mystery, changing the names of the three main women in his life as he tells her his personal history across 16 years. Most of it we see as it happened, but there are occasional interruptions by Maya. It's a comedy, it's ... sort of romantic. None of the characters are evil, no one humiliates themselves for humour, and yet it's very funny and quite charming. There's chemistry between all the players. I also hadn't the slightest idea where it was going and found the ending satisfying without being obvious - a big surprise for something that's nominally a romantic comedy. I really like this one.

2008, dir. Adam Brooks. With Ryan Reynolds, Abigail Breslin, Elizabeth Banks, Isla Fisher, Rachel Weisz, Derek Luke, Liane Balaban, Kevin Kline.

Déjà Vu

Washington plays a cop (actually a federal agent, but the difference isn't particularly important to the movie despite their making much of it) investigating a horrific bombing on a New Orleans ferry that kills over 500 people. He makes a connection on a young woman apparently killed in the explosion whose corpse showed up too early, and because of this detective work is drawn farther into the investigation. This includes viewing the scene four and a half days ago through what he is initially told is an assemblage of satellite data but which turns out to be a device that sees into the past, and you just know time travel will be involved.

MINOR SPOILER: Unfortunately the apartment with the blood-soaked bandages couldn't exist in the time line in which Washington started to investigate. Time travel, particularly when the characters have an opportunity to change things, present an immense technical ("could it happen?") challenge for writers. And they made a huge logical error: having carefully set you up to understand the parameters and how the time travel might work, they choose both options from their own either/or scenario. The first thirty minutes is a surprisingly decent suspense thriller, but it gets sillier and poorer once the SF elements are introduced - the "I can see the past" car chase is particularly stupid.

2006, dir. Tony Scott. With Denzel Washington, Paula Patton, Val Kilmer, James Caviezel, Adam Goldberg, Elden Hensen.

Delicatessen

"Surreal" doesn't begin to cover it. In a post-apocalyptic world, a surviving delicatessen serves up the occasional passer-by the local residents. I borrowed this because it was directed by Jeunet, and it certainly has many of the touches he shows in later films including a heavy inclination to sepia toning and absurdity by the truck load. Well-loved by both the critics and the fans, I guess I just didn't "get it."

1991, dir. Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. With Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Ticky Holgado, Anne-Marie Pisani, Silvie Laguna.

Desert Heat

This is a really bad martial arts movie (direct to video apparently), but saying "it's just a poor remake of 'Yojimbo'" misses out on some wonderfully sick and morbid humour. There have been many parodies of Mr. Miyagi (the mentor in the original "The Karate Kid"), but who better to parody the role than Pat Morita? Under the direction of the same man who directed him the first time? (Although Avildsen was so embarrassed by this one he's credited as "Danny Mulroon.") The movie's greatest weakness is its attempts to be a serious martial arts film. That's just boring (and the fighting isn't even good). But the twisted humour is just a scream.

1999, dir. John Avildsen (credited as "Danny Mulroon"). With Jean-Claude Van Damme, Pat Morita, Danny Trejo.

Despicable Me

Gru is a supervillain - but he's also getting a bit old and being supplanted by the younger Vector. Having failed to break into Vector's fortress, he discovers that Vector's weakness is cookies, so he adopts three children who sell cookies to sneak his robotic minions into Vector's place. The bonding process that follows is unbelievable, ludicrous, occasionally sickly sweet, and very entertaining. Gru's army of minions (bright yellow, pill-shaped, short, indestructible, semi-humanoid ...) are also very funny.

2010, dir. Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud. With Steve Carrell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Kristen Wiig, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Elsie Fisher, Pierre Coffin.

Destry Rides Again

I've never seen Stewart looking so young (or so thin and tall). And the movie has Dietrich too! Stewart plays Destry, a young new Deputy in a violent town who doesn't believe in guns. Everyone finds this hilarious except for the sheriff (Winninger) who had hoped he'd be a gunslinger like his father. Destry falls for the beautiful lounge singer (Dietrich) who works for the unscrupulous Kent (Donlevy).

The movie shows its age and Vaudeville origins with the staged (literally) singing numbers with Dietrich in a saloon. Stewart is perhaps a bit better than usual: he's playing his usual character, but hasn't worn it in quite as much as he had later. I couldn't really see the appeal of Dietrich. Winninger was good - both funny as the former town drunk and also poignant when he needed to be. Overall fairly funny.

1939, dir. George Marshall. With James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich, Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, Brian Donlevy.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

Lau plays Detective Dee, jailed for eight years for treachery against the crown when he opposed the soon-to-be Empress' becoming protector of the throne. He's summoned to see her when a couple of men spontaneously combust on the eve of her ascendancy as Empress, and then sent out to investigate with the assistance of Jing'er (Li) and Pei (Deng). The first is unreliable and treacherous, and the second is a complete asshole ... who at least wants to get to the truth.

As befits a Wu Xia picture, the leads are all capable of super-human feats. Unfortunately, the fight scenes (under the care of Sammo Hung) kind of suck, so don't see it for that. The mystery is complex and mildly interesting, but I was bothered by the spontaneous combustion relying on a non-existent animal (it might have been better if it was caused by religious superstition, as was suggested at one point). I rather liked the Pei Donglai character - as I mentioned, not a nice guy but determined to seek the truth, not a common type of character in the Chinese movies I've seen. But overall it was a pretty poor and commonplace (if high budget) martial arts flick.

2010, dir. Tsui Hark. With Andy Lau, Bingbing Li, Chao Deng, Carina Lau, Tony Leung Ka Fai.

The Devil Wears Prada

Hathaway plays a recent grad who wants to be a journalist working for the insanely demanding Streep at a fashion magazine in New York. The movie is essentially about selling your soul - something I might have guessed from the title, but you never know with a comedy. As her personal life is devastated, Hathaway starts dressing more and more stylishly and occasionally actually receiving acknowledgement from her boss. Hathaway is charming (except for the selling her soul part), Streep is miserable, Blunt is unpleasant, Tucci plays his normal role (he plays it well, also as usual ... but isn't it time for him to move on?) and Grenier is around just enough to play the boyfriend, the reminder of what she's losing. It wasn't nearly as humiliating or embarrassing as it could have been and there's definitely some humour, but this isn't a particularly good movie.

2006, dir. David Frankel. With Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, Adrien Grenier, Simon Baker, Tracie Thoms.

The Devil's Disciple

Written by George Bernard Shaw, a BBC TV production. The filming is ... iffy. But the performances are good, and the script pretty much puts away any further doubts. My favourite Shaw play.

In 1777 America, Richard Dudgeon (Gwilym) returns home, disowned son of a religious and bitter mother, to find himself owner of the house on his father's death. Just in time to face the occupation of the British army. Dudgeon claims to be "the Devil's Disciple," although he may just be doing it because he's infuriated by the religious hypocrisy around him. The local preacher (Stewart) has a shot at befriending him. I enjoyed Shaw's script immensely.

1987, dir. David Jones. With Mike Gwilym, Patrick Stewart, Ian Richardson, Elizabeth Spriggs, Susan Wooldridge.

Diabolique

I've rarely seen a movie so over-the-top that it's boring, but this definitely manages. Stone plays cold and obnoxious, and doesn't manage to even do that particularly well. Adjani does weepy and weak. Palminteri tries for ferocious sexual animal or some such and just looks silly. The story has the wife and mistress of a brutal teacher teaming up to murder him, but strange things happen after the murder. Even if you can get past the bad acting, there are other major issues: who took the pictures of the wife and mistress moving the crate? All the major parties were occupied. And the ending, in which pretty much everyone dies and is revived a couple times, is just beyond ludicrous.

1996, dir. Jeremiah S. Chechik. With Isabelle Adjani, Sharon Stone, Chazz Palminteri, Kathy Bates, Donal Logue.

Dial M for Murder

Hitchcock adaptation of Frederick Knott play (Knott did the screenplay too). A beautiful young wife (Kelly) is having an affair, and her husband (Milland), while pretending not to know, plots to have her killed so he can keep her money. He's slippery and clever, but things don't quite go as planned. Clever, witty, and well-acted. Not great, but definitely enjoyable and worth seeing.

1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. With Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams, Anthony Dawson.

Dick Tracy

Beatty's take on the classic comic. Painted in broad strokes in every respect, I found it more annoying than successful. The dialogue is broad, the characters are broadly drawn, all the bad guys wear tons of facial silicon, and the colours blaze off the screen. "Sin City" took a lot of clues from this one: use the facial modifications and colours in judicious quantities as highlights, not continuous overload. Oddly, I thought Madonna provided one of the better acting jobs in this sloppy mess (the list of people who embarrassed themselves in this one is long). It's an interesting movie and worth seeing, but it's not very good.

1990, dir. Warren Beatty. With Warren Beatty, Glenne Headly, Charlie Korsmo, Madonna, Mandy Patinkin, Paul Sorvino, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Dick Van Dyke.

Le Dîner de Cons

Pierre (Lhermitte) and his friends have a dinner each week, and each one of them brings the stupidest guest they can find (prize to be awarded later). Pierre has found a winner, a man who builds incredibly complex models from matchsticks, carrying pictures of them and going on at great length (Villeret, who played the same role on stage). But Pierre's back has gone out and his wife is upset with the game. When his new dinner guest comes over, he loses his wife to the hijinks that ensue and every attempt to fix things make matters worse, all of which is hilariously funny ... if you like humiliation. But the only part I enjoyed was Huster as the ex-husband laughing at Lhermitte as he suffers through payback. A thoroughly mean-spirited movie about a bunch of obnoxious people.

1998, dir. Francis Veber. With Thierry Lhermitte, Jacques Villeret, Francis Huster.

The Dish

"Based on a true story." When the Americans went to the Moon, a radio telescope in the middle of a sheep paddock in Australia was used to transmit a significant part of possibly the most famous TV broadcast ever made as Armstrong walked on the Moon. This tells the story of the people and town associated with that telescope. Manages to convey a good part of the anxiety and excitement of the event. Enjoyable and sweet.

2000, dir. Rob Sitch. With Sam Neill, Billy Mitchell, Patrick Warburton, Roy Billing.

District 9

In the near future, a very large spaceship settles over Johannesburg. Humans eventually cut their way in and rescue the starving aliens on board. Twenty years later, the million-plus aliens are being kept in a slum that's now to be relocated further away from Johannesburg. In charge of this operation and at the centre of the movie is Wikus van de Merwe (Copley), a cheerful and not terribly bright man who was probably chosen for the job because he married the chairman's daughter.

A surprisingly decent SF movie, I didn't like it much - in large part because our main character spends most of the movie puking, mutating, and disintegrating. If you're okay with that, it's pretty good.

2009, dir. Neill Blomkamp. With Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, David James.

District 13 (orig. "Banlieue 13")

Free running / parkour and martial arts action flick from France. This has action that should make Tony Jaa and Jackie Chan sit up and take note. The initial (parkour) chase scene is fantastic. There's some good fights and action later, and - while it's mostly predictable - there are some entertaining twists and turns. Action movies don't usually come out of France, and that's another good reason for fans of the genre to watch this one: it's got a different feel. Definitely worthwhile.

2004, dir. Pierre Morel. With David Belle, Cyril Raffaelli, Tony D'Amario, Bibi Naceri, Dany Verissimo.

District 13: Ultimatum (aka. "D13-U", orig. "Banlieue 13 Ultimatum")

Just like the previous movie, except not as good. They do all the same things: we meet Belle doing good in the hood (trying to blow up the wall around D13 this time ... last time it was destroying a drug stash), and we meet Raffaelli single-handedly taking out a drug dealer, exactly the same as last time. And this time Leïto (Belle) rescues Damien (Raffaelli) from jail instead of vice versa ... And guess what? They have to save D13 from being exploded, again. Except this time the editing is even choppier so the fights have less visual appeal, and the same problem applies to the parkour. Neither is as good as the previous outing. There are more bad guys, and more good/bad guys, and the end result is more laughable.

2009, dir. Patrick Alessandrin. With David Belle, Cyril Raffaelli, MC Jean Gab'1, Philippe Torreton, Daniel Duval, Elodie Yung.

Dive Bomber

Made just prior to the American entry into the Second World War, this rah-rah patriotic Hollywood product has little to recommend it except the science. Starring Flynn as a flight medical researcher and MacMurray as a leading pilot sometimes involved in medical testing, the flying footage is excellent but too long (and I love planes!) and the acting kind of sucks. MacMurray misses the target on both his comedy and his acting. Flynn is somewhat convincing as a womanizing devil and okay as a doctor, but poor as a person with actual human emotions. There are also one or two supposedly "comedic" sub-plots dragged in for the "entertainment" value that fall completely flat while upping an already too-long run-time.

What the story is primarily about is the development of aeronautical methods of preventing black-outs in dives and preventing altitude sickness. And in this alone the movie is quite interesting - although probably only for a science geek like myself. Hardly recommended, even for the latter group. Other points of interest include incredibly early use of Technicolor - in combination with unprecedented naval aerial filming, and atrociously bad direction by Curtiz - who directed Flynn's most famous movies and "Casablanca" (only a year later).

1941, dir. Michael Curtiz. With Errol Flynn, Fred MacMurray, Ralph Bellamy, Alexis Smith.

Dr. No

The first James Bond movie. Connery plays Bond, a role he was to become very familiar with. And most of the elements we became so familiar with over the years were there: suave hero, hot women, evil world-destroying conspiracy, even one or two awful puns. But this has the least action of any Bond movie I've ever seen - that's been ramped up considerably as the series progressed.

1962, dir. Terence Young. With Sean Connery, Joseph Wiseman, Ursula Andress, Jack Lord, John Kitzmiller, Lois Maxwell.

Dogma

Smith's brutal attack on the Catholic Church. The irony of it, and what makes it so good, is that he is clearly still a man of faith. But that faith is in God, not the Church.

The cast is incredible, and, for the most part, well used. We start with a woman (Fiorentino) who works at a Family Planning clinic. While she still goes to church, she's lost faith. She's shortly visited by an angel (Rickman, hysterical) and sent on a quest to prevent two angels (Damon and Affleck, also hilarious - and rather threatening) from returning to heaven - and in the process un-making reality. Jay and Silent Bob are of course present and ever-helpful.

Highly recommended for anyone with a sense of humour about religion.

1999, dir. Kevin Smith. With Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Linda Fiorentino, Alan Rickman, Chris Rock, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, George Carlin, Salma Hayek, Jason Lee, Janeane Garofalo, Alanis Morissette, Bud Cort.

Don Juan DeMarco

The story of a soon-to-retire psychiatrist (Brando) and his last patient, a young man who claims to be Don Juan (Depp). Depp is just about the only person who could have sold this story in the title role, and he's great. The tale he tells is absurd, funny, and romantic, and the script is sharply observant of the state of love and our view of reality today. This is a really wonderful movie.

1995, dir. Jeremy Leven. With Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando, Faye Dunaway,

Doom

Based on the video game of the same name, includes big nasty marines running around sticky dark corridors trying to clear them of horrible monsters level by level.

The awful plot and bad acting reminded me considerably of "Resident Evil," although, bad as it is, it isn't that bad. Urban and Pike raise the general level of acting from awful to mediocre. Johnson is squarely holding down the awful end of the scale - he's made it to "passable" in recent years, but definitely not in this movie.

2005, dir. Andrzej Bartkowiak. With Dwayne Johnson, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike.

Dorian Gray

Based on Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, the director and screenwriter apparently didn't believe that Gray's off-screen acts of depravity in the original novel were sufficient: they load on the on-screen hedonism, depravity, and violence to levels Wilde never even imagined. They also lost a lot of Wilde's wit and social commentary in the process.

Barnes is adequate in the lead, as are most of the cast. Firth is a stand-out, stealing every scene he's in. Every step away from Wilde's version made this a poorer film (and there are a lot of those steps): even if you haven't read the original, this will probably look a pretty shoddy piece of work.

2009, dir. Oliver Parker. With Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Ben Chaplin, Rebecca Hall.

Double Indemnity

If the interviews on the DVD are to be believed, this movie single-handedly launched the entire Film Noir genre. Certainly it's a very good movie. An insurance agent (MacMurray) falls for a married woman who convinces him to help her kill her husband after taking out a lot of insurance on him. The three leads are all excellent, and the story falls into place, and then back apart again, with style and an elegant inevitability.

1944, dir. Billy Wilder. With Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Jean Heather, Byron Barr.

Dragon Fist

Early Hong Kong Chan - before he developed a sense of humour and started directing his own movies. It looks initially like a standard "you killed my master" revenge tale, but turns out rather differently. Not that that's as much of a blessing as it sounds - the script is as useless as the acting. The martial arts are okay, but very traditional.

1979, dir. Lo Wei. With Jackie Chan.

Dragon Wars: D-War

In 1507 in Korea, the Dragons had their last uprising. But the heroine and her hero fell in love, and denied the necessary sacrifice. Now the dragons, the hero, the heroine, and the protector have all been reborn in ... Los Angeles. So much of the same mythology will play out in 2007, in the modern-day United States.

The acting is mediocre, the special effects are visibly CGI but remarkably good given the budget. Still, it's a good thing I like the occasional movie with a side of cheese, because this isn't very good.

2007, dir. Shim Hyung-rae. With Jason Behr, Amanda Brooks, Robert Forster, Elizabeth Peña.

Dralion

A DVD of Cirque du Soleil's show "Dralion." A wonderful acrobatic show, with the occasional rather odd cutting decision - ie. some fantastic acrobatics going on centre stage, and they decide to show you the singer. Overall pretty good.

2000. Dir. David Mallet. Cirque du Soleil.

Dreadnaught

What the title has to do with anything, I don't know. Classically bad Hong Kong chop sockey. I hoped for a bit more from Yuen Woo-ping and Yuen Biao, one of Jacky Chan's classmates. Biao is incredibly acrobatic and Woo-ping is the best fight choreographer in the business, but this movie doesn't do much. It's mildly humorous, but overall not even worth the rental.

1995. dir. Yuen Woo-ping. With Yuen Biao, Tak-Hing Kwan.

Drive Angry

Our protagonist is John Milton (Cage), brutally interrogating people who know about a kidnapping. As he causes mayhem across the state, he acquires a travel companion named Piper (Heard) and her fine ride (a black Dodge Charger). We find out that Milton is after Jonah King (Burke), a Satanist who killed Milton's daughter and intends to sacrifice Milton's granddaughter. Milton doesn't like that - in fact, it appears he's returned from Hell to take care of business. He's pursued by "The Accountant" (Fichtner), who's enjoying his time on Earth - and is even harder to kill than Milton.

There's swearing, lots of sex, an incredible amount of violence, and more stupidity than you can imagine. It's all kind of entertaining, if you like that kind of thing.

2011, dir. Patrick Lussier. With Nicholas Cage, Amber Heard, William Fichtner, Billy Burke, David Morse.

Driving Miss Daisy

A quiet little piece about some old people getting older ... Funny and enjoyable. Doesn't talk about racism much, and yet manages to say a fair bit about it.

1989. dir. Bruce Beresford. With Jessica Tandy, Morgan Freeman, Dan Ackroyd.

Drunken Master (orig. "Jui kuen")

My second favourite early Chan movie, bettered only by "Snake in Eagle's Shadow" (which contains all the same actors and stunt men). Chan plays an obnoxious and talented Kung Fu student, who, after causing too much trouble, is forced by his father to study with the titular drunken master. After much brutal training and some typically Chan humour, he bests the evil enemy. So what else is new? But the fights are among his best. Highly recommended for fans of the genre.

1978, dir. Yuen Woo-Ping. With Jackie Chan.

Due South Season 1 (TV)

"Due South" is fine Canadian content about a Mountie (an RCMP officer, played by Gross) named Benton Fraser who works at the Canadian consulate in Chicago. He was described by a friend who reads Terry Pratchett as "a Canadian Corporal Carrot," a description so accurate it's given me nearly as much amusement as the series itself. Of course Fraser works at the consulate, but somehow we always see him hanging out with his cop buddy (Marciano) helping solve cases - usually by extreme attention to detail, and sometimes by sniffing, licking, or tracking. The ideas covered are quite varied, and they manage to keep the episodes fairly fresh and enjoyable.

1994-95. With Paul Gross, David Marciano, Gordon Pinsent.

Dummy

Let's be clear from the start: this is a Romantic Comedy. The outcome is completely inevitable, the only thing that makes it worth the journey is Brody's excellent performance. He plays a shy and rather emotionally battered 28 year old who quits his job and takes up ventriloquism - and begins to find his voice. The end credits are quick to assure us that Brody did all his own ventriloquism - I'm sure he did, he's just that way. Jovovich plays his misguided and flat out crazy friend "Fangora" with a great deal of energy but not a lot of talent, and Farmiga plays his incredibly sweet and charming love interest.

2002, dir. Greg Pritkin. With Adrien Brody, Milla Jovovich, Illeana Douglas, Vera Farmiga, Jessica Walter, Ron Leibman.

Dune (2000)

I never did see the infamous 1984 movie by David Lynch: I loved the book too much to see it slaughtered like that. While this has many problems, it was an earnest attempt at bringing the entire novel to the screen.

Let's start with the problems: The effects are poor, constantly using massive amounts of blatant CGI. Everybody in the production is from different countries, and the accents vary enormously. The acting is often mediocre. Very heavy use is made of colour tinting throughout. The run-time is four and a half hours (the director's cut is five hours).

And now the good stuff: the run-time is four and a half hours. This let them develop most of Herbert's characters, and bring in very nearly the entire plot as he wrote it - something you couldn't do in less time than this. Hurt is good, although he doesn't stay around long. Newman as Paul Atreides is quite good - and that's a major plus given that he's the centre of the entire mini-series. And the movie as a whole is gripping and disturbing. I highly recommend it.

2000, dir. John Harrison. With Alec Newman, William Hurt, Saskia Reeves, Ian McNeice, Julie Cox, P.H. Moriarty, Giancarlo Giannini, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Barbora Kodetová.

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E

Eagle Eye

Works on our paranoia about the staggering level of observation that's possible in modern society, and what could happen if that was blatantly misused. LaBeouf and Monaghan both get phone calls from a mysterious woman who orders them to do illegal things - forcing them to do so with threats and physical coercion. A large number of expensive cars are totalled in the early car chase - and the action editing is so choppy and blurry you can't see a bit of this million dollar spectacle they've put on. So what was the point? Logic also falls by the wayside, a casualty of sloppy plotting. As usual LaBeouf's acting is like a beacon for viewers desperate for a moment of quality. Could have been a good movie, but blew it all on sloppiness and sensationalism.

2008, dir. D.J. Caruso. With Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Billy Bob Thornton, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, Anthony Mackie.

Earthsea

This is based on Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea and its sequel, The Tombs of Atuan. I've read the former about ten times, the latter perhaps four. It's kind of hard for me to look at this without thinking of the source material, and believe me, it doesn't hold up well. They didn't want it to be like Harry Potter-lite, or so the director said in the interview - and yet we have sorcerers throwing fireballs at evil soldiers, and horrible looking flying monsters, and a whole bunch of other stuff that didn't come out of LeGuin. Her stories are slow and contemplative, but they felt the need for action. So there are large elements from her story, but there are also huge sections that definitely weren't hers. The acting is uniformly mediocre and the story they end up with is fairly bad. Not much to recommend here.

2004, dir. Robert Lieberman. With Shawn Ashmore, Kristin Kreuk, Isabella Rossellini, Danny Glover, Sebastian Roché, Chris Gauthier.

East is East

Listed as a comedy, and highly regarded by the critics. I suppose there is a fair bit of humour, but the emotional content is intense and the humour is frequently quite black. Portrays a lower class Pakistani-English family living in England, with the Pakistani father trying to arrange marriages for his sons, who aren't interested. The ending is pretty mixed - rather more like real life than most movies. I liked it.

1999. dir. Damien O'Donnell. With Om Puri, Linda Bassett, Jimi Mistry, Archie Panjabi.

Eastern Promises

Cronenberg's follow-up to "A History of Violence" - the two movies share a lot in common. Not least of which is Mortensen. This time we're looking at a Russian crime family in London. Mortensen plays the driver, Cassels the irresponsible son to the ruthless father played by Mueller-Stahl. And Watts is a midwife in possession of the child of a very young - and dead - girl who has dubious ties to that family. While the story is significantly different than "A History of Violence," the feel is quite similar - the same sorts of questions about violence and loyalty, and this one is nearly as good (which means it's very good).

2007, dir. David Cronenberg. With Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Mina E. Mina, Sinéad Cusack, Jerzy Skolimowski.

Easy A

Stone plays Olive Penderghast, a sarcastic A student at a high school in California. She makes up a story of a sexual adventure and ends up with a reputation. Figuring it can't get any worse, she fakes sex with a gay friend so that his reputation will be improved. As rumours and unkind words fly, she starts wearing trashy clothes with a red "A" sewn on them to match the book they're reading at school, The Scarlet Letter. Stone is good, Tucci and Clarkson are good as her eccentric, intelligent and supportive parents, and Hayden-Church is good as her favourite teacher. I even enjoyed the several direct references to Eighties teen movies. But somehow the movie as a whole just never grabbed me. Should work for most people - definitely better than most teen flicks.

2010, dir. Will Gluck. With Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Thomas Hayden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci, Cam Gigandet, Lisa Kudrow.

Easy Living

Madcap/slapstick comedy with poor working girl Mary Smith (Arthur) caught up with the extremely rich Ball family in the most ridiculous possible way. Typical of the Depression (and Preston Sturges, who wrote it), we have a poor girl suddenly thrown into the midst of wealth and romance. The product is silly but charming and funny, and Arthur, Arnold, and Milland are all very good.

1937, dir. Mitchell Leisen. With Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold, Ray Milland, Luis Alberni, Mary Nash.

Eat Drink Man Woman

About the lives of three Chinese women and their master chef father who has trouble communicating with them. Plays out across several months and all their lives get turned around in various ways. Food plays a central part. Very funny and a great view of a family.

1994. dir. Ang Lee.

EDtv

Similar to "The Truman Show," except that the main character is aware he's the centre of a live 24 hour TV show. Very funny, well developed.

1999. dir. Ron Howard. With Matthew McConaughey, Jenna Elfman, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Hurley.

8 Mile

I didn't believe it when I heard it. The critics all said "Eminem can act." The movie sounded interesting, so I rented it to see for myself. And it's true: he can act. Perhaps only in this context, but he turns in a really good performance here. The story is somewhat autobiographical, although several elements have been changed. Don't discount his achievement because it's a portrayal of his own life: not as easy as it sounds. The "battles" he took part in coming up in the rap/hip hop world explain a lot about the way he writes.

2002. dir. Curtis Hanson. With Eminem, Kim Bassinger, Mekhi Phifer, Omar Miller.

84 Charing Cross Road

Bancroft plays Helene Hanff, an American writer in New York looking for out of print British books. She strikes up a business relationship and correspondence with Frank Doël in Great Britain, buying books on an irregular basis. The correspondence lasts 20 years, and through it we trace both their lives. A very quiet and charming film based on a true story.

1986. dir. David Jones. With Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, Judy Dench, Mercedes Ruehl.

Elektra

"Elektra" as a character makes her first live-action film appearance in the 2003 movie "Daredevil." In which she dies. And yet, this isn't a prequel, it's a loosely tied follow-up. See, Elektra (played in both interpretations by Garner) is raised from the dead by her sensei/teacher, "Stick," played by Stamp. After that (or is it before? it's hard to tell), she gets an education in "Kimagure," a combination of martial arts and anticipating the future. But none of this is told linearly: it's all flashbacks. This might have been workable, but is considerably confused by many of them being involuntary flashbacks for Elektra herself, who even occasionally mistakes them for reality. After being booted out of Kimagure school for being too violent, she becomes an assassin. We see her at the beginning of the movie on what will turn out to be her last assignment. She meets and saves a father and daughter (Višnjić and Prout), and then gets involved in their rather complicated lives which turn out to overlap her own.

Ultimately a very confused and confusing movie with all its unclear flashbacks and supernatural superpowers.

2005, dir. Rob Bowman. With Jennifer Garner, Goran Višnjić, Kirsten Prout, Terence Stamp.

Elizabeth

I'm told by those that have read about the history of Queen Elizabeth's reign that this is ... inaccurate. Period dramas like this are usually shot in a very straight-forward manner, but there's some use in this one of unconventional cinematography, including bleach-to-white and blurring, which feels a little out of place. But the performances are superb, and the story is excellent. Highly recommended.

With Cate Blanchett, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffry Rush.

Elizabethtown

After creating a financial catastrophe of epic proportions, the main character (Bloom) is stopped from committing suicide by a phone call telling him of the death of his father. His visit to the titular hometown of his father introduces him to a talkative flight attendant (Dunst) and quirky family members. Has some embarrassing moments (Sarandon tap dancing is right up there), but overall a bizarre and bizarrely enjoyable ride. Second time around I was more impressed: Dunst and Bloom are excellent. Dunst is both annoying and charming, as she is supposed to be. The movie is a mess, the characters are brilliant creations.

dir. Cameron Crowe. With Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin.

Ella Enchanted

Hathaway plays Ella, "blessed" with obedience. She must obey every command given to her. When her father remarries and she acquires some new and unpleasant stepsisters, it comes time for her to set out on a quest to find the fairy godmother who so kindly cursed her.

Unfortunately what we have here is in many ways a live-action version of Shrek 1+2. No obnoxious-but-somehow-charming animated ogre (although there are ogres ...), we have instead a beautiful and intelligent but cursed young woman as our heroine. Also on a quest. Also through medieval settings with anachronistic jokes about malls and modern life in general. Also with bad musical numbers set to anachronistic rock music. Unfortunately, they over-applied the "cute," dumped the vast majority of the plot kindly provided by Gail Carson Levine (author of the book of the same name), and wasted the acting talents of several really good actors. A few clever jokes doesn't come close to covering the other massive flaws.

A related note: the BluRay disc of this movie is the most stripped out production I've ever seen in my life: no subtitles (in any language), no extras, it doesn't even have a menu. You drop the disc in the drive and it plays: that's it.

2004, dir. Tommy O'Haver. With Anne Hathaway, Hugh Dancy, Cary Elwes, Minnie Driver, Eric Idle, Steve Coogan, Patrick Bergin, Joanna Lumley, Vivica A. Fox, Lucy Punch, Jennifer Higham, Aidan McArdle, Parminder Nagra, Heidi Klum, Jimi Mistry.

Emma (A&E)

An A&E product, this was made for TV. Despite that unpromising beginning, this is a superb production. The dialogue is great, it looks good, Beckinsale is very good, and she gets great support from the entire cast. I really enjoyed this one.

1996. dir. Diarmuid Lawrence. With Kate Beckinsale, Mark Strong, Prunella Scales, Olivia Williams, Samantha Morton.

Emma (McGrath)

I expected to like this better than the A&E version, but was surprised to find it worse. The thing is ... while Emma (played by Paltrow) is indeed irritating and manipulating, she's also quite charming. The A&E script brings that out, this one completely loses sight of the charming part - which leaves very little for Northam's Knightley to convincingly fall in love with. The production values on this one are far superior, but that's about it: the acting is about equal, and A&E got its hands on a much better script.

1996. dir. Douglas McGrath. With Gwyneth Paltrow, Greta Scacchi, Alan Cumming, Jeremy Northam, Toni Collette, Juliette Lewis.

The Emperor's New Groove

One of Disney's best efforts. A little annoying in places, but very funny. They manage this by stepping outside of standard film conventions in some odd ways (think of a voice-over narration that's a little too self-aware). Spade plays Emperor Kuzco, in the only role in which I've ever liked his work. Kuzco is turned into a llama by his advisor (who meant to kill him), and the story revolves around his regaining the throne and becoming less arrogant in the process (that's a surprise).

2000. dir. Mark Dindal. With David Spade, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt, Patrick Warburton.

Empire Falls

Made for TV, but that's a good thing: they had an excellent cast and got to make it as long as they needed (about three and a half hours). From Richard Russo's Pulitzer Prize-wining novel about a small town in Maine. Centres around Harris's character Miles Roby, a good man who's a little too passive and is under the thumb of the town's ruling matriarch. Plays out ... just like life in a small town. I haven't been much of a fan of Newman, but he was great as the tiresome, annoying Max. A very good movie.

2005, dir. Fred Schepisi. With Ed Harris, Helen Hunt, Paul Newman, Robin Wright Penn, Aidan Quinn, Joanne Woodward, Dennis Farina, William Fichtner, Estelle Parsons, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Theresa Russell, Danielle Panabaker, Lou Taylor Pucci.

The Empire Strikes Back

The second "Star Wars" movie (contrary to Lucas's revisionism) and the best of the series. The darkest of the lot, with the best character development (such as it is). Retains the mythic proportions of the first movie and really develops the universe. Definitely benefits from a new hand at the helm.

1980, dir. Irvin Kershner. With Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, David Prowse, Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker.

Enchanted

The premise is simple: in the animated world, the wicked step-mother (not even hers) launches the charming, singing, naive princess-to-be into the real world to get rid of her. Our world: Times Square, to be exact. Where she (Adams) behaves exactly like a Disney character: singing, charming animals and people, and - with the assistance of our hunky and cynical hero, Dempsey - finding out about "dates." Her prince (Marsden) follows her through and proceeds to take on a bus, which he skewers with his sword. Then the incompetent assistant (Spall) to the evil step-mom (Sarandon) follows them through, etc. etc. You get the idea. Adams is particularly good as an authentic cartoon princess who believes in "forever and ever." I think the movie would have been better if they had skewered the initial naiveté of the cartoon world some (a la "Shrek"), but they chose to go for a faithful and irony-free version. But the result is nevertheless quite charming.

2007, dir. Kevin Lima. With Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Timothy Spall, Susan Sarandon, Idina Menzel, Rachel Covey.

Encounters at the End of the World

Herzog's voice-over starts this documentary about Antarctica by telling us "The National Science Foundation invited me even though I made it clear I would not be making another movie about penguins." Indeed, he does not. I still think the man is insane, and he does make some weird choices, but overall this is a fascinating movie. He goes to Antarctica, shows you not only the pretty scenery but also the ugliness (McMurdo Station, which looks like an Alaskan social housing project) and talks to the people. Who are all intelligent and more than a little bit weird. Most are travellers, many have PhDs and operate forklifts. You've never seen anything like this about Antarctica before - and you should.

2007, dir. Werner Herzog.

Endless Night

Bennett plays the main character, Michael Rogers. Having drifted from job to job for a while, a couple major occurrences change his life: he meets the famous, and terminally ill, architect "Santonix" (Oscarsson), and he meets a young woman named Ellie Thomson (Mills) at a particularly beautiful place where he'd like to build a house - if only he had money. As it turns out, she has a great deal of money, and loves him.

They hire their architect friend to build their dream house on the land - but there's a rumour the land is cursed, and problems and death follow. It is Christie, after all. The sets, particularly the dream house and casual clothing, are incredibly Seventies. I felt the ending was a terrible cheat: yes, we had a couple clues, but I wasn't happy with it.

1972, dir. Sidney Gilliat. With Hywel Bennett, Hayley Mills, Per Oscarsson, Britt Ekland, George Sanders.

The English Patient

Based fairly loosely on Michael Ondaatje's famous novel of the same name. Ondaatje wrote things that couldn't be put on film, and Minghella does things on film that would be impossible to describe in a book. An extremely badly burned patient is cared for in an abandoned monastery in Italy in the second world war. His history unfolds in flashbacks. A brilliant movie (nine Academy awards), but don't watch it if you're looking for a mood-lifter.

1998. dir. Anthony Minghella. With Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe.

Enigma

The thing that struck me the most watching this movie was the slavish accuracy of the recreation of Bletchley Park (the code-breaking centre in the U.K. during the Second World War, whose existence was only acknowledged by the British government in the 1970s), and how astonishingly similar it felt to the Bletchley Park portrayed in Neal Stephenson's fantastic book Cryptonomicon. For me, the movie was worth seeing just for this: it's a fascinating episode in history (perhaps more so to a computer geek). The main story revolves around one of the code breakers, a mildly unstable mathematical genius (played by Scott) obsessed with a woman he went out with for a short time. When she disappears, he and her roommate set out to find out what's going on.

2001, dir. Michael Apted. With Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Saffron Burrows, Jeremy Northam, Tom Hollander, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Matthew Macfadyen.

Enlightenment Guaranteed

A low budget German movie about two cranky brothers who set off to Tokyo and a Zen monastery together, for very different reasons. It reminded me considerably of "Lost in Translation," not just because of the Tokyo setting, but also because the two brothers seem so lost in not just Tokyo but their own lives. The two main characters are incredibly irritating right up until near the end, when the monastery has finally had its effect on them and they find some peace.

2002, dir. Doris Dörrie. With Uwe Ochsenknecht, Gustav-Peter Wöhler.

Equilibrium

Low budget science fiction morality tale. A couple people said it was "like 'The Matrix.'" I wouldn't say so: it had several gun battles and it's SF, but the similarities end there. Set in a world where everyone takes drugs to prevent emotions and it's a crime to feel anything. I'm interested to see he went on to do "Ultraviolet:" that makes a lot of sense.

2002, dir. Kurt Wimmer. With Christian Bale, Taye Diggs, Emily Watson, William Fichtner.

Escaflowne

Maybe this would have made sense if I'd seen the TV series ... although the notes claim it's a "retelling" rather than an extension. It made sense in places, except for the parts that didn't. Like why a 16 year old Japanese school girl is suddenly in an alternative universe, and a goddess. Or why everyone in the alternative universe is at war, or why there are enormous suits of armour that can magically be called up to wreak havoc on the landscape. Very nice animation in places, but the story doesn't make much sense.

2000, dir. Kazuki Akane, Yoshiyuki Takei.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Weird, weird movie. Very good though. Takes you a while to figure out what the hell is going on, but once you do it's fascinating. Carrey plays a man who decides to get his last relationship erased from his memory. During the process he has second thoughts and tries to fight it off. Pay attention and you'll be rewarded.

2004 dir. Michel Gondry. With Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson.

Everything is Illuminated

Wood plays Jonathan Safran Foer, the main character in the novel the movie is based on and the name of the novelist himself. Foer collects things - family things. He puts them in ziplock bags and sticks them on his big wall. We meet him as he sets out for the Ukraine to find the woman who rescued him from the Nazi extermination of their Jewish village. He has purchased the services of a translator and driver, who both turn out to be eccentric in the extreme - their several days together turn out to be "illuminating" for all of them.

The movie has a number of really beautiful moments, and all of the actors are good, but the movie frequently staggered on the edge of surreality and/or magic realism. I thought at first what they needed was to get more surreal, but the extras show that they had tried that, and they were right to avoid it. Perhaps what they needed was to always walk the line instead of straying back into mundane reality occasionally. Definitely an interesting movie.

2005, dir. Liev Schreiber. With Elijah Wood, Eugene Hütz, Boris Leskin, Laryssa Lauret.

eXistenZ

A mental exercise in keeping track of layers of deception, but don't forget the pounds and pounds of animal internals and the penetration. I found the repeated and mostly unrelated switchbacks made the movie less and less involving and ultimately I just didn't care anymore. And of course it was completely disgusting, but then it's Cronenberg. It doesn't matter if it was meant as a commentary on the dangers of video games, bioengineering, or both.

1999, dir. David Cronenberg. With Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe, Don McKellar, Sarah Polley.

The Expendables

There were a lot of complaints about this movie online, about it being "old school" or having too many characters. Certainly it's for fans of stuff like "Die Hard" and "Lethal Weapon" - if you stick those in the DVD player for a bit of mindless fun occasionally, you'll enjoy this too. Yes, there are a lot of well known action stars, but they're drawn larger than life - how much time do you need to get to know their characters? Things blow up, moral compasses are rediscovered, the good guys win ... What, you expected high art? It's well done in the genre and I enjoyed it.

2010, dir. Sylvester Stallone. With Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Eric Roberts, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, David Zayas, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Exploring the Deserts of the Earth

A documentary of a 900 day trip by motorcycle across nearly all of the deserts of the entire planet. Wallner is a very good cinematographer who produces some excellent footage, whether she's pointing the camera at people or landscapes. The 357 minute running time is broken up into 12 segments, two DVDs. If this were all deserts and nothing but, I might not have made it through: but it's broken up by the stories of their travels, which are occasionally quite fascinating. In Turkmenistan (? not sure it was that country, but one of the former Soviet republics) they were required to take two government watchers with them. The government watchers followed them into the dunes in a very old minivan, which got stuck. Over and over. Until Martin and Wallner hired two senior citizens in a very large truck to travel with them and periodically rescue the government watchers. Utterly bizarre.

2006, dir. Michael Martin, Elke Wallner. With Michael Martin, Elke Wallner. English narration by David Ingram.

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F

F/X

Rollie Tyler (played by Brown) is a special effects man for the movies, one of the best. He's approached by the Department of Justice, who convince him to stage a false public assassination of a crime boss so he can be put into a witness relocation program. The "assassination" goes beautifully, but suddenly he's on the run for actually committing the murder. He uses his skills to outwit his pursuers and trap the people who set him up.

At this point the movie looks very "Eighties," but it's clever and well done. For a movie that's primarily about special effects, continuity falls down rather badly in one or two places, but good performances and a solid mystery keep it interesting.

1986, dir. Robert Mandel. With Bryan Brown, Cliff De Young, Brian Dennehy, Jerry Orbach, Mason Adams, Diane Venora.

Fahrenheit 451

Based on the Ray Bradbury novel, and showcasing not one but two wooden performances by Christie (two different roles). Werner seems determined to save face for Christie by turning in a performance so wooden it comes with splinters. I was disappointed because the script was actually a good interpretation of Bradbury, although painfully Seventies.

1966, dir. François Truffaut. With Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, Cyril Cusack.

Fahrenheit 9/11

Moore takes a look at the events surrounding September 11th, 2001. He looks closely at a lot of things that the news media have ignored. This is his best movie yet. The word "objectivity" simply isn't in his vocabulary, but, as biased as this is, it's deeply affecting, depressing, thought-provoking, and definitely worth seeing.

2004. dir. Michael Moore. Starring a whole bunch of politicians.

Failure to Launch

Rom com, based on McConaughey's failure to leave his parent's house by age 35. Parker is the woman hired to "simulate" a relationship with him and thus get him to leave. Has its moments, but a wide array of well-acted caricatures couldn't save bad dialogue and a bad plot. The biting animals got particularly tiresome.

2006, dir. Tom Dey. With Matthew McConaughey, Sarah Jessica Parker, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Bartha, Bradley Cooper, Terry Bradshaw, Kathy Bates.

The Family Man

Cage plays a business man who turned his back on the love of his life 13 years ago. On Christmas day he finds himself living the life he would have had if he'd stuck with the woman of his dreams (Leoni, who is luminous - as the harried mother of three, more beautiful here than any other woman ever put on film). Cage channels Jimmy Stewart pretty much the whole way, but despite reasonably good acting the silly premise causes the movie to fall apart.

2001, dir. Brett Ratner. With Nicolas Cage, Téa Leoni, Jeremy Piven, Don Cheadle.

The Family Stone

Is it a comedy? A drama? It's a big, fat mess! Parker plays an incredibly uptight business woman brought into the midst of a laid-back, wacky, and slightly unforgiving family by her new boyfriend (Mulroney). In the script's scramble to cover every possible comedic, political, and dramatic note, a complete car wreck of a movie is assured. The romantic ... re-alignments that occur towards the end of the movie are far too pat, and too politely achieved. And yet there is some satisfaction in watching a large ensemble cast of very talented actors going to town with this mess of text and actually pulling out some moments both touching and funny.

2005, dir. Thomas Bezucha. With Sarah Jessica Parker, Claire Danes, Luke Wilson, Dermot Mulroney, Craig T. Nelson, Rachel McAdams, Diane Keaton, Tyrone Giordano.

Fantastic Four

Not the best of the superhero movies, but not the worst either. The script and acting were both mediocre, with the exception of Chiklis, who did more with a lump of rock (as "The Thing") than any of the others managed with their own faces. Gruffudd managed a credible American accent, but spent his time on that - not acting. But it's an enjoyable movie.

2005, dir. Tim Story. With Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Considerably worse than the previous one, which at least had some character development. This one just rips into not particularly good action. Alba looks more like plastic than the CG Surfer and the gags aren't funny.

2007, dir. Tim Story. With Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon, Kerry Washington.

Farscape, Best of Season 1 (TV)

This set of (supposedly the "best") six episodes from the well known science fiction series is absolute proof that there's no justice in the world. The far superior "Firefly" series was cancelled before it had run an entire season, and this one went on to multiple seasons.

"Farscape" looks good, with production quality oozing out all over. And the acting isn't bad. But the scripts suck and the meaningless "out of the frying pan into the fire" in every single episode became exceedingly tiresome.

1999. With Ben Browder, Claudia Black, Virginia Hey, Anthony Simcoe, Gigi Edgley.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Penn has always been the literal poster boy for this movie, although it's Leigh is arguably the most central character. Written by Cameron Crowe, the movie remains something of a cult classic - I didn't see it until 2008. I'm at a loss to see why. Yes, it's a passable representation of school in the Eighties, exaggerated for humour, but ... it's very episodic and I wasn't too crazy about the gags.

1982, dir. Amy Heckerling. With Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Sean Penn, Robert Romanus, Phoebe Cates, Brian Backer, Ray Walston.

Faster

This starts out looking like a slightly better produced violent revenge flick, but gets more complicated as it goes. The Rock (Johnson) is actually pretty good, and several of the characters get rather more personality than you expect from the genre. The end is total fantasy - unfortunate given that they made other parts of it unexpectedly real, but overall a pretty decent film for fans of the genre.

After a second watch, I'd say that this is an intensely frustrating film. The Rock really is surprisingly decent. Oddly, the man is actually better at being charming - but here, he's asked to play a reasonably decent man with a ruthless lethal streak a mile wide and single-minded murderous determination ... and he does it pretty well. It has moments of sheer cinematic brilliance - the plot line about the preacher in particular, but it's not the only bit - and moments of utter stupidity. Could have made it beyond the genre if it had had a better plot - too bad.

2010, dir. George Tillman Jr. With Dwayne Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, Carla Gugino, Moon Bloodgood, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Maggie Grace, Mike Epps.

Father Goose

2011 reviews of this movie point out that Grant was merrily playing against type after decades of being suave and debonair - although the movie is still a comedy (and romantic, more or less). In this case he plays Walter Eckland, bumming around tropical islands and getting drunk whenever he can. Unfortunately, the Second World War interferes, and he is involuntarily recruited as an island watcher. Things get more complicated when a school teacher (Catherine Freneau, played by Caron) and her seven charges wind up on his island and interfering with his already messed up drinking schedule. Caron is too young for Grant and their characters falling in love is a little contrived, but Grant does look remarkably good and a lot can be forgiven when the movie is this funny. Recommended for people who like this generation of movies.

1964, dir. Ralph Nelson. With Cary Grant, Leslie Caron, Trevor Howard, Jack Good.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I love Gilliam, but this is exceptionally weird, even for him. Depp plays Hunter S. Thompson, accompanied by del Toro as his severely drugged-up lawyer.

dir. Terry Gilliam. With Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro.

Fearless (aka "Huo Yuan Jia")

Li claims this will be his last martial arts film. Certainly it's one of his better ones. He plays Huo Yuanjia, a martial artist with a burning pride that eventually drives him to go too far, and ruins his life. The recovery offers us something akin to drama - Li isn't a brilliant actor, but he's likable and does a reasonable job. Of course there must be a reconciliation and a final fight (or vice versa, it doesn't really matter). I continue to be thankful for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" which raised the bar for martial arts movies and allowed movies like this - with real cinematography, good action, and occasionally decent acting - to exist.

2006, dir. Ronny Yu. With Jet Li, Shido Nakamura, Yong Dong, Nathan Jones.

La Femme Nikita

Not an easy film to watch, but worth the effort. Nikita is a drug addict who kills a cop and is put to death without a trial. She awakes to find herself in a government training program for assassins. Excellent acting, nerve-wracking.

1990. dir. Luc Besson. With Anne Parillaud, Tcheky Karyo, Jean-Hughes Anglade.

Fever Pitch (2005)

I don't like the Farrellys, I don't like Barrymore, and I'm not crazy about Fallon. Which makes me wonder why I would watch this in the first place, and made it a pretty big surprise when I actually liked the movie ... Based on a Nick Hornby novel that's already a successful British movie starring Colin Firth, the Farrellys changed football to baseball and relocated to Boston. Fallon is one of the Red Sox's most dedicated fans, and Barrymore the woman he falls for - and who falls for him. Can they balance his obsession with their love? Teeters on the edge of gross, but but for once the Farrellys resist the urge to fall into a huge heap of shit for a laugh. In fact, it's almost ... charming.

2005, dir. Bobby and Peter Farrelly. With Drew Barrymore, Jimmy Fallon, Jack Kehler, Ione Skye, Evan Helmuth.

Fido

Imagine prototypical Fifties suburbia - with the undead for servants. And occasionally the zombies just ... do what zombies do. Social satire and a chunk of nasty humour. Even though Nelson did what he always does, I thought it was an excellent fit for the movie. And Connolly was great as the titular zombie - the main character who never has a single word of articulate dialogue.

2006, dir. Andrew Currie. With Carrie-Anne Moss, Billy Connolly, Dylan Baker, K'Sun Ray, Tim Blake Nelson, Henry Czerny.

Field of Dreams

Costner plays Ray Kinsella, who hears a voice when he's standing in his cornfield in Iowa. Eventually he concludes that what it's telling him to do is build a baseball field in the middle of his property. As his reduced corn acreage drives him and his family toward bankruptcy, the voice returns to send him on another quest, to recruit author Terrence Mann (Jones, wonderful) to help his cause.

I'm not a huge fan of baseball, but this is one of the most charming and entertaining movies I've ever seen. I've seen it several times and it remains a favourite.

1989, dir. Phil Alden Robinson. With Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, Burt Lancaster, Frank Whaley.

The Fifth Element

This is a very silly film. The first time I saw it I thought it was supposed to be serious, and was very disappointed. A pretty silly attitude. The film is a lot of fun and very entertaining.

1997, dir. Luc Besson. With Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Chris Tucker, Brion James.

Fight Club

Violent, yes, but with reason. Excellent social commentary, funny in a very twisted way. Highly recommended. Superbly structured and detailed, stands up to multiple viewings.

1999, dir. David Fincher. With Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf Aday.

Filière 13 ("File 13")

A Quebecois movie, I borrowed this from the library because it was directed by Huard who also did "Bon Cop, Bad Cop." I was pleasantly surprised: there's a bit too much awkward-situation-mugging and slapstick, but Lemay-Thivierge is pretty good at it. And Lemay-Thivierge and Legault both act quite well - good, given that the movie rests on their shoulders.

Legault plays Thomas, one of Montreal's best cops brought low by a permanent debilitating headache. Lemay-Thivierge is the police public relations officer who starts having crippling anxiety attacks. They're both assigned to a boring, dead-end observation job - which they mess up. But they get a break in solving another stale case (which ties into the Gomery Commission of all things), and, despite a suspension, insist on pursuing it while trying to pull their lives together again. Not a bad film.

2010, dir. Patrick Huard. With Claude Legault, Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge, Paul Doucet, Jean Pierre Bergeron, Elisabeth Locas, Marie Turgeon, André Sauvé.

The Final Cut

Near future science fiction, with Williams as a "Cutter," an editor of life stories from an implant that records everything. An interesting look at the ethics (particularly relating to privacy) of such an enhancement. Unfortunately the ideas are a lot better than the plot or the central actor.

2004, dir. Omar Naim. With Robin Williams, Mira Sorvino, Jim Caviezel.

Finding Nemo

Another good movie from Pixar. The critics raved about this one - I'm going to stop short of raving. The animation was beautiful, and it was a fun story with good voice work.

2003. dir. Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich. With Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres.

Finding Neverland

I saw this one on a plane so I may have missed some content, but it claimed it was only edited "to fit the screen." A story based on the events in J.M. Barrie's life leading up to the creation of Peter Pan. I was really frustrated with some of the absurdities in the movie (I'm not talking about the flights of fancy with the children either), but both Depp and Winslet are excellent.

2004. dir. Marc Forster. Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Dustin Hoffman.

Firefly (TV)

Like all of Whedon's products, both funny and depressing. This was a very good show. Unfortunately, despite its good qualities, it was cancelled after only fourteen episodes (that's what's on the DVDs - not sure all of them got airtime). The premise is simple: Mal Reynolds, the captain of "Serenity," a Firefly class spaceship, takes jobs of dubious legality and tries to stay away from the eyes of the Alliance. It's essentially a Western in space, but with immensely more thought put into it than the majority of that genre. Because of its short run, it never encountered the stagnation that many long TV series get bogged down on. It also doesn't feel much like other SF series or movies ... although it occasionally goes awfully Western.

2002. Created by Joss Whedon. With Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Summer Glau, Morena Baccarin, Jewel Staite, Adam Baldwin, Sean Maher, Ron Glass.

Firewall

Just not a good movie. Ford looks remarkably like a 63 year old trying to be an action hero. The plot twists and turns to no particular end, except to leave the viewer feeling incredibly uninvolved. Ford plays a bank computer security expert, Bettany the criminal who uses his family to blackmail him into stealing from the bank. While the details are somewhat unpredictable, the whole comes out exactly as you'd expect it and the unpredictability adds no interest at all.

2006, dir. Richard Loncraine. With Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, Virginia Madsen.

The Fisher King

Bridges plays an obnoxious radio DJ who, through an off-hand remark on air, precipitates a shotgun killing spree in a bar. A couple years later his depression has driven him to the edge of suicide, but he meets a homeless man whose life was also changed by that shooting. I found the allegory and path of redemption too blatant and heavy-handed, although they were intended to be that way. Nevertheless, very funny and quite fascinating to watch, because it's so weird.

1991, dir. Terry Gilliam. With Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, Mercedes Ruehl, Amanda Plummer.

A Fist Full of Dollars

Take "Yojimbo," replace swords with guns, and you have "A Fist Full of Dollars." The movie that set Leone and Eastwood on the road to fame is very much a Kurosawa film - without the humour. Pretty good for a western.

1964, dir. Sergio Leone. With Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volanté.

Fist of Fury

Alternative title in North America "The Chinese Connection." I have a huge respect for Lee as a martial artist, but he's a staggeringly wooden actor and the martial arts aren't presented in an interesting way. If you have to watch Lee, go for "Enter the Dragon" or "Return of the Dragon."

1972, dir. Wei Lo. With Bruce Lee.

Fist of Legend

Jet Li remakes the Bruce Lee movie "Chinese Connection"/"Fist of Fury." 1937 China, Li returns from Japan because his kung fu master has died. An unusual period, but a very traditional setup. Lots of enmity toward the invading Japanese, including Li's girlfriend. That at least was a bit different. Unfortunately, they lost me when they sped up the fight scenes. I accept well-done wirework, although I'm not generally keen on it, but speeding up fights seems to me an implicit acknowledgement that they just weren't interesting or well enough done at their normal speed. And since you don't watch martial arts films for the acting ... I have to consider this one a loss. Too bad.

1994, dir. Gordon Chan. With Jet Li, Billy Chan, Yasuaki Kurata.

(500) Days of Summer

Gordon-Levitt plays a young man who falls hard for ... well, a young woman (Deschanel). He thinks she's "the one," she's not looking for anything serious. Which, predictably, gets ugly. But the movie is extremely non-sequential: every section of it is prefaced by a (488) number letting you know what day of the relationship you're on. Some of the days you see several times, through different filters. Extremely funny in places and quite clever, but I found the ending somehow mildly unsatisfactory.

2009, dir. Marc Webb. With Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Chloë Moretz, Geoffrey Arend, Matthew Gray Gubler, Clark Gregg, Minka Kelly, Richard McGonagle.

Flash Point

Yen produced and starred in this movie about a cop who's perfectly at ease with beating the shit out of anyone he doesn't like. But when a gang of Vietnamese brothers (Chou, Lui, Xing) threaten the life of his partner, what was left of the regulations go right out the window.

Quite violent and not particularly good. There are lots of fights and they're fairly long (generally a good thing in a martial arts movie), but the choreography is only so-so. Yen was happy to bring a lot of MMA and groundwork into this one, and I suppose it does add some realism, but I don't find it as fun to watch.

2007, dir. Wilson Yip. With Donnie Yen, Collin Chou, Louis Koo, Ray Lui, Bingbing Fan, Yu Xing, Kent Cheng.

Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

I actually saw this after the 2004 version. This one is better. What particularly stood out was Krüger's performance as the brilliant, egotistical, and viciously proud aircraft designer ... and Giovanni Ribisi's channelling of that performance in 2004. Ribisi's replica was note perfect. Same idea: transport plane crashes in the desert far off course, and after several days of reducing their water supply the aircraft designer suggests they attempt to build a new plane from the pieces left of the old plane. No one has any idea if it will work, but it's better than waiting to die.

1965, dir. Robert Aldrich. With James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Hardy Krüger, Ernest Borgnine, Ian Bannen, Ronald Fraser.

Flight of the Phoenix (2004)

This is a remake and I'd dearly like to see the original, which is supposed to be better. This is ... not bad, but hardly a great film - even given that all it wanted to be was an action flick. Simple premise: a transport plane crashes in the Chinese or Mongolian desert (they're not sure which) and it looks like their only way out is to put the bits of the plane back together into something that'll fly. It's blessed with good cinematography matched by a beautiful chunk of desert that's their primary set, but the acting is mediocre. The extras suggest that part of the problem was an obnoxious and not particularly good director.

2004, dir. John Moore. With Dennis Quaid, Tyrese Gibson, Giovanni Ribisi, Miranda Otto, Tony Curran, Sticky Fingaz, Jacob Vargas, Hugh Laurie, Scott Michael Campbell.

Flightplan

A comment at IMDB called this "'Panic Room' at 40,000 feet." There's a great deal of truth to that. Foster puts on her stressed out behaviour for most of the hour and a half, and it's all about her daughter. Unfortunately, the movie is just as tedious as her monotonic performance. The cinematography is deliberately very isolating, and in the process it doesn't so much raise tension as leech the life out of the movie.

2005, dir. Robert Schwentke. With Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean.

Flipped

So not what I expected from Reiner. Fortunately, mostly in a good way. The film is excessively sweet, but it's also (mostly) a kid's movie with none of the nastier humour I've come to expect from Reiner.

Juli falls in love with Bryce the day he moves in across from her as they're both starting second grade. She dogs his footsteps until things get flipped in seventh grade (set in 1963): she loses interest in him and he falls for her. We see it as a he-said-she-said with alternating points of view between the two of them.

There aren't really any laugh-out-loud jokes in this one, but it's charming from end to end, well done, and likely to keep you both smiling and chuckling quietly. Worth a watch. And, if the Wikipedia summary of the book is correct, it's very accurate to its source material (Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen).

2010, dir. Rob Reiner. With Callan McAuliffe, Madeline Carroll, John Mahoney, Aidan Quinn, Penelope Ann Miller, Anthony Edwards, Rebecca De Mornay.

Flyboys

I got pissed off at this one early on because the characters are flying Nieuport 17s ... with radial engines rather than rotaries. If you're going to go to the trouble of getting so many replica planes and using so much CGI, then make the engines rotate. And then they were always flying against red Fokker triplanes, and that's just not how it happened. Yes, I know more about WWI aircraft than most people, but ... make the effort.

Mediocre acting and mediocre dialogue pretty much do the film in, although I thought that the portrayal of life in an air squadron during the first World War did seem fairly accurate - extremely short life expectancy, rejection by squadmates until you've proven yourself, visits to the whorehouse, living in abandoned mansions, partying wildly after the death of friends ...

2006, dir. Tony Bell. With James Franco, Martin Henderson, Jean Reno, Jennifer Decker, David Ellison, Tyler Labine, Abdul Salis.

Flushed Away

The action never stops - and that's a bit of a problem. Action and gags go by so fast you feel like you've missed half of it. For the first time, Aardman and company (think "Wallace and Gromit") have gone for computer animation - but they kept the exceptionally wide and toothy mouths. There are endless jokes about singing slugs - which are surprisingly funny. But I didn't really start laughing until three minutes before the closing credits, when they got their best gags in. The story follows a pampered pet mouse (Jackman) who has an unexpected sewer rat visitor who flushes him down the toilet. This leads him to a number of adventures, most of which involve Winslet as the captain of her own mouse boat (pun not intended). Ultimately, this seemed to me to be a waste of a huge amount of talent (just look at the cast list).

2006, dir. David Bowers, Sam Fell. With Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Bill Nighy, Jean Reno.

Fools Rush In

A romantic comedy pitting Mexican culture against American. Fairly amusing. Perry has only one role he can play, but he does it well enough and Hayek is charming.

1997, dir. Andy Tennant. With Matthew Perry, Salma Hayek.

For a Few Dollars More

All the humour that was in "Yojimbo" that they didn't put in "A Fistful of Dollars" was stuffed in this nominal sequel. The story's not nearly as good though, and the dead villain from the last movie is resurrected as another villain in this movie - very weird. I thought the previous movie was better, but at least this one was funnier - and the showdown at the end is both cathartic and funny.

1965, dir. Sergio Leone. With Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volanté, Lee Van Cleef.

The Forbidden Kingdom

Not precisely the Jackie Chan-Jet Li martial arts fans the world over have been hoping for for decades. Among other things, both are known for avoiding wirework, and this is all about wirework. And it combines Disney channel cheese with Hong Kong cheese, not exactly an appetizing platter. Nevertheless ... I kind of enjoyed it. Angarano (star of "Sky High") plays a martial arts obsessed underachiever who is transported to another dimension where he's made to live out something akin to one of his favourite M-A movies tutored by Chan and Li. It's pretty bad, but still kind of fun.

2008, dir. Rob Minkoff. With Michael Angarano, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Yifei Liu, Collin Chou.

A Foreign Field

A BBC Masterpiece Theatre production about a bunch of people arriving at the D-Day beaches 50 years after. Cyril (McKern) is a British vet who has the mentally damaged Amos (Guinness) in tow. Waldo (Randolph) is an American vet with his daughter (Chaplin) and her husband (Herrmann) in tow, and Lisa's (Bacall) brother was lost in the battle. Both McKern and Randolph are trying to locate Angelique (Moreau), a French woman they both had an affair with.

Unfortunately the structure and beats of the movie are very TV-movie-of-the-week. Guinness is good as the charming but imbecilic Amos, and McKern has a monologue to bring tears to your eyes, so it's not all bad. And Bacall ... even in a role like this she commands attention - damn, what a voice. It's also a good reminder of the war - something that's slowly being forgotten.

1993, dir. Charles Sturridge. With Leo McKern, Alec Guinness, John Randolph, Lauren Bacall, Jeanne Moreau, Edward Herrmann, Geraldine Chaplin.

Forever Young

Captain Daniel McCormick (Gibson) is a young test pilot just prior to World War II who's found the love of his life (Glasser), only to have her yanked away by fate. His best friend (Wendt) is working on cryogenics, and McCormick insists on becoming a human test subject. Through another accident he's left in hibernation for 53 years rather than just one, and awoken by accident by a couple kids, one of whom is Nat Cooper (Wood), playing in an old warehouse. Once he's thawed out (which takes a while) he becomes entangled with Nat and his mother (Curtis).

There was a time when Gibson used to be funny and charming, and he manages both well here. Curtis is very good, and Wood (at age 10) is doing a pretty respectable job. The story is ridiculous but quite sweet, and I really enjoyed it.

1992, dir. Steve Miner. With Mel Gibson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Elijah Wood, Isabel Glasser, George Wendt, Joe Morton.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Far too much of Segel's penis in this movie. And who wrote it in? Segel, who penned this not-very-funny comedy. Not titillating for anybody (this isn't a particularly attractive man) and not particularly funny. Segel plays Peter Bretter, a TV music composer devastated by the loss of his long-time girlfriend, the gorgeous TV star Sarah Marshall (Bell). He takes off for Hawaii to forget her only to find out she's staying at the same resort with her new rock star boyfriend (Brand). Apatow didn't direct, but his influence is still clear from the producer's seat. Except they're funnier when he's directing. It should be noted that I'm in direct conflict with the majority of critics on this movie.

2008, dir. Nicholas Stoller. With Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russel Brand, Bill Hader, Maria Thayer, Jack McBrayer.

49 Up

One of the longest running projects ever done in film, and certainly the most fascinating. Apted started with the film "7 Up" for Granada TV in London in 1963, and every seven years has returned to visit the lives of each of the school children he first interviewed in 1963. I've seen them all from "21 Up" onward, and I love them. This one took me a while to get into, I suppose because I'm not a fan of Tony and Jackie who he started with. But then he got to some of the people I really like - Nick and Suzy particularly. The reason for the success of the movies is in large part Apted's not pursuing an agenda (he and Granada had an agenda in '63, but that died when it became his project), just letting them talk. At 49 they all seem happier than they've ever been, and it's great to see that. Highly recommended, all of them.

2006, dir. Michael Apted.

Four Brothers

The primary conceit of this movie is the mixed race brothers: two white and two black, who grew up together adopted by the same mother. This idea holds together remarkably well - if the movie falls down, it's not because of this. In adulthood, the brothers are brought together again in Detroit (filmed in Toronto and Hamilton apparently) for the funeral of their mother. This leads to them investigating the death and seeking revenge. I didn't like this initially, but it improved immensely in hindsight, and it's now kind of a favourite movie of mine - very odd. The main problem is the villain, Ejiofor being incredibly abusive and humiliating to his underlings: it's hard to believe he could hold a crime empire together when he alienates his staff as much as he does. On the other hand, his downfall revolves around his nastiness.

It's a gritty movie, violent, nasty and realistic. Nobody's a hero (except perhaps mom) - they try, but they're human, and they're scared (or bastards). The acting is very good, and the realism is amazing in this kind of movie and a real treat (but be prepared for violence and blood).

2005, dir. John Singleton. With Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, André Benjamin, Garrett Hedlund, Terrence Howard, Josh Charles, Chiwetel Ejiofor.

The Four Musketeers

Originally filmed as part of the 1973 version of "The Three Musketeers," this is a direct sequel to that movie split off by the profit motive and the fact that the run-time would have been around 210 minutes. See my review of that movie as I watched them back-to-back and any comments I made about it apply to this as well.

The plot of this movie revolves peripherally around the siege of La Rochelle (in which the Musketeers fight in a humourous way), but is primarily about Milady de Winter's attempts to kill d'Artagnan for crossing her in the previous movie, and Constance because she's d'Artagnan's lover. The action - having been filmed at the same time as the previous movie - is in very much the same style.

Between Milady and Athos' back-history and the deaths near the end of the movie, this is definitely the darker of the two movies. And probably because of that I prefer the first (the humour works better along with the somewhat lighter plot). But the two movies are quite similar and both very good, and should be seen together.

1974, dir. Richard Lester. With Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Geraldine Chaplin, Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee, Simon Ward, Raquel Welch, Spike Milligan, Roy Kinnear, Michael Gothard.

Four Weddings and a Funeral

I remembered MacDowell being bad from a previous viewing. But I didn't really do her justice: she's appalling. If they had cast almost any other female actress in the lead role, this would have been a much better movie. Too bad: it's otherwise pretty good. A note for fans of "Love Actually": the song "Love is All Around" first appeared here.

1994. dir. Mike Newell. With Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, Simon Callow, Kristen Scott Thomas, Rowan Atkinson.

Foxy Brown

Oh. My. God. Primo blaxploitation trash still available on DVD in 2004 because Quentin Tarantino says it's awesome. I'm going to blame him for my watching it, and it's no wonder he loves it - the violence is staggering for the period. People shot, maimed, going through propellers ... And Pam Grier. She's a beautiful woman. She establishes early on that she wasn't hired for her acting talent - she has none.

1974. dir. Jack Hill. With Pam Grier.

Frailty

Strange movie. Psychological thriller verging on horror, about a man convinced that God is showing him demons that walk the earth, and he must destroy them. They look exactly like humans, but they must be destroyed. The movie manages to be fairly creepy, but overall I didn't like it much. My standard in this category is "Silence of the Lambs," and this doesn't compare.

dir. Bill Paxton. With Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton.

Fracture

Gosling plays a District Attorney taking on a very clear cut murder case just as he's about to move on to corporate law. The case looks easy: a signed confession, a murder weapon, no problem. But it turns out that the killer (Hopkins) has effectively gamed the legal system by stacking the circumstances in such a way that denying his own confession will work. It's clever, it's very well acted, but I didn't like it much.

2007, dir. Gregory Hoblit. With Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, David Strathairn, Rosamund Pike, Embeth Davidtz, Billy Burke, Cliff Curtis.

Freaky Friday (2003)

I haven't seen the original, so I can't make any comparison - but this is a remake of a 1970s movie. Curtis and Lohan play mother and daughter forced to spend time literally in each other's bodies. The climactic concert is the least entertaining thing in the whole movie, but aside from that the movie manages to be both funny and touching a lot of the time. No great piece of art, but better than I expected.

2003, dir. Mark Waters. With Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Mark Harmon.

Frida

Hayek turns in a good performance as Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter. Molina turns in a better performance as her sometimes husband, Diego Rivera. Almost everybody sports a fake accent (they were playing to the English speaking market - they should have been filming in Spanish), some good, some bad. They recreate a lot of Kahlo's paintings in film, in fascinating detail.

2002. dir. Julie Taymor. With Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Geoffrey Rush, Antonio Banderas, Ashley Judd.

Friends With Money

Aniston stars as a stoner maid and former teacher whose friends are all exceedingly rich. If the scriptwriter is to be believed, most relationships are rocky all the time. When their big revelation is that a man can dress well and be polite without being gay, I guess I shouldn't have expected too much. No one is particularly likable, and the movie is a relatively dull way to pass an hour and a half.

2006, dir. Nicole Holofcener. With Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack, Greg Germann, Jason Isaacs, Catherine Keener, Simon McBurney, Frances McDormand, Bob Stephenson, Scott Caan.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Based on "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe" by Fannie Flagg.

1991. dir. Jon Avnet. With Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary-Louise Parker.

From Paris With Love

This all makes a lot more sense when you notice that Luc Besson is one of the producers. An American-style action film made in Paris with a French director? No common sense at all? Yup, Besson.

Rhys Meyers plays James Reese, an extremely efficient aide to the U.S. Ambassador in France, who has a loving and beautiful French fiancée. But what he really wants is to be a spy. And that happens when Charlie Wax (Travolta) comes to town. Wax blows shit up, kills people, and generally causes mayhem wherever he goes. And it's a long time before it becomes clear whether he's after people selling coke, or maybe he just wants to snort it, or maybe he's chasing terrorists. All of which is supposed to be funny.

Travolta is mildly amusing in his role, and Rhys Meyers is fairly decent, but the action is dull and the humour misses its target repeatedly. What's really sad is that there were a couple moments where it's clear that both the two actors and the two characters could have been in a great movie together if the script hadn't sucked so hard.

2010, dir. Pierre Morel. With Jonathan Rhys Meyers, John Travolta, Kasia Smutniak.

Frost/Nixon

A somewhat fictionalized but reasonably historically accurate look at the Frost Nixon interviews interspersed with documentary-like talking-head commentary from the various participants. Howard shows remarkable restraint here, giving us an almost unemotional view of the events - thus making it more exciting because the discussions and the talking heads bring home, piece by piece, just how incredibly important these interviews were. And here's Howard, master of the overbearing emotional gesture, operating with restraint. I didn't know he could do it, and I think the end result is magnificent. How did it come about that this party-animal British TV celebrity interviewer end up facing off with Tricky Dick and turn out compelling TV? Watch the movie and find out, it's a good one.

2008, dir. Ron Howard. With Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen, Rebecca Hall.

The Fugitive

I saw this in the theatre when it came out and really disliked it. I saw it again in 2009, because a friend really liked it and wanted to watch it again. What we both really noticed was that the continuity crew must have been on a work-to-rule campaign, because the continuity sucked. Ford plays Dr. Richard Kimble, a respected doctor convicted of killing his wife - an act he did not commit. When he's offered an opportunity to escape and search for the real killer, he takes it - and is hotly pursued by a Marshall played by Jones, and his crew. There's some humour, some action, some detective work ... and none of it felt real or enjoyable to me. Ford's acting left a lot to be desired, and no one else was there to take up the slack: Jones is a good actor, but he seemed to have been told to be loud, authoritative, competent, and emotionless. Not particularly good.

1993, dir. Andrew Davis. With Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pantoliano, Andreas Katsulas, Joseph Kosala, Julianne Moore, Sela Ward.

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Curse

One of the best known anime TV series imports, justifiably so. Two young brothers (Edward and Alphonse Elric) with an extraordinary talent for alchemy (this being an alternate earth where things are otherwise similar to our own) try to use their powers to bring their recently deceased mother back from the dead. Their mother remains dead, but for tampering with nature one loses an arm and a leg while the other loses his entire body - both end up with "automail" (robotic) replacements. The writing actually addresses real human issues and desires (ie. bringing back those we love from the dead) in a compassionate way - I'm enjoying this considerably more than the other anime series I've seen.

This disc includes the episodes: "Those Who Challenge the Sun," "Body of the Sanctioned," "Mother," and "A Forger's Love."

Fullmetal Alchemist: Scarred Man of the East

The second disc, episodes 4-8 of season 1. More formulaic than disc one, and the transitions between humour and philosophizing are more abrupt, often like throwing a switch. Alphonse bemoans being trapped in a suit of automail a couple times, but politely. It's often tragic: they're losing nice people at the rate of about one an episode, and maybe it's a particularly obvious shot at at the oft-quoted "Principle of Equivalent Exchange." To gain something, they lose something.

This disc includes the episodes: "The Man with the Mechanical Arm," "The Alchemy Exam," "Night of the Chimera's Cry," and "The Philosopher's Stone."

Fullmetal Alchemist: Equivalent Exchange

Episodes 9-12 of season 1. Settling into a formula: Ed and Al are on their search for the Philosopher's Stone to return themselves to full human form, but wherever they go they encounter greed and problems. Ed is always temperamental and touchy about his height but always does right in the end. It's still better than most anime, but it's getting a bit old.

Includes "Be Thou for the People," "The Phantom Thief," and "The Other Brothers Elric" parts one and two.

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Fall of Ishbal

In this disc Dr. Marko is introduced - as Oppenheimer was to Hiroshima, so Marko is to Ishbal. He created a tool that was used to massacre thousands (hundreds of thousands? We don't know) of innocents. And the alchemists fight some more with Scar, introduced in "Scarred Man of the East."

Includes "Fullmetal vs. Flame, "Destruction's Right Hand," "The Ishbal Massacre," "That Which is Lost."

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Cost of Living

Surprisingly human and intelligent, the series continues to be good. "Scar" continues to be a problem, and the "Homunculuses" are introduced a bit more. They're annoying, but everything else about it is good.

Includes "House of the Waiting Family," "Marcoh's Notes," "The Truth Behind Truths," "Soul of the Guardian."

Fullmetal Alchemist: Captured Souls

While the series has always had a sequence that has mattered, I don't think I'd seen a cliffhanger before - they did that between "The Cost of Living" and this disc. And most of the episodes on this disc are quite strongly connected. Alphonse and Ed go to "Lab 5" in the last episode of the previous disc, and much of this disc takes place there. Unfortunately, they also spend a great deal of time expanding the list of "enemies" for Al and Ed by releasing prisoners from the lab and introducing a new "Homunculi." Obviously they aren't planning on ending the series soon. At least they humanized Scar some. I thought this was the most uneven of the discs so far: it's very bad in some ways, and has some of the best moments on it as well.

Includes "The Red Glow," "Created Human," "Fullmetal Heart," and "Bonding Memories."

Fullmetal Alchemist: Reunion on Yock Island

The cover of this disc has a damaged-looking Edward Elric getting his automail arm exploded. I thought "oh god, not again!" Because that's been happening about once a disc for the last three discs. Fortunately the choice of image didn't reflect the content. Unfortunately, it's becoming more and more clear that the Elric's quest will be going on for a very long time. On this disc, they spend a lot of time with Winrey, and are re-united with their childhood Alchemy teacher.

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Altar of Stone

Disc 8, Episodes 29-32. Here we heap on the new villains at a furious pace: several new homunculi, a couple state alchemists turned bad, a difficult showdown with the Ishbalan refugees. This is a tedious and unrewarding disc, and may even be the end of my viewing of Fullmetal Alchemist.

Includes "The Untainted Child," "Assault on South Headquarters," "Sin," and "Dante of the Deep Forest."

Fullmetal Alchemist: Pain and Lust

Disc 9, episodes 33-36. At this point the introduction of new characters and the stretching out of content as the authors see that they have a success and they need to make it lllaaaaaassssttttt ... is becoming more than a little annoying. MAJOR SPOILER WARNING: The fights with the homunculus Greed are too long and become quite tedious. And yet, as obnoxious as he is, they manage to make his death quite tragic: in part because Ed kills him, and Ed has hardly killed anyone and really doesn't want to be killing people, but also because he says some things in his death scene that put him in a more sympathetic light and because his troops are so staggeringly loyal. This is spoiled by fairly clear evidence that we're going to have another homunculus called Greed in fairly short order.

Includes "Al, Captured," "Theory of Avarice," "Reunion of the Fallen," and "The Sinner Within."

Fullmetal Alchemist: Journey to Ishbal

Disc 10, episodes 37-40. Contrary to what I said about Disc 9, I've found out that FMA wraps up at the end of this, the second season. This is good.

The first episode on this disc is essentially a comic interlude with essentially no reference at all to the Elric brothers. The other three are more development of problems in Ishbal, which are clearly going to come to a head soon.

Includes "The Flame Alchemist," "The Bachelor Lieutenant," and "The Mystery of Warehouse 13," "With the River's Flow," "Secret of Ishbal," and "The Scar."

Fullmetal Alchemist: Becoming the Stone

Disc 11, episodes 41-44. The first word that comes to mind for the episodes on this disc is "sloppy." They're wrapping up some plot lines, and clarifying some mysteries, but this disc is more annoying than enjoyable. MAJOR SPOILER WARNING:Scar dies of acts both noble and vengeful, and in the process turns Al into the Philosopher's Stone. Ed and Al's Dad finally reappears, and it becomes apparent that he's probably not entirely human and is responsible for a lot of the problems going on. Major revelations, but ... not too well set in the context of the FM universe.

Includes "Holy Mother," "His Name is Unknown," "The Stray Dog," and "Hohenheim of Light."

Fullmetal Alchemist: The Truth Behind the Truths

Disc 12, episodes 45-48.

Includes "A Rotted Heart," "Human Transmutation," "Sealing the Homunculus," and "Goodbye."

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Disc 13, episodes 49-51. All is revealed and most business concluded in the final three episodes. I found the conclusion pretty damn unsatisfactory. SPOILER WARNING: It's a little bloody late to be introducing alternative universes to solve problems - even if it is our own Earth. But that's not the only issue: the brothers, having struggled through 51 episodes in pursuit of returning themselves to flesh and blood, are left with another, possibly even more massive, quest. I don't know if this was a deliberate lead-in to the follow-up movie or not.

Includes "The Other Side of the Gate," "Death," and "Laws and Promises."

Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa (orig. "Gekijô-ban hagane no renkinjutsushi: Shanbara wo yuku mono")

The production values didn't change since the TV series, just the length. SPOILER WARNING: if you haven't seen the TV series, you shouldn't read this or see the movie. The movie wouldn't make any damn sense anyway. So we left Ed on Earth and Al back on their world. This leads to two wildly disjoint stories running in big separate blocks. It's not that it's hard to follow, but it doesn't work particularly well. As always, they are dogged by "equivalent exchange:" everything they do has side effects, often tragic. At least there's something resembling closure. This isn't a particularly good movie even if you've seen the TV series, and would truly be completely meaningless without seeing the series.

2005, dir. Seiji Mizushima.

Funny Face

Let me start by saying I don't like musicals. But it would have helped if they had chosen a romantic lead to stand opposite Hepburn who wasn't thirty years her senior and looked like a cadaver by comparison. Of course, they did exactly the same thing to her in "Sabrina." And the romantic chemistry was just as non-existent. There are one or two decent dance numbers, and the music by George and Ira Gershwin offers some minor redemption, but I was pretty unimpressed.

1957, dir. Stanley Donen. With Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Kay Thompson, Michel Auclair.

