Reviews

All hail the *intelligent* screenplay!

GOOD WILL HUNTING pairs "Bahston" boys Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in their first, and arguably most powerful, bromance to date (excepting maybe their turns as marauding angels in Kevin Smith's DOGMA); written by Damon and Affleck, who deserve every inch of their little gold man (Best Screenplay 1998), a driving story of a disturbed young mathematical genius trying to find his niche in a world that unwittingly ostracizes him for his beautiful mind.

Matt Damon is Will Hunting, a brawling teen by day (with his informal gang Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck and Cole Hauser) and a janitor at a college by night; he is also an autodidactic savant with photographic retention skills and math aptitude to embarrass a rocket scientist. He is "discovered" by physicist Professor Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård) who tries to nudge him on a respectable path by bailing him out of jail on the provision that Hunting will help the Professor solve perplexing mathematics problems and also see a therapist.

The math problems are a breeze for Hunting. The therapists are a stickier matter, as they all run screaming from his presence as he pinpoints their insecurities before they can pinpoint his--until he meets Sean Maguire (Robin Williams, unshaven like a bearcub), who brings all his DEAD POET'S philosophic skills to bear on the fast-talking, uncooperative scrapper.

Minnie Driver is Skylar, the Harvard student who falls for Hunting, but whom he ends up pushing away neurotically, in an argument-out-of-nowhere scene that is written so well, it doesn't seem like it was written at all, but escalating right before our eyes.

When Hunting's neurosis is unlocked by Maguire at the end, the revelation is so simple that we marvel at how easy it is to actually connect with someone, and yet how hard it is to find that connection.

The script benefits from being written by two "unknowns" who load it with verve and vitality, realism and dynamism, while still displaying a sound mechanical knowledge of "Hollywood" screenplay construction. Director and pal Kevin Smith aided Affleck and Damon in securing a deal where they had a large amount of control over their story, and director Gus Van Sant would let it play out unobtrusively and intelligently.

The Professor and Maguire are at odds on how to handle Hunting--push him into society or let him find it at his own pace; what could have become a clichéd pissing contest in a passé Hollywood writer's hands remains a revelatory argument of ethics between two men who are battling their own regrets and just want the best for their surrogate son. If we thought we'd seen the best of Robin Williams in DEAD POET'S SOCIETY or AWAKENINGS (as opposed to his worst in NINE MONTHS or FATHER'S DAY), he embraces this sober psychiatrist's role like the bearcub embracing his face; and it took a couple of novices to put words in his mouth that would melt like butter and ring like the bells of Notre Dame. (He would deservedly walk away with a little gold man of his own for Best Supporting Actor.)

The best aspect of the script is that it truly captures the contempt and separation that a virtuoso feels for people who cannot grasp the art or discipline that he finds so awkwardly simple. Hunting describes his aptitude for equations with an insightful analogy: "Beethoven looked at a piano and it just made sense to him; he could just play. I look at a piano, I see a bunch of keys, three pedals and a box of wood--but Beethoven, Mozart, they saw it, they could 'just play.' I couldn't paint you a picture, I probably couldn't hit the ball out of Fenway, and I can't play the piano. But when it came to stuff like that, I could always 'just play'."

Hunting is offered jobs dealing with superstring theory, advanced algorithms, heavy duty CIA stuff, which he isn't interested in, at one point raging into a tirade that connects all the political corruption in the world to the personal level, "...America only over there to install a government who would sell them oil at a good price..."

Of course, the "troubled character" has to find his redemption and it is done subtly, with every payoff hitting elegantly: Hunting's best friend Chuckie (Affleck) laments Hunting is still hauling bricks with him, and hopes for the day he can arrive to pick up Hunting for work and Hunting is not there, "...and you're just gone, no goodbyes, no nothing"; Maguire tells Hunting of how he met his wife by giving up a classic baseball game, "I told my friends, 'I'm going to see about a girl'." When these moments hit, the performances sell them; they are not forced, and create magnificent screen moments for Williams, Affleck and Damon.

We wish Affleck and Damon could once again write something half as good as this masterpiece of cerebral mayhem. Though they've parlayed their grand win into continued success through the years, nothing they've done individually or together yet matches the raw (dare we call it "indie") flavor-blast of GOOD WILL HUNTING. Like Costner, Welles and Lucas, they seem to have peaked at the head of their careers. It's ironic that these two young guys (Affleck and Damon), now renowned for their sex symbol status, shot themselves into the A-List by writing and starring in a dialog-driven mindfest!

--Poffy The Cucumber

Yes, I know it's trying to be inspiring and heroic and poignant, but COURAGE UNDER FIRE is one of the most blatantly gutless movies ever made. About a soldier investigating whether a downed female United States helicopter pilot in Desert Storm deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor. So I ask you: in which universe will America ever make a movie where a Medal of Honor is investigated and NOT awarded?

So it's a foregone conclusion--all the mystery and mayhem and maybes are simply wasting our time more than the actual war this story was set in--as it leads inexorably to the melodramatic military funeral, the flags, saluting, tears of the family, proud shiny buttons and white gloves, the flyover with one plane breaking formation, and that bilious, bleating orchestra swell. And the Medal. The End. Cry me a river; cry me a patently meaningless award, military swine.

Then the coda: the investigating soldier visits pilot's grave, salutes grave, tiny flag, voice-over of dead pilot to American Pie Mom and Dad, talking of the Big Push and hero hero hero hero hero hero another blithering orchestra swell I'm going to vomit...

Denzel Washington is the investigating soldier, with demons of his own. (Well, they're not really demons; they're roiling stabs of conscience he feels for stupidly shooting one of his own tanks during a skirmish, killing his own men in the hilariously black euphemism "friendly fire," and then having the military cover-up his blunder.) And whenever he has visions of that po' boy he fricasseed in that tank (Mmm! Soldierboy, the other white meat!), he heads straight for the alcohol... uh, cos he's a hero, see.

When he's asked to investigate whether Captain Karen Walden (Meg Ryan) is worthy of receiving the Medal of Honor for "courage under fire," the story ends right there. Of course she's deserving of it. She's the first female officer recommended, she's regarded as a hero for sacrificing her life for her men--and she's Meg Ryan. As if the movie would go to all the trouble setting up her heroism and feminism and Ryanism and NOT award her the medal.

And every cliché in the military lexicon is thrown at us like grenades lobbed into foxholes: the tragic family; damaged goods investigating damaged goods; the novice (Matt Damon), the toughguy (Lou Diamond Phillips), the hero-worshipper (Tim Guinee) and all the other bumboys like the Benetton passengers of SPEED; the hospitalized guy (Seth Gilliam) whose seen one battle too many; the military cover-up. And everyone's got Movie PTSD.

Denzel wants to find out "what really happened," so COURAGE is constructed like a RASHOMON for rednecks, as we see all the alternate flashbacks with a coy Walden, an indecisive Walden and a butch Walden barking orders and trying not to look like a sex object. Not one of the scenarios is ambiguous about her Hero status--no matter if she threw Iraqi babies at walls or defunded the G.I. Bill. If we can call football players heroes, and people who jumped from the Twin Towers heroes, then this chopper pilot must be a shoo-in, so I ask again: what compels viewers to spend 120 minutes *pretending* there's any doubt?

Denzel visits Walden's helicopter bumboys, who all give differing accounts of My Night In The Desert With Captain Walden. Diamond Phillips claims he was the toughguy, as he lies and plies himself with alcohol and commits suicide (cos he's a hero!); Damon claims Walden was a strategic hardnose, as he admits to being a junkie and afraid to go flying again (cos he's a hero!); Guinee relates how Walden sacrificed herself for them, even as he reveals how she got them shot down by taking another pass at an Iraqi tank when she could have flown away--cognitive dissonance rules!--while constantly telling his wife to shutup for calling Walden butch (cos he's a hero!); while Seth Gilliam pounds his medication to numb himself out of the running as a reputable eyewitness (cos he's a hero, see!).

What's in it for her bumboys to report that she was a coward? Nothing. But saying she was a HERO makes them vicarious heroes alongside her. Ooo-rah!

And here's a note to all you military wardogs whose first reaction is to Spock-chop me for "disrespecting" you (such heroes, fighting for peace!): When are you going to realize your own government, who pays you hypocritical lip service, regards you with even less respect than I do? I just consider you deluded and egotistical and sometimes uneducated, while they consider you cannon fodder!

It's the United States government that fools you into getting your asses shot off for them in the first place; it's the United States government that refuses you and your family financial benefits when you return from war; it's the United States government that stop-losses you, reneging on your stipulated leave time, over and over and over again; it's the United States government that cuts your medical funding; it's the United States government that evicts your family, that lies about friendly fire, that doesn't provide armor for you or your vehicles; it's the United States government that kicks you out for being gay after you've dedicated your life to them; it's the United States government that supposedly trains you for PTSD and then all of you return from war with PTSD (Who are the a-holes? You, who are either failing your training, or the government who are failing to train you properly?).

Is that what you bitches call "respect"? Under fire from your own government, it's about time you showed some real Courage Under Fire and tell them where to shove it next time they want to exploit you for political gain. That is, unless you really are as dumb as they consider you to be.

Ooo-rah!

--Poffy The Cucumber

Before MLK, Before O, there was - X.

MALCOLM X. A black man fighting for the black man in a white man's world.

Denzel Washington is Malcolm Little (whom everyone calls "Red" for his conked red hair), a petty thief, cocaine addict, prostitute peddler, and all-round small-time gangsta before the term was invented. During the War Years, Malcolm falls in with West Indian Archie (Delroy Lindo), plying his trade in Boston and New York, eventually being busted with his long-time friend and accomplice, Shorty (Spike Lee) and sent to jail.

In jail, about the time that Jackie Robinson made the major leagues in baseball, Malcolm Little becomes Malcolm X, to shuck off his "slave name." So begins the rise to power of one of America's great black leaders. But it is in jail that the movie MALCOLM X falters, as Malcolm's criminal outlook on life flip-flops to that of Islam, schooled by a pushy, annoying, racist fellow convict, Baines (Albert Hall).

Malcolm leaves prison as one of Islam's greatest exponents, an articulate, intelligent, outspoken community leader, preaching fire and damnation against the White Man, causing so much civil discomfort (even whilst awakening the self-respect of the black community) that it leads to his assassination by the Nation of Islam.

Proving my point about religious hypocrisy.

As I write this in 2009, there are "two" Americas - pre-Obama and post-Obama. Films like MALCOLM X created righteous outrage - but in a post-Obama world that outrage is obviously diluted. The Dream has been realized - where else is there to go for the Black Man? Yes, there will be racism - always. The human animal is built that way. But what more can be done or said than achieving the highest post in the world?