Futurama: Bender's Big Score

I admit that I've seen less than half of an episode of the TV series. So jumping in on the movie that followed the cancellation of the TV series may seem a bit weird. But I thought I'd give it a shot. And I totally and completely failed to see the humour in it. I know the series had a lot of fans, but I didn't laugh once for an hour and a half. I smiled maybe twice. The plot was barely cohesive and the humour was a dead loss. Not much left.

2007, dir. Dwayne Carey-Hill. With Billy West, John Di Maggio, Katey Sagal, Lauren Tom, David Herman.

---

G

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

You know it's going to be a great movie when, right at the beginning of the movie among all the logos, you get a huge sparkling Hasboro sign. That's right: this is a movie based on a toy franchise.

Duke (Tatum), his buddy "Ripcord" (Wayans), and their troop are delivering a nasty new nano-tech weapon for NATO when they're viciously attacked by a group of nasties led by Duke's ex-fiancée (Miller) (now called "The Baroness") and armed with all kinds of advanced weaponry. They're rescued by another interestingly equipped group - "the Joes." Who also have great names, like "Snake Eyes" (Park), "Breaker" (Taghmaoui), "Heavy Duty" (Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and "Scarlett" (Nichols). Duke and Ripcord are recruited and end up fighting the nasties.

I was optimistic when I saw the Motion Picture Rating warning that said "... Mayhem Throughout." Lots of violence, no blood. Lots of effects, not much interest. Lots of decent actors, no decent acting. Lots of plot twists, although none too advanced for a 12 year old. All resulting in a movie that's pretty damn bad, but not bad enough to be funny. An all-around disappointment.

2009, dir. Stephen Sommers. With Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller, Christopher Eccleston, Marlon Wayans, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rachel Nichols, Ray Park, Lee Byung-hun, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Dennis Quaid, Said Taghmaoui, Jonathan Pryce.

Galaxy Quest

The best Science Fiction parody ever made. The most obvious target is Star Trek, in all its (pre-1999) incarnations. Allen plays an actor whose defining role occurred 18 years ago, the captain of a starship on a long dead TV series. He and his "crew" live out a sad existence attending conventions and doing low end commercial appearances. But Allen is approached and recruited for an "appearance" by people he assumes are fans ... and we're down the rabbit hole as they turn out to be aliens in need of leadership believing that he actually is a starship captain. His crew are pulled in, and a bunch of actors try to lead a starship through a space battle. Brilliant casting and hilariously funny.

1999, dir. Dean Parisot. With Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub.

The Game

To me, this is Fincher taxiing on the runway before he went on to make "Fight Club." Douglas is signed up for "the game" by his brother (Penn). Douglas plays a soulless investment banker caught up in a series of weird events that may or may not be "the game," and there's some question as to whether or not "the game" is a good thing. Not bad the first time, doesn't hold up to a second viewing.

1997, dir. David Fincher. With Michael Douglas, Sean Penn, Deborah Kara Unger, James Rebhorn.

Game of Thrones, Season 1

Several friends told me I should read George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, but I've been reluctant to do so for a couple reasons: I don't like series, and this series is particularly infamous for killing off characters, including "heroes" and the ones you like. I have no problem with the latter in principle: he's writing a civil war and that's just the way it goes. But I'm not crazy about reading it. But when the HBO TV series came out, it garnered rave reviews and I thought I might be okay with the story in that form.

It all comes together here: superb writing, excellent production values, and really good acting. I expect production values to be high in an American series, but the other two parts ... well, in Britain they do it the other way 'round: excellent acting, good script, crap special effects. But this has got it all.

The setting is essentially medieval, but there are left-overs from a previous age of essentially dark fantasy: dragons, magic, "White Walkers" who can raise the dead. But the majority of the ten episodes of the first season focus on the political intrigue surrounding the throne and the lead-up to a very nasty civil war. Our main players are the Stark family who rule the North, the incredibly rich and ruthless Lannisters who mostly control the throne, the Night's Watch in the far north who protect the rest of the country from the Others on the far side of "The Wall," and the rebel Targaryens who used to hold the throne and now live in exile beyond the Narrow Sea.

The Stark family are noble, loyal, and likeable ... unfortunately they're not always aware enough of the effects of the political intrigue surrounding them. They also have a hellish temper. Bean plays the head of the house, Fairley his wife, Madden his senior son, and Williams his younger tom-boy daughter. Heady, Coster-Waldau, and Dinklage are the three Lannister siblings - Dinklage plays Tyrion "The Imp," the only one of the three who seems to have retained any humanity. It's fantastic to see Dinklage in a role worthy of his acting skills. Clarke and Lloyd play the exiled Targaryens.

This is a superb series. See it.

2011, dir. Tim Van Patten, Brian Kirk, Daniel Minahan, Alan Taylor. With Sean Bean, Mark Addy, Michelle Fairley, Richard Madden, Peter Dinklage, Lena Heady, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Rory McCann, Aidan Gillen, Harry Lloyd, Emilia Clarke, Iain Glen, Maisie Williams, Kit Harington, Alfie Allen.

Gamer

Butler plays a convict in the near future, playing in a first-person-shooter game ... in which he's the equivalent of the on-screen character while someone else controls him. He's won 26 games without dying, utterly unheard of, and if he wins four more he'll be released. But there's more going on behind the scenes with politics and the game creator.

The filming is incredibly frenetic, with rapid POV changes, angled shots, broken up "signal," etc. etc. The directors throw up a number of fairly interesting moral questions about bio-engineering and about gaming and the people who play, but then don't address them at all. "Hey, here are some naked breasts. Maybe it's blatant titillation, or maybe it's because gamers are repugnant: but we're not going to discuss that because we're making an action movie and we wouldn't want to force you to think." And yet it's not a terribly good action movie either.

2009, dir. Neveldine/Taylor. With Gerard Butler, Logan Lerman, Michael C. Hall, Amber Valletta, Terry Crews, Kyra Sedgwick.

Gandhi

Impressive work for Kingsley, and a good bio, but far too long.

1982. dir. Richard Attenborough. With Ben Kingsley, Martin Sheen, John Gielgud.

Garden State

Written and directed by Braff, exceeds all expectations. Braff also stars in the movie, playing a young would-be actor in L.A. who goes home for the first time in nine years to attend the funeral of his mother. He meets up with some old friends, makes some new ones, and takes a "vacation" from the mood-numbing drugs he's been on for 16 years. The content doesn't sound extraordinary, but the presentation is: the cinematography has some truly brilliant moments, the soundtrack is great, the characters are both hilarious and touching. I highly recommend this one.

2004. dir. Zach Braff. With Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Ian Holme.

Gentleman's Agreement

Peck plays Phil Green, a widower and journalist moving to New York City with his mother (Revere) and his young son (Stockwell). Green picks up a story about anti-Semitism, and decides the best way to break the story is to be Jewish himself for a few weeks. As this is going on, he's falling for Kathy Lacey (McGuire). I found that side story rather annoying, probably because I wasn't too keen on McGuire's acting. Rather better were Garfield as Green's Jewish friend Dave Goldman, and Holm as Anne Dettrey (Holm won a supporting Oscar for the role, well deserved).

This was based on the best-selling novel of the same name, and it's a blistering indictment of not only anti-Semitism, but also those who don't like anti-Semitism but keep quiet about it. It was hugely successful at the box office and at the Oscars. Unfortunately, it drew several of the people associated with the movie into the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings for those nasty liberal tendencies that they exposed by choosing to be involved with this movie (most actors carefully avoided this movie for that reason). Because it was controversial and successful, it's very likely it was as socially important as the extras on the DVDs suggest.

1947, dir. Elia Kazan. With Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, Anne Revere, Dean Stockwell, Celeste Holm, John Garfield, June Havoc, Jane Wyatt.

Get Low

Duvall plays Felix Bush, a hermit in the American South around 1930. He comes out of 40 years of seclusion to plan his own funeral party - despite the fact that he's quite evidently not dead yet. Murray plays Frank Quinn, the desperate and broke funeral parlour manager who takes on the party planning job, and Black plays Buddy Robinson, the funeral home assistant who spends more time with Bush. Spacek plays Mattie Darrow, who had a short fling with Felix 40 years gone.

Brilliantly acted by pretty much everybody involved. Both extremely poignant and very funny, an excellent movie.

2010, dir. Aaron Schneider. With Robert Duvall, Lucas Black, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek, Bill Cobbs.

Get Smart

I was expecting this to be really bad, but I thought I might enjoy it anyway. As it turned out, it's not too bad at all and I laughed - a lot. Carell plays Maxwell Smart, and they play Smart as a slightly clumsy, maybe accident-prone, but very intelligent doofus. Definitely preferable to "complete idiot," which I was expecting. Not an intelligent film, but it's got quite a few good gags while still retaining a plot and only aiming for humiliation humour once or twice. Fun.

2008, dir. Peter Segal. With Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Bill Murray, Patrick Warburton, Terry Crews, David Koechner, Masi Oka, Nate Torrence, Ken Davitian, David S. Lee, Dalip Singh.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

Headstrong widower Mrs. Muir insists on renting a cottage, despite it being haunted. On her first night, she encounters the ghost of the foul-mouthed (only by previous century standards) sea captain who haunts the place. They make a deal and eventually become friends, but real life interferes with her ethereal romance.

A bizarre cross between a romantic comedy and a ghost story, with limited acting by all the leads.

1947, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. With Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, George Sanders, Edna Best, Natalie Wood.

Ghost In the Shell

With the exception of "Akira," this was the first major American release of an anime movie. They spend a lot of time on visuals: there's one point in the movie where the director takes about three minutes just to show bits and pieces of the city. The visuals are stunning. The story is an interesting one too: in the future when each of us has a computer in our head, can we be hacked? Beautiful to look at and thought-provoking. Possibly the best unknown science fiction movie out there, a hell of a lot better than many better known SF movies.

1995. dir. Mamoru Oshii.

Ghost In the Shell 2: Innocence

More complex than the original (which is saying something) and more obtuse. Not as good, but the graphics are even more beautiful - blatantly mixing CGI with hand drawn stuff, and with a level of detail that's astounding. Just gorgeous. Great music, weird goings-on interspersed with pauses to just admire the scenery. Bateau, one of the main characters from the previous movie, is partnered with Togusa (also in the previous movie) to figure out why a particular model of robot is occasionally killing its owners. Of course there's more to it than that.

2004, dir. Mamoru Oshii.

Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

"Ghost in the Shell" spawned a TV series, but they wanted to keep Kusanagi so they "forgot" about the Puppet Master. Typically low budget TV animation (long shots on non-moving scenes, or with only a small part moving), but some nice images and decent use of the limited format. The worst problem is the episode length at 16.5 minutes: it makes the 22 minute half hour of North America look long. What we have here is SF political wrangling and criminal activity - not as good or as complex as the movie, but occasionally mildly entertaining. But apparently not so much that I feel compelled to pursue the remaining episodes of the season.

2002?, dir. Kenji Kamiyama.

Ghost Rider

Wow. Just ... wow. How you can pump this much money, special effects, and star power into a movie and get a turd that stinks this bad, I don't know. Fonda slums it as the devil - and doesn't even do it particularly well. Cage is a good actor, but you'll never know it from this movie. Mendes looks pretty and acts dumb, willingly believing that it's okay that her boyfriend's head turns into a flaming skull occasionally. Logue offers a bit of relief. But if you're going to watch psuedo-religiosical camp, "Constantine" is an order of magnitude better.

2007, dir. Mark Steven Johnson. With Nicholas Cage, Eva Mendes, Peter Fonda, Matt Long, Raquel Alessi, Donal Logue.

Ghost Town

Gervais plays a misanthropic dentist, who, during a routine operation at the hospital, dies for seven minutes and returns with the ability to see dead people. As the tagline says, "He sees dead people ... and they annoy him." Remind you of another movie? This is the comedy version of "Sixth Sense," with similarities well beyond the basic premise of seeing the dead people. Kinnear plays his most persistent visitor, with Leoni being Kinnear's widow and a resident in Gervais' building.

Gervais tones down his regular comic shtick somewhat, and puts enough humanity into his character to make this pretty good. The biggest problem is the amount of change we see in him in a very short time: I think "Groundhog Day" set a watermark for assholes changing into better people, and this one doesn't make it: we could have bought the transformation if it had taken longer. But nevertheless fairly charming and quite funny.

2008, dir. David Koepp. With Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Téa Leoni, Aasif Mandvi.

Ghost World

Two teens graduate from high school and find that real life is just as disillusioning as high school. Not a very happy movie. Still not sure if I liked it, but it's fairly memorable.

2001. With Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi.

The Girl from Paris (orig. "Une hirondelle a fait le printemps")

An early thirties woman from Paris decides to stop teaching computers and the internet, goes to farm school and buys a farm way out in the country. With it (for a year and a half) comes the grumpy, bitter old man who originally owned it. She goes to work with her energy, and he complains and causes problems.

Serrault was quite good as the old bastard, but I didn't like Seigner in the slightest: I thought she acted poorly and was really annoying. And while the story did move forward some in the hour and forty minutes run-time, I didn't really feel like we'd gotten anywhere. There were lots of goats.

2001, dir. Christian Carion. With Mathilde Seigner, Michel Serrault, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Frédéric Pierrot.

The Girl in the Cafe

Lawrence (Nighy), a shy and lonely British career civil servant, meets the very much younger Gena (MacDonald) in a café, and after a couple dates asks her if she'd like to join him at the G8 summit in Reykjavík. Once there, she pays more attention to his hopes for the summit than he has allowed himself to, and she wakes him up out of his very limited life with both painful and hopeful results.

I've never much liked Nighy, but he's absolutely brilliant here. And MacDonald inhabits her character completely. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the ending, although I'm not entirely sure where I think it should have gone. But the ending is decent, and the rest of the movie is excellent, so give it a look.

2005, dir. David Yates. With Bill Nighy, Kelly MacDonald.

Girl, Interrupted

Based on Susanna Kaysen's book about her stay in a mental ward in the late Sixties. Comparisons to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" are inevitable. While Goldberg isn't Ratched, and Ryder isn't McMurphy, the echoes in the structures and character are too much to ignore. The acting is good, the story is good, the movie is good, but you'll probably enjoy it more if you haven't seen "Cuckoo's Nest."

1999, dir. James Mangold. With Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg, Vanessa Redgrave, Brittany Murphy, Jeffrey Tambor.

Girl With a Pearl Earring

Firth plays Johannes Vermeer, the well-known (now, anyway) Dutch painter. Johansson plays Griet, a new servant in his house. They develop something of a relationship because she has something of the painter's sight. In need of money, he paints her at the request of his patron Van Ruijven (played by Wilkinson, always good), with pearl earrings - leading to what is possibly his most famous painting. Murphy plays a butcher's boy down the market, the only man courting her who might be able to offer her something worth having. Murphy is a good actor, but I've always found his face harsh and cold, and not convincing as someone attractive or charming. Both Vermeer and Griet are closed off and fairly uncommunicative, so what we know of them often comes through their faces ... which gets a bit old, even though they're both pretty good. A good but not great film.

2003, dir. Peter Webber. With Colin Firth, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Judy Parfitt, Cillian Murphy, Essie Davis, Joanna Scanlan.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Swedish version of this film, based on the very well known book by Stieg Larsson. American version to follow shortly. Literal translation of the Swedish title: "Men Who Hate Women."

Mikael Blomkvist (played by Nyqvist) is a journalist who published a major whistle-blower piece on a big industrialist. We first meet him as he's convicted of libel after all his contacts and evidence evaporated. We also meet Lisbeth Salander (Rapace), an extremely good computer investigator with a left-over Goth look, a substantial attitude, and a legal guardian because she's on probation. Blomkvist is going to have to serve a prison sentence, but in the time before that happens, Henrik Vanger (Taube) (another industrialist) asks him to investigate a forty-year-old disappearance. As this is going on, Lisbeth's new guardian is hideously sexually abusing her. Eventually, she and Blomkvist end up working together.

The movie is often hard to watch - forced oral sex, rape, lots of bodies, horrible crimes. Gritty and often unpleasant, but a good mystery at its centre, and a couple good characters. Particularly Rapace as Lisbeth - I can't imagine anyone stepping into those shoes, Rapace owns the character ... it'll be interesting to see what the American production does.

2009, dir. Niels Arden Oplev. With Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Sven-Bertil Taube, Peter Haber, Björn Granath, Ingvar Hirdwall, Peter Andersson.

Glory Road

Surprisingly decent movie staggering between several classifications: it's an inspirational sports movie, it's about racial equality, it's sports history, it's occasionally sickly sweet. A Disney product, and more or less what you'd expect from them, but the surprise is that it's good. The movie follows basketball coach Don Haskins (played by Lucas) as he fields the first ever all-black starting lineup in NCAA history (1966). The movie was pretty good, but the icing on the cake was the interviews with the real players that ran with the end credits (and are filled out further in the DVD extras).

2006, dir. James Gartner. With Josh Lucas, Derek Luke, Jon Voight.

God of Cookery (orig. "Sik san")

Chow plays "The God of Cookery," whose name is ... "Stephen Chow." He's a pompous ass, and bad choices in friends bring him down. Typically, he finds friends and dedication in low places, and begins the journey back up - perhaps learning a little humility along the way.

All of which is rather missing the point, which is endless opportunities for Chow to do ridiculous slapstick. I think I prefer this to "Kung Fu Hustle," but "Shaolin Soccer" was really his masterpiece. Lots of special effects and craziness as always.

1996, dir. Stephen Chow, Lik-Chi Lee. With Stephen Chow, Vincent Kok, Tats Lau, Karen Mok.

Gods and Monsters

Based on the book Father of Frankenstein, a novel about the last months of Frank Whale's life. Whale directed "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein," among other movies. I suppose it's about friendship, as the very gay, intellectual, and old Whale follows an odd path to befriending his straight young gardener. McKellen is superb - his behaviour was so disturbing at times I found it difficult to watch, and yet the character is ultimately sympathetic. Fraser and Redgrave do well in their supporting roles.

1998 dir. Bill Condon. With Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

How a movie that takes so much material from the playbook of the Keystone Cops has become an immortal comedy, I don't know. But I do know that despite my disbelief at that achievement, this remains a favourite movie of mine. Weyers is very good at slapstick, "The Antichrist" (their problematic Land Rover) gets them into all sorts of trouble, and N!xau is great at both looking innocent and doing slapstick. Uys also sticks in a lot of animals "watching" the characters and reminding us of the absurdity of their actions. The end result is much more than the sum of its parts, and absolutely a must-see for comedy fans.

1980, dir. Jamie Uys. Starring Marius Weyers, Sandra Prinsloo, N!xau, Louw Verwey, Michael Thys, Nic De Jager.

The Golden Compass

There are huge chunks of information missing in this translation from the famous book of the same name by Philip Pullman. I enjoyed the movie immensely, but I had read the books. And I enjoyed it despite the blatantly CG animals - they were good, but still obviously CG. There were a lot of complaints when this came out that it was confusing and didn't make sense: I didn't have that problem, but I can certainly see it. Weitz just needed to slow down, allow that it was going to be a longer movie, and do a bit more description mixed into the constant flow of action. The visuals are gorgeous, and some of the characters come across very well despite the lack of time to get to know them. I look forward to the other two movies.

UPDATE: the movie was incredibly expensive and tanked something fierce at the box office: sequels are unlikely.

2007, dir. Chris Weitz. With Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Dakota Blue Richards, Ben Walker, Freddie Highmore, Ian McKellan, Eva Green, Tom Courtenay, Ian McShane, Sam Elliot, Christopher Lee, Kristin Scott Thomas, Kathy Bates, Derek Jacobi.

The Good German

Clooney plays a newspaperman (in uniform, although why is never entirely clear) returning to Berlin at the same time Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill are there deciding how to carve up Europe, while the Second World War rages on against Japan. The movie is black and white, and Noir all over. Clooney came looking for a woman he knew before the war ... and encounters her immediately. He wonders how that happened so quickly and conveniently, and that's only one of many questions he has to answer. It was intelligent, and you have to think and pay attention, and yet when you're done only about half the puzzle pieces fit: there were a bunch of places in the background where the logic fell down if you tried to reassemble it all afterwards. The ending is a huge and blatant tribute to "Casablanca," but with a lot less hope. Not a good enough movie to be as depressing as it was.

2006, dir. Steven Soderbergh. With Cate Blanchett, George Clooney, Tobey Maguire, Tony Curran, Ravil Isyanov, Beau Bridges, Don Pugsley, Robin Weigert, Christian Oliver.

The Good Girl

Stupid people and their unhappy lives. I guess I like my characters a little brighter than the ones in this movie. Maybe if there was some insight, something clever about the movie, I would have had some hope of liking it. Despite good performances by Aniston, Gyllenhaal, and Nelson, the meaninglessness of the whole thing leaves the viewer numb.

2002, dir. Miguel Arteta. With Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal, John C. Reilly, Tim Blake Nelson.

Good Night, and Good Luck

History replays - Edward R. Murrow takes on Senator Joseph McCarthy. Clooney takes a look at the events at CBS during the McCarthy era. All talk, but definitely thought-provoking and probably extremely accurate as they're using extensive footage of McCarthy and I would expect any broadcasts by Murrow were verbatim (Strathairn was excellent in the role).

2005, dir. George Clooney. With David Strathairn, George Clooney, Jeff Daniels, Frank Langella, Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The last of Leone's three spaghetti westerns (along with "A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More," they defined a new genre), and the most highly regarded. I liked this one the least of the three - it was overly long (especially in the recently released English version with older footage added in - it runs to about 2:40) and abrasively unfunny. Wallach and Eastwood form an uneasy partnership in an attempt to track down a fortune in gold coins. They stumble through the Civil War and are pursued by Van Cleef, who also wants the money.

1966, dir. Sergio Leone. With Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach.

The Good, the Bad, the Weird (orig. "Joheunnom nabbeunnom isanghannom")

A Korean tribute and / or parody of Spaghetti Westerns, set in Manchuria in the 1930s. We have three main characters, Yoon Tae-goo (Song), Park Chang-yi (Lee), and Park Do-won (Jung), all pursuing a treasure map and then trying to find the treasure. The cinematography is often excellent, and some of the gags are pretty funny. There's also lots and lots of action. The story ... makes sense, but ultimately isn't particularly cohesive.

2008, dir. Ji-woon Kim. With Kang-ho Song, Byung-hun Lee, Woo-sung Jung, Seung-su Ryu.

The Good Thief

Addiction, recovery, redemption (and luck). Based (very loosely according to Jordan, I haven't seen it) on The old movie "Bob le Flambeur." The end result is pretty good - intelligent dialogue, a heist movie that's primarily about the characters. Nolte was excellent.

2002, dir. Neil Jordan. With Nick Nolte, Tcheky Karyo, Said Taghmaoui, Emir Kusturica, Nutsa Kukhianidze.

Good Will Hunting

No psychologists or mathematicians were hurt during the filming of this movie. And neither discipline was permanently damaged. I don't think either the math or psychology is particularly accurate in this film, but in the end it doesn't really matter. It's just an enjoyable story about personal recovery. Damon plays a young mathematical genius with an ugly past and a fear of change. Skarsgård plays the math professor who tries to help him, Williams the psychologist brought in when no one else can deal with him, and Ben Affleck his best friend. The script was written in large part by Damon and Affleck (don't let that put you off).

1997, dir. Gus Van Sant. With Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver, Casey Affleck, Stellan Skarsgård.

A Good Year

Based on the book of the same name by Peter Mayle, which itself was based on an idea cooked up by Mayle and Scott - who are good friends. So we find Scott directing ... a romantic comedy?! A love letter from Mayle and Scott to their home neighbourhood of Provence. Crowe plays a high powered stock trader whose uncle dies. Crowe is a self-proclaimed "asshole" who lost touch with this uncle he loved. Now he's forced to spend time in Provence on the huge estate he's inherited. Slapstick, life lessons, and romance follow. Not a particularly brilliant movie, but charming, and Crowe is actually pretty damn funny as well as being a good actor.

2006, dir. Ridley Scott. With Russell Crowe, Marion Cotillard, Freddie Highmore, Albert Finney, Didier Bourdon, Abbie Cornish, Tom Hollander, Archie Panjabi.

Gorgeous (aka "Bor lei jun")

Chan wrote and produced this fairy tale romance. Hong Kong produced, no violence, no inappropriate behaviour, environmentally friendly, and no tension. Even the fights have almost no tension because there's nothing riding on them except the fighter's pride. Qi Shu is beautiful, and Jackie Chan can't act.

1999, dir. Vincent Kok. With Jackie Chan, Qi Shu, Tony Leung, Bradley James Allan.

Grace is Gone

This appears to be very much Cusack's project, producing and playing the lead role. And this isn't Cusack like you've ever seen him: there's usually some Cusack-isms to his performance, but that's all gone this time. His face moves differently. His body moves differently. And his whole performance is superb.

Cusack plays a man married to a soldier named Grace: not surprisingly (if you've seen the trailer or read the DVD box), as soon as they've established what his life is like with her away, two neatly dressed army officers arrive at his door with the news of her death. He doesn't know what to do and isn't able to tell their two daughters (O'Keefe and Bednarczyk) what's happened, instead bundling them into the car for an impromptu road trip. Not surprisingly, they have no idea of what's going on.

Both of the young actresses are very good, Nivola is very good in his short appearance as Cusack's brother, and the dialogue is realistic and affecting. And yet somehow the movie as a whole never adds up to much more than a sad story. A memorable one, but not a great work of art.

2007, dir. James C. Strouse. With John Cusack, Shélan O'Keefe, Gracie Bednarczyk, Alessandro Nivola.

The Graduate

I expected a more conventional movie ... It's strange and uncomfortable, but very good. Dustin Hoffman plays a recent university graduate confused about what to do with his life. Having an affair with his father's business partner's wife and then falling for her daughter doesn't help any.

1967. dir. Mike Nichols. Dustin Hoffman, Catherine Ross, Anne Bancroft.

Gran Torino

I joked to a friend before I saw this that it was "a Western in suburbia." After I saw it, all I did was change that to "a Western in suburbia with a touch of Borat." Eastwood's character is massively racist, and spouts racial epithets throughout the length of the movie. I suppose I laugh at him and not at Borat because "he's just like that" whereas Sacha Baren Cohen is doing it deliberately to provoke people. Not that it's a comedy: there's a lot of humour, but it's also thought-provoking and sad.

Eastwood's character lives in a somewhat down-at-heel neighbourhood somewhere in the mid-West, where we open on the burial of his wife. He's a Korean war vet retired from working on the Ford assembly line, he's a racist, and his kids don't know how to talk to him (and he doesn't know how to talk to them). He finds himself involuntarily befriended by the Hmong family who've moved in next door. His sense of "right" overrides his racial discrimination when his neighbours are threatened by a local gang.

2008, dir. Clint Eastwood. With Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, Brian Haley, Geraldine Hughes, Dreama Walker, Brian Howe, John Carroll Lynch, William Hill.

Grand Canyon

What did Kasdan do after "The Big Chill?" Here's the answer. It has its moments, but not very good.

dir. Lawrence Kasdan. With Kevin Kline, Danny Glover.

The Great Dictator

Chaplin's satire of Hitler and Nazism, released in 1940. Chaplin really went to town on Hitler, mocking him for the entire duration of the movie. He also makes it very clear that the Jews don't deserve oppression (nor does anyone else). As Wikipedia points out, the U.S. was officially neutral at the time, so Chaplin's stance was unusual. Chaplin later said he would never have made the movie if he had known how serious the Second World War was going to be. But he did make it, and it has some very funny moments - although perhaps not his best film. Also his first real talking picture.

Chaplin plays a Jewish barber-turned-incompetent soldier, and also plays "Adenoid Hynkel," the dictator of Tomania. His parodies of Hitler's speeches are simultaneously horrifying and hilarious.

1940, dir. Charlie Chaplin. With Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie.

The Greatest Game Ever Played

Good acting almost carries the day, but it's overwhelmed by a staggeringly clichéd storyline. The parent who disapproves of the impossible dream, nearly does the child out of it for life ... but is inevitably redeemed by some small act at the end of the picture. And let's not forget the woman - the upper class woman whose heart he touches despite his lower class origins. LaBoeuf is excellent as always, Dillane is very good, Marcus has fun and looks good, and Flitter is entertaining. But the storyline sinks the whole thing (don't give me this "based on a true story" crap: the writer and director choose what to include). Too bad with so many good people on board.

2005, dir. Bill Paxton. With Shia LaBeouf, Stephen Dillane, Stephen Marcus, Josh Flitter, Elias Koteas, Marnie McPhail, Peyton List.

Greedy

Joe McTeague (Douglas) is the old, manipulative, and verbally abusive matriarch of a family of money-grubbing bastards. Danny (Fox) is the son of the estranged sibling, who left to get away from the back-stabbing. When he's introduced to the family he never knew, he looks for a time like the only decent person in the lot.

SPOILER WARNING: Fox is initially charming as Danny, but his conversion from decent person to money-grubbing bastard and back again is unconvincing. And the repeated switch-backs in Uncle McTeague's behaviour are too frequent and become less and less plausible - and less and less endearing. Has a few laughs, but mostly pretty annoying.

1994, dir. Jonathan Lynn. With Kirk Douglas, Michael J. Fox, Nancy Travis, Olivia d'Abo, Phil Hartman, Ed Begley Jr., Jere Burns, Colleen Camp, Bob Balaban.

Green for Danger

Filmed just after WWII, the movie is about a murder (or two) in an improvised British hospital during the war. I'm getting a little tired of the idea that a murder mystery has to be as complex as humanly possible to "keep it interesting." Four or five different people all had motive and opportunity. And in this case it's hard for the viewer to solve as the primary motivator is only given to you at the end by the inspector. The characters are at least entertaining.

1946, dir. Sidney Gilliat. With Sally Gray, Trevor Howard, Rosamund John, Alastair Simm, Leo Genn, Judy Campbell, Megs Jenkins.

The Green Hornet (2011)

My views on this movie should be taken with a grain of salt as I fast-forwarded through chunks of it.

Rogen plays Britt Reid, the party animal son of respected newspaper publisher James Reid (Wilkinson). After his father's death, he discovers his father's very talented assistant (and martial arts expert) Kato (Chou). Somewhat accidentally, they start fighting crime.

What I'm leaving out here is Rogen being a dick for the full 108 minute run-time. He's a talentless idiot who's only good at offending people ... but he's very rich because of his father. If you like Rogen's humour (he helped write this abomination) you may enjoy this movie: but believe me, this is probably going to be too much of Rogen-being-an-asshole even for his biggest fans, because that's what they concentrate on. This is a strange choice for Gondry - his stuff has always been bizarre, but usually more intelligent and better than this.

2011, dir. Michel Gondry. With Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz, Cameron Diaz, Edward James Olmos, Tom Wilkinson, David Harbour.

Green Lantern

Reynolds plays military test pilot Hal Jordan, selected to be Green Lantern guardian for Earth and the rest of our galactic sector after his predecessor, Abin Sur (Morrison) is mortally wounded by the evil being Parallax. After the first act of the movie on Earth - setting up Jordan's character and circumstances - the ring that selected him hauls him off to space for his Green Lantern training.

One of the more far-fetched superhero stories, and certainly no great work of art, but it's pretty entertaining and I didn't ask more than that.

2011, dir. Martin Campbell. With Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong, Angela Bassett, Tim Robbins, Temuera Morrison.

Green Zone

Damon plays Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, chasing after WMDs in Iraq. The intel his company is fed is constantly wrong, and through a series of events he begins to doubt the source of the intel, and then try to chase the person down. The movie is filmed in what one reviewer referred to as "vomit-cam," similar to the Bourne films which Greengrass also directed.

It was fun to watch but something of a fantasy - a depressing fantasy about a very determined and honest man caught in a situation he doesn't like and doesn't control in the middle of a war. Damon does a pretty good job and gets fairly good support from the other actors, but ultimately the movie slides together into a muddled memory of running firefights.

2010, dir. Paul Greengrass. With Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Khalid Abdalla, Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs.

Gridiron Gang

I was astonished by the trite platitudes fired off throughout the movie. So much so that I nearly quit at half time. And then I was more astonished (and a bit relieved, I suppose) to hear the clips from the documentary this was based on that are interspersed with the credits: the real Sean Porter really truly is a platitude-spouting machine. But I guess it works: when you're working with 16 year olds, they haven't heard all of them before (just most of them). But it did have some good moments: "I love sacking the quarterback. I still can't believe that's legal." It's heart-warming in a clichéd way: Johnson plays Porter, a teacher at a juvenile delinquent facility in California who decides that discipline through football will reduce recidivism. Apparently he was right.

2006, dir. Phil Joanou. With Dwayne Johnson, Xzibit, Jade Yorker, David V. Thomas, Setu Taase, Trevor O'Brien.

The Grifters

Frears heads out to look at the lives of con men. He seems to think that having a conscience that flops about like a fish out of water is a bad thing. The three stars are all various types of grifters, although we only find out about Bening well into the movie. Sleazy, nasty, and it all ends badly. Well done, well acted, and I didn't like it much at all.

1991, dir. Stephen Frears. With John Cusack, Annette Bening, Anjelica Houston.

Grosse Pointe Blank

John Cusack plays a professional hit man returning to his hometown for his ten year high school anniversary ... and a hit. A very funny script, some action, and Cusack's very good acting make this a really enjoyable movie. Minnie Driver is great as the love interest.

1997, dir. George Armitage. With John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Joan Cusack, Dan Aykroyd, Alan Arkin.

Groundhog Day

Murray plays Phil Connors, an obnoxious TV news reporter sent to Punxsutawney with his camera man (Elliot) and new producer (MacDowell) to report on the groundhog's weather prediction. After the report, a blizzard forces them to stay in Punxsutawney overnight, and when Murray wakes up in the morning he finds it's Groundhog Day again. In fact, he lives the day over thousands of times, and the movie shows his progression through hedonism, depression, suicide (he still wakes up the next day), love, and good will. Murray is absolutely at his best here: extremely funny and acting very well. MacDowell is surprisingly charming (I've never been a fan). Overall, an excellent movie.

1993, dir. Harold Ramis. With bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott.

Gunga Din

A rip-roaring comedy adventure in colonial India. Or at least I think that's how the movie sees itself. Seventy years after its release it looks more like the three good looking stooges take on the men in shoe polish. All the Indians were played by white actors covered in gunk, and the Grant / Fairbanks Jr. / McLaglen characters are a bunch of brave but obnoxious soldiers out to cause each other and everybody else problems. But of course they'll also win the war ... The three of them worked well together and were occasionally charming or mildly amusing, but the blatant racism means the movie doesn't play well these days.

1939, dir. George Stevens. With Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joan Fontaine, Eduardo Ciannelli, Sam Jaffe.

Guinevere

A particularly unsatisfying and irritating movie. We are to believe that Polley is an exceedingly insecure (but incredibly beautiful - she is, after all, Sarah Polley) girl from a family of overbearing extroverts, and that she would fall for a wheezing old photographer played by Rea. I've heard much of Polley's acting, and she did well later in the picture (by which time I'd decided the story was a complete write-off) but I found her initial insecurities overplayed. The voice-over finale is painfully cheesy.

1999, dir. Audrey Wells. With Sarah Polley, Stephen Rea, Jean Smart, Gina Gershon.

Gulliver's Travels (1996)

A three hour Hallmark TV package that pretty much manages to capture everything of Swift's original vision that still makes sense today. I didn't think Danson and Hallmark were the crew to do this, but I was wrong: I loved this production. They've modified the structure considerably: we start with Gulliver arriving home after eight years in a rather bad state, to find that his wife has been reduced to the state of housekeeper in what was their home for the doctor who replaced him, and she has to constantly fend off proposals of marriage from him. He also has a son he didn't know about. But this is only the beginning of his problems: he rather involuntarily relives all his adventures in his mind, and, in trying to tell the tale, is soon committed to an insane asylum. So we have the two stories in parallel: his current incarceration, and his bizarre journeys from the past. The effects are relatively straight-forward, but work exceptionally well. Danson is good in the lead. And, best of all, they kept most of Swift's vitriolic commentary on the state of humanity (while losing his contemporary political commentary that wouldn't make sense to a modern audience).

I've always been amused that Gulliver's Travels has become a children's story: it was certainly never intended to be. But giants, little people, and talking horses ... That's how it's often interpreted these days. This production is ... borderline kid-safe. But they're definitely not the target audience. Highly recommended. Give it time: the beginning is okay, but it improves greatly as it goes.

1996, dir. Charles Sturridge. With Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, James Fox, Ned Beatty, Geraldine Chaplin, Edward Fox, Sir John Gielgud, Robert Hardy, Shashi Kapoor, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Phoebe Nicholls, Kristin Scott Thomas, Omar Sharif, Alfre Woodard, Edward Woodard, Peter O'Toole.

Gunless

I had been wanting to watch this for several reasons ... A Canadian comedy western starring Gross and Guillory? Sounds good! But the reviews were poor and, as it turns out, they're pretty much right. Gross plays "The Montana Kid," a violent American gunslinger who finds himself in a small Canadian town after an attempt to hang him goes wrong.

The movie fails on several levels, not least of which is the title: there are a very large number of guns in the movie. The problem is, the Montana Kid (Gross) feels he's been insulted by one of the Canadians (Mane, playing the smith), and won't shoot the guy if he's unarmed - it's his "code." And he can't find a functional revolver in the town to arm his opponent with. So he has to stick around until a gun is available. He gets to know the locals, etc. etc. Guillory acts well as well as being charming and beautiful. Gross is good, but unfortunately much the same as usual - he's not breaking any new ground. The movie has a number of small laughs and is kind of charming in an understated way (how very Canadian of it), but overall it's kind of disappointing and fairly unbelievable.

2010, dir. William Phillips. With Paul Gross, Sienna Guillory, Tyler Mane, Dustin Milligan, Callum Keith Rennie.

---

H

Hancock

I love the superhero movies, so take my review with a grain of salt. That said, this is a pretty weird one. Smith plays an alcoholic and very lonely superhuman whose acts of retribution against criminals, and methods of saving people, tend to cause staggering amounts of damage. When he saves Bateman's character Ray Embrey, Embrey decides to apply his public relations skills to bring Hancock back into favour with the public.

The movie is different from other superhero movies in that Hancock is initially seen as complete drunken asshole. It's also different in that the explanation of his powers is more mythic than the pseudo-scientific explanations of the Marvel universe - and perhaps both of these things lost them some of their audience. Personally, I found it a great change of pace. The big dénouement at the end is incredibly clever, and spectacularly heroic. Really good.

2008, dir. Peter Berg. With Will Smith, Jason Bateman, Charlize Theron.

Hang 'Em High

Eastwood's first English language, non-Leone Western. Before the beginning credits even roll Clint has been strung up from a tree by a vigilante mob for a crime he didn't commit. They leave, and after the credits he's cut down by a Marshall who takes him into custody to check his story. The judge who lets him go promptly hires him, as Clint's character used to be a "lawman" himself. As you might imagine, he's a bit upset with the nine men who tried to kill him, and so hangs the tale.

I'm pleased to say that it didn't go anything like I the way expected it would. Unlike the Leone movies, who's good and who's bad is anything but clear-cut, and you may not be cheering for Clint to kill the vigilantes quite as much as you thought you would. A Western about justice that involves Clint Eastwood and that actually provokes a bit of thought: not bad.

1968, dir. Ted Post. With Clint Eastwood, Pat Hingle, Inger Stevens, Ed Begley.

The Hangover

The film opens with three guys in the middle of the desert. They and their car are beat to shit, and Phil (Cooper) is calling to explain to a waiting bride that, well, they don't know where the groom (Doug, played by Bartha) is. We backtrack, and see the four guys setting out for Las Vegas for Doug's bachelor party. They party a bit, and then we see them the next morning in their suite ... which is totally trashed, and contains both a live chicken and a tiger (fortunately in different rooms). None of them have any memory of the events past about 10 PM the previous evening. So we follow their process of discovery.

The set-up is nuts, and they don't really let up: it's crazy. But somehow it adheres to a bizarre internal logic that mostly works, and, better yet, it's both totally unpredictable and funny. It's ridiculous. And you will laugh.

2009, dir. Todd Phillips. With Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha, Heather Graham, Ken Jeong.

Hanna

Hanna (Ronan) is a 16 year old girl raised completely alone by her father (Bana) in the woods in Scandanavia, just south of the Artic Circle. She speaks multiple languages fluently, has memorized large chunks of the encyclopedia, and loves Grimm's Fairy Tales. Her father has also trained her as an assassin, pretty much from birth. After a short introduction to her incredibly isolated (and bizarre) home life, her father turns her lose on the world - although he's aimed her at just one person. The story follows Hanna as she tries to adjust to a world full of people and places she's never seen before, as her life history is unfolded for us.

While getting Daft Punk to do the score for "Tron: Legacy" was a brilliant idea, Wright's choice of the Chemical Brothers to do the score here doesn't really work despite Wright's occasionally quirky visuals. The movie as a whole is quite emotionally cold - although perhaps the Chemical Brothers fit with that ...

2011, dir. Joe Wright. With Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, Jason Flemyng, Jessica Barden.

The Happening

Shyamalan has outdone himself: yes, this is actually worse than "Lady in the Water." Long lingering shots of Wahlberg looking confused or upset (it's hard to tell), Deschanel - pretty and bad, and the most absurd of all his premises yet (the plants are out to get us) all add up to a really poor movie. Wahlberg is actually a fairly capable actor, I'm not sure if it was disinterest or poor direction that left him looking so foolish. Not that it would have mattered: the script was so poor and the reliance on overly drawn-out "scares" meant the best actor in the world couldn't have saved this.

2008, dir. M. Night Shyamalan. With Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Ashlyn Sanchez, Betty Buckley, Spencer Breslin, Robert Bailey Jr., Frank Collison.

Hard Boiled

Yun-Fat plays "Tequila," a Hong Kong cop (and occasional jazz musician) who sets out on a vendetta against the gun-runners who killed his partner and friend. Leung is one of the gangsters with more of a sense of loyalty than most, and as much talent for killing as Tequila. You don't need to know much more about the plot than that - in fact there isn't much more plot. In a two hour and seven minute run-time, I think 90 minutes is given over to gun battles, the last one at the hospital taking up (literally) more than half of the movie. One of the beauties of gun battles in movies (if you like that kind of thing) is the adrenaline rush they provide: that being the case, brevity is called for. Balletic mayhem can only go so far, and in this case, it went way too far. And when we got to the "save the children" section (getting 50 or 100 babies out of the baby ward in the exploding hospital), I just shook my head in disgust. The body count is breath-taking, and yet ALL the good guys survive. Yep, I believe that.

1992, dir. John Woo. With Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Teresa Mo, Philip Chan, Kwan Hoi-Shan, Anthony Wong.

Hard Core Logo

I don't know what the right word is ... "Mockumentary" implies the aim is humour, but while there's definitely humour in the movie that's not really what it's about. It's supposed to be a tour movie of the punk band "Hard Core Logo" - a reunion tour of five cities in Canada. They fight, they do drugs, they drive a van thousands of miles and smoke thousands of cigarettes. And the ending is a 16 tonne weight dropped out of nowhere that leaves you just staring. Not that it's wrong: it works. But I sure as hell didn't see it coming.

1996, dir. Bruce McDonald. With Hugh Dillon, Callum Keith Rennie, John Pyper-Ferguson, Bernie Coulson, Julian Richings.

A Hard Day's Night

Surreal, funny, and charming. Showed the Beatles as they were just coming into their true fame, running from hordes of screaming fans, and just generally being silly. The script and direction were very good, and Lester probably deserves the credit he was given as possible father of MTV with the concert footage filming style.

1964, dir. Richard Lester. With John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Star, Wilfrid Brambell, Norman Rossington, John Junkin.

Hardball

Reeves plays Conor O'Neill, a man with a gambling addiction and the resulting debts to the wrong people. Direly in need of money, he takes (is shoved into) a job coaching a bunch of kids from the Chicago Projects to play baseball. He has every intention of leaving as soon as he can.

You'll be unsurprised to hear that he helps the kids and the kids help him, and there are a number of warm and fuzzy moments. But. While it does have some surprisingly touching moments, Reeves really didn't manage to sell either of the two sides of his character: the asshole-gambler or the reluctant-but-warm-hearted-helper. He wasn't helped by the script, which went out of its way to emphasize both. The kids were fairly well chosen for their roles. But don't watch this movie.

2001, dir. Brian Robbins. With Keanu Reeves, Diane Lane, John Hawkes, Bryan C. Hearne, Julian Griffith, Michael Jordan, A. Delon Ellis Jr., Kristopher Lofton, Michael Perkins, Brian M. Reed, DeWayne Warren.

Harold and Kumar go to White Castle

Some of it is insanely grotesque (the character "Freakshow") and it aims really (really) low, but quite a few of the gags are extremely funny. It's a good thing I didn't know this was directed by the guy who did "Dude, Where's My Car?" because I never would have rented it. Who knew he could actually produce something funny? Much of the credit here goes to the two leads who are funny and work well together.

2004. dir. Danny Leiner. With John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris.

Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone

The first of the Harry Potter movies. The young stars are fairly poor actors on their first try, and Columbus's direction is pedestrian, but the product is enjoyable. The wizard chess at the end is positively inspired.

2001. dir. Chris Columbus. With Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

As Rowling's writing gets worse, the direction and acting in the series of movies is improving. Dark, tense, funny, and action-packed, this is very well done. Both Radcliffe and Watson turn in good performances, although Grint doesn't seem to be improving much.

2005. dir. Mike Newell. With Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

The main actors have grown into adulthood and have learned something of the craft they've been stumbling through previously. That and the best writing and directing yet make this the best of the series so far (although the dénouement, typical of Rowling, is weak). Also the darkest of the series, but we can expect it to get even darker in the sixth and seventh instalments. Oldman manages to be more charming than I've ever seen him before, and Lynch is great as Luna Lovegood. The latter two are what made it worth watching for me.

2007, dir. David Yates. With Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes, Brendan Gleeson, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, Bonnie Wright, Michael Gambon, Imelda Staunton, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Evanna Lynch.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Another very dark entry in the series, with lighter moments revolving around the principles' attempts to find love. Filming is good. Despite a passable story arc it still felt like a bunch of connected vignettes and didn't flow terribly well. Still, a reasonably good job this time out.

2009, dir. David Yates. With Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Bonnie Wright, Jim Broadbent, Alan Rickman, Tom Felton, Helena Bonham Carter, Natalia Tena, David Thewlis.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1

Harry Potter and crew finally leave the school of Hogwarts: not because they've completed their last year, but because Harry is in hot pursuit of Voldemort and the school is under the control of Voldemort's Death Eaters. Unfortunately, this is only half a film, or more correctly, half a book. It's plenty of film with a run-time of 146 minutes (on par with the others). But the movie doesn't finish out the year: that's being left to Part 2. It's well done for what it is, much on par with the others in the series. Sadly, none of the three main characters have grown up to be great actors.

2010, dir. David Yates. With Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, Bonnie Wright, Imelda Stanton, Toby Jones.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2

And finally, the close to probably the most financially successful film series ever. It had been a little while since I'd seen the previous movie, so I was a bit disappointed when they gave no reminders whatsoever of where we'd stopped in the previous one. The last two thirds of the movie is essentially "The Battle of Hogwarts," and three much-beloved characters (and several others of course) die in the fighting. Too much of a battle, but a reasonably satisfactory conclusion.

2011, dir. David Yates. With Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, Bonnie Wright, Imelda Stanton, Toby Jones, Evanna Lynch, Ciarán Hinds.

Harvey

Stewart plays Elwood P. Dowd, a genial drinker with an invisible companion who happens to be a six foot tall rabbit. His sister tries to have him committed, but ends up in the asylum herself. A very goofy movie that doesn't say much or do much, but is immensely entertaining.

1950, dir. Henry Koster. With James Stewart, Josephine Hull, Charles Drake, Cecil Kellaway, Jesse White, Victoria Horne, Wallace Ford, Peggy Dow.

He Died With a Felafel in His Hand

Every bit as surreal as the title suggests. Danny (played by Taylor) wanders from shared house to shared house. Obviously intelligent and articulate, but unable to write the novel he thinks he wants to write he's more than a little adrift. Constantly surrounded by insane roommates he slowly starts to figure things out. Bizarre but entertaining.

2001, dir. Richard Lowenstein. With Noah Taylor, Emily Hamilton, Romane Bohringer, Alex Menglet, Brett Stewart, Sophie Lee.

Head of State

Rock plays a down-on-his-luck alderman who is (after the death of both the candidate and his running mate) set up to run for president and lose. I have to admit that it actually did have several good laughs, but they were pretty far apart and what came between was predictable and tedious.

2003, dir. Chris Rock. With Chris Rock, Bernie Mac, Dylan Baker, Lynn Whitfield.

Heart and Souls

After dying in a bus crash, four very different people find themselves tied (although they're not sure why) to a boy born nearby the instant of the bus crash. Not the greatest premise, and the execution is distinctly cheesy, but Downey's performance - as the adult young man who is occasionally possessed by any of the four - is something to behold. Intermittently very funny, foundering in schmaltz and cheesiness, but still quite possibly worth seeing for (excessive) good-heartedness and Downey.

1993, dir. Ron Underwood. With Robert Downey Jr., Kyra Sedgwick, Alfre Woodard, Charles Grodin, Elisabeth Shue, Tom Sizemore, David Paymer.

Heartbreak House

Unutterably silly, even for Shaw. As it's Shaw it does have some amusing moments, but damn it's silly. He's poking fun at the conventions of society ... but then, when isn't he? A young woman turns up at the house of a friend where she's greeted by her friend's very eccentric father and the mildly off help. The young woman's secret crush turns out to be her friend's husband, the sisters, both married, flirt with everyone, and everyone has their illusions stripped away (if they had any to start with). BBC "Play of the Month."

1977, dir. Cedric Messina. With John Gielgud, Lesley-Anne Down, Siân Phillips, Barbara Murray, Daniel Massey.

Heights

Set in New York, the movie takes place across 24 hours. Close plays a famous actress, Banks her daughter, Marsden the daughter's fiancée. The movie revolves around the relationships between the central characters and others I haven't mentioned. The level of co-incidence is extremely annoying, and the unnecessary split shots equally so. Close, Banks, and Bradford are pretty good, but the acting overall was mediocre.

2004, dir. Chris Terrio. With Elizabeth Banks, Glenn Close, James Marsden, Jesse Bradford, John Light, Matthew Davis.

Helen of Troy

Hollywood is crawling with gorgeous young actresses and the movie-going public doesn't like to look at unattractive people, so I was somewhat impressed that they found someone they could make stand out as much as Guillory does as Helen. Perhaps they "protected" her some, not putting in Sienna Miller or Megan Fox or any others of that ilk ... but for beauty alone, Guillory was a good choice. Too bad she's only a passable actress, and the only decent actor in there is Skarsgård (in a too-short appearance). Sewell does his usual over-the-top intensity and nastiness. The leisurely pacing, blatant CGI, logical failures, and mediocre plotting made the 180 minute running time painful.

2003, dir. John Kent Harrison. With Sienna Guillory, Matthew Marsden, Rufus Sewell, John Rhys-Davies, Stellan Skarsgård.

Hell on Wheels (orig. "Höllentour")

A documentary that shows you everything about the Tour de France (2003) that you've never seen before: the cars and trailers following the riders, the buses, the masseurs, the reporters, the cameramen, the advertising, the fans, even the pee breaks. And the pain: the spills, the scrapes, the people riding with broken bones (coccyx, collar bone, and rib were mentioned). The director followed mostly Zabel and Aldag from Germany - Lance Armstrong is mentioned a couple times, but they don't even bother to tell you it was him who ultimately won ... I guess they assume you already know that.

2004, dir. Pepe Danquart, Werner Schweizer. With Erik Zabel, Rolf Aldag, Andreas Klöden, Alexander Vinokurov, Steve Zampieri, Dieter "Eule" Ruthenberg.

Hellboy

Based on a comic book series about a demon brought to earth by a Nazi experiment and raised as a normal human. In modern day America he works with others with paranormal powers to keep paranormal threats to the U.S. at bay. If you can swallow the basic premise, it's a pretty entertaining movie. Perlman is good in the title role, and the effects are impressive.

2004, dir. Guillermo del Toro. With Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor, Karel Roden, Rupert Evans, John Hurt.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

After del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth," I had high hopes for this movie. I didn't like "Pan's Labyrinth," but it was visually stunning and emotionally wrenching, showing del Toro as a very capable director. The trailers showed "Hellboy II" with much of the visual sensibility of Labyrinth, and indeed, it's very pretty, but it has even less emotional depth than the first "Hellboy." Characters are mocked and parodied rather than developed, the beautiful effects stand front and centre, and everything blows up real good. Quite a disappointment.

2008, dir. Guillermo del Toro. With Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, James Dodd, Jeffrey Tambor, John Alexander, Luke Goss, Anna Walton, Seth MacFarlane, John Hurt, Brian Steele.

Hereafter

Posits that people who have died and been revived will see a place, the "Hereafter," where the dead go for some amount of time before moving on. And if you die several times (as Damon's character did), you may develop a significant connection to that place and the people in it.

Marie Lelay (de France) dies, and is revived, in the tsunami in Thailand. While she's dead, she experiences a place of lights, floating, people - an image she pursues back home in Paris, digging into the idea of near-death experiences. We're also introduced to a genuine psychic in San Francisco George Lonegan (Damon) who abandoned a lucrative career reconnecting the living with their dead relatives as he couldn't deal with the emotions involved. His brother Billy (Mohr) sees only the lost money, not the pain the skill has cost George. And we have a pair of twin brothers in London, struggling to deal with their loving but heroin-addicted mother (guess what - there will be a death).

Parts of the movie are good - particularly Damon's performance, and the initial introduction to the twins and their mother - but the incredibly co-incidental meeting of the three principles all at once toward the end of the movie is typical of the poor construction of the plot. The movie just doesn't come together.

2010, dir. Clint Eastwood. With Matt Damon, Cécile de France, Frankie McLaren, Thierry Neuvic, Jay Mohr.

Hero

Li plays an assassin on a mission to kill a warlord who is slaughtering his way across China in the process of unifying the country. The story is assembled in pieces from flashbacks told by different characters, each segment filmed with stunning colour-coded cinematography. The martial arts is completely over the top, surpassing even its prototype "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." It's a parable with ludicrous martial arts action, occasionally excellent acting, and breath-takingly beautiful cinematography that truly deserves a full theatre screen.

2002, dir. Yimou Zhang. With Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang, Dao Ming Chen, Donnie Yen.

Heroes, Season 1

23 episodes, each running a "TV hour." What made this season good was the character driven plot, the ensemble cast, and the very not-black-and-white characters. As the action increased through the season to the climax in the 23rd episode, the logical fallacies increased exponentially. Despite which I really enjoyed it. I've heard a great deal of bad about season 2 and even more so season 3 (which is still airing as I write), and I think I'm just going to quit here. There are a couple threads that were deliberately left open, but the end of season 1 is a good conclusion.

2006, Tim Kring. With Masi Oka, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Hayden Panettiere, James Kyson Lee, Jack Coleman, Milo Ventimiglia, Adrian Pasdar, Ali Larter, Greg Grunberg, Zachary Quinto, Noah Gray-Cabey.

Hidalgo

Over-long paean to the American Mustang (the horse, not the car). Mortenson plays Frank Hopkins, a Mustang rider who enters a 3000 mile race across the deserts of the Middle East. If you like horses (or deserts) you'll love this one - I wasn't so impressed.

2004, dir. Joe Johnson. With Viggo Mortenson, Omar Sharif, Zuleikha Robinson.

High Crimes

Judd plays an attorney whose husband is accused of killing civilians 12 years prior while he was a soldier. She doesn't know military law, so she hires Grimes (Freeman), an alcoholic (but very good) military lawyer. Judd's fairly good, Freeman is very good, but Caviezel is as confused about his role as the audience, and the plot holes and coincidences (particularly at the end) pile up and kill the picture.

2002, dir. Carl Franklin. With Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, James Caviezel, Adam Scott, Amanda Peet, Juan Carlos Hernández.

High Fidelity

John Cusack is the owner of a record store. He's not very successful in love, and spends the movie talking to the camera about his problems in that department and tracking down ex-girlfriends. Based on the Nick Hornby novel. Very funny, even a little romantic. Much better than average "deleted scenes" on the DVD.

2000, dir. Stephen Frears. With John Cusack, Iben Hjejle, Todd Louiso, Jack Black, Lisa Bonet, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Joan Cusack.

High Noon

Classic Gary Cooper western. So many other films owe a debt to this one that you should see it even if you aren't big on westerns. A town marshal is forced to face a crew of killers alone when all of the townsfolk decline to help him.

1952, dir. Fred Zinnemann. With Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney Jr., Lee Van Cleef.

Highlander

Immortals walk among us, and the final show-down is on the streets of New York City in 1986. We learn this from flashbacks to the life of Connor MacLeod (the Highlander, played by Lambert in the role that launched his career), and see his education by Ramirez (Connery). We also find out that "the Kurgan" (Brown) is the ultimate enemy, very strong and very nasty - and if he wins the final battle, all will not be well in the world.

The movie is cheesy, and the soundtrack (by Queen) overbearing, but it remains a really enjoyable movie. Of course it makes sense to make the Scotsman (Connery) play the part of an Egyptian/Spanish gentleman, and the Frenchman (Lambert) play the Scottish Highlander. Both of them with untameable accents. It makes no sense that this is a good movie: and yet it's not just good, it's great. And it inspired a series of films (none of which you should watch, just this one), a TV series, and apparently an upcoming remake. Definitely a lot of fun.

1986, dir. Russell Mulcahy. With Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, Clancy Brown, Beatie Edney, Roxanne Heart, Sheila Gish.

A History of Violence

Canadian content for me, when I badly needed it (I had been in southeast Asia for several months when I first saw this) - better yet, Cronenberg (the Canadian) wasn't grotesque, as he often has been in the past. Still, the violence is graphic and in no way heroic.

Tom Stall (Mortensen) is a respected and happy small town businessman whose life is disrupted when he becomes an unintentional hero saving his diner from a robbery/hostage situation. His picture in the news attracts the attention of people who believe he's a retired thug.

Very well done, a good movie full of excellent performances from all the leads. Holmes surprised me in the role of the teenage son, really good.

The story differs immensely from the graphic novel it was based on, primarily in being much more ambiguous about Stall's motivations.

2005, dir. David Cronenberg. With Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Ashton Holmes.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

If you've read the books, this is a rehash that misses out on a lot of the best jokes (they simply don't have enough time to play them out in full, but they also missed some opportunities) and adds very few new ones. If you haven't read the books, this is a frenetic and nonsensical exercise in absurdity, nearly impossible to follow. So where's the audience? Nighy was a stand-out as Slartibartfast.

2005, dir. Garth Jennings. With Martin Freeman, Stephen Fry, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Sam Rockwell, Warwick Davis, Alan Rickman, John Malkovitch.

Hitman (orig. "King of Killers")

Comedy action from Hong Kong, starring Li. He plays a low rent Triad hitman who's kind-hearted and doesn't like to hurt people. He just wants one big score to set his mother in mainland China up with a nice house. When the $100 million U.S. kill comes up, his boss just insults him rather than sending him in. But Li sneaks in anyway, and ends up with his own "agent," a loud-mouth con man (Tsang).

Between lousy subs and cross-cultural failures of communication, I didn't get most of the humour, and the fights were mostly disappointing. Kind-hearted, but not Li's best.

1998, dir. Tung Wai. With Jet Li, Eric Tsang, Simon Yam, Gigi Leung.

Hogfather

BBC TV production of a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel. Typically twisted and mildly chaotic, with Death spending most of Hogswatch Eve imitating the Hogfather (Pratchett's stand-in for Santa Claus) in the Hogfather's ... absence. Death also manages to get his granddaughter (the inimitable Susan, played by Dockery) to investigate the disappearance - although she was trying to get out of the business and Death isn't "allowed" to involve her. Seems he likes humans: "Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom." Only one of several very good quotes. But Pratchett is meant to be read, and an accurate translation to the screen doesn't guarantee the same kind of humour the books provide: the movie was mildly enjoyable, but not a great success. Pratchett has a cameo as a toy-maker.

2006, dir. Vadim Jean. With Marc Warren, Michelle Dockery, David Jason, David Warner, Tony Robinson, Nigel Planer, Peter Guinness, Stephen Marcus, Craig Conway.

Holes

Based on the famous children's book by Louis Sachar, who also did the screenplay. Whenever I see a children's movie, I hope for the kind of sly adult humour that Pixar slides into things like "Finding Nemo" or "Toy Story II." That's not present here at all, but the movie is so bizarre and entertaining in its own right that adults should be happy with it too (kids will certainly be). LaBeouf plays Stanley Yelnats IV, born into a cursed family - except that no one believes in curses in this day and age. Nevertheless, he ends up in a youth camp for a theft he doesn't commit. Very entertaining.

2003, dir. Andrew Davis. With Shia LaBeouf, Henry Winkler, Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Tim Blake Nelson, Khleo Thomas.

The Holiday

What I remember most about this movie is that it's unrelentingly sweet. The good news is that it's leavened with humour so you don't go into sugar shock, but it's not a great movie. A lot of good actors have a good time, and the script has enough good stuff in it that this produces many enjoyable moments. The best humour is already blown if you've seen the trailer - Winslet talking to her brother (Law) and her house guest (Diaz) in a beautifully set up bit of telephone hold tag. But Wallach gets no airplay at all in the trailer, and the whole subplot with him is ... well, sweet, but it does have a bit of bite and a great deal of charm. Black plays Black, and that was neither a surprise nor a pleasure.

2006, dir. Nancy Meyers. With Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Jack Black, Eli Wallach, Edward Burns, Rufus Sewell.

The Hollywood Librarian

The DVD case claims that the movie is about the presentation of librarians by Hollywood, and there is some of that in the first 45 minutes of the movie. There's a lot of material to mine in that category, but instead Seidl gets completely derailed telling you how great librarians and libraries are, how great "Story Time" is, and ends with a long bit on the closing of the Salinas, California libraries, and their eventual re-openings.

I really wanted to like this movie: I'm a librarian, and I've always been fascinated (and occasionally offended) by movie portrayals of librarians. But this movie isn't about that - or at least not for very long. In fact, it doesn't know what it's about - and that's a major problem. Yes, libraries are great, and the librarians who staff them are knowledgeable and often helpful, but in the movie a good premise became a puff piece for librarianship. Sorely disappointing.

2007, dir. Ann Seidl.

Hollywoodland

Brody plays a low rent private investigator looking into the death of actor George Reeves (most famous for playing Superman on TV, played here by Affleck). The acting is excellent all around, but I found the ending (which was accurate to Reeves's life) somewhat unsatisfying. Brody is possibly my favourite actor working today: there's nobody better.

2006, dir. Allen Coulter. With Adrien Brody, Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins, Robin Tunney, Lois Smith, Molly Parker.

Homicide: Life on the Street

I only managed to sit through the first two episodes of this show. I thought "Law and Order" was depressing. This one is a parody as well: all the characters are parodies, so broadly drawn as to be completely ridiculous - and that's in the first two episodes.

Hope Springs

Makes me think Firth is having a go at being the new Hugh Grant, the intelligent, charming, quiet, romantic British leading man. Kind of a waste, really: I still think his best role was his relatively minor but extremely effective part in "Shakespeare in Love." This movie places him in the town of "Hope" in the United States, running away from a betrayal by his ex- (Driver), and into the arms of Graham. Humiliation and comedy ensue. Has some very charming moments, but it's a serious mess.

2003, dir. Mark Herman. With Colin Firth, Heather Graham, Minnie Driver, Mary Steenburgen, Frank Collison.

Hopscotch

Matthau plays Miles Kendig, possibly the CIA's operative, suddenly retired (involuntarily) to a desk job. Rather than accept this fate, he destroys his own file and vanishes - although not from the view of the camera, which follows him as he teams up with an old friend (Jackson) to provoke and embarrass the agency he once worked for.

While Matthau is under threat of death for his actions, there's not really a lot of menace in the movie - it's a comedy. Myerson (Beatty) is Kendig's former boss, and the person losing the most face. Cutter (Waterston) is Kendig's former protégé, and a lot brighter than Myerson - but still unable to catch Kendig. As a whole the movie is amusing.

This stands out to me as the first Criterion DVD I've actually enjoyed: I don't usually like their choices.

1980, dir. Ronald Neame. With Walter Matthau, Glenda Jackson, Sam Waterston, Ned Beatty, Herbert Lom, Lucy Saroyan, David Matthau, Mike Gwilym.

Horse Feathers

Groucho is the new Dean at a not-very-good college, where his son (played by Zeppo) is on the football team. There's a lot of antics on the football field, involving all four brothers. Kind of amusing.

1932, dir. Norman Z. McLeod. With Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx.

Hostage

Willis plays a police hostage negotiator from L.A. who takes a chief-of-police position in a very small town after he's unable to save a small boy in a hostage situation. Since this is an action movie and not a psychological drama, by the time you're ten minutes into the movie that first family is dead and a second family in his new hometown are under threat in a similar situation. It all gets even uglier when it turns out that the father of the new family has mob ties and soon Willis's family comes under threat as well. The acting is mediocre at best and there are dozens of loose ends (Willis's marital problems? but it's not the only one) and logical inconsistencies. And the ending is appropriately over-the-top and unbelievable.

Willis produced, and his daughter in the movie is played by ... his daughter.

2005, dir. Florent Emilio Siri. With Bruce Willis, Kevin Pollack, Jimmy Bennett, Michelle Horn, Ben Foster, Jonathan Tucker, Marshall Allman, Serena Scott Thomas, Rumer Willis.

Hot Fuzz

Pegg plays a star cop so good he's exiled to a small town for being too good. This is very much the same crew that brought us "Shaun of the Dead:" both written by Pegg and Wright, both directed by Wright, and both starring Pegg and Frost - although this time out Pegg plays it pretty much entirely straight ... and manages it very well. Ludicrous and hilarious, takes shots at dozens of different movies - draws heavily on Westerns, police procedurals, and even horror. Great outtakes on the DVD. And it was almost worth the price of admission to see Dalton slumming and having a great time doing it.

2007, dir. Edgar Wright. With Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman, Jim Broadbent, Paddy Considine, Timothy Dalton.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Three mildly alienated friends and an unenthusiastic nephew find themselves in the 80s after a dip in a disreputable hot tub, re-living a critical day in their lives. Similar in spirit to the almost concurrent "The Hangover," it's not quite as funny and it goes for somewhat grosser humour - but still an entertaining ride. Partly pulled out by decent performances by the four leads.

2010, dir. Steve Pink. With John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke, Chevy Chase.

House of Flying Daggers

Plans within plans, betrayals within betrayals. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" brought us the new genre of upscale martial arts movies, and Zhang has cashed in big first with "Hero" and now with this movie. The cinematography isn't quite as breath-taking as it was in "Hero," but the same touch is clear.

2004, dir. Yimou Zhang. With Ziyi Zhang, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau.

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

"How to Humiliate a Guy in 10 Days," "How to Humiliate Yourself in 10 Days." Two fairly decent actors can't save this festival of embarrassment. Hudson and McConaughey are partnered: she determined to destroy the relationship by doing every clichéd horrible thing a woman could possibly do, and he determined to hold it together no matter what to win an advertising account. If you like humiliation humour, this may be your thing: it's certainly not mine.

2003, dir. Donald Petrie. With Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey.

How to Steal a Million

Hepburn plays the daughter of a very good art forger who doesn't approve of her father's hobby. She tries to discourage him, but finds herself needing to remove one of the family forgeries from its very well guarded place in a museum before it's tested for insurance purposes and the family's secret is let out. To this end she recruits O'Toole after she catches him apparently trying to steal another forgery from her house. Hepburn and O'Toole are quite charming, and the movie is amusing - I think some of the humour has been lost in the years between, but it's still very enjoyable.

1966, dir. William Wyler. With Audrey Hepburn, Peter O'Toole, Hugh Griffith, Eli Wallach.

How to Train Your Dragon

Our hero is Hiccup, the son of a Viking and reluctant heir to a history of killing dragons. Dragons raid their island for food, and he wants to kill a dragon to impress everyone ... he's just not cut out for it. And when he finally comes to the killing part, he can't do it. The dragon he frees instead of killing is injured, and when he helps it a friendship develops.

An incredibly charming film, visually wonderful, and with humour to keep both the parents and the kids laughing. Hiccup says of the island he lives on "The food is tough and tasteless, the people even more so." It's a blast in 3D, but it remains thoroughly entertaining in 2D as well (I've seen it both ways).

2010, dir. Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois. With Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jonah Hill, America Ferrara, Craig Ferguson.

Howard's End

One of the later Merchant and Ivory movies. Won some awards and has good people in it, but I didn't like it much - not particularly compelling.

1991. dir. James Ivory. With Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter.

Howl's Moving Castle

Miyazaki, but somewhat atypical: this one is based on a Diana Wynne Jones novel, and the main character isn't exactly a young woman. But it's still Miyazaki: gorgeous images backing an entertaining story about a young woman turned into an old woman who takes up company with a magician in the pseudo-Victorian age. I didn't feel it had quite the depth of "Spirited Away," but still excellent and I've bought the DVD because the art is astonishingly beautiful.

2005, dir. Hayao Miyazaki. English voices by Emily Mortimer, Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall, Billy Crystal, Jean Simmons.

The Hulk

I watched this (despite negative reviews) because it was directed by Ang Lee. Unfortunately, even his skills weren't enough to save it. Or perhaps they were what sank it. It's sad when the most interesting thing in a movie is shot-to-shot transitions - but at least they're cool.

2003. dir. Ang Lee. With Eric Bana, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Connelly.

The Human Stain

Don't be fooled by the top billing of Hopkins and Kidman: half the film is flashbacks to Hopkin's character's youth, as important a story as what's going on in the present day. Unfortunately, constant flashbacks defuse any immediacy in either story line. Excellent performances (especially by Harris in a relatively small role) make an otherwise thoroughly disorganized film worth watching.

2003, dir. Robert Benton. With Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise.

The Hunger

Long before the current (2009) adoration of vampires, there was "The Hunger," based on Whitley Strieber's novel of the same name. Deneuve plays a millennia-old (but still young and beautiful) woman, and Bowie her companion of several centuries. The downside of their arrangement is the need to feed on human blood once a week.

Bowie begins to age extremely quickly - decades in a matter of hours - and seeks out a specialist on ageing, played by Sarandon. Sarandon, meeting him only for a minute, thinks he's a crank. Having evaded him for several hours, she sees him again and realizes that he was telling the truth about his condition. Upset at her behaviour, he leaves. Etc.

There's more to the plot, but I'm already giving it too much credit: this movie isn't about plot, it's about atmosphere and style over all else. Worse, it's 80s style. There were a couple good things about it: it introduced me (when it came out in 1983) to the great song "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus, and it put Deneuve and Sarandon in bed together - back then, that was shocking, and probably a first in main-stream cinema.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING (ie. stop reading if you plan on seeing the movie): the best thing about watching the DVD was the 20-years-later voice-over by an older and wiser Scott, and Sarandon - who was willing at that remove to state a pretty strong opinion against the ending. I was fascinated to learn (I'd wondered for over twenty years) had Sarandon's character intended to commit suicide, or was she trying to usurp Deneuve? She was trying to commit suicide, being unwilling to be immortal if it came at the price of being an addict. And Sarandon signed on to the movie because she liked that about the character - who in the original script stayed dead. Sarandon was pissed with the new ending.

1983, dir. Tony Scott. With Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, David Bowie, Cliff DeYoung.

The Hunted

I didn't see the full movie, saw the second half on TV.

del Toro plays a former Special Forces soldier who kills a couple hunters. His former instructor (Jones) is called in to track him down. What follows is a fairly poor update of "Rambo"/"First Blood." Even the locations are similar, using Oregon while "Rambo" went north of the border into British Columbia.

2003, dir. William Friedkin. With Tommy Lee Jones, Benicio del Toro, Connie Nielsen.

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I

I Am Legend

The third movie version of Richard Matheson's 1954 book of the same name, the first to use the name of the book. I didn't think I would like this, but their vision of a post-apocalyptic New York was brilliant, and Smith was great (as he so often is). Smith is a military doctor in an utterly deserted New York, three years after a human-made virus has wiped out about 99% of the population of the world. He has a dog, and a major fear of the dark. Recommended.

2007, dir. Francis Lawrence. With Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith.

I Am Number Four

The reviews were correct, this isn't a particularly good movie. Several aliens (who look remarkably human) hide out on Earth, and numbers 1, 2, and 3 are all killed. We follow number 4 (Pettyfer, who's not a brilliant actor). It's a fairly typical coming-of-age/superhero film: he's hunted down by the bad aliens while learning about his powers and finding friends (McAuliffe, Agron, Palmer). The special effects are reasonably good, it's heart is in the right (albeit manipulative) place, and I like a good dumb-ass SF movie, so I kind of enjoyed it.

According to boxofficemojo.com, the production budget was $60,000,000. As the gross so far (2011-09) is more than double that, I'm guessing the hot young stars can expect a call-back for the implied sequel. (Not to worry if you haven't seen it, it wraps up fairly nicely with only very minor loose ends.)

2011, dir. D.J. Caruso. With Alex Pettyfer, Dianna Agron, Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Durand, Callan McAuliffe, Teresa Palmer.

I Heart Huckabees

This is a deeply weird movie. Unfortunately that's pretty much all it is: it isn't very good. I found that it got funnier towards the end as they spent more time mocking Zen Buddhism rather than Existentialism, and that's a philosophy I know a lot more about. But I almost didn't make it - if "nothing matters," as the movie insists on telling us, then ... why bother watching the movie? For the most part it comes off as a bunch of not-very-funny nonsense. A waste of a lot of good actors.

2004. dir. David O. Russell. Jason Schwartzman, Jude Law, Mark Wahlberg, Naomi Watts, Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Isabelle Huppert.

I, Robot

The line "Suggested by the short stories of Isaac Asimov" should stand as a warning to SF fans expecting a literal interpretation of Asimov's famous stories. You won't find it here. With that understood, this is actually a very good, thought-provoking movie - right up until the end when they blow it out with totally preposterous action. But an interesting story and it sure looks good (hey, it's Proyas).

2004. dir. Alex Proyas. With Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Alan Tudyk.

I Sell the Dead

Managhan plays Arthur, a convicted trafficker in corpses. The movie plays out with him being interviewed about his career by Father Duffy (Perlman). We learn how he apprenticed in the trade with Willie (Fessenden) and the two of them competed with "The House of Murphy", another gang of grave robbers. Mildly amusing, well acted, but not as clever as it wanted to be.

2008, dir. Glenn McQuaid. With Dominic Monaghan, Larry Fessenden, Ron Perlman, Brenda Cooney, John Speredakos, Alisdair Stewart, Heather Bullock, Angus Scrimm.

I'm Not There

I watched only bits and pieces of this bizarre analysis of Bob Dylan's life, trying to see as much of Blanchett's performance as possible. Short of watching actual Dylan footage, I don't think you'll ever see as good a reproduction of him as she managed. Unfortunately I'm not enough of a Dylan fan to do the movie justice and watch the whole thing ... it looks quite weird.

2007, dir. Todd Haynes. With Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger.

The Ice Harvest

I didn't find a laugh in this entire movie. It was trying to be a black comedy/film noir, but the attempts at humour left the noir aspect crippled so all we see is a bunch of unlikeable people bungling a big crime.

2005, dir. Harold Ramis. With John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Oliver Platt, Connie Nelson.

The Ice Storm

A painstaking recreation of the Sixties ... okay, it's supposed to be 1973, but the Sixties were alive and well in suburbia. The interactions, the children, the adults, the appearance of all the minor props and backgrounds ... Affairs and family problems surface on Thanksgiving weekend during an ice storm. Lee does great work, but I'm not terribly fond of this one. Depressing without being gripping.

1997, dir. Ang Lee. With Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Elijah Wood, Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire.

An Ideal Husband

Written by Oscar Wilde, with slightly more substance than "The Importance of Being Earnest" - more teeth, anyway. Blackmail, and the possibility of the ruin of a gentleman's life. Proves again that Everett was born to act in Wilde's plays, although "Earnest" was better. But Julianne Moore has the stand-out performance, staggeringly slimy - she made my skin crawl, quite an achievement in a Wilde play.

dir. Oliver Parker. With Rupert Everett, Cate Blanchett, Jeremy Northam, Minnie Driver, Julianne Moore.

Identity

A psychological horror movie of sorts. Several people arrive in a motel together in a rain storm with the roads around washed out. They are killed, one by one. There's a big twist near the end, but to me it felt like a cheat that wasted the work of some fairly good actors. I wouldn't recommend this one, despite the presence of Cusack who is one of my favourite actors.

2003. dir. James Mangold. With John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, Alfred Molina.

Idiocracy

I was interested in this movie because it was Judge's first movie after "Office Space," a personal favourite. Wilson plays an average guy in the army who is volunteered along with a prostitute (Rudolph) to take part in a one year human hibernation project. Through bureaucratic incompetence they are forgotten, and end up sleeping until a garbage slide unburies them in the year 2505. At which time they discover they are by far the smartest people on the planet. This sets us up for a very long string of stupid jokes, a few of which are funny. Not up to "Office Space," and not worth your time unless you're a dedicated fan of Judge.

2006, dir. Mike Judge. With Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Crews.

Igby Goes Down

Fucked up. Perverse. Pretty good - just about everyone puts in a good performance, particularly Kieran Culkin in the lead. Culkin plays a young man with a seriously messed up family: pill-popping mom Sarandon, schizophrenic dad Pullman, brother Phillippe that he (mostly) hates. He's not exactly a charmer himself.

2002, dir. Burr Steers. With Kieran Culkin, Claire Danes, Jeff Goldblum, Jared Harris, Ryan Phillippe, Bill Pullman, Susan Sarandon, Rory Culkin.

Igor

Our main character is an "Igor," born with a hunch on his back and thus required to act as an assistant to one of the many mad scientists in the country of "Malaria." The main job of an Igor is to say "Yes, master" and pull levers. But our hero (Cusack) aspires to be an inventor himself.

Computer animated in a style that's very reminiscent of Tim Burton, and loaded with movie and pop culture references that don't really produce laughs. The movie starts out with Igor madly trying to be evil. Child or adult, you know he's going to turn out good. Bizarre without being particularly interesting to look at, and definitely not funny, with the possible exception of Buscemi this one misses the mark entirely.

2008, dir. Tony Leondis. With John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, John Cleese, Jennifer Coolidge.

Il Mare

I really wanted to see this because it's the movie that "The Lake House" was based on, and I'm a big fan of "The Lake House." While the initial layout of the movie is essentially identical (young woman moves out of a lovely house on stilts over the water, young man moves in, letter box does weird things with time), the feel of the movie is radically different. Both of our heroes are incredibly isolated, sad, and lonely. The house in "The Lake House" seems like a refuge, a lovely place to get away from the frantic pace of modern urban life. But in "Il Mare," it's a place of isolation and sadness. It's also by the sea, and instead of being over the water all the time, it's occasionally over the water and frequently over rather nasty mud flats.

In general, when Hollywood does a remake of a foreign film, the original is superior. For once, this isn't the case. This has some occasionally excellent cinematography, but the plot is mediocre to poor, our main characters both look like damaged goods, and the whole tone of the movie is depressing without any particular rewards.

2000, dir. Hyun-seung Lee. With Jung-Jae Lee, Gianna Jun.

The Illusionist

The movie is set in Vienna around 1900, filmed with a yellow/orange/brown cast intended to make it feel older - it's a bit of a conceit, but a nice feel. The screenplay is based on "Eisenheim the Illusionist" by Steven Millhauser. Eisenheim (played by Norton) is a stage magician from the lower classes in love with a countess (Biel) that he knew when they were both young. But now that he's found her again, she's engaged to the ruthless Prince (Sewell). The Prince uses chief inspector Uhl (Giamatti) to run a lot of his errands, particularly in respect to Eisenheim. Director Burger meant this movie to be a study about what we can see, what can we believe in - and as a result there's a fair bit of ambiguous material. Norton plays his character so controlled that you don't get much from his performance. Sewell was better than I expected (although still chewing scenery), Giamatti was typically very good, Biel was decent. The ending was ambiguous. But the movie rewards a second viewing as there are a lot of well-worked-out details that you won't catch all of the first time.