The point of films like X was to create righteous outrage so people would aspire to the goal of equality. To that point, X served its purpose bodaciously - in a pre-Obama world. In a post-Obama world, well, the struggle may not be over completely, but the "outrage" part surely must be. X opens with a burning American flag - power to the peeps an' all dat - but if you burn a flag NOW, isn't that just disrespect to the Black Man? Who happens to also be THE Man?

Spike Lee directs MALCOLM X from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley. Though it is not Lee's fault, Malcolm's messages were garbled in religious hypocrisy and overt racism, and the messenger himself precluded this movie becoming an epic due to his small-mindedness; due to not being King: He called the Kennedy assassination "justice... the chickens coming home to roost," saying it didn't make him sad, but glad. He called for "complete separation between the black race and the white race" and subscribed to juvenile mythologies like the Tribe of Shabazz, an ancient race of black kings and queens from whom the Caucasian race descended. (Nowhere nearly as sensible as the Tribe of David where an olive-skinned virgin gave birth to Jesus the Magic Caucasian and started a white race of Christians even though he was a Jew...)

Malcolm preaches, "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us the white man is the devil." He doesn't say "some white men" - he says ALL white men are devils. These are the lessons he learns from that idiot Baines in jail. (I call him an idiot because religious fanaticism is a form of idiocy.) You could play a drinking game to this movie, on every time Malcolm X says, "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad" and by the end of the movie, you'll be drunk enough to convert to the Nation of Islam.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, though treated like a deity, was a flesh-and-blood guy, supposedly the apex of spirituality, his exact words: "I have built this nation under the divine guidance of Allah" - but the old Honorable Elijah Muhammad turns out not so honorable when news is leaked of two teenage girls who have sired children through his heavenly sperm. Malcolm meets with the girls, learns the pornographic truth, and is so disappointed in the Honorable Elijah Muhammad that he splits with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. (Jesus in Purgatory! Now he's got ME doing it!)

Malcolm X was a fiery political leader - Denzel's sexuality and charisma are tuned to breaking point on the podium, a perfect role for a perfect black panther - but it's unfortunate he had to resort to the crutch of religion to unite people. After he splits with the Honorabl--yeh, that guy, he has to maintain that his words are now not the Honora-- geez, there's no escaping this guy-- and that his words are his own. Why couldn't he do that from the start? Was Malcolm that weak-minded he needed to lean on the platitudes of a philandering old goat to unite people under a false aegis?

Spike Lee's movie-making is stupendous, Denzel's performance, electric. Malcolm X was charisma and brimstone and an inspiration for the black movement. But his message of Islam was plain stupid. I don't take away from the man - he is greater than I will ever be - but the delusion of religion obfuscated his underlying messages and this movie is shot through the prism of Malcolm's religious journey, which weakens the movie.

Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom the same faction who called him a religious hypocrite for splitting from them, The Nation of Islam "under the divine guidance of Allah." Need I say more about religious hypocrisy, the godlike manner in which they silenced him, or the Honorable Elijah Muhammad? A messianic eulogy ends this powerful film. But it's too late. I'm already drunk.

--Poffy The Cucumber

Hey, all you skatepunks and facebookers and under-30 neo-hippies: you know that word "Rambo" that you toss around to describe tough guys? It's an unquestioned part of modern English vernacular: you use it as sarcasm, insult or deflective compliment; newscasters use it to sprinkle their reports with humor; sociologists use it to identify unnecessary brutality; the word is in the Oxford English Dictionary, fer chrissakes! Rambo.

This is where that word came from - FIRST BLOOD.

It didn't originate with any of those misnamed sequels sporting the "Rambo" dog tag. It originated in a novel by David Morrell (First Blood, 1972), subsequently made into this effective, primal, unlikely hit.

FIRST BLOOD would not only augment Sylvester Stallone's existing tough-guy career (by this film's release, he was already up to ROCKY III), it was a tectonic cultural ground slam, spawning the sequels that would bear the "Rambo" moniker and entrench the archetype in world consciousness. "Rambo" virtually wiped out the other metaphors for tough guys: Hercules and Tarzan.

Viet Nam is over. A bedraggled ex-Special Forces operative, John Rambo, (Stallone) tramps into a hick American town, searching for long-dead friends and a hot meal. The antagonistic sheriff, Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy) wants Rambo to keep walkin.' When Rambo refuses, Teasle (that name just kills me!) hauls him to jail, where all the small-town redneck officers (including Bill McKinney and David Caruso) beat, berate and bully the compliant Rambo to his breaking point.

And then all Italian Stallion breaks loose.

It is established that Rambo is a "war hero" (whatever that means - maybe that he has big muscles) and the movie is a slight nod to post-war trauma and the difficulty in assimilating back into society - especially redneck Amuuurican society that is the least likely to accept you, that you are most apt to have come from. But that theme will only surface towards the end, when Rambo gives his Grand Soliloquy. For the most part, FIRST BLOOD is an adrenalin punch in the face, appealing to our primal revenge instincts.

Escaping the police station, Rambo flees into the forest, Teasle on his tail (I kill me!) and the whole sheriff's department as posse. Like a baleful wolf blending into the forest, Rambo stalks the namby-pamby officers, putting them out of commission one by one. And as surprising as it may sound, Rambo actually "kills" no one! Though this movie has a violent reputation (garnered in retrospect by its sequels), in FIRST BLOOD, only one officer falls from a helicopter and dies accidentally. Body count: 1! This sends Teasle into revenge mode - even though he was the one who started the conflict by provoking Rambo. The story ignites our sense of perverted Justice very well indeed. We're on Rambo's side from minute one.

I'm sure David Morell did not intend to rip off CHATO'S LAND (1972) - Bronson's Apache picking off his white pursuers one by one - but that is the brutal template FIRST BLOOD is fashioned on. The hunted becoming the hunter.

After Rambo puts his infamous gigantic hunting knife to Teasle's throat and warns, "Don't push it...or I'll give you a war you won't believe!" - the military are called in. Hoo-rah! With them comes Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna), who was Rambo's trainer, therefore someone who can presumably hit Rambo's PAUSE button. Unfortunately, Trautman can only talk in clichés and dynamic one-liners that involve doing a camera-turn before he exits the room; he overacts so much that five extras got their SAG cards.

Trautman can't do much with Rambo over the walkie-talkie, except cause more flashbacks for him. Rambo maintains to Trautman that he didn't start this fracas - that "they drew first blood!" After destroying the whole town, Rambo comes face to face with his beloved commanding officer and cries like a baby. He's trying to fit in - he says - but the society that he fought to preserve refuses to conform to his new PTSD lifestyle. Oh, so it's OUR fault the military trained the humanity out of you and lied to you that you could one day return to humanity psychologically unscathed...

You gotta respect Stallone for his business acumen, and how he turned two shallow movie characters into worldwide phenomena. But it was here, in FIRST BLOOD, where we also realized what a grand orator Stallone is, when he gives an impassioned monologue in the finale, on the death of innocence, that went something like this:

"Nothing is over! Nothing! Yucan swish it oohh Wozen my Waar I didn't ask you And the Wooma Gooma maggots protesting and the Waahoouy baby murderer code of honor! You wash my back, l wash yours! Heahh, there's nothing! All dese gray guys Chevy Convertible we wanna drive until the tires fell off And the Woouy Mogam Oosh body parts flying everywhere! Ouuuy l wanna go home, Johnny! But I Coonafy Hih legs! l can Geeah oww my head Oyoou..."

And Lawrence Olivier wept.

--Poffy The Cucumber

IN THE LOOP is a thunder-paced, dialog-driven British comedy with corruption more insidious than SYRIANA and dialogue more fierce than PULP FICTION.

Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) is a small-thinking, mealy-mouthed, indecisive, powerless British politician (i.e. your average politician, British or otherwise), craving to be taken seriously in the worst way. After a war conference between British and American movers and shakers which he is "allowed" to attend as "a piece of meat" (to his chagrin), he is accosted by reporters and sees his chance to prove he is In The Loop with the big boys.

On the spot, stuttering like a motorboat, Foster blurts a statement, "To walk the road of peace, we must be prepared to climb the mountain of conflict," seemingly advocating Allied war with the Middle East. But the war council (euphemistically named the Future Planning Committee) spins a contrary stance; Foster's statement goes from damage control to viral to bumper sticker in a matter of hours. And he suddenly finds himself being taken seriously. In the worst way.

From trying to get his feet wet, to trying to keep his head above water...

Foster is the foot-in-mouth device that sets IN THE LOOP in motion, but the movie belongs to one man amongst this unquestionably stellar cast: Peter Capaldi as British Director of Communications Malcolm Tucker. With his guttural denunciations and his blackly humorous manner of direct confrontation, Capaldi propels this movie like a saw-toothed shark, all in his proximity quailing before his grievous-bodily-harm loquacious embrace: "This is a government department, not some f**king Jane f**king Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse c*ck!" Capaldi makes IN THE LOOP the SEXY BEAST of political farces.

And everyone rises to the occasion to keep up. With four writers credited to the screenplay (Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Tony Roche and director Armando Iannucci), dialogue is more syrupy vicious than Tarantino's wet dreams. It's almost distracting. I could listen to these guys creatively insult each other all day, screw the plot.

The lovely Gina McKee is Tucker's executive assistant; David Rasche is an American politician, playing it like an evil Ed Begley Jr.; rosy-cheeked young Chris Addison is the fresh-faced new junior assistant to Foster, who tells him at one point that the situation will be "easy-peasy lemon-squeezy" to which Foster replies it will instead be "difficult-difficult lemon-difficult" and then gets caught having to explain what he means to the whole war council...

When Foster flees the limelight back to his local council, where he must listen to old ladies complain about septic tanks and concerned citizen Steve Coogan complain about a council wall falling into his mother's backyard, he realizes being a flustered meat puppet wasn't half bad after all, and returns to the abrasive pounce of Tucker.

Only one man can stand down Tucker's acid tongue--Tony Soprano! As a Senior Military Assistant--James Gandolfini, who realizes that only those who have not experienced war crave it so glibly, and whose bearlike presence and quiet, overbearing certitude swiftly puts Tucker in his place. "You're his little English b*tch and you don't even know it. Bet if I came to your hotel room tonight, I'd find you down on all fours, him hanging out the back of you." Bada-bing!

There are no explosions, car chases or murders--these people are much worse; explosive, unchaste and backbiting, their covert, duplicitous war decisions apt to cost many more lives than simple explosions, car chases or murders. And the whole cast is shot through with an ambiguous badness that just reeks of life on the beltway.

If you like your comedy intelligent, witty and frighteningly rude, IN THE LOOP is your bacchanal.

--Poffy The Cucumber

It helps if you read this review with a nasal British accent. Bonus points for having a big cartoon nose.