2006, dir. Neil Burger. With Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Pure Gilliam, featuring Ledger's last screen role. Plummer is Doctor Parnassus, with his travelling side show that doesn't fit in particularly well in the modern world. He's accompanied by his daughter Valentina (Cole) and two assistants, Anton (Garfield) and Percy (Troyer). There's a deal with the Devil (Waits) to be dealt with, and the outsider Tony (mainly played by Ledger, but also Depp, Law, and Farrell in the imagination ...) alternately saving the day and causing trouble. It's a weird, weird movie. Not his best, but pretty good and enjoyable.

2009, dir. Terry Gilliam. With Heath Ledger, Christopher Plummer, Verne Troyer, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield, Tom Waits, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law.

Imagine Me & You

Mediocre rom com about a young bride who meets her perfect girlfriend ... on her wedding day. The three leads are all very attractive and well acted, the supporting roles are too broadly drawn to even think about, the script and plot are middling, and the movie ultimately redeems itself through its wickedly funny one-liners.

2005, dir. Ol Parker. With Piper Perabo, Lena Headey, Matthew Goode, Celia Imrie, Anthony Head, Boo Jackson, Darren Boyd.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde's most famous play. Everett was meant to perform Wilde - not to put down anyone else in the movie, the whole ensemble was excellent. It feels like a movie rather than a play moved to the screen. Very good interpretation.

2002. dir. Oliver Parker. With Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, Rupert Everett, Judi Dench, Frances O'Connor, Tom Wilkinson, Anna Massey.

In America

The story of a poor Irish family trying to get their life together in Hell's Kitchen, New York. This isn't about immigrants, New York, or even living in poverty: it's about recovery from loss. Before they arrived they lost a son, and, while the movie is relatively positive overall, that's not all they're going to lose. I found the characters were painted with too broad a brush in places, and the whole E.T. doll thing near the beginning kind of lost me for the rest of the film. It certainly has some very touching moments, but it stumbles along rather unconvincingly a lot of the time.

2002, dir. Jim Sheridan. With Paddy Considine, Samantha Morton, Djimon Hounsou, Sarah Bolger, Emma Bolger.

In Bruges

Two British hit men are sent to Bruges (in Belgium) to spend a few days, for reasons they don't understand. The older of the two (Gleeson, who's great) wants to get out and see the sights, the younger (Farrell) is utterly disgusted with the town and just wants to go to the pub. When the boss calls, things get ugly. Travel porn, lots of swearing, assassins, and black humour - done well. Politically incorrect, hysterically funny, eminently quotable (but not at the office), and depressing. A very good movie.

2008, dir. Martin McDonagh. With Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clémence Poésy, Jérémie Renier, Thekla Reuten.

In Good Company

The surprise here isn't that Johansson is excellent, or that Quaid can do gruff and charming, but that Grace is actually really good. Coming from "That Seventies Show," it was awfully hard to tell before this. He plays a very young executive for Globecom who displaces Quaid's character in a buy-out. Johansson plays Quaid's daughter, tightly connected with both men. One of the most interesting comments Weitz made in the extras was that he wanted to look at the problems and traumas inherent in a functional family - after all, we've all seen dysfunctional families onscreen hundreds of times. An underrated, funny, and charming movie.

2004, dir. Paul Weitz. With Topher Grace, Dennis Quaid, Scarlett Johansson, Marg Helgenberger, David Paymer, Clark Gregg, Philip Baker Hall, Selma Blair.

In Her Shoes

"Shoes like these should not be locked in a closet! They should be living a life of scandal and passion, and getting screwed in an alleyway by a billionaire while his frigid wife waits in the limo ..." "Please tell me you just made that up." This pretty much encapsulates Maggie and Rose, the sisters at the centre of this wonderful movie. Maggie the tramp is played by Diaz, Rose the successful and unhappy lawyer is played by Collette. Their recently rediscovered grandmother is played by MacLaine. Hanson takes a novel to a good screenplay to a very good movie, no small thanks to Collette (who is excellent) and MacLaine (who is so good it's breathtaking). The beginning finds Maggie kicked out of her parents house, staying with her sister where she causes worse and worse problems until Rose kicks her out, whereupon Maggie goes to Florida to sponge off their grandmother. The resolution is a little convenient and emotionally manipulative, but it's carried so well by the cast that you're likely to forgive them. Besides, there's a great deal of emotional truth to it.

2005, dir. Curtis Hanson. With Toni Collette, Cameron Diaz, Shirley MacLaine, Mark Feuerstein.

In Search of Shakespeare

A documentary that tries to reconstruct the life of Shakespeare, particularly the parts that aren't as well known. Wood (who wrote and starred) freely admits that big chunks of it is speculation - but does manage to back up most of his ideas fairly well. He takes his time and kind of plods along in places, to the point that this could probably have been done in two hours instead of the four it ultimately took, but worth seeing for fans of Shakespeare.

2003, dir. Gregory Doran. With Michael Wood, the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In the Line of Duty 4

Cheesy martial arts flick, $5.50 in the Walmart bin. I enjoyed it, although it's pretty bad.

2003. dir. Yuen Woo Ping. With Donnie Yen.

Incendies

The movie opens with the reading of a will, in which the Marwan twins Jeanne and Simon (Désormeaux-Poulin and Gaudette) discover that not only is their father still alive, but they have a brother they didn't even know about. But the will doesn't explain who these people are, and requires that they be found. Jeanne sets out from Montreal to an unnamed Middle Eastern country based at least in part on Lebanon, where she begins to discover her mother's violent and incredibly unpleasant past.

The movie is well done - well acted and well filmed - but about half way through it completely lost me. Partly the emotional (and physical) brutality - I suppose they were believable, but I failed to believe that a single person could survive all of that. After the assassination, she would have been dead in seconds. Weeks at most. But that's not how the story plays out. I also had major problems with the time-line: yes, it could work, but the children aren't young enough when we see them for it to be convincing. The constant switching between the voyages of the mother and the daughter, with two very similar looking women in the same places, was also confusing and annoying - and probably intentional.

The friend I was watching it with pointed out that it was structured as a modern myth - thus the brutality, and the tie-ins to Oedipus. Apparently it worked as such for critics - but not for me.

2011, dir. Denis Villeneuve. With Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Rémy Girard, Abdelghafour Elaaziz.

Inception

Near future SF, with DiCaprio as Cobb, who specializes in "extraction," pulling information out of the minds of dreamers. It's not a particularly safe past-time, and a previous job has left him locked out of the United States, and thus permanently away from his children. One final job will solve all these problems ... and we all know how well those final jobs go. This being a Nolan movie, it's extremely complex as we travel through level after level of dreams and try to keep track of how the hell Cobb and his team are going to get back out ...

The visuals are spectacular, but I found I was spending so much time sorting through the details of the different layers of deception and dreams that I wasn't as emotionally involved or as interested in the characters as I would have hoped to be.

2010, dir. Christopher Nolan. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine.

The Incredible Adventures of Wallace and Gromit

This DVD is a compilation of the three Wallace and Gromit episodes, "A Grand Day Out," "The Wrong Trousers," and "A Close Shave." The first episode was nominated for an Oscar but lost to Park's own "Creature Comforts," and the other two won Oscars (Best Animation). They're extremely funny and I highly recommend them. The extras on this DVD are very nice too.

1989, 1993, 1995. dir. Nick Park.

The Incredible Hulk

Not the disaster the Ang Lee version was, but I can't rate it much higher than "not bad." This is a "reboot," not a sequel, meaning we start the story again from the beginning. Norton plays the long-suffering Dr. Banner, who turns mean, huge, and green whenever he gets pissed off. Oh - and he drops 90% of his IQ points. We get a quick intro to the back story of the failed experiment that left him with this problem during the credits, but the story really starts with him living and working anonymously in Brazil, while still trying to work out how to fix his own problem. He's in Brazil because he's avoiding the American military, and one general in particular and ... I'm rambling on about the story, and should be covering why this is or isn't good. Norton's not at his best, and all the other actors are just a little bit too emotional. There's no elegance to the plot, although it makes sense. The effects are heavy-handed.

My greatest pleasures in the movie came from the small things: Lou Ferrigno got a small (but speaking) part as a campus security guard. Blake Nelson put in what was, for him, a rather muted performance - and thus more enjoyable. Culver University was actually my alma mater (the University of Toronto), and I had about fifteen minutes to identify half the buildings on campus. And the big final confrontation is on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto (standing in for New York), where you can clearly see the huge neon signs of Sam the Record Man about three times. All of which should tell you, "if that's the good stuff, this movie wasn't keeping his mind on the important stuff like the plot."

2008, dir. Louis Leterrier. With Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt, Tim Blake Nelson, Ty Burrell.

The Incredibles

Another superb movie from Pixar. A family of superheroes are forced into a superhero relocation plan after a bunch of lawsuits take superheroes off the streets ... This is an adult movie disguised as a kids' movie - both will find a lot in it, but adults will particularly appreciate the ruminations on trying to fit in when you don't really. Very funny and incredibly clever. The DVD has some good extras, and now that I own it I have to say this is one of my favourite movies ever.

2004. dir. Brad Bird. Voices of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Lee.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The fourth Indiana Jones movie. Not as bad as "Temple of Doom," but that's not saying much at all: this is still a very bad movie. Ford is too old to be an action star, and they would have made a better film if they'd simply acknowledged he was 65 years old and had him "win" by being knowledgeable and devious. But that's not the style of the movies, and probably not what audiences wanted. But what they wanted they weren't likely to get from an "action" star that old. Everyone looked like they had a blast making the film, which always helps, but the plot was incredibly stupid. Indy survives being pretty much at ground zero of a nuclear blast, physics is ignored at every turn, and in the end the mystery is solved with "interdimensional beings." Give me the religious hokum of "Raiders" any day.

2008, dir. Steven Spielberg. With Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent, Igor Jijikine.

Infernal Affairs (orig. "Mou gan dou")

We start with a triad gang boss sending a bunch of young brothers (gang loyalty rather than blood) to become police recruits. We follow one of these as a cop, kept undercover by the police for ten years ... Apparently he's gone over to the police point of view, but finds himself up against a gang mole in the police department. An ugly game of cat and mouse ensues. Well done with very good acting by the two leads (Leung and Lau).

2002, dir. Wai-keung Lau, Siu Fai Mak. With Tony Leung, Andy Lau, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Eric Tsang.

Inkheart

Evidently my memory of the book was highly inaccurate: I thought this movie version wasn't accurate, but it most respects it's right with the book. I think the large number of elements from The Wizard of Oz series of books may have been an addition specifically for this American production (the author, Cornelia Funke, is German).

The movie's biggest problem is that it doesn't have so much a "plot arc" as an incredible mess of loops and bumps. People are captured, escape, captured again, escape again ... you get the idea. The underlying concept is fun: Fraser's character Mortimer is a bookbinder who's a "silvertongue:" when he reads a book out loud, the characters he reads are drawn into our world (and someone from our world goes into theirs). He pulled a couple evil villains (and the rather dubious Dustfinger) out of a book called "Inkheart" when his daughter was three, before he realized what was going on. He hasn't read to her in the intervening nine years. But now, his villains (and Bettany as Dustfinger, quite good) have located him, and his daughter's life is in danger.

It's pretty and the idea is good, but - as mentioned - the plot structure doesn't work well on screen. Passable as a kid's movie, doesn't have much to offer adults.

2008, dir. Iain Softley. With Brendan Fraser, Eliza Bennett, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Rafi Gavron, Andy Serkis, Jim Broadbent, Sienna Guillory.

The Interpreter

In some ways this is a very successful film, and in other ways, it's pretty crappy. It's biggest drawback is its complexity: you spend too much time figuring out what's going on and not enough caring about it. And once you put it all together, it's still kind of hard to care. I'm also getting really tired of Kidman in her "edgy and nervous" role, which she takes on here as a U.N. interpreter who overhears a conversation threatening the life of a visiting politician. As the movie unfolds, her involvement becomes suspect for various reasons. Kidman was okay, but Penn's performance was superb.

2005, dir. Sydney Pollack. With Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn.

Ip Man

Yen plays the title character. Ip Man is a Wing Chun practitioner in the town of Foshan: the movie opens by showing that while Foshan teams with martial arts schools, Ip Man (who has no school) is the best martial artist. We then move forward to the arrival of the Japanese with their 1937 invasion, and the various fall-out from that.

The movie is loosely based on the life of Ip Man, who later went on to become a very famous martial arts instructor - including teaching Bruce Lee. Yen plays fairly well in the lead, but is somewhat unbelievably noble - possibly the result of having living members of the Ip family consulting and on set. The fights are fairly good, choreographed by Sammo Hung and emphasizing the Wing Chun style. Production values are high and the story is ... well, perhaps not accurate to Ip's life, but a good historical recreation. Nevertheless, I didn't find it very involving.

2008, dir. Wilson Yip. With Donnie Yen, Simon Yam, Lynn Hung, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Gordon Lam Ka-tung, Fan Siu-wong.

The Ipcress File

Written by Len Deighton. The central idea is a psychological attack on a person that just looks silly 40 years later, but if you can get through that part it's a very decent British spy movie. Definitely 60s, and the music sounds like a James Bond movie from the period.

1965, dir. Sidney J. Furie. With Michael Caine, Nigel Green, Guy Doleman, Sue Lloyd, Frank Gatliff.

Iron & Silk

Based on Salzman's book about his experiences teaching English in China for two years. Salzman plays himself (with a different name, "Mark Franklin," why?) - he's incredibly wooden, but where do you find a decent actor with martial arts skills like that? Master Pan also plays himself - mostly good, since he's portrayed as a grumpy old guy and he does that well. This is not a fast-paced movie, but the cultural education embedded in it is wonderful, and the Wushu lessons he took are interesting. Worth seeing.

1990, dir. Shirley Sun. With Mark Salzman, Vivian Wu, Jeanette Lin Tsui, Qingfu Pan.

Iron Man

Another of Marvel's comic franchises brought to the screen, and done well. Downey is very good as the obnoxious, impulsive, and extremely intelligent Tony Stark. Bridges and Toub were really good too, the special effects were excellent, and the story ... well, perhaps not the best of the superhero plotlines, but quite good. I bought the DVD as soon as it came out - but then, I'm a sucker for superhero stuff.

2008, dir. Jon Favreau. With Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Leslie Bibb, Shaun Toub, Faran Tahir, Clark Gregg.

Iron Man 2

Cumulatively, the critics are right: this isn't as good as the original, but it's not bad. This movie finds Tony Stark (Downey) slowly dying from blood poisoning brought on by the palladium reactor in his chest that's theoretically keeping him alive. His behaviour becomes erratic, and it doesn't help when Anton Vanko (Rourke) shows up as Whiplash - a guy with an Iron-Man-like suit, electrified whips, and a very bad attitude. Then Rhodey (Howard rather unfairly got the boot, replaced by Cheadle ... admittedly a better actor) steals one of the other Iron Man suits and there are fights. Several, in fact. If it wasn't the sequel to one of the best superhero movies ever made, no one would ever have complained about this. So: not bad, but not great.

2010, dir. Jon Favreau. With Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson, Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell.

Iron Monkey

I first saw this years before its North American release as an extremely poor quality bootleg rented at a speciality video store in Toronto. Despite the quality issues, I really enjoyed it. So much so that I purchased the DVD when it became available. The wire work is way over the top (in the manner of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), but wonderfully done. The fights are hugely entertaining, and the plot ... well, it's not as bad as most martial arts movies.

1993, dir. Yuen Wo Ping. With Donnie Yen, Rogguang Yu, Jean Wang, Sze-Man Tsang.

The Island

Different critics see different source material, but most of them, myself included, see something highly derivative of its predecessors. Take "Logan's Run," add a big chunk of Larry Niven's organ banks, add a touch of "The Matrix" for spice, plus action, action, action (hey, it's Bay) and you have this mildly entertaining and unoriginal movie with big stars and stuff blowing up all over.

2005, dir. Michael Bay. With Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Sean Bean, Djimon Hounsou, Michael Clarke Duncan.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

Based on the novel by H.G. Wells, starring Brando as Moreau, Kilmer as his assistant, and Thewlis as the visitor through whose eyes we see. Despite the fact that Thewlis is the main character in the movie, the DVD found no room for him on the cover because of course Brando and Kilmer were the bigger draw. And I have to admit, they both did a fine job of being completely and totally psychotic. Thewlis is a good actor, but here he seems to be trying to live up to seriously conflicting instructions: being the central character in something that gets characterized as "horror," he never does anything sensible (although he's painted as a sensible guy). Not good as horror, not good as anything else, this is a pretty poor movie.

1996, dir. John Frankenheimer. With David Thewlis, Val Kilmer, Marlon Brando, Fairuza Balk, Ron Perlman, Marco Hofschneider, Temuera Morrison, Daniel Rigney.

It Could Happen to You

New York policeman Charlie Lang (Cage) finds himself unable to provide a tip at a diner and promises waitress Yvonne Biasi (Fonda) half of whatever he wins in the lottery that night. When the ticket he picked up actually wins $4 million, his wife (Perez) is mightily unimpressed that he intends to actually carry through on his promise.

The core of the story has some basis in truth: cop, waitress, splitting the lottery winnings. But the relative ages of the players, the divorces and romances, those are Hollywood fictions for our entertainment. Cage and Fonda are over-the-top sweet, giving away money at every turn to make other people's lives better. Perez and Tucci (as Biasi's estranged husband) are over-the-top money-grubbing horrible people. But Cage and Fonda manage to show a certain joy in life that brings considerable charm to the movie and makes it fun to watch. Overall, a sweet urban fairy tale.

1994, dir. Andrew Bergman. With Nicolas Cage, Bridget Fonda, Rosie Perez, Isaac Hayes, Wendell Pierce, Stanley Tucci, Seymour Cassel.

It Happened One Night

A typical "opposites attract" romantic comedy with a lot of good humour. Reminded me a lot of "My Man Godfrey," which is similar and probably about the same time.

1934. dir. Frank Capra. With Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert.

Italian for Beginners (orig. "Italiensk for Begyndere")

The structure and acting of this Danish film are a little uneven, and it looks like it was occasionally shot hand held for no particular reason, or perhaps because of lack of funds. It starts with several deaths, introduces us to a group of Danes taking a weird Italian class, and ends with relationships. Not bad, but rather forgettable.

2000, dir. Lone Scherfig. With Anders W. Berthelsen, Anette Støvelbæk, Ann Eleonora Jørgensen, Peter Gantzler, Lars Kaalund, Sara Indrio Jensen.

The Italian Job (2003)

An enjoyable and action-packed heist film, this remains possibly my favourite in the genre. Some clever ideas and a memorable set of characters make this worth seeing.

2003, dir. F. Gary Gray. With Mark Wahlberg, Donald Sutherland, Jason Statham, Edward Norton, Charlize Theron, Seth Green, Mos Def.

The Italian Job (1969)

I saw this a couple years after seeing the 2003 version, but I think my reaction would have been similar had I seen it first. The humour is ... well, there's a lot of it but pretty much none of it works in 2006. The Minis are fun, and, along with the main character's name, are nearly the only thing to survive into the new version. I found the movie irritating in the extreme - see the new version instead.

1969, dir. Peter Collinson. With Michael Caine, Noel Coward, Benny Hill.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

A dying escaped convict tells a few people where he buried some cash, and they all rush to try to recover it. It's very long, and the humour was definitely not my style. If you have an urge to see this, I'd recommend you see "Rat Race" (2001) instead. The idea is virtually identical, but the humour is more ... up-to-date. It's equally forgettable.

1963. Dir. Stanley Kramer. With ... a cast of thousands.

It's a Wonderful Life

One of the most famous movies ever made, now indelibly associated with Christmas because that's when it's always shown on TV (although the association within the movie is quite strong). Stewart plays a compassionate business man locked into a small town life not of his choosing, and when financial difficulties hit his small firm he considers suicide. A mildly incompetent angel is sent to help him, and ends up showing him what would have happened if he'd never been born. Stewart is good, Reed is luminous. 60 years of glittering fame has left the movies something of a cliché, but it's still enjoyable and very touching.

1946, dir. Frank Capra. With Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore.

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Gilchrist plays Craig, a 16 year old stressed out about his life and contemplating suicide. He checks himself into a psychiatric hospital - where he finds himself housed with the adults as the teen wing is "under renovation." He finds himself taken under the wing of Bobby (Galifianakis) and falling for fellow patient Noelle (Roberts).

Much of the story is narrated by Craig, and we see some chunks as fantasy flash-backs. It's fairly clear that while he's pretty badly stressed, he's not really that badly off. On the other hand, the stay in the ward offers good psychiatric care and some life lessons (plus weird fellow patients). It's all a little too light-hearted, but passably well done.

Gilchrist is excellent as the uncertain Craig. Roberts is beautiful, but should have been played with more of an edge given what she was in for - this could be the director's fault rather than Roberts'. And it was nice to see Galifianakis in a role that required some dramatic skills rather than straight comedy: it turns out he actually has the skills.

2010, dir. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. With Keir Gilchrist, Zach Galifianakis, Emma Roberts, Viola Davis, Zoë Kravitz, Bernard White.

I've Heard the Mermaids Singing

I picked this up because I really liked Rozema's "Mansfield Park" and because it was very well reviewed. I was destined to extreme disappointment. Very surreal, a morality play in a distinctly Canadian style, and our guide is a clueless child in an adult's body (McCarthy).

1987, dir. Patricia Rozema. With Sheila McCarthy, Paule Baillargeon, Ann-Marie MacDonald.

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The Jacket

The story of a Gulf War veteran (Brody) accused of murder during an event he can't remember and put into an insane asylum. There he's experimented on by a doctor who injects him with a drug and stuffs him in a straight jacket and into a morgue drawer repeatedly. While in the titular jacket he has visions of the past - and the future, although it's less than clear if they're visions or he's actually there. Weird, very frenetic in a retro-Seventies kind of way, loaded to the gills with good acting. Craig was excellent, Knightley, and Leigh were very good, and Brody is beyond outstanding.

2005. Dir. John Maybury. With Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brad Renfro, Daniel Craig.

Jackie Chan's First Strike (orig. "Jing cha gu shi 4: Zhi jian dan ren wu")

Jackie Chan's second major North American release after "Rumble in the Bronx." A bit of a James Bond ripoff, complete with multiple locations, crazy stunts, gunfights on skis, evil Russian agents, and nuclear weapons. More importantly, it includes some of his best fights and stunts ever.

1996, dir. Stanley Tong. With Jackie Chan.

The James Bond Story

It's important to place this in context: a TV movie filmed while "The World is Not Enough" was in production, the third of the four Brosnan Bonds. It's clear that Apted, who directed "The World is Not Enough" was trying to make huge changes to the franchise and the relationship of the character to the world, but they come off as relatively small ones - particularly as seen after the release in 2006 of "Casino Royale." But it's an interesting documentary about the series, and what the directors, writers, and actors thought they were doing. Sexism, explosives, women, gadgets, murder, and bad one-liners: how we love it. Or so their box office receipts say.

2000, dir. Chris Hunt. With Sean Connery, Roger Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, Jane Seymour, Maud Adams.

The Jane Austen Book Club

A group of women - and one man who's never read Austen before - get together for six months to discuss Jane Austen's books. Swicord resorts to the practise of over-emphasizing neuroses and quirks for the first half hour to introduce us to the characters. Things even out after that and get better, although I felt they worked too hard to fit the Austen story lines into the participant's lives. But for the most part it works, and is quite enjoyable. I thought Dancy was quite good.

2007, dir. Robin Swicord. With Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Hugh Dancy, Kathy Baker, Amy Brenneman, Maggie Grace, Jimmy Smits, Marc Blucas.

Japanese Story

Geologist/programmer Collette is co-opted into taking a visiting Japanese gentleman into the Australian desert in the hope that he will buy her company's software. In the nature of this type of buddy/romance movie, they at first hate each other. Then things proceed much as you'd expect in your average Hollywood movie, until halfway through when everything goes sideways. It's unusual, it's different, it's remarkably long-winded for a short movie, and I didn't like it much. Collette's acting was good, as you'd expect. Tunashima wasn't bad.

2003, dir. Sue Brooks. With Toni Collette, Gotaro Tunashima, Matthew Dyktynski, Lynette Curran, Yumiko Tanaka.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

If you've seen Smith's previous four movies, this is intermittently amusing. Otherwise (unless you have a huge love of dick and fart jokes) you might want to pass. On the plus side, the movie is blessed with a staggering number of amusing cameos. "Restricted for nonstop crude and sexual humour, pervasive strong language and drug content." Not that I have a problem with that - if it's funny.

2001, dir. Kevin Smith. With Jason Mewes, Shannon Elizabeth, Kevin Smith, and many more.

Jazz - Swing: Pure Pleasure

Part 5 of Burns's epic "Jazz" documentary for PBS. Covers the likes of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, Glen Miller, and Artie Shaw. He certainly takes his time, stretching stuff out with more photos and music than were strictly necessary. Good if you're up for the leisurely pace, but I found it a bit tiresome in spots. Good information though.

2001, dir. Ken Burns.

JCVD

Van Damme plays himself, or perhaps a very unfortunate version of himself. Short on money, making B movies, and losing the custody battle for his daughter to one of his ex-wives, he stops at a post office/bank in his home town of Brussels where he gets embroiled in a robbery in progress.

The movie is proof positive that the man can actually act, and because it got much wider distribution that his previous martial arts flicks, it could yet save his career. It's a truly bizarre and extremely self-referential film: I'm not sure I'd want to watch it again, but it's fascinating and pretty good. Van Damme's six minute monologue was done in a single take, and was worthy of Ralph Feinnes rather than a B movie action star.

2008, dir. Mabrouk El Mechri. With Jean-Claude Van Damme, François Damiens, François Beukelaers, Liliane Becker, Zinedine Soualem.

Jerry Maguire

Jerry Maguire is a sports agent suffering from an attack of conscience. In a moment of clarity he writes a mission statement for sports management, suggesting a number of changes to the business model to improve client relations (and incidentally cutting income). He's fired, and finds himself with only one overbearing client (Gooding), and one employee (Dorothy Boyd, played by Zellweger). Things get more complicated when Jerry and Boyd have a night together.

Everyone is a little (and occasionally a lot) over the top in this one. I have no doubt sports agents are occasionally almost as loud and obnoxious as they're portrayed here, but it did get tiresome: I was disappointed in that aspect of the movie. But it's funny and it's intelligent, and worth a watch.

Quotes: "Show me the money!" "You complete me." "You had me at hello." Sound familiar? Every one of them originated here.

1996, dir. Cameron Crowe. With Tom Cruise, Renée Zellweger, Cuba Gooding Jr., Bonnie Hunt, Jay Mohr, Jerry O'Connell, Beau Bridges, Kelly Preston.

La Jetée

I wanted to see this because it's the movie that "Twelve Monkeys" was based on. I expected it to be weird, and it was: a short (28 minutes), a sequence of black-and-white photos, told in voice-over. After World War III the remnants of humanity form a totalitarian government underground (under Paris in this case), and our hero is thrown into a time travel experiment. This is something of a classic - it must be, Criterion put it on DVD ... It's remarkably disturbing when you consider what seems to be a very limiting format.

1962, dir. Chris Marker. With Jean Négroni, Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich, Jacques Ledoux.

Jet Lag (orig. Décalage Horaire)

Eminently forgettable cookie-cutter romantic comedy. In the first half Félix (Reno) and Rose (Binoche) - trapped in a crippled airport - wave their neuroses and problems about like flags, making each hate the other. Incidentally, the audience probably loses all interest in them too. In the second half they soften and get interested in each other, show each other the way to a better life. We're supposed to believe that the influence they have on each other in a 24 hour period will change them forever?

2002, dir. Danièle Thompson. With Jean Reno, Juliette Binoche, Sergi López.

Johnny Mnemonic

Reeves plays Johnny, a courier in the year 2021 who carries large quantities of data in his head when customers are unwilling to trust the data to the internet. The story has him trying to get out of the business: to this end, he's taken a dangerous job and severely overloaded his implants. In fact, it's likely to kill him if he doesn't get the data back out soon, and an awful lot of people want him dead. Based on a short story by William Gibson who also wrote the screenplay.

As promised, the movie is pretty bad (I was further frustrated by really bad subtitles done in ALL CAPS (really) on a full screen DVD ...), but interesting nevertheless. Wikipedia quotes Gibson and Longo claiming they made a very funny film that was later hacked into a really bad action movie ... it's hard to know the truth of that. Recommended only for hardcore fans of science fiction and/or Gibson.

1995, dir. Robert Longo. With Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer, Beat Takeshi, Dolph Lundgren, Henry Rollins, Ice-T, Udo Kier.

Joint Security Area

The film opens with two North Korean soldiers being killed in a guard house along the North-South border. Alarms sound, a lot of gunfire is exchanged. Things settle down enough so that a Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission officer (Lee Young Ae) can be sent in to do an investigation in the hope of avoiding war. The story unfolds slowly and with a certain inevitability. Lee Byung-hun and Song are good as the soldiers on opposing sides of the border where the incident occurred. Lee Young Ae was okay, but not great: fortunately, less is required of her. While it offers a considerable lesson about the Korean border to non-Koreans, much of what happens is typical of wars everywhere, and utterly heart-breaking. Recommended.

2000, dir. Park Chan-wook. With Lee Byung-hun, Song Kang-ho, Lee Young Ae, Kim Tae Woo, Shin Ha-kyun, Herbert Ulrich.

Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex (Brolin) was a Confederate soldier until he crossed General Quentin Turnbull (Malkovich) who then killed his wife and child, and left him scarred for life. We first meet Hex after the war as he works as a bounty hunter. He believes Turnbull is dead, but we find otherwise soon enough - setting Hex on the path of revenge again.

One scene has Hex drinking in a bar. Another guy we've never met before says to the bartender "he doesn't look so tough." There's another short exchange, the guy steps toward Hex saying something about how ugly he is, and Hex blows him through a window with a hidden gun with no further discussion. This is how the entire script delivers its points: subtly. Much of it is incredibly predictable, and the remaining parts are just stupid. For once justice has prevailed: this thing tanked horribly at the box office ($47M budget, total intake as of mid-2011 of $11M).

Fox is in as eye candy ... perhaps she was also meant as comedic relief, but that didn't work out terribly well. Fassbender does a passable turn as Turnbull's psychotic sidekick - I didn't even recognize him. The movie is staggeringly violent ... but only by implication. Hex buries his hatchet (literally) in several people, heads come off ... and the camera cuts away just before every time.

2010, dir. Jimmy Hayward. With Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon.

The Journey of Man

A Cirque du Soleil production. Not movie length, about 40 minutes? They film in several beautiful locations, and impose their acts in front of these places, trying to tell the tale of a boy growing to manhood and then old age. Pretty, but it's time for me to stop watching their videos and go buy tickets for the live shows again.

2000, dir. Keith Melton.

The Journey of Natty Gann

These days (2006), this is advertised as a Cusack movie. This is an unjust description: the movie belongs to Salenger, for better or for worse. Cusack has perhaps 15 minutes of screen time. The story is about a young girl (Salenger) during the Depression whose father (Wise) is forced to leave her behind when he finally manages to find work. She takes it upon herself to ride the rails from Chicago to Seattle to try to find him. The movie is too dark for Disney (who produced it), and yet not dark enough to really show the Depression, so it gets a little lost. Her befriending and taming a feral wolf was also less than convincing. Some of the cinematography was excellent, although partly trashed by a poor DVD transfer and locked into 4:3 presentation. It's not a bad movie, it's just not a particularly good movie.

1985, dir. Jeremy Kagan. With Meredith Salenger, Ray Wise, John Cusack.

Julie & Julia

Adams plays Julie Powell, who has decided to work her way through the entire of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, blogging as she cooks every recipe. In a parallel story line 40 years earlier, the ungainly Child (played brilliantly by Streep) is finding her calling at a cooking school in Paris.

Adams is very good as Julie, and both stories are incredibly charming. Worth watching. Almost good enough to forgive Ephron for her (many) past blunders ...

2009, dir. Nora Ephron. With Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina, Linda Emond, Jane Lynch.

Jump Tomorrow

This is what's commonly called a "little" movie: no explosions, no big names, no big tragedy, just low budget talk and goofiness. Adebimpe plays a young Nigerian in America three days away from his arranged marriage that he has no interest in, but he's a passive guy and if life didn't interfere, he probably would have just ... never questioned. But life does interfere, in the form of a chance meeting with the beautiful Verbeke (who hasn't been in another english movie - too bad!, she's a good actress too), and then the rather less beautiful Girardot. It's an American movie, made in America, but it's wonderfully hard to tell: Adebimpe is convincingly Nigerian, Verbeke's first language isn't English, Girardot is very French, and the last major character is a very French Citroën DS (car). They also went (very successfully) for a sparse 60s feel to the movie, and it all comes out quite surreal and rather funny. Definitely worth seeing (even though you've never heard of it).

2001, Joel Hopkins. With Tunde Adembimpe, Hippolyte Girardot, Natalia Verbeke.

Jumper

Based on the very good teen SF novel by Stephen Gould, the director of a couple of the Bourne movies kind of made a hash of this. But when you put Christensen as your main character, it wouldn't matter if the plotting and editing were perfect, the best you could manage would be a passable film. He's a bad actor and I have no idea why anyone hires him. I like the concept: Christensen plays a young man who finds he's able to teleport to anywhere he wants, and leads a life of leisure funded by occasional visits to the insides of closed bank vaults. Then he finds out there are other jumpers, and that they're in a war with "Paladins" who kill jumpers (this is a radical and unnecessary departure from the book). Some good moments and ideas, but among other things there aren't any appealing characters in the entire movie: we're supposed to sympathize with Christensen's character, but he's initially established as a self-centred shit and really doesn't do much to shake the image.

2008, dir. Doug Liman. With Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane, Jamie Bell, Rachel Bilson.

Juno

I hate the soundtrack and dislike the credits ... but everything between the credits that isn't music is golden. An eccentric 16 year old (Page) finds herself pregnant. Not much more to know about the setup or plot, just that the whole thing is off-beat and very funny. The acting is very good all round and it's a charming movie.

2007, dir. Jason Reitman. With Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney, J.K. Simmons, Olivia Thirlby.

Just Cause

Three quarters of this movie is a great psychological thriller, but the last quarter derails to play out as the requisite violent showdown in the bayou. Connery plays a law lecturer who hasn't been in court for 25 years who finds his assistance requested by a possibly wrongfully convicted, educated young black man on death row who is accused of raping and murdering a 12 year old white girl. It quickly becomes apparent that the confession was beaten out of the young man. There's a lot of good, thought-provoking stuff in here before the brutally disappointing blow-out ending - including an utterly brilliant performance by Harris as a murderous psychopath that was worth the price of admission.

1995, dir. Arne Glimcher. With Sean Connery, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Capshaw, Blair Underwood, Ed Harris, Christopher Murray, Scarlett Johansson.

Just Friends

Not my kind of humour, far too much humiliation. Reynolds plays a man who was fat in high school and best friends with a beautiful woman he loved. Ten years later he's fit, good looking, and evidently having his way with any woman he wants. He returns to his hometown, meets the woman of his dreams again, and is humiliated - repeatedly. Hilarious. Hell, they left the best scene on the cutting room floor: Reynolds is engaged to Alanis Morrisette, and she did a brilliant cameo that they felt didn't fit the story arc (they were right, but changing the story arc might have been better than dumping this scene).

2005, dir. Roger Kumble. With Ryan Reynolds, Amy Smart, Anna Faris, Chris Klein, Chris Marquette.

Just Like Heaven

Sweet, forgettable romcom about a depressed guy (Ruffalo) who moves into an apartment haunted by the spirit of its former tenant (Witherspoon). I enjoyed it because it did what it was supposed to do: it was funny and charming. Don't expect to remember it for more than a couple weeks past seeing it though. Good support from Logue as Ruffalo's best friend and Waters as Witherspoon's sister. The latter is particularly interesting: she's married to the director which would normally be a very bad sign, but she was near-perfect, in appearance (she really looks like Witherspoon's sister), comedic timing, and acting.

2005, dir. Mark Waters. With Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, Donal Logue, Dina Waters, Jon Heder.

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The Karate Kid (2010)

A remake of the 1984 movie of the same title. The plot is almost identical, except this time it's set in China (and it's "Kung Fu," not "Karate," but why change the title?).

Smith plays the 12 year old Dre Parker, who's moved the Beijing from Detroit with his mother. He falls for a young violinist at his school, and gets on the bad side of Cheng (Wang), a well-trained martial artist and bully. You know the plot: Cheng trains with the evil Kung Fu master, Dre finds himself training with the maintenance man (Chan, actually doing something resembling acting), and it all hinges on the big tournament at the end of the movie.

It's predictable even if you're not familiar with the original (which it follows quite closely). But they did a really good job with it and it's a lot of fun. This may actually develop the kind of lasting fame the original got.

2010, dir. Harald Zwart. With Jackie Chan, Jaden Smith, Taraji P. Henson, Zhenwei Wang, Yu Rongguang, Wen Wen Han.

Kate & Leopold

Time-travelling-rom-com, my favourite obscure subgenre of film! (In case you're wondering, I'm mostly serious - see also "The Lake House.") Jackman plays a Duke Leopold Mountbatten in 1876 New York brought to modern-day New York by Stuart Besser (Schreiber), who has discovered a way to travel backwards and forwards in time - occasionally. In modern New York, Leopold meets Kate McKay (Ryan) and they fall for each other. Which is lovely, but it's looking like Leopold has to go back in time because his absence is creating time paradoxes. Their introduction of the concept of time paradoxes would suggest that they would work out any in their film very carefully, but they didn't - disappointing, but not too surprising. They also messed up rather badly on the state of Leopold's knowledge: he knew a lot of things (even before he jumped forward in time) that weren't to happen for several years (music, Edison's fame). And they played up Jackman's coming from the past whenever it would be funny, and ignored it whenever it would be inconvenient. But ... suspend disbelief and this is still a rather enjoyable movie: Jackman is great as always, Ryan is really good and has rarely been so lovely, and Schreiber is near-perfect as the slightly unhinged but brilliant ex-boyfriend (I've never really liked him before). Wikipedia's entry on the movie tells me that the DVD includes a four minutes longer "director's cut" that includes an awesome little time travel twist that makes all kinds of sense but probably got nixed by a nervous producer or a test audience. Don't read it until after you've seen the movie.

2001, dir. James Mangold. With Meg Ryan, Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Breckin Meyer.

Keeping the Faith

Norton and Stiller are a priest and rabbi respectively, friends since childhood. Long-lost companion Elfman shows up and things get a bit crazy. This is a very enjoyable film, very funny. Norton's first try at directing, and he's remarkably assured at the helm. Not a brilliant movie, but the commentary he supplies on the movie and the deleted scenes show he really understands what he's doing, and I think he's going to be as fabulous a director as he's been an actor if he chooses to follow that path. I love its very warm and laid back attitude about religion.

2000, dir. Edward Norton. With Edward Norton, Ben Stiller, Jenna Elfman, Eli Wallach, Milos Forman, Anne Bancroft, Holland Taylor, Ron Rifkin, Rena Sofer, Ken Leung.

Kick-Ass

Based on a comic, examines what might happen if someone (in the "real" world, without super powers) decided to dress up in a suit and defend justice. That person is Dave Lizewski (Johnson), a high school student who reads a lot of comics and isn't too thrilled with his life. He buys a wet suit from the internet and starts running around on rooftops at night. Eventually he tangles with some criminals - and gets his ass kicked. But he inspires others, and - despite injuries - persists. Of course it all has to ramp up to a big finale in which it seems a lot less like the real world and a lot more like people with super powers.

The ending is massively over-the-top, but for the most part I really enjoyed this as a somewhat more "real" take on superheroes (see also "The Watchmen"). Quite violent, but a lot of fun.

2010, dir. Matthew Vaughn. With Aaron Johnson, Chloë Moretz, Nicolas Cage, Mark Strong, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Lyndsy Fonseca.

Kiki's Delivery Service

Another children's coming of age story from Miyazaki in a world that resembles ours except that it has dirigibles, transport biplanes, and witches. Possibly more traditional that his usual work, and occasionally a little heavy handed with its message(s), still a very good movie. The artwork is gorgeous.

dir. Hayao Miyazaki. English voices: Kirsten Dunst, Phil Hartman.

Kill Bill Vol. 1

It must be nice to be Quentin Tarantino. "Your movie is to long to go to theatres. Edit it." "No." "Okay, we'll release it as two movies." I suppose this is Tarantino's tribute to the martial arts movies he loves. As always, he experiments heavily - he switches to black and white in places, and shows about five minutes of the story as anime. And, as always, the blood splatters. The martial arts on display were glossy and completely over the top - I didn't enjoy it much. The emotional content approached nil, which I suppose was to be expected. But that doesn't leave much, does it?

2003. dir. Quentin Tarantino. With Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu.

The Killer (orig. "Dip huet seung hung")

The movie that put John Woo on the map. The blurb on the back claims: "The Killer is a pulse-stopping action sensation more bullet-riddled than any movie in history." What they don't mention is the half-hour scenes of staggering sentimentality you have to wade through to see the relatively short gun battles. Chow plays Jeffery, a hit man thinking about retiring since his previous hit (the first scenes of the movie) caused him to accidentally blind the pretty female bar singer "Jenny" (Yeh). He becomes involved with Jenny, and accepts one last hit in the hope of earning enough money to get Jenny the operation she needs to restore her sight. The movie is very much about loyalty and honour, and terribly heavy-handed about it. Did I mention the sentimentality? This movie went on to inspire a generation of filmmakers (Tarantino in particular comes to mind, but many others borrowed heavily as well) keeping the honour and replacing the sentimentality with machismo and a quicker pace.

1989, dir. John Woo. With Chow Yun-Fat, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh, Kong Chu, Kenneth Tsang.

King Arthur

A modern revision of the King Arthur myth based on a relatively current theory that Arthur and his knights may have been employees of Rome. The knights are greasy and rude, and not precisely morally pure. The movie had some very good ideas and some decent performances and nice battle scenes, but is sabotaged by a messy and uneven plot. You would have to see it to believe that they can make seven winning a battle against 150 almost convincing ... It was nice to see that Gruffudd can actually act when he's not doing an accent (he was pretty bad in the "Fantastic Four"), and he definitely looks better with the beard.

2004, dir. Antoine Fuqua. With Clive Owen, Keira Knightley, Ioan Gruffudd, Mads Mikkelson, Joel Edgerton, Hugh Dancy, Ray Winstone, Ray Stevenson, Stephen Dillane, Stellan Skarsgård.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

A documentary about two people competing for the high score on the video game "Donkey Kong." It's not really about the video game, but about the people - and like so many documentaries about these niche environments, it's perversely fascinating. Quite good.

2007, dir. Seth Gordon. With Steve Wiebe, Billy Mitchell, Walter Day.

Kingdom of Heaven

This is one of them there "Epic movies:" big names, big scenes, big bucks ($130 million), big flop. I don't have a major objection to directors or screenwriters re-writing history for a better story ... it's just that Scott didn't manage to make anything good of it. It didn't help any that Bloom decided this would be the movie where he would prove definitively that he cannot act.

The story starts with blacksmith Balian (Bloom) having lost his wife and stillborn child, finding out his real father is the knight Godfrey (Neeson), now headed for the Holy Lands and the Crusades. We find that Balian, Godfrey, and the Hospitaler riding with them (Thewlis) have a remarkably modern and open-minded view of religion (let all religions share the Kingdom of Heaven, and let each worship God in their own way).

I enjoyed watching the siege engines and seeing the historical recreation: Scott messed with the history, but not the period accuracy, except for cleanliness. Everyone should have been dirtier, with poorer haircuts and worse teeth. It's supposed to be 1180! I was amused to notice that the extras included a note that Europeans learned the concept of bathing daily from the Muslims during the Crusades.

There are some good things about the movie: some of the cinematography, the sheer scale, some of the (short) discussions of honour and religion, some of the acting. Might be worth seeing if you like "epics."

2005, dir. Ridley Scott. With Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Brendan Gleeson, Liam Neeson, Marton Csokas, David Thewlis, Jeremy Irons, Edward Norton, Ghassan Massoud, Alexander Siddig.

The King's Speech

The story is pretty simple: Albert (Firth), soon to be King George VI, has a very bad stutter. His wife (Bonham Carter) finds him a speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Rush). Logue is eccentric but good. Firth, Rush, and Bonham Carter are all excellent, giving us a very good movie.

2010, dir. Tom Hooper. With Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Michael Gambon, Jennifer Ehle, Derek Jacobi.

Kinsey

Good as biopics go, and Kinsey was an interesting character. I thought I knew how much of a difference he made, but perhaps I didn't. Fascinating, a bit disturbing.

2004, dir. Bill Condon. Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Chris O'Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Oliver Platt.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Downey plays a lousy robber abruptly recruited to try out for a movie in L.A. He's also our wonky narrator. Once in L.A., he's sent off to detective school with "Gay Perry," played by Kilmer, and hooks up with the love of his life from his childhood (Monaghan). Corpses and schemes pile up quickly. Not full-on surreal, but pretty damn bizarre, a cross between film noir and ... I don't know what, partly a parody of Hollywood. Pay attention: you'll need your wits about you to make it through this one knowing what's going on. It all makes sense, but it's complex and a bit surreal.

2005, dir. Shane Black. With Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, Corbin Bernsen, Dash Mihok, Larry Miller, Rockmond Dunbar, Shannyn Sossamon, Angela Lindvall.

Kissed

Parker plays a necrophiliac who has trouble in her relationship with her live boyfriend (Outerbridge). Both are excellent, and the movie is very well done. This isn't a horror movie, nor even intended to shock - although it will probably do that. Any movie that openly portrays necrophilia and leaves it up to you to figure out what you think of it and why is bound to be a pretty uncomfortable voyage for most people. I had to stop it a couple of times when it got too creepy.

1996, dir. Lynne Stopkewich. With Molly Parker, Peter Outerbridge, Jay Brazeau, Natasha Morley.

Knight and Day

Diaz plays June Havens, who runs into Roy Miller (Cruise) in an airport, then takes the same nearly empty flight with him. Unfortunately, he kills all the crew (he had to) and crash-lands the plane in a field. But makes sure she's okay. etc.

Diaz doesn't look good (although I may be in a small group thinking so) and doesn't act well. Cruise looks like he's having a blast, but his performance is (perforce) over-the-top. It should have been more entertaining than it was, but it was amazingly silly and not nearly as funny as it thought it was.

2010, dir. James Mangold. With Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Maggie Grace, Paul Dano, Marc Blucas.

Knocked Up

Reasonably responsible woman goes to bar, meets funny irresponsible stoner dude, sex and pregnancy follow. Funny, offensive, occasionally charming, and surprisingly decent.

2007, dir. Judd Apatow. With Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Martin Starr.

Knowing

I watched this because it's Proyas. I don't always like his stuff but it's usually interesting. Unfortunately, this is possibly his dullest piece of work. At its best it's distinctly creepy, but it aims too high and draws out many scenes far too long so it ends up being ridiculous and making it extremely hard for the viewer to suspend disbelief.

The story starts in 1959, when a young girl instead of making a drawing for a time capsule writes hundreds of numbers on a sheet of paper. Fifty years later, Cage's son is given that sheet, and Cage realizes that the numbers give dates and numbers of deaths for every major disaster from then to now ... plus a couple more. And the "couple more" are of course the focus of the movie, as he watches them happen and tracks down the daughter of the woman who wrote the numbers (who thinks he's crazy). Not a brilliant premise, but could have been a good movie if it had been handled better. Oddly, I didn't see nearly as much of Proyas's visual flair in this one.

2009, dir. Alex Proyas. With Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne, Chandler Canterbury, Lara Robinson.

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance

Reggio says that this film is about whatever you want it to be about. There's no dialogue, just 90 minutes of stunning cinematography portraying various parts of the earth. Given the title Reggio gave the film, he had a bit more of an agenda than he claims, but it's a pretty amazing thing to watch. Some parts are beautiful but tedious, some parts are ugly but fascinating ... it's a weird, weird mix.

1983. dir. Godfrey Reggio. Music by Philip Glass.

Kung Fu Panda

We follow the story of overweight panda Po (Black) who's a huge fan of Kung Fu. In an effort to see the selection of the Dragon Warrior he causes general havoc and literally falls into the title himself. Predictable from beginning to end, the movie is nevertheless enjoyable as it beats on the door of every martial arts cliché available and leaves a good laugh pretty much everywhere it goes. Not a great movie, but a lot of fun. The animation is very nicely done as well.

I was surprised at how I completely failed to recognized the voices from the incredible line-up. I knew it was Black in the lead role, but I had trouble associating the voice with him, and the only other voice I identified without assistance was Hong as Po's father (now that's a distinctive voice).

2008, dir. John Stevenson and Mark Osborne. With Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Ian McShane, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Randall Duk Kim, James Hong, Dan Fogler, Jackie Chan, Michael Clarke Duncan.

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L

Lady and the Tramp

One of Disney's older pictures, with lots of songs and enough "cute" to choke a horse. The biggest threats found in the movie are rejection, rats, and the dog pound. Oh, and the Siamese Cats. There are some good moments (famously, the spaghetti dinner in which both dogs slurp on the same strand of spaghetti and end up "kissing" each other), but I find the movie staggeringly sentimental and significantly dumbed down - even by Disney standards.

1955, dir. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske. With the voices of Peggy Lee, Barbara Luddy, Larry Roberts, Bill Thompson, Bill Baucom.

The Lady Eve

Stanwyck plays a con man, Fonda the rich and bumbling mark. All is going swimmingly for Stanwyck and her two accomplices until she falls for him. Unfortunately, he finds out the truth at the wrong time.

There's plenty of witty dialogue at the beginning, and everyone is good except Fonda. Not that I'm blaming him for the deficiencies of the script: his character is such a clumsy, clueless guy that it's a wonder Fonda managed to sell him as reasonably sweet instead of downright stupid. The second half of the movie revolves around her reappearance in his life under another name - with a different hairstyle and different accent, and we're to believe he's too dumb to see who it is, and will fall for her all over again. I found what followed to be too bitter and nasty to be funny, and the conclusion to be both far too convenient and totally unbelievable. A promising beginning, a very sour end.

1941, dir. Preston Sturges. With Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, William Demarest, Eugene Pallette, Janet Beecher.

Lady for a Day

Dave the Dude (William) finds that Apple Annie (Robson) is an essential source of good luck in his life, so when Annie's daughter is about to reappear from Europe and expects her mother to be a society lady, Dave helps out. I found the ending unsatisfying for various reasons, probably mostly because decades of movies have disagreed with Capra's resolution of the story. Fairy tale fantasy, not quite as cheesy as it sounds, and does manage some astonishingly funny laughs.

1933, dir. Frank Capra. With Warren William, May Robson, Guy Kibbee, Glenda Farrell, Ned Sparks.

Lady in the Water

I came to this DVD knowing that the critics really didn't like it, but also knowing that, with it being Shyamalan, it would probably be interesting even if it was a mess. And it is indeed both things. Without Giamatti (who is fabulous), this would be a complete and total disaster. With him, and with Howard's uneven but occasionally brilliant support, I enjoyed watching it. The problem is that Shyamalan has written a children's fairy tale, but presents it here to adults - and adults only. You wouldn't take your kids to this because A) you probably wouldn't think it was appropriate, and B) they'd be bored out of their skulls. But the logic remains child logic, and it doesn't work for adults. Too bad it has so many issues, it could have been great.

2006, dir. M. Night Shyamalan. With Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, M. Night Shyamalan, Bob Balaban, Jeffrey Wright.

The Lady Vanishes

A young woman meets a slightly batty older lady on a train trip, but when she awakes from a nap the older lady has vanished and no one will admit she was ever on the train. Paranoia leavened with humour in classic Hitchcock style, all with a touch of Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express was published in 1934 ...).

1938, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. With Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty.

The Lake House

The titular lake house is a fabulous work of art - totally impractical, but fantastic to look at. And so goes the structure of the movie: if you can accept the deus ex machina mailbox transporting letters backwards and forwards through time, this is an elegantly structured and rather good piece of work. The reviews show that I was in a pretty small minority in that opinion. It's true that the dialogue is occasionally weak and I thought Moss-Bachrach was a poor match as Reeves's brother (and looked permanently queasy to boot), but Reeves and Bullock both turned in good performances and I really enjoyed it.

A couple other interesting things to look for are the gorgeous cinematography of Chicago - it's rarely looked so beautiful - and the very amusing "Persuasion" redux (Jane Austen that is). For SF fans, the time paradoxes are worked out astonishingly well and in meticulous detail.

2006, dir. Alejandro Agresti. With Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Christopher Plummer, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Shohreh Aghdashloo.

Larry Crowne

Hanks plays the title character, who's fired from U-Mart (remarkably similar to Walmart) at the beginning of the movie. He's been Employee Of The Month eight times, but he's considered un-advanceable because he doesn't have a college education. So he gets a scooter to save money on gas and starts taking classes at the local community college, where he meets his very cute fellow student Talia (Mbatha-Raw) and her crew of scooter-riding buddies, and develops something of a crush on his disillusioned speech teacher, Mercedes Tainot (Roberts).

Hanks directed as well as starring, and it feels like a vanity project: Hanks is front and centre for most of the movie, playing a goofy charming guy. Worse, he co-wrote the script with Nia Vardalos (of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"), and it's sickly sweet without a moment of threat from end to end. Good performances from Hanks, Roberts, and Mbatha-Raw make it somewhat entertaining and occasionally fun.

2011, dir. Tom Hanks. With Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Cedric the Entertainer, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wilmer Valderrama, Bryan Cranston, Taraji Henson, Rami Malek, George Takei.

Lars and the Real Girl

Lars Lindstrom (Gosling) is a quiet guy in a small town (I think it's supposed to be Minnesota, but filmed entirely in Ontario). He lives in the garage out back of the house he co-owns with his brother (Schneider), who lives in the house with his wife (Mortimer). Mortimer tries to bring Lars into their life, but Lars resists. One day he shows up and announces that he has a girlfriend ... who turns out to be a RealDoll, an anatomically correct sex doll. He insists on treating her as human, and at the behest of the town psychologist (Clarkson), the entire town plays along.

They got some things right - Mortimer and Schneider are particularly good as the long-suffering family, Gosling is good as the delusional Lars, and they skip the puerile jokes - but the entire town being polite and kind to both Lars and his doll? I don't think so. Suspension of belief failed several times in the process. An interesting attempt, but not a huge success.

2007, dir. Craig Gillespie. With Ryan Gosling, Paul Schneider, Emily Mortimer, Kelli Garner, Patricia Clarkson.

The Last Detail

Quaid plays Meadows, a navy man given eight years of jail and a dishonourable discharge for an (unsuccessful) attempt to steal $40. Nicholson and Young play the "chasers" assigned to get him to jail. Over the course of five days or so they attempt to show Meadows a good time. Let me give you a hint: sailors don't go to the opera or the art gallery when they have free time.

The movie is well-played: Nicholson and Young are very good as navy lifers, and Quaid is good as the young innocent. But the movie doesn't really go anywhere or do much: they "show him a good time," but nobody learns much.

1973, dir. Hal Ashby. With Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid, Clifton James, Carol Kane.

The Last Legion

At the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, the twelve year old emperor Romulus Augustus (Sangster) is protected by a group of warriors (led by Firth) and his teacher (Kingsley). Lots of battle with no blood (but a lot of deaths) in the name of family-friendliness. It's cheesy and kind of stupid, but it's also very cute, earnest, and occasionally funny. Rai is pretty, but neither good as a warrior or as an actress - but does manage to pull off the connection with Firth. I enjoyed it.

2007, dir. Doug Lefler. With Colin Firth, Thomas Sangster, Aishwarya Rai, Ben Kingsley, Peter Mullan, Kevin McKidd, John Hannah, Rupert Friend, Nonso Anozie, James Cosmo, Owen Teale.

Last Night

McKellar's rumination on the question "what would you do if the world was going to end tonight?" The event is never explained, but we have only about seven hours left when we start the movie. It's depressing ... but if it had that effect on me I guess I can't say it didn't do much for me. It's pretty good with a hell of a line-up of Canadian actors.

1998, dir. Don McKellar. With Don McKellar, Sandra Oh, Sarah Polley, David Cronenberg, Callum Keith Rennie.

Last Chance Harvey

My initial assessment from the trailer was "formulaic rom com for the older set," and seeing it didn't change my mind. The movie plods along for the first 40 minutes establishing his miserable life and her dull one until they finally connect and it becomes entertaining. Thompson and Hoffman work well together, the dialogue isn't totally predictable and it's often quite funny. They also both have speeches (his at the reception, hers about disappointment at the end of the movie) that absolutely no one else could have made convincing, and yet they both flew. Nice to see them together.

2009, dir. Joel Hopkins. With Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Eileen Atkins, Kathy Baker, Liane Balaban, James Brolin, Richard Schiff.

The Last Samurai

High budget romanticism about the end of the samurai era in Japan. Despite being overblown and grandiose, it still manages to be very compelling: the cinematography is fantastic and the actors do well. Cruise plays a disillusioned hero of the Civil War who goes to Japan to train the Japanese army to fight the samurai. Instead, he ends up adapting the samurai way of life and regaining the honour he thought he'd lost forever. One of my favourite movies.

2003. dir. Edward Zwick. With Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe.

The Last Sentinel

This is a B movie post-apocalyptic knock-off of "Soldier:" I hope I can be forgiven for thinking "Soldier" was a B movie, but I guess I don't anymore. It looks quite good compared to this. Wilson is looking old, and showing even less talent at acting than he has in the past. And since his martial arts skills also seem to have declined, why exactly is he the hero here? Maybe because he's financing this. The "drama" consists of Wilson, or Wilson and someone else, moving about in a cinder block wasteland hazed over with the dust of multiple explosions. The evil clone army has all gone to the Storm Trooper School of Marksmanship, so Wilson - despite constantly being massively outnumbered - hardly ever takes cover, relying on frontal attacks at a light jog. Guess who wins?

2007, dir. Jesse V. Johnson. With Don Wilson, Katee Sackhoff, Bokeem Woodbine, Keith David.

The Late Show

Initially I thought Carney and Tomlin were acting in two completely separate movies: Carney in a noir detective flick, Tomlin in some comedy tripe starring Tomlin. But the two movies eventually converged into one exceptionally bad one.

1977, dir. Robert Benton. With Art Carney, Lily Tomlin, Bill Macy, Eugene Roche, Joanna Cassidy, John Considine.

Law & Order (year 1 disc 1)

This is a disappointing start to the collection: there are only two episodes on the disc and the "extras" that fill it are completely inadequate. The only thing of any substance is a documentary on how "Law & Order" got started: it's very interesting, but it's also only 15 minutes long. And the two episodes aren't their best - they hadn't really hit their stride yet.

Year 1, Disc 1, episodes 1-2: "Prescription for Death," "Subterranean Homeboy Blues."

Law & Order (year 1 disc 2)

Logan's comment to and about Robinette and how long he'll last with Stone in "Everybody's Favorite Bagman" is the only indication that this was intended to be the pilot episode. If you're watching them in sequence, it seems a little out of place. Particularly since sequence usually doesn't matter at all in "Law & Order." But on this disc they seem to be on track with the thought-provoking material. It's a good series.

Year 1, Disc 2, episodes 3-6: "The Reaper's Helper," "Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die," "Happily Ever After," "Everybody's Favorite Bagman."

Law & Order (year 1 disc 3)

By this point in the L&O season it must have been pretty clear that they were going to tackle every hot issue they could get their hands on. On this disc, "Poison Ivy" was particularly memorable: I saw it years ago, and opted not to watch it again because it's still an unpleasant voyage of psychological manipulation and abuse.

Year 1, Disc 3, episodes 7-10: "By Hooker, By Crook," "Poison Ivy," "Indifference," "Prisoner of Love."

Law & Order (year 1 disc 4)

Episodes 11 to 14 of the first year, they've hit their stride. Rarely upbeat, but always well done.

Year 1, Disc 4, episodes 11-14: "Out of the Half-Light," "Life Choice," "A Death in the Family," "The Violence of Summer." 1990-91. With George Dzundza, Chris Noth, Michael Moriarty, Richard Brooks, Dann Florek.

Law & Order (year 1 disc 5)

Good, but perhaps not the best of this year's discs?

Year 1, Disc 5, episodes 15-18: "The Torrents of Greed (Parts 1 and 2)," "Mushrooms," "The Secret Sharers." 1990-91. With George Dzundza, Chris Noth, Michael Moriarty, Richard Brooks, Dann Florek.

Law & Order (year 1 disc 6)

What do you say about "Law and Order?" Perhaps "they should have quit while they were ahead." In any case, I really like the first few years. Well done, often depressing, always thought-provoking.

Year 1, Disc 6, episodes 19-22: "The Serpent's Tooth," "The Troubles," "Sonata for Solo Organ," "The Blue Wall."

Laws of Attraction

I see on IMDB that one of the movie's fans compares it to the "screwball comedies of the 30s, 40s, and 50s." I'm with that: it reminded me a great deal of "Adam's Rib." Unfortunately the luggage that comes with that idea is caricatures rather than characters, with Brosnan being charming and sloppy, and Moore being neurotic and insecure. So much so that there's little to convince you he'd fall for her (even though Moore is, of course, beautiful). They play a pair of duelling divorce lawyers in New York who become acquaintances, then friends, sort of, and then ... married, kind of by accident. Not a particularly good movie. [I was impressed to finally register that Sheen is also Lucian in "Underworld," and virtually unidentifiable. He's pretty good, but not a particularly major character (wait, that's "caricature") here.]

2004, dir. Peter Howitt. With Pierce Brosnan, Julianne Moore, Michael Sheen, Parker Posey.

Le Divorce

Possibly one of the least engaging movies I've ever seen. I borrowed it because it's Merchant Ivory: apparently that means less than it used to. I expected a comedy because the tagline is "Everything sounds sexier in French." What I got was a big fat dose of nothing. Watts and Hudson play sisters, Watts long married to a French husband who is now leaving her. Hudson comes to visit her in Paris and gets involved with an older married man related to the departed husband. It wasn't funny, it wasn't engaging, it wasn't dramatic, it kept circling back to a painting the family owned that might or might not be by La Tour, and might or might not be worth a lot of money. If that's your big drama, you're kind of lost.

2003, dir. James Ivory. With Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, Esmée Buchet-Deàk, Melvil Poupaud, Thierry Lhermitte, Nathalie Richard, Glenn Close.

A League of Their Own

When American baseball players went off to war (World War II), someone decided they could make money by sending women onto the field instead. This is based (loosely, I would assume) on actual events. Lovitz does Lovitz, but it works pretty well in context. Hanks is great as the baseball-player-turned-manager who threw his career away on booze. Davis, Madonna, and Strathairn are good, O'Donnell and Petty are okay. The sibling rivalry between Davis' and Petty's characters is overplayed and inadequate to carry the primary dramatic weight of the movie, but the rest of it holds together on small moments and humour. Fairly predictable, but funny and charming.

1992, dir. Penny Marshall. With Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Lori Petty, Madonna, Jon Lovitz, David Strathairn, Bill Pullman, Rosie O'Donnell.

Leatherheads

Clooney directs and stars in an attempt at making a 1930s screwball comedy. Of course he's making it in 2008 and setting it in the 1920s with Zellweger as his opposite number, and with the double entendres and alcohol and sex jokes much more out in the open. Clooney is a professional football player in an era when college football packed stadiums and pro football played to crowds that strived to reach three digits. After his team goes broke he arranges to get Krasinski (a war hero and excellent college football player) on his team, with the dubious help of backer Pryce. Both of them fall for Zellweger, a reporter who's trying to dig up the truth about Krasinski's war hero status. Enjoyable, painfully authentic (you'll never see a better recreation of football from that time period), not great.

2008, dir. George Clooney. With George Clooney, John Krasinski, Renée Zellweger, Stephen Root.

Legally Blonde

Witherspoon plays a shopping-obsessed blonde determined to follow her beau to law school after he leaves her. The results are only surprising if you're unfamiliar with the Hollywood way of doing things. What is surprising is the humour, which is available in great abundance.

2001. dir. Robert Luketic. With Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair.

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde

I knew this was going to be bad, but I underestimated their ability to suck the life out of a good idea. Truly horrible. If you've seen the original, don't see this. If you haven't seen the original, don't see this.

2003. dir. Charles Herman-Wurmfeld. With Reese Witherspoon, Sally Field, Luke Wilson.

The Legend of the Swordsman (aka "Swordsman II")

Li is one of a group of warriors sworn to retreat to a contemplative life. Not surprisingly, their plans are thwarted and they're drawn into a fight between rival clans and lots of people die. Lots of weapons martial arts, lots of blood, lots of superhuman powers. I didn't enjoy it much, although I can't explain exactly why: it's not that different from a lot of his other stuff. Perhaps more bleak and violent than usual, and that may be the problem.

1992, dir. Ching Siu Tung. With Jet Li.

Let the Right One In (orig. "Låt den rätte komma in")

A Swedish film, set in Sweden. In winter. Oskar is a 12 year old who is bullied at school. At home, he's reclusive and fantasizes about violence. One night in the apartment complex playground he meets the young girl (Eli) who just moved in. They slowly become friends as people die around them to quench Eli's thirst.

This isn't shock horror - you know what Eli is if you've seen any of the trailers, so none of the killing is a big surprise. What Alfredson is going for is creepy, and he delivers in spades. And cold: this is Sweden in winter, and white is the dominant colour even at night. So cold. The adults are all ineffectual, unable to see the violence and unhappiness of the children ... but they do occasionally make a good meal. The movie is primarily about the developing, disturbing relationship between Oskar and Eli.

I've seen complaints online that the English subs on the Swedish language DVD miss a lot of nuances of the language. But this is nothing compared to the trailer for the American remake of this movie (called, pathetically, "Let Me In"). "Nuance" isn't a word the makers of that movie understand at all. Couldn't they leave a good movie alone?!

2008, dir. Tomas Alfredson. With Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar.

Liar Liar

Carrey plays a divorced lawyer with a very young son (played fairly well by Cooper) who gets tired of his father's lies and makes a birthday wish that stops Carrey lying for 24 hours. As you'd expect, this leads to all kinds of Carrey's staggeringly absurd slapstick moments. As usual, it's very hit-or-miss and occasionally difficult to watch. On the other hand, some of it is hysterical - the boardroom scene being a particular stand-out for me. Overall, one of Carrey's better efforts.

1997, dir. Tom Shadyac. With Jim Carrey, Maura Tierney, Justin Cooper, Cary Elwes, Anne Haney, Jennifer Tilley, Amanda Donohoe.

The Librarian: Quest for the Spear

Wyle plays a perpetual college student with 22 academic degrees, kicked out (against his will) into the "real world," where he has a bizarre interview and becomes "The Librarian." His first day on the job finds him attempting to retrieve the pieces of the Spear of Destiny, one of which has been stolen by the evil Serpent Brotherhood. Combines the sensibilities of Indiana Jones and "Ben Gates," Nicholas Cage's character from "National Treasure" to create a new, and not particularly different, rollicking archaeologist-type adventure.

It's very silly, and the effects and scenery are pure made-for-TV, but I found that the laughs it delivered - while not frequent - were huge. Apparently I'm not alone in being entertained: as of 2010 there are two more movies, and a fourth is planned - the latest being theatrical. Wyle is charming, and Walger, while not a great actress, is quite good in the role as his gorgeous, charming and "homicidal" side-kick/assistant.

2004, dir. Peter Winther. With Noah Wyle, Bob Newhart, Sonya Walger, Kyle MacLachlan, Jane Curtin, Olympia Dukakis, Kelly Hu.

The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines

The process of transition - in this case Flynn Carsen (Wyle) changing from student to "The Librarian" (the previous movie) makes a better story than the continuing adventures of "The Librarian" (this movie). And to add to that misfortune, they decided logic was a notch less important than in the last movie (not that it was a high priority then either). Without explanation, his romantic interest from the previous movie, Nicole (Sonya Walger) has vanished, to be replaced by the less appealing Emily Davenport (Anwar), an archaeologist with multiple degrees that we're to believe he'd be more interested in. The chemistry with Walger worked better. Newhart, Curtin, and Dukakis reprise their roles from the previous movie and apply no great effort to their work. The budget for special effects and locations went up (they appear to have actually shot in Africa). The original still has a great deal more charm.

2006, dir. Jonathan Frakes. With Noah Wyle, Gabrielle Anwar, Bob Newhart, Jane Curtin, Olympia Dukakis, Erick Avari, Robert Foxworth.

The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice

Frakes seems to have improved his game somewhat this time out: this is funnier and better than its predecessor, although still not up to the first one (that's the problem of sequels). At least they directly addressed Flynn's romantic woes, and even gave a pretty good explanation. The addition of vampires was a little over-the-top, although the mythology of the story implies all kinds of wilder possibilities given that Flynn has already reassembled the Spear of Destiny and the library houses H.G. Wells' time machine, Pandora's Box, and the Arc of the Covenant. But they continue to follow their formula (too bad) in which Flynn goes somewhere, encounters a beautiful woman who helps him for the rest of the movie and has a relationship with her, with a closing sequence in "The Library."

2008, dir. Jonathan Frakes. With Noah Wyle, Stana Katic, Bob Newhart, Jane Curtin, Bruce Davison, Dikran Tulaine.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

There are a number of things you need to know to fully appreciate this movie: first, it was made during the Second World War. Second, "Colonel Blimp" was a very long-running and popular cartoon character, an old, ineffective, self-contradictory windbag, a caricature of the army old guard. A lesser but very useful piece of knowledge is that "Mata Hari" was an infamous exotic dancer and possible double agent during the First World War.

The movie follows the life of Clive Candy - from the Bohr War through World War One and into World War Two: his early years as a rebellious and effective officer who galls the old guard, through his later years when he becomes the old guard, galled by the upstarts. It's a brilliant portrayal, all the more startling for one of the three main characters being a sympathetic German in a time when anything German was anathema. A fabulous and elegant movie.

1943, dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. With Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr, Anton Walbrook.

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean

Newman plays Roy Bean, an outlaw first seen after a robbery, visiting a whorehouse where he is shortly robbed and mistakenly not killed. This lapse of judgement leads to him, after several days of recovery, returning and slaughtering about ten people, men and women both. He then decides - in the presence of Perkins as a preacher who seems more comfortable with the "vengeance" parts of the bible than the "turn the other cheek" stuff, and very nearly stole the whole movie in five minutes - to set up shop as a judge. He shortly swears in some other outlaws as "Marshals," and they proceed to run the town and get rich ... and even enforce something that vaguely resembles law. Occasionally.

This is described as a comedy, and certainly there are some funny parts. Both the humour and the drama are extremely uneven - sometimes very successful, sometimes falling completely flat. To me it felt too long and didn't hold together well at all for its two hours running time.

1972, dir. John Huston. With Paul Newman, Victoria Principal, Ned Beatty, Jim Burk, Anthony Perkins, John Huston, Roddy McDowall, Stacy Keach, Ava Gardner, Jacqueline Bisset.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Anderson walked the fine line between tragedy and outright farce in "The Royal Tenenbaums" to brilliant effect. But it's a fine line, and this time he stumbles badly leaving us not caring about any of his characters. It's an incredibly surreal movie, and not nearly as funny as it thinks it is - but not tragic or touching either.

2004, dir. Wes Anderson. With Bill Murray, Angelica Houston, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum.

Life or Something Like It

Lanie Kerrigan (Jolie) "has it all," meaning the beautiful condo, the pro baseball fiancée, and the AM news TV spot. But an encounter with "Prophet Jack" (Shalhoub) severely damages her materialistic views. He makes several prophesies, most of which come true almost immediately: and the last, that she'll die in a week - which drives the movie. Burns plays the camera man that she has some kind of antagonistic history with, but is also attracted to.

This could have been a decent (if clichéd) movie if it hadn't starred Jolie. She has been known to act occasionally, but has never seemed more plastic, more artificial (both her looks and her acting) than in this movie. Burns is generically good-looking and charming. The relationship between the two flies from vicious antagonism to happiness far too easily and quickly. Shalhoub is by far the most interesting person to watch in this: almost mesmerising as a money grubbing homeless man burdened with a skill he doesn't actually want. But he's not in enough scenes to save this otherwise fairly generic rom com.

2002, dir. Stephen Herek. With Angelina Jolie, Edward Burns, Tony Shalhoub, Christian Kane, James Gammon, Melissa Errico, Stockard Channing.

Like Stars on Earth (orig. "Taare Zameen Par")

A Bollywood movie that Disney has decided to market over here - partly because it's so sweet and well intentioned, but possibly also to cash in on one of India's biggest stars, Aamir Khan who just hit big in "3 Idiots." Safary stars as Issan, an eight year old boy who suffers because his schoolwork is so bad until a teacher (Khan) figures out that he's dyslexic and tutors him separately. Khan stars, and also produced and directed.

Living so close to the U.S., I see a lot of Hollywood movies (even more than the rest of the world). And sometimes I think they have a patent on emotional manipulation - oops, did I say that? Shouldn't give them ideas. But then a movie like this comes along, so heavy-handed as to make Hollywood's product look subtle. Well-meaning, but incredibly long (2h40m) and syrupy, with endless musical sections - not dance numbers, but generally drifting views of children. Very nearly ruined "3 Idiots" for me by showing Khan being such a git and highlighting the excessively manipulative techniques of Bollywood films in general.

2007, dir. Aamir Khan. With Darsheel Safary, Aamir Khan, Tisca Chopra, Vipin Sharma, Sachet Engineer.

Lilo and Stitch

Alternating all out mayhem and cute, this is one of Disney's better efforts. There's a little too much Elvis in the mix for my taste, but Stitch's transformation from destructive monster to charming family member is managed fairly well, with the inevitable (and often humorous) setbacks along the way.

2002, dir. Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders. With Daveigh Chase, Chris Sanders, Tia Carrere, David Ogden Stiers, Kevin McDonald, Ving Rhames, Zoe Caldwell, Jason Scott Lee.

The Lion in Winter

Disturbing and brilliant. The script is enough to cause controversy in 2004, it must have caused some problems when it came out. Politics and sex and family (royal families) take centre stage for two hours of jaw-dropping argument and political and emotional manoeuvring. The acting is excellent all around and you'll be left shaking and emotionally drained at the end. Superb.

1968. dir. Anthony Harvey. With Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton.

Little Miss Sunshine

Drama and black comedy about a dysfunctional family. The story is about a road trip in a VW van (which is the seventh major character) to take Breslin's character to the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty pageant. In the van we have the coke-snorting vulgar grandfather (Arkin), the father who can't sell his nine step success strategy (Kinnear), the too-honest mother (Collette) and her fresh-from-a-suicide-attempt brother (Carell), the vow of silence brother (Dano), and Breslin. It's all about interactions and problems, and watching your dreams come tumbling down. I wasn't surprised that Collette was great, she usually is. And Arkin was excellent. The big surprises were Breslin, Dano, and Carell: I haven't heard of the latter two, and I actively dislike Carell's comedy. But they were all excellent. A twisted little movie.

2006, dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. With Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, Steve Carell.

Live Free Or Die Hard

In the fourth (and we can only hope, the last?) episode of the series, John McClane (played by Willis) finds new and ever more unbelievable ways to defy both the laws of physics and human endurance. He's backed up by the rather reluctant Long, who looks like the voice of reason: he barely defies gravity or sense at all. Suspending disbelief is a common practise in modern action movies, and I've seen an awful lot of them so I'm pretty good at it. But the sequence in which McClane drives a tractor trailer under attack by an F-22 aircraft - which he ultimately manages to destroy - had me giggling for about two minutes straight. The word "ludicrous" just seems so totally inadequate. I might have let the SUV in the elevator shaft go, but not after the F-22. Has some amusing moments, but really too stupid for words.

2007, dir. Len Wiseman. With Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Maggie Q.

The Lives of Others (originally "Das Leben der Anderen")

In 1984 in East Berlin, a Stasi (secret police) officer is ordered to find something against one of the state's few loyal playwrights - because a senior party member has a thing for the playwright's girlfriend. It's unlikely there are going to be many other movies that so accurately recreate the sense of living in East Germany, the paranoia and fear. Donnersmarck and his staff made sure that the movie was extremely accurate in every detail of the former state - and then they went on to create a superbly acted movie from an excellent script. Mühe as Stasi officer Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler is spectacularly good. Wiesler is a very cold and controlled character, his face barely moves. And yet it's all there. See this.

2006, dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmark. With Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Tukur, Thomas Thieme.

Local Hero

An American oil company sends their "acquisitions" man to buy up a small Scottish town so it can be replaced by an oil refinery. Charming and amusing.

1983. dir. Bill Forsyth. With Peter Riegert, Burt Lancaster.

The Long Good Friday

There are some problems with this film, including an amazingly intrusive Seventies soundtrack and incomprehensible Cockney slang (and no subtitles so you can't even check to see that it really was incomprehensible), but otherwise we have a pretty interesting British gangster film. Imagine Bob Hoskins as Tony Soprano - but pre-dating Soprano by a couple decades. It doesn't hurt that they have Helen Mirren playing his wife, either. Violent and reasonably intelligent.

1980, dir. John Mackenzie. With Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, P.H. Moriarty, Paul Freeman.

The Long Goodbye

Gould plays a version of Raymond Chandler's detective Philip Marlowe. When a friend comes to him asking for a ride from L.A. to Tijuana at 3 AM, he asks no questions. And when the police come asking after the friend he refuses to talk. Or, more accurately, he talks plenty - just not what they're asking. Marlowe is played here as a real smartass. When they let him go he starts digging into the story, trying to find out what actually happened because he doesn't believe the official line.

Marlowe survives the chaotic process as much by pure blind luck as through his own skills. He's very good at provoking people (including the very rich thug who's decided that Marlowe has the money his friend took from the thug ...) and can't keep his mouth shut - but he is at least a passable detective. I found the character irritating and the story messy at best and decidedly unrewarding. In fact my interest in the movie ran so low that my favourite moment was probably the appearance of Schwarzenegger as an unspeaking and uncredited thug in the bad guy's office three quarters of the way through the movie.

1973, dir. Robert Altman. With Elliott Gould, Nina Van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Mark Rydell, Henry Gibson, Jim Bouton, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Longest Yard (2005)

Sandler stars in a remake of the Reynolds movie of the same name - reports suggest that the original was better, and that's not too hard to believe. Which isn't to say I disliked it: it's not a very good film, but I laughed and I enjoyed it. Sandler plays a washed out NFL quarterback jailed for drunk driving and recruited to form a football team to play the prison guards. Rock plays his assistant, and Reynolds comes on board as a coach. Also starring two massive wrestlers/martial artists (Sapp and Singh) and a stack of NFL players for that authentic look.

2005, dir. Peter Segal. With Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Burt Reynolds, Nelly, Michael Irvin, Bill Goldberg, Terry Crews, Bob Sapp, Nicholas Turturro, Dalip Singh, William Fichtner.

Longitude

Drama for geeks, the very best. This A&E mini-series (about 200 minutes) is about building - and reconstructing - the first high precision naval chronometer. It has no right to be even marginally interesting, and yet it's utterly fascinating and incredibly compelling. Two stories are told in parallel, that of John Harrison and his son William attempting to build the timepieces in the first place over fifty years in the 1700s, and that of Rupert Gould, obsessively reconstructing the same pieces over nearly the same period of time in the early twentieth century. While the story has been "dramatized," I believe it follows the history of both stories fairly closely. A huge and very good cast plus attention to historical detail make this an excellent piece of work.

2000, dir. Charles Sturridge. With Michael Gambon, Jeremy Irons, Stephen Simms, Anna Chancellor, Gemma Jones, Bill Nighy.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

I saw this in the theatres when it came out, watched it again 200908 on DVD (the theatrical cut). I liked it the first time, but the second time ... I enjoyed it with some considerable reservations. It's so purple it scorches the air around it. Purple prose, purple emotions - everything is a grand gesture. Yes, they're fighting for the survival of their entire world, but it still seems too over-the-top. Despite which I'll still call it "good," because it looks good and it's about as accurate a recreation of Tolkien on screen as I can imagine (which is to say "not very," but Tolkien didn't write for the screen).

2001, dir. Peter Jackson. With Elijah Wood, Ian Holm, Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee, Orlando Bloom, Sean Bean, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Cate Blanchett, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Dominic Monaghan, John Rhys-Davies, Hugo Weaving.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Rewatching this in 2009, theatrical release. Happily it didn't feel quite as purple as the first one, or maybe I've just adjusted to the writing. It's a good movie.