John Lennon's high school principal tells him, "You're going nowhere, son." At that point, you're meant to slap yourself on the knee and exclaim "Hah! Little did he know!" Do you feel dirty yet? A mixture of myth and melodrama, NOWHERE BOY follows teen John (Aaron Johnson) from his troubled youth in 1950s Liverpool, juggling school, sex and two sets of parents (blood and foster), up to the point he leaves for Germany with a new band that we never hear named.

And that's the strange dichotomy in this biopic about the founding member of The Beatles: We know going in that this is the story of a young man who would be in a band "bigger than Jesus," yet the filmmakers keep the elbow-nudges so subtle that they may as well not be pertinent at all; musically, besides the opening chord to A Hard Day's Night, we don't hear any Beatles soundtrack, even the word 'Beatles' is never mentioned. Yet they want us to care about this rowdy boy raised by two lonely women battling for his affections - but if this boy weren't John Lennon, would we care? Because every one of us has a sob story to tell. Just because he's The Walrus, does it mean his origin tale is any more compelling than ours? Going to such lengths to AVOID Beatles allusions, isn't the film nothing more than a glorified soap opera?

It's touted as the birth of the Beatles, but it's not. Because there are no threads or foreshadowing of what these lads might become. It's more a chronicle of one boy's artist-rebel psyche. And again, if the boy wasn't Lennon - would we care?

Soaping the two sides of this emotional story of betrayal, selfishness and repentance are John's conservative, widowed, responsible Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) and his irresponsible, flighty mother Julia (played with red-headed spryness by Anne-Marie-Duff). From a memoir by Lennon's half-sister, Julia Baird, director Sam Taylor-Wood and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh might be trying to tell us that John got his rock from Mimi and his roll from Julia.

We meet Lennon as a fresh-faced (yet not altogether innocent) teen, living with Mimi and Uncle George (David Threlfal, who was James Cromwell in a previous life). After the death of George (who was more like a "best mate" to John than an authority figure, as Mimi was), teen John seeks out his birth mother.

Enter Julia, a free spirit (who these days would be called trailer trash); flirtatious, profligate, alcoholic, who gave up John in his infancy to Mimi because she knew she was too irresponsible to raise him. She treats John almost as a girlfriend would and her sensual forwardness is Oedipally uncomfortable. She introduces John to rock and roll (frankly telling him "rock and roll means sex") and teaches him banjo. (An effete young lad named Paul McCartney (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) would later teach John guitar).

The two women would battle for John's affections, Mimi feeling she earned the right to them by raising him, and Julia feeling her maternity guaranteed her right.

Then there is John's fledgling friendship with Pete Shotton (Josh Bolt) - a name that the under-20s might not recognize as Lennon's first partner in crime/bandmate; we see Lennon's first band, The Quarrymen, playing atop a flatbed truck (sound quality is too good for an open air crapfest, but we let that slide); we eventually see the seminal incarnation of George, John and Paul, but we never do meet Ringo, and the movie ends with John telling Aunt Mimi that he is leaving for Hamburg "with that new group." Mimi asks, "What's it called?" John jokes, "Do you care?"

Movie's title is misleading; though Lennon wrote Nowhere Man later in life, he was not a "Nowhere Boy." And though his displacement amongst two mothers might have been psychically damaging, the movie itself never portrays him as a rudderless, antisocial miscreant, but as someone who knew what he wanted and ambitiously sought it. (Young Elvis on TV was a major inspiration, at one point, John lamenting, "Why couldn't God make ME Elvis?!" Julia replies, "Because he was saving you for John Lennon!" Yes, I feel dirty again.) Of course, fame is where luck and effort and right-place-right-time collide (and the leap from flatbed truck to Hamburg definitely warrants a Python-esque "Scene Missing" title card), but to sustain that momentum, you can't possibly be a "nowhere boy" no matter what your public image portrays.

We are left with the impression that now all Lennon needs is a big-nosed drummer whose jokes outweigh his talent, a Kaiserkeller and some tight trousers - and he'll be well on his way to Eggman Jesus.

--Poffy The Cucumber

THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE flies high on the performance of one man. Playing two men. Dominic Cooper. In a star-making turn, Cooper plays Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, and the body-double that Uday blackmails into his service, Latif Yahia. And they BOTH look like Freddie Mercury!

Every politician needs a body double, for those pesky public appearances when your presence alone is enough to make people do stupid things - like vote for you. THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE tells the story of Uday Hussein's body double, Latif Yahia, a soldier in the Iraqi army, who shared none of the political views of the Hussein dynasty, and whose family was threatened with slaughter if he refused the job.

British Dominic Cooper played Howard Stark (IRON MAN's father) in the recent CAPTAIN America, a performance that many young actors would be proud of, but this... this firestorm benchmark catapults him out of the engine pit into the big leagues; a breakout performance, a teachable moment, a nuclear reaction, a comet across the skies...

Movie gives us a sense of time and place - George H.W. Bush's Iraq War - yet is not a political document, but an insight into the enabled madness of one man; a brutal, driving, terrifying semi-fictional actioner that will evoke Pacino's SCARFACE, with its drugs, beatings, rapes, shootings and arbitrary deaths. But it's not the Miami underworld - it's the Iraq "government." And as Nixon told us, "When the government does it, it's NOT illegal!"

As youths, Latif and Uday attended the same school, and - worst luck - Uday remembered Latif's facial resemblance to him. Now years later, Uday tortures Latif into accepting the post, threatening to send Latif's family to Abu Ghraib - and god knows, you don't want your family thrown into Abu Ghraib with those godless American torturers running the place! With makeup, hairstylists and some exacting surgery, Latif is molded to look like Uday, whose hyena-giggling flamboyance and tickled demeanor remind us of Freddie at his cheekiest. At first, we wonder why, then remember that - of course! - Farrokh Bulsara's Zanzibar bloodline didn't spring from the womb of Whitey Brittania. Bismillah!

When Latif relents and decides to sincerely impersonate Uday, Dominic Cooper's acting is so brilliantly nuanced that we can still tell the two men apart. Even when Latif is hell bent on mimicking Uday, we can see through his facade, yet Cooper as Uday himself is seamless, unmistakable! It's a jaw-dropping performance, up there with Keaton in MULTIPLICITY or Rockwell in MOON. We have to consciously beat our temples to remind ourselves this is one man, with camera trickery putting him beside himself.

Latif meets Saddam himself (Philip Quast), who tells him portentously, "Don't give me a reason to be angry with you"...

Uday lived the life of a Roman Emperor, every whim and fantasy satiated with impunity: snatching schoolgirls off the street, raping new brides, shooting people for real or perceived insults to him or his country. (It is no coincidence the filmstock seems tinted gold, as all the riches and power flows to the dictators of the country; the rest live in squalor and fear.) Latif looks on in contempt and pure hatred; though he is bequeathed all the wealth, suits, watches and women he needs to play the part of Uday, he is engulfed in Uday's trigger-happy, demonic petulance. He bonds with his liege Munem (Raad Rawi), telling him, "You're a good man in a bad job, I understand. But do you know that he's insane?"

When Uday tries to force Latif to kill an innocent man, Latif can take it no more and begs to be killed himself. Uday tells Latif ominously, "I will never kill you - I love you too much!" while a big insincere smile creases his face. Not that Uday really loves Latif, and not because he particularly likes to have a body double around - he enjoys having HIMSELF around; a bizarre, psychotic narcissism, transferring his soul onto his image. Uday asks Latif, "You are not afraid to die?" Latif replies, "You forget I was dead the day I came here."

Uday's clone fantasy culminates when he watches Latif on TV giving a speech to Iraqi troops. Uday reclines with his mother in bed, fully-clothed (is it Oedipal or accepted Middle Eastern culture?), excitedly telling her, "Look mother, it's me!"

Speaking of bisexual Queen vocalists, Uday's love interest Sarrab (Ludivine Sagnier) looks like a transvestite. Nothing against the poor woman (who is quite beautiful off set), but her character is so badly made up with colored wigs, corpse makeup on that strong jaw and supposedly slinky dresses that do nothing to accentuate her nice figure, that she looks like Freddie Mercury in drag! The Adam's apple doesn't help. And the final irony - Uday actually has a predilection for trannies!

Sarrab would eventually gravitate to Latif (I guess she just digs the Bismillah quotient in a man), having a surreptitious affair with him and plotting Uday's assassination...

And the film's climax calls to mind those fearful words of Kevin Spacey in THE USUAL SUSPECTS, "How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?"

"Beelzebub has a devil set aside for me, for meee, for meeeeeeeeee!---"

--Poffy's Movie Mania

FOUR CHRISTMASES would be nothing without Jon Favreau dry-humping Vince Vaughn's twisted arm. Best part of the movie. I laughed out loud. Then the movie kept going. Unfortunately.

In this uneven comedy, Brad (Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) are a boisterous, adventurous young couple who studiously avoid visiting their dysfunctional families every Christmas, opting to take wild vacations - and lie to their families that they are instead doing volunteer work for underprivileged kids overseas. This year, they get busted, and must visit all four of their divorced parents (and extended families) in one day.

Now if this were a wonders-of-Christmas movie, it would be bilious enough, but FOUR CHRISTMASES combines the nausea of a Christmas movie with the gut-belching dementia of a marriage-is-awesome movie. Ultimately, Christmas is just a device to drive the unmarried couple into the cloying proximity of family and married life. And to discover the wonders therein. Cue shining rainbows and angels singing.

At first, the couple resist the insidious madness. In Brad's words, "You can't spell families without lies." We soon learn he picked up that axiom from his cantankerous dad (Robert Duvall - like Favreau, could carry the movie on his wild boar performance alone!). Brad and Kate have no desire to tie the knot and end up like their dissatisfied and divorced parents.

But this movie doesn't leave well enough alone and allow Brad and Kate their fun-loving life of taking impromptu dance lessons or role-playing picking each other up in bars. In the process of visiting their varied families, they come to realize truths about each other and - so the movie tells us - how dysfunctional THEY are for not wanting to end up married! (Nuance: It may be missed by the Great Unwashed, but the message of the movie is not EXACTLY "to be married" but to "be together," which is tantamount to marriage, in gutless modern pc parlance.) I spit on this movie's message!

Written by - surprisingly - four guys (Matt Allen, Caleb Wilson, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore) and directed by Seth Gordon, all of whom we can be sure have been pussywhipped into marriage and are now suffering cognitive dissonance, as they promote "married bliss" even whilst showing us every parent in the movie unhappily divorced!

To top it all off: disrespectful, unruly kids! Every child in this movie is a brawling, loudmouth brat that deserves to be abandoned in a parking lot. Yet the cognitive dissonance in full swing: Kate gets all swoozy with the desire to have kids after being browbeaten and physically beaten by them. I spit again! Ptuh!