2002, dir. Peter Jackson. With Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortenson, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, Cate Blanchett, Liv Tyler, Ian McKellen, Miranda Otto, Karl Urban, Bernard Hill, Hugo Weaving, Brad Dourif, Christopher Lee.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

The final film in Jackson's epic retelling of "The Lord of the Rings." There's much good to be said about this - the scale is epic, the effects excellent, most of the acting very good indeed. But why do directors insist on re-inserting the crap they were rightly required to cut for the theatre version under the terrifying appellations "Director's Cut" or "Extended Version?" Especially when the original running time already exceeded three hours! I really appreciated the theatrical release, but the DVD extended version made me mildly nauseous.

2003, dir. Peter Jackson. With Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortenson, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, Cate Blanchett, Liv Tyler, Ian McKellen, Miranda Otto, Karl Urban, David Wenham, Bernard Hill.

Lord of War

"They say that I am the lord of war, but perhaps it is you." "I believe it's 'warlord.'" "Thank you, but I prefer it my way." Cage plays the "lord of war," a man who will sell weapons to anyone - so long as the cheque won't bounce. We follow about 15 years in his life. Brutally depressing, not that that surprised me. But what really depressed me was the closing onscreen quote to the effect that "the five biggest arms dealers in the world are China, France, the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom - the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council." The movie itself brought home the physical and moral destruction on a personal level, and that closing quote showed the world-wide problem.

2005, dir. Andrew Niccol. With Nicolas Cage, Bridget Moynahan, Jared Leto, Ian Holm, Eamonn Walker.

L.A. Confidential

One of the best movies ever made. An extremely intelligent and ambitious cop (Pearce) goes against the department united front in 1950s L.A. The story is quite complex, based on a James Ellroy novel, but worth all of your attention: it's intense, intelligent, and shocking. This is what "The Usual Suspects" should have been. A fabulous ensemble cast surrounded by a meticulously recreated 1950s L.A. (which is NOT the point, just another wonderful detail) will leave you with your mouth hanging open.

1997, dir. Curtis Hanson. With Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, David Strathairn, Danny DeVito.

The Losers

Morgan plays Clay, the leader of a CIA black ops team. While on what they take to be a standard "blow up terrorists" job, the team notices a bunch of children (being used as drug mules) in the target zone. When they call for an abort, it's refused - they rush in and rescue the children before the kill. For which they themselves are left for dead. Several months later they're approached by Aisha (Saldana), offering them an opportunity to kill "Max," the man who betrayed them.

Lots of action, huge body count, no blood. Exceedingly hard to believe, but fairly funny with likable characters. Max (Patric) is another of the unbelievably amoral villains who seems to care about absolutely nothing, he's just a dangerous asshole. Annoyingly sets itself up for a sequel (that may not come - broke even at the box office, but barely).

2010, dir. Sylvain White. With Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoë Saldana, Chris Evans, Idris Elba, Columbus Short, Óscar Jaenada, Jason Patric, Holt McCallany.

Lost Horizon

In the process of rescuing "90 white people" from a besieged Chinese town, a noble diplomat (I don't choose that cliché lightly) and several of the passengers are hijacked, ending up in Shangri-La. The DVD I watched in 2008 had been lovingly restored, in pieces, from a bunch of all different bad prints - including restoring it to its full original, and unnecessary, length of 132 minutes. Editors are a GOOD THING(TM) and for the same reason that director's cuts are usually no improvement, this one has issues: it's too long and too slow. Sickly sweet in many places and ludicrous throughout, I was perhaps most bothered by Shangri-La being populated by a bunch of Tibetans and yet run by a couple white guys. That's 1937 American pictures for you. Still, it has a certain charm, mostly because it does give some thought to the pursuit of a perfect life.

1937, dir. Frank Capra. With Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, Edward Everett Horton, John Howard, Thomas Mitchell, Margo, Isabel Jewell, H.B. Warner, Sam Jaffe.

Lost in Austen

Rooper plays Amanda Price, a modern-day fan of Austen's Pride and Prejudice who has read the book so often she has it entirely memorized. And one day she discovers Elizabeth Bennet in her washroom ... and that she has Alice's rabbit hole in the washroom to take her right to the Bennet household. Right at the beginning of the story. Unfortunately, no matter how well prepared, a modern woman isn't quite prepared for the niceties or the details of life in Austen's time, and she quickly and significantly screws up the story line despite her best efforts. And with Lizzie insisting on staying in the present, Amanda has to fight this battle on her own.

This is a four part BBC mini-series with a full run-time of roughly three hours (unfortunately purchased for a Hollywood movie remake). Rooper is brilliant as a girl who doesn't quite know how to keep her mouth shut - in fact, pretty much everyone on the project acted very well. If you can get past the "Alice in Wonderland" entry mechanism (or should I perhaps reference "The Lake House?") the writing (by Guy Andrews) is brilliant - a marvellous reconception of Austen by someone who clearly knows the original exceptionally well. Fans of the book and/or movies will be surprised (in a good way) by many of the characters - the visions of Wickham and Collins are particularly interesting.

2008, dir. Dan Zeff. With Jemima Rooper, Eliot Cowan, Hugh Bonneville, Morven Christie, Alex Kingston, Tom Mison, Tom Riley, Guy Henry, Perdita Weeks, Gemma Arterton, Christina Cole, Florence Hoath, Lindsay Duncan, Michelle Duncan, Ruby Bentall.

Lost in La Mancha

Around 2000, Terry Gilliam had a shot at making a version of Don Quixote called "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" starring Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp - after roughly a decade of planning. It was a movie he'd wanted to do forever. You won't have seen this movie, because "Lost in La Mancha" is a documentary about how the production went straight to hell in a hand basket and fell completely apart. They never had as much money as they needed, they couldn't get the actors on set. When they did get the actors on set, they had a massive flood. Rochefort would have been the perfect Quixote ... but he started having medical problems. It looked like it would have been a great movie - very Gilliamesque, but really good. But it imploded. A fascinating view of the film-making process, and how it can go completely off the rails. The film makers are more than happy to cast Gilliam as Quixote, tilting at windmills.

Watching this in 2010 I'm interested to note that it appears Gilliam has reclaimed the rights to the script (owned by the insurance company for several years) and is currently casting With Robert Duvall and Depp (again) confirmed. We'll see if he can pull it off this time.

2003, dir. Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe. With Jeff Bridges (narrator), Terry Gilliam, Johnny Depp, Jean Rochefort.

Lost in Translation

Two Americans overwhelmed by Japanese culture meet in their hotel bar in Tokyo, and spend some time together. The friends I saw it with were annoyed that scenes were frequently left incomplete, but I thought that the information you needed to know was conveyed just fine. The woman we were with was also appalled at the idea of Murray as an even marginally romantic lead. Both leads did a very good job, and I really enjoyed the movie. It does a very good job of conveying the isolation travellers feel far from home in a country where they don't speak the language.

2003, dir. Sophia Coppola. With Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi.

A Lot Like Love

The latest generation of rom com, that starts with the two leads having it off in an airplane washroom without even knowing each other's names. A friendship develops by fits and starts, with several romantic misfires. Will they get together in the end? It's a new generation, but it's not that different. The plot is ... mundane, and the characters are written in clichés just often enough to be annoying, but Kutcher and Peet both act well and are remarkably funny, so the final product is reasonably enjoyable.

2005, dir. Nigel Cole. With Amanda Peet, Ashton Kutcher.

Love Actually

This one is about the twists and turns that love and relationships take. I saw it on a flight back from London, which was interesting: it was filmed in London, and they kept showing places I had been. It's a comedy about love and relationships with plenty of serious moments, but don't call it a "romantic comedy." And do watch it - it's really, really good.

2003, dir. Richard Curtis. With Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Allan Rickman, Keira Knightly, Hugh Grant, Laura Linney, Bill Nighy, and Liam Neeson.

Love and Other Drugs

What most people hear about this movie is the part where Jamie (Gyllenhaal) sells Viagra. But this is about Viagra sales the way "Million Dollar Baby" is about boxing, which is to say it's more surface than core. The centre of the story is about Jamie's relationship with his passionate, sick, and very defensive girlfriend Maggie (Hathaway). But while "Million Dollar Baby" got to the meat of the story and concentrated on it, this one spends a lot of time on Jamie's pimping drugs and the supposedly amusing side-story of his multi-millionaire loser brother coming to live with him. This is probably worth seeing for Gyllenhaal and Hathaway, who are both incredibly gorgeous AND fantastically talented actors who turn in great performances here. But overall not a particularly good story.

2010, dir. Edward Zwick. With Anne Hathaway, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Gad, Hank Azaria, Oliver Platt, Judy Greer, Gabriel Macht, Nikki DeLoach.

Love in a Cold Climate

Based on a couple of Nancy Mitford novels, a tale of privilege and the quest for love in 1930s England. Pike is our narrator, a clueless naif in the first half. By the end we see her as the only one of the three main girls with any common sense, and most of the rest of the families and friends that surround them are really objectionable people.

2001, dir. Tom Hooper. With Rosamund Pike, Elisabeth Dermot-Walsh, Megan Dodds, John Wood, Sheila Gish, Samuel Labarthe, John Light, Anthony Andrews, Daniel Evans.

A Love Song for Bobby Long

A movie about three messed up people and a house. Johansson's character inherits a house in New Orleans from her estranged mother, but when she arrives there she finds she's also inherited two well educated alcoholic boarders who were friends of her mother. There then follows a drawn-out series of admissions and revelations about relationships between everybody, everybody improves a little bit, and something important gets done. But there's not really anything exciting here: it's kind of sloppy, and even Travolta can't make Bobby Long as compelling a character as he's supposed to be. Disappointing.

2004, dir. Shainee Gabel. With John Travolta, Scarlett Johansson, Gabriel Macht, Deborah Kara Unger, Dane Rhodes, David Jensen.

Love's Labour's Lost

One of Shakespeare's least satisfying plays, rightly infrequently performed. A passable cast do what they can with the muddled text. Apparently it was hilariously funny in his own time because most of the characters were caricatures of well known people, but we don't see that now. So the enjoyment of the play must come from the plot (which is even more pathetic than usual) and the prose ... The only character who really shines is Berowne - of the four lords, the only one who has the sense to know that what they're endeavouring to do is impractical and unlikely. He is also occasionally very funny. But, in the end, an unsatisfying production of an unsatisfying play. Part of the BBC's "Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare."

1985, dir. Elijah Moshinsky. With Mike Gwilym, Jonathan Kent, Jenny Agutter, Petra Markham, David Warner, Clifford Rose.

Lucky Number Slevin

All will be revealed ... but in the build-up it's kind of hard to care or believe, and if you do, your trust will be betrayed. Hartnett plays a guy with bad luck caught in between two crime bosses for debts he didn't even incur. The crime bosses are played by Freeman and Kingsley (so much better than Hartnett). There's some very clever dialogue, and some clever plotting, but this doesn't make a movie.

2006, dir. Jason Smilovic. With Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Stanley Tucci.

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M

M:i:III (aka "Mission Impossible III")

And I thought the other two were bad - of course, that begs the question why I would watch it. I suppose because I heard it was good. The opening scene shows Hoffman as the bad guy torturing and killing Cruise's significant other in front of a chained up and begging Cruise. Hoffman could have been a fairly good bad guy, but to throw his performance in at the deep end like this, with him looking as unscary as he does, just didn't work for me. Anthony Hopkins is a very conventional looking guy who played Hannibal Lecter and makes him utterly terrifying and completely convincing, but Hoffman just isn't that good. So I was lost from the first scene, and this is a movie where suspension of disbelief is direly needed for the complete and frequent denial of the laws of physics. The face replacements got really old in the last movie: they really should have skipped it this time around.

2006, dir. J.J. Abrams. With Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rames, Billy Crudup, Michelle Monaghan, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Keri Russell, Maggie Q, Laurence Fishburne.

Machete

"Machete" is a movie based on a fake trailer released with the Rodriguez/Tarantino "Grindhouse." It stars Trejo in his first lead, playing a role with the same name as his character in the movie "Spy Kids" (although the tone of this movie is a bit different). I understand the style is similar to "Grindhouse," but I haven't seen that so I can't compare.

Machete's family were slaughtered in Mexico by the druglord Torrez (Seagal), whereupon he is left to die. The movie jumps forward three years, to find Machete working as an illegal immigrant in Texas. After Booth (Fahey) sees him in a street fight that Machete easily wins, Booth hires him to kill the very racist Senator McLaughlin (De Niro). This turns out to be a set-up to further McLaughlin and Booth's agenda (make Mexicans look bad) and leaves Machete seriously injured (although he was meant to be dead). Etc.

Blood gushes, breasts jiggle, bullets fly. Trejo can't act, and no one else is trying - it's amusing when Marin, Lohan, and Johnson look like the best actors. I imagine that after the shit Seagal has been making, he looked at this and thought "hey, a legitimate project!" If you like violent, nasty, and incredibly stupid, this is your gig.

2010, dir. Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis. With Danny Trejo, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Don Johnson, Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan, Jeff Fahey, Steven Seagal, Cheech Marin, Daryl Sabara, Tom Savini, Shea Whigham.

The Machinist

The central question of "The Machinist" is "why is Bale's character a psychotic insomniac anorexic?" Since he's unable to answer the question himself, we spend an hour and a half involved in his very ugly and unhappy world. The ending does bring some coherence when I was afraid there would be none, but it was extremely depressing (as expected) and not good enough to warrant the unpleasant voyage.

2004, dir. Brad Anderson. With Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sánchez Gijón, John Sharian, Michael Ironside.

Mad Dog and Glory

"Mad Dog" is De Niro, a cop who doesn't come close to living up to his name. Glory is a bartender (Thurman), a temporary "gift" to Mad Dog for saving the life of a gangster (Murray). A quirky and occasionally charming comedy with an annoying and unbelievable ending. I don't usually like Caruso, but like all the other leads he does a good job here.

1993, dir. John McNaughton. With Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman, Bill Murray, David Caruso, Mike Starr.

The Madness of King George

Hawthorne (of the British "Yes Minister" TV series) does a very good job as King George the third. George went mad, but medical science at the time wasn't exactly up to taking care of the problem. The ending isn't quite as depressing as that would imply, but it's not a happy film. I didn't enjoy it much, although it's well done.

1994. dir. Nicholas Hytner. With Nigel Hawthorne, Helen Mirren, Ian Holme, Rupert Everett.

The Magnificent Seven

"Seven Samurai" translated into a Western. The Western was stagnating when this came out, and it was a shock to hear the gunslingers admitting (as did the original samurai) that their often glamorously portrayed life is actually less than happy. While the acting wasn't great, it was sure as hell distinctive: Brynner, McQueen, Bronson, Vaughn, Dexter, Coburn, and Buchholz as the seven, and Wallach as the bandit chief. It doesn't get much better than that, although this was the breakthrough film for at least a couple of them.

1960, dir. Preston Sturges. With Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, Eli Wallach, Brad Dexter, Horst Buchholz.

Magnolia

I didn't "get it," and this is in places bizarre enough that that's the only way you're going to appreciate it after a deity has been made of coincidence and a run-time of three-plus hours. A large and rather good ensemble cast do their bits to make their parts of the movie better, but the pieces fit together only in a logical sense - not in an emotional sense, at least not that was particularly rewarding to me. Watching Cruise strut and preen and yell "Respect the Cock!" was at least amusing.

2003, dir. P.T. Anderson. With Tom Cruise, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Alfred Molina, John C. Reilly.

Major League

One of the most enjoyable movies I've ever seen. The story isn't just a stereotype anymore, it's now essentially the archetype: lovable band of losers come together and against all odds win big. They're not aiming particularly high and we all know the story perfectly, but it's the telling that matters. The characters are very engaging and the humour abundant. Sit back with some popcorn and enjoy.

Sheen is great, Berenger and Bernsen are very good, Snipes is hilarious in a role before he got so full of himself, and Uecker is brilliant and hilarious as a colour commentator who really doesn't care what comes out of his mouth.

1989, dir. David S. Ward. With Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Corbin Bernsen, Margaret Whitton, James Gammon, Rene Russo, Bob Uecker.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Possibly the most famous detective movie ever made, and an incredibly influential noir film, the 1941 version of "The Maltese Falcon" was the second of three attempts to bring Dashiell Hammett's novel of the same name to the screen. Bogart plays the obnoxious detective Sam Spade.

Spade and his partner Archer (Cowan) take Miss Ruth Wonderly (Astor) as a client. Her story is a ruse, and Archer is killed in short order. Spade gets to work to discover a much more complex story about a highly desirable falcon statuette.

I'm not a huge fan of this one, although it's well done. Greenstreet and Lorre are both good in their "regular" roles. Astor heaps lies on top of lies, and isn't particularly convincing at any level. Spade irritates everybody, and is breath-takingly clever - although at least he didn't achieve the high watermark of irritating cleverness presented by Philip Marlowe as played by Elliott Gould in "The Long Goodbye."

1941, dir. John Huston. With Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Lee Patrick, Gladys George.

A Man Apart

A lame excuse to put Diesel in a leading roll in an action movie. After his wife is killed by a drug lord, he sets out for revenge. Never heard that before. Violent without redeeming features.

2003, dir. F. Gary Gray. With Vin Diesel.

Man of the House

This falls into the category of "I was expecting really, really bad so I enjoyed it." Yes, it's a stupid movie. Jones does what he does: stone faced, tough old man. But he does it so well, and I just enjoy watching him. And putting him together with a house full of cheerleaders wasn't the worst idea ever. It also wasn't as tasteless as I expected - but then, I had very low expectations. The premise is that he's a Texas ranger protecting a bunch of cheerleaders who witnessed a murder. Of course despite his grumpy nature he ends up helping them and they help him. Comedy (of a sort) ensues.

2005, dir. Stephen Herek. With Tommy Lee Jones, Cedric the Entertainer, Christina Milian, Paula Garcés, Monica Keena, Vanessa Ferlito, Kelli Garner, Anne Archer, Brian Van Holt.

Man of the Year

The critics hated this one, and they're right in one sense: the plot kind of sucked. We had two major elements: a comedian (Williams) running for president, and a major problem with the new electronic voting system. One of these is funny, the other isn't, and they're trying to hang a plot on the latter very uninteresting idea. It was a bad idea to start with, and poorly executed to boot. But it's a comedy, and when Williams was on a tear about modern day politics it was bloody hilarious. I don't always like him when he's on a rant, but it worked this time. The movie sank whenever we stumbled back to the pathetic plot. Ah well, you can't have everything. I thought it was more than worth it for the laughs.

2006, dir. Barry Levinson. With Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, Laura Linney, Lewis Black.

Man on Wire

The story of Philippe Petit's high-wire walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center. This is a documentary, and it goes in to considerable detail about the devious (and illegal) methods he and his friends used to get the whole thing set up. Extensive interviews with Petit and the friends who helped him. A good movie about an interesting event.

2008, dir. James Marsh.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

This isn't Hitchcock's best movie, but neither is it his worst. It is, however, his second version of this movie! And Hitchcock's worst is still better than 98% of the world's output of movies. This movie sees a couple (Day and Stewart) in Morocco where they meet some unusual characters. Their son is kidnapped, and a dying man leaves a vague message about an assassination with Stewart. They follow the trail to London.

What makes Hitchcock's work so amazing is the detail and reality - not of the shoddy rear projections while they're riding in buses and cars, but the way the couple acts around each other. It's clear they love each other but have the kinds of issues that married couples always have - something most movies gloss over if the couple's issues aren't the main focus of the movie. But Hitchcock adds these touches effortlessly, just more detail added to the fabric of the movie.

1956, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. With Jimmy Stewart, Doris Day, Daniel Gélin, Bernard Miles, Brenda De Banzie.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Stewart plays a young man (although he doesn't look the part - he was, after all, 54 at the time) journeying to the old "Wild West" with a new law degree and the idea that he will set up shop as a lawyer in the town of Shinbone. But before he even arrives, he's beaten severely when his stagecoach is robbed by Liberty Valance and his men. He quickly finds out that the Marshal is a coward and law is set by the gun. While Valance is clearly a villain, there are no clear cut knights in shining armour here. A Western in the classic sense, but also an interesting character study and an interesting story.

1962, dir. John Ford. With Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Edmond O'Brien, Woody Strode.

Mannequin

An atrociously bad movie that I admit I kind of enjoyed - both when it came out and on re-watching in 2008. Think of "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle": 20 years from now who's going to claim that's a "good" movie? And yet it's funny. Taylor as Hollywood delivers my favourite line: "You know I would never interrupt you when you're getting a piece of wood." There are no characters, only clichés walking around in this movie. Definitely not for everyone, and you have a better chance of enjoying it if you're old enough to remember (well) the year it came out.

1987, dir. Michael Gottlieb. With Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall, Estelle Getty, James Spader, G.W. Bailey, Carole Davis, Steve Vinovich, Christopher Maher, Meshach Taylor.

Mansfield Park (1999)

This is odd: for the most part I've come to Austen movies knowing the text, but this one was new to me. Rozema takes considerable liberties with the material (two homoerotic scenes between women, public hugging and kissing, implications of rape and torture of slaves), but ... she made a damn fine movie. And when Rozema took liberties with the dialogue, she got it from where? Austen's own materials - just not the novel of the title. O'Connor is very good as Fanny Price, Davidtz gets top billing for a relatively minor role (and performance), Nivola and Miller are very good as the men in Price's life. And one of the 20th century's best known playwrights makes one of his infrequent movie appearances as the head of the house. The drama is brilliant, and some of the humour is cripplingly funny - wickedly biting satire.

Having read the book and seen the movie again: Rozema's version of Fanny has been changed from timid, shy, and afraid of everything (as written by Austen) to a retiring but superb social observer. She's a better judge of character in the movie than Austen intended, and things end well for her more through her own efforts than they do in the book.

Hardcore Austen fans beware: if you're offended by significant changes to the text, this production is rife with them. To everyone else - I highly recommend this as a movie, and even as Austen.

1999, dir. Patricia Rozema. With Frances O'Connor, Jonny Lee Miller, Alessandro Nivola, Embeth Davidtz, Harold Pinter, James Purefoy, Hannah Taylor Gordon, Hugh Bonneville.

Mansfield Park (2007, TV)

Masterpiece Theatre's short TV version of the Jane Austen novel. While they don't go for the wild anachronisms that Rozema introduced, they cut so much of the story that this felt just as unfaithful to the original material as the Rozema. The acting here is overall pretty poor, and when the director wants us to understand how attractive Fanny (Piper) is, he sends her off to laugh and chase a child or a dog. Fanny doesn't do a lot of talking, and while we can vaguely see that Henry Crawford (Beattie) might like her innocence, and Edmund (Ritson) would appreciate a solid friend since childhood, they didn't really give us much in the way of convincing romance. Read the book or deal with Rozema's wild ideas: either is better than this.

2007, dir. Iain B. MacDonald. With Billie Piper, Blake Ritson, Hayley Atwell, Joseph Beattie, James D'Arcy, Michelle Ryan, Catherine Steadman, Jemma Redgrave, Douglas Hodge.

Manufactured Landscapes

A documentary that shows us Ed Burtynsky who loves nature and might have spent his life photographing it, but found his muse taking pictures of the destruction we wreak upon our environment. He's been doing this for about 25 years. The movie combines one of his gallery openings with film of him shooting in several locations and cinematic reshoots of his photos. His photos are among the best I've ever seen in my life - I've never seen so many photos by one photographer and liked (loved!) such a high proportion of them. They dazzle, they're staggeringly beautiful. And simultaneously appalling, because they're of industrial waste, pit mines, oil wells, and factories. The cinematography keeps up with the photography too.

2006, dir. Jennifer Baichwal. With Ed Burtynsky.

Marathon Man

One of the most famous thrillers ever made. A graduate history student becomes unwittingly involved with a Nazi war criminal trying to get his possessions out of a New York bank. The infamous dental torture scene still holds a kick, despite 30 years of movies devising new ways to shock. I found the ending disappointing, but overall fairly good.

1976, dir. John Schlesinger. With Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane, Marthe Keller.

The Marksman

Snipes has never really been in anything good, but he's been in some very enjoyable movies like "Blade." Unfortunately, this is neither of those things. Snipes plays a "painter," here meaning someone in the military who infiltrates enemy territory and puts a marker on a military target to facilitate bombing. He teams up with a bunch of actors no one has heard of to make a movie no one should bother to see that you'll forget immediately if you do see it.

2005, dir. Marcus Adams. With Wesley Snipes.

Mars Attacks

I saw this when it was released and remembered not particularly liking it. But when it turned up for $3 as a DVD, I decided I'd give it a chance because Burton, as weird as he is, is rarely boring.

I'll stand by the assessment that he's "rarely" boring, but he does come close here. The idea seems appropriate enough for him: Martians come to Earth, appear initially friendly, then begin to do horrible things. (All based on a cult series of trading cards by the same title.) Despite a huge and very talented cast, the vast majority of the gags fall flat. It's not funny and it's certainly not good science fiction. Moving on ...

1996, dir. Tim Burton. With Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones, Lukas Haas, Natalie Portman, Lisa Marie, Jim Brown, Pam Grier.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

A reasonable attempt at the "Frankenstein" story that blundered badly. Massive failures of logic (far above and beyond the re-animation of life that we take for granted as part of this story), over-acting, scenes that were blatantly obvious five minutes ahead that were lingered over as if they were a great revelation ... The two things they did right were making the Creature intelligent, and casting De Niro in the role: he was brilliant.

1994, dir. Kenneth Branagh. With Kenneth Branagh, Robert De Niro, Tom Hulce, Helena Bonham Carter, Aidan Quinn, Ian Holm, Richard Briers, John Cleese, Robert Hardy.

MASH

Not so much a plot as sequential vignettes of life in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, tied together with weird announcements over the camp loudspeaker. The original book was written about the Korean war, but all references to place were removed to let the American audience think it might be in Vietnam - a war they were still involved in when the movie was released. Inspired possibly the most successful TV series of all time - which is in many ways better than the movie. But it would seem (from the extras) that the movie was the one that broke the ground - utter mayhem on film, an unheard-of combination of blood-soaked, realistic operating rooms in combination with hysterical dark humour. Which the studio very nearly refused to release because "no one would watch such a combination." The jokes are certainly raunchier than the TV series was allowed to be. Launched the careers of Sutherland, Gould, and Skerritt, and probably helped Duvall along substantially.

1970, dir. Robert Altman. With Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, Roger Bowen, Rene Auberjonois, David Arkin, Jo Ann Pflug, Gary Burghoff.

The Mask

Maybe the best use Carrey's putty features have been put to. A shy bank clerk acquires an ancient mask that transforms him into an indestructible green-faced maniac. The mask also brings many of the wearer's more hidden traits to surface - in the case of our bank clerk, a wild desire to re-enact Tex Avery cartoons in real life and a bizarre romanticism. The source material (a graphic novel) was about homicide and revenge: the people who got the mask generally slaughtered those they didn't like and generally nobody ended up happy. Not surprisingly, they handed this material to a horror director ... but somehow he decided it should be a comedy and still managed to sell the product - complete with two unknown leads. And I'm glad he did. This is a very funny movie.

1994, dir. Chuck Russell. With Jim Carrey, Cameron Diaz, Amy Yasbeck, Peter Greene, Peter Riegert.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Beautifully crafted, but strangely hollow. During the Napoleonic wars, Crowe (playing the captain of the HMS Surprise) pursues the French vessel Acheron around South America. I doubt you will ever see a better done sea picture of that era: the sense of life at sea on a fighting ship is a labour of love. Unfortunately, despite good acting, the plot arc staggers and stumbles and is swamped by occasional sentimentality.

2003, dir. Peter Weir. With Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, James D'Arcy.

The Matador

In a time of movies stepping outside their genres and doing weird cross-overs, this one is still off-the-charts weird. The director calls it "a black comedy about friendship," which is accurate as far as it goes, but there's so much more going on ... Brosnan plays a hitman losing his edge, and Kinnear is an struggling businessman. They meet in a Mexican bar and start a very strange friendship. The beauty of the movie is that you have no damn idea where it's going - or in some cases, even where it's been - until you get to the end. Brosnan's performance is excellent.

2005, dir. Richard Shepard. With Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis, Philip Baker Hall.

The Matrix

One of the best science fiction movies ever made. One of the best action movies ever made - it rewrote the way action movies have been done ever since. A smooth melding of computer technology (in both presentation and content), religion, paranoia, and philosophy brings us a fascinating and thought-provoking script coupled with incredible visuals. See this movie. (Skip the sequels.)

1999, dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski. With Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Gloria Foster, Joe Pantoliano.

Matrix Reloaded

Unfortunately, this movie couldn't begin to compare to its predecessor, which had an incredible overarching sense of paranoia ("What you perceive as reality - is not."). The special effects are great, but the fights are too long (no matter how well staged), the rave is ludicrous, and the "emotional" content is laughable. I was disappointed at the change in Morpheus's character, from being a leader with a vision to a misguided prophet.

2003. dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski. With Keanu Reaves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Collin Chou.

Matrix Revolutions

The conclusion of one of the highest flying science fiction series ever. Started with what was possibly the best SF film ever made, ended with what I initially thought was one of the worst. It's not a terrible film, but expectations for it (even after the second one came out) were still high enough to make it look pretty bad. Lots of violence and special effects. The effects are, in many places, quite beautiful. Ultimately the only really worthwhile segment is the Indian gentleman (who is supposed to be a program, not a human) at the beginning of the movie talking about the concept of love: after that it deteriorates into uninteresting action.

2003, dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski. With Keanu Reaves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Collin Chou.

Maverick

Gibson plays the card-playing lead character in the old West, trying to get into a high stakes poker tournament. Based on the 1950s TV series starring Garner. In this movie he's aided and hindered by a lawman (Garner) and a gambling con artist and thief, played by Foster. The movie is absurd and frequently annoying, but it's also quite funny and charming. Definitely worth a watch.

1994, dir. Richard Donner. With Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, James Garner, Alfred Molina, Graham Greene, James Coburn.

Mean Girls

Better than average teen comedy, although not great. Funny. Lohan was surprisingly good. I was thrilled to see that they filmed both outside and inside Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto, although it's not a particularly long scene.

2004. dir. Mark Waters. With Lindsay Lohan, Tina Fey.

Meat Loaf: To Hell and Back

TV movie, didn't catch the beginning. Based of Meat Loaf's life. Brown is a near-perfect match for Meat Loaf in appearance, and a good actor. Throne is quirky and great as Steinman, and a good fit as he's also a musician. It seems some of the facts were changed for their convenience, but fairly true to the spirit of his life. My favourite parts were Steinman describing their first album: "Of course it's over the top! It's meant to be over the top!" Or Meat Loaf's description of their songs: "mini-Operas."

2000, Jim McBride. With W. Earl Brown, Dedee Pfeiffer, Zachary Throne.

The Mechanic (2011)

Statham stars in this higher budget re-interpretation of an old Charles Bronson B-movie. He plays Arthur "The Mechanic" Bishop, a hitman. The closest thing he has to a friend is his mentor at his firm, Harry McKenna (Sutherland) - who the Mechanic is shortly required to kill. After the funeral, he ends up starting to see McKenna's son occasionally, and eventually takes him on as an apprentice (what could possibly go wrong?).

Violent and cold, reasonably well acted.

2011, dir. Simon West. With Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Donald Sutherland.

The Medallion

Unusual for one of Jackie Chan's movies, this one has wire work and some speeding up. It makes sense in context (ie. some of the characters have supernatural powers) but offended a friend of mine. I can understand that given that Chan's stuff has always been so solidly real. Despite their being an excuse for these modifications, the movie's still a piece of crap. There are one or two patented Jackie stunts and fights at the beginning, but after that it's all silliness, including Evans as the annoying side-kick - who is so incredibly irritating for so long that I wanted to strangle both the editor and the director. Forlani is lovely but that's really no excuse to put her in here when she can't act and she can't do martial arts. If he'd stuck with Love Hewitt (who co-starred in The Tuxedo) this would have been somewhat better.

2003, dir. Gordon Chan. With Jackie Chan, Claire Forlani, Lee Evans, Julian Sands, John Rhys-Davies.

Meet the Robinsons

Starts out promising with good computer animation and Disney apparently looking to tackle the whole sense of identity and not-belonging that comes with being an orphan in the first 20 minutes, but then wanders off into slapstick, pretty lights, and time travel. It's pretty to look at and occasionally amusing, but ultimately not very good.

2007, dir. Stephen J. Anderson. With Angela Bassett, Daniel Hansen, Jordan Fry, Matthew Josten, John H.H. Ford, Laurie Metcalf, Don Hall.

Megamind

Two humanoid aliens end up on earth: Metro Man, with very Superman-like powers, and Megamind, who is bright blue, evil, and extremely good with technology. They constantly fight it out and Megamind always loses ... until one day he wins and doesn't know what to do. So he tries to create a new hero to fight him, but as usual, his plan backfires ...

The movie has a good time messing with all the superhero/supervillain tropes, with Megamind doing a fair bit of property damage but always expecting to lose. And when his new hero isn't a hero, and he falls for the girl (knowing "the bad guy never gets the girl") ... I think I like Ferrell better as a voice than a face - he's pretty good here, as is Fey. The movie is painted in very broad strokes, but is nevertheless quite entertaining.

2010, dir. Tom McGrath. With Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, David Cross, Brad Pitt.

Memories (orig. "Memorîzu")

Three SF shorts brought together by Katsuhiro Ôtomo, who also directed the third film. The first, "Magnetic Rose," finds some space scavengers entering the hulking remains of a ship, in which they find a huge generated environment stemming from the memories of a very messed up woman. The second, "Stink Bomb," has a very dumb man (his stupidness is inconsistent and exists for the convenience of the movie) accidentally turning himself into a biological weapon and then heading for Tokyo. And the third, "Cannon Fodder," shows us a day in the life of a city of heavy artillery, firing at an unseen enemy. I found the endings of all three ... unsatisfactory. But the animation, particularly in the last one, was impressive.

1995, dir. Kôji Morimoto, Tensai Okamura, Katsuhiro Ôtomo.

Men in Black

This found Mr. Smith, just off "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" teaming up with Mr. Jones in a movie adaptation of the comic book of the same name. Their job is to keep the many aliens living on Earth (most of whom live in NYC, where the MIB are based) under control. The movie starts with Smith as a NYPD member chasing down a criminal who appears to be human but turns out to be an alien, and then switches to the landing of a "Bug" at a farm in upstate New York where it kills D'Onofrio and uses his skin to appear human. Most aliens are peaceful, but this one is not: Smith and Jones are sent to track it down.

This is a very silly, very funny movie. Jones' stoneface route in put to perfect use, and Smith is having a blast ad-libbing like crazy. The goo factor is a bit high for a comedy, but despite that the movie is something of a landmark in the comedy genre. Which makes it that much more of a shame that MIB2 is one of the worst comedies ever made.

1997, dir. Barry Sonnenfeld. With Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Vincent D'Onofrio, Linda Fiorentino, Rip Torn, Tony Shalhoub, Mike Nussbaum, Carel Struycken.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

The tagline on the box says "No Goats, No Glory." That was the biggest laugh I got out of the video.

In the 80s the U.S. Army started work on alternative methods of warfare, some non-lethal, some totally and completely absurd. "Remote viewing" was the process of using only your mind to see a place distant in space and time. And the process of the title was all about killing something just by staring at it.

Bob Wilton (McGregor) is a newly divorced and unhappy reporter who sets out to prove himself by going to Iraq and reporting on the war. There he meets Lyn Cassady (Clooney), one of the "Jedi warriors" trained with Bill Django's "New Earth Army" and follows him into the war zone.

I think the biggest laugh I got out of the movie (other than the tagline on the box) was the casting of McGregor as an apprentice "Jedi." The rest of it is end-to-end silliness without any laughs.

2009, dir. Grant Heslov. With George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Stephen Root.

Men With Brooms

A truly Canadian sport at the centre of a very Canadian movie. A lightweight romantic comedy centred around curling. A curling team that split up ten years ago is brought together again by the death of their coach. Goofy, with moments of embarrassment and brilliance.

2002, dir. Paul Gross. With Paul Gross, Leslie Nielsen, Molly Parker, Michelle Nolden, Peter Outerbridge, James Allodi, Jed Rees.

Message in a Bottle

A romance that starts with ... a message in a bottle. Wright plays a divorced mother who finds the titular message and is captivated by it. She's a researcher at her Chicago paper, so she gets to work on finding out where it might have come from. That leads her to Costner. It's clichéd with a good script, a bit heavy-handed, and superbly acted. Anything else I could say would be "damning with faint praise."

1999, dir. Luis Mandoki. With Robin Wright Penn, Kevin Costner, Paul Newman, Illeana Savage, Robbie Coltrane.

Metropia

Our protagonist is Roger, a worker in a call-centre in a near-future Europe where Trexx corp. has created a monolithic all-Europe transit system "to prevent wars by bring people closer together" (or some similar sentiment). But Roger rides a bicycle (which is apparently illegal) because "something weird" is going on in the metro. One day, his bike is completely trashed and he has to use the metro, whereupon he starts hearing a voice in his head and follows the girl of his dreams.

This is a dystopian vision with one huge corporation essentially trying to take over the world. The film frames consist of heavily modified and animated photographs, with a general result reminiscent of hinged-jaw photo animations. The backgrounds are often really good, grim and forbidding stuff that set the tone beautifully. But the Gilliam-esque animation makes it hard to really get into the drama of the thing - not that it matters much as logic fails completely at a couple points.

Really weird, very unusual, but still not really worth watching.

2009, dir. Tarik Saleh. With (voices by) Vincent Gallo, Juliette Lewis, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård.

Metropolis (Osamu Tezuka)

Based on the comic by Osamu Tezuka (which is based on many of the ideas from the 1927 movie of the same name), Rintaro has brought us a very confused movie with great visuals. The plot is clear enough, but someone had no idea if this was for children or adults. The plot is too complex for children, the humour and characters are far too weak for adults, and the music is out of place for anybody.

2001. dir. Rintaro.

The Mexican

Pitt is an inept mob delivery boy in love with Roberts. He tries to make one last important delivery. The humour is weak, the movie is a mess, and Pitt and Roberts aren't a convincing romantic couple.

2000. dir. Gore Verbinski. With Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, James Gandolfini.

Miami Vice (movie)

Mann brings his highly influential TV series to the big screen, 17 years after it ended on TV with Foxx and Farrell as Tubbs and Crockett. Mann's fantastic vision (brilliant bleak white spaces, super-saturated colours - all very reminiscent of the TV series) and good acting couldn't rescue an annoying and fairly thin story. People run drugs, things go wrong, people get shot. Mann's cinematography is so good it didn't need an update, they updated the appropriate technology, and he chose good actors - but the story is the same ... except weaker. Too bad.

2006, dir. Michael Mann. With Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Li Gong.

Michael Clayton

Clooney plays the titular character, a "triage" lawyer, the man they send in when no one else can fix it. 18 years with the firm and not a partner, maybe because of his gambling problem. We meet him as someone attempts to kill him, and then flash back four days to get the full story on why. An associate (probably a friend, it's never entirely clear) of his - another "bagman" as they call themselves, has a bit of an episode. Wilkinson plays the manic-depressive Arthur absolutely brilliantly. Clayton tries to get Arthur back on his meds and in the process finds out more about Arthur's current case than he necessarily wanted to and things get morally and physically ugly. Well acted all around and a very good story too.

2007, dir. Tony Gilroy. With George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack.

Micmacs (orig. "Micmacs à tire-larigot")

It's Jeunet, and very much so. To me "Micmacs" looks like a cross between "Delicatessen" and "Amelie." Warm-coloured filming, happy band of eccentrics, same actors as all his other films, even smoky shots across the rooftops. Jeunet says in the interview on the DVD that he's been accused of doing the same thing repeatedly: "I'm a seafood restaurant. If you want meat and vegetables, there are plenty of fine restaurants across the street" (paraphrased from English subs on a French interview). And, as dearly as I love "Amelie," I'm getting a bit tired of his rather limited style.

"Micmacs" finds our antagonist Bazil (Boon) first orphaned by a land mine, then with a bullet embedded in his skull through no fault of his own. After a stay in hospital he discovers that he's now homeless, jobless, and a bit eccentric. Of course, other sweet and kind and bizarre street people take him in. He eventually sets out to extract revenge from the arms dealers who ruined his life with the assistance of his new friends.

2009, dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. With Dany Boon, Julie Ferrier, Dominique Pinon, André Dussollier, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Yolande Moreau, Michel Crémadès, Nicolas Marié, Omar Sy, Marie-Julie Baup.

Microcosmos

This movie has it all: sex, violence, death, a terrible storm, and a great soundtrack. But no one you've ever heard of - it's about insects (with the occasional snail and frog thrown in for good measure). The cinematography is extraordinary, and the soundtrack really is excellent. Even if you don't like bugs you're likely to find the movie mesmerising. Beautiful and fascinating.

1996, dir. Claude Nuridsany.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

I own this on DVD and after an initial bad reaction I've gone back a couple times to try to find redeeming features. It's Shakespeare, and it's got a list of "talent" as long as your arm. But no: the bicycles-as-props and the sets, almost every one of them, are bad ideas. And the director has managed to coax bad performances from pretty much everyone. Bizarrely (or perhaps not), Kline plays remarkably well as a bad actor turned donkey ... and Rockwell is good in a relatively minor role, but the rest of the performances are sub-par.

1999, dir. Michael Hoffman. With Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, Stanley Tucci, Calista Flockhart, Anna Friel, Christian Bale, Dominic West, David Strathairn, Sophie Marceau, Sam Rockwell, Bernard Hill.

Millennium Actress (orig. "Sennen joyû")

Anime. A very strange structure, a bit surreal, and some problems ... but really good. An old movie studio is being torn down, and one of the employees decides to track down the studio's most famous star. He and his camera man interview her - and end up reliving/re-enacting parts of both her life and her movies. The camera man becomes terribly confused as he finds himself filming across an entire millennium as the actress changes age and his employer keeps reappearing in different costumes to save her. This is actually a very clever idea, but after 35 minutes or so it's a little overused. They move on to further revelations about both his and her lives, which are actually fairly rewarding, as the movie comes to a close.

2001, dir. Satoshi Kon. With Miyoko Shôji, Mami Koyama, Fumiko Orikasa, Shôzô Îzuka, Shouko Tsuda, Masaya Onosaka.

The Millionairess

BBC "Play of the Month." Silly Shaw - we start with a histrionic (titular) millionairess played by Smith trying to draw up her will with her solicitor - who can't keep a straight face and keeps laughing at her offers of suicide. It stays just as silly throughout, and even Smith can't make the main role convincing. Not that the other roles are much better. Still, amusing.

1972, dir. William Slater. With Maggie Smith, James Villiers, Peter Barkworth, Charles Grey, Tom Baker.

Million Dollar Baby

I'm not always fond of Eastwood's subject material, but he's getting better and better as a director. In this case he's backed up by not one, but two Oscar winning performances. Swank delivers a devastating performance as a backwoods girl determined to be a good boxer. Be prepared to weep.

2004, dir. Clint Eastwood. With Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman.

Millions

A child builds a cardboard house near the railway track. One day his house is obliterated by the arrival of a bouncing bag full of currency. We see his and his brother's attempts to make use of the money through his eyes: he keeps seeing saints, and they give him advice. More than a little surreal. The moral was meant to be that money is really a lot of hassle, but oddly having none of it still might be considered a problem. I find it a little difficult to swallow when the movie industry (even the British one) preaches the non-value of money. Heart-warming fare from the man who brought us "Trainspotting" and "28 Days Later."

2004, dir. Danny Boyle. With Alex Etel, Lewis McGibbon, James Nesbitt.

Mindhunters

This is utter crap. Oh, wait, did I say that out loud? FBI profilers trapped on an island, people die, everybody's a suspect, blah blah blah. The problem is, you just don't care.

2004, dir. Renny Harlin. Val Kilmer, Christian Slater, LL Cool J, Kathryn Morris.

Minority Report

John Anderton (Cruise) is a police man in the year 2054 in D.C. He works with the "precrime" unit that uses precognitives to put people away before they commit murder - until he finds that he's about to commit a murder himself. He runs, trying to find out why he would kill someone he doesn't even know.

The vision of the future is brilliant, combining a lot of things I think are highly plausible (including eye scanners everywhere, less privacy, and incredibly intrusive advertising) that Spielberg put together with the help of a panel of experts.

Science fiction, speculation, mystery, comedy, suspense, action ... I think this is a great film - possibly the best SF film ever made.

2002. dir. Steven Spielberg. With Tom Cruise, Colin Ferrell, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow, Kathryn Morris, Neal McDonough, Steve Harris, Lois Smith.

Miss Austen Regrets

Williams plays Jane Austen in her later life (in many ways this movie is a book-end to "Becoming Jane"). We see her helping her niece Fanny deciding on a husband, then trying to sort out the sales of her books and flirting with a doctor ...

According to this, Jane Austen was not only poor but also bitter and unhappy - although she would never tell that to her sister Cassandra (Scacchi). It's a reasonably good production, but it certainly doesn't have the emotional lift of Austen's own writings.

2008, dir. Jeremy Lovering. With Olivia Williams, Imogen Poots, Greta Scacchi, Hugh Bonneville, Adrian Edmondson, Pip Torrens, Jack Huston.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

McDormand plays Miss Pettigrew, a governess in London in 1939, who finds herself unemployed. In desperation, she steals a job that wasn't intended for her from her employment agency (which has decided not to employ her again because of past problems). This turns her into the social secretary for a beautiful young woman (Adams) who's attempting to sleep her way to the theatrical role of her dreams - while already having two other boyfriends. Miss Pettigrew, the daughter of a preacher, is singularly unimpressed, but so befuddled and desperate that she stays on duty. What follows is a charming and romantic tale as they both show each other a bit of what's missing in the other's lives. And the historical accuracy and sets are spectacular.

2008, dir. Bharat Nalluri. With Frances McDormand, Amy Adams, Shirley Henderson, Ciarán Hinds, Mark Strong, Lee Pace.

Mission to Mars

Starts out alright with an intro to all the astronauts and their camaraderie, but goes steadily downhill thereafter. The visuals are good, but borrow heavily from "2001" - as does much of the rest of the story. They find something on Mars: it's not the monolith of "2001," but it's not very damn far off. Sappy with a couple horror movie scares, a waste of good actors.

2000, dir. Brian De Palma. With Tim Robbins, Gary Sinese, Don Cheadle, Connie Nielsen, Jerry O'Connell.

Mrs. Brown

I really wanted to see this one, as it was Madden's film before "Shakespeare in Love" (one of my favourite films). It's very good, but ... Connolly plays a servant in the household of Queen Victoria (Dench) after the death of her husband.

1997? dir. John Madden. With Judy Dench, Billy Connolly, Antony Sher.

Mrs. Henderson Presents

Lots of breasts plus Dench and Hoskins being funny, on the negative side we have lots of pieces of musical numbers and Hoskins naked. Dench plays a very rich and recently widowed woman in London shortly before the Second World War who decides that owning and running a theatre is the entertainment she needs. Hoskins is the manager. And Dench decides that they should do nude shows. Frears has brought us much better movies, but this is still enjoyable and light-hearted entertainment.

2005, dir. Stephen Frears. With Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins, Christopher Guest, Kelly Reilly.

Mrs. Miniver

Unbridled British patriotism - to be expected of a 1942 production. Some of it is terribly predictable, but there are a couple surprises, and it's reasonably well done.

1942, dir. William Wyler. With Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon.

Mrs. Warren's Profession

A Shaw play that didn't see performance until nine years after it was written because the profession of the title (prostitution, never stated outright) is the source of the money that housed and educated our young heroine. But our heroine is unaware of this, and the play revolves around her and several other people's discoveries of this fact. Has some good characters (particularly the indolent, flippant, and extremely astute Frank Gardner) and a few good moments, but it's not Shaw's best and the ending is distinctly un-Shaw.

1972, dir. Herbert Wise. With Coral Browne, Penelope Wilton, James Grout, Derek Godfrey, Robert Powell, Richard Pearson.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

I was expecting to enjoy this, but more as a quaint, charming, and mildly amusing throwback. Instead I got something much more charming than I was expecting, and side-splittingly funny in places. Cooper plays Longfellow Deeds, a young man from a small town who unexpectedly inherits $20 million - and doesn't seem overly impressed by it. But he goes to New York to settle things, where people try to take advantage of him at every turn. He applies common sense and good manners, and his behaviour is considered insane. (And now I know precisely where the Rush song "Cinderella Man" came from!) Very enjoyable, stands head and shoulders above Capra's other films.

1936, dir. Frank Capra. With Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Lionel Stander, Douglass Dumbrille.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Hoffman plays Mr. Magorium, the owner of a toy store in a major city. Portman is Molly Mahoney, his store manager. Magorium hires a "mutant" (actually an accountant, a cross between someone who can count and a mutant according to Magorium) (played by Bateman) to help with his willing the store to Mahoney on his imminent departure from our world (after 243 years). The story is told, at least in part, by one of the store's habitués, Eric (Mills).

If you watch the trailer you'll have a pretty good idea what this story is about: Hoffman is over-the-top and somewhat entertaining, Portman is mildly annoying, Mills is actually pretty decent. The store ... is a magic toy store. But it's only magical if it's believed in, etc. etc. I found it heavy-handed, overly cute, and distinctly predictable.

2007, dir. Zach Helm. With Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Zach Mills, Jason Bateman.

Mr. Nice Guy

One of Jackie Chan's worst big budget movies. Nevertheless, it has one of his most spectacular stunts ever: during a fight scene on a construction site, he rolls over a live table saw. The man is INSANE. But damn fun to watch.

1997, dir. Sammo Hung Kam-Bo. With Jackie Chan, Miki Lee, Gabrielle Fitzpatrick, Karen McLymont, Richard Norton.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

A friend once referred to Capra's works as "Capra-corn" because they're occasionally incredibly corny. Nothing has embodied that as much as this film. Stewart plays the role that became his standard, the slightly naive but noble all-American man. Picked as a fool to replace a Senator who died, he goes in with his naiveté and his nobility to tackle the extremely corrupt government. The ending is indeed Capra at his corniest. You've probably seen "It's a Wonderful Life," but give him a chance again - not this movie but "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town." Yes, it's corny, but it's also hilarious - something this tried for and didn't quite manage.

1939, dir. Frank Capra. With James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Raines, Edward Arnold.

Mr. 3000

Predictable from beginning to end. Mac has his moments, Bassett is beautiful (but obnoxious), and there's some humour, but fairly lame overall. Mac plays a retired baseball player who bailed out after getting precisely 3000 hits. Nine years later everyone finds out that due to an error, he actually got 2997 hits. He comes out of retirement. Problem is, he's a prick and definitely not a team player. Gee, guess what? He learns. One thing they did get right: it really feels like baseball ... they worked hard at that.

2004, dir. Charles Stone III. With Bernie Mac, Angela Bassett, Michael Rispoli, Brian J. White, Ian Anthony Dale, Evan Jones, Chris Noth, Paul Sorvino.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Two assassins, married to each other, each unaware of the other's profession. In the discovery lies much turmoil ... Pitt and Jolie actually manage to pull it off, and it's pretty funny.

2005, dir. Doug Liman. With Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn.

Moebius

An Argentinian film school project with a marvellous concept: the Buenos Aires subway system has become so complex that you can lose a train in it. In fact, the lost train may have shifted to an alternative dimension because of the topological complexity of the system it was travelling in. (I'm a science fiction fan, this sort of stuff appeals to me.)

The filming is fairly good, the subway tunnels feel claustrophobic, dirty, and complex. The people are well lit and look good, but aren't great actors - although I suppose my judgment on that is suspect given the rather bad set of subs I saw the movie with. The movie is too long for the concept it's putting across, even with the added weight of its attack on the snail's pace and difficulty of Argentinian bureaucracy. And I wasn't sold on the final act of our protagonist (a topologist brought in to help sort out where the hell the train has gone): he's unimpressed by what's going on around him, but what he does at the end is a bit more drastic than I was willing to buy.

I wish I'd seen it with better subs. Interesting.

1996, dir. Gustavo Mosquera R. With Guillermo Angelelli, Robert Carnaghi, Annabella Levy, Jorge Petraglia, Fernando Llosa.

Monkey Business

This movie opens with the four Marx brothers (this being an early movie, Zeppo was still in front of the camera) stowing away on an ocean liner. After they're discovered, they race about causing complete chaos pretty much everywhere. But they make some friends, and after sneaking off the boat at the end of the trip, they help rescue the damsel in distress.

I didn't watch the musical numbers. Groucho was perhaps at his most non-sensical, and with less of a tie to what was going on around him, also at his least funny. Not my favourite.

1931, dir. Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx, Rockliffe Fellowes, Harry Woods, Thelma Todd, Ruth Hall, Tom Kennedy.

Monsoon Wedding

An Indian soap opera, a Bollywood movie for the North American who doesn't know much about Indian movies. Pretty good.

2001, dir. Mira Nair. With Naseeruddin Shah, Lillete Dubey, Shefali Shetty, Vijay Raaz, Tillotama Shome, Vasundhara Das, Parvin Dabas.

Monster Camp

A documentary about LARPers - Live Action Role Playing gamers. To most people, this would probably be a real eye-opener about a bizarre subculture they had no clue about, but to me it was fairly pedestrian. I felt like I knew them all - not personally, they all live in Seattle, but they're just like Science Fiction fans. Badly socialized, a bit more intelligent than the average, and with a need to escape from reality. Which they do by running around in the woods in elf or dwarf or monster outfits, and symbolically killing each other. The filming isn't great, the characters are ... well, Characters. Fairly good.

2007, dir. Cullen Hoback.

Monsters

A NASA probe found alien life in the solar system, took samples, and then broke up in the atmosphere over northern Mexico on its return to Earth. Six years later we find Andrew and Samantha on the edge of the "Infected Zone" that's overrun by alien lifeforms.

This is a no-money independent production with two actors you've hardly heard of. And while it's not exactly Oscar-worthy, its quite interesting with good performances from its leads, surprisingly decent special effects, and a good and pleasantly unpredictable story. Recommended.

2010, dir. Gareth Edwards. With Scoot McNairy, Whitney Able.

Monsters vs. Aliens

Witherspoon voices Susan Murphy, struck by a meteorite and turned into a 20 meter tall woman. she's caught and spirited away in a manner similar to Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians, waking to find herself held captive with several other "monsters" for U.S. military defence purposes and, without any input from her, renamed "Ginormica." The arrival of an alien probe on Earth causes the military to send the Monsters into action. What ensues is reasonably predictable, good-spirited, and with a good message for kids. Funny and enjoyable.

2009, dir. Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon. With Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Kiefer Sutherland, Rainn Wilson, Stephen Colbert, Paul Rudd.

Moon

Sam Bell (played by Rockwell) is the sole staff member on the mining station on the far side of the Moon. His only communication with the Earth is via satellite recordings, no live conversations. As the end of his three year term approaches, he starts to have visions and accidents.

Rockwell puts in an excellent performance. Essentially it's him and the voice of Spacey as the robotic helper Gerty. The settings are excellent: the base is good, and the models used outside on the moon are almost entirely miniature models with very limited CGI, and all the better for it. The story is disturbing and thought-provoking. This is Jones' first full length movie, and I'll definitely be looking for further movies from him!

A couple odd side notes: don't think of Gerty as HAL. If you've seen "2001" it's nearly impossible not to, but that's not where they're going with it. And (stranger still) Duncan Jones = Zowie Bowie. Really: he's David Bowie's son, and his birth name was "Zowie." But don't hold it against him, he's not using it as a crutch and he did a fine job on this movie.

2009, dir. Duncan Jones. With Sam Rockwell, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott.

Morning Glory

McAdams plays Becky Fuller, unemployed and looking for another position as a TV morning show producer. She ends up with a low-paying position with the fourth-rated morning show in New York City, where she struggles with a mixed staff and particularly her recalcitrant former star reporter Mike Pomeroy (Ford).

McAdams is really good (and occasionally incredibly annoying, as she's supposed to be) as the intelligent, hyperactive workaholic. Ford is somewhat better than his usual lackluster performance, and Keaton is hilarious. But overall it's only sort of so-so, not providing quite enough laughs and being a bit too predictable.

2010, dir. Roger Michell. With Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Patrick Wilson, Jeff Goldblum.

Mostly Martha

Martha is a chef, isolated and more than a bit obsessive compulsive. A family tragedy burdens her with a child, and her time off from work introduces another chef into her kitchen. The results are fairly predictable, but the journey is enjoyable. This is the German movie that is the basis for American movie "No Reservations" in 2007.

2001, dir. Sandra Nettelbeck. With Martina Gedeck, Sergio Castellitto, Maxime Foerste, August Zirner, Sibylle Canonica.

Mother, Jugs & Speed

Mid-Seventies comedy, black. Cosby plays the beer-swilling ambulance driver "Mother" - he's pretty cynical and likes to buzz the nuns, but he tries to take care of people. Welch is the receptionist "Jugs," although she prefers to be called "Jennifer." Keitel is the new recruit, a suspended cop named "Speed" because some of the other drivers can't tell the difference between that and the drug he's accused of pedalling, cocaine. Their ambulance company is locked in a territory battle, and the crew were already inclined to dirty tricks ...

Cosby is really funny, and his acting is good too. Welch and Keitel are more straight men. Hagman delivers some humour and some nastiness, and Garfield is pretty funny as the messed up manager.

1976, dir. Peter Yates. With Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch, Harvey Keitel, Bruce Davison, Larry Hagman, Allen Garfield, Dick Butkus.

The Mothman Prophecies

John Klein's wife dies. She may have seen something unusual just before her death, and it haunts Klein (played by Gere). Two years later he finds himself rather mysteriously in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, investigating sightings of some sort of creature that prophesies doom and gloom. It's reported to look just like what his wife saw. Periodically quite creepy, but badly structured (perhaps because it's "based on a true story") and ultimately quite disappointing. If you like this kind of thing, your time would be better spent watching a couple episodes of the X-Files.

2002, dir. Mark Pellington. With Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Will Patton, Alan Bates.

Much Ado About Nothing

In some ways I think this is a wonderful production: Branagh realized this is a complete farce (hey, it's one of Shakespeare's comedies) and didn't take it too seriously. He and Thompson are predictably excellent. But farce or not, I have issues with Washington and Reeves as brothers (even half brothers)! And, while Beckinsale is wasted as a pretty trophy, Robert Sean Leonard is front and centre acting badly. Skin colour aside, Washington was quite good, and Reeves was more than usually wooden. Keaton went over the top and around the other side in the role of Dogberry - but really, that's all you can do with it. He was amusing. Ultimately the movie is funny and enjoyable.

1993, dir. Kenneth Branagh. With Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Kate Beckinsale, Denzel Washington, Robert Sean Leonard, Michael Keaton, Keanu Reeves.

Mulan

Fa Mulan is a young woman in ancient China in this Disney animated film. When her father, crippled in a previous war, is called on to fight again, she steals his sword, armour, horse and conscription notice and runs off to army camp as the (male) conscript from the Fa family. Her father is horrified when he finds out, but if he reveals her she'll be killed. Of course she has an incredibly annoying sidekick in the form of one of the family "guardians," in this case the failed guardian / miniature dragon with maturity problems voiced by Murphy. And of course the future fate of China will eventually depend upon her.

I think at the time it came out I liked this because the previous Disney movie I'd seen was "The Lion King:" not a terrible movie, but I was offended by its message to kids: be a slacker, and eventually you'll find guidance from the voice of your dead father. Mulan is a charming, intelligent and outspoken young heroine who takes things into her own hands from the start. She's a very likable character. Unfortunately an intervening decade of Pixar movies has led me to expect better humour and better character development in children's animation.

Passable songs. A charming main character. Stylized and attractive animation. An incredibly annoying and too prominent (but occasionally amusing) sidekick. Ultimately, better than your average animated movie, but not among the best.

1998, dir. Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook. With Ming-Na, Eddie Murphy, B. D. Wong, Miguel Ferrer, Harvey Fierstein, Gedde Watanabe, Jerry Tondo, James Hong, Pat Morita.

The Mummy (1999)

In typical adventure/horror movie style, assembles an unlikely cast of explorers to unearth, release, and defeat the horrible monster. Fraser is no great actor, but he has an abundance of charisma and charm, and when he and Weisz are on screen together you forget the pure camp atmosphere and enjoy the chemistry (they have romantic chemistry too, but that's not what saves the movie). An homage to the original Mummy movie and some other stuff (Harryhausen) - good campy entertainment, but skip the sequels.

1999, dir. Stephen Sommers. With Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo, Kevin J. O'Connor, Oded Fehr.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

I wasn't a big fan of the second movie, but this is by far the worst of the three. Bello is a good actress, but can't fill Weisz's shoes. Hannah appears to be in his own movie, in which he makes a couple jokes in a bar, a couple to a yak, and a couple more in a bar. Someone tacked on a subplot about the Rick and Evelyn (Fraser and Bello) trying to recover their relationship with their son (Ford, acting exceptionally badly) ... Not that that was necessarily a bad idea, but it's staggeringly poorly executed. And so is the rest of the movie. For martial arts fans, there was a faint hope of seeing a good fight between Li and Yeoh ... while the fight happens, it's not worth seeing. There are lots of special effects, but it's all very empty without anything like a decent plot. Sure the first movie was cheesy, but it was cheesy-fun. This isn't even cheesy-bad, it's just bad-to-awful.

2008, dir. Rob Cohen. With Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, John Hannah, Michelle Yeoh, Luke Ford, Isabella Leong, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Russell Wong, Liam Cunningham, David Calder.

Murderball

This is a bizarre movie, a documentary about wheelchair rugby. It's impressive, and it's nuts, but with the crazy personalities involved it wasn't a huge surprise to see a "Jackass" segment on the DVD. Perhaps IMDB's plot summary will shed a little more light: "A film about quadriplegics who play full-contact rugby in Mad Max-style wheelchairs - overcoming unimaginable obstacles to compete in the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece."

2005, dir. Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Alex Shapiro.

Music and Lyrics

It's a little sad when the best humour in a movie that's purported to be a romantic comedy is in the final credits. But of course I made it all the way through to the credits, so I must have found some entertainment along the way.

Grant plays a 1980s former pop idol reduced to playing high school reunions, and Barrymore plays the woman who came to water the plants but ends up writing lyrics with him. Grant's former group "Pop!" (the opening credits show one of their 80s hit videos) is fairly clearly based on Wham! I took the hint from the extras and maybe there's a bit of Men Without Hats in there too - but Wham! is probably the main influence. Essentially Grant could be playing anyone in Wham! who wasn't George Michael, and credit to Grant and the script for capturing the ageing 80s icon very well. Unfortunately the romcom formula is embedded: they meet, they find common ground, they support each other, one of them does something horrible, then extraordinary measures are called for to recover. Grant and Barrymore are good but while the script contains some good gags it does no favours to the characters and the end product is mediocre. At least the songs they wrote weren't too painful.

2007, dir. Marc Lawrence. With Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore, Brad Garrett, Haley Bennett, Jason Antoon, Scott Porter.

Must Love Dogs

Standard issue romcom fare, but ... Lane and Cusack are excellent, as are the supporting cast. The script is intelligent and funny, but the movie sinks under the weight of multiple big messy joke set-pieces that often humiliate the characters involved. The ending in particular is inelegant. But I enjoyed it for the characters and the humour.

2005, dir. Gary David Goldberg. With Diane Lane, John Cusack, Dermot Mulroney, Elizabeth Perkins, Christopher Plummer.

Mutiny on the Bounty

While a fair bit has been changed for dramatic purposes, this turns out to be quite historically accurate. And they've managed to make quite a good picture.

1935, dir. Frank Lloyd. With Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

One of the most famous movies of 2002, in which a Greek woman still living with her family and working at the family restaurant meets, and falls for, a man from a fairly traditional American family. Vardalos wrote and starred. It's a comedy about family - especially Greek family. Very funny and charming.

2002, dir. Joel Zwick. With Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Lainie Kazan, Michael Constantine, Andrea Martin, Joey Fatone.

My Blueberry Nights

It takes a lot to make me quit a movie without seeing the end: this movie had what it takes. Maybe Wong Kar Wai just isn't ready to be working in English: it certainly didn't look like his actors knew what the hell they were supposed to be doing. And, while the visuals were distinctive and very, very colourful, they weren't actually attractive. Within ten minutes we know where the ludicrous title comes from as Jones (who shouldn't be the centre of a movie, she doesn't have much acting talent - or perhaps it's only his direction) eats at Law's diner. And also in ten minutes both of them simultaneously get nose bleeds in separate incidents, and shamble into the diner where they hold their noses in an identical manner. Are you trying to tell us something? Here, have a sledgehammer, it would be more subtle. Strathairn, capable of excellence, was poor. Even Weisz, who I thought was incapable of bad acting, stumbles here.

2007, dir. Wong Kar Wai. With Norah Jones, Jude Law, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz.

My Boss's Daughter

I didn't watch all of this movie - I couldn't. It was just too humiliating: to the actors, to the characters they played, and ultimately to the viewer. Kutcher plays a young businessman with a sadistic, manipulative, all-round horrible boss (Stamp). Reid plays Stamp's beautiful and charming (but possibly stupid) daughter. The plot seems to revolve around Kutcher being manipulated by the daughter into house-sitting a depressed owl for the boss, and the subsequent destruction of the house by unexpected visitors. Kutcher is good at looking confused, but doesn't have much of a talent for the pratfall. Did I mention that this is humiliating?

2003, dir. David Zucker. With Ashton Kutcher, Tara Reid, Terence Stamp.

My Brother is an Only Child (orig. "Mio fratello è figlio unico")

The box describes this as two brothers who have hated each other forever and are likely to kill each other, and can they save themselves? All very serious - so I was very surprised to find a lot of humour as they were fighting, and not quite as much threat of loss of life as was suggested. Not that it isn't there: the two are highly political at a time in Italy's history (the 1960s) when being communist or fascist could get you killed. We see two boys growing to young men, one very charismatic, drawn to Communism, the other more angry than sensible, who turns to fascism. And Francesca, the girl between them. Not a great movie, but fairly good.

2007, dir. Daniele Luchetti. With Elio Germano, Riccardo Scamarcio, Diane Fleri, Angela Fiocchiaro, Massimo Popolizio, Vittorio Emanuele Propizio.

My Fair Lady

A Lerner and Loewe musical version of Shaw's "Pygmalion." It's astonishingly accurate to its source material. Hepburn is Eliza Doolittle, and Harrison is Henry Higgins.

On a bet between Higgins and Colonel Pickering, Higgins takes Doolittle into his house to remove her Cockney accent and teach her to speak properly. Higgins is rude and incredibly inconsiderate, but effective. Not being a fan of musicals, I didn't enjoy this much. I thought having Hepburn in it would help, but I found her pretty unconvincing in her poor-flower-girl turn.

1964, dir. George Cukor. With Rex Harrison, Audrey Hepburn, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Stanley Holloway.

My Favorite Wife

I'm not entirely sure why this one has made it to DVD in 2009: it's certainly not one of the good movies of the time. Grant plays a widowed lawyer, remarried after the shipwreck death of his wife seven years past. The same day, his original wife resurfaces. It looks like she's going to be the sensible one, but she ends up lying and doing stupid things for a cheap laugh. I found some genuine comedy in the first 15 or 20 minutes, but it was downhill from there.

1940, dir. Garson Kanin. With Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick, Ann Shoemaker, Scotty Beckett, Mary Lou Harrington.

My Favorite Year

This just isn't a very good movie ... despite which I still like it - and apparently a lot of other people do too. O'Toole plays a washed out ex-movie star (modelled on Errol Flynn) preparing to appear in a TV show. Linn-Baker is the young TV writer assigned to keeping O'Toole sober until the show is over. O'Toole puts in a brilliant performance surrounded by a bunch of almost entirely unknown actors performing to stereotype - it's hard to tell which is worse: the performances or the script. It's messy, it's stupid, it's occasionally quite charming, and O'Toole dazzles in the middle.

1982, dir. Richard Benjamin. With Peter O'Toole, Mark Linn-Baker, Lainie Kazan.

My Neighbors the Yamadas (orig. "Hôhokekyo tonari no Yamada-kun")

Studio Ghibli it may be, but I couldn't watch this one in full. Drawn in a rough comic book style, there was no particular story - just episodes from the life of a not terribly interesting family stumbling through life and squabbling on the way.

1999, dir. Isao Takahata.

My Neighbor Totoro

An incredibly charming anime children's movie. Being by Miyazaki, the main characters are of course young girls. The copy I watched is an English dubbed DVD with no Japanese track from the Walmart cheap bin so I can't complain much, but I wish it had the Japanese track and subtitles. Of course the main target audience isn't much into subtitles. Just a really fun movie.

1993. dir. Hayao Miyazaki.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

A spoof of the recent superhero movies, although not a terribly successful one. Luke Wilson plays a decent guy who approaches Thurman on the subway (on the urging of his friend "Dwight Schrute" aka Rainn Wilson) only to find out that A) she's "G-Girl," New York's superhero, and B) she's needy and neurotic. He breaks up with her and she does things like chuck a shark at him. The humour's not subtle. Funny in places, predictable, too broad.

2006, dir. Ivan Reitman. With Luke Wilson, Uma Thurman, Anna Faris, Rainn Wilson, Eddie Izzard.

Mystic Pizza

Coming of age poor in Mystic, Connecticut working in the titular pizza parlour. These days Roberts gets top billing because she's the most famous, but the movie is very much about all three of them (Gish, Roberts, Taylor). It manages to do a fair bit with a bunch of characters and hold it all together - pretty good.

1988, dir. Donald Petrie. With Annabeth Gish, Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor, Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Storke, William R. Moses.

Mystic River

At its core a murder mystery, but this is more about the people. Bacon, Penn, and Robbins' characters all grew up in the same neighbourhood, and they played together as kids until one of them is abducted and left with emotional scars for the rest of his life. The three are drawn back together when the daughter of one of the others is killed. Bacon is the police man investigating. A good movie, quite depressing.

2003. dir. Clint Eastwood. With Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins.

The Myth (orig. "San wa")

Chan plays both a modern archaeologist (evidently very rich - it's never explained how an archaeologist can afford a huge residence right on the water of Hong Kong harbour) and a general from the Qin Dynasty. These two stories play out more or less in parallel, and allow Chan to be silly in one (modern day) and serious in the other (Qin Dynasty). Not that what he does is anything I'd call acting. And then there's his buddy, who's researching anti-gravity. So Chan is talked into visiting a site that's purported to have anti-gravity, and his present and the past he's been dreaming begin to overlap. Sadly, while both stories make some sense on their own, the resolution is both unsatisfactory and, umm, just plain stupid. There are a few instances of Chan's balletic fights, and an equal quantity of silly humour. Two guys fighting each other while tied to a cart that's trying to fall over a cliff with the woman who is the object of both their desires on it was pretty damn silly.

2005, dir. Stanley Tong. With Jackie Chan, Hee-seon Kim, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Mallika Sherawat.

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The Namesake

The story of an Indian couple and the children they raise in America. Penn (of "Harold and Kumar" fame) plays the son of Khan and Tabu, raised in America and disenchanted with the first name ("Gogol") that his parents gave him. We watch his voyage to understanding his heritage and the meaning of his name. Who knew Penn could act? He's good, the movie's good, it's touching, it's just not great.

2006, dir. Mira Nair. With Irfan Khan, Tabu, Kal Penn, Sahira Nair, Jacinda Barrett, Zuleikha Robinson, Soham Chatterjee.

Nancy Drew

Drew is portrayed as very retro and polite - a throwback to the era of the original books, including driving a silly little car from the period. The mystery is actually fairly interesting, despite employing some very traditional devices (creepy mansion, death of a famous movie star, creepy gardener, death threats). While Roberts is quite good, she somehow doesn't quite have the charisma to make the role an icon. The deliberately retro behaviour didn't help there either. And Flitter, at the age of 13, has already been typecast - quite an achievement.

2007, dir. Andrew Fleming. With Emma Roberts, Josh Flitter, Max Thieriot, Tate Donovan, Rachael Leigh Cook, Kelly Vitz, Daniella Monet.

Nanny McPhee

Firth plays a single father around 1900, with seven extremely intelligent but nanny-hating children. After they have caused the 17th nanny to leave, screaming (they staged a scene in which they ate the youngest child), "Nanny McPhee" conjures herself up (Thompson, looking hideous). Based on the "Nurse Mathilda" children's novels, this is aimed squarely at children - the occasional sex joke, while amusing, seemed terribly out of place. A combination of charming characters, humour, and occasionally brilliant cinematography created a film I very much enjoyed. Sangster was great, as was Coleman, and it was fun to see Landsbury in such an absurd and entertaining role.

2005, dir. Kirk Jones. With Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Kelly MacDonald, Angela Landsbury, Thomas Sangster, Raphaël Coleman.

Nanny McPhee Returns (aka Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang)

This one goes surreal before Nanny McPhee ever sets foot on the scene. The child actors aren't as good, the target audience is younger, and the delivery and messages are delivered with such clarity that I'm forced to ponder the possibility that the previous movie might, in fact, have been a masterpiece of subtlety. If you're not getting the picture ... I really didn't like it.

2010, dir. Susanna White. With Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rhys Ifans, Maggie Smith, Asa Butterfield, Bill Bailey.

National Treasure

A passable Disney cross between Indiana Jones and caper movies, with a dash of conspiracy thrown in. A goofy, fun time-waster of a movie. You don't have to pay attention, but if you do there are actually some details in there that are kind of fun.

2004, dir. Jon Turteltaub. With Nicholas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Plummer.

Nausicaä

aka. "Warriors of the Wind," the commonest title in North America. One of Miyazaki's oldest films. Visually spectacular, as always starring a young woman and involving flying ... The visual style for everything except the characters is rougher than his later movies, the animation cheaper, and the story structure a little sloppier. It's interesting to see as a fan, but not one of my favourites.

Be aware that there's an English version around that was edited for TV and that's 40 minutes(!) shorter than the original, a complete slaughter. Look for a run-time of just under two hours.

1984, dir. Hayao Miyazaki. English voices: Alison Lohman, Patrick Stewart, Shia LaBoeuf, Edward James Olmos, Chris Sarandon.

The Navigator

Two rich but clumsy people find themselves the only occupants on a huge passenger boat set adrift. This gives a lot of room for Keaton's humour and pratfalls. While there's still no one on the planet who has ever managed to fall down in a funnier way than Keaton, this one doesn't really have enough laughs for its length. The DVD comes with a couple other shorts, "The Boat" and "The Love Nest," neither of which helped change my opinion.

1924, dir. Donald Crisp, Buster Keaton. With Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Frederick Vroom.

Near Dark

Bigelow's take on the vampire flick - in the mid-eighties, long before the latest surge of vampire movies. Our protagonist Caleb (Pasdar) sees a pretty girl named Mae (Wright) in town and picks her up. They flirt, but around dawn she becomes desperate to get home. She also bites him, and that causes him no end of problems. He finds himself violently allergic to sunlight, and drawn into (or kidnapped by) Mae's vampire family. Caleb doesn't take well to the life of a vampire, although he still really likes Mae and she likes him. Ultimately the movie is about family - the one Caleb left, and the one he joined. But there's going to be a lot of blood before you get to the point. Well done, but in some ways too conventional - the story structure is essentially that of a Western.

I was amused to see that the marquee for a movie theatre they passed was advertising "Aliens," Bigelow's husband-at-the-time's last movie (that would be James Cameron).

1987, dir. Kathryn Bigelow. With Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, Bill Paxton.

The Negotiator

Danny Roman (Jackson) is a very good police negotiator, whose life becomes rapidly messed up when he becomes a confidant to allegations of corruption in the department, and is then framed for the murder of another police man. He takes hostages of his own and demands another negotiator - Chris Sabian (Spacey), who comes from the opposite side of town and therefore outside of the departmental corruption. Of course Roman knows the negotiations playbook, and uses that to his advantage while trying to force Sabian to help him root out the problem.

The movie is actually very good until the ending which is severely unrealistic. Jackson is okay, and Spacey is excellent. Unfortunately the ending blew all of my good will with its stupidity ... too much of a dedication to seeing not only the good guys winning, but also surviving, being vindicated, etc. etc.

1998, dir. F. Gary Gray. With Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, David Morse, Paul Guilfoyle, J.T. Walsh, Paul Giamatti, Ron Rifkin, Siobhan Fallon.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

An anime series, 26 episodes of 22 minutes each. Passable mech stuff, irritating overblown characters. The last three episodes go really wonky and incomprehensible.

Network

A satire that has a lot of interesting things to say about about society in general and TV in particular. None of the characters are particularly likable which made it harder for me to really enjoy it, but it's worth it for the excellent social commentary. This is the source of the very famous quote "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

1976. dir. Sidney Lumet. With Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, and Robert Duvall.

Never Back Down

Young man with a temper moves to a new place, gets in a fight, gets beaten. Gets comedic sidekick and [optional] romantic interest. Finds peaceful martial arts master. Studies hard. Gets in trouble for fighting. Reconciles with teacher. Studies hard. We don't fight, we're peaceful. But a final fight with the bad guy is inevitable. Overcomes temper, learns skills, wins fight. Master learns from student too.

... So that's every martial arts movie ever written. Somehow Wadlow really seemed to think he was doing something new: the only even marginally unusual thing about this was that it was MMA - hardly a revelation. It had some oddly brilliant moments - sometimes it was a cinematic idea (I loved the Youtubing), acting sparks between family members, occasionally really good dialogue. But most of it was bog standard TV fare.

2008, dir. Jeff Wadlow. With Sean Faris, Amber Heard, Cam Gigandet, Evan Peters, Leslie Hope, Djimon Hounsou.

Never Cry Wolf

Based on one of Canada's best known books (same title), this portrays the adventures of the author (Farley Mowat, although he's called "Tyler" in the movie) in the Canadian Arctic trying to figure out just what the wolves do, and what they eat. Some of the cinematography was stunning, as the Arctic is an incredibly beautiful place, but the content is much simplified from the book. This wasn't a bad movie, and it has some very good moments, but ... read the book instead.

1983, dir. Carroll Ballard. With Charles Martin Smith, Zachary Ittimangnaq, Samson Jorah, Brian Dennehy.

Neverwhere

This is a three hour British TV series written by Neil Gaiman. It's fantasy, based around the idea that there's another city underneath London. It was enjoyable, but hardly a great piece of work. Not surprisingly, most of what made it good was Gaiman's dialogue.

1996, dir. Dewi Humphreys. Gary Bakewell, Laura Fraser, Hywel Bennett, Clive Russell, Paterson Joseph.

New Tricks (TV Series)

In this BBC TV series, a skilled but disgraced police officer is given a dead-end job - a new department, a budget to hire three retired police officers, and a stack of cold cases.

The acting is so-so, the mysteries are reasonably good (although not always the focus of an episode), the characters reasonably good, and occasionally it manages some truly wonderful humour and some very clever ideas. Not a great series, but definitely entertaining.

Comments based on watching the first two seasons.

2003- . With Amanda Redman, James Bolam, Dennis Waterman, Alun Armstrong.

Next

Cage plays a mildly sleazy Vegas performer whose magic show is based in part on a genuine ability to see as much as two minutes into the future. Another movie based on a Philip K. Dick story! He uses his skill for petty gambling, but near the beginning of the movie is spotted by a competent and determined government agent (Moore) determined to use his skill to stop a potential terrorist nuclear blast on U.S. soil. This is further confused by the appearance of the woman of Cage's dreams (literally), played by Biel (never lovelier). The devices for showing us Cage's skill are clever and interesting to watch, and most of the movie is well thought-out. It relies heavily on the Alice-in-Wonderland excuse, but ... well, that's him seeing the future and I found it more acceptable here than most places. A really good SF (or should I say "paranormal?") movie.

2007, dir. Lee Tamahori. With Nicholas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Cera plays Nick, a slightly dweeby guy whose main buddies are his gay bandmates (Yoo and Gavron) and who's just been dumped by his hot girlfriend (Dziena). Norah (Dennings) and her friend Caroline (Graynor) are out clubbing and get entangled with Cera and his crew. The movie plays out over one long night, in which Cera, Yoo, Gavron, and Dennings (and pretty much everyone else) tries to track down a surprise appearance by the very popular band "Where's Fluffy?" The title might be a hint that there's a connection of sorts between the two leads, and they bond over music. It's very cute, it's occasionally funny, and it's definitely of its generation, but it's at best an "okay" movie.