Like Mighty Mouse, Jon Favreau saves the day. Favreau is Denver, one of Brad's thick-necked brothers, a tattooed, redneck wrestler who takes every opportunity to bodyslam Orlando (Brad's given name, from the city where he was conceived). Favreau's scenes, along with Duvall's scenes as Brad's father, are like the magic of Christmas and kwanzaa and chanukah and martian-snow-day all rolled into one.

Other parenting roles feature Mary Steenburgen and Jon Voight as Kate's separated parents. Then there's Sissy Spacek as Brad's mom, now sleeping with Brad's best friend Darryl (Patrick Van Horn - Vaughn's and Favreau's pal from SWINGERS, 1996!).

FOUR CHRISTMASES does have its hilarious moments - installing a satellite dish on Duvall's roof, Brad playing Joseph in a Nativity Scene that he saves with his latent Community Acting talent, Brad's delectably uncomfortable meeting with his mom and her lover - his best friend/step-dad. And any scene that Jon Favreau is in. I love that man!

--Poffy's Movie Mania

He did the time for a bank robbery he didn't commit. Now that he's out, he's really gonna rob that bank. Nice Concept. Might look implausible if the actors don't tread delicately with utmost conviction. Or unless you can find an actor that stands outside the field of acting altogether and can retain a blank poker face through it all. Enter Keanu Reeves.

He's Henry, a shiftless toll booth operator in Buffalo, suckered into being accessory to a bank robbery and imprisoned, whereupon his cellmates (led by James Caan as Max) urge him to exact recompense for the injustice of his incarceration: when he gets out, commit a real crime to make up for the time he already did unjustly.

Though a comedy caper movie, HENRY'S CRIME is not flashy or frenetic; it's indie all the way (written by David White, Stephen Hamel and Sacha Gervasi - who may be the love-child of Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais). With lean, expedient direction by Malcolm Venville, initially funded by Keanu himself, the movie plods along bemusedly and interestingly, much like its lead character, who takes everything with equanimity. He is, after all, The One.

Henry never bats an eyelid when he is arrested; or when his girlfriend (insipid Judy Greer) visits him in jail to tell him she has fallen in love; even when he is victim of a violent Meet Cute, as he is run down in the street by aspiring theater actress Julie (the stunning Vera Farmiga, in an uncharacteristically shrikey role). Nothing seems to reach this guy's nerve endings. Usually I would laugh and/or complain about the lack of acting from Keanu, but in this context, his demeanor fits perfectly. One would have to be quite inured to emotion existing each day in the suburban rut we find him in, and then to endure jail time. Yet his determination (or whatever you'd call that somnambulistic pseudo-ambition) to lash out and grab life by the baby-makers, to rob the very bank he was convicted of robbing indicates SOME kind of moral outrage at the least.

Didn't Morpheus tell us The One would bring balance? Henry needs Max to help him pull the heist, so he convinces Max to take his parole. Up 'til now, Max - a lifer who loves prison for its regularity - has dialed the Crazy up to 8 every time he sat in front of the parole board. He'd rather be called a "confidence man" than "con-man" (too pedestrian); perpetrating a crime is not even about the money, but the thrill of the chase, and getting caught for that crime will only land him back in jail - which he loves - so it's all win-win for him.

Henry and Julie must necessarily bonk, she must necessarily figure in the plot (by rehearsing in a theater right next door to the bank - a theater which once had a tunnel connecting it to the bank vault - oh, heavens to plot convenience!), Max necessarily provides comic sidekick relief, and Henry must necessarily become an unwitting hero during the heist... What ISN'T so necessary is Peter Stormare going above and beyond as eccentric Euro director of the play, Darek Millodragovic, whose overacting and over-accent is so hilarious, Keanu almost snapped out of his jet lag.

To infiltrate the theater complex, Henry must join the theater company... and so flowers the greatest irony in this movie: this guy who Can't Actually Act (in real life or in this movie role) must act at being an Actor.

It's a fine line this movie treads in making Henry an anti-hero (read as criminal) and allowing him to commit a crime that is not morally reprehensible, so he doesn't lose the audience. In that sense, Keanu's underplaying-to-the-point-of-chloroform performance is exemplary, selling us a character who bemusedly decides that his only post-prison option is to actually do what the confidence man suggested.

Amusing resolution, though gutless, as Henry has to somehow pay for his crime, no matter how innocuous it was, and no matter that he was already convicted mistakenly. Damn you MPAA, and your obnoxious, hypocritical meddling in otherwise interesting movies! If the MPAA had any sense - which they don't - they would make the people who incarcerated Henry incorrectly pay for THAT injustice. But that's too complicated for a society weaned on seeing "crime" as low-level, easily-defeated, punch-em-up tropes.

The jejune surrender to good screen writing by making Henry get busted again - simply for trying to even the score against The Man - THAT... is the movie's real crime.

--Poffy The Cucumber

An incredible Iron Maiden backstage pass! For fans, non-fans and devil-worshipers alike.

IRON MAIDEN FLIGHT 666 is not just onstage footage coupled with staged interviews. It is backstage, onstage, offstage and everything in between, settling in comfortably with heavy metal band Iron Maiden on their 2008 "Somewhere Back In Time" World Tour, which includes shows in Third World cities rarely visited by a band of their stature, in a personalized Boeing 757 airliner (emblazoned with Maiden's distinctive razor-edged logo and affectionately dubbed "Ed Force One") - being piloted by their lead singer!

Directed lovingly by Sam Dunn (co-director Scot McFadyen), the man who crafted the thoughtful paean to heavy music, METAL: A HEADBANGER'S JOURNEY (2005), FLIGHT 666 is an in-depth, intimate portrait of this world-shaking band: traveling, sound checks, holidaying, philosophizing about each other, golfing, drinking, murdering a pizza in the back of the tour bus...

Easily the most incredible thing about this tour is band vocalist Bruce Dickinson piloting the tour plane. He's been a pilot for years, but performing this round-the-world feat goes beyond imagining. Consider the spoiled brat singers in younger bands who complain that they need rest, or a certain superstitious ritual before going onstage, etc. and here is the singer of extremely vocally-gymnastic songs not just performing the physical expertise of flying a 757, but enduring the psychological and legal nightmare of taking the lives of the whole production in his hands. As band mate Steve Harris says of Bruce, "I don't know where he gets the energy." It's not just the energy; consider the logistics - the insurance of not just yourself as a band member who has to complete the tour, but the safety of the property, of the lives of those you are responsible for, of the cities you are flying over... It boggles the mind that this endeavor ever got off the ground - literally!

Every time the band gets off the plane, they are wearing their usual tour clobber of jeans and t-shirts - and here comes Bruce down the steps dressed in his pilot suit, white shirt, chevrons an' all!

Down to India (the first major metal band to play Mumbai; during sound check and show, buckets side-stage for the bug they all caught - the show must go on, troopers all!), across Malaysia, the Australian continent ("Scream for me, Melbourne!" I love that phrasing of Bruce's - used it many times myself), Japan, Mexico and South America (Third World cities starved for Maiden's brand of old school metal - Port Allegra, Sao Paolo, San Juan), USA and Canada... while the spirit of Eddie guards over the plane, a tiny Ed bobble-head on the dash of the plane, a picture of mummy Ed on the plane's empennage.

The gregariousness of drummer Nicko, the loner stylings of 3rd-guitar Janick, the musicality of guitarist Adrian, the sturdiness of guitarist Dave, and the man behind the thunderous hoof beats of Maiden's signature style - bassist Steve Harris. Manager Rod Smallwood: "Steve is the musical basis of Maiden - everything gets Steve-ized." Behind everything, that galloping bass monster.

Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine): "When Steve's foot goes up on the monitor and he points his bass and starts singing along, I'm gonna be very excited!" You've just got to see it to understand Morello's excitement: the mighty Steve Harris, Fender raised like a machine gun, silently mouthing Bruce's vocals as he "sprays" the front rows with imaginary shrapnel. How did someone pinpoint that exact awe-inspiring thing that has given us the metal chills since our head banging youth? In Costa Rica, a golf ball hits drummer Nicko's wrist - one inch lower and their medic advises they would have all gone home. Makes you once again think of those maddening logistics of medical insurance, travel insurance, medic pay, millions of dollars changing hands, advertising resting on the tour schedule and Bruce's piloting skills... phew!

The crew are cool, seasoned road veterans; seen it all, done it all, none of them the young, long-haired hooligan type - they're all the sedate and old long-haired hooligan type.

One thing about this energetic band, they never make a big deal about groupies and chicks. Maybe now, with their families and kids on tour with them, they're old enough and wise enough not to make it a feature of their discussions, but they've never indulged in wayward groupie talk, even though they came up during the big-haired groupie '80s. Their docu video 12 WASTED YEARS (1987) comes to mind, a chronicle of the band on the road, where we see manic crowds from which the band could easily have choice pickings - yet, as mum about sexual escapades as Isaac Asimov!

Backstage with Lars Ulrich, Dio, Vinnie Appice... in Australia, Adrian playing tennis with Wimbledon champ Pat Cash... a priest in Brazil with 162 Iron Maiden tattoos: "I'm their number one fan in the world! On top of that, I'm called Father Iron Maiden. My son's name is Stevie Harris."

Vintage footage of ROCK IN RIO (2002), with Bruce in his snakeskin top, yellow spandex and hair down to arse - funny thing is, he is singing better in 2009 than in 2002. See what piloting a plane can do to your adrenalin?

If you're a Maiden fan, don't hesitate, Wrathchild: don't let The Evil That Men Do stop you Running Free and buying the FLIGHT 666 DVD for Piece Of Mind, to immerse in its Revelations and Play With Madness...

In the first three minutes of THE FIGHTER, we realize that Christian Bale should not have won that Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in this film. He should have won for Best ACTOR.

Yes, we know the technical definitions of "main," "major," and "supporting" characters - but really! Bale's Herculean immersion into his wild-eyed character drove this film, which, without his involvement, would have been merely another lazy story about an underdog clawing his way to the middle echelons of a testosterone-induced inferiority-complex dick measuring competition; to call boxing a "sport" is to imply it has some intrinsic spiritual worth.

BALE is to THE FIGHTER what Kilmer is to TOMBSTONE, what Brando is to STREETCAR, what Day-Lewis is to GANGS OF NEW YORK.

Bale is Dicky Eklund, a gregarious, trouble-seeking, ex-boxer from "Bahston," who trains and manages his younger brother "Irish" Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) with the best intentions, yet with no clout to take Micky into the bigger leagues where he belongs. Mother Alice (Melissa Leo) co-manages with big dreams and bigger hair.