2008, dir. Peter Sollett. With Michael Cera, Kat Dennings, Aaron Yoo, Rafi Gavron, Ari Graynor, Alexis Dziena, Jonathan B. Wright, Zacharay Booth, Jay Baruchel.

Night at the Museum

Stiller plays a fairly familiar character, a bit of a loser who humiliates himself on a fairly regular basis. He finds a job as a night watchman at a museum in the hope of keeping a regular job so that he can keep the respect of his young son, but the job turns out to be anything but regular: every night, all (ALL) the displays in the museum come to life. Gervais plays the same character he played in "The Office." While I've never liked Stiller's brand of humour (saving possibly "Keeping the Faith"), this is a goofy, enjoyable children's movie.

2006, dir. Shawn Levy. With Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Carla Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs, Ricky Gervais, Jake Cherry.

Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor)

The forces of light and dark (in the form of "others," people who aren't exactly human and have weird powers) have held to a truce for hundreds of years. The emergence of a stronger "other" has been prophesied, and the night has come - will the new one choose light or dark? Hackneyed, bizarre, inventive, and occasionally quite hard to follow, this is worth seeing for at least a couple reasons: it's filmed entirely in Moscow, and it's blatantly not a Hollywood product.

2004, dir. Timur Bekmambetov. With Konstantin Khabensky, Vladimir Menshov, Mariya Poroshina.

Nights in Rodanthe

Lane plays a single mother seven months separated from her unfaithful husband (Meloni) who abruptly tells her he wants to come back to her. With this in her head, she goes off to take care of her friend's B&B on the Outer Banks (North Carolina), where she has only one resident (Gere, with problems of his own) and an incoming hurricane.

This is the second movie I've seen based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, the other being "Message in a Bottle." Being Sparks, it's a overwrought, sodden, saccharin romance. That hits exactly the same notes as the other one. Their love makes them better people. One of them dies tragically and nobly. And you, the viewer, are sick to death of the sobbing by the time it's done. Gere and Lane are both decent actors, but you wouldn't know it here: they're hammering home every possible emotional note like you're going to miss it if they don't hit it with a sledgehammer. The prose and plot have already been banging away on you, so you're going to leave a bit bruised.

2008, dir. George C. Wolfe. With Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Christopher Meloni, James Franco, Scott Glenn.

Nim's Island

I wanted to see this for one reason: Foster does slapstick. And sadly, that's the only good reason to see it. Foster plays children's adventure author Alex Rover - whose main character, also named "Alex Rover," is male and haunts her (played by Butler). Nim (Breslin) is a huge fan of Alex Rover. She lives with her father (also Butler), a marine biologist, on a small island in the South Pacific. When Rover emails the biologist for research, Nim answers and Rover becomes entangled in their lives. Immediately and physically. The problem is that the movie condescends to its primary audience (children) and totally ignores its secondary audience (the adults accompanying the children). It had some side-splitting moments of comedy - mostly Foster, who's actually pretty good at slapstick, and passable at being neurotic - but is overall pretty poor.

2008, dir. Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin. With Abigail Breslin, Gerard Butler, and Jodie Foster.

9

Animated post-apocalyptic movie. The main character is "9", the last of nine small creatures apparently made of burlap, metal claws, and camera parts. Wood plays 9, who heads out after his awakening and shortly meets 2 (Landau). 2 gives 9 a voicebox so he can speak, but is shortly after taken away by a cat-like beast. 9 soon meets 5 (Reilly), and then the giant 8 (Tatasciore) and the cowardly leader 1 (Plummer). 9 brought a small device with him that the cat beast steals, and which eventually allows the start-up of a particularly evil creation called just "The Machine."

The story and dialogue are hideously clichéd, but the visuals are outstanding. 7 is actually a pretty decent character, a woman of action (Connelly) - both cool-looking and appealing for what she does. I was also quite fond of 3 and 4, creatures after my own heart: scholars and librarians.

2009, dir. Shane Acker. With Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau, Fred Tatasiore.

Nine Months

When I buy a DVD, I keep it - but I'll make an exception for this one. Columbus thinks that a sledgehammer is subtle because his usual tool is a bulldozer. A stellar cast is completely wasted on unrecoverable tripe - only Williams brought humour to the heavy-handed script. My guess is that he wrote (or improvised) some of his lines himself as he so often does. Don't watch this one.

2001. dir. Chris Columbus. With Hugh Grant, Julianne Moore, Tom Arnold, Joan Cusack, Jeff Goldblum, Robin Williams.

9 to 5

I saw this as a kid, thought it was hilarious. Revisiting it in 2009 was educational. Three women (Tomlin, Fonda, and Parton) find themselves working for an autocratic and not terribly bright boss (Coleman). After he insults them and upsets them once too often, they quietly kidnap him for several weeks and work around him at the office. It's mildly amusing in spots, but terribly dated and over-the-top.

The extras on this 25-years-later DVD point out that this was something of a feminist piece at very much the right moment in time. That may make it "important," but it doesn't make it a better or funnier film.

1980, dir. Colin Higgins. With Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Dabney Coleman, Elizabeth Wilson, Henry Jones.

Ninja Assassin

Tells the story of Raizo (Rain), a young Japanese orphan boy raised from early childhood to be a Ninja. But see, while he passes the tests and survives the training, he's sensitive. And ultimately finds out he doesn't like killing people. So instead he starts killing Ninjas. Huh? The movie is incredibly bloody, with limbs and heads chopped off and blood spurting all over. Rain is unknown over here, although something of a pop phenomenon in his home country of Korea. A number of awards in his home country would suggest hes' a passable actor, but it doesn't show here - although he's surprisingly good in the comedic moments. He's also insanely fit and obviously worked very hard on the physical action. So if you like ridiculous action movies and are okay with a blood bath, this may be your thing.

2009, dir. James McTeigue. With Jung Ji-Hoon (aka "Rain"), Naomie Harris, Ben Miles, Rick Yune, Shô Kosugi, Randall Duk Kim.

Ninja Scroll

An anime movie in the time of feudal Japan, fought between superhuman ninja and demons for the future of Japan. Complex, clever, and inventive, I really enjoyed this one. A lot of thought went into the characters - both their "abilities" and their behaviour - and into the visuals. It's obvious they didn't have as much money for the animation as Miyazaki or the AniMatrix, but they used what they had very well.

1993. dir. Yoshiaka Kawajiri.

Ninotchka

Three communist Russians (Ruman, Bressart, and Granach) in Paris between the World Wars are attempting to sell a set of jewels to raise money for the state. The original owner, a Tsarist countess, gets wind of this, and her friend (Douglas) stops the sale. Comrade "Ninotchka" Garbo is sent along to speed things up. Douglas falls for her, despite her staggeringly utilitarian and dour attitude toward everything. Of course she warms up, but the course of true love is never easy.

The dialogue is often quite witty (Douglas got the best lines and was the most entertaining) and the picture is reasonably charming. The fake Russian accents become tiresome.

1939, dir. Ernst Lubitsch. With Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart, Alexander Granach, Ina Claire.

No Reservations

The American remake of "Mostly Martha." A light and enjoyable film, although not as good as the original. It's an accurate recreation of the original and it comes close, but in most respects it's not quite as good.

2007, dir. Scott Hicks. With Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin, Patricia Clarkson, Bab Balaban.

Noises Off

A British director (Caine) brings a hit sex farce to the U.S., where he contends with a not-terribly-bright cast and off-stage escapades (which he gets substantially involved in). There's a great deal of straight-up slapstick humour - some of which is even genuinely funny. Not really my kind of thing though.

1992, dir. Peter Bogdanovich. With Michael Caine, Carol Burnett, Julie Hagerty, John Ritter, Christopher Reeve, Denholm Elliott, Marilu Henner, Mark Linn-Baker, Nicollette Sheridan.

North by Northwest

One of Hitchcock's deservedly famous movies. Grant plays an advertising executive mistaken for a spy, suddenly thrown into the middle of an international intrigue. The dialogue is acidic and hilarious, the action is great, and the movie can still keep you on the edge of your seat 45 years after it was made.

1959, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. With Carry Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau.

Northanger Abbey

This made-for-TV version of Austen's novel seems to be pretty much the only version out there. Apparently very few are willing to tackle Austen's "satire," such as it is. Considering what a quirky novel they had to work from, it's a passable if not brilliant interpretation.

1986, dir. Giles Foster. With Katharine Schlesinger, Peter Firth, Robert Hardy, Googie Withers.

Notorious

Perhaps I'm a bit slow on some subjects, but it wasn't until I looked at the extra material that I figured out the title. The main character, Alicia Huberman (played by Bergman), is "notorious" because her father is a convicted Nazi sympathizer. But the U.S. government finds she isn't a fan of the Nazis, and asks her to help ferret out other Nazi sympathizers and their activities. Grant is her liaison, they fall in love, he rejects her because of her party-girl history, and acts as an "enabler" as she gets into more and more danger. Well done and nerve-wracking, Bergman is particularly magnetic.

1946, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. With Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern.

Notting Hill

Possibly the best romantic comedy ever made. Grant is at his most charming, Roberts at her most beautiful, and both act quite well. Very funny.

Grant plays William Thacker, who owns a travel bookstore in Notting Hill, London. Roberts is Anna Scott, the most famous movie star on the planet. A pair of chance encounters in Notting Hill set them on an oft-interrupted romantic voyage. Ifans plays Thacker's bungling and socially inept roommate. Thacker's wonderful friends (a marvellous British ensemble) add immeasurably to the story.

1999. dir. Roger Michell. With Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, Rhys Ifans.

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Ocean's Eleven (2001)

A witty heist movie with a famous director and a cast of stars. The characters are introduced one by one, not given a lot of time but enough. And then there's a big and complex robbery ... with another level to it that you don't see until the flashback at the end fills you in. Beautifully constructed and very entertaining.

2001, dir. Steven Soderbergh. With George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Elliott Gould, Bernie Mac, Carl Reiner, Eddie Jemison, Shaobo Qin.

Ocean's Eleven (1960)

I saw this after the 2001 version. Many similarities, many differences - especially the ending which comes as a real surprise when you've seen the more recent version.

Sinatra plays Danny Ocean, bringing his crew from the 82nd Airborne back together for a Las Vegas heist. Witty dialogue and a fairly clever job follow. My favourite gag: Mother: "You'll miss my wedding!" Son: "Mother, I have never missed one of your weddings." Mother: "Yes you did. The first one."

Neither version is hugely memorable, but I'll take the more recent version. Probably because, while they're both well done, I understand the period and language of the more recent one better.

1960, dir. Lewis Milestone. With Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson, Richard Conte, Cesar Romero, Joey Bishop, Akim Tamiroff, Henry Silva, Buddy Lester, Richard Benedict.

Ocean's Twelve

Not up to its predecessor. I haven't quite put my finger on why, but partly it's because they went for the cheap jokes a fair bit. One of the beauties of the original was the time they spent with the characters: it's true that you "know" the characters from the previous film, but there are so many of them that it wouldn't hurt - and would probably have benefited the film - to do it again. And the heist isn't as obvious, as central, or as interesting while also being substantially more complex.

2004, dir. Steven Soderbergh. All the same people, plus Catherine Zeta-Jones, with some amusing cameos.

Ocean's Thirteen

Slightly more rewarding than "Twelve," but nowhere near "Eleven." And "Eleven" was never on a scale that included great movies, it was just good fun. The heist is complex, but we're in on most of it thus avoiding one of the major problems of "Twelve." But I found it hard to suspend disbelief for their solution, and it wasn't as clever a solution as it was in the previous ones. Some good gags, but not very good overall.

2007, dir. Steven Soderbergh. With George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Elliott Gould, Bernie Mac, Carl Reiner, Eddie Jemison, Shaobo Qin.

The Odd Couple

This is a "classic?!!" I didn't expect a great movie, but this ... Urgh. Proof that massively exaggerating personality quirks for humour is not only an incredibly long-standing tradition, but can lead to a "classic" movie.

The movie starts with the fastidious Felix Ungar (Lemmon) attempting suicide after his marriage breaks up, but it's just too inconvenient. So he goes to his Friday night poker game, and ends up staying with his buddy Oscar Madison - who is a complete slob. They drive each other crazy. There were two or three laugh-out-loud gags, and that was pretty much it for me: the rest of it was just irritating. I guess I should have known better: it was written by Neil Simon.

1968, dir. Gene Saks. With Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Fiedler, Herb Edelman, David Sheiner, Larry Haines, Monica Evans, Carole Shelley.

The Office, Season 1 (BBC)

The blurb on the DVD says "'The Office' is the comedy phenomenon that reveals the cringeworthy truth about life in the white-collar world." It's such a "phenomenon" that an American duplicate starring Steve Carell has run for a couple seasons. Filmed in documentary style with people almost always aware of the camera and occasionally talking directly to it, "cringeworthy" is the most important word in that blurb. If you like humiliation and people (most particularly Gervais as the boss and Crook as his assistant) embarrassing themselves, this is your kind of comedy. It's not my thing. I made it through the six episodes on this disk, which is more than can be said about the American version: I only lasted about two episodes with that. An interesting comparison: the British version is probably 1/3rd sex jokes: those are all gone from the American version.

2001, dir. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. With Ricky Gervais, Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook, Lucy Davis.

Office Space

Very funny attack on office life. Live action "Dilbert." If you work in a cube farm you HAVE to see this. Even if you don't you'll understand the frustrations from your own work environment. The red Swingline stapler (Swingline now makes one and it's very popular) and the attack on the printer/fax are particular highlights.

1999, dir. Mike Judge. With Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, Diedrich Bader, Stephen Root, Gary Cole.

An Officer and a Gentleman

I didn't like it much, but I have to admit it was extremely well done on some levels. Terribly clichéd in some ways, and quite heavy-handed in spots. But the acting was good (Gossett was excellent) and it had ... I suppose I'll have to use the word "honesty." Working class people struggling with real lives. And sex portrayed as a part of life rather than something lurid or something to be hidden.

The story follows slacker asshole Zack Mayo (Gere) as he randomly (almost) joins the Navy in the hope of flying jets, and gets a lot more than he'd expected.

1982, dir. Taylor Hackford. With Richard Gere, Debra Winger, Louis Gossett Jr., David Keith, Robert Loggia, Lisa Blount, Lisa Eilbacher.

Offside

An Iranian film about young women trying to sneak into the 2006 Iran-Bahrain World Cup Football match. 100,000 screaming fans - and they're all male, because no women are allowed in. The pace is extraordinarily leisurely and the acting poor. I suppose it's interesting because the director clearly believes that women should be let into the games and is challenging a long-standing Iranian taboo, but I found it dull.

2006, dir. Jafar Panahi.

O'Horten

Odd Horten (Owe) is a Norwegian train engineer who is retiring. The movie deals with his last couple days of employment and the beginning of his retirement. And the very, very odd situations he finds himself in.

A fair bit of deadpan Scandinavian humour entirely failed to make me laugh. It will work for some, as it's fairly clever and well done. The opening shot of a train going through multiple tunnels and alternate snow-covered landscape was a brilliant bit of cinematography, but overall the movie was a dead loss for me.

2007, dir. Bent Hamer. With Bård Owe, Espen Skjønberg, Henny Moan, Ghita Nørby.

Old Boy

After 15 years of captivity for unknown reasons, by unknown captors, our main character is released. The movie is end-to-end about revenge, and it's even more vile than I had managed to imagine. The critics loved this, and it'll certainly get your attention. Expect to leave it feeling at least mildly ill.

2003, dir. Chan-wook Park. With Min-sik Choi, Ji-tae Yu, Hye-jeong Kang.

Once

I've seen several references to this as a "musical." I tend to think of "musicals" as movies that involve totally unnecessary dance numbers in the middle of an otherwise perfectly sensible conversation: this involves none of that. What it does have is musicians playing the part of musicians, writing music, singing and playing.

A man playing the streets of Dublin meets a young woman who loves his music. She helps him believe in his own music, he falls for her. There's not much more to it, but it's pretty good.

(As a side note the male lead, Hansard, is the lead singer of "The Frames," and the director used to be the bass player in that band. Irglová is a good friend and writing partner of Hansard's.)

2006, dir. John Carney. With Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico

Third in the series that started with "El Mariachi." A large cast, multiple double-crosses, and unrealistic action rapidly make you lose interest in keeping track of who's dead or about to be.

2003, dir. Rodert Rodriguez. With Antonio Banderas, Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, Mickey Rourke, Danny Trejo, Salma Hayek.

Once Upon a Time in the West (orig. "C'era una volta il West")

This Western followed right after the "Fistful of Dollars" series, same director. Same histrionic direction: long and lingering shots with overbearing scoring and foley, close-ups on faces and/or eyes ... you know the drill if you've seen any of the previous three. I thought this was better than the others, but more frustrating too: there's actually quite a good story buried inside the 165 minute run-time. This would have made a great 90 minute movie.

Cardinale plays a woman moving to a small town in the west to marry a man, only to arrive and find the man and all of his children were slaughtered that very day. The slaughter is pegged on "Cheyenne" (Robards), a local brigand she has already met - but was actually done by "Frank" (Fonda). There's also the mysterious "Harmonica" (Bronson), out for some form of revenge on Fonda. All becomes clear over the course of the movie. Would have been great if it'd been substantially shorter.

1968, dir. Sergio Leone. With Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Gabriele Ferzetti.

Mon Oncle

Tati plays Monsieur Hulot (again), the bumbling uncle stumbling around in the new high tech house of his nephew. I watched this because Tati has a reputation, and because it's a Criterion copy and they tend to press only "classics." And I absolutely didn't "get it." In 117 minutes run time, I think I cracked a smile once. I didn't laugh at all. I watched Python Terry Jones's introduction after I'd seen the movie and nothing was clarified. Tati hardly says anything, reminiscent of a silent film comedian (although a lot of others have a lot to say), but foley is used very heavily to emphasize squeaks and bumps. The humour (such as it is) is gentle and innocent - people walking into lamp posts features heavily - but simply left me cold.

1958, dir. Jacques Tati. With Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie, Lucien Frégis, Alain Bécourt.

The One

Li finally gets a halfway decent American movie, in a science fiction setting no less. Present day on our earth, but on parallel earths another version of Li is running around killing off all of the other Li's so he can be "The One." Silly premise leading to some decent special effects and some great martial arts. Sure, it's cheesy - but it's enjoyable.

2001, dir. James Wong. With Jet Li, Jason Statham, Carla Gugino, Delroy Lindo.

101 Dalmations (1961)

One of the true classics of animation (and please, can we forget the 1996 live action version entirely?!). Obscenely cute but also very funny and clever. The scene with the "Cruella De Vil" song still puts me on the floor.

1961, dir. Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, et al. With Rod Taylor, Ben Wright, Cate Bauer, Lisa Davis, J. Pat O'Malley, David Frankham.

One Week

The premise is simple - thirty year old man (Jackson) finds out he has advanced and aggressive cancer. Buys motorcycle and rides west, despite the protests of his fianceé (Balaban) who wants him to get treatment immediately.

I watched this to see the very Canadian scenery, and out of a sense of dedication because it was Canadian. So it was a wonderful surprise when it turned out to be a good movie with real characters and an interesting plot. Shades of "Amelie," with both the bizarre narration and the effects that Jackson has on others' lives. Quite good.

2008, dir. Michael McGowan. With Joshua Jackson, Liane Balaban, Campbell Scott, Gord Downie, Emm Gryner, Joel Plaskett.

Ong Bak

You gotta love martial arts movies. The hero is always a peace-loving (but well-trained) individual who fights only when he absolutely has to. Of course, that's usually quite frequently. In this case, first-time performer Jaa is supposed to be a good Buddhist from a small town going to the city to retrieve the head of the village's Buddha. How strange that he should get into dozens of fights. I read one review when it came out that said "the stunts in this movie will have the makers of 'Jackass' reaching for their Medicare cards," and they weren't joking. The stunts are comparable to the kinds of things Jackie Chan was doing in his early movies, although the fighting is much more brutal. The movie is predictable and occasionally annoying, but any fan of martial arts needs to see this.

2003, dir. Prachya Pinkaew. With Tony Jaa, Petchtai Wongkamlao (credited as "Mum Jokmok"), Pumwaree Yodkamol.

Ong Bak 2

Despite the name this has absolutely nothing to do with "Ong Bak." This one is set around 1420 AD in Thailand during a period of unrest. Jaa plays a man who, at a young age was rescued from slavery and probable death by the leader of a pirate group who then trains him as a warrior and his successor. But Jaa first wants to take revenge on the group that enslaved him, and the nobleman who had his family killed. Violent revenge flicks are fairly common in Thailand, and this dishes it out in spades along with some excellent fights. Unfortunately, the editing is almost incoherent with several incomplete flashbacks and character development is lacking (even given it's a martial arts movie). It's very violent, but if you're a fan of martial arts it may be worth a watch for the fighting.

2008, dir. Tony Jaa, Panna Rittikrai. With Tony Jaa.

Ong Bak 3

Picks up where "Ong Bak 2" left off. I saw this with the worst subtitles I've ever seen. Remembering that this is set 600 years ago, my favourite was probably the statement "I don't have You Tube" [sic]. So I can't claim to have understood the story at all. But it clearly involved an immense amount of extreme pain, torture, and blood. And various kinds of witchcraft, which look exceptionally stupid without context. But the big failure is that there aren't many fights, and the few there are are pretty poor. What happened to the guy from "Ong Bak" and "The Protector?" Sad.

Near the end of the movie the head of the village Buddha ("Ong Bak") is damaged in one of the fights. This damage is seen on the head of the Ong Bak in the first "Ong Bak" movie, implying that the main character in the first movie may have been a re-incarnation of our main character in this movie. There's the tie-in that we've all been waiting so desperately for ... (sure).

2010, dir. Tony Jaa and Panna Rittikrai. With Tony Jaa, Sarunyu Wongkrajang, Dan Chupong, Nirutti Sirijanya, Primrata Det-Udom.

Onibaba

I thought "Criterion Collection, Japanese, appears to be anime. Should be good." It's not anime, that was just the impression I got from the cover: it's black and white and hand drawn. Obviously someone considers this a classic, but I won't be joining that crowd. Set in the "Warring States" period in Japan, a young woman and her mother-in-law murder injured samurai to sell their armour and weapons to get enough money to survive. They live in the middle of a huge field of grass, and the shots of the wind in the grass became tedious, no matter how pretty. A friend of theirs returns from the war bearing news of the death of the son/husband. We watch as the gorgeous, naive, and not terribly bright young woman is manipulated by the mother and used (quite willingly) by the friend. Lots of sex. An interview with the director included on the disc convinced me that I would have to be an unusual kind of insane to really "get" the movie, at least his vision of it.

1964, dir. Kaneto Shindô. With Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Sato, Jukichi Uno, Senshô Matsumoto.

Only Angels Have Wings

Arthur plays Bonnie Lee, fresh off the banana boat (literally) in South America on a short stop in a small town, where she encounters a bunch of delivery flyers led by Geoff Carter (Grant). They fall for each other - kind of - and she sticks around. Things get more interesting when a new flyer (MacPherson) shows up - one that several of them know (and actively dislike) by another name. Better yet, he's married to Carter's former flame.

Funny in places, dramatic in others. While it focuses primarily on Grant and Arthur, it's a very good ensemble piece: I particularly liked Barthelmess as MacPherson/Bat Kilgallen. Quite good.

1939, dir. Howard Hawks. With Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell, Sig Ruman.

Open Season

Animated tale of a bear who is happy with his life performing on a stage, eating human food, and living in a comfortable garage - until his calm life is interrupted by a runty deer, and he is involuntarily returned to the wild just before hunting season begins. Typical buddy movie, with Laurence as Shrek the bear and Kutcher as Donkey. To my surprise, Kutcher ran rings around Lawrence, and almost saved the movie. Connolly is wasted: incredibly annoying without being funny. Ultimately, typical children's fare with few redeeming features.

2006, dir. Roger Allers, Jill Culton, Anthony Stacchi. With Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Gary Sinese, Debra Messing, Billy Connolly.

The Opposite of Sex

Really annoying. Ricci's voice-over makes you less involved in the movie, makes you care less. Ricci is a good actress, but the whole effect is pretty poor.

1998. dir. Don Roos. With Christina Ricci, Martin Donovan, Lisa Kudrow, Lyle Lovett, John Galecki, Ivan Sergei.

The Order

I was expecting your average Catholic priest horror-action movie, but that wasn't what I got at all. While it isn't particularly well executed (the effects are mediocre and the acting poor), I found the movie quite fascinating because the central "evil" character (the sin-eater) is astonishingly morally ambiguous. I expected to turn off my brain for the action, but instead found myself enjoying trying to work out whether or not what the "bad guy" did was actually bad ...

2003. dir. Brian Helgeland, with Heath Ledger, Mark Addy, Shannyn Sossamon, Benno Fürmann, Peter Weller.

Ordinary People

When this came out, one critic complained that it should be called "Ordinary Rich People," and that's an accurate assessment. A family tries to recover after the death of the eldest son. The script is fairly poor, but the performances mostly manage to salvage it. Redford's directing got better after this, his first effort.

1980, dir. Robert Redford. With Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Timothy Hutton, Judd Hirsch.

Orlando

This was awful when it was released, I have no idea why I felt compelled to rewatch it - it's still awful. Based on a Virginia Woolf story, but I suspect Woolf is rolling in her grave - there has to be a lot missing, and what's there doesn't add up to a cohesive story. Swinton plays a young nobleman around 1600. As the movie progresses, he fails to get any older ... and eventually changes into a woman as centuries pass.

1993, dir. Sally Potter. With Tilda Swinton, Billy Zane, Lothaire Bluteau.

Orphen Season 1

Typical anime TV series. Despite the semi-medieval, almost steampunk, setup, I found it quite reminiscent of "Trigun" with the powerful group leader/magician (although Vash is definitely goofier than Orphen) being followed on his adventures by the comic relief. It's mildly entertaining, occasionally funny, and even has (rare) moments of poignancy. Only recommended for fairly hardcore fans of the genre.

Our Hospitality

One of Keaton's longer films, this one finds him the last member of a family that has a long-standing feud with another family - but he doesn't know it because he grew up hundreds of miles away. As an adult he's called upon to return to his hometown, where the other family hasn't forgotten the feud.

The humour is in the long train ride to the hometown (the train and track must have been custom-built at considerable expense for this film), Keaton's clumsy attempts at romance, endless inept attempts to shoot Keaton (some fairly clever), his attempts to prevent being shot, etc. The bizarre spot of wife abuse humour doesn't fly too well today: Keaton finds a man choking and slapping his wife, and when he tries to interrupt he gets beaten up by the wife. Whereupon the two go back to their routine. Some amusing spots, but not his best movie.

1923, dir. Buster Keaton and John Blystone. With Buster Keaton, Natalie Talmadge, Joe Roberts, Joseph Keaton.

Out of Time

Washington plays a small town police chief who finds himself looking at the burned out ruin of a house that contains the bodies of his girlfriend and her husband. To complicate life further, his ex-wife is the homicide detective investigating and all of the evidence points to him. Looks like film noir, ends up more of a ... gris. This is hardly new territory, but it's done well by good actors, and is quite enjoyable.

2001, dir. Carl Franklin. With Denzel Washington, Eva Mendes, Sanaa Lathan, Dean Cain.

OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

Rupert Murdoch owns a huge chunk of the media (magazines, newspapers, a movie company) in the United States, but his most effective tool is Fox TV, which reports what they call "Fair and Balanced" news. This movie shows how Fox has become essentially a Republican propaganda machine, and the tricks and methods they use to control the perceptions of the public foolish enough to watch them.

2004, dir. Robert Greenwald.

Outsourced

Hamilton plays Todd Anderson, whose job running a fulfilment call centre - and all the jobs under him - are outsourced. He reluctantly goes to India to get the replacement team up to speed, where he promptly encounters various forms of culture shock.

On the surface it sounds like a pretty pathetic and predictable movie. In practise, they manage to dodge many of the expected clichés, and the ones they do use are so much better applied and everything so well handled that the movie comes out dazzlingly charming. There are some huge laughs, and none of them come through the humiliation of any of the characters. And the Indian culture is very accurately portrayed: I was particularly amused by the note to Todd from his new landlady saying "don't go out today" on Holi. Good advice - or at the very least don't wear good clothes ...

A gentle, well-acted, well-written and hilarious comedy about recovering your life when your job gets turned upside down. Highly recommended.

2006, dir. John Jeffcoat. With Josh Hamilton, Ayesha Dharker, Asif Basra, Arjun Mathur, Siddarth Jadhav.

Outlander

A review on the box says "Beowulf meets Predator:" true, but you know you're in trouble when that's the best review they can find to publish. Caviezel (thoroughly beefed up) plays our (anti-?)hero, zipping about on a spaceship which crash-lands in Norway in 907 AD. (It turns out that Earth was a failed and abandoned colony world.) Unfortunately, he has an uninvited passenger arriving with him: a very large and hungry alien (you're shocked). Caviezel is captured by angry Norwegians, who blame him for the slaughter caused by the alien. The plot is much the same as always: he slowly gains their trust by being extra-macho, tough, and trustworthy, explains the problem, they go hunting. There is romance and a sidekick of sorts ... Although honestly I thought Huston as Wulfric was both the best character and possibly the best actor in the film.

2009, dir. Howard McCain. With James Caviezel, Sophia Myles, Jack Huston, John Hurt, Cliff Saunders, Patrick Stevenson, Ron Perlman.

Over the Hedge

Animated. Hungry raccoon RJ (Willis) raids the den of a hibernating bear (Nolte) for food, but is caught. In attempting to pay back the bear, he manipulates a "family" of animals led by cautious turtle Verne (Shandling). RJ wants to go raid the human's food in neighbouring suburbia, Verne doesn't. But RJ is a fast talker and convinces the "family" to start raiding. I wasn't too keen on RJ's appearance, but the rest of the characters were good. The humour is hit-or-miss, but in a couple places they hit it out of the park so it's easy to forgive.

2006, dir. Tim Johnson, Karey Kirkpatrick. With Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carrell, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner, Nick Nolte, Thomas Haden Church, Allison Janney, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Avril Lavigne, Omid Djalili.

Owl and the Sparrow (orig. "Cú và chim se sẻ")

Vietnamese. At the centre of the film is a ten year old girl who works in a bamboo blind factory for her uncle, her guardian since the death of her parents. The film opens with her running away to Ho Chih Minh City, where she tries her hand first at selling postcards and then at selling flowers. In the process she meets zoo keeper Hai and airline attendant Lan who she is convinced would be a good couple.

The filming is done with a camcorder, no steadycam. A lot of shots follow the backs of people's necks through hallways. Much of the photography is a bit unsteady. The whole idea is a bit of a fantasy. But the acting is remarkably good and the story charming.

2007, dir. Stephane Gauger. With Han Thi Pham, Cat Ly, The Lu Le, Nguyen Hau, Trong Hai, Hoang Long.

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The Pacifier

"Kindergarten Cop" redux. If you liked Schwarzenegger's take on this kind of subject matter (tough guy stuck in baby-sitting role) you'll probably enjoy this too. Goofy, family-safe, not very good, but enjoyable anyway.

2005, dir. Adam Shankman. With Vin Diesel.

Pan's Labyrinth (orig. "El Laberinto del Fauno")

During the Spanish Civil War a young girl finds herself relocated to the country with her pregnant mother to join the mother's new husband. The new husband is a vicious army officer. The young girl meets characters similar to those in the fantasy books she reads. The critics uniformly loved this one, but I thought it was ... well, just "good." And brutally depressing.

2006, dir. Guillermo del Toro. With Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Doug Jones, Ariadne Gil.

Panic Room

98% of this movie is in one house, one long night. Foster and Stewart, playing mother and daughter, are trapped in the "panic room" of their new house by thieves, only to find themselves under siege because what the thieves want is in the panic room. Pretty good, as the characters are better developed than in most films of this type.

2002, dir. David Fincher. With Jodie Foster, Forest Whittaker, Dwight Yoakam, Kristen Stewart, Jared Leto.

Paprika

This was heart-breaking to watch: Kon had a brilliant career in Anime, and this was his last and probably best film ... But I was watching it in early 2011, about four months after his death at age 46. I loved his other movies that I'd seen, "Millennium Actress" and "Tokyo Godfathers."

We start with a police man on surveillance at a circus, but it's not right - and shortly after that it goes wildly psychedelic. Then we learn it was a dream. The credits that follow are some of the most brilliant visual trickery I've ever seen. The movie itself plays out partly in the near future, and partly in the dreams of the main characters: a device called the "DC Mini" allows psychiatrists (or people who've stolen one) to enter the dreams of patients. It's a very strange movie. Wonderful visual references to at least a couple other movies, the biggest being "Roman Holiday." Visually brilliant and an interesting plot, definitely recommended.

2006, dir. Satoshi Kon. With Megumi Hayashibara, Akio Ōtsuka.

The Parent Trap (1961)

One of Disney's better efforts at live action, starring Mills as Sharon McKendrick and Susan Evers, twins who never knew about each other until they meet at camp. After antagonizing each other considerably they settle down, realize their shared parentage, and decide to change places. Sickly sweet, but also occasionally quite funny.

1961, dir. David Swift. With Hayley Mills, Maureen O'Hara, Brian Keith, Una Merkel, Charles Ruggles, Leo G. Carroll, Joanna Barnes.

The Parent Trap 2

I gave this one about 15 minutes because it was on the DVD with the 1961 version. I gave up.

The Parent Trap (1998)

Pretty much a scene-for-scene remake (although the Reverend got dropped, only spoken to on the phone), pretty much note-perfect. Lohan is incredibly cute and not obviously talented ... and awfully hard to associate with the party monster we know today through the tabloids (2009). Again, the two identical twins fight horribly, make up, scheme, swap places, and try to bring their parents back together. Lohan setting booby traps for Lohan is a bit dull, but it gets better when Quaid, and particularly Richardson, are on screen.

1998, dir. Nancy Meyers. With Lindsay Lohan, Dennis Quaid, Natasha Richardson, Elaine Hendrix, Lisa Ann Walter, Simon Kunz.

Paris When it Sizzles

A direct (grand?)parent to "Airplane," sports our two leads trying to write a movie screen play in a couple of days while, of course, falling in love. Much of the movie consists of the butchered screenplay itself (starring our two leads, of course), occasionally with their voice-over commentary. Kind of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in reverse, in that I couldn't see any possible reason for Hepburn's character to fall for Holden's character. Intermittently funny.

1964, Richard Quine. With Audrey Hepburn, William Holden.

Paris Trout

A violent and unpleasant story based on the Marion Stembridge murders in Milledgeville, Georgia, culminating in 1953. Hopper is as usual very convincing as a sociopath.

1991. With Dennis Hopper, Barbara Hershey.

Passchendaele

Gross's take on Canada's involvement in World War I. Gross wrote, directed, and starred in something a little too close to a Canadian version of "Saving Private Ryan." Gross is a soldier we first see storming a German machine gun nest (embedded in the remains of a church) where he bayonets a very young, injured and unarmed German soldier. Gross says this comes from a story of the first World War his grandfather told him, one that may have shaped his grandfather's entire life. Gross's character is then sent home, injured, where he falls in love with his nurse (which certainly happened often enough during the wars). The nurse's young brother is determined to go to war, convinced that it will prove his bravery - despite having been rejected repeatedly for asthma. When he manages to get himself recruited, Gross follows him back to war to try to protect him for the love of his sister.

Like "Saving Private Ryan," this goes for gruesome historical accuracy (in the previous World War): Gross went absolutely all-out in that category - right up until the final fight, where we get a break from realism for a foolish, heroic, and unbelievable rescue. (Don't assume that that means a happy ending.) If you can live with that, it's a good movie with good acting all around, and interesting for its recreation of the period.

2008, dir. Paul Gross. With Paul Gross, Caroline Dhavernas, Joe Dinicol, Jim Mezon, Michael Greyeyes.

A Path to Happiness: A Guide to Living a Balanced Life

Three sections each of approximately an hour, of which I watched only the first entitled "Meditating With the Dalai Lama." He explains the purpose and methods of meditation. He's a very likable guy, but conveys ideas rather slowly because his English vocabulary is fairly limited. Still, quite good.

2006, with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Patton

One of the better war movies out there. Scott is excellent as the brilliant General Patton, crippled by his own arrogance. Malden plays General Bradley, who gets a less revealing and more sympathetic take. Which of course had nothing to do with the fact that General Bradley was still alive and consulted on the movie.

1970, dir. Franklin Schaffner. With George C. Scott, Karl Malden.

Paycheck

Affleck plays a genius in a world that takes Non-Disclosure Agreements a little farther than we do: his memories of the job are wiped after he finishes. After a particularly long job, he comes out of the mind wipe to find he abandoned the money (multiple millions) and left himself a set of trinkets instead. He's understandably confused by this and spends the rest of the movie trying to figure out what happened on his last job and why he did what he did. Suitably twisty for a Philip K. Dick story (which it was based on), although the ending certainly didn't seem like Dick. An excess of gratuitous action, but fairly enjoyable. Too bad Affleck didn't act.

2003, dir. John Woo. With Ben Affleck, Uma Thurman, Aaron Eckhart, Paul Giamatti, Colm Feore.

Peaceful Warrior

Based on the Dan Millman book Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Millman's novel, as poorly written as it is, has been hugely influential on many people - myself included. Unfortunately, someone is always trying to take stories of internal journeys and make movies of them. This usually works just as well as you'd expect.

Mechlowicz plays Dan Millman, a university gymnast on track for the Olympics. But he has a substantial ego and a self-loathing he hides with alcohol and a string of women. Nolte plays "Socrates," Millman's spiritual guide.

Nolte isn't convincing as a man who is totally at peace, and he's especially not convincing as someone full of joy and happiness. The tasks he sets Millman come off as even more random than they did in the book because they have less to tie them together. As a fan of the book this brought back some of the pleasures and reminders about life that the book has to give, but I can't imagine it would leave a good impression on anyone new to the material.

2006, dir. Victor Salva. With Scott Mechlowicz, Nick Nolte, Amy Smart, Ashton Holmes.

Penelope

A fairy tale with a modern setting. I had a hard time wrapping my head around that: "That's Christina Ricci with a prosthetic pig nose and it's not a fantasy setting." Took me half an hour to get over that. The nose is the result of a curse that can be cured by "true love" blah blah blah, but the curse is essentially the only magic we see in the movie - another part of the stumbling block. But once I got past all that (hopefully others watching it won't be so slow on the uptake), I quite enjoyed it. Goofy and charming and consistent to the underlying idea. Witherspoon shows up late, plays well, and ... turns out to be one of the producers.

2006, dir. Mark Palansky. With Christina Ricci, James McAvoy, Richard E. Grant, Catherine O'Hara, Peter Dinklage, Reese Witherspoon, Richard Leaf.

Penn & Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour

This DVD includes three segments each about 50 minutes, with the intrepid duo visiting China, India, and Egypt in search of indigenous street magic. While there are occasional fascinating moments, this is overall pretty damn dull. I'm not sure even hardcore Penn & Teller fans would find much here to entertain them: Penn & Teller are our guides, but they do very little magic.

I think my favourite moment was when Teller broke his silence to talk about an Egyptian magician who did the cup and balls trick for them - and he of course knew what was going on, that the balls were being palmed ... but the balls were absolutely not where he expected them and he was astounded. It was fun to see.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Lerman plays Percy, whose life becomes a bit messy when he gets attacked by a Fury and discovers that A) he's the demigod and a son of Poseidon (McKidd), B) everyone thinks he stole Zeus's lightning, and C) if the lightning he doesn't have isn't returned soon, the end of the world as we know it is fairly likely. After the kidnapping of his mother (Keener) by Hades (Coogan) and some training in which he proves he's an apt pupil with a sword, he's off to save the world ... or at least his mother. Assistance is provided by his guardian, a satyr named Grover (Jackson), and Annabeth, daughter of Athena (Daddario).

I think Columbus saw this as the sequel to Harry Potter that he didn't get to make. The feel is astonishingly similar. And, like HP1, he steers the movie with a competent but heavy hand. Not that the original story is subtle, but Columbus still managed to take away from the movie some. The acting is barely competent, the effects are very good. All the big names you see in the credits list all have small parts.

2010, dir. Chris Columbus. With Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, Alexandra Daddario, Jake Abel, Sean Bean, Pierce Brosnan, Steve Coogan, Rosario Dawson, Catherine Keener, Kevin McKidd, Joe Pantoliano, Uma Thurman.

Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi wrote two graphic novels, essentially an autobiography, in 2004 and 2005. She was born and raised in Iran under the rule of the Shah. At an early age she went through the revolution, then the war with Iraq, then the incredibly restrictive religious regime. At which point her parents sent her off to Vienna to be safer and go to school. It's one hell of a story, and they're among the best graphic novels anybody's ever written. This movie is the first book (and a bit of the second I think) converted into a movie. The graphical style is very similar to the books, but the feel is very different. Different episodes show up with radically different weighting in the movie, it was very odd - I found the running comparison in my head detracted from the movie. But the movie is very good. I found it felt bizarrely flippant about some really horrible things: yes, it's a war seen through the eyes of a ten year old whose biggest concern is getting an Iron Maiden tape, but it was weird. Unusual, one hell of an education in the history of Iran, and definitely worth seeing.

2007, dir. Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi. English voices included Amethyste Fezignac, Marjane Satrapi, Sean Penn, Iggy Pop, Gena Rowlands.

Persuasion (1995)

A fairly good movie, but not as enjoyable as some of the other versions of Jane Austen books. This isn't the fault of Michell: he's painting the same picture that Austen painted. Anne Elliot (our central character, played here by Root) has a pretty miserable life. Having refused the offer of marriage from Frederick Wentworth (Hinds) eight years previously, she's now encountering him again socially while trying to deal with her very difficult and domineering family. It's Austen, so things will probably turn out well, but it's not really a cheerful or enchanting ride - despite good acting all around.

1995. dir. Roger Michell. With Amanda Root, Ciarán Hinds, Susan Fleetwood, Fiona Shaw, John Woodvine, Emma Roberts, Victoria Hamilton.

Persuasion (2007)

A BBC TV production of this famous Austen story. See the previous entry for a plot outline. Although one of the first things I noticed was that they really weren't overly concerned with Austen's view of the plot. Or the text. And they had a short running time, so they cut even more details. And/or just re-wrote it as they saw fit. And characters are introduced so fast it's hard to keep track of them.

Passable acting (except for Head as the father who chews the scenery whenever he's on-screen) isn't nearly enough to overcome shoddy filming, a bad script and a overall rushed production. As with most movies, this finds a few moments of poignancy, but you'll be better off watching the much better 1995 version.

2007, dir. Adrian Shergold. With Sally Hawkins, Rupert Penry-Jones, Alice Krige, Anthony Head, Julia Davis, Amanda Hale, Sam Hazeldine, Peter Wight, Marion Bailey, Joseph Mawle.

The Philadelphia Story

Hepburn's character is about to enter into her second marriage when a tabloid writer and his photographer (Stewart and Hussey) are ushered into the arrangements by the ex-husband (Grant). The barbed wit and bickering pissed me off at times, and I wasn't surprised to find Cukor's name attached to the Hepburn vehicle "Adam's Rib," which I really disliked (for particularly vicious verbal sparring). This is much better, often quite funny - but ultimately empty because there's no emotional solidity: allegiances and interests change at the drop of a hat.

1940, dir. George Cukor. With Katherine Hepburn, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Ruth Hussey, John Howard, Roland Young, John Halliday.

The Phantom Tollbooth

This one's easy to review: read the book instead. While the movie makes some effort to stay true to the spirit of the book, its lessons about looking around, paying attention, and learning are all better absorbed in the longer and less passive media of a book.

The story sees Milo, a very bored child, transported from the real world to the animated world where he encounters a great number of very strange creatures and people, and ultimately saves the world before coming home. Even though the sense of menace in the book isn't great, it's been defused further in the movie: nothing is frightening at all. I didn't like the songs, but that's probably a personal bias.

1970, dir. Chuck Jones, Abe Levitow, Dave Monahan. With Butch Patrick, Mel Blanc, Shepard Menken.

Phone Booth

A man is trapped in a phone booth by a sniper. Filmed in ten days (I think it benefits from this) and in continuity (ie. they never went backwards in the plot while shooting). Colin Ferrell's performance is excellent, and the plot is fairly good. But I thought the ending - the last two minutes - were a real cheat. Schumacher says in his voice-over (literally) "fuck them if they can't take a joke." See the movie anyway - it's unusual, and mostly very well done.

dir. Joel Schumacher. With Colin Ferrell, Forest Whitaker, Kiefer Sutherland.

The Pineapple Express

A "stoner-action-comedy" according to the producer (Judd Apatow), an accurate enough assessment. If you like stoner humour, this is probably a masterpiece, but it didn't really work for me. There are a couple good laughs, but mostly it's Rogen and Franco stumbling around being stupid (which they do well). Also fairly violent.

2008, dir. David Gordon Green. With Seth Rogen, James Franco, James Remar, Gary Cole, Rosie Perez.

The Pink Panther

I had good memories of the "Pink Panther" movies from childhood, but I'm not sure I saw this one - probably later ones. And in 2008 this one did very little for me. Sellers is pretty good at physical comedy, but the movie as a whole kind of wanders about making the occasional lame joke.

1963, dir. Blake Edwards. With Peter Sellers, David Niven, Robert Wagner, Capucine, Claudia Cardinale.

The Pink Panther (2006)

Not quite as humiliating as I expected, but not too far off. Martin goes full out attempting to imitate Peter Sellers, with limited success. I laughed perhaps twice in the entire movie.

2006, dir. Shawn Levy. With Steve Martin, Jean Reno, Kevin Kline, Beyoncé Knowles, Emily Mortimer.

Pirate Radio (orig. "The Boat That Rocked")

Seventeen year old Carl (Sturridge) is sent to the Radio Rock boat anchored off the British coast in 1966. They broadcast rock music into Britain, where the BBC won't play rock. The boat is managed by Quentin (Nighy), who asks him why he was kicked out of school. "I suppose smoking was the clincher." "Drugs or cigarettes?" "Well, both." "Well done! Proud of you. So your mum sent you here in the hope that a little bracing sea air would sort you out?" "Something like that." "Spectacular mistake." And there, in a nutshell, you have the movie's plot and humour. It's funny as hell with fantastic music and a weak plot. Despite that latter problem I recommend it for the humour and the huge cast of eccentrics they build up (Nighy, Frost, Hoffman, and Ifans are all wonderful).

2009, dir. Richard Curtis. With Tom Sturridge, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Ifans, Bill Nighy, Nick Frost, Talulah Riley, Chris O'Dowd, Kenneth Branagh.

Pirates of the Carribean

Unquestionably a Disney product, but one of their better live action efforts that actually has some entertainment value for the adults in the audience. Rush and Depp are so far over the top they've come round the other side, but that's part of the fun. The special effects are great.

2003. dir. Gore Verbinski. With Geoffry Rush, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

This one makes the previous one look like fine art. Too long and too messy, but the special effects are pretty good.

2006, dir. Gore Verbinski. With Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Jack Davenport, Bill Nighy.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Another mess. Far too long (2h45m). Everyone looks filthy, gritty, and diseased - yes, it's intentional, but how is that appealing? The plot is convoluted and stupid. Once again, lots of visual effects fail to make up for a complete lack of appeal. The only relief from annoyance was Richards' promised appearance - fortunately short, as it doesn't appear he can act.

2007, dir. Gore Verbinski. With Geoffry Rush, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy, Jack Davenport, Jonathan Pryce, Keith Richards.

Playing By Heart

A big, good ensemble cast tackling a script about love and relationships. May well have inspired "Love, Actually," which is very similar but British. :-) Enjoyable.

1998, dir. Willard Carroll. With Gillian Anderson, Ellen Burstyn, Sean Connery, Anthony Edwards, Angelina Jolie, Jay Mohr, Ryan Phillippe, Dennis Quaid, Gena Rowlands, Jon Stewart, Madeleine Stowe.

Planet 51

The movie opens with an idyllic scene of a man and a woman in a car, admiring an evening view. But they're then attacked by evil aliens, who are attacked by the local militia, who are revealed to be aliens (of a different sort) ... and in fact we're watching a horror movie on an alien planet. This animated movie starts with a big and very funny set-up of this idyllic small-town 50s alien environment, which is eventually disrupted by the arrival of a clueless human spaceman (Johnson). Planetarium and Observatory worker Lem gets roped into helping him out - which sets them both to fleeing the local military, and more humour with friends and family.

The intro is often hilariously funny, with bunches of great movie references. The intro is probably strongest, but the gags continue throughout. The visual design was marvellous with their rounded pseudo-50s design (a product of the movie's Spanish origins?), and there's plenty of good jokes mixed in with the failed gags.

2009,dir. Jorge Blanco. With Dwayne Johnson, Justin Long, Seann William Scott, Gary Oldman, John Cleese.

Pleasantville

Two modern-day teenagers (McGuire and Witherspoon) find themselves trapped inside a 50s black-and-white family values TV show. Highly stylized, surreal, and somewhat heavy-handed about racism and discrimination, but hugely entertaining and really, really good.

1998. dir. Gary Ross. With Tobey McGuire, Reese Witherspoon, Joan Allen, William H. Macy, Jeff Daniels, Don Knotts.

Point Blank

Marvin plays Walker, a criminal left for dead, betrayed by his friend - who leaves with Walker's wife. After his recovery, he sets out to get revenge and/or his cut - $93,000. Walker works his way through "the Organization," looking for his money.

Based on the same material as the 1999 film "Payback" with Mel Gibson, Boorman and Marvin concluded the original script (nearly identical to "Payback") was crap, and scrapped the whole thing, primarily keeping the character of Walker. Or so Boorman claims in the voice-over - but the Wikipedia summary of "Payback" is essentially identical.

The movie is painfully Sixties, with flashbacks, flashforwards, and flash-sideways to some other reality. It all makes sense, but the whole is less than the parts, and Marvin's stone-faced routine doesn't do much with the main character and gets distinctly tiresome. Walker keeps himself alive in some interesting ways, avoiding being killed through a certain animal intelligence, but that's about all the interest the movie offers, followed by an unsatisfactory ending. I also saw the Fairfax "twist" coming a long way out, so no surprise there.

1967, dir. John Boorman. With Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Sharon Acker, John Vernon, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O'Connor.

Point of No Return

American remake of "La Femme Nikita." It's not as good as the original, but I still like it. Having killed a police man, a young woman (Fonda) finds herself sentenced to death. After her "death," she awakes to confront death again: a government agency offers her the choice of life as an assassin, or a real death. The leads are all pretty good, although what a guy with an Irish accent (Byrne) is doing in the middle of a U.S. super-secret government agency I don't know.

1993, dir. John Badham. With Bridget Fonda, Gabriel Byrne, Dermot Mulroney, Anne Bancroft, Harvey Keitel.

Police Story

Chan plays police inspector Chan Ka-Kui. We see him first involved in a poorly managed sting operation in a shanty town on a hillside where the police are trying to capture a drug lord. The police are spotted, which leads to four cars being driven through the shanty town - through the buildings, down the hill, blowing stuff up all the way ... It's one of the most spectacular set pieces in any of Chan's movies. Chan is single-handedly responsible for rounding up the crime lord and several of his henchmen, in a wicked fight on a moving double-decker bus. Chan is then put in charge of protecting the police's main witness (Lin) - we're now into the comedy section of the movie, in which we see what an incredible pig he is to his girlfriend (Cheung). The final set piece is a massive fight in a shopping mall, which is very good, and it includes the infamous five storey slide down a lighted pole and crash landing ...

1985, dir. Jackie Chan. With Jackie Chan, Brigitte Lin, Maggie Cheung, Yuen Chor, Bill Tung.

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea ("Gake no Ue no Ponyo")

Brunhilde/Ponyo is a small creature who resembles a goldfish. When she comes in contact with the human world, specifically a boy named Sosuke who saves her from death, she decides she wants to be human and be with Sosuke. So ... she changes. And runs away from her father's underwater house, in the process releasing his very potent magic into the world.

The movie is aimed at a younger audience than anything Miyazaki has done previously, even "My Neighbour Totoro." Sosuke is five, and that seems an appropriate audience. But it's also the least emotionally involving thing he's ever done. Sosuke and Ponyo are overwhelmingly cute, but they're also boring. A huge disappointment after "Howl's Moving Castle" and "Spirited Away," two of the best animated movies ever.

2008, dir. Hayao Miyazaki. With Yuria Nara, Hiroki Doi, Tomoko Yamaguchi.

Porco Rosso ("Kurenai no buta")

Middle Miyazaki, with all the classic elements: flying, a strong independent young girl (who often upstages the nominal star), a bit of magic, gorgeous animation, not-quite-as-mean-as-they-want-to-be pirates. Not his best, but charming and enjoyable.

1992, dir. Hayao Miyazaki. English voices by Michael Keaton, Susan Egan, Brad Garrett, Kimberly Williams, David Ogden Stiers, Kevin Michael Richardson.

The Poseidon Adventure

Possibly the very first large scale disaster movie, and interesting just for that. A big ocean liner, swamped by an earthquake-driven wave, overturns, leaving the passengers stuck in (tagline) "Hell, Upside Down." We have the typical motley assortment of characters (preacher, spunky young girl, bright boy, cop, his ex-hooker wife, old Jewish couple). It's cheesy and there are lots of logical problems, but the sets are kind of cool and the human drama is surprisingly involving. Not bad.

1972, dir. Ronald Neame. With Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Carol Lynley, Roddy McDowell, Stella Stevens, Shelley Winters, Jack Albertson, Pamela Sue Martin, Eric Shea.

Predators

A group of hardened military men, a death row inmate (Goggins) and a doctor (Grace) find themselves parachuted into an unknown jungle to be hunted for sport by Predators. Royce (Brody) ends up as the de facto leader. Brody brings some decent acting to the movie and definitely buffed up for the part. As much as I respected his acting before this, I didn't think he was capable of being scary ... I was wrong. The man can do terrifying. The scenery is lovely to look at. The internal logic is awful (come on, swimming with thirty pounds of armaments attached? - and believe me, that's not the only gaff). It had its moments: the incredibly nasty death row criminal dying a noble death was a nice touch, and there were others. Enjoyable if you like this kind of thing.

2010, dir. Nimród Antal. With Adrien Brody, Alice Braga, Topher Grace, Laurence Fishburne, Walt Goggins, Danny Trejo, Oleg Taktarov, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Louis Ozawa Changchien.

The Prestige

A rivalry between two former friends, both magicians, rages across years and consumes their lives. Based on a story by Christopher Priest. Set around 1900. I was amused by the presence of Nikola Tesla. Nolan loves his twists, so expect more than one. I'm okay with that, but I noticed about two thirds of the way through the movie that he was messing with not only with the plot but his filming methods, deliberately obscuring something we should be seeing. The plot tricks are all good (although I felt there were too many) but the camera tricks felt like a cheat - I should be doing my detective work based on the plot, not the camera handling. Nevertheless it's a very good movie.

2006, dir. Christopher Nolan. With Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Piper Perabo, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, David Bowie, Andy Serkis.

Pride and Prejudice (1995)

A five hour TV version by A&E starring Firth and Ehle. Of the Austen versions I've seen (very nearly all of them), this appears to be the most accurate. Two of the major characters (Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins) are caricatures and this is more Austen's fault than the director or the actors - they simply brought the original text to life. I didn't enjoy this as much as the other Austen's I've seen, although it's not bad and there's certainly some virtue in its accuracy.

1995. dir. Simon Langton. With Colin Firth, Jennifer Ehle.

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

Stars Knightley in one of the most prized roles in all of literature, Elizabeth Bennet. Knightley is pretty much perfect as Lizzie: let's face it, she does "headstrong" really, really well. The movie is also blessed with Pike as the perfect Jane Bennet (less literary, but incredibly charming and even more beautiful than Knightley). Blethyn and Hollander (as Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins respectively) deserve considerable credit too for taking characters who are essentially caricatures in the book and, with the original dialogue, managing to play them as almost human. The text is compressed from the original and several minor characters and plot devices are dropped to allow the movie to fit into two hours. The movie's greatest virtue is also its greatest flaw: it brings the incredible passions of Austen's characters to the surface so you feel them, instead of just knowing them. It improves the movie, but takes it further from its source material: in Austen's time you would never express things as passionately as several of the characters do. Personally, I can live with that: this is an excellent movie.

2005, dir. Joe Wright. With Keira Knightley, Matthew MacFadyen, Rosamund Pike, Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland, Tom Hollander, Jena Malone, Judi Dench, Simon Woods.

Pride and Prejudice (1980, BBC)

A five part mini-series with a screenplay by Fay Weldon. I wasn't too keen on Weldon's interpretation of the text, which made everything more petty and sarcastic than Austen intended. Watching five hours of mind-numbingly flat acting from the entire unknown ensemble was painful, with Rintoul particularly unconvincing as Mr. Darcy: he's so wooden and so cold for so very long you can't imagine anyone willing to talk to him at all - let alone fall in love with him.

1980. With Elizabeth Garvie, David Rintoul, Sabina Franklyn, Peter Settelen, Priscilla Morgan, Moray Watson.

Priest

Starts with a pedantic exposition on the state of the world we're about to see, with "The Church" (definitely RC with its confessionals) controlling the cities and creating "Priests" to fight the Vampires. Then we get the backstory on our main character with a simultaneous introduction to Priests and Vampires. And finally we jump to the "present day," in which all the Priests have been retired - and, like army veterans nearly everywhere, they have trouble finding work. But it's okay, because the Vampires are back - and worse, our hero's niece has been kidnapped by them.

The dialogue, script, and acting are all wooden (although Bettany and Q manage a few passable moments, even with the poor script). On the other hand, the action is pretty good and the aesthetic is spectacular. Overall kind of stupid, but will probably appeal to most fans of the genre.

2011, dir. Scott Stewart. With Paul Bettany, Lily Collins, Cam Gigandet, Karl Urban, Maggie Q, Christopher Plummer.

The Princess and the Frog

Disney, animated. Our heroine is Tiana, a young African-American woman struggling to get enough money together to open her own restaurant in New Orleans in the early Twentieth Century. Her hectic life is derailed by the appearance of the lazy, partying, and broke Prince Naveen of Maldonia, and the interference of the evil voodoo-using Dr. Facilier. As a result, both she and the prince become frogs, running (or hopping) for their lives. They initially really dislike each other, but along the way they befriend a motley crew of helpers and of course come to appreciate each other a bit more. You've heard the story before, but the animation is often dazzlingly beautiful, and the story is presented well.

2009, dir. Ron Clements and John Musker. With Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David, Michael-Leon Wooley, Jim Cummings.

The Princess Bride

Hugely entertaining absurdist parody fairy tale, fantastically quotable, a really wonderful comedy. It's tough to explain the plot, particularly given that there's a modern day frame story (Savage and Falk) and the story busts all kinds of fantasy conventions. Wright has never looked so beautiful, nor Elwes looked so good. Patinkin and Andre are great, the entire cast is ... well, perfect. And incredibly charming. Highly, highly recommended.

1987, dir. Rob Reiner. With Robin Wright, Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Andre the Giant, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, Peter Falk, Fred Savage, Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, Peter Cook, Mel Smith.

Princess Mononoke

Miyazaki does beautiful work. The moral is a little predictable (don't destroy nature), but there are no clear-cut bad guys, which is a pleasant change. I thought "Spirited Away" was better, but this is pretty good.

1997, dir. Hayao Miyazaki. Voices in the American version by Gillian Anderson, Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver, Jada Pinkett Smith, Billy Bob Thornton.

The Prince and Me

Stiles plays a young and focused university student determined to get into medical school. Mably plays the intelligent but unfocused prince of Denmark, desperate to escape his fate, the inevitable kingship. He flies to America and plays at being a university student, messing up Stiles's life and inevitably they fall in love. Predictable, straight-forward, and unrelentingly sweet. Stiles and Mably are good and even have some chemistry, but the whole thing is played so flat there are never any sparks or real surprises.

2004, dir. Martha Coolidge. With Julia Stiles, Luke Mably, Ben Miller, Miranda Richardson, James Fox.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

It's based of a video game (one I rather liked, although that has very little indeed to do with this review) so I wasn't expecting great art. Nor did I get it. But they poured money into this thing like it was going out of style (~$200 million!), and the production values are through the roof. It's a very silly movie, but it's also quite entertaining.

Gyllenhaal plays Dastan, a young beggar elevated to princehood by bravery and a noble act in a pseudo-Persian kingdom some 1500 or so years ago. Treachery in the family leaves him fighting not just for his life, but for the integrity of his family's kingdom and possibly the survival of mankind. Fortunately, he knows parkour. On his side (sometimes) is the Princess/Priestess Tamina (Arterton), and a dagger that can (occasionally) turn back time.

2010, dir. Mike Newell. With Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, Richard Coyle, Toby Kebbell, Steve Toussaint, Ronald Pickup.

The Prisoner (2009)

AMC decided to remake the (in)famous "Prisoner" series in 2009. This is a six episode (of course) mini-series. The set-up is modern: Caviezel plays a man who resigns from Summakor, a company that does a lot of observation of people. We never learn much more about them than that. As the series starts, Caviezel awakes near the Village, finding out he's "6," and he can't leave. "2" (McKellen) runs the Village, and clearly wants something from 6, but what is unclear - even at the end, I'm not convinced that what 2 got was what he initially wanted ...

The ideas of psychological manipulation have been updated since the original, but the confusion and absurdity remain. McKellen is very good, Caviezel is merely adequate. The eventual explanation makes a bit more sense than the original did, but you have to make it through to episode 5 to begin to get the slightest inkling of sense from the process (and it remains hard to believe).

I hated the original (but found it oddly fascinating, or I would never have watched this). The two fans of the original I know who've seen this were split: one liked it, one didn't.

2009, dir. Nick Hurran. With Ian McKellan, James Caviezel, Hayley Atwell, Jamie Campbell Bower, Ruth Wilson, Lennie James, Rachael Blake.

Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

As I write (2010), this 1894 novel has been turned into a movie six times. The only one I'd seen is the most recent, made in 1979 with Peter Sellers - I would have been 13 or 14 at the time. This version stars Colman as the King-to-be and his visiting Englishman body-double. When the King drinks drugged wine the night before his coronation, the Englishman who looks just like him is convinced to masquerade as the King until the drug wears off. But for various reasons, the masquerade is forced to carry on, and the "King" with his two loyal men (played by Niven and Smith) must tangle with the King's evil half-brother Michael. Rather period, but quite charming.

1937, dir. John Cromwell. With Ronald Colman, David Niven, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., C. Aubrey Smith, Madeleine Carroll, Raymond Massey.

Prisoner of Zenda (1952)

A frame-for-frame remake of the 1937 version, except now it's in colour with different actors. Unfortunately, the only improvement was Kerr as Princess Flavia - the rest were kind of a loss. This movie was on the flip-side of the DVD with the 1937 version, so I got to make a very close comparison: they really are astonishingly similar. Why would you package two such similar versions together? Show us something different. There were about three dialogue changes - that was it. See the 1937.

1952, dir. Richard Thorpe. With Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, James Mason, Louis Calhern, Robert Douglas, Jane Greer, Robert Coote.

The Producers

One of Brooks's better known efforts. Mostel and Wilder play a play producer and an accountant determined to make money by creating a horrible flop on Broadway. The humour is broad and didn't amuse me much, although the movie has many fans.

1968, dir. Mel Brooks. With Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder.

The Professionals

A Western set around 1917, with four men - each experts in his field - hired to cross the border into Mexico and rescue the kidnapped wife of a very rich industrialist for a very large sum of money. But ... "all is not as it seems."

Marvin plays Fardan, who leads the men. Dolworth (Lancaster) is his dynamiting, womanizing buddy who has to be pulled out of jail to help. Cardinale plays Maria the wife, and Palance plays Raza, the Mexican bandit who has kidnapped her (and a previous cohort of Fardan and Dolworth). The acting was passable and the strategy and logic okay, but the personal interactions really fell down in places. And I was sick to death of Lancaster's shit-eating grin by the end of the film - particularly since it seems to have been his one and only acting tool.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING: stop reading now if you're planning on seeing the movie. While Maria and Raza being lovers was a good twist, I thought the resolution was awful. In essence, the four main characters are made to take her back to the U.S., killing all the way, A) to prove their manliness to themselves, and B) to prove their manliness to the audience. And, having crossed the border and killed nearly everyone, they do both a literal and figurative U-turn.

1966, dir. Richard Brooks. With Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Jack Palance, Woody Strode, Claudia Cardinale.

Project A Part II

One of Jackie Chan's later Hong Kong movies. Fairly good. I've never been too fond of his humour, but this one is a bit funnier than usual.

1987, dir. Jackie Chan. With Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Rosamund Kwan, Bill Tung.

{proof}

Paltrow plays the daughter of a brilliant but mentally unstable mathematics professor (Hopkins). After his death, she struggles with her inheritance: she may have both his intelligence and his disease. Gyllenhaal plays a grad student who falls for her, Davis her annoying sister. The acting is excellent all around, but I found Paltrow's character a little too belligerent and/or withdrawn to be believable, and the endless flashbacks were occasionally annoying. Overall, fairly good.

2005, dir. John Madden. With Gwyneth Paltrow, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anthony Hopkins, Hope Davis.

Pump Up the Volume

Slater plays a shy and alienated Arizona high school student who runs a pirate radio station in the evenings. A great Eighties soundtrack supports a very good movie about alienation, rebellion, and, eventually, connection. This is about high school and teenagers, but it's NOT John Hughes: he probably never even dreamt of doing anything this raunchy. And, while Hughes certainly dealt with alienation, it was never as visceral as this. Highly recommended.

1990, dir. Allan Moyle. With Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Mimi Kennedy, Scott Paulin, Cheryl Pollack, Annie Ross, Robert Schenkkan.

Pumping Iron

A rather good "docudrama" (it's sometimes marketed as a "documentary") on body building, including the Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia contests in 1975. In this 25th Anniversary edition there's an interview with Schwarzenegger claiming that he was putting on the hardcore obnoxious personality he shows in this movie. Since I also found out that Lou Ferrigno's father had nothing to do with his training (that was an addition for the movie too), I guess Schwarzenegger may be telling the truth. It was also pointed out in the added interviews that after this movie came out, movie action heroes started having to be seriously buff as a result of this movie, and Schwarzenegger's "Conan" movies - look at the action movies through the eighties.

1978. dir. George Butler. With Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Mike Katz ...

Punch Drunk Love

Surrealist. Dysfunctional man humiliated by his seven semi-dysfunctional sisters tries to find romance, has trouble. Pianos and puddings appear, disconnected car accidents occur in the background. The soundtrack is utterly bizarre, doesn't fit at least half the time, and seriously detracts from the movie. I watched most of it, but at times it set my teeth on edge.

2002, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. With Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Luis Guzmán.

The Punisher (2004)

Ah, the revenge flick. Popular to this day, but I'm not a fan - lots of violent killings and no redeeming features. The movie starts with an FBI sting that gets slightly off track, and a death sets in motion the first round of revenge: Howard Saint (Travolta) and his associates track Frank Castle (Jane) and kill his entire family - about 35 people - leaving Castle for dead. The remainder of the movie is spent on Castle's elaborate revenge on Saint and everyone around him.

Jane was actually decent in the title role, and the cinematography had some really fabulous moments. Incredibly violent.

2004, dir. Jonathan Hensleigh. With Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Will Patton, Rebecca Romijn, Ben Foster, John Pinette, Samantha Mathis, Mark Collie, Roy Scheider.

Push

I was fortunate enough to see this in previews. It's not a "good" movie, but I enjoyed it immensely. But then, I get less picky when there are superheroes involved. In this case, our two main characters are Cassie Holmes (Fanning), a "Watcher" who is able to see glimpses of the future, and Nick Gant (Evans), a "Mover" who can cause objects to move without touching them. They are hunted by "Division," led by Hounsou (in considerable danger of being stereotyped as the evil heavy), a "Pusher" who can put thoughts in other people's heads, and Jackson, a better Mover than our hero. The pre-movie on-screen trivia was quite defensive about how it might sound like "Heroes," but really, this was written in 2005 - long before "Heroes." It is a lot like "Heroes," but it also bears a more than passing resemblance to "Jumper." Fortunately, this is better than the latter.

Filmed entirely in Hong Kong, It feels very different from most Hollywood product. Mildly jittery camera work is certainly nothing new, but at least it was used well - it made it feel edgy without viewers needing airline puke bags. Evans and Fanning have a wonderful chemistry, and if you can gloss over some logical problems this is a really enjoyable movie.

2009, dir. Paul McGuigan. With Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Djimon Hounsou, Camilla Belle, Neil Jackson, Hal Yamanouchi, Lu Lu, Kwan Fung Chi, Jacky Heung.

Pygmalion (1938)

The 1938 version of the Shaw play, starring Howard as Henry Higgins. Hiller is Eliza Doolittle, and Sunderland is Colonel Pickering. If you're going to make "Pygmalion," this is probably the way to do it. It's very funny, and for the most part quite well done. Shaw himself actually scripted the parts of the movie that differ from the text of the play!

Oddly, this is possibly the worst visual quality movie I've seen on Criterion: it goes from grainy to smooth as silk every few minutes, very odd.

1938, dir. Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard. With Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Scott Sunderland, Wilfrid Lawson, Marie Lohr, David Tree, Esme Percy.

Pygmalion (1973)

BBC TV production of Shaw's play. While I'm a big fan of the 1938 version (above), this has a much more complete and accurate text. Of course, the 1938 version was edited by Shaw himself ...

Redgrave is good as Eliza, And Villiers and Fraser play well as Higgins and Pickering respectively. And the BBC opted for the ending that Shaw intended (according to his afterword to the play) rather than the ending many people of Shaw's period preferred to read into it. Pretty good overall.

1973, dir. Cedric Messina. With Lynn Redgrave, James Villiers, Ronald Fraser, Emrys James, Lally Bowers, Angela Baddeley, Nicholas Jones.

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Q

The Quiet Man

Atypical of Wayne's movies, he plays a man retiring to Ireland with an unfortunate history behind him. He falls for the sister of the local bully. I enjoyed it, but it's fairly sexist by modern standards.

1952. dir. John Ford. With John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald, Victor McLaglen.

Quills

Rush turns in a great performance as the Marquis de Sade, and the rest of the cast supports him well. The movie is very good - twisted, sexy, occasionally funny, depressing.

2000, dir. Philip Kaufman. With Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix, Michael Caine.

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R

Rambo: First Blood

A lovely showdown between a psychotic Vietnam vet and an antisocial violent sheriff. Most people know this movie, but it was news to me when I saw it in 2010. Of course it stars Stallone as a Vietnam vet with nothing to do and nowhere to go, who drifts into a small town where he's immediately escorted out of town by the sheriff (Dennehy) who's willing to see a raised eyebrow as an act of vagrancy and a shrug as "resisting arrest." Things degenerate from there as both refuse to back down. Rambo retreats to the woods and decimates the police force sent after him.

I was actually fairly impressed by the tension built up, even though neither of the leads was particularly sympathetic. Not a bad action movie.

1982, dir. Ted Kotcheff. With Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy.

Ramen Girl

Dumped by her boyfriend a week or so after joining him in Tokyo, Abby (Murphy) goes on crying jags and takes comfort in a local ramen shop. By an odd leap of logic she concludes that making ramen (which comforted her) is what she needs to do with her life, and despite the fact that the ramen master speaks no English and she speaks no Japanese, she more or less forces herself upon him as an apprentice. What follows was very reminiscent of a martial arts movie, with the master essentially torturing her with menial tasks and very long hours, trying to make her quit. As time passes, they slowly gain respect for each other. There's a lot of attempts at humour related to Abby not understanding Japanese, some of it successful, some of it not. The movie is overly sentimental and the conclusion foregone. Not worth watching, although if you have to you'll find that like many bad movies made with good intentions, it does manage to find some moments of heart and humour.

2008, dir. Robert Allan. With Brittany Murphy, Toshiyuki Nishida, Sohee Park, Tammy Blanchard, Kimiko Yo.

Rango

Animated film with Depp voicing a pet chameleon with thespian inclinations who finds himself abruptly out in the wild. He figures he can be anyone he wants, so he picks the name "Rango" and acts the tough guy. The movie is narrated (if you can call it that) by a quartet of owls in sombreros who also play much of the soundtrack music. The movie sends up dozens of other movies: I kind of lost track. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (Thompson and his lawyer in their convertible), "It's a Wonderful Life" (the bank scene), "Don Quixote" (more the character than a film), The Man With No Name ... I found it amusing that the first two I spotted, "Fear and Loathing" and "Don Quixote" are both movies Depp worked on with Terry Gilliam (although the latter never got finished - see "Lost in La Mancha"). The animation is good, and the movie is pretty funny - recommended particularly for film buffs to play "spot the send-up."

2011, dir. Gore Verbinski. With Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Alfred Molina, Ned Beatty, Abigail Breslin, Ray Winstone, Stephen Root, Harry Dean Stanton, Bill Nighy, Timothy Olyphant.

Rapid Fire

Lee plays a Chinese-American student with no interest in the anti-China political activism that killed his father. When he's tricked into attending a rally/fundraiser, he witnesses a critical drug-related killing and becomes the centre of a nasty physical and legal dogfight that he would rather just walk away from.

You've heard the story before. Many times in fact - it's the prototype for many martial arts films. Lee is a poor actor, and they haven't hired anyone good to back him up, so the badly written script isn't really getting any support there either. But forget all that, let's talk about the martial arts. There aren't enough fights, but the ones that do happen are superb: Lee took his father's martial arts lessons ("use what works for you") to heart, and incorporates not only the Wing Chun that was at the core of his father's style, but also Muay Thai - something Bruce Lee was probably not very familiar with. And Brandon Lee was fast, damn near as fast as his father, which would have made him significantly faster than any other martial out there. He and Jeff Imada did the fight choreography for this movie, and the fights are very much worth watching. This is an essential movie for fans of the genre.

This was Lee's last movie before "The Crow," which killed him - an unfortunate loss.

1992, dir. Dwight H. Little. With Brandon Lee, Powers Boothe, Raymond J. Barry, Kate Hodge, Tzi Ma, Michael Paul Chan, Al Leong.

Ratatouille

Bird and Pixar haul out the animated magic again. The inevitable ruler is Bird's previous effort for Pixar, "The Incredibles." "Ratatouille" doesn't quite measure up, but in the effort they have produced a charming and highly entertaining movie (with superb animation). The story is about a young rat called Remy who has a talent for cooking, but needs human help to actually do it ... He finds a young man to help him in Paris, and we follow their adventures together. The script includes one of my favourite quotes of recent years: "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgement. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."

2007, dir. Brad Bird. With Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Lou Romano, Janeane Garofalo, Peter O'Toole.

Random Hearts

Ford plays Sergeant "Dutch" Van Den Broeck, Thomas plays Kay Chandler. They don't know it, but their respective spouses are having an affair - which they figure out when the plane carrying those two spouses off to Miami crashes in the bay, killing everyone on board. Two very different characters are drawn together by the questions about the affair, and they end up in an affair of their own.

Ford and Thomas are reasonably good and their characters are fairly well drawn, but the movie is too long and too messy.

1999, dir. Sydney Pollack. With Kristin Scott Thomas, Harrison Ford, Charles S. Dutton, Bonnie Hunt, Dennis Haysbert, Sydney Pollack, Peter Coyote, Richard Jenkins, Susanna Thompson.

Ray

A biopic about Ray Charles with Foxx in the lead role. A lot of people are hugely enamoured of this film. I thought Foxx's performance was excellent, but didn't like the flow of the movie overall.

2004. dir. Taylor Hackford. With Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington.

The Reader

Fiennes plays Michael Berg, or at least the oldest version of him in 1995. A successful lawyer in Berlin, we see his life in flashbacks. At the age of 15 he met the 36 year old Hanna Schmitz, who he has an affair with - a great deal of sex, and he often reads to her. In his early twenties while studying law, he sees her for the first time in years: she is a defendant, an SS guard accused of watching a church full of prisoners burn and doing nothing about it.

Title credit goes to Fiennes, but the real credit for this should go to Kross who's on screen much more and has to (in only his sixth acting role, and his first in English) do a good portion of his acting naked. He and Winslet are excellent.

I haven't read the book By Bernhard Schlink, but if the Wikipedia summary is accurate, the movie is very true to the book (except for being in English). Wikipedia says the book is very much about Germany and the memory of the Holocaust. That sounds right, but the movie comes across as much more personal: it's about two people and their very long and complicated relationship. The moral questions it brings up are fascinating: not so much about her, but about his actions toward her.

2008, dir. Stephen Daldry. With Kate Winslet, David Kross, Ralph Fiennes.

Real Steel

A Disney "science fiction" movie, one of those ones where everything is exactly the same as our world - except there are giant boxing robots. Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a down-on-his-luck guy who keeps losing his giant robot battles and is always on the run from his debts while trying to create new ones - because of course he's going to win that next fight. All of a sudden he has his 11 year old son (Goyo) dumped in his lap. Do they bond? Of course they do - over giant boxing robots. It's cheesy as hell and incredibly predictable, but a good script and good acting - and the fact that the two are bonding over the two things in the world that Kenton cares about, boxing and giant robots - make this fairly enjoyable.

2011, dir. Shawn Levy. With Hugh Jackman, Dakota Goyo, Evangeline Lilly, Anthony Mackie, Kevin Durand, Hope Davis.

The Recruit

A CIA training session full of mind games. Not as disturbing as it wants to be, but well done by both the main actors.

2002. dir. Roger Donaldson. With Al Pacino, Colin Ferrell.

RED

The movie starts with retiree Frank Moses (Willis) flirting on the phone with Sarah (Parker) who works for the pension office. Shortly after that, a bunch of heavily armed and well-trained killers entirely fail to kill Frank, who moves on to visit/kidnap Sarah (but he means well). From there we find out that Frank and his friends are ex-CIA, and are now targeted for some reason.

The movie is loosely based on Warren Ellis' short run comic series "RED," which was apparently thoroughly blood-soaked and not very funny. The movie is definitely action-comedy with a bit of romance. Large sections of it were clearly filmed in Toronto, including the Royal York Hotel, the Toronto Reference Library, and City Hall (an odd choice given how distinctive it is, but they don't really give a full shot of it).

The movie is a lot of fun - I would have paid the price of admission just to see Mirren as a machine-gun wielding assassin, but there was plenty more fun to be had beyond that. Urban is also good as the straight-arrow agent in charge of assassinating Frank.

2010, dir. Robert Schwentke. With Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Morgan Freeman, Karl Urban, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, Ernest Borgnine.

Red Cliff

Woo returns to China to direct an epic, in both scope and length. Originally released in China as two movies, each over two hours in length. The worldwide release was one two-and-a-half hour movie. I'm reviewing the Asian release, both parts.

The time is 200 AD, and the Han Dynasty is reaching its end. Evil Chancellor Cao Cao uses his hold on the emperor to have war declared on southerners Sun Quan and Liu Bei. Cao Cao then sets out with the immense imperial army to settle things at Red Cliff. Kaneshiro plays Liu Bei's military expert, and Leung plays Sun Quan's military advisor. They have the biggest roles as the men who arrange to hold off an army of 300,000 with only 30,000 men. Of course, all the superheroes are on their side: traditional Wuxia heroes who can leap small buildings in a single bound, take four arrows in the back and barely flinch, or push back five people with one arm.

I've wondered if the 2.5 hour cut of the movie might not have been an improvement on what I saw. Beautiful cinematography and well-drawn characters weren't enough to overcome the self-indulgence of the lingering shots (very lingering shots) and silliness like improvisational jazz between our heroes on traditional Chinese instruments. The movie is too long and the heroes too heroic - too smart, too perfect, too unafraid of death. Not that cutting the movie would have helped much with the latter. Nevertheless, it's certainly a spectacular piece of work - but more likely to appeal to fans of the genre than to a wide audience.

2008, dir. John Woo. With Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Fengyi, Chang Chen, Hu Jun, Lin Chi-ling, Zhao Wei.

Red Trousers: The Life of the Hong Kong Stuntmen

The phrase "Red Trousers" originates from the pants worn in practise and performance by people who perform in the Peking Opera. Their training was so intense and from such an early age that their skills in physical movement of pretty much any kind are unrivalled. Where these skills are most put to use in Hong Kong cinema is as stunt men. Shou's best known role in the Western world would probably be in "Mortal Kombat," and he's taken it upon himself to make a documentary wrapped around an exceptionally bad short martial arts film he made to highlight their skills. To fans of the genre (such as myself), it's fascinating - and it helps that I've read Jackie Chan's autobiography. If you're not a fan, this probably won't do much for you. Either way, you're likely to come away with the belief that Hong Kong stunt men are, well, insane.

2003, dir. Robin Shou. With Robin Shou, Beatrice Chia, Keith Cooke, Hakim Alston, Craig Reid, Sammo Hung, Ridley Tsui.

The Red Violin

The time line of this movie jumps around like a madman on a pogo stick. It's not that it's hard to follow, but multiple casts in multiple times lead to dissociation. I ended up not caring about the fate of any of them and disliking a few (although I realize some of the characters weren't intended to be likable). The plot revolves around the history of the titular violin through 350 years to the present, when it's at auction.

1998. dir. François Girard. With Colm Feore, Samuel Jackson, Greta Scacchi, Jason Flemyng, Don McKellar.

Redbelt

I enjoyed Mamet's "State and Main," and I guess that's why I watched this despite absolutely hating "Lakeboat." He wrote and directed this one. This is the end of the line for Mamet as far as I'm concerned: stupid, manipulative, abusive of his own characters, unrealistic, and with an over-the-top ending that would make a Hollywood screenplay writer blush. Oh, wait, Mamet is a Hollywood screenwriter. Ejiofor is great in the lead, but the character is so ludicrously hamstrung by his own concept of honour that even Ejiofor can't make it entirely convincing. Allen is good too. A bunch of Martial Arts and MMA big names (Randy Couture, Dan Inosanto!) show up to look foolish.

2008, dir. David Mamet. With Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alice Braga, Emily Mortimer, Tim Allen.

Regarding Henry

I saw this when it came out, and now again in 2008. Ford plays a lawyer who takes a bullet in the head - followed by a long voyage through therapy (he can't speak or walk, and remembers nothing). His personality is radically changed, and his homecoming is a little strange. As a virtual child himself and a very different person, he suddenly connects with the daughter he had previously been a terrible parent to, and his relationship with his wife is very, very different. In hindsight, I think it was this movie that gave me the misguided impression that Ford could act: he's actually really good in this. He never did so before or since, but he's definitely worth watching this one time. His voyage to recovery and understanding himself (both new and old) and his family plays out beautifully.

1991, dir. Mike Nichols. With Harrison Ford, Annette Bening, Bruce Altman.

Reign Over Me

A dentist (Cheadle) sees, and eventually reconnects with, his college roommate (Sandler). Sandler's character lost his wife and three daughters in one of the 9/11 planes, and has retreated into the past to avoid thinking about the loss. Cheadle has problems of his own, and while he sees Sandler's problems he also finds some freedom in Sandler's odd world. But Sandler's eccentricities and refusal to talk about certain things (including resorting to verbal abuse and mild violence to avoid it at times) makes him difficult to be around. Funny at the beginning, less funny but reasonably compelling at the end, fairly well acted.

2007, dir. Mike Binder. With Don Cheadle, Adam Sandler, Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler, Saffron Burrows, Mike Binder, Robert Klein, Melinda Dillon, Donald Sutherland.

The Replacement Killers

Style over substance all the way, but wow, what style. The cinematography is world class, as good as the action is absurd. Chow Yun-Fat is excellent, Sorvino is good. The movie attempts to bring Hong Kong action to North America, choosing to use one of HK's best known action stars and set most of the movie in Chinatown of an anonymous American city. The story centres on a hitman who refuses to complete a job and the consequences that follow.

1998, dir. Antoine Fuqua. With Chow Yun-Fat, Mira Sorvino, Michael Rooker, Kenneth Tsang, Jürgen Prochnow, Danny Trejo.

The Replacements

Sort of "Major League" for football (although not quite as good). The professional players go out on strike, a bunch of unknowns come in to replace them. Led by coach McGuinty (Hackman) and quarterback Shane Falco (Reeves), and accompanied by a bunch of strippers-turned-cheerleaders, they face the remainder of the season. Good-hearted and occasionally quite funny. One thing it shared with "Major League" was the sport being played quite convincingly: much of it was done with real football players and the actors trained hard.

2000, dir. Howard Deutch. With Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman, Brooke Langton, Orlando Jones, Jon Favreau, Rhys Ifans.

The Rescuers

I got this because I remember enjoying the (long delayed) sequel "The Rescuers Down Under" when it was released in 1990. Admittedly that was a long time ago, but I wasn't a child. I found this very disappointing: the style of the animation was a bit dated, but the songs in particular were painful. Newhart and Gabor were enjoyable, but the movie itself is silly without managing to be either as inspiring or emotionally moving as they sometimes can be.

1977, dir. John Lounsbery, Wolfgang Reitherman, Art Stevens. With Bob Newhart, Eva Gabor, Geraldine Page, Joe Flynn, Michelle Stacy.

The Rescuers Down Under

The immensely superior sequel to "The Rescuers." Not great art, perhaps, but one of Disney's more enjoyable movies. Gabor and Newhart return as Bianca and Bernard, the Rescue Aid Society's elite operative mice. This time, they're tasked with rescuing a young boy held captive by a poacher in Australia. Scott has a great time as the evil poacher Percival C. McLeach.

The plot and animation are greatly improved over the previous incarnation. The irritating sidekick is mildy amusing. And everyone is charming. A very sweet movie.

1990, dir. Hendel Butoy, Mike Gabriel. With Bob Newhart, Eva Gabor, John Candy, Adam Ryen, George C. Scott, Tristan Rogers.

Resident Evil

Based on a video game: Jovovich plays Alice, a woman who awakes to find herself without memories in a very large and empty mansion. Several commandos appear and drag her off to an underground lair beneath the mansion on an unspecified mission. Bits and pieces of what's going on are revealed over time, and the actions of the commando team make the zombies and experimental evil animals much worse.

Everyone makes classic horror movie mistakes. People get bit by zombies and are either ripped apart on the spot or continue with the team and slowly become infected. While the movie has great production values, nothing about this is original and even the scares are predictable. Evidently I'm not "getting" something here, as they're currently working on movie number five as I write. Hey, if it works at the box office, who cares what the critics think ...

2002, dir. Paul W.S. Anderson. With Milla Jovovich, Eric Mabius, Michelle Rodriguez, James Purefroy, Colin Salmon, Martin Crewes.

Restoration

Downey plays skilled physician Robert Merivel in London in the mid-1600s. His intelligence and curiosity draw the attention of the King, but the court causes his downfall with all the girls and partying. That takes up half the movie, but then we have to have the redemption and "restoration." The movie isn't particularly well structured, but Downey is very good in the main role, and McKellen and Thewlis both helped considerably when they were on screen.

1995, dir. Michael Hoffman. With Robert Downey Jr., Sam Neill, David Thewlis, Ian McKellen, Hugh Grant, Meg Ryan, Polly Walker.

The Return of Martin Guerre

I'm trying to find the word for this, and the best I can do is "sloppy." The structure of the movie starts in the middle and recounts the story of Martin Guerre's return to his medieval French town after nine years absence, then moves forward with the accusation that Martin is an impostor. Part of the sloppiness can be blamed on this being a story taken from real life (never as neat as movie scripts), but a large part of it can be blamed on non-linear timeline, which didn't help. Baye and Depardieu do their best, but I was never entirely sold on this one. Strange to say, I actually liked the American remake ("Sommersby") better. Of course, the DVD case said "Contains 12 minutes of additional footage," rarely a good thing.

1982, dir. Daniel Vigne. With Gérard Depardieu, Nathalie Baye, Maurice Barrier, Isabelle Sadoyan.

Return of the Dragon

A lousy movie about a Chinese restaurant in Rome and how some Italian gangsters are trying to buy the property by any means necessary, including intimidating potential customers and beating up the restaurant staff. The owner's cousin Tang Lung comes to the aid of the restaurant staff, and he knows "Chinese Boxing." He's a really bad actor. And the dubbing on the American version that I saw - the Chinese people speak dubbed English, the Italians speak dubbed English, and yet they have to speak to each other through an interpreter.

All of which is true, but kind of misses the point: Tang Lung is played by Bruce Lee, and Lee truly was the greatest martial artist of his generation. Unbelievably fast. He directed and choreographed this one himself, and the fights are quite good. Only for fans of the genre, but if you're a fan, it's essential.

1972, dir. Bruce Lee. Starring Bruce Lee, Nora Miao, Chuck Norris.

The Return of the Jedi

The third in the original series of "Star Wars" movies. Too cute by half (spare us the Ewoks, please!) and a bit on the sweet side, it doesn't quite live up to the first two, but it's a pretty decent wrap-up to the series.

1983, dir. Richard Marquand. With Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Kenny Baker, Anthony Daniels, Billy Dee Williams, Ian McDiarmid.

Revenge of the Sith

The third stinking turd drops from the butt of George Lucas, and millions of fools like me head to the theatre to pay money to listen to agonizingly bad dialogue and watch the light sabres clash. His plots are so poorly written and so absurd the porn industry wouldn't let him write for them. The visual extravaganza means nothing without a decent plot to support it. Painfully, embarrassingly bad.

2005, dir. George Lucas. With Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson.

Richard III

Shakespeare's "Richard the Third," modernized. In this case, the fittings (tanks, planes, cigarettes, buildings, injectable drugs) suggest England around the Second World War, with the royal family embroiled in civil war. McKellen (who had a hand in the screenplay) is suitably vile as Richard III, but I wasn't overly impressed by the interpretation. I found the implementation actually made it harder to concentrate on the dialogue.

2000, dir. Richard Loncraine. With Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Jim Broadbent, Robert Downey Jr., Nigel Hawthorne, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith.

Ride With the Devil

Set during the American Civil War, tells the story of several people caught up in the action in Missouri. Most of the main characters are "bushwhackers," Southern loyalists fighting a guerrilla war in their state. I found the movie somewhat unfocused as it follows several characters over a long period of time, with some of the main characters dying. But the story is nevertheless very good, dodging every stereotype and cliché to show a decent man growing to adulthood in a very difficult time.

Lee gathered a crew of excellent actors to put this one together with good performances throughout. I was particularly impressed with Wright: I haven't been his biggest fan, but he's very good here. Jewel is surprisingly good.

1999, dir. Ang Lee. With Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jeffrey Wright, Jewel, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Simon Baker, James Caviezel, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo.

Risky Business

I saw this years ago when it came out, and now in 2008. Possibly Cruise's first lead role. This is a (small) step above most teen flicks, but it still goes in for some obvious jokes (the car off the pier is right up there). The setup is typical: clean-cut teen struggling to get into college, his parents leave him in charge of the house. He calls a call girl (De Mornay) - things start out as they normally do, but promptly go out of control as you'd expect in a teen movie. It's funny, but there are better comedies in the world.

1983, dir. Paul Brickman. With Tom Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay, Bronson Pinchot, Curtis Armstrong.

Robots

The plot is so familiar it's painful - small town boy goes to the city to make big - and this is suddenly supposed to be new and exciting because the characters are robots? Even the kids it was meant for will find it predictable. But the movie does have some major redeeming features and moments of brilliance. There are at least a couple of visual set pieces that are wonderful to see, and Williams is hysterically funny. There's an abundance of fart jokes (from robots ... okay ...), one of which is actually pretty funny. There are at least a couple of relatively subtle sex jokes which will go right over the heads of the kids and have the adults giggling. And there are so many movie references it'll leave your head spinning and make you wonder how many more you missed.

2005, dir. Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha. With Ewan McGregor, Robin Williams, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carrey, Jennifer Coolidge.

Rock Star

Wahlberg plays a singer/photocopy repair technician who is seriously obsessed with the metal band Steel Dragon, including performing in a "tribute band." When Steel Dragon loses their lead singer, he auditions for the position and gets it. The transition from small time imitator to lead singer for a massive stadium band comes with a price (to no one's surprise). I really liked this when it came out but it didn't hold up too well on re-watching. I owe it a debt though: it introduced me to Verve Pipe's album "Underneath," which is brilliant. Most of the music is, however, metal.

2001, dir. Stephen Herek. With Mark Wahlberg, Jennifer Aniston, Timothy Spall, Dominic West.

The Rocketeer

The plot is a disastrous mess and the acting is horrible (even Dalton and Connelly, who should have done better). Even the effects aren't that great, but the movie is notable to airplane fans for the construction of a flying GeeBee replica. The GeeBees were the fastest planes around in the 1930s, and won pretty much every race they entered - when they didn't kill the pilot. There were twelve built, and six crashed. Evidently the pilot who flew this one landed after the first take and said "I hope you got that, because I'm never getting in that thing again." The replica was every bit as unstable and hard to control as the original. But it's beautiful to see.

1991, dir. Joe Johnson. With Bill Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin, Timothy Dalton, Paul Sorvino, Terry O'Quinn.

Role Models

Tasteless, derivative, incredibly predictable, and pretty funny. Rudd and Scott play a couple of guys who give anti-drug lectures at high schools while selling energy drinks, until Rudd has a bad day and gets them in shit. They're ordered to do community service, and end up in a Big-Brother-alike organisation. Scott draws a young and very foul-mouthed black kid, Rudd gets an introverted older kid who's totally obsessed with a live action role playing game. Things progress exactly as you'd expect: bad start, recovery, horrible glitch, grand gesture, everyone happy. But along the way there are some good laughs - better than most, in fact. Enjoy.

2008, dir. David Wain. With Seann William Scott, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bobb'e J. Thompson, Jane Lynch, Ken Jeong, Ken Marino, A.D. Miles.

Roman Holiday

This movie may have been the start of location shooting, an American movie shot entirely in Rome. And it was definitely the start for one of the movie's greatest stars, Audrey Hepburn, who immediately won an Oscar. Peck was also excellent, as you'd expect.

Peck plays Joe Bradley, an American reporter stuck in Rome (who just happens to be incredibly handsome). Hepburn plays Princess Ann, a young royal family member (of an unnamed country) locked into a rigorous and demanding life she's come to hate. When she makes a break for it, she stumbles into Bradley's life. She lies to him about who she is, but he eventually figures it out and he lies to her about what he does so he can spend the day with her to write a tell-all story about her. What follows is funny, beautiful to look at, and charming. Hepburn has a beauty and charm about her in this one that no one has ever managed on film before or since. One hell of a romantic comedy, with a remarkably realistic twist on the ending.

1953, dir. William Wyler. With Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Eddie Albert.

Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Zeffirelli's 1968 version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is probably the best version the world is ever going to see. It's not perfect, but there are so many difficult things about making a production of it that I really think this is as close as we're going to get. Romeo is very young, and Juliet is even younger (she's supposed to be 13), and the two leads show the impetuosity of their age well. Very well done.

1968. dir. Franco Zeffirelli. With Olivia Hussey, Leonard Whiting.

Romeo and Juliet (1976)

A British TV production. I liked the interpretation of Mercutio, but that was where my interest in this production ended. Romeo (Neame) was bad, and Juliet (Hasson) was horrible - to the point that after an hour and forty minutes I couldn't take it any more. Instead I went and watched Gwyneth Paltrow as Romeo in "Shakespeare in Love" - now that was a good production of the play.

1976, dir. Joan Kemp-Welch. With Christopher Neame, Ann Hasson, Robin Nedwell.

A Room With a View

Probably the best of the Merchant-Ivory films. Based on an E.M. Forster novel. Bonham Carter plays a young British woman around 1910 not quite sure of her heart. The scene varies between Florence and Britain. Basically an up-scale romantic comedy.

1985. dir. James Ivory. With Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Daniel Day Lewis.

The Royal Tenenbaums

"I've always been considered an asshole for about as long as I can remember. That's just my style. But I'd really feel blue if I didn't think you were going to forgive me." Royal Tenenbaum (Hackman) is father to three genius children with his wife Etheline (Huston). But Hackman walks out on them early on. After a short introduction to their childhood, we see them mostly stripped of their genius in adulthood - and Royal reappearing to try to reconnect and/or cause problems (both are fun for him).

The movie is incredibly surreal, but it's also hysterically funny and deeply emotionally touching because underneath the surreal is truly emotional material - and while it's been heavily stylized, you still really feel it. I can't explain how Anderson pulled it off so well in this movie and yet stumbled so badly with "The Life Aquatic ..."

2001, dir. Wes Anderson. With Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Angelica Houston, Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Danny Glover.

Rumble in the Bronx (orig. Hung faan aau)

Chan's first serious entry into the North American market. I was very glad to see him get here, but this isn't my favourite film of his. Some spectacular stunts (the leap from the parking garage is insane, in the best possible way) and craziness (a full size hovercraft?? On city streets!?), but it's one of his nastier movies (blood, people get shot, people die) and not one of his most enjoyable.

1996, dir. Stanley Tong. With Jackie Chan, Anita Mui, Françoise Yip, Marc Akerstream, Bill Tung.

Run Lola Run

The critics loved it. I didn't. The premise is that Lola's boyfriend has rather abruptly gone 100,000 marks (think about the same amount in dollars) in debt to the mob, and Lola has 20 minutes in which to turn up that amount of cash or he's likely to die. She runs a lot. It's inventive and often interesting, but I found it pretty irritating in places - I didn't like the characters much and there's some repetition.

1999. dir. Tom Tykwer. With Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu.

The Rundown

The Rock does what he normally does. That's okay, but Scott and Walken do what they normally do too, and that's really, really tiresome. The Rock is big, strong, incredibly tough, charming, and intensely honourable. Scott is at his most unbelievably annoying. Walken plays the same bad guy he's played in a dozen movies previously. The movie isn't improved by the monkey humping jokes, or by an extended pissing joke. The highlight for me happened about five minutes in with Arnold Schwarzenegger's five second cameo. All I wanted was to be entertained, but this movie didn't even make it up to that weak standard.

2003, dir. Peter Berg. With Dwayne ("The Rock") Johnson, Seann William Scott, Rosario Dawson, Christopher Walken, Ewen Bremner, Ernie Reyes Jr.

Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage

I'd have to say this is pretty much the perfect bio film. Of course it's not going to work for anyone who isn't already a fan of the group: but if you are, it's as good as it gets. It traces the progression of the band, how they met and the albums they put out from the beginning to 2010. Multiple interviews with hugely famous musicians. Excellent.

2010, dir. Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen. With Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart, Kirk Hammett, Kim Mitchell, Gene Simmons, Jack Black, Billy Corgan, Taylor Hawkins, Vinnie Paul, Trent Reznor, Tim Commerford, Les Claypool.

Rush Hour 3

Same shtick as the other two, but it's getting awfully tired. Fighting the Tong in Paris - the action is slowing down, and Chris Tucker is tiresome beyond description. Having seen a Tony Jaa film the day before, I think Jackie should stop doing action films - which means no films at all, because he's no actor. I love his older films, but his time is past.

2007, dir. Brett Ratner. With Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Hiroyuki Sanada, Max von Sydow, Yvan Attal, Noémie Lenoir.

Russell Peters: Outsourced

Stand-up performance by Peters: just him, a stool he never uses, and a microphone. I think "political correctness" is the scourge of our age, but listening to an hour and a half of race jokes got a little uncomfortable. Some of them were pretty funny, but a lot of them he stretched out about twice as long as he should have.

2006, dir. Alan C. Blomquist. With Russell Peters.

Russian Ark

Weird. A huge technological achievement and frequently pretty to look at, but often incomprehensible without a knowledge of Russian history. Filmed at the Russian Hermitage Museum in one continuous 87 minute take with around 1000 actors, it's an impressive film. But it's still weird.

2002. dir. Alexander Sokurov. Camera Tilman Büttner.

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S

Sabrina (1954)

The Hepburn/Bogart chemistry was less than convincing. The cast was otherwise quite good, and it was pretty funny. Holden plays a playboy millionaire, Hepburn the chauffeur's daughter in love with him, and Bogart plays Holden's older brother determined to throw off the match.

1954, dir. Billy Wilder. With Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, Humphrey Bogart.

Sabrina (1995)

Wow ... same movie, but ... better. Ormond is dazzlingly beautiful and very good in the lead. The chemistry with Ford isn't entirely convincing, but it's better than Hepburn/Bogart and the age difference isn't quite as extreme. The sets and plot are nearly identical to the original - simply updated to the 90s, but the dialogue has, if anything, been improved. Kinnear is the playboy millionaire, Ormond plays Sabrina, the chauffeur's daughter freshly returned from Paris and suddenly looking incredibly fetching, and Ford is the hard-as-diamond family business manager determined that Kinnear won't fall for Sabrina because that would destroy a billion dollar business merger. I like this version better than the original.

1995, dir. Sydney Pollack. With Julia Ormond, Harrison Ford, Greg Kinnear, Nancy Marchand, John Wood.

Sahara

Claims to be based on a Clive Cussler novel. If it is, Cussler writes pretty stupid Indiana Jones knock-offs. McConaughey plays Dirk Pitt, an underwater archaeologist formerly in the Marines. With his lifetime buddy Al (Zahn) who was in the Marines with him, they recover stuff and do good deeds. On a job in Africa Pitt pulls out his old theory that there's an American ironclad ship from the Civil war with bundles of loot on it somewhere in Africa. They also become entangled with a beautiful WHO doctor (Cruz) and thus with the civil war in Mali. It's cute, mildly amusing, has a lot of action, makes no sense at all, and is very dumb.

2005, dir. Breck Eisner. With Matthew McConaughey, Steve Zahn, Penelope Cruz, William H. Macy, Lambert Wilson, Delroy Lindo.

St. Elmo's Fire

A painfully Eighties movie about a group of seven friends just graduated from college. What it's supposed to be about isn't clear, even if you watch the extras on the DVD - everybody has a different opinion, and none of them really make sense. Each of the men are obsessed with women in their various ways, pretty much all morally repugnant. One of the women is equally obsessed with a lifestyle she can't afford. So we have a disorganized and unfocused film about a bunch of college friends becoming less friendly and trying to find their way in life. (That's what it's about - but I don't think anyone on the DVD said so ...)

1985, dir. Joel Schumacher. With Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Mare Winningham, Andie MacDowell.

Salt

Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent with an arachnologist husband. We first meet her being tortured in a North Korean jail on suspicion of being an American spy, but she's released as part of a prisoner exchange. A couple of years later (moments in the film), a Russian defector the CIA is interrogating tells them that Salt is the name of a Russian mole who will kill the Russian president on American soil in a couple days. Turmoil ensues and Salt goes on the run, claiming she's not a mole but refusing to come in.

There's lots and lots of running about in the first third, followed by actions, explosions, killings, and reversals. Jolie tries hard, but the reversals are too sudden and no clues or warnings are given, so the final product is pretty unengaging.

2010, dir. Phillip Noyce. With Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, August Diehl, Daniel Olbrychski.

The Sandbaggers

I watched all three seasons of this British TV series within a month - it's utterly mesmerizing. Marsden plays Neil Burnside is the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, and in charge of the three "Sandbaggers," the guys who are sent out to do the political dirty work like getting and passing information, aiding or preventing defections, and even occasionally assassinating people. Burnside is extremely intelligent, effective, and arrogant. He's constantly in trouble with his higher-ups, and things that seem obvious to both him and us, the audience, are often stopped in the name of political expediency.

The acting is good, but what really makes this show is the writing. You're expected to give it not only your full attention, but a lot of thought: no spoon-feeding here. You won't be disappointed either: there are no compromises, and every detail has been thought through. Very little action, just talk ... and you'll still be on the edge of your seat throughout. Highly recommended!

1978-80. Written by Ian Mackintosh. With Roy Marsden, Richard Vernon, Ray Lonnen, Alan MacNaughtan, Elizabeth Bennett, Bob Sherman.

Sanjuro

Mifune is back in the role of the rogue samurai he first played in "Yojimbo." I watched the Criterion DVD, which claims that the movie is comic genius. I saw a fairly intelligent man (Mifune's character) leading a bunch of well meaning morons to save a (mostly) innocent man. A Japanese version of the Keystone cops? I think I laughed once. Some decent cinematography.

1962, dir. Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune.

Saving Face

New York City. Our heroine is a young female doctor. Heroine falls for a new girl. Her mother has been living with the grandparents, but is booted out when she gets pregnant, and moves in with heroine. Half of it's in Mandarin, the other half in English. I'll spare you the suspense: it's a romantic comedy. From the first fifteen minutes I thought I was going to love it - the dialogue has spots where it's hysterically funny. Unfortunately, it's pretty badly structured and struggles with that throughout. Still, kind of charming.

2004, dir. Alice Wu. With Michelle Krusiec, Joan Chen, Lynn Chen, Jin Wang, Guang Lan Koh, Jessica Hecht, Ato Essandoh.

Say Anything

Crowe's debut film has all the depth of emotion and character that were lacking in most of the 80s teen flicks. No stock characters, no formulaic plot. Cusack plays Lloyd Dobler, a bit of an under-achiever but charming and very optimistic. After high school graduation, he decides that he's going to go out with the school valedictorian, although his friends tell him "Diane Court doesn't go out with guys like you. She's a brain ... Trapped in the body of a game-show hostess." But she does go out with him. They then run into problems with Diane's over-protective father. Romantic, thought-provoking, great script, just a really good movie.

1989, dir. Cameron Crowe. With John Cusack, Ione Skye, John Mahoney.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

I have forever thought of this movie (and the original book) as "The Scarlet Pumpernickel" which would turn it into either a comedy or horror movie about bread. Instead, it's a cliché-ridden wanna-be actioner that actually has very little action, mostly talk. Our hero is an effete Englishman best known for his taste in clothes and his foolishness, who is in secret "The Scarlet Pimpernel." Under this name he disguises himself, sneaks into post-revolutionary France, and rescues the poor, mistreated aristocracy that are about to go to the guillotine. This is another place where the movie kind of loses me: yes, the guillotine was brutal and nasty, but what the aristocracy did to arrive there was too: it's hard to see the citizenry of France as the evil enemy. And the acting is only passable. Despite all of this it's a goofily enjoyable film as our hero prances about reciting bad poetry and going to the tailor in England, and rescues people about to be beheaded in France.

This print from "Madacy Entertainment" gave me a new appreciation for Criterion: I've never been too keen on Criterion's choices of movies, but when they restore a movie, it looks GOOD when they're done. This DVD sported bad blacks, bad contrast, no subtitles, and bad sound. Criterion really does do superb work.

1934, dir. Harold Young. With Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon, Raymond Massey, Nigel Bruce, Anthony Bushell. Based on the novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy.

The Scarlet Pimpernel: Mademoiselle Guillotine

Part (a middle part) of the A&E series of Pimpernel movies/mini-series. It bears almost no resemblance at all to the Wikipedia summary of the Orczy book Mam'zelle Guillotine from which it appears to take its name. The Pimpernel returns, once again (but this time with his wife), to France - to rescue the adopted daughter of a French nobleman. She was left at a convent, but is no longer there. The episode ends abruptly in death for several parties, a significant failure for the Pimpernel. No wrap-up - this isn't a movie, it's a mid-season episode (despite running 90 minutes). "Oops, she's dead." Run credits. Grant's okay as the Pimpernel, but the story lacked interest.

1999. With Richard E. Grant, Elizabeth McGovern, Martin Shaw, Christopher Fairbank.

School of Rock

There's a reason Jack Black doesn't get a lot of leading roles: he can be very amusing in supporting roles, but in the lead he can get tiresome. In this case the movie was written around him, and it works fairly well. Fortunately the kids he works with are charming, and the movie as a whole is pretty funny. Black plays an out of work musician who cons his way into a substitute teacher position, and trains the class to play as a rock band.

2003. dir. Richard Linklater. With Jack Black, Joan Cusack.

Schultze Gets the Blues

A bizarre little movie about a taciturn, retired German miner who finds a new fascination with his accordion when he discovers that he can play Zydeco as well as Polkas.

The director has a love of long, lingering shots of still landscapes, occasionally with people moving through them, and the pace of the plot is positively glacial. It's totally not Hollywood and that's in its favour, but I found the repetition of one Zydeco song over and over (not even played well!) got quite tiresome. And the ending, after Schultze's visit to America, is fairly unsatisfying.

2005, dir. Michael Schorr. With Horst Krause, Karl-Fred Muller, Rosemarie Deibel, Wilhelmine Horschig.

Scoop

I watched this for Johansson and Jackman, but they couldn't save a mediocre script nor compensate for the presence of Allen, who I find more intolerable every time I see him. He plays a whiny, neurotic little shit in every movie, and not only is it no longer funny, I found myself fast-forwarding through large chunks of the movie to avoid the pain. The plot has a dead newspaperman feeding Johansson (an American journalism student on vacation in London) tips on a society murder. Allen is a magician tied up in the incident, and Jackman the society playboy under suspicion.

2006, dir. Woody Allen. With Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Woody Allen, Ian McShane.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Based on the manga-like graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Scott Pilgrim (Cera - who else plays slackers these days?) is a 23 year old slacker, gamer, and occasional musician. One day at a party he meets the girl of his dreams - literally. Ramona Flowers (Winstead) has in fact been in his dreams, and now he'll do anything to date her. Including, as it turns out, fighting all seven of her evil exes.

Incredibly frenetic and ADHD, this is definitely a movie for its generation. Conversations start on one day and street and end on another day and street thirty seconds later - the movie moves that fast. Early in the movie, Scott's girlfriend previous to Ramona uses the word "Love" to him and it comes out as a big puffy pink word which Scott disperses by flapping his hand as if it were an annoying cloud of flies. You get the idea.

I read the graphic novels before seeing the movie. While the movie dropped a whole lot of plot points in the name of keeping the run-time under two hours, they stayed remarkably true to the spirit of the novel (not too surprising given that the movie was financed by Oni Press, the people who did the graphic novels). I was really sorry they dropped the subplot about Kim Pine helping him win Ramona back ... I really liked Kim's character. I attended the movie with a friend who wasn't a gamer and she missed some of the jokes: she still enjoyed it, but it definitely helps if you play video games. The final battle with Gideon is far too long and becomes quite tedious, but before that the movie is utterly hilarious. Culkin is excellent as Scott's gay roommate Wallace, and I liked Pill as the under-utilized Kim Pine.

2010, dir. Edgar Wright. With Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, Kieran Culkin, Alison Pill, Chris Evans, Anna Kendrick, Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman.

Screamers

Another Philip K. Dick story adapted for the screen, relatively early on. Post-apocalyptic nastiness featuring paranoia and despair, two of Dick's favourite ingredients - or possibly his only ones. The ending didn't strike me as quite as bleak as real Dick, and Wikipedia confirms that there were changes made. The movie remains apropos - the titular devices/characters are autonomous killing machines, and that idea's certainly not going away.

Weller plays the commander of a mining outpost on a distant planet in the year 2078 caught in the middle of a devastating war with no way out, and their own weapons (called "Screamers") are mutating and starting to attack them. He sets out to try to make a peace with the local enemy base. Remarkably reminiscent of "Alien" in its stark landscapes and threat of death around every corner, although not as good.

1995, dir. Christian Duguay. With Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis, Jennifer Rubin.

Scrubs Season 1

The story of three young doctor interns at Sacred Heart Hospital, and some of the other hospital staff. Dr. John "J.D." Dorian (Braff) narrates. 24 TV-half-hour episodes. I have a love-hate relationship with their over-the-top scripts and the magic realism (for lack of a better term), but overall it's very funny and I enjoyed it.

2002. With Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, Donald Faison, Neil Flynn, John C. McGinley, Judy Reyes.

Scrubs Season 2

Our interns are now residents, financially strapped and relationally challenged. Almost as fun as the first season, with some great guest actors - the relationship between Heather Locklear and Dr. Cox (in "My First Step") is hysterical.

2003. With Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, Donald Faison, Neil Flynn, John C. McGinley, Judy Reyes.

Seabiscuit

"Seabiscuit" was an unlikely but world-class racing horse in the 1930s. This is based on what is supposed to be an excellent book of the same name. Unbelievably heavy-handed on the emotional manipulation, but mostly well done. I was led to speculate on the horse's name: perhaps he was the offspring of Sausage Biscuit and Sea Anemone?

2003. dir. Gary Ross. With Toby Maguire, Jeff Bridges.

The Seagull's Laughter (orig. "Mávahlátur")

I was disappointed to see that Egilsdóttir, who was fabulous as the 13 year old lead ("Agga"), hasn't been in anything since. I spent the first twenty minutes of the film giggling every time she was on screen: an intelligent, cute, and obnoxious child. Set in Iceland in the early 1950s and seen through Agga's eyes, we see the glamorous Freya (Vilhjálmsdóttir) returning from America after the death of her serviceman husband. She's not happy with the tiny town she's returned to and has an axe to grind. I found the ending irritating, as the viewer is left without a definitive answer as to what actually happened, but overall a fascinating film.

2001, dir. Ágúst Guðmundsson. With Ugla Egilsdóttir, Margrét Vilhjálmsdóttir, Heino Ferch, Hilmir Snæ Guðnason.

Searching for Bobby Fischer

Based in part on the life of Josh Waitzkin (played by Pomeranc), the movie shows a year or so in the life of a very young chess prodigy. The title refers to another legendary chess prodigy, and to both his disappearances and Waitzkin's refusal to adopt some of Fischer's less appealing traits in the name of better chess. The supporting cast is excellent and there are evidently quite a few chess-related cameos (I wouldn't know). The end product is wonderful.

1993, dir. Steve Zaillian. With Max Pomeranc, Joe Mantega, Joan Allen, Laurence Fishburne, Ben Kingsley, William H. Macy.

Season of the Witch

Plodding medieval witch story, with Cage and Perlman as a couple Crusades knights who, after five years of slaughtering, suddenly decide it's wrong because one of them kills a young girl. As deserters, they're caught and recruited to transport a witch to a monastery where she will be tried and presumably destroyed. Very straight-forward and over-long, the only amusement comes occasionally from interactions between Cage and Perlman.

2011, dir. Dominic Sena. With Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Claire Foy, Stephen Campbell Moore, Robert Sheehan, Ulrich Thomsen, Stephen Graham, Christopher Lee.

Secondhand Lions

A hilarious film awash in its own nauseating sentimentality. Duvall and Caine make it watchable, as they're obviously having a great time. The idea is simple: Osment is abandoned with his two great uncles by his flaky mother, and we have a coming of age story for Osment and a return of purpose for Duvall and Caine. Unfortunately, McCanlies lays on the life lessons so thick it's sometimes hard to find the story underneath. Despite which, there are some remarkably funny moments. Almost "Big Fish" for the younger set.

2003, dir. Tim McCanlies. With Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, Haley Joel Osment, Kyra Sedgewick, Josh Lucas.

The Secret in Their Eyes (orig. "El secreto de sus ojos")

Benjamin Espósito (Darín) retires from his position as court investigator(?) in Buenos Aires, and tries to start a novel about a case that has haunted him for over 20 years. We see much of the case in flashback as he seeks out the assistance of his former boss, now a judge, Irene Menéndez-Hastings (Villamil) in the present day.

I had some minor discomfort with some of the final plot structure, but overall the movie is dazzlingly brilliant. The plot (one or two minor details aside) is fantastic, the acting is superb, and the whole thing both devastating and thought-provoking. Movies this good only come along once a year - twice, if you're really lucky and living right. And yet it will be totally ignored despite a Best Foreign Film Oscar by all but the critics and the most dedicated film fans because it's in a foreign language - where's the justice in that? See this.

2009, dir. Juan José Campanella. With Ricardo Darín, Soledad Villamil, Guillermo Francella, Pablo Rago, Javier Godino.

The Secret of My Success

Fox plays Brantley Foster, moved to New York from Kansas, where he has trouble getting a job until he gets some assistance from his uncle Howard (Jordan). Not content to work in the mail room, he starts applying his considerable intelligence to the annual reports and occasionally dresses up in a suit and masquerades as one of the company's businessmen. While trying to avoid sleeping with his aunt, who pursues him relentlessly, and chase down the girl of his dreams. Goofy, funny, 80s, forgettable.

1987, dir. Herbert Ross. With Michael J. Fox, Helen Slater, Richard Jordan, Margaret Whitton, John Pankow.

The Secret of NIMH

Based on the book "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH," animated by Bluth and company before he decided "sickly sweet" was the way to go. "Mrs. Brisby" (as she's called in the movie) decides to go see "the Great Owl," even though she's aware that "owls eat mice." She goes because her son is extremely sick and the owl is possibly the only source of advice to save her son. In the owl's quarters she stumbles over the bones of small animals. Not something you see in your average Disney movie. Unfortunately the goofy, unco-ordinated crow played by DeLuise for comic relief is very typically Disney. Nevertheless, one of the better animated movies out there. It was very funny and educational to see both Doherty's and Wheaton's names in the credits, now that they're better known.

1982, dir. Don Bluth. With Elizabeth Hartman, Derek Jacobi, Arthur Malet, Dom DeLuise, Hermione Baddeley, Shannen Doherty, Wil Wheaton.

Secretary

I'd better go with the IMDB summary on this one: "A young woman, recently released from a mental hospital, gets a job as a secretary to a demanding lawyer, where their employer-employee relationship turns into a sexual, sadomasochistic one." Surprisingly well done.

2002, dir. Steven Shainberg. With Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Spader, Jeremy Davies.

Sense and Sensibility (1995)

Probably the best interpretation of Jane Austen put on film - perhaps not the most accurate, but probably the best. Thompson did the screenplay. Winslet and Thompson are a pair of sisters around 1800 whose family fall on hard times (well - Austen's view of things: most of us would be happy with the house and servants they end up with ...). Elegant, mannered, fabulous dialogue, funny. The cinematography is brilliant, shot after shot. A very good production.

1995. dir. Ang Lee. With Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman, Imogen Stubbs.

Sense and Sensibility (2008)

BBC mini-series production of the Jane Austen novel. Morahan and Wakefield are very good as Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Morrissey plays Brandon rather darker than previous versions, it's an interesting turn. My main problem with this version (and it's not a huge one) is that they had an ugly Willoughby. He's played by Cooper - who in other photos looks fine, but is unattractive here. His acting is fine. Overall a very good production - I thought it held up astonishingly well against Lee's version, which has become the benchmark for all Austen productions.

2008, dir. John Alexander. With Hattie Morahan, Charity Wakefield, Dan Stevens, David Morrissey, Dominic Cooper, Janet McTeer, Lucy Boynton.

The Sentinel

This kind of film is so common it's becoming its own genre: Secret Service agent is accused of treachery, goes on the run to prove his own innocence. Within that context, it's reasonably good. A couple minor twists, nothing brilliant.

2006, dir. Clark Johnson. With Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland, Eva Longoria, Kim Bassinger.

Serenity

When the popular TV series "Firefly" was cancelled, Whedon decided to bring the continuation to the big screen (with the TV cast) and thus we have "Serenity." I hadn't seen the TV series when I saw the movie. There are occasionally moments when you feel like you're missing background information, but this stands well on its own. Big scale space opera, with the rogue ship operator harbouring a terrible secret (which he doesn't initially know about) and trying to get that secret out to the rest of the galaxy. Not perfect, but pretty good - an enjoyable ride. Whedon's commentary on the DVD is very good.

2005. dir. Joss Whedon. With Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, Summer Glau, Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Sergeant York

Cooper plays Alvin York, a guy from the back woods of Tennessee who (in real life as well as in the movie) went on to become one of the biggest heroes of World War I - despite having enrolled as a conscientious objector.

The movie alternately mocks and reveres the townsfolk of Pall Mall - making fun of their quaint language, poor spelling, and isolation, while simultaneously raising them up as hard-working, morally upright pioneer types. It's a bizarre mix. Early on, it's established that York - even drunk and at night - is a superb shot. Before America's involvement in the war he sobers up and gets religion, and thus is enrolled as an objector. He has a change of heart, and goes on to glory.

Cooper is good in the lead - in fact, this is some of the best choices of actors for the entire cast that I've ever seen in a movie. They were also fairly strong on the historical accuracy, rather to my surprise - although there should have been more mud at the front, but that's hardly a big problem. A pretty good movie, considering it could be argued to be a blatant propaganda piece as the United States teetered on the edge of entering the Second World War.

1941, dir. Howard Hawks. With Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie, Margaret Wycherly, George Tobias, Dickie Moore.

Serving Sara

Mildly funny, but as a whole a complete mess. Some of the interviews on the disc suggested to me that the fault lies in large part with the director, who didn't seem to know how to orchestrate humour.

2002. dir. Reginald Hudlin. With Matthew Perry, Elizabeth Hurley, Vincent Pastore, Bruce Campbell, Cedric the Entertainer.

7 Plus Seven

Apted's ongoing documentary series, revisiting the lives of several Britons every seven years. The first ("Seven Up!") was a 40 minute black and white special for Granada Television, after which Apted picked up the reins and made the series fly. This is their teen years, and a very good start to an excellent series. All future titles are numerical: "21 Up," "28 Up," "35 Up," etc.

1970, dir. Michael Apted.

Seven Samurai

Wow. A movie that genuinely deserves the reputation it has ... Brilliant.

The premise is a small village in feudal Japan in need of protection from bandits who are stealing from them hires samurai to protect them. Shimura takes on the leadership role, with Mifune playing the jester. It's very long (207 minutes!) but definitely worth your time.

1954, dir. Akira Kurosawa. With Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Keiko Tsushima, Kamatari Fujiwara, Daisuke Kato, Isao Kimura, Minoru Chiaki, Seiji Miyaguchi.

Seven Swords

Post-"Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" martial arts movie, with a big budget and intermittently superb cinematography. Unfortunately the editing left something to be desired: there are a huge number of characters that are almost all under-developed ... to the point that we are expected to recognize some of them and simply don't ... while simultaneously leaving us with a run-time of 153 minutes. It's essentially the Chinese version of "Seven Samurai" although they certainly changed more than "The Magnificent Seven."

In the mid-seventeenth century the Qing Dynasty has banned the use of martial arts by commoners. An army run by the evil Fire-Wind makes its fortune by killing anyone who could possibly be considered a martial artist - including women and children (remember they're evil) - to claim the bounty. He is served by a bunch of evil men in nasty-looking facial make-up using totally absurd (but ominous and of course deadly) weapons - including the decapitating umbrella of death (my name), an incredibly awkward trident, flying piercing chains, and thrown flying buzz-saws. Fire-Wind himself favours a sword about a meter long that's about 25mm thick and 150mm wide through most of the body: at that rate no normal mortal could hold the thing off the ground for more than a few seconds, never mind wield it in battle (shades of Final Fantasy). A couple of the villagers take the man who warned them of the coming invasion by Fire-Wind's army to Mount Heaven where they are joined by four more swordsmen and the (unexplained) benevolent master gives each of them a super-sword ("Dragon," "The Transcience," "Heaven's Fall," etc.), a couple of which behave just as absurdly as the evil enemy's weapons.

You'll have two huge challenges: suspending disbelief and keeping track of the characters. Good luck.

2005, dir. Tsui Hark. With Donnie Yen, Leon Lai, Charlie Yeung.

Seven Up!

The genesis of Michael Apted's brilliant, seminal "Up" series. At the time he was just out of film school, and, unlike all the later movies, he didn't direct - he was the researcher. Filmed in black and white for Granada Television, this is the least interesting of the set, and I didn't manage to sit through the whole thing despite it's short running time. I'd already seen much of the footage by watching later "Up" movies. Having seen this, I guess (despite its incredible importance) I'd recommend starting with "Seven Plus 7."

The idea at the time was to interview 14 British seven year olds to find out the state of the nation. But when it got interesting was when Apted went back seven years later to find out how those children were doing at the age of 14. And then again at 21, 28, 35 ...

1964, dir. Paul Almond.

Seven Years in Tibet

I don't think this movie faired well at the box office. Pitt wasn't ideal dyed blond and trying to pretend he had an Austrian accent, and the movie doesn't flow too well (story arcs in real life aren't as tidy as they are in fiction), but I thought it was a fascinating story. An Austrian ends up in Tibet around the time of the Second World War, and spends a lot of time with the Dali Lama.

1997, dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud. With Brad Pitt, David Thewlis.

17 Again

You get pretty desperate for movies when you need one every time you get on your stationary bike ... that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Perry plays a grumpy father of two, who abandoned a possible college basketball scholarship to be with his pregnant girlfriend. She's now divorcing him and he's wondering how his life might have been different. Along comes magic janitor man who makes him ... 17 again. And now we have an excuse for popular boy of the year Efron to parade around a school in a variety of outfits while girls swoon over his mature (and messed up, at least for a teenager) behaviour.

Mann was good as Perry's adult wife, and I was surprised by Efron who was actually quite convincing as an adult in a teen's body. But the movie aims low, using massive exaggerations to bring out the humour. When you use an "Alice in Wonderland" excuse to start the movie you'd better make an exemplary movie: "Pleasantville" comes to mind. This one is mired in clichés and broad gestures.

2009, dir. Burr Steers. With Zac Efron, Leslie Mann, Matthew Perry, Thomas Lennon, Sterling Knight, Michelle Trachtenberg, Melora Hardin.

Sex and Lucía (orig. "Lucía y el sexo")

The first hour is essentially art porn, severely lacking in plot. The second hour struggles to recover from that deficit, but fails to make much sense at all. It's about mothers and daughters and fiction and reality and the sea. The extras helped me to understand that the director thought he had brought us to a happy ending: a place of recovery and forgiveness, but to forgive the main male character would be to condone messing around on your girlfriend, screwing up the life of your ex- and your child by her, lying to all of them, and screwing the babysitter. And a couple other things. I was thoroughly unimpressed with the plot of the movie: having to look at the extras to figure out what the hell the director thought he was doing - because he absolutely didn't put the details in there - is pathetic. On the other hand, seeing Vega and Anaya naked and jiggling was pretty damn awesome. But ... but ... it's a really bad movie.

2001, dir. Julio Medem. With Paz Vega, Tristán Ulloa, Najwa Nimri, Daniel Friere, Elena Anaya, Silvia Llanos, Javier Cámara.

The Shadow

Baldwin stars as Lamont Cranston, a man trained in certain mental powers and then let loose to help control crime in 1930s New York City. We see him first as Ying Ko, a ruthless opium warlord in Tibet where he is caught and reformed by the Tulku, who also trains him in the ability to cloud men's minds.

In New York, the arrival of Shiwan Khan (Lone), the last descendant of Genghis Khan (equally as intent on taking over the world as his ancestor was), gives cause for the Shadow to really go to work. Khan has very similar powers of mind to those of the Shadow, as he trained with the Tulku as well. But obviously he's evil because he killed the Tulku!

Sorry, the Thirties nostalgia isn't enough to make this a good movie. It's a story written for the Thirties, and it doesn't work in 2010 (or even 1994). Not a disaster, but the story feels silly and it's not compelling.

1994, dir. Russell Mulcahy. With Alec Baldwin, John Lone, Penelope Ann Miller, Ian McKellen, Tim Curry, Jonathan Winters.

Shadow of a Doubt

One of Hitchcock's better known movies, and apparently his personal favourite. As his daughter said in the extras, "My father loved the idea of bringing menace into a small town." When we first see "Charlie" (Charlotte, played by Wright), she's bored of her small town life - and she knows just the cure, the arrival of her uncle Charlie (Cotten) whom she was named after. And arrive he does, charming everyone ... but he's a little creepy too. It was a subversive film at the time, this sweet, charming family, in their sweet house in a sweet town ... and Hitchcock turns it on its head. We're pretty used to that idea now, but now it's equally strange because it looks so old and we expect it to be sweet. So the end result is much the same. The casting was excellent. Very good.

1943, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. With Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers, Patricia Collinge, Hume Cronyn.

Shakespeare In Love

One of my favourite films. Comedy, romance, action, Shakespearean misunderstandings, all with a brilliant script and acting. Fiennes, never as good an actor as his brother, does an excellent job here as a young and unknown Shakespeare who falls for a gentry woman (Paltrow) engaged (rather involuntarily) to Firth's character.

It helps to know "Romeo and Juliet," the play that Shakespeare is writing and the troupe is performing during the course of the movie - I think everything is well enough explained that you could watch the movie with no knowledge of Shakespeare at all, but it will be better if you know the play. And after that it would help if you knew perhaps "Twelfth Night," and Shakespeare's penchant for having young women disguise themselves as boys, and that all female roles in the Elizabethan theatre were played by men ... etc. etc.

1998, dir. John Madden. With Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffry Rush, Colin Firth, Judy Dench.

Shall We Dance? (1996)

I saw this a couple years after seeing the American remake, and find myself in a rather small group that actually likes the American version. The original Japanese movie is, in most respects, better, but that leaves a lot of leeway for a good remake. Our hero Sugiyama (Yakusho) is a successful but unhappy accountant, who suddenly decides to take up the very suspect art of ballroom dancing - mostly because he finds the teacher attractive. But it doesn't turn out at all as he expects. Charming and fun.

1996, dir. Masayuki Suo. With Kôji Yakusho, Tamiyo Kusakari, Naoto Takenaka.

Shall We Dance? (2004)

"And you know what the worst of it is? Huh? I'm not gay. Can you imagine how much easier my life would be if I were? I mean a straight man who likes to dance around in sequins walks a very lonely road." A really charming movie, very sweet, fairly funny. I look forward to seeing the Japanese movie it was based on.

2004, dir. Peter Chelsom. With Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Omar Miller, Peter Canavale.

Shane

A traditional and not terribly exciting Western, not quite sure why it's still around and well known. Preaches non-violence through the course of righteous violence, a gospel I'm very tired of. Ladd plays a cowboy drifter who starts work for a prosecuted homesteader threatened by an evil cattle man and his hired gun (Palance). It's well done for what it is, but if you've seen a few Westerns, this one hardly strikes me as being worth the effort.

1953, dir. George Stevens. With Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Jack Palance.

Shanghai Kiss

I nearly gave up on this one because the main character, Liam Liu (Leung) is an asshole, and it gets tiresome. It goes on for a long time, and the epiphany and shift is both late in coming and too blatant, too big, but the movie does recover some at that point. Liu is an aspiring actor in L.A., tangled up in a relationship with a 16 year old girl 12 years his junior (who's probably more mature than he is) when he inherits a house in Shanghai from a relative he didn't know and decides to move there.

Direct-to-video. Leung is excellent, Panettiere is very good, the script is okay. Don't rush out to get this, but it's not bad. Amusing nods to "X-Men 3" (which Leung was in, saying here "Liam is my slave name" - and it was even a good joke in the context) and "Casablanca" ("not today, not tomorrow, but for the rest of your life ...").

2007, dir. Kern Konwiser, David Ren. With Ken Leung, Hayden Panettiere, Kelly Hu, Joel Moore, James Hong.

Shanghai Noon

Chan plays an imperial guard sent to rescue the errant Chinese princess who has escaped (into more trouble) in the American West. He runs into the outlaw Roy O'Bannon (Wilson) several times, and they eventually and reluctantly team up.

The parts of the movie that aren't straight-forward plot development are almost all Wilson clowning around. I find the man deeply unfunny (but I like his brother, go figure), and disliked every scene the man was in. Worse, there aren't very many fights, and this movie is probably the turning point at which Chan started making movies less about acrobatic fighting and more about insanely painful stunts. Most memorable in this case is his falling down the inside of and under-construction church bell tower, hitting every plank and platform on the way down. If I wanted to see people absorbing pain, I'd watch Jackass.

2000, dir. Tom Dey. With Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Lucy Liu.

Shaolin Soccer

Possibly the best martial arts movie spoof out there: a group of former Shaolin students get together to play soccer. The CGI and wirework soccer games are hilarious. I got a really interesting disc of this one from the video store: it had the original Chinese release and the American theatrical release both on the same disc, both dubbed or Cantonese with subtitles. The American edit is 25 minutes shorter - most of what was cut seems to be bizarre Chinese humour that doesn't fly too well on this continent. I didn't watch the whole American version, but it was pretty clear they'd managed to remove or modify some stuff they should have left alone as well - I'd recommend watching the Chinese version.

2001, dir. Stephen Chow. With Stephen Chow, Vicki Zhao, Man Tat Ng.

Sharkwater

Very much Stewart's movie - he filmed it, directed, produced, and was on screen for much of it. It's about sharks, and the recent decimation of their populations across the world. Very few people like sharks - except Stewart - and so there are no laws about killing them and no one cares. He'd like to change that. He set out to tell you how beautiful and non-dangerous they actually are, and ended up ramming ships, getting arrested, running from the law and getting chased by Coast Guard with a machine gun, and nearly losing his leg to necrotizing fasciitis. The video is uneven, but some of the underwater footage is gorgeous. I agree with his goals, but I'm not sure about his part-time cohort Watson, in charge of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I agree with their goals, and the movie certainly paints them as being in the right, but their methods are questionable. Still, Watson is definitely the most interesting person in the movie: a very intelligent guy, way out there politically.

2007, dir. Rob Stewart. With Rob Stewart, Paul Watson.

She Done Him Wrong

I saw this at the library and thought "I really should see at least one Mae West film." My first reaction to her was that she wasn't very attractive - after the first five minutes of the movie were spent telling us how attractive she is, and my second reaction was "my God, what an appalling accent!" However. They did give her some great lines, and nobody delivered them better. Grant is slathered in make-up, and showing early signs of rising to his later iconic status in this, his second starring role.

I was also fascinated by how close the movie was to its Vaudeville roots, with singers and musical numbers and comedy. Acting wasn't really a part of it, just delivering lines.

1933, dir. Lowell Sherman. With Mae West, Cary Grant, Owen Moore, Gilbert Roland, Noah Beery.

The Sheik

I only managed to watch about 30 minutes of this. Most famous simply for Valentino's looks, I couldn't see much else about it worth seeing - and Valentino didn't even strike me as that good looking. The "Image Entertainment" DVD I was watching shows different parts of the movie in different shades: some with a light purple tint, then orange, then yellow. Why, I have no idea. And it certainly didn't add to the experience.

1921, dir. George Melford. With Rudolph Valentino, Agnes Ayres.

She's the Man

I rented this based on my respect for "Ten Things I Hate About You," which is written by the same scriptwriters. Both are teen flicks set in high school based on Shakespeare plays. Doesn't sound too promising, but an extremely witty script kept "Ten Things ..." afloat. Unfortunately the majority of this movie is spent on fish-out-of-water humour, with Bynes pretending to be a boy at her brother's new school so she can play soccer. The relationship to the original play ("Twelfth Night," in this case) is even more stretched than it was in "Ten Things ...", and the effort is considerably less successful.

2006, dir. Andy Fickman. With Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum, Laura Ramsey, David Cross, James Snyder.

Sherlock, Season 1

The BBC turned a couple of guys who are utterly obsessed with the original Sherlock Holmes books loose on creating a modern-day Sherlock. And thus we have Cumberbatch as Holmes and Freeman as Watson, solving crimes in 2010 London.

We meet Dr. Watson first, short on money on an army pension, sent home injured from Afghanistan. He's in need of a roommate, and an old friend points him to Sherlock, whose powers of observation, intellect, and ego far exceed those of most mortals. Watson seems to have a slightly higher tolerance for Holmes' arrogance than most plus a bit of an adrenaline addiction, and ends up helping Sherlock out on cases as well as rooming with him.

The first episode (there are three in the "season," each 90 minutes) introduces us to the characters very effectively, along with the witty banter and an interesting serial killer. I enjoyed it immensely.

Unfortunately, the second and third episodes are overloaded with "clever" and lose out on the humanity of the first one. The cases are complex and somewhat interesting, but the attempts at character development are weak, and the final product is amazingly cold and distant given the strength of the first episode.

2010. With Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Rupert Graves.

Sherlock Season 2, Episode 1: "A Scandal in Belgravia"

Rarely have I anticipated a TV show as much as this one. While I wasn't keen on the second and third episodes of season 1, I thought the writers might get it together for a new season. Given my anticipation and that each episode runs 90 minutes, I'm going to review this season's episodes individually.

The previous season's cliffhanger with Moriarty (Scott) is resolved fairly gracelessly - there's rarely a good way out of such things. But from there the episode moves along nicely, showing some of Holmes' (Cumberbatch) and Watson's (Freeman) day-to-day life, with Watson's blog about Holmes' cases attracting customers, and Watson pointing out that Holmes' website is less effective in doing so with its description of the 240 types of tobacco ash ...

We're introduced to Irene Adler (Pulver) - in this incarnation, a dominatrix with an extremely compromising client list and collection of photos. She also has a mind very nearly as sharp as Sherlock, Moriarty, and Mycroft (Gatiss). As expected, she and Sherlock are simultaneously having a battle of wits and flirting.

The episode addresses Sherlock's apparent utter lack of concern for the emotions and physical well-being of others. It's also hysterically funny in places, and has some nice references to its source material (there's a wonderful bit with a deerstalker). The biggest case they handle during the episode occurs in fits and starts, with bits sticking out all over and poor narrative flow. And yet the episode is quite satisfactory, in large part because of the character elements - the kind of material that made the first episode of the first season better than the ones that followed. It'll be interesting to see where they go from here.

2012, dir. Paul McGuigan. With Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Lara Pulver, Mark Gatiss, Andrew Scott, Una Stubbs, Rupert Graves.

Sherlock Season 2, Episode 2: "The Hounds of Baskerville"

Sherlock is bored out of his skull, desperately searching for either an interesting case ... or a pack of smokes. What turns up (and makes him forget smoking) is a fantastically huge hound that may have killed someone 20 years prior near the Baskerville military facility. The mystery isn't the best they've managed, but the characters play out well and I enjoyed the episode.

2012, dir. Paul McGuigan. With Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Una Stubbs, Rupert Graves.

Sherlock Season 2, Episode 3: "The Reichenbach Fall"

Sherlock has a series of high profile successes, and Moriarty eventually decides it's time for Sherlock to take a fall. Through a series of machinations, he makes Sherlock look bad in the press and entirely lose the trust of the police.

I found some logical problems with the ending, but as they've happily continued to focus on character as well as mystery in this episode, it was still quite enjoyable. I'm happy to hear that the third series has been green-lighted.

2012, dir. Paul McGuigan. With Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Andrew Scott, Mark Gatiss, Una Stubbs, Rupert Graves.

Sherlock Holmes

Like every other franchise, "Sherlock Holmes" gets re-imagined and kick-started. In this case, by Ritchie who has decided that Holmes and Watson are action heroes. Holmes, when not on a case, is depressed and performs bizarre experiments. Watson (happily more intelligent than he was in the original) has a significant gambling problem and a fiancée.

Downey and Law are very good in the leads, and the primary mystery (with Strong playing Lord Blackwood, apparently using black magic to take over the world) is reasonably well worked out. But I found a significant logical breakdown in one of the early set pieces, in which Holmes chooses to get into a betting fist fight. He later tells Watson "I placed your customary bet," which implies he fought regularly so there was no reason the audience would be so stunned at the outcome of the fight.

I found the movie enjoyable for the interplay between Downey and Law (and to a lesser extent Downey and McAdams), but overall not a particularly great experience.

2009, dir. Guy Ritchie. With Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong, Kelly Reilly, Eddie Marsan, Hans Matheson, James Fox, Robert Maillet.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Ritchie continues his action version of Holmes and Watson with all the major characters returning and Fry taking the part of Mycroft Holmes. This time the major villain is Moriarty (Harris). The action is almost non-stop, with "Bullet Time" or its modern equivalent playing a fairly major part in later action sequences. The intellectual acumen of the two main players (Holmes and Moriarty) is at times entertaining, and Downey and Law are clearly having fun as Holmes and Watson with the wonderful Rapace thrown in for seasoning, but the never-ending action was tiresome and the conclusion mildly disappointing.

2011, dir. Guy Ritchie. With Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Jared Harris, Noomi Rapace, Stephen Fry, Rachel McAdams, Kelly Reilly, Paul Anderson, Eddie Marsan.

Sherlock Hound, Case File 1

Proof positive that not everything Miyazaki touches is gold. In a world that looks like London around 1900, the dominant "people" are dog-like, and Sherlock Hound is assisted in his detection of wrong-doing by Dr. Watson. Aimed squarely at the 7-10 crowd with nothing remarkable about it. This would appear to be a normal low budget Japanese anime TV series that only made it across the Pacific because of Miyazaki's name.

Sherlock Jr.

One of Keaton's most inventive films. These days it doesn't look quite as clever because every visual gag in it has been strip-mined by every comedy since, but when viewed with the time period in mind, it's a breath-taking piece of work. Keaton plays a movie projectionist who wants to be a detective. He falls asleep, and his ghost goes to work to save the damsel in distress in the movie - he dives into the movie, straight through the screen, gets kicked out, dives back in again, falls down - several times, etc. Some of his best work.

1924, dir. Buster Keaton. With Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Joe Keaton, Erwin Connelly, Ward Crane.

The Shipping News

Based on a reportedly excellent and award-winning book of the same name, this is a superb movie. See the movie first though: fans of the book disapprove of some of the changes (primarily the two main characters being reasonably attractive - not the way they were painted in the book). It's about the recovery of self respect, and shows a very slow (and therefore more believable) recovery. Newfoundland plays quite a role, and looks great. Dench is particularly superb in her supporting role, although everyone is excellent.

2001. dir. Lasse Hallström. With Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Pete Postlethwaite, Scott Glenn, Rhys Ifans, Gordon Pinsent.

Shirley Valentine

Shirley Valentine (played by Collins) is a lower class middle-aged British housewife with two grown children and a husband who ignores her (except when he needs dinner). When an opportunity to go to Greece with a friend comes up, she's both terrified and fascinated. She goes, and finds out that her life, contrary to her perceptions in the suburbs of England, is not yet over. She falls in love with Greece, has an affair with a bar owner (Conti), and stays considerably longer than she was supposed to, much to the confusion of her husband.

Based on a British one-woman stage play that also starred Collins - it must have been radically different, primarily because it was one person, but also because it was a before-and-after thing, whereas much of the movie plays out in a very lovely location in Greece.

Collins is very good, but I was a bit unhappy with the character of Shirley, who talks to the camera too much. I liked her self-awareness, but found her too annoying at times. Conti was very good, even putting on a mediocre Greek accent.

1989, dir. Lewis Gilbert. With Pauline Collins, Tom Conti, Alison Steadman, Julia McKenzie, Joanna Lumley.

Shoot 'Em Up

When a movie can make "Crank" look articulate and artistic, you know you have a masterpiece on your hands. Owen chomps carrots. Bellucci gives breast milk and blow jobs. There are so many incredibly bad puns that the old James Bond scriptwriters would wince in pain. The director was inspired by John Woo, but Woo's creative mayhem this is not. My only excuse for watching this shit is that both Owen and Giamatti are very good actors. I'm sure they had fun making this, but I hope they have the decency to be embarrassed.

2007, dir. Michael Davis. With Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci, and a whole bunch of guys who die in sprays of tomato sauce.

Shooter

Wahlberg plays a retired (but young) army sniper drawn out of retirement by his honour ... and promptly framed for it. You know the drill: honourable innocent man has to prove his innocence. But as these things go, it's pretty entertaining, although maybe a little harsh. Mara is very hot (and gratuitously partially undressed), and Peña gets in the best performance of the show as a slightly goofy but intelligent new recruit who turns out to have the balls when the time comes.

2007, dir. Antoine Fuqua. With Mark Wahlberg, Michael Peña, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Elias Koteas, Ned Beatty.

Shooting the Past

Wow, a LIBRARIAN'S movie. This is so much about collections and librarians I have a hard time imagining that it would appeal to anyone else. I mean, our big plot point is the threat of destruction of a collection of 10 million photographs. Certainly this would be a loss, but the only people in the world who get excited over such a thing are librarians, so I have trouble imagining anyone else maintaining interest for the 150 minute run time. Although there are certainly some beautiful photos. But if you are a librarian ... it's pretty entertaining. Spall is great - he accurately calls himself "a scruffy, irritating prat," but he simultaneously embodies the skills of a superb librarian: he can follow the faintest trail of information through an immense collection of photos to find a person across years, a family across generations. Made for TV, Masterpiece Theatre.

1999, dir. Stephen Poliakoff. With Lindsay Duncan, Timothy Spall, Liam Cunningham, Billie Whitelaw, Emilia Fox.

Shopgirl

Written and produced by Martin, certainly feels like one of his products. I don't like his humour, and I particularly don't like his characters who are too heavily flawed to remain likable. Martin remains in love with his home town of Los Angeles, and it's painted in glowing colours (someone messed with the colour saturation and balance in many of the shots). The story sees depressed and lonely salesgirl Danes courted by the goofy and not terribly bright Schwartzman, and the suave and distant Martin.

2005, dir. Anand Tucker. With Claire Danes, Steve Martin, Jason Schwartzman, Bridgette Wilson.

Shortbus

I'm all for sex in the movies, but perhaps not sex as a movie, especially when the moral seems to be that if you've got sex problems they can all be solved by deviant sex acts. Sex is a part of everyone's lives (even if it's only thinking about it), so yes, it should take a more prominent place in movies. But this massively overplays its hand.

2006, dir. John Cameron Mitchell. With Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, Lindsay Beamish, PJ DeBoy, Raphael Barker, Peter Stickles, Jay Brannan.

Shrek

Not sure I need to say much about this: it's hysterically funny, I own it, I've seen it a dozen times. There's kid humour and there's adult humour - much of which is in the huge number of movie tributes ("Highlander," "The Neverending Story," many others). See it.

2010 Note: having seen the sequels and the animated films that followed in its wake, I find "Shrek" itself to be less appealing and less funny these days. It broke ground by being incredibly irreverent and making fun of every fairy tale and animated movie that came before, but the huge number of imitators since affects the viewing of the original, making it a lot less fun. Too bad: it really was a hugely influential and funny film.

2001, dir. Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson. With Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, John Lithgow, Vincent Cassel.

Shrek 2

Not as good as the original, but reasonably enjoyable. Even more movie references, with a bunch of pop culture references ("Farbucks Coffee") and a lot of adult humour that went right over the head of the kids (who were hugely amused anyway).

2004, dir. Andrew Adamson and Kelly Asbury. With Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, John Cleese, Julie Andrews, Jennifer Saunders, Rupert Everett.

Shrek the Third

How the mighty have fallen. The first "Shrek" movie was made to mock crap like "Shrek the Third." The first movie had humour ingrained in every aspect, riffs on dozens of movies, jokes in every move and flip of the hair. Not all the jokes worked for everyone, but there were just so many that pretty much everyone loved it. This one has about the same hit-miss ratio, but it only has about ten jokes - every one of which is set up with a sledgehammer.

2007, dir. Chris Miller. With Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews, John Cleese, Rupert Everett, Eric Idle, Justin Timberlake.

Shrek Forever After

Better than the third Shrek, but by no means a good movie. Seeing it in 3D probably made the difference between maybe liking it and disliking it. The problem with Shrek was that the first one completely shredded fairy tales with its irreverence and humour ... and that was an idea that could only really work once. Of course that begs the question why I've seen all four of them. I guess I'm just very hopeful, and they did manage to find more humour.

2010, dir. Mike Mitchell. With Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Julie Andrews, Walt Dohrn, John Cleese.

Shut Up and Sing

I hate country music, but between the treatment the Dixie Chicks received after Mains's comment about President Bush at a 2003 concert in London (to the effect that they were ashamed that he was from their home state of Texas) and the song they eventually wrote in response (the absolutely brilliant "Not Ready to Make Nice"), I was more than willing to watch this movie about the whole sequence of events. The tagline, "Freedom of speech is fine, as long as you don't do it in public," is appropriate. The movie itself is perhaps a little too long, but it's interesting and I was happy to see three intelligent and articulate women trying to get through the firestorm of criticism from both their fans and their new-found enemies. It hasn't hurt them financially - in fact, it may have helped them. But it's changed where they play: it would appear they're not particularly welcome in their home state anymore, but sell out massive stadiums in the northern States, Canada, and Australia.

2006, dir. Barbara Kopple, Cecilia Peck. With Natalie Mains, Emily Robinson, Martie Maguire.

Sicko

Moore is such an asshole. Basically the Rush Limbaugh of the left. While I usually agree with his political objectives, I'm a bit embarrassed to be "on his side." In any case, this documentary is a big fat attack on the very broken American health care insurance system. I endured that system for ten years and I'm not surprised by anything he showed. I'm also very pleased to be back at home in one of the systems he held up as a superior example, Canada - not that it's as much better as he wants you to believe, but it certainly is a lot better.

Moore's anonymously paying off the hospital bill of a political opponent (who ran a Moore hate website) would have been a weird but magnanimous gesture - if he hadn't turned it into a twisting knife by revealing in the movie that he had done that.

2007, dir. Michael Moore.

Sideways

Two middle aged guys off on a tour of the wine country of California before one of them gets married. A huge hit with the critics, and an enjoyable movie. The movie went all kinds of places I wasn't expecting, and it did it well. This is also the movie that brought the brilliant Giamatti into the limelight (it should have been "American Splendor," but no one saw that). And it gave a huge lift to Hayden Church's career.

2004, dir. Alexander Payne. With Paul Giamatti, Thomas Hayden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh.

Signs

Shyamalan's third movie. His take on crop circles and alien invasion. He manages the mix of humour and suspense in a manor worthy of Hitchcock. Gibson plays a preacher who has lost faith, and Phoenix his brother. Crop circles appear near their small town, and we have aliens mixing with a crisis of faith. Not as good as "The Sixth Sense," but still very good.

Unfortunately, this was the turning point in Shyamalan's use of logic. His previous two movies were impeccably logical, everything worked out in meticulous detail. But here he stopped bothering. The logic is very broken: the whole thing about water, why did they come here exactly?!

dir. M. Night Shyamalan. With Mel Gibson, Joacquim Phoenix.

Silent Movie

Probably Brooks' best movie ... which isn't saying much in my book, but some of the immense number hit-or-miss visual gags do actually hit. Brooks plays a film director who lost his career to drinking. Now, with his two friends (Feldman and DeLuise, who are in every single scene with him) he's out to make a new movie - a silent movie, in the modern age. To make the movie successful, they're going to get all the big stars - Reynolds, Caan, Newman, Bancroft, etc. ... see the list below. Much of the comedy in the movie revolves around their pursuit of these stars.

This being Brooks, the jokes are incredibly broad. This being a silent movie, the gags are almost entirely visual, although there's a fair bit of audible non-dialogue humour. And one of the big gags of the whole movie is the only word of dialogue in the entire thing being spoken by Marcel Marceau (a very famous mime at the time). Scattershot, amusing enough to watch once.

1976, dir. Mel Brooks. With Mel Brooks, Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise, Bernadette Peters, Sid Caesar, Anne Bancroft, Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Paul Newman, Marcel Marceau.

Silverado

Kasdan's nod to the Westerns he loved as a kid - written by him and his brother, it's both an homage and borderline spoof. It starts with the introductions of Glenn's and then Kline's characters, and these introductions are pure genius (if somewhat over-the-top). As more and more people are introduced, you find out that the intention of the movie is to incorporate every possible cliché ever used in a Western movie (to name just a few: wagon train, evil sheriff, gallows, and the favourite of the friend I watched it with: shot-and-falls-from-the-balcony). The movie is a bit crowded with larger-than-life characters, but is never the less hugely enjoyable.

1985, dir. Lawrence Kasdan. With Scott Glenn, Kevin Kline, Kevin Costner, Danny Glover, Brian Dennehy, Linda Hunt, Rosanna Arquette, John Cleese, James Gammon, Jeff Fahey.

Silverhawk

I debated admitting I've seen this movie. Sure, I watch martial arts films, but I got my self respect. This is truly horrible. Very few martial arts films actually have good acting, cinematography, or plots, barring a small wave started by "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." So martial arts fans don't measure movies on the same scale. We look for good fight scenes and stunts, and if there has to be wire work, it better be good. Yeoh is a talented martial artist, but the humour is unsuccessful, the stunts lousy, the fights awful, and the scene cuts during fights occur every half second or so. No one should watch this.

2004, dir. Jingle Ma. With Michelle Yeoh, Richie Ren, Luke Goss, Brandon Chang, Michael Jai White.

Silver Streak

Somehow, this is indelibly associated in my mind with "Mother, Jugs & Speed." I have no idea why ... perhaps because they were a double bill on the marquee across the street when I was growing up - they both came out in the same year.

George Caldwell (Wilder) has boarded the titular train in Los Angeles with the intention of riding it all the way to Chicago. He meets the beautiful Hilly Burns (Clayburgh) and the rather less attractive Bob Sweet (Beatty) in short order. The movie then goes for Hitchcockian mystery mixed with comedy. The mystery isn't bad, but the comedy, which in Hitchcock would arise from circumstance, is instead inserted like wooden pegs driven home with a sledgehammer and no particular relation to the plot ... until Pryor finally shows up an hour into the film. Pryor and Wilder are hilarious together, but by then they've blown out the mystery and the viewer's trust - come on, George is knocked or thrown off the train THREE times, and gets back on every time? What, a train called "Silver Streak" crosses America at 20 miles per hour? Has some decent comedic moments, but otherwise a real waste of time.

An odd side-note: Kiel appears as an evil henchman (did he ever get any other roles? At over seven feet, I guess not) ... with steel teeth. He sported essentially the same dental work in the Bond movies "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Moonraker" after this movie. I doubt that's how Kiel's teeth really look, so it's particularly interesting that the Bond movies seem to have borrowed the man and the teeth ...

1976, dir. Arthur Hiller. With Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, Patrick McGoohan, Ned Beatty, Richard Pryor, Richard Kiel.

The Simpsons Movie

A nearly incoherent plot full of ludicrous incidents is more than compensated for by typically sly humour. Very funny.

2007, dir. David Silverman. With Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Harry Shearer, Hank Azaria.

Sin City

Bizarre. Based on Miller's "Sin City" series of comic books. Characters speak in horrible clichés - I think it was deliberate, but if it was it should have been more consistent. Visually stunning, hideously violent. If you can take the violence and the cliché-ridden dialogue, the visual style is truly breath-taking. Disjoint, with multiple interwoven stories.

2005. dir. Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller. With Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Elijah Wood, Rutger Hauer, Clive Owen ...

Sirens

A tale of sexual awakening set in the 1930s in Australia. A young clergyman and his wife are sent to try to talk some sense into an artist who wants to display controversial pictures of naked women. What they find is an unrepentant man with a supportive wife and three beautiful models that live with him and scandalize the town. It's a sensual film, although not a particularly good one overall. Most famous for bringing Macpherson to the screen - she was better than I expected, but not actually good, and hardly a great reason to see a movie.

1994, dir. John Duigan. With Hugh Grant, Tara Fitzgerald, Sam Neill, Elle Macpherson, Portia de Rossi, Kate Fischer, Pamela Rabe, Mark Gerber.

The Sixth Sense

Shyamalan's first (non-indie) film. A psychologist treats a young boy who claims "I see dead people." Unbelievably creepy, and extraordinarily well developed.

dir. M. Night Shyamalan. With Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Everyone should see this movie, but no one should be forced to listen to it - visually stunning, with a truly abysmal script. If only Conran had stuck to doing the visuals and let someone else handle the writing. It looks like the world of the future as seen in the 1930s and 1940s pulp magazines. Worth seeing for that alone, but a big screen is definitely preferred.

2004. dir. Kerry Conran. With Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Giovanni Ribisi, Angelina Jolie.

Sky High

Derivative, cheesy, and predictable. Also highly entertaining. High school for the children of superheroes. Takes some pot shots at how not-fun high school can be, and has some fun with the whole superhero genre. Being a Disney movie, it's more squarely aimed at children than the recent spate of superhero movies.

2005, dir. Mike Mitchell. With Michael Angarano, Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, Danielle Panabaker, Lynda Carter, Steven Strait, Bruce Campbell.

Skyline

Blue glowy lights fall from the sky. Everyone who looks at them is sucked into the alien spaceships.

The dialogue is among the worst I've ever heard: incredibly flat and uninteresting. Almost all the action is in or around a condo complex where our characters try to hide out from the invasion. There's lots of running, lots of being upset. The effects are decent, but this is a seriously lame-ass movie that should be avoided at all costs.

2010, dir. Greg and Colin Strause. With Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Donald Faison, Brittany Daniel, Crystal Reed, Neil Hopkins.

Slap Shot

Newman plays the coach of the minor league Charlestown Chiefs hockey team. He's a bit old to be a player, but he's that too. The team is losing most of its games and not drawing a crowd so it's doing poorly financially as well. The manager picks up the three Hanson Brothers, a trio of childish players with thick glasses. Initially Newman won't play them, but eventually in desperation he does. Whereupon he discovers that their violent enforcer tactics draw a crowd and help win games.

The movie is incredibly foul-mouthed and quite violent, and must have been shocking when it was released: I was still a bit surprised by it in 2010. While it's painfully dated in its clothes and hairstyles, it's also incredibly funny. One of the better sports films out there.

1977, dir. George Roy Hill. With Paul Newman, Strother Martin, Michael Ontkean, Lindsay Crouse, Jennifer Warren.

Sleepy Hollow

Someone had a good time playing with the colours. The palate is incredibly gray most of the time, marked by yellows and occasional other additions. Depp is excellent as the cowardly Ichabod Crane (I have no idea how this compares to the original Washington Irving), and Ricci is fascinating as his foil and love interest. Feels a lot like Burton meets Gilliam (think of the later "The Brothers Grimm").

1999, dir. Tim Burton. With Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Casper Van Dien.

Slings and Arrows Season 1 (TV)

Brilliant TV. Canadian too - I'm a patriot, but the sad truth is that Canada produces a depressingly small number of good movies or TV shows. But this isn't just good - it's superb. The series (all six episodes of it) centres around the "New Burbage" Festival, very clearly modelled on the Stratford Festival in southern Ontario, mostly about a production of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The personalities surrounding and driving the play are teetering on the brink of parody, but they're actors so it's a little easier to believe. Especially since it's so well done. Helps if you know Shakespeare, but it might start you reading it if you don't know it.

The story finds Geoffrey Tennant (Gross, brilliant), returning to New Burbage as the artistic director when the position is vacated by the death of his former friend Oliver (Ouimette). He has to deal with his former flame (Burns, also excellent, and his wife in real life), the ghost of Oliver, and stage a production of Hamlet with a young and questionable American movie star as the lead. McAdams proves she really can act as the aspiring Ophelia.

2003, dir. Peter Wellington. With Paul Gross, Martha Burns, Mark McKinney, Steve Ouimette, Don McKellar, Rachel McAdams, Luke Kirby.

Slings and Arrows Season 2 (TV)

Damn they're good. Feore is an off-beat ad executive trying to help McKinney out with advertising as Geoffrey (Gross) struggles with a recalcitrant and obnoxious lead on the production of Macbeth that he didn't want to do.

2005, dir. Peter Wellington. With Paul Gross, Martha Burns, Mark McKinney, Steve Ouimette, Don McKellar, Colm Feore.

Slings and Arrows Season 3 (TV)

Just as good as the other two seasons (and possibly better), the final brilliant season of Slings and Arrows. A bit darker than the previous ones: the big play is Lear, and the lead is both temperamental and extremely ill. Hutt and Polley are the big additions to the season. As always, I wished desperately that I could have seen more of the final production of the Shakespeare play itself. Hutt may have known that this was his swan song (he died within a year) and puts in a performance that exceeds that of the already excellent cast.

2006, dir. Peter Wellington. With Paul Gross, Martha Burns, Mark McKinney, Steve Ouimette, Don McKellar, Sarah Polley, William Hutt.

Slumdog Millionaire

Jamal grew up in the slums of Mumbai. Now he's on the Indian "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?," and time was called just before the final question. He's dragged off by the police because he's clearly cheating. But the answers are there, in the history of his life. Most of the incidents that led to his knowledge are less than pleasant, and they also reveal his love for Latika who he first met when he was nine or ten. And his problems with his brother. The MTV style of filming (frequent angled shots, quick cuts, manipulated colours) got on my nerves, but it was, absolutely and without a doubt, India. That may sound stupid because of course it was filmed there: but you can film there without getting the feel of the place. But Boyle most assuredly succeeded in that.

2008, dir. Danny Boyle. With Dev Patel, Madhur Mittal, Freida Pinto, Irrfan Khan.

Small Soldiers

A toy company is acquired by a multinational conglomerate, and when one of the toy designers goes looking for AI chips in inventory, he's sent surplus discarded military material. The toys get sent out with a lot more brains than was intended ... and a great deal of attitude. A pre-release lot gets into the hands of a toy store owner's son's hands ... and the toys go to war.