Dicky's claim to fame is that he once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard. (Leonard plays himself alongside Bale and Wahlberg - still looking twenty years younger than his age.) Since this movie is based on real life characters, we see some old footage of the real Eklund swiping at Leonard and Leonard hitting the canvas; contention to this day whether Leonard slipped.

But Dicky is a junkie. Though he must have once retained a modicum of discipline to grace the ring with Leonard, when we meet him here, he is so way past gone that when HBO interviews him and follows him around with a camera crew for a documentary on crack addiction, he sincerely thinks they are documenting his boxing comeback.

Bale's performance is magnetic, crafting a character through mind and body; gaunt, emaciated, a junkie for all intents and purposes. Oldman, Seymour Hoffman, De Niro. Bale is an actor willing to go so deep into his role that we truly think he lives there; an actor who makes us forget he was someone else in his previous movies - we do not look at this incoherent, twitchy crackhead and immediately think, "Hey, this guy is John Connor!" - and we really have to woik our imaginations to believe this beanstem could possibly be the Dark Knight! Further, deponent sayeth not; the awards speak for themselves.

Wahlberg diametrically opposes Bale's extroversion and brings a studied quietude to a role that demands of him an Eastwood-ian intensity coupled with a Schwarzenegger power behind his shoulders. And his underwear modeling days serve him in good stead - his physicality is explosive. If Bale wasn't here ass-klowning around, then Wahlberg would have been lauded as this movie's driver. He's become a very efficient actor - from annoying New Kid On The Block, to weaning off his baby-fat in FEAR, to the reasonable SHOOTER, to his slap-in-the-face performance in DEPARTED, we've seen him grow into this starring role. Well done, my son! The Gay-For-Wahlberg Express is boarding now...

Let's get something straight about the difference between this movie and the people that this movie portrays. The MOVIE is excellent. These PEOPLE (the usual salt-of-the-Earth epithet is "they're good people") are a bunch of pugilistic rednecks; they're in a profession that glorifies unprovoked battle - people beating up each other for no reason other than the created reason of income; they're in and out of jail, their lives revolve around alcohol, drugs and fighting (not necessarily in the ring). When you see the trailers for this Award-winning film, the soundtrack makes it seem like something epic is being achieved. It is not. It's about two roughnecks who know nothing much about anything else. The actors' PERFORMANCES make this movie compelling.

THE FIGHTER follows the tribulations of Wahlberg's Micky before he went pro in the mid-80s, as he tries to literally and metaphysically fight his way out of the security zone of his trailer trash environs.

He dates barmaid Charlene (Amy Adams looking voluptuously trailer) and butts heads with his family to accept her - a gaggle of sisters who all look like men and speak like education hasn't been invented yet; he must constantly drag Dicky out of the crack house; he must contend with Dicky's jealousy when an agent offers him paid training in Vegas (to raise the money to train in Boston instead, Dicky puts his crackhead girlfriend out on the street hooking); he must contend with Dicky getting in trouble with the law (during one street fight, a cop breaks Micky's hand); he finds himself at the center of two families - his girl and trainer pit themselves against his trailer siblings and mother.

THE FIGHTER boasts boxing scenes as realistic as having your jaw rattled by a roundhouse. We have grown so inured to the fakery of the ROCKY films (and their imitators), where the fighters box without blocking and the punches resound like thunderclaps, that seeing the realistic boxing style of these guys is refreshing. Wahlberg trained for years for this role, and it shows. Where are YOU looking when he takes his shirt off?

Reliable character actor Jack McGee is Micky's father; Mickey O'Keefe, a real life policeman and friend of the family who trained Micky, plays himself. Now training Wahlberg, which must have been surreal for him.

During the end credits, we meet both real life brothers, Micky and Dicky, and we realize just what amazing jobs Wahlberg and Bale did personifying them. Visually, we immediately recognize who is who, and when they speak, it's over. What the hell! - give a Best Actor award to BOTH those guys!

Uh-oh. I need to turn on the lights...

INSIDIOUS is one of the few modern horror films that is truly scary. Not many movies can hold your nerves hostage like THE EXORCIST or THE OMEN, but INSIDIOUS comes close, with atmospheric direction, blood-chilling sequences and lots of screeching violins.

A family with three kids moves into a rambling house in Middle America - the type with hardwood floors, high ceilings and a dark attic that practically screams, "Hey, look at me! I'm haunted!" Patrick Wilson (WATCHMEN) is father Josh, Rose Byrne is mother Renai (sans her baby fat as Brad's plaything in TROY, 2004). Their little boy Dalton (Ty Simpkins) has an accident in the attic and goes into a coma that doctors can't explain. Months pass. When Renai tucks in Dalton's little brother, he whimpers to her one night about comatose Dalton in the next room, "I don't like it when he walks around at night." Blood chills. Hairs rise. Cities fall.

Written by Leigh Whannell and directed by James Wan (the twisted Australian duo who brought us SAW), INSIDIOUS kicks us in the ribs with classic horror iconography: loud noises, doors opening by themselves, apparitions, whispers on a baby monitor... some beautiful scares - like the unclear vision of the Dickensian boy through the window dancing to "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." Only thing scarier is Tiny Tim.

INSIDIOUS channels POLTERGEIST fiercely - and though we might call that movie a classic today, even POLTERGIEST did get a little kooky in its third act. Remember all the Hollywood commotion in the final scenes, skeletons popping up in the pool, the house disappearing in some kind of vortex, and the elf woman with the voice that sounded like she was suckling helium?... So too INSIDUOUS cannot live up to its razor-burning first half, although it does retain enough ectoplasm for a wild ride to a satisfying surprise conclusion.

Like most horror films, INSIDIOUS does not survive its "explanation" phase. As per Horror Protocol, a suitably wizened old woman psychic (or medium, or charlatan, or whatever they're called) provides the prosaic explanation behind Dalton's coma: as the POLTERGEIST Helium Elf called the other dimension "The Light," the INSIDIOUS psychic (Lin Shaye) calls it "The Further" and explains that Dalton is actually astral traveling there, while demons are trying to use his inert body as a vessel to squeeze their bad selves into our dimension...

Royt...

Which brings up all those usual questions I have for psychics, mediums, charlatans, whatever: Why don't the demons just come through and be done with it, instead of poking around half-heartedly by leaving bloodied handprints on sheets and speaking through baby monitors? Are they trying to possess Dalton? Is he going to turn into a maniac axe-murderer inbred hillbilly? Why murder people if they only wind up in heaven? Isn't that undermining your whole demonic task of bringing them to hell? Why bother "scaring" them at all? Wouldn't demons from another dimensional plane consider simple Earthbound scares below their dignity? And in the noisy climactic scenes, ghosts try to cross into this world by busting out of a closet - and a man obstructs their paranormal entrance into our dimension by holding the closet door closed! Really? That's all it takes? I thought ghosts could go THROUGH things... Can we get a Demonic Infiltration Rulebook up in this haunted hizzouse?

And then - the perennial Séance. Why in the dark? Does the absence of light really affect inter-dimensional contact? Human eyes can only pick up a miniscule section of the electromagnetic spectrum - between 4000 to 7000 angstroms - that we call "visible light," so how could it possibly affect entities that can obviously communicate along a much wider bandwidth (and who are from a dimension where everything is supposedly so frickin' bright)? I'll tell you "why in the dark?" Because all those unsophisticates who handed down ghost stories from yore figured it would be scarier. How I love scientific explanations...

Writer Leigh Whannell plays one of two paranormal investigator dorks, whose funny appearance in the film is at a point where some levity is welcomed after heart-skipping scares - but his presence also presages the wizened woman and the unneeded "explanations." From the outset, the main drawback of INSIDIOUS is its PG-13 rating (we know they're allowed to say "fuck" but once and are only allowed concepts that won't overwhelm your average Lindsay Lohan fan), so with that hobbling, we realize what a good job the filmmakers did to make those hairs rise on your mammalian body. Point the finger at Joseph Bishara's eerie, evocative music.

Funniest (or most ignorant) by-product of movies like INSIDIOUS is that the slapstick mongoloids who call themselves "ghost hunters" notice all the made-up "paranormal" detection devices on screen and believe that they can actually construct this bogus equipment - at the very least, name some glorified toaster the same name as that apparatus in the movie and presto! Instant Ghost Detection Device! Which says more about the pants-wetter who is using it than the device itself.

The first half of the movie gives you The Fear - that notion of the inexplicable; half-seen visions with no point other than an abiding alienness; the second half is for ghost hunters with weak bladders (that would be all of them, no?).

If I, a nullifidian cucumber far above the superstitious beliefs of afterlife, angels and demons, needed to sleep with the lights on after this effective movie, I shudder to think how hellish this movie must be on those pants-wetters. Look behind you, ghost hunter. It's waiting for you in the dark.

A shoot-em-up, rock-em sock-em age-fest.

RED is Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman; they're ex-CIA, Retired Extremely Dangerous. You betcha - each of these operatives could wipe out whole cities: Willis with his arctic cool, Malko with his leering morbidity, Helen Mirren with her sexagenarian sexiness and Morgan Freeman with his pompous voice-over.

The four principals have more years between them than all the stars of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL combined. Ironically, watching HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL can kill you faster than any RED.

From a DC Comics graphic novel (by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner), RED follows Frank Moses (Willis) as he evades CIA operatives sent to kill him, led by Cooper (Karl Urban). It's easy to evade bad guys in movies who still can't aim after all those years of CIA training. Yes, it's the yawn plot device of CIA trying to kill its own ex-operatives. Frank recruits his old team mates to get to the bottom of why. (Why? Because it's the CIA, stupid! That's what they do.) Cooper culls Frank's file from curmudgeonly CIA analyst, Ernest Borgnine (that guy's still alive?!).

Beautiful Mary-Louise Parker is Sarah, a cubicled government accountant who dwells romantically on her spy novels, merely a phone flirtation for Frank, until he inadvertently pulls her into the chase and she finds herself on the lam with an All-American Hero more virile than any Fabio-based cover model. Her wonderment, amusement and sensual excitement are pitch-perfect, with just that right dash of spinner cuteness. Positively glowing.

Brian Cox is The Russian Guy. Was Rade Sherbedgia busy?

Suddenly - Richard Dreyfuss! He's a slimy weapons contractor (cough--Halliburton) who's been using the CIA as his personal hit squad (cough--Dick Cheney-- Didn't Dreyfuss already play that low swine in W.?) RED is solid action-comedy that doesn't take itself too seriously, yet seriously commits to delivering cheeky China White straight-to-the-vein outlandish bombast. Just how drunk was the stunt coordinator who thought up the eye-popping gag of Willis stepping from a spinning car, guns aimed and blazing? And how uber cool (and slightly sexually arousing) is Helen Mirren pumping an automatic machine gun or Bruce Willis in hand-to-hand combat beating up on some guy half his age?

Of course, the mindless action would be immaterial were it not punctuated by the personalities of the principals; Willis, Malkovich, Mirren and Freeman armed not only with guns that never run out of ammo, but a dry, deadly wit that only comes with the accumulation of years that these wolves have spent howling at the moon.

HEREAFTER, produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, is a pondering of What's Next from three very different human perspectives.

Clint Eastwood is at that age when we would all be inclined to ponder the possibility of a Hereafter, a Life after Death (by definition, an impossibility, but for many otherwise clear-thinking humans, this paradox makes all the sense in the world). Thankfully, Clint brings his thoughtful, storytelling mind to bear on this paradox (written by Peter Morgan) and crafts yet another of his magnificent movie monuments. When this movie-making Prometheus eventually meets his Hereafter, there will be a tectonic shift in the world of movies, if not the world at large.

French Marie (Cecile De France) "dies" in a flash-tsunami and is revived, thence troubled by visions of some other dimension; a young British boy (Frankie McLaren) dies in an accident and helps his twin (George McLaren) from beyond; an authentic American psychic, George Lonegan (Matt Damon) whose brother (Jay Mohr) is trying to capitalize on his powers, tamps down his extra-sensory gifts, finding them a curse to leading a normal life and finding a normal love.

At first blush, HEREAFTER seems too eccentric a topic for a grounded filmmaker like Eastwood to tackle. Again, he surprises us, never delving so far into magic and supernatural that he loses everyone but the culties. At its heart, HEREAFTER is about 'searching for answers.' Ironically, it's about lost souls. There's even a little romance thrown in for girlies who wandered in by accident to see The Sexiest Man Alive mumble introspectively.

The movie reads so well because the movie makers do not advocate any stance on whether 'afterlife' is real, connected to any deity, or the wild imaginings of desperate humanity; they do not offer answers either via rational experiment or irrational religion. The three characters are simply trying to live their lives, which have taken melancholy turns. Which fits the superstitious profile: most people would like to believe in a hereAFTER because they're dissatisfied with the hereNOW.

Marie, once a rising, incitant newscaster, throws it all away to travel the world researching a book on her post-death experience; the little boy, who is taken from his alcoholic mother, cannot find peace with his foster parents, stealing money to travel the country and visit psychics whom he hopes can contact his dead twin; and George Lonegan takes a cooking course (with head chef Bobby Baccala), meeting delectable Bryce Dallas Howard, and tries to make a delicious connection with her. Just as they partner up for a cooking contest, she is scared off by the discovery of his "powers."

Dallas disappearing (and leaving Damon in the lurch without a cooking partner!) makes us realize that HEREAFTER is also about the eternal quest to 'make connections'; connection with the other side, connection with other mortals who believe in the other side; connection between two people just trying to live life on this side. And then - another kind of connection, as the three separate stories spanning three countries (France, America and England) artfully weave into each other in London.

When Marie and George Lonegan meet, it is beautifully underplayed; it's how people meet in real life (with another touching, recognizably Eastwood theme on the soundtrack!), and though they simply sit down to coffee in a streetside cafe, their "connection" is as electric as the climax to any action movie. What a majestic filmmaker!

What I want to know is: Did George ever win that cooking contest?

In World War II, a patriotic American weakling, Steve Rogers, is injected with a top secret military serum to become a super soldier. Yes, it's Captain America! The red, white and blue avenger, in the best comicbook movie of the decade - and by that I mean, it's lightweight and predictable and aimed at twelve-year-olds.

CAPTAIN America: THE FIRST AVENGER captures all the spirit and action and derring-do of the Marvel Comics character created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941; just as that blond, blue-eyed super-patriot leaped off the pages in his battle against Hitler, so too does this latest filmic All-American Whitebread prettyboy... Trouble is, besides his interesting origin tale, and despite his iconic flag-wrapped butt, there was never much depth to this particular Marvel Comics superhero in the first place.

So I mean it when I say the movie is well made, beautifully shot in ochre hues, with the actors putting alarming conviction into their relatively shallow roles, but Captain America himself (played with body-shaved sincerity by Chris Evans) is just not that interesting a character. All he does is throw his shield and punch people. And leap like Air Jordan, sometimes while throwing his shield and punching people. Thus, after an interesting buildup to the injection of skinny Steve Rogers with super soldier serum, the movie gets down to shield-throwing, punching people and Air Jordaning. Albeit, very nicely.

Stanley Tucci is the good doctor Erskine who experiments on Rogers and is killed off much too soon by a German spy. I love The Tucci - what a great actor and underrated director; even in this death scene, his final wordless gesture is magnificently performed - but I think he picked up his "Cherman" accent by watching HOGAN'S HEROES.

Hugo Weaving's Nazi accent is not much better, as I'm sure he's mixing in a little Elvish. He's Jonathan Schmidt aka The Red Skull, also imbued with super serum, but because he's Cherman, he ended up "bad." Luckily, he didn't need any makeup to play Cap's craggy-faced nemesis - those cheekbones, like a Swiss model! Toby Jones is the Red Skull's sycophant, and his German accent is so bad, I'm positive he didn't even watch the HOGAN'S HEROES episodes provided by the filmmakers as homework.

Tommy Lee Jones is Colonel Chester Philips, who is here to make snide remarks in his characteristic drill-instructor staccato. Hayley Atwell is Cap's G-Rated love interest, and if it weren't for her magnus 36DD-cups straining against her army uniform, we'd notice she looks like Bill Hader. Dominic Cooper is physicist Howard Stark (yes, IRON MAN Tony's father), who creates Cap's shield, and makes Cap jealous by sharing fondue with the Bill Hader chick.

And Sebastian Stan is Cap's pal, "Bucky" Barnes - in the comics, the ambiguously gay Robin to Cap's Batman, in this movie, a rugged heartthrob himself when the mighty man-beauty of Evans is not standing next to him. In tights.

When Steve Rogers is a 90-pound weakling, it is Chris Evans's face computer-inserted over a skinny guy; an astonishing special effects feat that makes us realize that the era of the Method Actor gaining or losing weight may be past; just keep those computers rendering and those IT guys fed. Gotta admit that Chris Evans looks exactly what you'd expect an All-American boy to look like, and he's playing THE All-American Boy; that guy must get laid like he's the last man on Earth.

Director Joe Johnston (THE WOLFMAN 2010, JURASSIC PARK III) is so erratic that the film "works" in so many tiny ways (the colorful caricature of Captain America selling war bonds, the gruffness of Tommy Lee Jones disguising his understanding heart, the flip manner in which Captain America refers to himself - and how damn cool is it when he throws that shield?) and simultaneously doesn't work in bigger ways. For example: To intercept a moving train, Cap's squad must slide down a cable - which has no purpose being on that mountain other than to provide their Tinkerbell moment; once onboard the train, they battle bad guys in freight cars with road cases stacked on shelves - with none of the cases strapped down; when the bad guys shoot at Cap and miss (obviously because they've graduated with honors from the Stormtrooper Training Program on Bespin), Toby Jones has to yell at them through their headsets, more than once, "Kill him! Fire again!" Really? I thought he was free to go after I missed him the first time... Then the Bill Hader chick turns up with her squad of reinforcements. Take note that all the soldiers are in full battle gear including helmets and body armor - all except for Hader. No helmet or body armor. Why? So we can see her pretty hair flounce and watch her breasts straining against the thin fabric of her uniform, her chest heaving like she's on the brink of orgasm. Such a realistic depiction of the horrors of war.

I was almost applauding this movie for its attempt at credible science when skinny Steve was placed in the Manulator and doused with Vita-Rays (which, from the results, seem to automatically body-shave you), but then all the machines malfunctioned with Movie Sparks flying out de side. Sparks?! Really? Add that to the catwalk scene where someone must jump across as it collapses, and the climax scene where two men fight onboard a plane that is going down because no one is at the controls and we're just asking for Brendan Fraser.

Movie ends with a promise that "Captain America will return in The Avengers." Knowing that that movie is being directed by Joss Whedon (the mind behind FIREFLY) makes me almost wanna salute a flag. Or at least punch someone and throw my shield...

Jonah Hill hasn't been taking his Oedipal Complex pills!

Don't you hate it when the funniest parts are all in the trailers? ALL in the trailers. CYRUS is told in 1 minute and 30 seconds: Lonely John (John C. Reilly) meets fun chick Molly (Marisa Tomei) at a party; she is the only one brave enough to join him in a rendition of The Human League's Don't You Want Me. He begins dating her. She is something special. Then he meets her son, Cyrus (Jonah Hill); he's a grown man, lives with her, and is crazy protective of mom; cue ominous conversation. Scary protective; cue shot of Cyrus in undies with a knife. Obsessive protective; cue rumble at wedding. And Molly is oblivious to the undercurrent of tension between her new lover and her old son.

Cue missed comedic opportunities. At least, I think CYRUS is a comedy. That's what the 1-minute 30-second trailers say. More like a dark exploration of stunted personalities.

Writers-directors Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass can't seem to retain a grip on what they're trying to sell, even with such great comedians and actors at their call. Story skews towards disturbing pathos rather than absurd comedy. There are issues raised that are never addressed, such as John's stalking of Molly after only their second night together; his invasiveness in turning up at her home uninvited, calling too often, being overtly needy. We could surmise that the Duplasses don't get laid enough because they don't realize their male lead is damaged goods, though they may be trying to make John a mirror image of Cyrus. But Cyrus has the luxury of being Molly's son, so can get away with a little pathological clinginess; John's clinginess, on the other hand, is portrayed as "true love."

Yup, the Duplasses don't get laid enough.

Catherine Keener (THE SOLOIST) appears yet again as a heartless bitch. And Tim Walsh (THE HANGOVER) once again appears as a placeholder.

Marisa Tomei is the shining lodestar here, singlehandedly holding the show together with her talent, because Reilly and Hill, excellent comedians though they are, are out of their league when it comes to the nuance of this dark comedy. They simply play two bemused antagonists, Hill opting to err on the side of blankness if he doubts what emotion should be on his face. It is amazing to see Tomei bridge the emotional gap between Reilly and Hill when all three are on screen together, imbuing the scene with the correct emotions and reactions required to sell it.

Cue wasted talent in forgettable movie.

Remake of the 1973 George A. Romero movie of the same name, THE CRAZIES is a simple, shallow, well-made thriller. A virus drives the people of a bucolic Midwestern town crazy and they start killing people. I don't mean to nitpick, but killing is kinda natural for a species that kills to eat, to mate, to survive. You know what would really be crazy? A virus that made you paint your house.