What I found impressive about this movie was that the problems inherent in intelligent, learning, war-oriented toys were not only well thought out, but so was the build-up and final confrontation. It's crazy, but it actually makes sense and didn't feel particularly contrived. It's a weird movie, but pretty good.

1998, dir. Joe Dante. With Gregory Smith, Kirsten Dunst, Jay Mohr, David Cross, Phil Hartman, Kevin Dunn, Ann Magnuson, Tommy Lee Jones, Frank Langella.

Smoke Signals

Two young men from an Indian reservation set out for Phoenix, Arizona where one of their fathers has died. They are tied together by their history, and by an act of the father in their very early childhood, but their friendship is uneasy at best.

It's an independent road movie with no budget at all and no actors you've ever heard of, and a weird, almost cameo, appearance by Skerritt right in the middle. It's a road movie buddy comedy with Indians. It has its moments, but I didn't think it was overly funny and drew its characters too broadly.

1998, dir. Chris Eyre. With Adam Beach, Evan Adams, Irene Bedard, Gary Farmer, Tantoo Cardinal, Tom Skerritt.

Smokin' Aces

"Aces" is a stage magician who does card tricks, who finds his way into the world of the mafia. He enjoys the life of a rich mafia man, and slowly makes it his own. But his rise has led to rivalries, and as the movie starts, he's trying to work out a witness protection deal with the FBI to save his own life. There's a contract on his head by the mafia don that brought him into the world he loves so much. We're introduced to the rogue's gallery of assassins who will be competing to kill him by the discussion of the "good guys" who will be trying to protect him. And thus we enter into an hour long cat-and-mouse game and gun battle. If you're paying any attention, you know there's more to it than meets the eye, but if you're paying attention you're going to be pretty disappointed by the pay-off at the end. Spectacular, nasty action sequences, so maybe if you like that kind of thing ...

2006, dir. Joe Carnahan. With Ray Liotta, Ryan Reynolds, Andy Garcia, Jeremy Piven, Ben Affleck, Common, Alicia Keys.

Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin

Early Hong Kong Chan - before he developed a sense of humour and started directing his own movies. Typically sexist, lots of very traditional style Chinese martial arts. The plot revolves around Chan being in possession of a book containing the deadly "Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin" which everybody wants. Some of them want to know what happened to the masters who wrote the book and disappeared rather mysteriously. Not his best (although he made plenty worse).

1978, dir. Chi-Hwa Chen. With Jackie Chan.

Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (orig. "Se ying diu sau")

Chan's best early movie. He plays a young man who is perhaps a bit slow, who wants to learn Kung Fu and works at a Kung Fu school where he's used as a mobile punching bag. A chance encounter with an old man entangles him in a plot to wipe out an entire school of martial arts, but also teaches him Kung Fu. Etc. etc. Nothing really new here, except it's just done so much better than the majority of martial arts movies. Excellent fights. Highly recommended for fans of the genre.

1978, dir. Yuen Woo-Ping. With Jackie Chan.

Sneakers

Redford plays Martin Bishop (or "Martin Brice," depending on how you look at it), a security expert whose team breaks into businesses at their behest to test the business' security. But he has a past that's about to catch up to him, and the NSA puts him onto a job that he really doesn't want to be involved in. This is essentially a caper film, so much cleverness and a couple of double crosses are involved.

I wasn't a huge fan of this when it came out, but re-watched it in 2011. Each of the members of Bishop's team are well-played by the cast (Poitier, Aykroyd, Phoenix), but Strathairn is particularly good as "Whistler," who is blind but incredibly talented with superb hearing. The movie has some good gags, but the plot (and threats involved in the plot) don't really carry a lot of weight.

1992, dir. Phil Alden Robinson. With Robert Redford, Ben Kingsley, Sidney Poitier, David Strathairn, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix, Mary McDonnell, Stephen Tobolowsky, Donal Logue, James Earl Jones.

Snow Falling on Cedars

American West Coast, just after the Second World War. A fisherman turns up dead, apparently clubbed in the head, tangled in his own nets, and drowned. A Japanese man who had dealings with him is put on trial. And watching all this is the one-armed white ex-lover of the Japanese wife, still in love and obsessed.

We're given fractured pictures, quick flashes of the past, the present ... and then very long, lingering shots. It's a disorienting and annoying way of presenting things. The score was also far too loud in many sections. With these caveats, it's still a good movie - interesting as a mystery, a drama, and as a portrait of a community entering, and recovering from, racism.

1999, dir. Scott Hicks. With Ethan Hawke, Youki Kudoh, Reeve Carney, Anne Suzuki, Rick Yune, Max von Sydow, James Rebhorn, James Cromwell, Richard Jenkins, Arija Bareikis, Eric Thal.

Soapdish

Fields plays the (only slightly) ageing lead lady on a soap, and we watch the drama in the actor's personal lives. It's an over-the-top, mildly surreal farce, but unfortunately not a particularly good one. It has some funny moments thanks to an outstanding cast, but they can't make the plot any less of a muddled mess. It's really too bad Kline doesn't do more slapstick - he's very good at it.

1991, dir. Michael Hoffman. With Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Robert Downey Jr., Cathy Moriarty, Elisabeth Shue, Whoopi Goldberg, Teri Hatcher, Garry Marshall.

Solaris (2002)

I haven't seen the older, longer Tarkovsky version, so I won't be comparing. This is science fiction, but it's about memory and alien-ness, not technology. Chris Kelvin (Clooney) is sent to a space station above the planet Solaris at the request of his friend, the captain of the space station. There he finds that people in the station are haunted by manifestations (physical and real) of loved ones, evidently put there by the planet. I didn't think Clooney's acting was up to carrying the full burden of the script, and the ideas and weirdness left me cold. The visuals were excellent, but that's hardly something to save the movie when it's as strange and alienating as this one is.

2002, dir. Steven Soderbergh. With George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Viola Davis, Jeremy Davies, Ulrich Tukur.

Soldier

Russell plays a trained-from-birth future soldier, discarded in favour of a newer breed of super soldier. He's left for dead on a garbage dump planet, where he finds a small colony of crash-landed humans. While this isn't exactly an art movie, Russell does an excellent job showing the slow socialization of this lifetime soldier through the smallest of facial movements. Inevitably he ends up facing off against his replacements (and can you guess the outcome?). Highly entertaining for fans of the genre. Russell and Pertwee are particularly good, and Busey is better than usual in his normal role.

1998, dir. Paul W.S. Anderson. With Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Sean Pertwee, Connie Nielsen, Michael Chiklis, Gary Busey, Jason Isaacs.

Solomon Kane

When I saw this in December 2010, it still didn't have a North American distribution deal. Why not is incomprehensible: it's had excellent reviews and very good box office in Europe, and would do well over here.

Purefroy plays Solomon Kane (a character created by Robert E. Howard of "Conan" fame), a privateer damned to Hell and turned pacifist Puritan. But that's not his fate: a slaughter of innocents eventually drives him back to violence: "If I kill you, I am bound for Hell. It is a price I shall gladly pay."

Purefroy is brilliant in the lead. Postlethwaite and Crook give him some good support, the effects and cinematography are excellent, and the story - except for a somewhat overblown ending - is great. Highly recommended (although only if you have a good tolerance for violence and blood).

2009, dir. Michael J. Bassett. With James Purefroy, Pete Postlethwaite, Mackenzie Crook, Max von Sydow, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Alice Krige, Samuel Roukin, Jason Flemyng.

Solstrom (Disc 1)

Cirque du Soleil takes their shtick to the small screen. While it allows them to skip scene changes, do retakes, and just generally tighten it all up, the bridging story seems more important and thus its silliness becomes more apparent. And I found the whole drill became rapidly annoying by the third episode on the first disc. If I had been watching them each a week apart it might have worked better, but after three episodes there's already some duplication.

2000. With Cirque du Soleil performers, and others.

Some Kind of Wonderful

One of the John Hughes brat pack movies. It's strange how these movies combine some excellent humour and intelligence with really irritating emotional manipulation ... And of course there's the dated clothes, hair styles, and slang. If you want teen Eighties romance that holds up well, see Cameron Crowe's "Say Anything." Nevertheless an enjoyable love triangle teen rom-com.

1987, dir. Howard Deutch. With Eric Stoltz, Mary Stuart Masterson, Lea Thompson, Craig Sheffer, Elias Koteas.

Something's Gotta Give

Nicholson's 63 year old character only dates women under 30 - he starts the movie with Peet. When he has a mild heart attack, he ends up spending more time than he meant to with Keaton, more age-appropriate for him. Reeves plays his doctor, a man also very interested in Keaton. To me, the movie was most notable for McDormand, who looked great, and Reeves, who put in a very good performance. Keaton was severely over-the-top in places, and I have to think that was the director's fault: "scream and wail more." A messy movie with occasional moments of interest, but not very good.

2003, dir. Nancy Meyers. With Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Amanda Peet, Keanu Reeves, Frances McDormand.

Somewhere

Dorff plays Johnny Marco, a Hollywood movie star living an unhappy and dissipated life while surrounded by booze, parties, and women. Then his ex-wife drops his daughter on him for a while.

Coppola establishes the pace from the first shot: incredibly leisurely, verging on glacial. I realize I watch too many action flicks and that's caused me to have a mildly ADD approach to movie-watching, but I was okay - in fact, very happy with - Coppola's own "Lost In Translation" ... not exactly a speedy movie. But this one is too damn slow, and I got tired of watching Dorff's face, and even more tired of watching his Ferrari.

It's a great portrait of a man - Dorff acts well, and the leisurely pace shows his life and unhappiness superbly, but it just takes too long. While the ending is ambiguous, I thought it was fairly hopeful. One of the pleasures of the movie was seeing that, despite his ridiculous lifestyle, he loves his daughter and being around her made him better and brought him back to life.

2010, dir. Sofia Coppola. With Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Michelle Monaghan, Chris Pontius, Simona Ventura.

Somewhere in Time

Reeves plays Richard Collier, a playwright who becomes obsessed with a stage actress of seventy years prior. To be with her, he thinks himself into the past. They dress it up a bit more than that, but not by much: that's what he does, he lays down on the bed and decides he wants to be in the same place seventy years ago. And he has a lovely time with Elise McKenna. Of course there are problems, but what romance is perfect?

Reeves comes across as a big goof - charming, but not someone you would rush to trust. Seymour is dazzlingly beautiful as Elise McKenna. Plummer is McKenna's manager, who makes a bunch of cryptic and never explained comments about her future. The ending is ambiguous. And I now know why most romances are "Rom Coms" - romance without the comedy is a pretty heavy slog. Especially when it's as dull and absurd as this one.

1980, dir. Jeannot Szwarc. With Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, Christopher Plummer.

Sommersby

Based on the French movie "The Return of Martin Guerre" (although the producers were loathe to admit it and I think it took the threat of a lawsuit for them to do so), this is about the return of a man to his town after the Civil War. He behaves differently, and some people think he's an impostor. Paced and built better than the original (although slightly overblown in all dimensions as so many things from Hollywood are), this is a beautiful story. The ending is significantly different than Martin Guerre. And who would have thought an American remake could be better than a French original??

1993, dir. Jon Amiel. With Jodie Foster, Richard Gere.

Son of Rambow

Brit kid comedy set in the early 1980s. Will (played by Milner) is a very sheltered kid whose family belongs to the Plymouth Brethren. He's a good artist: his bible is unreadable because of his drawings. He stays out of trouble at school, but is drawn into it by Lee Carter (Poulter). Carter abuses Will's friendship, and Will is happy because he's seeing the world outside his restrictive household.

The child actors were astonishingly good, and any given conversation, most immediate interactions, made sense. But the long-term interactions of the kids didn't make sense to me. They also repeatedly defied physics ... until the plot called for an injury or two. So no points for consistency. Mildly amusing.

2008, dir. Garth Jennings. With Bill Milner, Will Poulter, Jessica Hynes, Jules Sitruk, Ed Westwick, Tallulah Evans, Anna Wing.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

I really enjoyed this movie ... not that it's particularly good, but it's definitely entertaining. Cage, Baruchel, and Molina all looked like they were having loads of fun, and that really came through, added to the fun of the movie.

We are first introduced to Morgana, Merlin, and Merlin's apprentices - Balthazar (Cage), Horvath (Molina), and Veronica (Belluci). Morgana wants to destroy the world, Horvath betrays Merlin and the other apprentices. Merlin dies and sends Balthazar on a many hundreds of years quest to find "the Prime Merlinian" (ugh, couldn't they have come up with a different name?), the only person who can stop Morgana. This is all explained in about five minutes.

Which brings us to the present day. Baruchel is Dave Stutler, a physics student - now identified as "the Prime Merlinian" by Balthazar, who takes Dave on as his apprentice. With the exception of the scene that was lifted straight from Disney's "Fantasia" segment of the same name, the movie is just fun to watch. The special effects are good, but blend well in the sense that they're there to show what the sorcerer's can do - not what the special effects guys can do.

2010, dir. Jon Turtletaub. With Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Monica Bellucci, Teresa Palmer, Omar Benson Miller.

Source Code

Jones' follow-up to the excellent (but unfortunately not widely seen) "Moon." Someone other than me thought "Moon" was good: they gave him a shitload of cash for this one.

Gyllenhaal plays military pilot Coulter Stevens, who finds himself on board a Chicago-bound commuter train with no idea how he got there. In fact, he has someone else's driver's license ... and their face. Eight minutes after he awakes, the train explodes killing everyone on board. And Coulter Stevens awakes in a small capsule, where he's given instructions to go back to the train and live those eight minutes over and over until he figures out who the bomber is. Not a fun assignment for him, particularly when he really doesn't want to watch the woman he's grown to like (Monaghan) die, over and over again. And his handlers are reluctant to tell him anything about how he got to be where he is. I wasn't entirely happy with the conclusion, although it was better than I expected. But the movie is exceptionally well done.

2011, dir. Duncan Jones. With Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright, Michael Arden.

Southland Tales

Alternate reality science fiction, set in 2008, based on the idea that someone set off a nuclear bomb in Texas sending the U.S. over the brink into "World War III" and complete paranoia. The Patriot Act has expanded into an immense new surveillance program and policing program called USIdent. Papers are required to cross state borders.

This is Kelly's follow-up film after "Donnie Darko" - which I hated. This one makes just as little sense, and a bunch of story lines all come together for an immense climax that makes no sense at all. The only really interesting thing to me was Johnson's performance: it was certainly outside his usual range. He was both more arrogant and less self-assured than his usual characters, and he actually did pretty well.

What makes this whole exercise extremely frustrating is that Kelly's vision of the near future (or alternate future, depending on how you look at it) seems extremely likely and very well constructed. But that's not enough to carry a movie: you need a plot that's cohesive and makes sense.

2007, dir. Richard Kelly. With Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake, Wallace Shawn, Miranda Richardson, Mandy Moore, Christopher Lambert, Kevin Smith, John Larroquette, Jon Lovitz, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Bai Ling.

Souvenir of Canada

Copeland tackles Canada's national identity based on his two "Souvenir of Canada" books. Utterly useless to outsiders as a lesson on Canada, but intriguing and amusing to those who grew up Canadian - although, whether he realized it or not, Coupland targeted primarily his own generation. He shows us stubbies (old style Canadian beer bottles) without ever naming them or talking about their significance, and many, many things fly by like that - present for Canadians to laugh at or reminisce about, meaningless for others. He talks about when Terry Fox started and ended his Marathon of Hope, but doesn't mention Fox's death or that the Marathon was never completed - we all know that. It's a strange movie, partly made up of Coupland's bizarre imaginary playground, but often hitting on things that are core Canadian issues.

2005, dir. Robin Neinstein. With Douglas Coupland.

Soylent Green

While there isn't a computer in sight (their vision wasn't entirely accurate), this is actually a pretty good look at the future: massively overpopulated with huge shortages of food, water, and power. It stays on those themes (and the resultant changes in mores) and brings them home pretty well: it's quite claustrophobic. But there are some weird moments when all the people disappear, and the punchline (about Soylent Green), which I've known for years, isn't nearly as mind-blowing as they think it is. Still, pretty good.

1973, dir. Richard Fleischer. With Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Connors, Joseph Cotten, Brock Peters, Edward G. Robinson.

Spaceballs

Mel Brooks's broadside at the original "Star Wars" movie(s) - although there are parodies of other things in there as well, most notably "The Wizard of Oz." Broad humour, unfunny parody, just generally stupid.

1987, dir. Mel Brooks. With Mel Brooks, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Bill Pullman, Daphne Zuniga.

Space Cowboys

A highly enjoyable and somewhat forgettable movie about sending a bunch of old guys into space. The four leads appear to be having a great time, and it pays off in entertainment for us. This ain't great art, but it sure is fun.

2000, dir. Clint Eastwood. With Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, James Garner, James Cromwell.

Spanglish

This is all about raising your kids and cultural divides. Vega (absolutely gorgeous) plays a Mexican single mom raising her daughter in Los Angeles. She takes a job with the Clasky family (Sandler and Leoni). Sandler plays it almost straight, and does a passable job ... it's Leoni who's massively over-the-top. Probably the best comedic moment in the entire movie comes when Sandler and Vega decide to have a conversation, although neither speaks the other's language. Bruce, playing Vega's daughter, acts as translator. Having been told to translate "very accurately," she proceeds to do word-for-word ... and emotion-for-emotion on both sides of the discussion. Comedic brilliance, but otherwise not a great actress. Steele is very good as the Clasky daughter. Setting aside the intensely frustrating ending, this is an enjoyable and often funny movie.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING - stop reading now if you haven't seen the movie. About the ending: it's not that I can't deal with unresolved stuff or feel that a romance is required. It's that the director himself said the movie is about raising your kids - that's the central and most important thing. And if that's the case, why the fuck is Sandler's character sticking with Leoni's character?? She has no redeeming features, she's a rolling disaster for the entire year of the movie, and she's very clearly screwing up their kids - in fact her only redeeming feature might be that she's aware of that ... occasionally. Sandler is clearly deeply infatuated with Vega, she feels the same and would be immensely better for his kids ... and they walk away. Yup, makes sense to me.

2004, dir. James L. Brooks. With Adam Sandler, Téa Leoni, Paz Vega, Cloris Leachman, Shelbie Bruce, Sarah Steele, Ian Hyland, Cecilia Suárez.

Spawn

Todd McFarlane's graphic novel of the same name turned into a movie. A mix of brilliant and stupid ideas, which appears to be McFarlane's mode of communication. The end result from a novice director is predictably uneven - I enjoyed it, but there are spots where you just have to wince. The basic premise has Jai White as an assassin with moral qualms set up and killed by his boss (Sheen), then offered the opportunity once in Hell to return to Earth to see his wife if he'll lead the army of Hell. He makes the deal and becomes Spawn.

1997, dir. Mark Dippé. With Michael Jai White, Martin Sheen, John Leguizamo, Theresa Randle, Nicol Williamson, D.B. Sweeney, Melinda Clarke.

The Specials

This movie was resting in well-deserved obscurity when I discovered it on the rack at the library - a donated DVD in excellent condition, probably because the previous owner never watched it.

"The Specials" are the seventh best group of superheroes in the world, and they're more concerned with getting a toy merchandise deal than saving the world. I'm inclined to like movies about superheroes, but this one adheres to the Saturday Night Live theory of humour: jokes about sex and bodily fluids combined with blatant stupidity is obviously hilarious. I'm not opposed to jokes about sex or even occasionally bodily fluids ... but if you can't tell a joke without resorting to that, your jokes about sex and bodily fluids won't be funny either. And stupidity-as-humour supporting an entire movie seems to have worked for "Dumb and Dumber," but doesn't seem to have flown in any other context. You also won't see anything super-heroic, although Kennedy spends the movie painted blue and Sean Gunn spends it painted green.

The movie is short at 82 minutes, but still far too long for the number of ideas and funny jokes they mustered. They actually had a half-way capable cast, but the script (by James Gunn) is just painful.

2000, dir. Craig Mazin. With Thomas Haden Church, Rob Lowe, Judy Greer, Paget Brewster, Jamie Kennedy, Jordan Ladd, Kelly Coffield, Sean Gunn, Jim Zulevic, Mike Schwartz, Barry Del Sherman.

Speed Racer

What the Wachowski brothers need more than anything is a good filter. "Yes, make 'The Matrix.' No, we'll pass on 'Reloaded.' 'V for Vendetta' sounds great, but we don't know what kind of crack you were on when you came up with 'Speed Racer.'" But instead the movie companies just throw money at them. This is a strange one, and incredible kaleidoscope of over-amped colours: it has moments of genius (usually visual and surreal - the acting is just over-the-top or flat), but it has at least as many moments when you cringe and look around in unadulterated embarrassment to make sure that no one is seeing you watching this shit. A cadre of good actors couldn't save the resulting mess (Ricci sure as hell wasn't trying), although they definitely looked like they were having fun. Oddly, the script actually had a few moments of feeling, decently written. Just weird.

2008, dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski. With Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Fox, Scott Porter, Benno Fürmann.

Spellbound

An oddly fascinating movie about the 10-12 year olds headed for the 1999 national spelling championship. It sounds dull, but ... they're characters. Pretty good.

Spiderman

I saw this back when it was first released, and in 2008. I was unimpressed with it the first time, although I thought it had some good moments, but I wanted to give it a second chance because I like superhero movies. McGuire and Dunst have zero romantic chemistry. Many of the action sequences, which looked good only six years ago now appear blatantly CG. But the biggest problem for me is the underlying story of Peter Parker: in this movie, as in the original comic, fate has singled him out to have a really shitty life. He's an angst-ridden kid whose actions invariably hurt his loved ones. I'm sick of that. Apparently others aren't: Spiderman started in the 1960s and is still going, several issues per month. Dafoe is quite good as the mildly verbally abusive and neglectful father of Peter's friend, but wildly over-the-top as the Green Goblin. Not really his fault, the Green Goblin is insane. Simmons captures J. Jonah Jameson to perfection ... sadly not a character that needed to come to the screen exactly as seen in the comic books.

2002, dir. Sam Raimi. With Tobey McGuire, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe, James Franco, Cliff Robertson, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons.

Spiderman 2

McGuire and Dunst continue to be the least convincing romantic couple ever put on film. The movie remains true to the tone of the comic - Peter Parker aka Spiderman has a fairly lousy personal life and being Spiderman makes it worse. A passable movie, but cannot compare to my favourites, the X-Men movies.

2004. With Tobey McGuire, Kirsten Dunst, Alfred Molina.

Spiderman 3

I remember a time when I saw McGuire act in a movie ... watching this one it hardly seems possible. McGuire is beyond awful, Dunst is bad ... and you know it's a mess when Franco's is one of the better performances on board. In fact the best of the lot is Hayden-Church, but he spends so much of his time being a special effect it doesn't amount to much. Dunst and McGuire extend their run as total destroyers of romance whenever they're together. Franco is forced to continue the absurd role premiered by Dafoe - jazzed up on drugs, oscillating between best buddy and homicidal maniac ... you know, most people's best friends are like that. The movie also introduces us to the evil emo Peter Parker (infected by an alien symbiote), with the straight, lank and greasy hair, who alternately attracts and repels women (the movie wants you to think it's both, but watching him I can only go with "repels"). Every movie Peter Parker learns big life lessons from Mary Jane, or from Aunt Mae's homilies, and every movie he's forgotten them again so he's forced to learn them again.

The special effects are fairly good, but they can't even begin to cover the fact that this is by far the worst of an already not-particularly good series. Don't see this.

2007, dir. Sam Raimi. With Tobey McGuire, Kirsten Dunst, Thomas Hayden-Church, James Franco, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, Willem Dafoe.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

Based on a children's book, finds rebellious 12 year old Jared (Highmore), his twin brother Simon (also Highmore), sister Mallory (Bolger), and mother (Parker) moving into a house with a history. Jared shortly discovers the secret study of his great-uncle Arthur Spiderwick, and opens "the book" despite warnings not to. This of course precipitates a series of supernatural events involving brownies, goblins, and an ogre.

Sadly the movie doesn't have anything for adults in it. But it's a pretty good kid's movie and the visual effects are enjoyable.

2008, dir. Mark Waters. With Freddie Highmore, Sarah Bolger, Mary-Louise Parker, David Strathairn, Martin Short, Nick Nolte, Seth Rogen, Andrew McCarthy.

The Spirit

Not quite as bad I'd heard, but still pretty damn awful. Miller is good with visuals, but plot and getting decent performances from actors are not among his skills. Worse, what's good in the visuals was already done, and better, by Rodriguez and Miller when they made a movie of Miller's own "Sin City." Here, Miller is trying to bring a "classic" by Will Eisner to the screen. Eisner was hugely influential on comics, but "The Spirit" wasn't so much a "classic" as a very long-running experiment. I liked Ebert on this one: "To call the characters 'cardboard' is to insult a useful packing material."

2008, dir. Frank Miller. With Gabriel Macht, Eva Mendes, Paz Vega, Jaime King, Dan Lauria, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Stana Katic.

Spirited Away

The movie that brought Miyazaki to my attention, along with most of North America. One of the best animated movies ever made. Pretty much indescribable, it's a stunning visual treat with a fabulous plot that develops steadily and sweeps you away. Disney made sure that the English voice work was extremely well done. See this as soon as you can.

2011 update: in the years since its release I've watched this perhaps ten times. The story remains excellent and the artistic detail is astounding - the movie continues to reward every viewing.

2001, dir. Hayao Miyazaki.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring

A Korean Buddhist fable. Bizarre, but good. Extraordinarily beautiful. Follows the life (about 45 years worth) of a Buddhist monk and the child he raises on an isolated monastery floating in a small lake.

2003. dir. Ki-duk Kim.

Spy Game

Pitt plays a young and still idealistic CIA agent, who we see before the title breaking into a Chinese prison in an attempt to break out one of the prisoners. Redford plays his former mentor on his last day at the CIA before retirement. The movie plays out in a series of flashbacks, as Redford is questioned by the CIA about his association with Pitt. Both are effective agents, but the film is about their different styles and moral decisions.

I'm not a huge fan of Scott's direction, this movie actually comes out quite well. Constant flashbacks usually annoy me or leave me disoriented, but here they're handled pretty much perfectly. Redford and Pitt are both excellent, and the story is a very well-constructed old-fashioned spy thriller that manages to be exciting on a visceral level, intelligent, and thought-provoking. Definitely worth a look.

2001, dir. Tony Scott. With Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack.

Spy Kids

Rodriguez's first foray into children's movies, and his best (anyone going to claim that either of the sequels or "Sharkboy and Lavagirl" are better?). A goofy and enjoyable flick about a couple children who find out their parents are retired spies - and then have to set out to save them from an evil plot.

2001, dir. Robert Rodriguez. With Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara, Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alan Cumming, Tony Shalhoub, Teri Hatcher, Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo, George Clooney.

Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams

Equally as silly as the first movie, and almost as much fun. Carmen (Vega) and Juni (Sabara) are back, but this time their parents (Banderas and Gugino) are out of retirement and helping (or occasionally hindering). But this is mostly the kids' movie. Additional comedy comes from the rest of the spy family, their uncle (Trejo) and grandparents (Taylor and Montalban). Buscemi shows up to be goofy too.

2002, dir. Robert Rodriguez. With Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara, Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alan Cumming, Tony Shalhoub, Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo, Ricardo Montalban, Holland Taylor, Steve Buscemi, Emily Osment, Matt O'Leary, Mike Judge, Taylor Momsen.

Stalker

Not, as the title immediately suggests to any North American of my generation, a horror movie. Bizarre Russian SF. "Stalker" is the central character, a man who can find his way through the mysterious "Zone". The "Zone" simply appeared in their country twenty years prior, and most people die immediately on entering it. But if you go with a stalker, he can probably get you to "The Room" where your deepest wish may be granted. In this case, Stalker takes "Writer" and "Professor" into the Zone. Written by the Strugatsky brothers, Arkadi and Boris.

I watched this because Alex Proyas (director of "Dark City") said that it was one of his top five movies, and it was the only one I didn't know of the five. In its favour I can say that the sound is absolutely fascinating: massively overdone, but staggeringly atmospheric despite that. This is a movie to listen to. But the filming ... we see two and a half hours of our three unattractive, (anti-)heroes, often in considerable close-up, stumbling through overgrown industrial wasteland and tearing philosophical chunks out of each other ... when you can understand A) the badly translated Russian and B) the bizarre Russian view of the world. Watching it was a slow and painful process, and (with the occasional exception of the sound design and rarer moments of cinematography) thoroughly unrewarding.

1979, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky. With Aleksandr Kaidanovsky, Alisa Frejndlikh, Anatoli Solonitsyn, Nikolai Grinko, Natasha Abramova.

Star Trek the Next Generation, Season 1 Disc 1

Contains the episodes "Encounter at Farpoint" (double length pilot), "The Naked Now," and "Code of Honor." "Farpoint" was a truly inauspicious start - the introduction of the idiotic "Q" character, Deanna Troi wandering around with a foolish grin saying "I feel great joy," and everyone over-acting because we're just not going to take the time to introduce them over a longer period of time. And then in "The Naked Now" Data and Tasha have sex (sure thing), and Wesley saves the Enterprise - something he was to make a depressingly frequent habit of.

1987. With Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton.

Star Trek the Next Generation, Season 1 Disc 2

Contains the episodes "The Last Outpost" (including the first over-exaggerated appearance of the Ferengi), "Where No One Has Gone Before," "Lonely Among Us," and "Justice." And of course we have Wesley Crusher. While Wil Wheaton has turned out fairly cool, his character was a disaster and it was just as well he was "voted off the island" after the first season.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

This really is pretty much the best thing they ever did with the franchise. In 2011 the special effects look pretty lame, but it really doesn't matter: this thing's got story, character development and drama. It's a great plot, almost everyone is acting remarkably well, and it's just a joy to watch. And while there are a lot of things I like about this movie, my favourite is probably watching Mr. Roarke of "Fantasy Island" (Montalban, for the many people who aren't that old) turning in a brilliantly vicious performance as Khan. If you're a fan of science fiction, this is a must-see.

1982, dir. Nicholas Meyer. With William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Ricardo Montalban, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Kirstie Alley, Bibi Besch, Merritt Butrick, Paul Winfield.

Star Trek: Insurrection

The movie starts with a malfunctioning Data attacking an anthropological research team on the surface of a planet and revealing them to the natives. The Enterprise comes to bring him in, and then stays to investigate the causes. Of course there's more going on than meets the eye.

Frakes, who plays First Commander Riker, also directed the movie. And while "Star Trek" as a franchise has never been particularly subtle in their emotional manipulations and claims of moral high ground, this is a particularly unsubtle movie. Data saying "Saddle up. Lock and load" is representative of the movie, both mildly amusing and very heavy-handed. It's not the worst movie they've ever done, but it's pretty damn bad.

1998, dir. Jonathan Frakes. With Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Levar Burton, Marina Sirtis, Donna Murphy, Anthony Zerbe, F. Murray Abraham.

Star Trek (2009)

Everybody else is rebooting, why don't we? And let's give it to the king of schlock, J.J. Abrams ... Who, amazingly, turns in a good movie. Yes, they use time travel. And get this: they do it in such a way as to fit the current movie into ST canon ... and take it right out of canon so they never have to worry about matching up with any previous story line. Clever.

The movie gets started fast, showing us an exploratory vessel with Kirk's father saving the day ... and dying. This also introduces us to our villain, Nero (Bana). Kirk (Pine) grows up a troubled but brilliant rebel, as Spock (Quinto) grows up a troubled but brilliant half-Vulcan. Both end up in Starfleet Academy, where they clash over Kirk having rigged the Kobayashi-Maru test that Spock wrote (a nice touch to see one of the most famous bits of canon put on film). When Nero threatens the planet Vulcan, most of the Starfleet cadets are pulled abruptly into service, and you can pretty much guess how it goes from there.

Unfortunately, while it's an enjoyable, exciting story, I didn't feel there was any danger of the main characters dying or being significantly injured because this is a franchise. Scotty (Pegg, a poor choice), Bones (Urban), and Chekov (Yelchin) were a little too much caricatures, while Kirk, Spock, Uhura (Saldana), and Sulu (Cho, formerly of "Harold and Kumar" fame, doing very well) were all great characters. And Nimoy as old Spock was amazingly great (never been a fan of his before this). Has some problems, but overall a really enjoyable movie.

2009, dir. J.J. Abrams. With Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Ben Cross, Winona Ryder.

Star Wars

It would be technically correct to say that the characters are two dimensional and the acting wooden, but the story has the resonance and simplicity of myth and is hugely entertaining.

1977, dir. George Lucas. With Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, James Earl Jones.

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

The special effects are fantastic but the acting is so appallingly bad, and the romance between Anakin and the Princess so unconvincing that the whole thing falls apart. The first three were cheesy but charming. The new series is worse despite the huge budget, and has none of the charm.

2002. dir. George Lucas, with Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

The simplicity of the original series (boy's family destroyed, boy goes to war, becomes man, saves galaxy) is replaced here with trade embargoes, Jar Jar Binks, and better special effects than Lucas could ever afford in the first three. The podrace is mildly entertaining and the light sabre battle at the end is what they should have been in the previous three. Neeson tries (he's the only one), but is unable to bring life to one of the worst scripts in the history of film. The plot is equally atrocious, and the end result is a staggering insult to wonderful childhood memories of the original "Star Wars."

1999, dir. George Lucas. With Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid, Ray Park, Jake Lloyd.

Stardust

A friend of mine was disinclined to see this movie because "It wasn't Gaiman's best" (Neil Gaiman wrote the original story). That would appear to be true: the underlying story doesn't live up to "Sandman" or several other things he's done. But, that said, it makes for an immensely enjoyable ride: there are fun twists, there's a lot of good actors having fun, the effects are great, the music is better than average, and it's very funny. It's not great art, but it's about as entertaining as a movie possibly can be and I highly recommend it.

2007, dir. Matthew Vaughn. With Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Mark Strong, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Ricky Gervais, Rupert Everett, Peter O'Toole, Sienna Miller.

Starsky and Hutch

I have no excuse - I was desperate. Big budget stars, big budget movie ... and it's utter and complete trash. I even saw that coming, but I needed a movie to watch while on my stationary bike ...

Stiller plays Starsky, Wilson plays "Hutch." Stiller is uncool and completely incompetent, and nobody seems to notice that the only things he has going for him are a really nice car (the "Striped Tomato" Gran Torino) and the ability to drive it. Hutch on the other hand is quite competent and supposedly cool, but extremely corrupt. Then there's Snoop Dogg as "Huggy Bear," and Vaughn and Bateman as the businessmen/drug dealers.

No competent police work is done, several of the jokes telegraph their arrival five minutes in advance, and none of the jokes (not even the ones that don't telegraph) are funny. Pretty much everyone is humiliated. But the production values are excellent! When Snoop Dogg adds a touch of class to a movie you know something is wrong ...

2004, dir. Todd Phillips. With Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Snoop Dogg, Fred Williamson, Juliette Lewis, Amy Smart, Carmen Electra, Will Ferrell, Chris Penn.

Starter for 10

A coming-of-age story, set in the mid-80s with an all-authentic soundtrack (The Cure, Psychedelic Furs, Yazoo, Tears for Fears ...) and set in Britain. McAvoy plays a charming and intelligent goof starting out at university, struggling to get onto the quiz show he's obsessed with, and choose between two beautiful women (Eve and Hall). Funny, and better than most. Probably falls into "best of category" (ie. coming-of-age), but doesn't step outside that.

2007, dir. Tom Vaughan. With James McAvoy, Alice Eve, Rebecca Hall, Dominic Cooper, Mark Gatiss, Guy Henry, Benedict Cumberbatch, Charles Dance, Lindsay Duncan, James Corden.

The Station Agent

Dinklage plays a dwarf, sick of people, who inherits a train station in the middle of nowhere. He moves there in the hopes of getting away and promptly finds himself embroiled in the lives of several of the locals. No violence, no sex, just people and talking. It's very funny and quite charming. If you want action, this isn't for you. But otherwise I'd highly recommend it.

2003. dir. Thomas McCarthy. With Peter Dinklage, Bobby Cannavale, Patricia Clarkson.

Steamboat Bill Jr.

Buster Keaton's greatest skills are 1) remaining completely deadpan at all times, and 2) falling down. He can fall down like no one you've ever seen ... I had hoped to like this movie more than I did. But it was worth it to see the famous scene in which the entire facade of a building falls on him - he just happened to be standing where the only window landed. They actually did that: measured it out, marked where he should stand, dumped the front of a two storey building on him.

1928. dir. Charles Reisner. With Buster Keaton.

Steamboy

Ten years later we have the follow-up to "Akira." "Akira" was incredibly beautiful, but even those who are fans or have seen it several times generally admit it makes no damn sense. Happily, Otomo seems to have gotten a clue about plotting and cohesion since then, and the movie is possibly even more visually spectacular. Ray Steam is the third generation of a family of steam-powered inventors, and a prodigy himself. Unfortunately, everyone wants their latest invention, and Ray has to figure out what's going on and what to do about it. The English voicing is actually quite good, as odd as it may seem to have Paquin doing a (young) male lead.

2004, dir. Katsuhiro Otomo. English version with Anna Paquin, Alfred Molina, Patrick Stewart, Kari Wahlgren.

Strange Days

Feinnes plays Lenny Nero on the eve of the year 2000 (this qualifies as near-future SF as it was produced in 1995). He's an ex-cop pedalling sleazy experience disc - you wear a "SQUID" headset, and it allows you to experience everything (not just sight and sound, but taste, motion, thoughts) someone else experienced during the recording process. He's obsessed with his ex-girlfriend Faith (Lewis), who's now with a big-name music producer who represented a recently murdered and very famous rapper named Jeriko One. Lenny comes into possession of an incredibly explosive SQUID disc that could easily cause a race riot in their town of L.A. on the eve of Y2K, and now a bunch of people want to kill him ...

Feinnes is great as Lenny, and Lewis is very good too. The other really big role in the movie goes to an unbelievably fit Bassett, as Lenny's long-suffering friend "Mace." Her acting is passable, but doesn't look too good beside Feinnes and Lewis. The movie as a whole is very loud, incredibly sleazy, and surprisingly compelling. Since the year 2000 is now long gone, this will probably only get viewed by a few SF fans, but others should consider giving it a shot.

1995, dir. Kathryn Bigelow. With Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott, Vincent D'Onofrio, William Fichtner, Richard Edson, Brigitte Bako, Glenn Plummer, Josef Sommer.

Stranger than Fiction

Ferrell plays Harold Crick, who comes to realize that he's a character in a book. He realizes this because he hears his author's narration, including mention of his imminent death. The movie follows his adventures trying to locate his author (Thompson) and her attempts to figure out how to kill him off. Post-modern (according to my fellow viewer, who should know), rather bizarre, and exceedingly funny. Thompson is unsurprisingly excellent, but I was rather more surprised to find Ferrell doing a very good job. A really wonderful film, highly recommended.

2006, dir. Marc Forster. With Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Queen Latifah.

Strangers on a Train

Two people meet on a train. One suggests to the other that if both had people in their lives who were a problem, both their difficulties could be solved by swapping murders as there would be no connection between the murderer and the victim, or between the two who met on the train. One thought this was just a bizarre theory, but the other takes it an agreement has been made. Not bad, but hardly my favourite Hitchcock.

1951, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. With Farley Grainger, Robert Walker, Patricia Hitchcock, Ruth Roman.

The Stunt Man

Rush's unquiet meditation on what's real and what we can trust. Cameron (Railsback) is on the run from the police when he stumbles on a film set and upsets a stunt which ends in the death of the stunt man. The director Eli Cross (O'Toole) hides Cameron from the police on the understanding that Cameron will become "Burt," the dead stunt man. Cross is an incredibly manipulative director, and each stunt turns out to be a little different from the original plan ... All of which is complicated by Cameron/Burt falling for leading lady Nina (Hershey).

The movie has a number of utterly brilliant moments, but I felt it fell apart toward the end - particularly around the worst scene, in which Cameron and Nina talk about what crime Cameron committed and their departure together. It reeks of the Seventies, and carries no emotional weight - in fact, it completely derails the film. Still, worth seeing particularly for fans of film in general, and for O'Toole's demented and brilliant performance.

One odd connection I made on this second viewing (in 2011) is between this and The Magus by John Fowles, which I (partly) read in the intervening years. Both are about a young man of somewhat dubious morality caught in the web of a smarter and manipulative older man. It's an interesting association.

1980, dir. Richard Rush. With Peter O'Toole, Steve Railsback, Barbara Hershey, Allen Garfield (as Allan Goorwitz), Alex Rocco, Sharon Farrell, Adam Roarke, Charles Bail.

Sucker Punch

My views on this movie should be taken with a grain of salt as I fast-forwarded through chunks of it.

The story is set up without audible dialogue. Our protagonist, "Babydoll" (Browning) is put in an insane asylum after her mother's death - her (step?)father assaults her after finding out that the daughters have inherited everything, and then frames Babydoll for his murder of the younger sister. In one of the last moments of what might have been reality, we see him paying off an attendant at the asylum to make sure she's lobotomized. From this point forward the movie lives in one of two levels of Babydoll's fantasies, neither of which is very nice.

Snyder has created a visually impressive work, with visual fantasy ranging through feudal Japan, the first and second World Wars, and science fiction - all with further fantasy elements, anachronistic weaponry, and superhuman girls saving the world.

However, the dialogue is heavy-handed, cliched and stupid, and the plot is paper-thin. The acting is really poor ... not that it matters in the face of material this bad. If you're going to watch a bad film for the visuals, go watch "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow:" the script is worse, but the visuals are better. Or watch Wong Kar Wai's "2046": at least it's got decent acting to go with the incomprehensible plot and gorgeous cinematography.

2011, dir. Zack Snyder. With Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Carla Gugino, Oscar Isaac, Gerard Plunkett.

Sukiyaki Western Django

Miike (best known for his Japanese shock horror) opens this bizarro Western with a gunman coming into a town divided between the Red gang and the White gang. Before the movie title is even shown, one of the gang members says "Don't think you're going to go all 'Yojimbo' on us." Referencing your source material can be quite elegant. But when someone references it this way, and then proceeds to do precisely what the character said you couldn't ... it's just tedious. But don't worry: it's still Miike, and you're in for a violent and repulsive experience. There's rape and murder, blood everywhere, stylized and emotionally repugnant. There are better places to get your fix of artistic bloodshed. The acting is poor, with the Japanese cast speaking their lines in bad English. Tarantino is particularly poor, ironic given he's probably the only native English speaker. You know the outcome, but more people die than in most of the other Yojimbo knock-offs. And there's less sense of justice being done.

2007, dir. Takashi Miike. With Hideaki Ito, Masanobu Ando, Shun Oguri, Quentin Tarantino.

Sullivan's Travels

Hollywood movie director Sullivan (McCrea) wants to do "O Brother Where Art Thou" but has only done comedies. To gain understanding of tragedy and "trouble" he decides to become a tramp for a while. He picks up Lake during his travels. Charming, goofy, and funny.

1941, dir. Preston Sturges. With Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake.

Sunset Boulevard

A Hollywood screenwriter hits hard times, and, in evading people trying to repossess his car, he finds what he at first takes to be an abandoned mansion. The owner of the mansion is Norma Desmond, a former silent film star who isn't quite as grounded in reality as she needs to be. They develop a bizarre relationship. It's a well done and extremely creepy movie that I didn't like.

1950. dir. Billy Wilder. With Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Buster Keaton ...

Sunshine

As a longtime fan of science fiction and as an engineer, I'm here to tell you that the failures of logic and physics in this movie are truly breathtaking. Just amazing. Yes, it must have looked absolutely fantastic on a movie screen and even on a TV it looks pretty good and the character drama was fairly good, but the failures of logic and full-on stupidity are just too much. Plot: the sun is dying, let's send a massive bomb on a manned spaceship to kick-start it. Reminded me a great deal of the even worse SF/horror movie "Event Horizon." Isolated crew on a huge ship trying to deal with surreal bullshit.

2007, dir. Danny Boyle. With Cliff Curtis, Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rose Byrne, Benedict Wong, Chris Evans, Troy Garity, Mark Strong.

Super 8

Abrams tries his hand at directing a movie that's been referred to (quite accurately) as a mashup of "E.T." and "Stand By Me" - presumably movies that inspired him as a kid. I'd suggest that we should throw in "Cloverfield," and at that point you know almost exactly what's going to happen. The dialogue is well written: the kids are real kids, the parents are mostly parents, and the interactions felt very accurate. But the story arc is both grandiose and silly, and it just didn't feel like it had much depth by the time we got to the end.

2011, dir. J.J. Abrams. With Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler, Riley Griffiths, Elle Fanning, Glynn Turman, Noah Emmerich.

Superman Returns

Oh God! The clichés!! It burns! Among MANY others, there's the plane full of good guys plunging to their deaths, plunging out of sight, the long pause so you KNOW they've died, then they SOAR to safety ... And all so lovingly crafted with deep respect for the source material.

Lex Luther gets out of jail at the same time Superman returns from an extended holiday tour to see the bones of his home world. Lois is in danger, fly, Superman, fly! Oh no, Lex has Kryptonite! Now Lois must save Superman!

Borrows very heavily from the first Christopher Reeves Superman - this was meant to be a sequel, but is in many respects a remake. At least Spacey got to have some fun with the Luthor role, and Marsden actually looks like he's learning to act. Posey had the conflicted, dumb Luthor sidekick from the previous movie down pat - no great compliment. I expected better of Singer.

2006, dir. Bryan Singer. With Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, James Marsden, Parker Posey, Frank Langella.

Super Size Me

Spurlock goes on a month-long McDonalds-only diet. A funny and horrifying look at junk food culture. Watch the extras on the DVD, especially the interview with the author of Junk Food Nation.

2004 dir. Morgan Spurlock. With Morgan Spurlock.

Surrogates

Willis plays Tom Greer, a cop in a near future world where everyone lives their lives through android surrogates. As a result of this change in society, crime (and disease) have dropped dramatically. But his life (and that of his partner, Agent Peters (Mitchell), get very interesting when two surrogates are destroyed. Not normally a big problem, but in this case the surrogate's operators are killed as well.

Based on the excellent graphic novel of the same name by Robert Venditti, this was something of a disappointment. Willis puts in a great performance, but the changes from the graphic novel were a bad idea. In the original story, destroying the surrogates didn't harm the users, although the intent was the same: make people stop living by proxy. But I think Hollywood (by which I mean either the director or his producers) decided we had to up the ante, endanger lives, blow shit up. Unfortunately, it makes less sense this way. It's still a thought-provoking premise: should we live our lives by proxy, and how bad is that really? But the end product isn't all that good.

2009, dir. Jonathan Mostow. With Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Boris Kodjoe, James Cromwell, Ving Rhames, Jack Noseworthy.

The Sweet Hereafter

A school bus accident leaves most of the families in a small Canadian town without children. A lawyer comes to urge them all to sue ... somebody. It's a creepy, unpleasant movie. One of Egoyan's better known movies - certainly not much fun ...

1998. dir. Atom Egoyan. With Ian Holm, Maury Chaykin, Sarah Polley.

Sweetland

The core story of the movie is a fairly good one, but it's contained inside two frame stories that aren't filled out well at all. We look back from the present to 30 years ago (the senile Frandsen (Cumming) is particularly distracting and unnecessary), and from there we look back another 50 years. It's comprehensible, but detracts from the movie. It may have worked well with the short story that the movie was based on but it fails in this form.

The centre story is about the arrival of a mail order bride in Minnesota just after World War I. The husband-to-be is Norwegian, and the bride is sent along by the parents, so no one is happy when she turns out to be German. But she's strong-willed and a decent person ...

2007, dir. Ali Selim. With Elizabeth Reaser, Tim Guinee, Lois Smith, Ned Beatty, John Heard, Alex Kingston, Alan Cumming.

Swimming Pool

Includes several unpleasant people, a house in the south of France, lots of sex, and a swimming pool. Oh - and the "Alice in Wonderland" excuse.

2003, dir. François Ozon. With Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier.

Swimming With Sharks

Whaley plays the new assistant to Spacey's exceptionally abusive studio executive ... until Whaley snaps, ties Spacey to a chair, and starts abusing right back. Really creepy humour, and somewhat lacking in sympathetic characters. The punchline is actually really good.

1994, dir. George Huang. With Kevin Spacey, Frank Whaley, Michelle Forbes, Benicio Del Toro.

Swordman II (orig. "Xiao ao jiang hu zhi: Dong Fang Bu Bai")

I'm a fan of Li, but this is just a mess. If they'd got it right, it might have been half the movie "Iron Monkey" was, but they didn't get it right. Lots of leaping, flying, exploding, chopping things in half by waving a hand, and a plot that made almost no sense. Aided and abetted by classically bad English subs, although fixing them wouldn't have helped significantly. My favourite: one of the good guys gets agitated over problems and another one says "Brother, stay clam." Perhaps he should have followed with "Are you a man or are you a mollusc?!"

1992, dir. Siu-Tung Ching, Stanley Tong. With Jet Li, Brigitte Lin, Michelle Reis, Waise Lee, Rosamund Kwan, Fennie Yuen.

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T

Tai Chi Master

Sometimes movies shouldn't be released on BluRay. Case in point: "Tai Chi Master," where the wires, dozens of them, have become visible since the DVD release (or perhaps it was VHS - it's been a LONG time since I saw this).

Not that it really matters - this is a DUMB movie. Junbao (Li) and Tienbo (Ho) are best friends from childhood, raised together in a monastery where they learned martial arts. They're kicked out when Tienbo badly injures another student who cheated in a fight and Junbao jumped to defend his friend. The two follow very different paths in the outside world, and no one is surprised to hear they're headed for a showdown.

There are some amusing elements in the movie (intentionally), but the wire work is so pervasive and excessive as to pull the whole movie down. It reminded me of "Iron Monkey" - same director, equal quantity of wire work, and yet much more enjoyable. Partly "Iron Monkey" has a better story, but what I found on closer inspection was that "Iron Monkey" tries much harder to emulate the laws of physics - ie. IF someone could jump this high, they would have to land at this angle to brace themselves. As opposed to "Tai Chi Master" in which people tend to balance only because they're on wires, not because the structure underneath them could possibly be stable.

1993, dir. Yuen Woo-ping. With Jet Li, Micheal Yeoh, Chin Siu Ho.

The Tailor of Panama

I didn't know John Le Carre wrote a farce. Who knew? Not a particularly great one, but at least mildly amusing. Very good performances fall to an uninvolving plot. Brosnan plays a spy in disgrace sent to Panama to finish out his time, where he hooks up with Rush's tailor to try to find out what the high and mighty (who come to Rush for suits) are doing. Rush is an inveterate liar, which leads to problems.

2001, dir. John Boorman. With Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush, Jamie Lee Curtis.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Four heavily armed men hijack one car of a train in New York City and demand a ransom. The robbery is well planned and methodical, leaving the police struggling. Full of well-drawn characters and a lot of cursing, a surprisingly decent movie. Struggle past the Seventies kitsch and occasionally blaring score and you'll find a movie that's influenced every action flick since.

1974, dir. Joseph Sargent. With Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, Earl Hindman, James Broderick, Lee Wallace, Jerry Stiller.

The Tale of Despereaux

Despereaux is a fearless young mouse with gigantic ears and dreams of being a noble knight. His failure to act in an appropriately mouse-like manner eventually gets him thrown out of the mouse community and into the larger world beyond.

I watched this primarily for the style of the animation. It's somewhat uneven, but for the most part is dazzlingly beautiful in a deliberately Renaissance painting style that makes it a pleasure to watch even as the preachy plot falls flat on its face. Hoffman's voice work was a particular stand-out.

2008, dir. Rob Stevenhagen, Sam Fell. With Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, Sigourney Weaver, Emma Watson, Kevin Kline, Ciarán Hinds, Tracey Ullman, Robbie Coltrane, Stanley Tucci.

The Talk of the Town

This movie opens with Grant running from the law, pursued cross-country by a lot of police. He stands accused of arson and murder, and I thought "That's an awfully dark role for Cary Grant." Of course it's not as it seems. Grant ends up hiding out in a house owned by Arthur's character, and she's renting the house to Colman's character. Colman is a lawyer, and the three of them have a farcical little existence together interrupted occasionally by the police. Charming and entertaining but not hugely memorable.

1942, dir. George Stevens. With Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Ronald Colman.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Contains an awful lot of Ferrell/Reilly humour, in which they do their best to act unimaginably stupid, and generally succeed. That doesn't make me laugh. However, there are three or four really good laughs ... I was particularly fond of the knife in the leg (yes, it is a high class of humour). Not that I would recommend sitting through 120 minutes for that. This is mostly a Ferrell/Reilly film, but it's staffed by all the Apatow regulars.

2006, dir. Adam McKay. With Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Gary Cole, Jane Lynch, Amy Adams, Michael Clarke Duncan, Sacha Baron Cohen.

The Taming of the Shrew (CBC, 1988)

Feore plays Petruchio in this CBC DVD of a Stratford stage production. Kate (Semple) in the titular shrew, and Petruchio tames her by means of psychological torture. Presumably this was popular and funny in Shakespeare's time. What amazes me is that it's still popular in our time: it sets my teeth on edge.

1988, dir. Richard Monette. With Colm Feore, Goldie Semple, Henry Czerny, Keith Dinicol, Scott Wentworth, Geraint Wyn Davies.

Tangled

Another remix/reboot/whatever on an old fairy tale. Rapunzel in her tower (kidnapped and raised in the tower from a very young age), kept in a golden prison by Mother Gothel who covets the healing powers of Rapunzel's hair. One day the thief Flynn climbs the tower ... and gets slugged with a frying pan by Rapunzel. Yup, it's updated.

The animation is astonishingly beautiful in an age of great animation - it looks good throughout, but there are several scenes that flow for minutes of breath-taking beauty. There's far too much singing and dancing for me (it's a musical), but this is unlikely to bother anyone else. The story is funny and charming, and I liked Flynn's heroic act at the end ... which should have killed him. But we couldn't stray that far from the expected fairytale structure, so all ends well. Overall very good.

2010, dir. Nathan Greno and Byron Howard. With Zachary Levi, Mandy Moore, Donna Murphy, Ron Perlman.

Tango Charlie

Bollywood does John Wayne. Calling this an "anti-war movie" is like calling a John Wayne movie "anti-war." The violence is graphic and unpleasant (and the director has the sense to cut back on the musical numbers as the clash would be too great), but the hero is still morally pure and the villains evil and in need of killing, and at the end we're supposed to cheer for our hero's great act of patriotism - even though he's sunk to the level of violence that he's previously so carefully avoided. It's an interesting movie, but please don't say it's "anti-war." If you want that, see "Three Kings."

2005, dir. Mani Shankar. With Bobby Deol, Ajay Devgan, Sanjay Dutt, Sunil Shetty, Tanisha.

Taxi Driver

The world according to Travis Bickle. "Are you talking to me?" Bickle is a mentally unstable former marine, now a taxi driver. A very famous film that I didn't enjoy much at all. It's good, I just didn't like it.

1976. dir. Martin Scorsese. With Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel.

10

I watched this two hour movie in about one hour with my thumb hovering over the fast forward. George Webber (Moore) is a successful song writer with an intelligent, pretty, and likable girlfriend (Andrews ... who happens to be married to Edwards) who becomes obsessed with a young and gorgeous girl (Derek). He declares her an 11 on a scale of one to ten, and pursues her to Mexico where she's honeymooning with her new husband.

There are some intelligent jokes and some valid commentary on mid-life crises, but most of the movie is about sex, tits, and humiliation (of Moore). Derek is attractive, but there's no shortage of attractive women in the world and I didn't quite get the obsession. Not worth seeing.

1979, dir. Blake Edwards. With Dudley Moore, Julie Andrews, Bo Derek, Robert Webber, Dee Wallace-Stone, Brian Dennehy.

10 Things I Hate About You

A teen flick re-interpretation of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew." The idea has "disaster" written all over it, but against all odds and thanks to some superb writing, this is an incredibly clever and hilarious movie. "How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways."

1999, dir. Gil Junger. With Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik.

Tenure

Wilson plays a professor at a small college. He's a very good teacher, but a lousy researcher with an almost non-existent history of publishing. Now a Yale professor (Mol) has joined his department, and his best friend (Koechner) is encouraging him to sabotage her (when he's not off chasing Bigfoot).

Embarrassing and unfunny. The writer does seem to have a knowledge of what it's like to work on a campus (I worked at a mid-sized college in the U.S. for a decade), but can't muster humour in situations that should have been easy. Very disappointing.

2009, dir. Mike Million. With Luke Wilson, David Koechner, Gretchen Mol.

Terminator Salvation

So the old stars fall and the young rise. Bale and Ironside did yelling, Worthington and Yelchin did acting. Bale has done some excellent roles, but he sure as hell didn't strain himself here. Worthington plays a convicted murderer, executed in 2003, resurrected in 2018 in the middle of the "War with the Machines." He doesn't know what the hell is going on - but is strong and quick and good at staying alive. Bale plays John Connor, very interested in Yelchin because Yelchin is his father - and the person he has to send back in time to meet and save his mother, and thus become his father. The machines are equally interested in Yelchin, because killing him would prevent all of that happening.

There's lots and lots of action, and an awful lot of explosions, but the drama ... well, not much. Worthington as a partially human machine (or partially machine human) is most interesting to watch as a creature who wants to be human, and is horrified at what he may be. But overall, this is an explosion movie, not a drama.

2009, dir. McG (aka Joseph McGinty Nichol). With Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood, Bryce Dallas Howard, Common, Michael Ironside, Helena Bonham Carter.

Terry

Prior to seeing this film I tended to think of Ashmore (good Canadian boy that he is) as a serviceable but not brilliant actor. He put his heart into this one - he's excellent. And the movie is too. The movie is about amputee Terry Fox's run across Canada to raise money for Cancer research - or at least about as much of that run as he managed to make. Possibly the closest thing that Canada has to a national hero. All the support cast are good as well. Definitely worth watching.

2005, dir. Don McBrearty. With Shawn Ashmore, Ryan McDonald, Noah Reid, Matt Gordon, Catherine Disher.

Terry Jones' Medieval Lives (Disc One)

I wasn't keen on Jones' method of presentation, mixing himself in ludicrous costumes and animated medieval drawings reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's Monty Python work with documentary discussion of the period, but I found the information conveyed utterly fascinating and more than enough to outweigh the unfunny humour. The four episodes on this disc - "The Peasant," "The Monk," "The Damsel," and "The Minstrel" all exploded the myths of the medieval lives of each of these groups of people most convincingly. Recommended.

2004, dir. Nigel Miller. With Terry Jones.

Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die

Pratchett (one of the world's best known comedy fantasy writers, with 20+ novels written in the Discworld series) has developed Alzheimer's disease. Accompanied by BBC Scotland cameras and his personal assistant, he goes to find out about how he can make the choice to die through assisted suicide.

I've read many of Pratchett's books, and I've seen him speak - he's a very funny man. I was very sad to hear that he'd developed Alzheimer's. I'm with him all the way in his belief that we should have the right to choose. He visited a couple of British men who were planning to take the assisted suicide route: Peter Smedley (motor neurone disease) and Andrew Colgan (multiple sclerosis). He also visited the widow of Hugo Claus (another writer, Alzheimer's). I'm defining them here by their diseases, but the movie shows at least a small part of who they are, and it's truly heartbreaking: Colgan in particular seemed like a really nice guy, and relatively young at 42. And yet you can see why he's making the call: his motor skills had deteriorated badly and were continuing to get worse. To even the scales slightly, he also visited a man with motor neurone who had chosen to live in a hospice rather than take assisted suicide.

Dignitas in Switzerland is pretty much the only option for British citizens looking for assisted suicide: it's not legal in Britain, and of the countries that allow it, Switzerland is the only one where non-locals can legally do it. They spent some time with the staff of Dignitas, and Smedley and his wife allowed the cameras in on his exit. I cried.

2011, dir. Charlie Russell.

Tesla: Master of Lightning

PBS documentary about my favourite inventor. Took the long view - until well after his death and the repercussions of his work and ideas - and didn't flinch away from his strange behaviours. I didn't think it told enough about his inventions, but that wouldn't have been possible in the hour and a half run time. Overall, not bad.

The Terminal

Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, a visitor to New York caught in political limbo by the implosion of his country during his flight over. He's forced to stay in the airport terminal for months. A light-weight, charming and amusing movie. Hanks is superb, as always.

2004, dir. Steven Spielberg. With Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci.

The Theory of Flight

This one's a bit weird. It's brought down by Hallmark moments, and lifted up by a couple really excellent performances by Bonham Carter and Branagh. "Based on a true story," Bonham Carter plays a severely crippled woman, and Branagh the man on community service assigned to help her. Without them it would have been nothing, but with them, it manages some very memorable moments.

1998, dir. Paul Greengrass. With Helena Bonham Carter, Kenneth Branagh, Gemma Jones, Ray Stevenson.

The Thin Man

The first movie starring the famous duo of Powell and Loy as Nick and Nora Charles. Powell has married money (Loy) and has retired from sleuthing, but his visit to his hometown finds him embroiled in a murder investigation anyway. The first five minutes of the movie is some of the most brilliant scene-setting I've ever seen: you learn more about five characters (three on-screen and two off) in those five minutes than you do in entire movies sometimes. And they do it with very funny dialogue. Powell and Loy are wonderful together and the whole movie is entertaining. The only disappointment was the "let's gather all the suspects together for dinner and have a dénouement" ending. Perhaps it wasn't old and lame at the time, but it is now. That aside, I'm looking forward to watching the next in the series - I wonder how far I'll get before it grows old?

1934, dir. W.S. Van Dyke. With William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan.

Thirst (orig. "Bakjwi")

Priest Sang-hyun volunteers for an experiment with a deadly virus, hoping to help find a cure, but instead ends up a vampire after the disease nearly kills him and he's given a blood transfusion. The vampirism keeps the disease at bay, but only if he drinks blood frequently. He also finds himself having trouble controlling his desires, and enters into an affair with the neglected wife of a childhood friend.

Park is perhaps best known over here for The Vengeance Trilogy - after watching "Old Boy" I refused to watch "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance." Not that "Old Boy" is bad: it's both interesting and utterly appalling. I wanted to see what Park would do with the vampire genre.

The movie is creepy, erotic, violent, bloody ... and overall quite fascinating. Not for the faint of heart, but not so emotionally repugnant as "Old Boy."

2009, dir. Park Chan-wook. With Song Kang-ho, Kim Ok-bin, Shin Ha-kyun, Kim Hae-sook.

13 Conversations About One Thing

A pastiche of scenes, pasted together out of order (reconstructing them in your head is one of the few rewarding parts of this movie) about a bunch of different people whose lives intersect, mostly discussing fate and what life has in store for us. Arkin is excellent as a miserable and truly unlikeable guy - although you're likely to have some pity for him at some point. But I really, really didn't like the movie's attitude that if you're happy now, you won't be soon enough: something horrible is going to happen to each and every one of us, and soon. Brought on by ourselves or others - don't even bother trying to be happy.

2001, dir. Jill Sprecher. With Alan Arkin, Matthew McConaughey, John Turturro, Clea DuVall, Tia Texada, Barbara Sukowa, Amy Irving.

13 Going On 30

It's "Big," but with a girl! And less substance! And Tom Hanks was better - although Garner does a very good job, I'm not knocking her performance, she's just up against a very good actor. The story finds our 13 year old heroine, Jenna (played by Allen at this age), desperately trying to be cool, and then when it doesn't work out as expected, desperately wishing she was thirty. A wish that's granted. Whereupon she discovers all the predictable lessons: you need to get there by growing up, friendship is more important than coolness, etc. etc. Garner draws some solid laughs as a 13 year old in a 30 year old body, but the movie is predictable and fairly hollow.

2004, dir. Gary Winick. With Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo, Judy Greer, Andy Serkis, Kathy Baker, Phil Reeves, Christa B. Allen, Sean Marquette.

The Thirteenth Floor

A computer-based alternative reality science fiction movie that disappeared completely because it had a very similar premise to another movie that came out the same year called "The Matrix." This one is perhaps not as good, but is fascinating for taking the idea in a radically different direction, and doing it pretty damn well. Bierko is our protagonist, a programmer in the modern day world, who has helped his boss (Mueller-Stahl) build a computer simulation of 1937 L.A. that is so accurate it might as well be reality. Mueller-Stahl has barely been introduced when he's murdered, and Bierko has to step into this simulation to figure out why everything went sideways.

1999, dir. Josef Rusnak. With Craig Bierko, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Gretchen Mol, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dennis Haysbert.

The 13th Warrior

Banderas plays Ahmed ibn Fadlan Arab poet assigned, as punishment, as emissary to the "Northmen" (otherwise known as "the Vikings"). He promptly finds himself sent off as the 13th Warrior (although he protests that he doesn't fight at all) to fight an unknown enemy with 12 warriors who speak a language he doesn't know (although that part is solved fast enough).

Banderas is charming in this very violent, bloody, and gritty film - as are his band of brothers, the other 12 Viking warriors. Nobody you've every heard of. But a reasonably intelligent script based on a Michael Crichton novel ("Eaters of the Dead") makes for some fun viewing - I particularly liked Storhoi as the Viking who takes ibn Fadlan under his wing.

1999, dir. John McTiernan. With Antonio Banderas, Dennis Storhoi, Vladimir Kulich, Omar Sharif, Clive Russell, Richard Bremmer, Tony Curran.

The 39 Steps

One of Hitchcock's earlier movies, before he moved to the U.S. Mistaken identity spy story, not bad.

1935. dir. Alfred Hitchcock. With Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll.

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould

A fascinating portrait of Glenn Gould, one of the most famous classical musicians who ever lived. Extremely talented but eccentric in the extreme, this is an uncompromising and unusual portrayal of him in the form of 32 short segments. It would help if you knew something about him or liked his music, but I think it would stand well on its own. Feore's performance is very effective.

1993. dir. François Girard. With Colm Feore.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

A movie about the American film ratings system - a rather good one too. The screeners who rate movies are kept entirely anonymous to those that they rate "to avoid influence." Interestingly, they will talk directly to movie producers and directors - ie. those that are most likely to want to influence them. Dick shows us a large number of sex scenes (in an amazingly clinical manner, but not surprisingly it got an early cut of his movie an NC-17 rating) to show the bizarre biases in place in the ratings system. He doesn't bother discussing violence, because it's clear early on that the raters believe that a 13 year old will be fine watching hideous murders but will be permanently warped by two people having consensual sex. A fascinating movie - watch the extras on the DVD as well.

2006, dir. Kirby Dick. With Atom Egoyan, Darren Aronofsky, Trey Parker, Kimberly Peirce.

This Gun for Hire

Ladd plays Raven, a hired killer who did a job for Gates (played by Cregar). When Raven finds out he's been set up for a fall with his pay-off, he goes on a rampage for revenge. In the process, he takes Lake hostage - a couple times. And saves her life once.

Based on Graham Greene's A Gun for Sale, the movie was a pleasure for being more intelligent than most. I haven't read the original book and I suspect that they've made huge changes - Greene wrote it in 1936, but now it's set in America and the Japanese are the enemy. Nevertheless, some of the complexity survived the inevitable re-writes.

1942, dir. Frank Tuttle. With Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar.

Thor

After an appalling set of trailers came this surprisingly decent movie. Thor (Hemsworth) is cast out of Asgard, sent to Earth as a human for his excessive arrogance. Things play out pretty much as expected: he doesn't deal well with being human, he beats people up, he meets a nice woman (Portman) and father figure (Skarsgård), he starts to settle in. But Asgard isn't done with him, evil comes to Earth and he must recover his power to defend a place and people he now loves. You get the idea.

Still doesn't sound that good, does it? But they do it well, and they do it with humour, and it's a fun ride. Probably only good for those who are fans of the Marvel universe, but if you are, this is definitely worth a watch.

2011, dir. Kenneth Branagh. With Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgård, Clark Gregg, Jaimie Alexander, Ray Stevenson, Joshua Dallas, Hogun, Idris Elba, Colm Feore.

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

An outlaw (Crowe) is captured in a small town. A poor rancher (Bale) with a bunch of problems agrees to escort him to the train - for a fee. A very good script and really good performances all around take what could have been a mundane Western and bring it up to something that deserved its large cluster of award nominations.

2007, dir. James Mangold. With Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Logan Lerman, Dallas Roberts, Ben Foster, Peter Fonda, Gretchen Mol, Alan Tudyk.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Estrada (played by Cedillo, at least when he's alive) is an illegal immigrant from Mexico working as a ranch hand in Texas. Jones directs and plays the lead role, Estrada's best friend. When Estrada is killed, Jones takes his (re-)burial into his own hands. There are a lot of flashbacks but the timing is generally pretty clear. There's some seriously warped humour about the dead body and (unrelated but several times) sexual dysfunction. A lot is left unstated - sometimes just unanswered questions and sometimes things that the viewer can work out on their own. Twisted, excellent, and very memorable. Highly recommended.

2005, dir. Tommy Lee Jones. With Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio Cedillo, Dwight Yoakim, January Jones, Melissa Leo, Levon Helm.

300

Following after "Sin City," firmly establishes red as Frank Miller's favourite colour. (In case you're not getting it, that would be BLOOD.) I liked "Sin City." While it was drawn in broad strokes and was incredibly nasty and bloody, it was at least interesting. This one is packed full of boring, unswerving archetypes: The Noble King (one), The Noble Queen (one), The Noble Warrior (300), The Corrupt Priest (five), The Corrupt Politician (one), The Insane God King (one), etc. The Noble Warrior(TM) comes complete with CGI washboard abs and muscles - like the real Spartans would all have had those. So we have a long drawn out setup and macho battles, with the final inevitable conclusion - you do know about the Spartans at Thermopylae, right?.

2006, dir. Zack Snyder. With Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West, David Wenham, Vincent Regan, Michael Fassbender, Tom Wisdom, Andrew Pleavin, Andrew Tiernan, Rodrigo Santoro.

3 Idiots

The first copy of this that I saw had staggeringly bad subs: they only appeared intermittently and occasionally vanished a tenth of a second later (leaving me to rewind to make repeated attempts to pause in the right place), they were a grammatical disaster, and most of the time they weren't there at all. So I was patching the dialogue and plot together from these subs and the chunks of heavily accented English that would occasionally appear mid-sentence (the movie was in at least three different languages).

I loved this film despite missing half of the dialogue, and having seen it in the theatre with a decent set of subtitles I love it even more. You may be thinking "of course," but it could have gone either way: bad dialogue over a good story arc happens frequently enough.

The story is about three friends who met in Engineering College: Farhan (Madhavan), our narrator, a good guy who doesn't really want to be an engineer but his father laid out his path pretty much from birth. Raju (Joshi) loves engineering, but the entire economic future of his family hangs on his success, and he's nervous. And Rancho (Khan), who cares only for learning - and perhaps the health of his friends. Five years after they graduate Farhan and Raju are brought together by Chatur (Vaidya) who was their nemesis at school but claims to know the whereabouts of Rancho. The movie is partly a road trip as they search for Rancho, but primarily a series of flashbacks to school.

This was the highest grossing Bollywood film ever (although it only held that record for about a year after its release), and I think it deserves the credit: it's dramatic, funny, charming, and totally engrossing. It's amazingly short on musical numbers (there are two and a half in the 160 minute run-time), making it easier(?) for North Americans to get their heads around it - and they're good numbers too. As an added bonus, they must have had an engineer on staff as a consultant: all the technical stuff actually made sense and could have been real.

It's finally occurred to me how to describe completely in two words: "Bollywood Capra." If you know film, that'll tell you everything you need to know.

2009, dir. Rajkumar Hirani. With Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Kareena Kapoor, Boman Irani, Omi Vaidya, Parikshit Sahni, Javed Jaffrey.

Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon

Set during one of the worst periods of near-permanent warfare in China (historically known as "Three Kingdoms"), shows the rise and eventual fall of Zhao Zilong (Lau).

This is meant to show courage, honour, nobility and tragedy, but it's just long-winded and stupid. They hired lots of people to mill about for the battle scenes and used lots and lots of fake blood. Don't expect good fighting: despite Sammo's presence as action choreographer, the action is chaotic and ludicrous (people throw people through the air on the end of a spear, and many people are hurled off horses by the impact of an arrow). We are supposed to see that, while Zhao's end was tragic, he lived nobly. But mostly it just struck me as tedious.

2008, dir. Daniel Lee. With Andy Lau, Sammo Hung, Maggie Q, Vanness Wu, Andy On, Ti Lung.

Three Kings

The Gulf War, seen in shades of gray (but the humour is black - very black). In one scene, one of the main characters is tortured, and yet you have sympathy for the torturer as well because of what you know about him. The refusal to paint things in black and white is so rare in war movies ... Disturbing and very good.

1999, dir. David O. Russell. With George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube.

The Three Musketeers (1948)

I'm a fan of the Michael York version, and this one is equally absurd in its own way. Kelly plays the brash, annoying, and charming D'Artagnan. It reminded me a great deal of anything by Errol Flynn: the same gaudy colourful costumes, stagy feel, and wild swashbuckling. Kelly certainly had much of the Jackie Chan thing going on in the fight sequences, leaping about with incredible skill and drawing the laughs. To my surprise, it did have some serious moments and even tragedy - somewhat burdened by the stagy feel and period acting, but overall a very enjoyable film. I still favour the York version, but this was definitely a lot of fun.

1948, dir. George Sidney. With Gene Kelly, Lana Turner, June Allyson, Van Heflin, Angela Lansbury, Frank Morgan, Vincent Price, Keenan Wynn, John Sutton, Gig Young, Robert Coote.

The Three Musketeers (1973)

Possibly the most filmed story ever, this was the first movie version I saw. My preference for this version is probably partly because of that, but I also think this is a thoroughly entertaining version of the tale.

York plays the unmannered country boy d'Artagnan, come to Paris to join the Musketeers. He promptly offends, in different circumstances, three different musketeers and sets up duels with each. At the first duel it's discovered that the three he's offended are all good friends, but d'Artagnan fights none of them as they're interrupted by six of the Cardinal's guards and all four fight the guards instead. The musketeers see that d'Artagnan has skills, and are reconciled to him etc.

I have some issues with Dumas' plot: the King's a moron and the Queen's having an affair with a lord in the enemy court, but we must defend the Queen's honour at all costs? Where's the musketeer's so highly valued honour in that? But if you're okay with that, well, it's a very funny and charming story. The fights are good - and very different from the swashbuckling versions of "The Three Musketeers" seen previously - more like brawls, as one reviewer put it.

It was a surprise to me that I particularly liked Heston as the Cardinal - I've never been much of a fan of his. But he beautifully balances ruthless, charming and power-hungry for possibly the best dramatic performance in the movie(s) (I'm thinking of "The Four Musketeers" as well, as they were originally intended as one film). Milligan as M. Bonacieux, Welch as Constance Bonacieux, and Kinnear as Planchet have no drama to play - they're full-on parodies. But the rest of the cast are pretty good, and clearly having a great time doing it.

1973, dir. Richard Lester. With Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Geraldine Chaplin, Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee, Simon Ward, Raquel Welch, Spike Milligan, Roy Kinnear.

Time After Time

McDowell plays H.G. Wells, who in 1893 hadn't come into his fame but had invented a time machine ... which he hadn't had the nerve to test. He tells his friends this over dinner, but they're interrupted by the police who are searching for Jack the Ripper who had just killed nearby. The bag of Wells' friend, Dr. John Leslie Stevenson (Warner), contains proof that he's the Ripper ... but the police can't find him. After they leave, Wells finds the time machine gone and is forced to follow Stevenson to the year 1979.

The mood of the movie is (reasonably enough, given when it was made) painfully Seventies. The effects are atrocious, on a par with Dr. Who of the period. And the score is a bit heavy-handed. Even the chase scenes are a bit sad. But for all that, the human drama is pretty good: Warner is having a blast as Jack, and McDowell and Steenburgen, while not brilliant, are fairly good. And the story itself is well put together. Despite the harsh words, I really liked it and would recommend it to fans of the genre.

1979, dir. Nicholas Meyer. With Malcolm McDowell, David Warner, Mary Steenburgen.

Timeline

Walker plays the son of a dedicated archaeologist (Connolly) who's fallen for the archaeologist's grad student (O'Connor) - unfortunately he has no interest in history. It turns out that their dig is being funded by a big corporation that has a wormhole through time to the period of the place they're excavating, and of course a motley crew gets sent back in time. The problem is that a movie like this requires massive attention to sorting out the time paradoxes involved, and the main thing that got attention was action sequences and explosions. Continuity took a back seat as well, and, while they sorted out one or two of the time paradoxes in rather interesting ways they created dozens more that were completely ignored. Did you know that the English in 1357 spoke modern American English?

2003, dir. Richard Donner. With Paul Walker, Frances O'Connor, Gerard Butler, Billy Connolly, David Thewlis, Anna Friel, Neil McDonough, Michael Sheen, Matt Craven, Lambert Wilson.

The Time Machine (2002)

"One of those staggeringly well-produced, joylessly extravagant pictures that keep whooshing you from one visual marvel to the next, hastily, emptily." (Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune.) This seems to have been the general consensus among critics, despite which I quite liked it. Unfortunately, I can see what they mean. The sets (at every age) are spectacular. They've changed details of the story at every single step - but the ideas added were actually pretty damn interesting. The ending is a little too Hollywood. Still, worth seeing.

2002, dir. Simon Wells. With Guy Pearce, Mark Addy, Phyllida Law, Sienna Guillory, Orlando Jones, Samantha Mumba, Omero Mumba, Jeremy Irons.

Titan A.E.

An animated movie set far in the future, our reluctant hero (Cale, voiced by Linz and Damon) is the survivor of the recent destruction of Earth and the son of the man who may have drawn down the wrath of the aliens that destroyed the planet. 15 years on he's 20 years old and someone wants him to find his father's ship and potentially save the human race - a task he has little enthusiasm for.

My first reaction to the film was that the mix of computer and hand animation (the latter used exclusively for characters) was a bit cheesy, the emotional targeting was at kids, and this was essentially "Bluth does anime." But the film drew me in: the division of animation styles was a little jarring, but much of it was quite beautiful. The story was somewhat confused about its emotional level, and yet it mostly works. An entertaining film, probably best for fans of the genre.

2000, dir. Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. With Matt Damon, Bill Pullman, John Leguizamo, Drew Barrymore, Nathan Lane, Janeane Garofolo, Ron Perlman, Tone Loc.

To Catch a Thief

Grant plays a retired cat burglar accused of a new set of crimes in the south of France where he lives. He sets out to find out who the real criminal is, and in the process meets the daughter of a woman who owns a fine set of jewels (Kelly). It's not as tense as some Hitchcock movies, but it's entertaining from end to end and unquestionably worth seeing. One of Hitchcock's best.

1955, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. With Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, John Williams, Charles Vanelle, Brigitte Auber, Jean Martinelli, Georgette Anys.

To Kill a Mockingbird

While I read the book many years ago, I had managed to mostly forget it. And that was a good thing when watching this classic movie, as it was new to me again. Peck plays Atticus Finch, a small town lawyer in the American South during the Great Depression, defending a black man accused of rape. But the story is seen through the eyes of his young daughter "Scout," played marvellously well by Badham. "Atticus" remains a name that people recognize, a name synonymous with justice - and the bravery to stand in front of a lynch mob. A very good movie.

Notable also for the first film appearance of Duvall in the small but important part of Boo Radley.

1962, dir. Robert Mulligan. With Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, John Megna, Brock Peters, James Anderson, Collin Wilcox, Robert Duvall.

To Kill With Intrigue (orig. "Jian hua yan yu Jiang Nan")

One of Chan's worst movies - which is saying something, as he's been involved in some pretty bad ones. This was before he started using humour in his movies. Staggeringly awful editing (including film tinting that changes from blue to yellow, sometimes even in the same scene), a plot that makes no sense (editing isn't entirely at fault here, although it certainly didn't help), and bad martial arts.

1977, dir. Wei Lo. With Jackie Chan, Ching Hsia Chiang.

Tokyo Godfathers

Unusual among the anime that makes it over to North America, this movie has no science fiction or fantasy elements - although it does have one or two Christmas miracles. The main characters are a group of three homeless people in Tokyo who discover an abandoned baby on Christmas day. As they care for the baby and attempt to find the parents to return it, their histories are finally revealed to the others and they each find some hope. It's absurd, surreal, and charming, definitely a must-see for fans of the genre, and a good movie even for those who don't watch anime. I loved Kon's "Millennium Actress," I'm now really looking forward to his future output.