I can't compare the two versions, not having seen the Romero film, though in reading about it, we can discern how Romero's ham-fisted, no-budget execution subsumed his sociological commentary. The Romero version shows the military as becoming a bigger problem than the virus problem they were sent to solve; as reviewer Michael Atkinson puts it: "The Ashcroftian governmental cure out-terrorizes the disease." Yet that version is hobbled by its usual Romero non-acting. Again, I cannot speak with authority, so check it if you have two hours of life to throw away.

Me? One THE CRAZIES is more than enough derangement.

This 2010 version has the same military plane going down, releasing its cargo of deadly bio-weapon virus, but after the fervor that has grown up around America's deadliest, most useless arm of government, the military who arrive to clean up their mess here do not exacerbate the problem but are merely callous authorities that Our Heroes must escape. Bedecked in ominous gasmasks and hazmat suits to terrorize civilians just right.

Timothy Olyphant is David, the Sheriff of this town where, like CHEERS, everybody knows your name; the man he must shoot in the film's first minutes (for going, uh, crazy), he addresses by his first name. His doctor wife is Judy (Radha Mitchell), Danielle Panabaker is Judy's intern, and Joe Anderson is Russell the deputy, a likable, dependable redneck (how many times can anyone say that?). These four are unaffected by the virus and escape the town and the military who are trying to kill or quarantine them.

Olyphant seems like he'd be a cool guy to hang with. Even in ROCK STAR, he out-smoothed Marky Mark. Call me, Tim: few beers, some pool, bird-dogging chicks. Boys' night. One month after this role as a jeans-wearing small town sheriff quick on the draw, his TV series JUSTIFIED would premiere, where he plays a jeans-wearing small town sheriff quick on the draw. Born to do it. That guy's so cool...

The film's one touching moment is when Russell realizes he is affected by the virus. Instead of being left to die in the wilderness, or killed immediately, he asks David and Judy, "Can I walk with you guys awhile?" That's so sad. His performance at that moment captures that human need for others of our kind, the universal truth of fearing to die alone. For a species grown so inured to killing, that vestigial aspect of our nature is our great irony.

THE CRAZIES is the usual romp of jump-scares and gross-out killings and people with makeup that looks like a KFC factory exploded on their faces senselessly trying to kill other people (kinda like zombies; thanks, Romero - what an "original" idea!) and everyone saying "fuck" whenever they want, garnering an R-rating. Now remember kids, excessive gore alone can still warrant a PG-rating. THE CRAZIES is rated R because of its swearing. In other words, the gory mashings of skulls or the pitchfork through the torsos, or the knife through the sheriff's hand which he succeeds in slamming through the throat of his assailant while it is still through his hand, do not by themselves garner an R-rating; it's because the filmmakers chose to retain their frequent use of a word which is a euphemism for the act of procreation.

Who's crazy now?

When I saw THE BLOB as a young kid, it was terrifying. I didn't care about the tepid acting, the simple, linear storyline, and especially didn't notice any subtexts of Sex=Death, or Not All American Teen Hooligans Are Bad. And who the hell was Steve McQueen?

Now, well, the pulsing strawberry jelly representing the inexplicable entity from outer space looks like The Horror From Pepperidge Farm. And while somewhere, an acting coach is weeping inconsolably, the message of Not All Teens Are Bad can be embraced, considering the "teen" leader was the King Of Cool in his first starring role, 28-year-old Steve McQueen.

A meteorite plummets to Earth in the countryside; an old codger pokes at it and a gelatinous gloop covers his hand. "Teens" Steve (McQueen) and Jane (Aneta Corsaut, beyond bland) find the delirious old man when the gloop has overtaken his arm, and rush him to a doctor (Stephen Chase) who looks uncannily like George Reeves as Clark Kent. Unfortunately he ain't no Superman and is swallowed by the blob after some menial overacting.

And in respect for his body of future work, we pretend we don't notice young Mr. McQueen's Acting School Terrified Look as he sees the doc get blobbed.

The growing blob of matter slimes around town undercover of night, swallowing various extras and growing with each kill, while the town "teens" (Steve and his hooligan buddies, all dressed neatly in collared shirts and high pants) cook up dangerous stunts like driving backwards, sneaking out of their bedrooms at night, investigating an abandoned house and going to see a "spooky movie." Those crazy kids!

The special effects of the day are rudimentary, yet effective; though relying heavily on quick edits and process shots, director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. creates a very plausible horror with Bobby Blobby's soundless subsuming of sweetmeats.

As hard as it may be to fear something with the texture of strawberry jam, THE BLOB could have been a truly terrifying thriller, rather than a breezy cult novelty, as the formless, mindless eponymous entity is never explained, and therefore scarier than any axe-murderer or scientific experiment gone awry. It was not consciously malevolent, just trying to find energy sources, although I know the simple-headed movie makers were not trying to be that subtle, and painted it as a basic evil villain. We imagine but for cooler heads prevailing, they would have put a twirling mustache on it.

But the ominous tone is shunted aside to cater to the social mores of the day - the Teen Movement; the blob itself becomes merely a device for the Teens to overcome. THE WILD ONE (1953), REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955), DADDY-O (1958), THE REBEL SET (1959), THE BEATNIKS (1960) - the plots of these movies (and scores of others produced during this period) revolved around Wild Teens as the simultaneous outcasts and drivers of society. This synergy informs THE BLOB and its portrayal of mid-American society as a hapless bunch of inbreeds with Teens Saving The World.

In movies, the good guys always seem to win court cases. Over an ingratiating orchestra swell, no less. But in reality, good or bad has nothing to do with the outcome of court cases. It's how you play the game. If you can afford to be in the game in the first place.

A CIVIL ACTION is based on a real life Massachusetts court case, novelized by Jonathan Harr, about a group of families suing two factories in their Woburn locale, accusing them of polluting the town water supply and causing the leukemia deaths of their children. The factories were owned by corporations, and though a settlement was reached, even as the pittance was being paid out, it broke the back of the lawyer who represented the families and destroyed the spirits of the already-shattered families.

John Travolta is lawyer Jan Schlichtmann, who informs us during the opening credits that a lawyer would be doing his clients a disservice were he to get emotionally involved with their case. Then for dramatic arc, and in real life it would seem, Jan went against his own principles and tongue-kissed the case to bed every night and woke with its morning breath in his nostrils every day.

Robert Duvall is veteran lawyer Jerome Facher, his doddering, distracted persona disguising a clinical tactician who outplays Jan at every step of the game precisely because he is not emotionally involved. And has no desire to unearth any ethics or truth in the case. When Jan tells him that the families he represents want the truth about the contaminated water, Facher replies amusedly, "Are we talking about a court of law? A court isn't the place to find the truth... This case stopped being about dead children the minute it entered the justice system, the minute you filed the case."

William H. Macy is Jan's accountant, who helplessly watches the firm go broke against his desperate mortgaging of all their homes as collateral and selling all their office furniture; Tony Shalhoub and Zeljko Ivanek are Jan's snowed under assistants.

John Lithgow is the forceful, biased judge, who plays golf with Facher. From the outset, Jan is battling the judge's tripwire impatience as the new guy intruding into this Old Boys' Club.

Kathleen Quinlan heads the group of families suing for the truth (one of her sons is dead), and James Gandolfini (THE SOPRANOS would appear literally on the heels of this movie and change his career forever) is a factory worker who harbors damning secrets about the dumping of waste chemicals. In his words - presaging the credo of what would become his most enduring character - "I ain't a rat!"

Jan tell us: "Odds of a plaintiff's lawyer winning in civil court are two to one against. Your odds of surviving a game of Russian Roulette are better than winning a case at trial. So why does anyone do it? They don't. They settle. …only fools with something to prove end up ensnared in it. And when I say 'prove' I don't mean about the case, I mean about themselves."

In most movies, an eleventh hour revelation drives the Good Guys towards home plate, victory, and that annoying orchestra swell, but in A CIVIL ACTION, even as Jan uncovers damning evidence that would enable him to appeal the case, with an elusive eleventh hour witness, there is no money left for "justice" to be served. And "the law" - ironically - stands in the way: the long standing principle of res judicata, "that a matter once decided in a court of law remains decided - even if that decision flew in the face of reality."

Co-written and directed by Steven Zaillian, co-produced by Robert Redford (always into "sensible" films with something to say), A CIVIL ACTION is a success as a movie precisely because it is such a major downer. It conveys an infuriating claustrophobia, that maddening feeling that we can't, in fact, fight City Hall, no matter what Greg Brady says.

Schlichtmann becomes a shell of a man, obsessed with trying to do the right thing, sitting in his bare office with no desk, phones and electricity cut off and no future prospects. And it's raining outside.

A late scene shows young punks throwing firecrackers across a river on the contaminated land; one of the firecrackers lands in the river and the whole river catches alight.

Movie ends with the Environmental Protection Agency getting involved - one giant institution against another; a clash of the Titans, if you will. In Greek mythology, only a Titan could destroy another Titan; and in the modern obfuscating world of blind justice - does anyone see the irony in that phrase? - it is still impossible for an individual to destroy a Titan, even with the best intentions and the Truth on their side.

Harr's book ends on a somber, pessimistic note, but the movie was made after the book, with more current information. Closing text informs us that the two offending corps, Grace and Beatrice Foods, were indicted by the EPA and paid 69 million dollars in cleanup costs. Jan is now representing 60 families in New Jersey in another contaminated water case.

Is this guy a sucker for punishment or what?

"You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" -- Harry Callahan, DIRTY HARRY.

And a screen icon is scarred onto the face of filmdom. And the Earth is once again salted with the man-nectar of masculinity.

DIRTY HARRY is about a cop who takes the law into his own hands. That's the simple synopsis. But the cultural impact of this film and Clint Eastwood's most enduring character is indescribable.

Beyond the art of movies, beyond the rubric of cops and robbers, beyond the playground where good and evil frolic hand in hand, "Dirty Harry" has entered the lexicon as shorthand for righteous brutality, masculine justice, and not taking crap; the film DIRTY HARRY spawned innumerable "loose cannon" cop films (which was a misapprehension of its actual theme) and a more disturbing level of violence in movies; DIRTY HARRY took the anti-authority hippie stance of the 60s to the next level of societal angst in the newly-minted '70s.

Amidst the furor over an unwinnable war (times just don't change, do they?) American aggression found catharsis in DIRTY HARRY. Simplistically, the movie advocates violence against those who spawn violence (two wrongs making a right), seemingly advocating personal vigilantism over the dinosaurian "justice system"; yet the real message was too subtle for American audiences, who prove themselves time and again too blunt to comprehend subtlety. As Clint himself espouses, "It's not about a man who stands for violence. It's about a man who can't understand society tolerating violence." And Clint Eastwood should know. He IS Dirty Harry.