2003, dir. Satoshi Kon and Shôgo Furuya. With Toru Emori, Aya Okamoto, Yoshiaki Umegaki.

Tom Yum Goong (aka "The Protector")

Tony Jaa's second film, his first being "Ong Bak." He channels a younger Jackie Chan, doing hair-raising stunts and crazy martial arts, complete with outtakes during the final credits. But it's much more violent than Jackie Chan: much more blood, and more broken bones and dislocations than you can count.

2005. dir. Pratchya Pinkaew, with Tony Jaa.

Tombstone

I read on Wikipedia that Cosmatos "ghost-directed," and Russell was the actual director. Russell also plays Wyatt Earp, and the movie centres around the very famous and already much-filmed gunfight at (or near) the OK Corral. Elliott and Paxton play his brothers, with whom he's trying to set up a life that doesn't involve law enforcement. Kilmer (excellent, as he intermittently is) plays Doc Holliday. I watched this back-to-back with "Silverado," another Western: lighter and more enjoyable fare, but this is definitely the better movie. Russell's acting is a bit wooden and Heston is stuffed in more as a tribute than a necessity. But it's well done, and quite memorable.

1993, dir. George P. Cosmatos (or possibly Kurt Russell). With Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliot, Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Jason Priestley, Thomas Haden Church, Jon Tenney, Dana Delany, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Charlton Heston.

Top Gun

I saw this when it came out: the movie that brought you the songs "Danger Zone" and "Take My Breath Away" (performed by Kenny Loggins and Berlin respectively, but written by Giorgio Moroder ... which explains a lot), the incredibly distinctive Harold Faltermeyer score, and the quote "I feel the need for speed!" The extras claim it also put the phrase "crash and burn" into wide circulation - I'm less certain of that.

Cruise plays Lieutenant Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, who, along with his RIO (Radar Intercept Officer) "Goose" (played by Edwards), is sent to "Top Gun," the Navy school for the best pilots. He's incredibly talented, and incredibly cocky and self-assured. He chases one of the civilian instructors (McGillis) and just generally causes problems.

I loved this movie when it came out, but now (2010) it looks like a walking, talking cliché. It looks good, and the aerial footage is excellent (they had unprecedented assistance from the Navy flying group). The acting is passable. I loved the character of "Goose" and thought Edwards was excellent, and Ryan's small part as his wife was one of her best ever. But the rah rah patriotism and clichéd story line ultimately sink the movie.

1986, dir. Tony Scott. With Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards, Tom Skerritt, Michael Ironside, Meg Ryan, Rick Rossovich.

Topper

A movie's worth of Bennett and Grant clowning about ... or so the publicity would have you believe. Personally, I think Young deserves more of the credit: while Bennett and Grant play the loving dead couple helping/harassing Topper (played by Young), Young has to respond to empty air and often act as if these invisible people are poking, prodding, or assisting him. And he manages some very good slapstick at times. The dialogue is also quite witty, making for an enjoyable film.

1937, Norman Z. McLeod. With Constance Bennett, Cary Grant, Roland Young, Billie Burke.

Topper Returns

A pathetic attempt to cash in on the previous movie, but without Grant or Bennett, without a consistent plot, and without Young actually doing any worthwhile slapstick - mostly just mugging. There's still some witty dialogue, but the plot is such a mess, so over-the-top, that the movie falls completely to pieces.

1941, dir. Roy Del Ruth. With Joan Blondell, Roland Young, Carole Landis, Billie Burke, H.B. Warner.

Topsy-Turvy

Follows the lives of Gilbert and Sullivan (and their wives/girlfriend(s), management, and players) from the opening of "Princess Ida" - representative here of stagnation of their relationship and skills - to the opening of "The Mikado," one of their most successful comic operas. Spends too much time proving they're in a rut by making us watch big chunks of "Princess Ida" and then "The Sorcerer." It also attempts to follow far too many of the lesser characters with a scattered dramatic aim that diffuses any hope of a worthwhile story emerging. The acting is good (but achieves little), and the production values are superb. If only they had A) cut the unnecessary 155 minute running time, and B) found a worthwhile story in the hash of lives they showed, they might have had a movie.

1999, dir. Mike Leigh. With Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner, Timothy Spall.

Touch of Pink

To quote the IMDB plot outline: "A gay Canadian living in London has his perfectly crafted life upset when his devoutly Muslim mother comes to visit." Weird and silly, and not as funny as it thought it was.

2004. dir. Ian Iqbal Rashid. With Jimi Mistry, Kyle MacLachlan, Kristen Holden-Reid.

The Tourist

Jolie plays Elise, a mysterious woman trailed by the police. They're following her to find her ex-, who stole a couple billion dollars. When she gets a letter from him and takes off, they follow. Depp plays Frank, a math teacher on vacation that Elise uses as a decoy. But he keeps fumbling his way back into the action after he's been ejected ...

I'm a little tired of Jolie, but Depp is superb: that's definitely his face, but the character is different again from any other character he's ever played before. Sadly, that's not enough to save a fairly badly plotted movie with a bunch of logical inconsistencies. It was a surprise to me when von Donnersmarck's name came up in the credits: he helmed one of the best (and most meticulously constructed) movies I've seen in the last decade, "The Lives of Others." But I guess the paycheck attached to this one was enough to get him by the poor quality of the script ...

2010, dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. With Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, Steven Berkoff, Rufus Sewell.

Toy Story 2

The best of the three, this installment finds Woody accidentally in a garage sale where he's stolen by a toy collector who plans to sell him to a toy museum in Japan. So Woody is faced with the dilemma of returning home to Andy who will love him but eventually forget him, or going to the museum to be admired by children forever. Existential angst for toys! There's also an utterly brilliant riff on "The Empire Strikes Back" with Buzz Lightyear and the evil Emperor Zurg. Very funny, very clever, highly recommended. The outtakes are also hysterically funny.

1999, dir. John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, Ash Brannon. With Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger.

Toy Story 3

Once again the toys are dealing with their owner aging: Andy is 17 and headed off to college and the toys haven't been played with in several years. Well-reviewed by critics, I had a major problem with the structure of the movie: the emotional peak of the story arrives at the end of the second act of a three act movie, a rather bizarre placement. Even forgiving that flaw, this isn't as good as #2 - although it's still far better than most animated movies.

2010, dir. Lee Unkrich. With Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, Michael Keaton, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger.

Trainspotting

Unhappy, amoral heroin addicts stumbling through life in Edinburgh and London. Well done, creepy, and disgusting, I didn't enjoy it much because it's extremely difficult to empathize with any of the characters. If that's not an issue for you it's a very good production. It's also very funny in places.

1996, dir. Danny Boyle. With Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle, Kelly MacDonald.

Transformers

It was Stooopid. I really enjoyed it! I'm not much of a fan of Bay and doing a movie of the Transformers was rife with possibilities for disaster, but, as promised, it was a lot of fun. Good action, some very funny set pieces and jibes, and good effects. See it on a big screen if you can.

2007, dir. Michael Bay. With Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Rachael Taylor, Anthony Anderson, Jon Voight, John Turturro.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Should have been called "Transformers: Bigger and Stupider."

Our hero Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) tries to lead a normal life, heading off to college. This leads to several humour-by-humiliation scenes with his mother. Then there's the hot girl at college trying to pry him away from the love of his life back home (still Fox). Inevitably a new Decepticon enemy surfaces and Megatron is revived. There are several new autobots on both sides of the fight, most of whom don't get names, back stories, or descriptions of their powers despite a 150 minute running time. Instead we have two Jar Jar Binks twin autobots who argue constantly, beat each other up, and are supposed to be funny.

More explosions, more characters but much less character development, more character humiliation in the name of humour (not an improvement on the previous outing), and more minutes in the theatre seat all add up to a much worse movie.

2009, dir. Michael Bay. With Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, John Turturro, Ramon Rodriguez, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

I thought this movie couldn't be any worse than the second one, but once again I've underestimated Michael Bay. Nobody does bigger and stupider more effectively than Bay. I keep going back for the next serving in the hope that it will somehow show some of the combined fun and idiocy of the first one: hardly a great film, but just ... enjoyable. But Bay has found his market segment, and in that airless space thinking is actively discouraged.

Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) has graduated from college and has a new hot girlfriend (Huntington-Whiteley) but no job, and this is not only making him uncomfortable with his girlfriend, it's also a point of contention with his perennially embarrassing parents. But the Decepticons have a new and evil plan, and we didn't level enough of the planet last time (this time the entire of Chicago gets flattened).

The movie had some surprisingly entertaining moments: Tudyk is way over the top as "Dutch," but very amusing. Aldrin puts in an appearance as himself ... and Nimoy gets to say "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," which is pretty damn funny for fans of Trek.

2011, dir. Michael Bay. With Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Patrick Dempsey, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Buzz Aldrin.

Transporter 2

Taking over-the-top action to new heights ... Statham is okay in an otherwise fairly stupid movie. All the disadvantages of a Luc Besson movie (ridiculous action, ongoing absurdity - he wrote and produced) without the weird class he usually manages to introduce when he directs. Sort of entertaining.

2005, dir. Louis Leterrier. With Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta, Kate Nauta.

Travellers and Magicians

Made in the kingdom of Bhutan by the same director who brought us "The Cup." I enjoyed "The Cup," but this one is better all around. There are spots where the moralizing is a bit heavy-handed, but the story-telling is so enjoyable that it just doesn't matter. Some of the filming is staggeringly beautiful, particularly in the story with Tashi and Deki.

2003, dir. Khyentse Norbu. With Tsewang Dandup, Sonam Lhamo, Lhakpa Dorji, Deki Yangzom, Sonam Kinga.

Treasure Planet

A sciffy kind of riff on Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Jim Hawkins (voiced by Gordon-Levitt) is a bright but alienated and difficult young boy, with a talent for the kind of stuff that was popular at the time the film was issued: skateboarding and surfing apparently. He believes the story he read as a child of a planet full of treasure left by a pirate, and when a map from another pirate falls into his hands, he takes the opportunity to pursue it to "Treasure Planet."

A messy plot and mediocre mixed hand- and computer-generated graphics along with mediocre voice-work produce a dull and annoying movie. Thompson seems to be doing some sort of stiff-upper-lip British thing, and her voice acting is a complete loss (a bit of a surprise from one of the world's best actresses). Not recommended.

2002, dir. Ron Clements, John Musker. With Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brian Murray, David Hyde Pierce, Martin Short, Emma Thompson.

Trekkies 2

The original "Trekkies" was a really good documentary about an obsessive subculture of Science Fiction fandom. But a sequel? Well, yes, and it's pretty good too. Crosby hosts, and is mildly annoying, but again the fans and their obsessions are front and centre, this time partly overseas. It was a little like the "7 Up" series in that we got updates on particular fans seven years on. The main one is on Gabriel Köerner, who was 15 years old and totally obsessed in the first one. What some people may not have noticed was that he is very intelligent, and at age 22 he's doing visual effects for "Battlestar Galactica" and he's married to an attractive, nice, intelligent woman who's very supportive of his interests.

My favourite comparison made in the film is between Trekkies and football/soccer fans: Trekkies are obsessed, yes, but they do a lot of charity work and don't destroy the places they visit. Which type of fan would you rather be around?

2004, dir. Roger Nygard. With Denise Crosby and lots of fans.

Les Triplettes de Belleville

I wish someone had told me before the movie (instead of after in an interview with the director) that this was a "silent movie," then I wouldn't have been quite as frustrated with the exceptionally bad English subtitling. The English subtitle track includes a high percentage of French subtitles, go figure. But the film makes sense without knowing what's being said (a lot of it being background commentary or conversation).

This is a deeply weird movie, with an eccentric animation style that struck me as a cross of Crumb and Betty Boop - at least with the large number of obese people. Visually fascinating with a weird story, worth a watch. I was sent to it by Andrew Stanton's director's commentary on the "WALL-E" DVD, in which he admitted that his movie "Finding Nemo" had kind of eclipsed this one in 2003, but that it was a great movie.

2003, dir. Sylvain Chomet.

Trois Couleurs: Rouge

Last of the "Three Colours," a young woman finds that the owner of the dog she hit with her car is disinterested in life, except for listening in on his neighbour's phone calls. The setup is strange, but the characters play out very well. It's thought-provoking and almost redemptive, and I really enjoyed it.

1994, dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski. With Irène Jacob, Jean-Louis Trintignant.

The Troll Hunter

This mockumentary is purportedly done by students at a local Norwegian college, who set out to make a documentary about a local bear poacher Hans (Jespersen). He tries to run them off, but they follow him on several occasions and eventually find out that he's actually a government paid Troll hunter: Norway's only one. He's also totally disgusted with the hours.

This is a weird and fairly entertaining little movie. I think they were shooting for horror comedy, but (as pointed out by other critics) it's not actually particularly scary. What it is is wonderfully novel and perverse little movie, largely supported by Jespersen's matter-of-fact approach to dealing with something only about three other people on the planet believe in, and his complaints about under-funding. Entertaining and strange.

2010, dir. André Øvredal. With Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Mørck, Tomas Alf Larsen, Hans Morten Hansen, Urmila Berg-Domaas.

Tron

Incredibly cheesy (hey, we're anthropomorphizing computer programs with 28 year old computer graphics), but still quite charming and fascinating to watch. I saw this in an IMAX theatre about a year after it came out, and enjoyed it immensely then. Sure, it's incredibly silly and not terribly well acted, but the graphics have held up better than I expected (not well, but better than you'd think in 2010).

Bridges plays a cocky young programmer who had some computer games stolen by Warner. Morgan is his ex-, Boxleitner is her new girlfriend, and both of them still work at Encom, where Warner is now a senior executive. Bridges has been trying to crack the Encom system to prove that he wrote the games. When Boxleitner and Morgan let him into Encom, he crosses the "Master Control Program," who "encodes him in a laser beam" and thus transports him inside the computer. There he's made to fight in the video games, and teams up with Boxleitner's program (which looks exactly like Boxleitner except for the groovy skin-tight light-up suit) in attempting to shut down the MCP.

At the time, the effects were astounding. Today, they look a bit dated, but still rather pretty. The cinematographer also had a good run at making the human world look like the inside of a computer (lights as data flowing along roads) and other similar tricks. I'm looking forward to the sequel: more cheesy goodness.

1982, dir. Steven Lisberger. With Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, David Warner, Dan Shor.

Tron: Legacy

"Tron" holds the record for "longest wait for a sequel" at 28 years. Was it worth the wait? It depends what you expected. Since the original was cheesy, gorgeous entertainment and this is too, I was satisfied.

Hedlund plays Sam Flynn, son of Kevin Flynn (Bridges). Flynn (senior) disappeared 15 years ago, after having told his son repeatedly how great "The Grid" that he had created was. Now Sam is the largest stockholder in Encom, the company his father founded - but restricts his involvement with the company to one yearly, massive, prank. His father's friend Alan Bradley (Boxleitner, who is convinced his involvement with the movie was at Bridges' insistence) convinces Sam to go to Flynn's old arcade, where Sam rather inevitably finds his way (A) to The Grid, and (B) to the Games. And ultimately to his father.

I found the 3D to be the worst I've seen - which is saying something. I like 3D, but in this case colours looked like they'd been separated out like an old 32-colour GIF image, and there was a huge amount of ghosting and not much 3D. I would have enjoyed it more in 2D. But the effects and sets are great, and the story moves along briskly and has slightly more character development than the previous one. A fun ride.

Like "Tron" and "Transformers" (but not the latter's sequel) before it, this is massively cheesy but very entertaining film. And really pretty to look at. Expect ludicrousness, and enjoy the ride. I was particularly taken with Daft Punk's somewhat retro soundtrack.

2010, dir. Joseph Kosinski. With Garrett Hedlund, Jeff Bridges, Olivia Wilde, Michael Sheen, James Frain, Bruce Boxleitner.

True Grit (1969)

The movie (a Western) starts with our introduction to a family. The father goes on a business trip with his hired hand Tom Chaney (Corey) ... who shortly kills him. The daughter, Mattie Ross (Darby), who we've already seen is the hard-driving book-keeper in the family, sets out to hire someone to kill him. She chooses the boozing and obnoxious Rooster Cogburn (Wayne). They're shortly saddled with a Texas Ranger neither of them likes and that Mattie doesn't want because he's offered Wayne more money for Chaney for another crime.

Darby is good as Mattie, young but incredibly determined. Wayne got an Academy Award for his performance, but it's his only one and I'd say it's more of a "lifetime achievement" thing: he's only passable-to-wooden. The story is quite good though. It's also interesting for early appearances by Duvall and Hopper.

1969, dir. Henry Hathaway. With John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell, Jeff Corey, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Strother Martin.

True Grit (2010)

The Coen Brothers have another shot at the Charles Portis novel of the same name, this time with Bridges as Rooster Cogburn, Steinfeld as Mattie Ross, and Damon as the irritating but genuinely decent Texas Ranger. Many scenes play out exactly as in the Wayne version, but several (including the ending) are profoundly different. It's a good story and the acting is good all around: the joy of the movie is the revelation(s) of the strengths of the characters (that applies to both versions).

2010, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. With Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper.

True Lies

Cameron directs Schwarzenegger as a spy named Harry Tasker whose wife thinks he's a computer salesman. We meet Tasker first as he infiltrates a high security party for an Islamic business man in Switzerland. He's detected, but escapes after blowing lots of shit up. His boss (Heston) claims to be upset, but Tasker (and Schwarzenegger) have been doing this for years so he can hardly have expected anything else.

When Tasker suspects that his wife (Curtis) is having an affair, he turns the full power of his spy organization on watching his wife's every move. The second act of the movie strays from action into humour based in large part on humiliating both Schwarzenegger and Curtis (but wow was she FIT when she filmed that!) until the Crimson Jihad moves in and kidnaps everybody so there can be more action and killing.

Overall a pretty entertaining movie, although I found the middle act pretty cringeworthy.

1994, dir. James Cameron. With Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton, Tia Carrere, Charlton Heston, Art Malik, Eliza Dushku, Grant Heslov.

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

A twist on the Cyrano de Bergerac story - a romantic comedy, not the tragic ending you might expect from that description. Fairly conventional in construction, but very enjoyable - good dialogue, a lot of humour.

1996. dir. Michael Lehmann. With Janeane Garofolo, Uma Thurman, Ben Chaplin.

Tuck Everlasting

Disney, and it feels like it. Using picture-postcard locations when they should have been shabby was just the beginning of the many typical Disney problems with the film. Poor acting, blundering clichés ... And then in a very strange turn of events, the movie has a good ending. Intelligent, right, and decidedly not Disney. It was a pleasant and unusual reward for wading through the rest of the movie.

2002, dir. Jay Russell. With Alexis Bledel, Jonathan Jackson, William Hurt, Sissie Spacek, Scott Bairstow, Ben Kingsley, Amy Irving, Victor Garber.

Tucker and Dale vs Evil

The setup is fairly clever: a group of obnoxious college students go into the woods to drink beer and hang out, and end up very near to a very dilapidated shack that Tucker and Dale have just bought as their vacation home. Tucker and Dale are nice guys, but definitely rednecks. Through a series of misunderstandings and horror movie clichés, the college students come to believe that Tucker and Dale are homicidal maniacs, and in attempting to recover their friend (who they think is kidnapped, but was in fact rescued from drowning by our heroes) they begin to kill themselves off.

It's goofy, absurd, very funny, possibly even "quaint" ... And also exceedingly gory. Should work well for any fans of horror comedy.

2011, dir. Eli Craig. With Alan Tudyk, Tyler Labine, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Chelan Simmons.

The Tuxedo

Jackie Chan does James Bond (pre-Daniel Craig) with the help of a super Tuxedo. Chan plays a doofus who happens to be a really good driver hired to be the chauffeur to a secret agent. When the agent is injured, Chan takes his place and works with Hewitt to save the world from an evil plan to poison all the water supplies in the U.S. Strangely enough, that involves lots of jumping, fighting, and something that occasionally passes for comedy. My opinion should be taken with a grain of salt as I like to think of Jackie's skills as coming from him rather than the suit he's wearing so that disappointed me, but I still think it's one of his poorer films despite the high budget.

2002, dir. Kevin Donovan. With Jackie Chan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jason Isaacs, Debi Mazar, Ritchie Coster, Peter Stormare.

Twelfth Night (Branagh)

One of Shakespeare's more popular plays, this is a London stage production directed by Branagh and filmed for TV - released under the auspices of A&E. Even as a stage production I was rather unimpressed and felt it was poorly acted.

1988, dir. Paul Kafno/Kenneth Branagh. With Frances Barber, Caroline Langrishe, Anton Lesser.

Twelfth Night: or What You Will (Nunn)

Nunn is a well known stage director who occasionally directs a movie. He brings an incredible knowledge of Shakespeare to this, and excellent choices for cast, but as an infrequent film director he substantially overuses his ability to intercut between scenes. The clown, already an important part, is given an even greater significance - we see him observing from the sidelines where Shakespeare never had him, and that changes the interpretation of some of the things he says and does. I was disappointed at some of the cuts made to the script: he has a 132 minute run-time, I wondered that he needed to cut as much as he did. Still, the music that Shakespeare included is probably better executed and better used than in any other Shakespearean production I've ever seen: both Stubbs and Kingsley seem to do their own singing, and do it well! A flawed production (of a wickedly difficult to produce play), but probably the best we're likely to see for a long time.

1996, dir. Trevor Nunn. With Helena Bonham Carter, Nigel Hawthorne, Ben Kingsley, Imogen Stubbs, Steven Mackintosh, Mel Smith, Richard E. Grant, Imelda Staunton, Toby Stephens.

Twelfth Night (CBC Stratford)

Wow, a DVD that's not in IMDB ... And a pretty good production too. Since it's Stratford, it's more an embellished stage production than a movie, but there are several settings and it's not simply filmed on one stage. The central performances are quite good, although I wasn't too keen on the more peripheral Sebastian. As with most productions of Twelfth Night, some suspension of disbelief is required that anyone would mistake Sebastian for Viola or vice versa - Shakespeare himself probably wrote for twins (both male - sorry folks, that's the way it was). If you're a fan of the play, this is a pretty good version to see (although I still think the Nunn is best).

1986, dir. Alan Erlich. With Seana McKenna (Viola/Curio), Nicholas Pennell (Malvolio), Colm Feore (Orsino), James Blendick (Sir Toby Belch), Edward Atienza (Feste), Maria Ricossa (Olivia).

Twelfth Night (BBC)

A fairly unremarkable production. Not bad, not great. A bit more of the text was there than usual. Part of the BBC complete works.

1980, dir. John Gorrie. With Felicity Kendal, Robert Hardy, Alec McCowen, Sinéad Cusack, Trevor Peacock, Annette Crosby, Clive Arrindell.

12 Angry Men

All but three minutes of this movie occur inside the jury room. We see the debate among the jurors about the first degree murder trial they're deciding. It's an interesting consideration of what happens in the jury room and how personality and personal motivations affect jury decisions. Well enough done to receive five Oscars. Good.

1957. dir. Sidney Lumet. With Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, Jack Klugman.

Twelve O'Clock High

Peck stars as American air force general Frank Savage in the U.K. in 1942. When one of his squadron commanders starts to succumb to the pressure of the job (and the weight of the deaths of many of his air crew), Peck is put in to replace him and bring up the morale in the squadron. He struggles initially, but with some help he begins to bring it around - only to find himself too closely tied to the men's lives.

Well acted and apparently fairly accurate to the war that it portrays, I found myself most fascinated by the air warfare footage near the end of the movie - which was entirely accurate, as it was filmed in battle by both the Allies and the Germans. The film is also apparently considered a standard text in the military about the pressures of command.

1949, dir. Henry King. With Gregory Peck, Hugh Marlowe, Gary Merril, Dean Jagger, Millard Mitchell.

24 City

A documentary (mostly) about the closing of a munitions factory in Chengdu to make way for a new apartment complex, "24 City." The movie is a series of interviews with people associated with the factory - but some of the interviews were done by actors. There are moments of brilliant cinematography and some rather compelling interviews, but strange and (to my mind) somewhat alienating transitions between. Nevertheless, it was a hell of an education in the culture of China across the last fifty years.

2008, dir. Jia Zhangke. With Joan Chen, Lü Liping, Zhao Tao, Chen Jianbin.

21

It's about blackjack. And that's not the only predictable thing about it. Brilliant nerd Sturgess is recruited to join a team of students from MIT to spend weekends with them in Las Vegas, counting cards and raking in the cash. They're led by professor Spacey. Sturgess says he's out as soon as he makes the $300,000 he needs for med school. Predictably, he's seduced by the glittering lights, the money, the lifestyle. Also predictably, there's a girl, there's a bad guy, it all goes sour, and there's a big conclusion. Some credit is due for letting you see relatively early on that Spacey's character isn't all charming, and of course Spacey plays fairly well. But that's not nearly enough to make this good, it's merely serviceable.

2008, dir. Robert Luketic. With Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Aaron Yoo, Laurence Fishburne, Josh Gad, Sam Golzari.

21 Grams

Very disjoint in time: at least "Memento" was consistent. This one hops all over, backwards, forwards, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. The people in it aren't particularly nice, and it's hard to care even after you start putting the events together. It's about death and dying.

2003. dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu. With Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro.

Twilight

Unbelievably cheesy, but with beautiful scenery. The two young stars look pretty in their pale, pale skin, and deliver purple prose in a wooden manner. The trailer for the sequel, "New Moon," sounds so similar the poor writing can probably be attributed to Stephanie Meyers (the book author) - most Hollywood screenwriters can write better than this ...

2008, dir. Catherine Hardwicke. With Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Ashley Greene, Cam Gigandet, Kellan Lutz, Peter Facinelli, Edi Gathegi.

Two for the Money

There are times when Pacino is utterly mesmerizing. Unfortunately, that's about all that makes this movie worth watching. McConaughey plays a washed out football player who picks games for gamblers. He's good, and Pacino ushers him into the big money. Trouble follows. The portrayal of the gambling personality isn't bad, but the movie itself is a mess.

2005, dir. D.J. Caruso. With Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey, Rene Russo, Armand Assante, Jeremy Piven.

Two for the Road

Finney and Hepburn play the Wallaces, a couple married for ten years and not entirely happy about it. The movie paints their relationship over its entire lifetime, leaping forward and back over the years and making no effort to explain what time period we're looking at - although that's usually fairly clear and not entirely important, but it's a bit disorienting. Finney and Hepburn are very good and the characters are well drawn, but the movie as a whole was distinctly unsatisfying, having no clear beginning or ending, nor any apparent conclusion to be drawn from this window on a damaged relationship.

1967, dir. Stanley Donen. With Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney, Eleanor Bron, William Daniels, Gabrielle Middleton, Claude Dauphin, Nadia Gray, Georges Descrières.

Two Mules for Sister Sara

Eastwood's character Hogan starts the movie by rescuing a young woman (MacLaine) from some bandits ... and is shocked to find she's a nun travelling alone. He reluctantly rides on with her, and they eventually find they have similar aims - bringing down the French occupation of Mexico (where the movie is set).

Eastwood plays the same character as he always does. MacLaine is pretty and amusing as a somewhat unorthodox nun. Not bad, but hardly a great Western either.

1970, dir. Don Siegel. With Clint Eastwood, Shirley MacLaine, Manolo Fábregas.

2046

It's a room number, it's a year, it's a place, it's unclear ... Brilliant and bizarre cinematography in the service of a muddled story about a womanizer and his lost love(s) and regrets. The critics really liked this one, but did they actually understand it? I doubt it. Or maybe it was just me. But it's very pretty to look at.

2004, dir. Kar Wai Wong. With Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Li Gong, Ziyi Zhang, Maggie Cheung.

2010: The Year We Make Contact

It's hard to separate this from its predecessor, "2001." It would make less sense without it, and not be considered as good a movie. But it's not bad in its own right. I actually watched it in the year 2010, so its 1983 vision of an escalating war in South and/or Central America between the U.S. and the Russians no longer seems terribly likely. Nevertheless, the ideas are interesting.

A Russian mission to Jupiter, to visit the stranded ship "Discovery" is accompanied by three Americans: the man that launched the Discovery mission in the first place and feels guilty about the crew's deaths, the engineer who designed much of the ship, and the creator of HAL-9000. The tensions between the Russians and Americans back on earth make the voyage more difficult. They discover a mostly functional Discovery, and a not-very-friendly Monolith. And then a whole bunch of baby Monoliths, and some slight explanation - more than we ever got in "2001." Whether you find it satisfying or not is open to question. It does at least make some sense and offer some closure.

1984, dir. Peter Hyams. With Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea, Douglas Rain.

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U

The Ultimate Gift

It's not that I have a problem with the messages: selfishness is bad, money isn't that important. But I do have a problem with the incredibly heavy-handed delivery. Some relief comes in the form of decent acting by almost everyone involved, but the overwhelming sentimentality is pretty damaging. And there are too many convenient co-incidences (although perhaps we're meant to think that God stepped in and helped - this is a FoxFaith product, after all).

Fuller plays Jason Stevens, a trust-fund twenty-something who hasn't worked a day in his life and doesn't blink at spending thousands on ... well, anything. Garner plays his grandfather, whose videotaped will drives the plot of the story. His children receive huge amounts of money or property (along with acerbic comments) and are unsatisfied. To Jason, Garner's character leaves a series of tasks leading up to "the ultimate gift."

Breslin does a good job despite being made a walking plot driver. Fuller almost manages to sell the massive transformation of his selfish and obnoxious character. But the movie ultimately falls to its own sledgehammer message and sentimentality.

2007, dir. Michael O. Sajbel. With Drew Fuller, James Garner, Ali Hillis, Abigail Breslin.

Ultraviolet

Pissed off superwoman takes on futuristic patriarchal society single-handedly and saves the world in the process ... Sounds like "Æon Flux" - in fact it's almost exactly like "Æon Flux," right down to the fact that it SUCKS. If you have to see one of them, Flux is a bit better. Although the extremely colourful cinematography, shot primarily in Shanghai, does help a little here. The theatre edit was mind-numbingly stupid, but the six extra minutes on the DVD cut offers no redemption.

2006, dir. Kurt Wimmer. With Milla Jovavich.

Unbreakable

Shyamalan's sophomore effort shows the same incredible attention to detail of his first film ("The Sixth Sense"). When I first saw it, I wasn't entirely happy with it, but a second viewing left me astounded at how carefully worked out it is. I also came away with a greater respect for the subject matter. Bruce Willis plays a security guard who survives what should have been a fatal accident and his entire life changes because of it. Think of a real world adaptation of comic books rather than "Final Destination."

2000. dir. M. Night Shyamalan. With Bruce Willis, Robin Wright-Penn, Samuel Jackson.

Under Siege

Seagal plays Casey Ryback, cook on the soon-to-be-decommissioned battleship USS Missouri. When a group of mercenaries led by Billy Strannix (Jones) is let on the ship by the second in command (Busey) under the guise of musicians and caterers for the captain's birthday party, it falls to the "I also cook" guy to save the entire ship. His primary assistance comes from Jordan Tate (Eleniak - Playboy's Miss July, 1989, absolutely gorgeous in a terribly 80s way).

I've tended to think of this as Seagal's first feature film, but it was actually his fifth. I guess I thought that because I assumed his career started on a high and has been perpetually downhill - because this is most definitely his best film. It's his best film in part because it's (happily) not entirely his: he's on screen rather less than usual and Busey, Jones, and even Eleniak do a good job. Jones is brilliant as the intelligent, ironic, and incredibly dangerous Strannix. Eleniak has an incredibly memorable moment in which she cries "I'm an actress! I did a 'Hunter' episode, and a 'Wet'n Wild' video ...'" Getting her to mock herself and all other Playboy Playmates was a moment of pure genius and she sure as hell out-acted Seagal. All together an excellent action film.

1992, dir. Andrew Davis. With Steven Seagal, Tommy Lee Jones, Erika Eleniak, Gary Busey.

Under the Tuscan Sun

The definitive not-a-romantic-comedy. That's not sarcasm: it has all the makings of a romantic comedy, it just ... isn't. It's about recovering from the end of a relationship. Based on a true story, the flow isn't quite as neatly packaged as most movies - and that's a good thing. Lane is good as the main character, and gets good support from a largely unknown cast.

2003, dir. Audrey Wells. With Diane Lane, Sandra Oh.

Underworld

Goth is dead. Long live Goth. "West Side Story," but the gangs are vampires and werewolves. Fairly entertaining. ... As a follow-up, I should add that while the acting is so-so and the dialogue is mediocre, there are a wealth of carefully worked-out details in the underlying plot that fit together like clockwork. Someone was thinking about the results of who-bites-who. Sheen stood out as being particularly charismatic: it's been amusing to watch his rise since this movie.

2003, dir. Len Wiseman. With Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Bill Nighy, Michael Sheen, Shane Brolly, Erwin Leder, Sophia Myles, Kevin Grevioux.

Underworld: Evolution

There were moments during this movie when I completely lost the ability to suspend belief, as the logic is extremely flawed from end to end. It's a mess, it's absurd - and it's still kind of fun, but not as good as the first. Amusing to see Jacobi slumming.

2006, dir. Len Wiseman. With Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Derek Jacobi, Tony Curran, Bill Nighy.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

I thought Nighy was chewing scenery in the first movie, but I was mistaken: he REALLY gets down to it this time. God what an awful performance. And the man's capable of such excellent acting (see "The Girl in the Café") ...

Prequel to the original "Underworld," telling the story of the Lycan/Vampire lovers Lucian (Sheen) and Sonja (Mitra), and the ruling vampire, Sonja's father Viktor (Nighy). And the Lycan rebellion against vampire rule led by Lucian. They're trying for the Romeo-and-Juliet thing again. Not a disastrous idea, but with a lousy script, poor acting and special effects we've all seen before, there's little here even for the fans. The pre-ordained nature of prequels bothered me more than usual here: Sonja dies, Lucian lives, and Viktor lives - despite a killing blow from Lucian. One of the few redeeming features was the effective resurrection of Raze (Grevioux), although he seems best taken in small doses.

2009, dir. Patrick Tatopoulos. With Michael Sheen, Bill Nighy, Rhona Mitra, Kevin Grevioux, Steven Mackintosh.

An Unfinished Life

Not Lasse Hallström's best work - I think that title goes to "The Shipping News." This does carry some similarities, with people in need of healing and forgiveness. Redford and Freeman are good, Lopez and Gardner (who plays her daughter) are not, and Lucas ... doesn't do anything spectacular.

Lopez plays a woman abused by her boyfriend, who leaves the boyfriend as much at her daughter's insistence as at her own desire. She ends up taking her daughter to stay with her ex-father-in-law, the very bitter Newman - who was the father of her dead husband. Freeman plays the ranch hand mauled by a bear that Newman takes care of.

2005, dir. Lasse Hallström. With Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Lopez, Josh Lucas, Damian Lewis, Camryn Manheim, Becca Gardner.

Unforgiven

Not only the best Western ever made, also one of the best movies ever made. It starts simple - simple idea, simple reasons, simple camera work. But it's mesmerising: it builds and draws you in, with the characters, the acting, and the structure - just a breathtaking film. See it.

1992, dir. Clint Eastwood. With Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris, Jaimz Woolvett, Saul Rubinek, Frances Fisher, Anna Levine.

Unleashed

A very confused movie. Starts out looking like a martial arts movie (albeit with a mildly bizarre twist), then sidetracks for 45 minutes into a movie about recovery from abuse, and then goes back to being a martial arts movie. I guess that's what you get when you let Luc Besson do the screenplay. Martial arts fans, even ones who might enjoy movies about abuse recovery, aren't likely to enjoy this: who wants their martial arts diluted? No one else is going to like it much either. Freeman does manage to add some nice moments - he's a good actor.

2005, dir. Louis Leterrier. With Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, Bob Hoskins, Kerry Condon.

Unmistaken Child

A documentary. After the death of a famous and well-loved Lama, the young disciple of the Lama is abruptly tasked with finding the living re-incarnation of the master. He clearly doesn't feel quite up to this task - he's spent his whole life simply doing what his master said, and now he's suddenly sent out into the world on this massive undertaking. But we could hardly ask for a more charming guy: Tenzin Zopa embodies the very best of the Buddhist tradition. It's a fascinating view into a world most of us have no idea about.

My only complaint was that for the first few minutes I really, really wished Baratz had heard of "Steadycam," because it was immediately, painfully clear that this was all handheld video. It was mildly nauseating for a while. But either it got better or I ceased to care as the movie progressed - I certainly became quite wrapped up in what was going on.

2008, dir. Nati Baratz. With Tenzin Zopa.

Up

"Up" starts out by introducing us to Carl, and the love of his life, Ellie. In ten minutes we see their entire (childless) lifetime together, right up until Ellie's death. After that, his house is surrounded by high rises, and he takes things into his own hands by attaching thousands of helium balloons to the house and taking off on the adventure (to South America) the two of them had always sworn they'd take. One small problem: a persistent young scout has unintentionally joined him ... And of course there are all kinds of surprises waiting for them in South America.

Pixar used the 3D as part of the experience rather than the "throw it in your face to startle you" approach. And yet it still feels like a gimmick. I enjoyed it, and I wouldn't mind seeing 3D movies occasionally, but I don't think I'd want to see them with any regularity. (I've also seen the movie in 2D.)

The movie is somewhat didactic (think "Cars") but still bright, shiny, funny, and fun. Perhaps not their best, but nevertheless worth seeing.

2009, dir. Pete Docter and Bob Peterson. With Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer, Bob Peterson, Delroy Lindo, Jerome Ranft, John Ratzenberger (of course).

Up In the Air

Clooney plays the lead in this comedy-drama about a man who spends 90% of his life travelling, going from place to place firing people for bosses too weak-willed to fire their own employees. He loves the constant flying and the lack of commitments in his life. He meets another frequent flyer named Alex (Farmiga) and starts an intermittent relationship with her.

I saw an edited version (how much edited I don't know) of this movie on a flight. And the playback system bumped me out several times so I saw chunks and parts of it over several hours. It was good, but not as good as I expected given the reviews: I really need to see this in its original form, all at once, before I make any more comments on it.

2009, dir. Jason Reitman. With George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick.

The Upside of Anger

If watching Joan Allen be a drunken obnoxious bitch for a couple of hours is your thing, then this is your movie. The character is pretty seriously unappealing, and there's not a hell of a lot to recommend the movie as a whole. The basic premise: Allen's husband disappears - runs off with his secretary - as the movie starts, and she mistreats her four daughters and her new boyfriend. The word "comedy" was mentioned in the extras. Was that what this was? I didn't laugh.

2005, dir. Mike Binder. With Joan Allen, Kevin Costner, Erika Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood, Keri Russell, Alicia Witt, Mike Binder.

The Usual Suspects

The movie that put Singer on the map - with a huge bang too. It's at #16 (in 2005, slipped to #25 in 2010) on IMDB's top movies of all time. What to say about it? Complex film noir ensemble. Very good ... although I've always felt "L.A. Confidential" is quite similar and notably better.

1995, dir. Bryan Singer. With Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palminteri, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio del Toro, Kevin Pollack, Pete Postlethwaite.

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V

V for Vendetta

Alan Moore wrote the original graphic novel, and he disowned this interpretation by the Wachowski brothers. Having seen it, I think they did a remarkably good job given the difficulties presented in bringing this to the screen. Portman plays well as the all-important Evey. A little too violent for an ideas movie, and far too thought-provoking for an action movie, I'm surprised it's found an audience at all - especially given that it glamorizes terrorism in a post-9-11 world. The Wachowski brothers (who wrote, and, I think, produced) pretty much redeem themselves for the second and third Matrix movies here. The visual style is a direct lift from the original graphic novel, although the ending is somewhat different. Highly recommended.

2006. dir. James McTeigue. With Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry, John Hurt.

Van Helsing

Another take on the vampire stories. Jackman plays the title character, hunting not just vampires but any sort of monster. In the first five minutes they mash up Frankenstein and Dracula (in black and white), and in the next five they mash up The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There are a lot of references to other movies, including "Labyrinth" (Bowie's character walking on the underside of walkways) and Bond movies (the riff on Q's laboratory was particularly funny). Ultimately it takes itself too seriously - among other things, it's implied that Van Helsing's origins are positively biblical. It reminded me a lot of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" - both had incredible potential, both end up being very bad movies.

2004, dir. Stephen Sommers. With Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh, David Wenham, Will Kemp.

Vanity Fair

Witherspoon takes on the role of Becky Sharp at the centre of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair." A little too long, or perhaps not involving enough for its length. The costumes and scene dressing are very good, the acting is fairly good, where did it fail? Some of the critics take issue with the substantial softening of Sharp's character from the source material, and keeping her as conniving as she originally was would probably have made a better (but less charming) movie.

2004, dir. Mira Nair. With Reese Witherspoon, Gabriel Byrne, Romola Garai, Rhys Ifans, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Bob Hoskins, James Purefoy, Jim Broadbent.

Venus

O'Toole plays Maurice (pronounced almost "Morris" throughout), a decrepit old actor. He still gets jobs occasionally (usually as a corpse), and hangs out with his equally old actor best friend "Ian" (Phillips). Until Ian's grand-niece "Jessie" (Whittaker) moves in with him. Ian is terrorized by this very young, lower class, and not terribly bright girl, but Maurice is both more able to see her good qualities and is drawn to her looks. Thus starts a very odd relationship. He's drawn to her because she's pretty and takes him away from a very dull life, she's drawn to him because he treats her well and listens to her. And quite frequently drools over her.

O'Toole's portrayal of Maurice is brilliant: Maurice is intelligent, funny, and all about pretty women - no matter how young. He's simultaneously repulsive and sympathetic, one hell of an achievement. Credit should also go to Hanif Kureishi, the writer, for a fine script. All the supporting cast is excellent - particularly Redgrave - who, in three short scenes as Maurice's ex-wife, shows an entire lifetime history between them and shows what a brilliantly decent person he has abandoned in search of his own pleasure.

2006, dir. Roger Michell. With Peter O'Toole, Leslie Phillips, Jodie Whittaker, Richard Griffiths, Vanessa Redgrave.

Vertigo

Stewart plays John "Scottie" Ferguson, a police detective retiring because he has severe vertigo and no interest in a desk job. He's hired by a school friend (Helmore) to trail the friend's wife (Novak): she's apparently being possessed by the spirit of a dead (and suicidal) relative. Bel Geddes plays Ferguson's long-time friend and confidante.

Stewart is too old (50) or Novak is too young (25) for them to fall for each other, but this isn't a big deal. Hitchcock uses a lot of flashing coloured lights for terror and swirly effects for vertigo, stuff that got used heavily in movies through the Sixties that I'm not terribly fond of. Bel Geddes is great as the charming and intelligent female friend who loves Scottie - that Scottie both leans on and ignores. Overall this is a really good (if depressing) movie - about love and obsession (and how well they don't mix) and death.

1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock. With James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore.

A Very Long Engagement (originally "Un long dimanche de fiançailles")

Re-unites Jeunet with his star (Tatou) from the brilliant "Amelie." He takes us to the first World War, and tries to apply some of that same magic realism from "Amelie" to the rather more depressing subject of a woman searching for her fiancée lost during the war ... and filmed in mustard-gas-yellow. Jeunet's goofy almost-off-topic inserts that worked so well in "Amelie" don't work nearly as well with a more serious subject. It's a long movie and it feels long. What it does best is give a brutal and depressing view of trench warfare. It was supposed to be (I think) about the persistence of hope, and there's certainly a large serving of that too. Weird to see Jodie Foster working in a French movie - her character is Polish, which would excuse any accent.

2004, dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. With Audrey Tatou, Gaspard Ulliel, Dominique Pinon, Chantal Neuwirth, Jodie Foster.

View from the Top

Gwyneth Paltrow as a white trash airline stewardess with aspirations. The movie is fairly funny and forgettable.

2003. dir. Bruno Barreto. With Gwyneth Paltrow, Candice Bergen, Christina Applegate, Kelly Preston, Mike Myers.

The Village

In a small village in the 1800s, a truce is maintained between the townsfolk and the creatures that live in the surrounding woods. As usual in a Shyamalan film, things aren't quite as they appear. Unfortunately I found the twists in this one rather less compelling than in his previous efforts. It has some great moments, but his previous films are better.

2004. dir. M. Night Shyamalan. With William Hurt, Joachim Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard, Adrian Brody, Sigourney Weaver.

Visions of Light

A documentary about cinematography. Kind of interesting, talks about the origins of cinematography and its development as the equipment developed, the vision(s) that various D.P.s and directors had. Only for the hard-core cinephile.

1992, dir. Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, Stuart Samuels. With a bunch of cinematographers and directors of photography.

The Visitor

A quietly devastating movie, sad yet hopeful. By the director of "The Station Agent," also a very good movie - and this one is an order of magnitude better. Jenkins plays Professor Walter Vale, a man barely alive in his own life, simply going through the motions. Until he's forced to go to New York, where he finds a young immigrant couple living in his apartment: they've been scammed into renting it. After a tense initial meeting, Vale offers to let them stay a night or two as they have no place to go. Vale finds a friend in the young man, but not everything goes smoothly for all of them. There's no action in this one, just people drama. But you'll remember it: in fact, it will take quite a while to leave you. Excellent.

2008, dir. Thomas McCarthy. With Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Jekesai Gurira, Hiam Abbass.

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W

Waitress

Let's get the depressing story that accompanies the movie out of the way first: Shelly (who wrote, directed, and even acted in this film) was murdered in 2006, before this movie made it to the screen.

Russell plays (no surprise here) a waitress at a pie cafe where she also cooks pies. Very good pies. She desperately wants to escape her miserable life with her obnoxious and abusive husband, but that becomes even more difficult at the beginning of the movie when she finds out she's pregnant. "Why did I get drunk? I do stupid things when I'm drunk ... like sleep with my husband!" The movie is full of wicked zingers like that one, and you'll be charmed and made very hungry when you're not laughing.

2007, dir. Adrienne Shelly. With Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Cheryl Hines, Jeremy Sisto, Andy Griffith, Adrienne Shelly, Eddie Jemison, Lew Temple.

Walk the Line

While this is nominally Johnny Cash's biopic, my first thought was "Hey! This is 'Ray' with a white guy in the title role!" Both are biographies of musicians who dug themselves out of poverty and went on to great fame. Both had lingering family issues, and both had major drug habits. Phoenix is very good in the lead role, and Witherspoon is good as Carter.

2005. With Joaquim Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon.

Walking Tall (2004)

Loosely based on the story of Sheriff Buford Pusser (also the subject of a 1973 movie of the same name), this movie has "The Rock" returning home from the army to find that his father has turned into George Forman and the local mill has been closed down in favour of a casino. As it turns out the casino is crooked and sells drugs, so The Rock starts hitting it with a piece of wood from the mill. Better than it sounds, a passable action flick.

2004. dir. Kevin Bray. With The Rock, Johnny Knoxville, Neal McDonough, Kristen Wilson, Ashley Scott.

WALL-E

WALL-E are the garbage collecting units left behind on Earth when the humans leave having polluted the planet into unusability. WALL-E is also the name claimed by the only one still functioning 700 years later. In 700 years he's developed one hell of a personality ... and a penchant for knick-knacks. His routine is disturbed by the arrival of a space ship, and from it a probe robot called Eve that he takes a liking to. The story proceeds from there - of course there's more than just robot romance on the line. The personality they imbue in nominally mechanical devices - and almost entirely without dialogue! - is staggering.

Stanton's commentary on the DVD is utterly fascinating: detailed, intelligent, informative. Very, very few directors/commentaries manage this.

2008, dir. Andrew Stanton. With Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, Sigourney Weaver.

Wanted

McAvoy plays a schmuck with a regular and unhappy life who is suddenly informed that his father was the greatest assassin who ever lived and he has the same talents. "The Fraternity" (of assassins) trains him up and points him at the man who killed his father.

I knew this would be stupid - I often enjoy stupid action movies. But if someone told me in advance it was directed by Bekmambetov ("Night Watch" and "Day Watch"), I might have given this one a miss. There's bending common sense and physics ... and then there's what Bekmambetov does. "Stupid" doesn't begin to cover it. But ... it looks pretty doing it.

2008, dir. Timur Bekmambetov. With James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Terence Stamp, Thomas Kretschmann.

War

Statham is an FBI agent obsessed with chasing down "Rogue" (Li), an assassin who killed his partner. What ensues is a fairly standard action movie with some thoughtful personal touches to the script and a couple hard-to-believe twists on the end of the movie. The overtones of "Yojimbo" with Rogue playing the Yakuza off against the Triads are hard to ignore. I enjoyed the movie, although the revelations at the end were a bit hard to swallow.

2007, dir. Phillip G. Atwell. With Jason Statham, Jet Li, John Lone, Terry Chen, Mathew St. Patrick, Sung Kang, Luis Guzmán, Devon Aoki, Ryo Ishibashi.

War of the Worlds (Spielberg)

Spielberg is capable of excellent work. Sadly, this isn't it. The action is almost non-stop, a plus for some, but I didn't think it worked here. There were some interesting themes that got ignored in the action about the ways people react to extreme stress, and the lengths people go to to protect their family. Based on the old H.G. Wells story, and a previous movie.

2005, dir. Steven Spielberg. With Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins, Justin Chatwin.

Warlock (1959)

I'm not a big fan of westerns, but I've been forced to admit that there have been a few good ones made. One of the beauties of this one is that it's unpredictable from beginning to end. The town of Warlock is being tormented by a local gang, so the "Citizen's Committee" hires a "Marshal" of questionable legality. The gang has several members who ride with them because of friends and family rather than a big desire to be on the wrong side of the law, and one of these ends up picking up the undesirable title of "Deputy" for the town, pitting himself against former friends in the gang and to some extent against the Marshal. Quite good.

1959, dir. Edward Dmytryk. With Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, Anthony Quinn, Dorothy Malone, DeForest Kelley.

Wasabi

Reno plays an effective but often overzealous French cop, whose latest antics have landed him a two month suspension. The next day he finds out the love of his life, who he hasn't seen in 19 years, has died - and left him not only sole heir of her estate, but a 19 year old daughter he didn't know he had. And a few other small issues, of course. This is obviously a Luc Besson product, although almost understated for him - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because he's a master of going over the top, not restraint. Still, while it's just not a very good movie, Reno plays really well and I found it very enjoyable despite constant cross-cultural mugging by Hirosue and Muller.

2001, dir. Gérard Krawczyk. With Jean Reno, Ryoko Hirosue, Michel Muller.

Watchmen

I didn't think I would say this, but this may be too true to its source material. That would be the "Watchmen" graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (although Moore has had his name excised from the movie). Snyder recognized good source material when he saw it, so he stuck close to the source - so close in fact that it would sue him for harassment if it were human. He knew that messing around would arouse the ire of thousands of rabid fans (this is probably the best known graphic novel ever created, and it has a big following - myself included). Unfortunately a scene-for-scene, sequence-perfect, visually identical movie was good, but not great. Haley as Rorschach was superb (not his fault that the voice-over didn't entirely work, but it's in the graphic novel too), and Wilson was an excellent choice as Nite Owl II.

SPOILER WARNING - stop reading now if you haven't seen the movie. Having said that Snyder stuck too close to the source, it may be a little hypocritical to protest when he does change something and I don't like it ... I thought the "alien invasion" at the end of the graphic novel was better than Dr. Manhattan being the apparent culprit in the destruction of earth's cities: he may not seem entirely human, but he's easier to ignore as someone/something who was once human.

2008, dir. Zach Snyder. With Billy Crudup, Malin Akerman, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino, Matt Frewer, Stephen McHattie.

Wayne's World

Something of a Canadian classic, which I didn't see until 2009. It's an incredibly stupid movie, but five guys headbanging to "Bohemian Rhapsody" in a baby blue Pacer with flames ... brilliant. Made the rest of the foolishness worthwhile. And there were a few other funny jokes.

1992, dir. Penelope Spheeris. With Mike Meyers, Dana Carvey, Rob Lowe, Tia Carrere, Lara Flynn Boyle, Michael DeLuise.

The Weather Man

I only saw about 25 minutes of this one, and gave up in disgust having cringed repeatedly and not laughed once. Some very good actors couldn't save a massively humiliating script.

2005, dir. Gore Verbinski. With Nicholas Cage, Hope Davis, Michael Caine.

Wedding Crashers

Vaughn and Wilson play a pair of lawyers whose favourite pastime is to go to weddings that they weren't invited to where they party and then get laid. Things get more complicated when Beckwith (played by Wilson) falls for McAdams and forces Vaughn to spend the weekend with the family - including the other daughter, who is the "stage five clinger" he desperately wants to avoid. The family is as nutty and obnoxious in their own way as the two lying lawyers they've taken in. It was funnier than I expected, and not quite as obnoxious - but then, I was thinking "Harold and Kumar." I wouldn't particularly recommend it, but it definitely has some laughs.

2005, dir. David Dobkin. With Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher, Christopher Walken, Jane Seymour, Bradley Cooper, Will Ferrell.

The Wedding Date

Woman goes to younger sister's wedding, takes hired escort to shatter her ex- who is also the best man. Messing plays the lead, Adams the sister, Mulroney the escort, and Sheffield the ex-. It made me laugh several times near the beginning, but as the predictability piled up and the laughs thinned as they tried to get more romantic, it became terribly tedious. Not a bad crew of actors, but a staggeringly mundane script.

2005, dir. Clare Kilner. With Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney, Amy Adams, Jack Davenport, Sarah Parish, Jeremy Sheffield, Peter Egan, Holland Taylor.

The Wedding Planner

Not one of the world's best romantic comedies. J.Lo. can actually do some passable acting, but she wasn't doing too well in this one. Neither was McConaughey. The plot is fairly far-fetched and the chemistry lacking. Occasionally mildly amusing.

2001, dir. Adam Shankman. With Jennifer Lopez, Matthew McConaughey, Bridgette Wilson, Justin Chambers, Judy Greer, Alex Rocco.

Weekend at Bernie's

Our two heroes (one uptight, one slacker, you know, for, like, comedic effect) show their boss (Bernie) that someone has been scamming their insurance company for several million. To reward them he invites them to a weekend at his huge house on the beach. Unfortunately, when they arrive, he's dead. Slapstick comedy ensues as they try to convince people he's still alive. Pretty silly, although it does have several very funny moments.

1989, dir. Ted Kotcheff. With Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Catherine Mary Stewart, Terry Kisser, Don Calfa.

Weird Sex and Snowshoes

A short (60m) documentary about the Canadian cinematic landscape. As I've known for a long time, we're all about identity - and we'll skip the violence in favour of sex because we just aren't a violent people. But our protagonists tend to be ... just a little weird. More power to anyone outside of Canada who watches this, but good luck: it's a different world than yours. Covers early documentaries, the NFB, the Seventies, and then (just in case you were wondering about the "weird sex" part) "Kissed" and "Crash" (Cronenberg, although he didn't appear in the movie).

2004, dir. Jill Sharpe. With Denys Arcand, Atom Egoyan, Zacharias Kunuk, Robert Lepage, Guy Maddin, Patricia Rozema, Lynne Stopkewich, François Girard ...

Whale Rider

Filmed in New Zealand, a coming of age tale of a young Maori girl in a small coastal town. It would be unwise to categorize this as a kid's movie - it's kid-safe, it's probably a really good kid's movie, but there's an awful lot going on that only adults are likely to catch. I found the grandfather/Koro role - so bound by the path his tribe has always followed - a little heavy-handed at times, but Castle-Hughes is superb in the lead role (for which she was nominated for an Oscar at age 12), and the cinematography is very good. The movie also has a hell of a lot to say, without preaching, about tradition, how it affects people, and the need for change. A wonderful film.

2002, dir. Niki Caro. With Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rawiri Paratene, Vicky Haughton, Cliff Curtis, Grant Roa.

What A Girl Wants

Not exactly a classic, and occasionally overly broad (but not offensive) in it's humour, but charming and amusing. Bynes surprised me by being quite good. Firth was quite good too, but that didn't surprise me.

2003. dir. Dennie Gordon. With Amanda Bynes, Colin Firth, Kelly Preston.

Wheels on Meals

Yes, that is the title.

Thomas (Chan) and David (Biao) run a fast food van in Barcelona. They're clearly both good martial artists. Moby (Hung) is a mostly incompetent and definitely annoying "private eye" whose search intersects their lives. They meet Sylvia (Forner) who robs both of them, but David is enthusiastic to see her again. They rescue her from attack and finally meet their match in the martial arts in the form of Urquidez and Vitali (both very good competition martial artists).

Includes plenty of Hung/Chan humour, although I find it a bit more successful than usual. The plotline is routinely stupid. The three "brothers" (Hung, Chan, and Biao) all play well in this movie: they're all incredibly nimble. Includes some very good stunts, and the final fight between Chan and Urquidez is one of the best martial arts fights ever put on film - just spectacular.

1984, dir. Sammo Hung. With Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Lola Forner, Benny Urquidez, Keith Vitali.

Where the Truth Lies

Egoyan finally gets a budget and some Hollywood access, pulling in Firth and Bacon to play two of the main characters in this one. The book this is based on was by Rupert Holmes, adapted for the screen by Egoyan. I haven't read the book, but my suspicion is that the poor structuring can be blamed on Egoyan's adaptation - or his choice of allowing the poorest actor of the major characters (Lohman) to give voice to the revelations of the script in plodding exposition. Bacon and Firth were both excellent, but that couldn't save this one.

2005. dir. Atom Egoyan, with Alison Lohman, Colin Firth, Kevin Bacon.

Where the Wild Things Are

Live-action interpretation of the classic Maurice Sendak children's book. Records plays Max, a young boy subject to tantrums and particularly nasty behaviour. After an altercation with his mother he runs away, finds a boat on a pond, and sails several hundred miles to an island where the Wild Things are. When they threaten to eat him, he tells them he's a king, so they crown him. At this point I gave up on the movie: I found Max utterly intolerable. This isn't Records' fault: he was good as an incredibly obnoxious kid - with some awareness of the problems he causes, but not enough. In fact, he was excellent: it was the character of Max I found unwatchable.

2009, dir. Spike Jonze. With Max Records, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Catherine Keener, Paul Dano, James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Forest Whitaker.

While You Were Sleeping

Bullock plays a shy Chicago Transit Authority gate keeper who falls in love with a man who goes through her station every day - even though she's never spoken to him. When he's attacked on the platform on Christmas day and pushed on the tracks, she saves his life - and at the hospital where he's in a coma, she's mistaken for his fiancée. A comedy of errors ensues. Initially this is very funny and quite charming. But as the misunderstandings, coincidences, and flat out stupidities pile up, it becomes less amusing and more annoying. Bullock and Pullman are charming. The ending is inevitable.

1995, dir. Jon Turtletaub. With Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman, Peter Gallagher, Peter Boyle, Jack Warden, Jason Bernard, Glynis Johns.

Whip It

Page plays a 17 year old in Bodeen, Texas, whose mother pushes her into beauty pageants. She finds her calling in roller derby, without her parents knowing about it.

Unfortunately, what Barrymore (who directs as well as acts) has produced here is an utterly normal coming-of-age comedy with the minor twist of the addition of roller derby. Page is a good actress, but there's not much to work with. There's some laughs in the absurdity of roller derby and the actors (mostly actresses) seem to be having a great time, but the movie doesn't really succeed as either a coming-of-age story or a comedy. And they didn't even use the Devo song.

On the other hand, Stern as her father did something resembling real acting and none of his usual over-the-top mugging. It was a pleasant surprise.

2009, dir. Drew Barrymore. With Ellen Page, Alia Shawkat, Kristen Wiig, Marcia Gay Harden, Daniel Stern, Drew Barrymore, Juliette Lewis, Jimmy Fallon.

Whisper of the Heart (orig. "Mimi wo sumaseba")

Relatively unusual anime in that it's placed in plain old current day Japan. There are fantasy elements, but they're very clearly inside someone's head. Detail-oriented in the best possible way, well drawn. Less unusual in that it's another coming-of-age tale about a girl approaching high school. She meets a boy who inspires her. There's not much here that sounds exciting, there's no wild action, just a young girl worrying about what she's going to do with her life. And it's done well.

1995, dir. Yoshifumi Kondo.

Who Am I?

Chan plays a secret operative who's lost his memory after a betrayal when his men are killed and he's seriously injured. As he tries to recover his identity, people try to kill him. Includes a lot of hit-or-miss Chan humour, and patented Chan sexism. On the plus side, it includes some spectacular stunts and possibly his best fight ever.

1998, dir. Jackie Chan. With Jackie Chan, Michelle Ferre, Mirai Yamamoto.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Set in a world where "Toon Town" occupies a large area adjacent to a Hollywood studio lot and where toons interact with humans and are employed the same way as movie actors (although receiving different pay), we find the mostly drunk private investigator Eddie Valiant (Hoskins) being paid to take photos of the toon Jessica Rabbit (voiced by Turner) playing pattycake with a human. These photos break the heart of her husband, the famous actor / comic / toon, Roger Rabbit (voiced by Fleischer) - who is shortly accused of killing the human involved. Valiant has avoided working with toons in the five years since his brother was killed by a toon (who dropped a piano on him) but can no longer avoid it.

This is a landmark film, ground-breaking in its interactions of animated characters and live humans. And watching it again in 2011, I was astounded at how good it is. I'm hardly Hoskins' biggest fan, but he's excellent here. He puts on a good American accent and brings real pathos to things like the loss of his brother - considering how the brother died, that's something of an achievement. This movie also provided the world with one of the most famous movie quotes ever, with the ludicrously voluptuous Jessica Rabbit saying "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." The interactions between humans and toons are excellent, the mystery really is a mystery, the ending is tense ... a superb movie and a hell of an achievement. Highly recommended.

1988, dir. Robert Zemeckis. With Bob Hoskins, Charles Fleischer, Christopher Lloyd, Kathleen Turner, Joanna Cassidy, Alan Tilvern, Stubby Kaye, Lou Hirsch, Mel Blanc.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

The first half hour is spent in explaining the origins and properties of the GM EV and electric cars in general. I found that fairly boring, but it got more interesting as it became apparent that GM was going way the hell out of their way to destroy every single EV they'd built and leased rather than sell them to the owners, many of whom were desperate to buy them after the lease ended. A bit paranoid, but pretty damn convincing, and fairly interesting overall.

2006, dir. Chris Paine.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

While the movie is definitely about the parrots, it is just as much about Bittner who fed them and observed them for several years. I walked the neighbourhood and saw the parrots when I was in San Francisco in 2004 - I wonder if they were filming when I was there? Bittner is eccentric, but intelligent and interesting to listen to. The movie doesn't exactly grab you, but it's interesting and fairly well shot, and does have a wonderfully bizarre twist at the end. Not a bad thing - just strange and unexpected.

2003, dir. Judy Irving. With Mark Bittner and lots of parrots.

Win Win

Mike Flaherty (Giamatti) is a small town lawyer and volunteer wrestling coach trying to make ends meet. He makes a poor decision and becomes the ward of a mentally incapacitated client because it involves money. Then the client's grandson Kyle (Shaffer) appears (unrelated to the other issue) and Flaherty discovers the kid is A) fairly decent in a very blunt way, and B) really, really good at wrestling, so he takes him in. And then Kyle's Mom resurfaces, and wants control of both her son and her father ...

Populated entirely by real people, it's a pleasure to see the utter lack of clichés and stereotypes. I'm not fond of watching people, particularly decent ones like Flaherty, struggle for money, so this isn't going to be a favourite film of mine, but the acting is superb and it's a good story.

2011, dir. Thomas McCarthy. With Paul Giamatti, Amy Ryan, Alex Shaffer, Bobby Cannavale, Jeffrey Tambor, David W. Thompson.

The Wind Journeys (orig. "Los viajes del viento")

A Colombian film about a man trying to return a cursed accordion after the death of his wife. As always, I enjoyed the simple fact that this movie wasn't made in Hollywood. But decent cinematography isn't nearly enough to cover for a simple story played by poor actors and burdened with a great deal of mediocre-to-poor accordion playing.

2009, dir. Ciro Guerra. With Marciano Martínez, Yull Núñez.

Wing Chun

The trailer made this look like a serious martial arts action flick, but it's more of a comedy with a lot of action. And as with most Chinese humour, I didn't really get it. It was amusing, but neither the action (including wire-work and occasional speeding-up) nor the comedy was all that great. Yeoh was quite charming, but not enough to save the movie.

Yeoh plays the titular Yim Wing Chun, a woman who learnt martial arts to ward off an unwanted marriage (not the suitor, but the interest ... apparently successfully). She now dresses like a man and defends the village against nearby bandits. Yuen is a man who loved her when they were children and has recently returned, but has mistaken Wing Chun's co-worker for Wing Chun - a situation that Wing Chun does nothing to change.

1994, dir. Yuen Woo-ping. With Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, Pei-pei Cheng.

Wing Commander

I was looking for a couple hours of idle entertainment, and that's what I got. I'm not the least bit surprised to see that the critics hated it: it is, indeed, a bad movie. But ... it was kind of fun despite the clichés and massive failures of logic.

Lillard and Prinze play young new pilots assigned to help out in the fight against the alien Kilrathi. Both are superb pilots, each with their own issues. Prinze faces some problems because one of his parents was a "Pilgrim," a group that had previously been at war with the rest of the human race. Lillard is a show-off and a braggart who occasionally endangers others.

This is all based on a video game series, and mostly wastes a large amount of reasonable talent - Warner, Suchet, Karyo, Prochnow - by under-utilizing them or making the characters walking clichés. From an SF perspective, I was most annoyed by the ships and the flying: the ships looked like old American ironclad warships with rockets strapped on their asses. Flying was also very oriented to gravity-bound and atmospheric behaviour, despite being in deep space.

1999, dir. Chris Roberts. With Freddie Prinze Jr., Saffron Burrows, Matthew Lillard, Tchéky Karyo, Jurgen Prochnow, David Warner, David Suchet.

The Winning Season

Stars Rockwell as an alcoholic, estranged father, and current dishwasher. The local high school president hires him to (once again) coach basketball. He reluctantly takes on coaching the women's varsity basketball team ("women hate me").

Rockwell is excellent, but that can only raise a very traditional plot and movie to watchable and mildly enjoyable. Some minor twists help and there's a higher degree of personal lives intruding than usually seen in a sports movie.

2009, dir. James C. Strouse. With Sam Rockwell, Emma Roberts, Rob Corddry, Meaghan Witri, Melanie Hinkle, Rooney Mara, Shareeka Epps, Emily Rios.

Withnail & I

I have a weakness for sympathetic characters. Seeing none, I was less than enchanted with this film. Apparently it's a cult classic. Guess I'm out of the joke ...

1986. dir. Bruce Robinson. With Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann.

Without a Clue

Sherlock Holmes (Caine) is a clueless drunken actor guided by the brilliant Dr. Watson (Kingsley). Watson attempts to get rid of Holmes, but finds he's been so successful building up the mystique around Holmes that he can't convince anyone to hire him alone. I found most of the movie mildly amusing but nothing spectacular - and yet somehow it came together very well at the end, which has a good deal of action and humour and redeemed the whole movie.

1988, dir. Thom Eberhardt. With Michael Caine, Ben Kingsley, Jeffrey Jones, Lysette Anthony, Paul Freeman, Pat Keen.

Wolverine (aka "X-Men Origins: Wolverine")

The opening credits run over top of Wolverine (Jackman) and his brother Victor Creed (Schreiber) fighting side-by-side through a century of wars, morphing in a moment from the trenches of the First World War to the beaches of the Second ... as it turned out, this impressive bit of special effects wizardry was the best part of the movie as it shows a strong bond between the two characters and their two different motivations for fighting (Wolverine for justice, Creed for the kill). But after this fine setup, the movie continues at much the same pace - no further character development, just a series of situations created to allow people with superpowers to fight each other. All leading up to the unsatisfying ending in which Wolverine loses all memory of the entire story we just watched (sorry, if you've see the X-Men movies you knew it was coming). The special effects are great, and I thought Schreiber was good as Creed/Sabertooth (even though I was disappointed they didn't recall Tyler Mane). But Jackman spends the whole movie scowling and yelling and the lack of character development after the excellent track record of the first two X-Men movies (hell, even the third compared to this) leaves this piece of garbage in the sourest corner of hell.

2009, dir. Gavin Hood. With Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Will i Am, Lynn Collins, Dominic Monaghan, Taylor Kitsch, Ryan Reynolds.

Wonder Boys

Douglas plays a university professor who wrote "the great American novel" seven years ago ... and hasn't published anything since. We see him through a weekend in which his university has a big event, his editor flies into town looking for his next book, his wife leaves him, his mistress tells him she's pregnant, one of his students hits on him, he gets involved with another student who is a pathological liar ... A lot happens. It's very funny. And if you've ever worked at a university, it's even funnier.

2000, dir. Curtis Hanson. With Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Robert Downey Jr., Katie Holmes, Rip Torn.

Word Play

Who the hell does a documentary about Crossword Puzzles? And damned if it's isn't fascinating. It centres mostly on the New York Times crossword puzzle - those that create it, those that do it (including the likes of Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton), and the yearly competition in Stamford, Connecticut. Contrary to anything you might expect, it's quite enjoyable.

2006, dir. Patrick Creadon.

The World's Fastest Indian

A movie about one of those amiable maniacs you occasionally meet, totally obsessed with one thing. In this case, going very, very fast on a heavily modified motorcycle. And he's one of those rarer variety of amiable maniacs - one who was actually going to achieve something. Hopkins plays Burt Munro, a (real) New Zealander who took a hugely modified, very old Indian motorcycle to the Bonneville salt flats - and set a world record that stands to this day. They modify the facts for dramatic purposes and come up with a fairly charming movie. Munro (or this incarnation of him) is a charming guy, an eccentric, a lousy neighbour, and one hell of a mechanic.

What astounds me is that his record still stands: "fastest streamlined motorcycle under 1000 cc." Huge advances have been made in motorcycles - and, for that matter, streamlining. And they've had 40 years to take this record out: and yet, no one has. He must really have done one hell of a job ...

2005, dir. Roger Donaldson. With Anthony Hopkins, Chris Williams, Annie Whittle.

Wrath of the Ninja: The Yotoden Movie

Low budget but entertaining, set in the 16th century in Japan. A time, as we all know, of leaping, powerful ninja and horrible monsters. Three ninja with special weapons are brought together to fight a demon lord.

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X-Men

This is the prototypical superhero movie, there has yet to be a better. Jackman is perfect as Wolverine, despite the pressure of the incredible history and fan base he had to live up to. Paquin, while not excellent, plays well opposite him. The plot is meticulously structured, and the script excellent.

2000, dir. Bryan Singer. With Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin, Halle Berry, Famke Jansen, James Marsden, Tyler Mane.

X2: X-Men United

As good as the original, which is saying something. The best of the superhero movies. Adds more characters to the franchise, and expands the scale of the battle between mutants and the humans that want them controlled. Jackman is again excellent, and his Wolverine character, McKellen's Magneto, and Cumming's Nightcrawler play out particularly well.

2003. dir. Bryan Singer. Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Famke Jansen, Alan Cumming, Anna Paquin, James Marsden.

X-Men: The Last Stand

Rumoured to be the last of the X-Men movies, although there's already a "Wolverine" spin-off movie planned. The main premise of this movie is that a drug company has developed a permanent cure for the mutant "X-gene." As per usual, this pits Magneto and company against Dr. Xavier and the X-Men. Unfortunately, Rattner replaced Singer at the helm for this one, and while the product is quite serviceable, it doesn't have the quality or emotional depth that Singer provided. On the plus side, the fights are possibly even better than the previous two movies.

2006, dir. Brett Rattner. With Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Famke Jansen, Anna Paquin, James Marsden.

X-Men: First Class

retcon: retroactive continuity, best defined by Wikipedia as "the alteration of previously established facts in a literary work." The commonest application is to comics, where artists are constantly coming up with story lines that inconveniently don't fit with what's already been written about the characters ... so the continuity of the universe is simply revised to suit the new story line.

This story opens with almost exactly the same footage as the first X-Men movie - Eric Lensherr in the rain and mud of a Polish concentration camp, being separated from his parents. But its been refilmed so we can carry on with a different young actor who is then shown with the evil Doctor Schmidt (Bacon). Flash forward to Lensherr using his skills to hunt down the various Nazis in 1962, while Charles Xavier (McAvoy) is getting a Ph.D. in Genetics. Of course their paths cross, and they take on Sebastian Shaw (Schmidt with a new name) and his crew.

Overall it's quite well done. There's actually not a great deal of retconning, but enough to be annoying to someone who's as familiar with the previous X-Men movies as I am. Watch it as a stand-alone and you'll appreciate it more. The acting is good, the effects are excellent (although the CG is visible in one or two places).

2011, dir. Matthew Vaughn. With James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Rose Byrne, Nicholas Hoult, Oliver Platt, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Till, Zoë Kravitz.

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Y Tu Mamá También

A Mexican film, translating as "And Your Mama Too." I'm told it's just as rude in Spanish as it is in English. The movie is about sex, relationships, death, and, well, sex. Two male teens go on a road trip with an attractive older woman. Not a great movie, but fairly good. Different from most North American movies, and amusing that Cuarón's next movie was Harry Potter #3.

2001, dir. Alfonso Cuarón. With Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal, Ana López Mercado.

The Year of the Yao

In 2002 Houston won the 1^st round draft pick in the NBA. They chose Yao Ming - famous in China where he played with the Shanghai Sharks, but unheard of in America. Yao's first few appearances did nothing to reassure those doubting his ability to play in the NBA, but that changed quickly, and in a big way. It's an interesting story of a young (and enormous, at 7'6") Chinese man learning his new place in the world, and being polite like no NBA player has ever been before.

2004, dir. Adam Del Deo, James D. Stern.

Yellow Submarine

I was glad to see this on DVD, in wide screen, and with "extras." But my glowing childhood memories of this film were ... not "crushed," but at least bruised by seeing it again in view of modern animation. They tried a lot of things, and certainly a lot of it is interesting and inventive, but other animated films contemporary with it were of better quality. I was also hugely disappointed to find that the Beatles didn't actually do their own speaking voices (although I couldn't honestly tell that by listening). But ... the music is still some of the best ever made.

1968, dir. George Dunning. With The Beatles.

Yesterday Was a Lie

Brown plays the private investigator Hoyle. We first see her at her psychologist's, talking about a dream - in which she sees Salvatore Dali's "The Persistence of Memory" with all its twisted clocks. But the scene quickly changes. And changes again, apparently out of order. Director/writer Kerwin made some comment in the extras of writing about "quantum mechanics as an explanation of the human condition," and our protagonist is apparently cut loose in time because of a messed-up relationship. Oh, wait - I just gave it all away. But it's okay: it will seem mysterious and philosophical to you if you watch it anyway ... and it still won't make sense.

Two gorgeous women (Brown and Masterson) anchor the movie with lousy acting, and the only other character that really matters - Dudas (Newton), who Hoyle is pursuing - also acts poorly. The script is clearly written by someone with intelligence but not a lot of clarity or direction, and it never really comes together. The cinematography is dazzling (black and white, neo-noir, fog, and everyone is dressed beautifully), but not nearly enough to recommend the movie.

2009, dir. James Kerwin. With Kipleigh Brown, Chase Masterson, John Newton, Mike Scriba, Nathan Mobley, Warren Davis, Peter Mayhew.

Yi Yi

Life in Taipei. Lots of windows, doors, and halls. And long shots. A fascinating study of a family facing a bunch of changes in too short a time. Too long (2:50), but one hell of a character study.

2000, dir. Edward Yang. With Nien-Jen Wu, Elaine Jin, Issei Ogata, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Hsi-Sheng Chen, Su-Yun Ko.

Yojimbo

One of the most famous templates ever made ... A samurai walks into a town in Japan where two gangs are at war with each other. He sets out to help the gangs kill each other. "A Fistful of Dollars" and "Last Man Standing" are both based on this movie. The samurai (Mifune) and a couple of others in the movie are fairly realistic, but most of the gang members are buffoons. I think that Kurosawa is right that most people who swagger and act tough would fold up like a deck of cards when their life was on the line, but I think he went too far (Eastwood goes too far the other way in his Westerns, everybody so tough). In any case, it was interesting to see.

1961. dir. Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune.

You Kill Me

For me, this movie makes it official: the "dysfunctional hitman comedy" is now a genre of its own. "Prizzi's Honor," "Grosse Pointe Blank," and "The Matador" helped set the scene. Kingsley is a hitman for the Polish mob in Buffalo, but his drinking is interfering with his work. He's sent to AA in San Francisco (why isn't very clear) where he's pressed into working at a funeral parlour and meets Leoni over a dead body, and takes Wilson as a sponsor. The humour is fairly dark as you'd expect, and it's not bad - I got some good laughs. Enjoyable.

2007, dir. John Dahl. Ben Kingsley, Téa Leoni, Luke Wilson, Dennis Farina, Philip Baker Hall, Bill Pullman, Marcus Thomas, Scott Heindl.

You Never Can Tell

A Shaw play, on the same BBC DVD as "Mrs. Warren's Profession." This is definitely the lighter of the two, with Shaw having a good time making fun of the "modern woman." Dorothy and Philip Clandon had me in stitches, but the romance was just silly.

1972, dir. James Cellan Jones. With Robert Powell, Kate Nicholls, Richard Everett, Judy Parfitt.

Young at Heart (also "Young @ Heart")

A documentary about a chorus of retirees (called the "Young at Heart Chorus") singing rock songs. Things like Sonic Youth, Coldplay, the Clash, and occasionally James Brown. While they aren't particularly good singers, their enthusiasm and the bizarre interpretations are quite interesting. The movie also spends some time talking to the chorus members and getting into their lives. And in the couple months he filmed, two of the chorus members died. Despite that, an enjoyable film.

2007, dir. Stephen Walker. With the Young at Heart Chorus.

The Young Master

If you're okay with Chan's earlier stuff, this one is pretty good. Some very nice choreography (particularly the dragon dance) and typical Chan humour (ie. hit-or-miss). But the VHS has some of the worst subtitles I've ever seen: apparently they were intended for wide screen, but it's a pan-and-scan version, there's a lot of white-on-white, and occasionally they don't bother to translate stuff.

1980, dir. Jackie Chan. With Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Wei Pai, Lilly Li.

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Z

Zathura

"Jumanji" in space. There's really not a lot more to it than that. Except that the idea was only so-so to start with, and now it's old. They had several clever moments, but a lot more tedium and annoyance. Painfully blatant family values. I wouldn't recommend this.

2005, dir. Jon Favreau. With Jonah Bobo, Josh Hutcherson, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart, Tim Robbins.

Zombieland

Eisenberg narrates and leads as a young loner who has managed to survive the latest version of the zombie apocalypse, in part because of his asocial tendencies. He meets up with Harrelson, and they eventually encounter Stone and Breslin.

Very gory, and occasionally quite funny (despite the gore, this is primarily a comedy). I found the beginning too gory and the middle too slow, but Harrelson and Eisenberg made their characters quite entertaining.

2009, dir. Ruben Fleischer. With Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin.

Zoom

Sitting at 3% on Rotten Tomatoes, this isn't a movie most people are going to rush to see (and with a dis-recommendation like that, I'm not going to tell you you should). But I was influenced by a friend of mine (who also likes science fiction and superheroes) who had enjoyed it. To my surprise, I found I enjoyed it as well. The target age group is quite young, perhaps 8-10. It's not in the same league with "The Incredibles," it's definitely not as good as "Sky High," and the effects are distinctly low budget, but I thought it was both sweet and amusing (I have this bad feeling they were aiming for "edgy" and missed by a light year ...).

Plot: a bunch of young misfits with superpowers are brought together by the military. They're to be trained by "Zoom" (Allen), the unhappy and mostly powerless former leader of a superhero group, who's less than pleased that they're at the military facility that effectively killed off his entire former team. What none of them know is that they're supposed to fight Zoom's powerful (and evil) brother, "Concussion." The movie is about bonding, forgiveness, and becoming family.

2006, dir. Peter Hewitt. With Tim Allen, Chevy Chase, Courtney Cox, Kate Mara, Michael Cassidy, Ryan Newman, Spencer Breslin, Kevin Zegers, Rip Torn.

Movie count (20111228): 1269