In a role intended for Sinatra, Eastwood owned Detective Harry Callahan like Sinatra owned "My Way." After we meet alpha male Harry as an edgy maverick San Francisco cop who "doesn't play any favorites! Harry hates everybody" he is teamed with a young Mexican Inspector, Chico (Reni Santoni) and soon on the trail of a psycho sniper killer, Scorpio (Andy Robinson, who would never again command a role so hallucinogenically ruthless and tasty).

The subtext is that Scorpio is Harry on the wrong side of the law (As Above, So Below; the devil is god inverted). He hates minorities too and demands a ransom from the city of San Francisco in return for not shooting a homosexual or a catholic priest (nowadays that's the same thing).

There are the authority figures stultifying Harry's methods, then castigating him with legal technicalities when he gets the job done (John Vernon as the Mayor and Josef Sommer as the D.A.). And there is the first pairing of Eastwood with the ever-frazzled Harry Guardino as his Lieutenant.

Author Richard Schickel defines that moment a star becomes a superstar - the scene that establishes why Harry is Dirty, shooting down bank robbers while still chewing a hot dog.

From a diner, Harry spies a car idling outside a bank. Not wanting to interrupt his break, he instructs the chef to call in a robbery in progress. As Harry takes the first bite of his hot dog, alarms start clamoring, and he resignedly drops the dog and exits the diner, still chewing on the bite. And drawing his big gun. He sees an armed robber exiting the bank (Albert Popwell in the first of his four roles in Dirty Harry movies) and yells, "Halt!" mid-chew. The robber fires on Harry; Harry fires back, sending the robber sprawling. The getaway car careens at Harry, who calmly takes aim and shoots it, sending it crashing into a fire hydrant, which jets water like a carnival.

And now, the pièce de résistance: Harry saunters to the downed robber - still chewing - and calmly points his gun at him, the robber looking tentatively at his own gun on the ground, inches from him. And Harry speaks: "I know what you're thinking. 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" The milk of Legend.

The robber declines the challenge, yet when Harry turns to walk away, the robber beseeches him, "Hey!... I gots to know." The milk of hilarity.

By now Harry has morphed into a composite of Clint/Harry, as he smugly points his Magnum at the flinching robber - and pulls the trigger! Click! Empty barrels! Harry smiles that Eastwood smile and saunters away.

By now we are overdosing on Legend...

While his mythos as a laconic avenger was birthed with Leone's DOLLAR trilogy, the DIRTY HARRY movies rounded out this more "modern" Clint. And if Leone was responsible for carving Clint into Legend, the director of this cinematic juggernaut was the other man who "made" Eastwood: Don Siegel.

The finale is the cement that hardens the Legend. Harry points his Magnum at Scorpio, who is shielding himself with a boy. In a classic callback, Harry recites the same monologue he gave to the bank robber - but this time the tone is taut disdain, a mocking death knell for the person whom it is addressed to. And the funny thing is: during Harry's first speech, he is out of ammo, during his second, he has one bullet left - yet the circumstances make him a winner both times.

In Clint's Magnum opus we know that Harry Callahan stands for what is truly right - over and above any written law cravenly passed by sniveling old rich white guys who rape justice in the ass. The funny thing is: when you yourself come up against morally ambiguous situations in life, you look to someone like Harry Callahan to guide you. And you gotta ask yourself a question, "Do you feel Dirty?"

Well, do ya, punk?!

Liam Neeson and Sam Worthington try to out-act special effects. Fail. 16-year-old boys rejoice. Mankind tries to live without deities. Fail. Churches rejoice.

CLASH OF THE TITANS is written for 16-year-old boys, to be enjoyed exclusively by 16-year-old boys. Hell, I loved the 1981 original film. When I was 16. The 2010 remake obviously has better special effects and much better-realized and refined supernatural creatures, but the acting and the story have not graduated past the level of acceptance required by 16-year-old boys.

Perseus (Aussie Sam Worthington, who just can't seem to shake that accent as his ancestors Mel Gibson and Guy Pearce did), a demi-god in ancient Greece, must battle against the gods themselves when the city of Argos is forced to sacrifice its princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) to the Kraken.

Like any story that involves religion, everything happens for irrational reasons and without motivation and without any point. Perseus's very birth is laden with irrational backstory, as mortal King Acrisius (Jason Flemyng) feuds with Olympian god Zeus (Liam Neeson), causing Zeus to rape Acrisius's wife.

Let's backtrack for a moment: How exactly do you feud with a god? How does one "raid Olympus"? Isn't it on another dimensional plane? And even if Olympus IS just a physical abode resting on the lowest clouds, how do the ancient Greek soldiery (possessing no flying machines) actually ATTACK Olympus?...

Onward...

Acrisius's wife births Perseus, who is half-god, half-Australian. Acrisius, in a fit of rage, uh, waits nine months until baby Perseus is born, to entomb both baby and mother in a coffin and hurl it into the sea "to destroy Zeus's seed." Guess his "fit of rage" didn't take into account it might have been easier to just stab the mother while she was pregnant...

Long story short: Perseus lives, becomes a fisherman, in a world which has started to defy the gods who created them. Soldiers destroy a giant Zeus statue and broham Hades, ruler of the underworld, immediately appears as a giant black winged entity (with smaller bat-winged demons reminiscent of JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS) and wipes the floor with the soldiers. So what kind of cretin would continue insulting gods? Yet they do. Queen Cassiopeia of Argos boasts that her daughter Andromeda is more beautiful than the goddess Aphrodite, at which point Hades (Ralph Fiennes, doing his best Gary Oldman), appears again and calls for Andromeda's sacrifice - or he will release the Kraken (which we presume is a Very Bad Thing because he pronounces the name so terribly feyly).

After Hades lays down his curse, Perseus unwittingly gets roped into the quest to stop the Kraken, which involves visiting Stygian witches, taming a Pegasus flying horse, lopping off the head of the gorgon Medusa and using it to turn the Kraken to stone. While Hans Zimmer's music makes it epic on toast. All in a day's work for a demi-god. But Perseus spends half his skirt-wearing, sword-wielding time bitching about wanting to be a man not a god.

Perseus maintains to Zeus, "We live, we fight and we die for each other - not for you," which again, is spoken like a man living in a world WITHOUT gods, or in a world with imaginary gods, i.e. ours. If the gods showed themselves and performed magical, physics-bending havoc when you defied them, I'm betting you would learn quicksmart how to live, fight and die for them.

Blaming director Louis Leterrier and writers Travis Beacham, Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi for these discrepancies would be like blaming Peter Jackson for the illogical happenings in THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The Greek mythology is already written - if the movie writers stuck to every detail and inserted every ulterior motivation of the complex characters, we would need a trilogy of movies. As a movie version of CLASH OF THE TITANS had already been written in 1981 by Beverly Cross, these remake writers simply took that script - and dumbed it down even further.

As illustrated by the box office, no one cares. In modern parlance, "going Greek" doesn't involve mythological classicism.

The visualization of the creatures - from Flemyng's Calibos makeup to the ferryman Charon, to Medusa, the Pegasus and the Kraken - is monstrously good, although I will say that Medusa should have been topless. She's a snake-like monster who lives amongst ruins and turns people to stone with her stare; can you really see her adjusting her ornate bra for maximum push-up effect? I'm just sayin.' Movie makes an infantile decision to paint Hades as a "villain," as if synonymous with the Christian devil, but Hades was not a simple polar opposite to Zeus; Zeus ruled Olympus, Poseidon ruled the oceans and Hades ruled the underworld, which was called either Tartarus, Elysium or Erebus, and was a region ALL human souls passed through, not just "bad" ones. And Olympus was NOT the equivalent of Christian heaven, it was the exclusive abode of the gods - NO human was allowed there.

Would that any human cast his unworthy gaze on Liam Neeson's fake pirate's beard and absolutely fabulous outfit; gadding about in a shimmering silvery ballroom gown made of chromium wings that is even gayer than his costume as Qui-Gon Jin.

The grandest misnomer of all: the twelve Titans of Ancient Greece were Cronus, Oceanus, Tethys, Mnemosyne, Hyperion, Themis, Thea, Iapetus, Phoebe, Rhea, Coeus and Crius. None of whom appear in the movie. (Though Zeus and Hades are erroneously regarded as Titans by some texts, they are merely offspring of Titans, Cronus and Rhea.) So... a movie called CLASH OF THE TITANS which features not one actual Titan.

The movie makers are just bending us over and going Greek on us.

Ladies, don't go near this movie if you don't want to get pregnant.

Sylvester Stallone and his man-team infiltrate a junta compound to rescue a chick. Explosions. Gunfire. Wrestling matches. Man-banter. Big explosions. Then some bigger explosions. Then an explosion so big it will rattle the testosterone right out of your ballsac and into the nearest female's womb. That's how manly THE EXPENDABLES is...

As a boy's action-adventure movie, THE EXPENDABLES delivers, with hand-to-hand, gun-to-gun, wall-to-wall, ball-to-ball man-sweat; hot women (Giselle Itié, Charisma Carpenter) and a cool seaplane; hella fun, with hard action, hard livin' and forearms as hard as roped steel cables.

Seems Stallone has given up trying to impress audiences with his considerable acting talent and opted, in his autumn, to revert back to the gunmetal thunder of his macho youth that involved beating up people and baritone mumbles. (Autumn? At 64, still built like a freight train. Now that's the power of will, the power of diet, the power of, uh, steroids.) Stallone heads a mercenary team informally known as The Expendables, which includes Jason Statham (most agile), Jet Li (most diminutive), Terry Crews (most trapezius), Randy Couture (most xtreme) and Dolph Lundgren (most junkie giant). Eric Roberts (most B-Movie) is the villain, with Steve Austin (most neck) as his muscle. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis cameo in a man-banter scene with Stallone that makes its own semen sandwich. Mickey Rourke (most tattooed) is an ex-member of the boy band, who surprisingly turns out to be the heart of the movie.

It is Mickey's tragic baritone mumbling about how he could have saved one woman's life, after taking so many lives in a war zone, that spurs Stallone into going non-merc and rescuing one of the hot women for free (apparently to redeem his soul, but mostly cos she looked like a Euro runway model), and our hearts go out to him and his boys for having to kill all those faceless junta drogues who can't hit the side of a barn with their machine guns and army training.

A wet-dream tough guy ensemble, Stallone directs and co-writes and beats up people and baritone mumbles.

It's primal fear time.

Betcha when Aron Ralston started his canyon hike that Saturday morning, he didn't think that by 10 a.m. he'd be swimming in a subterranean cavern with two hot chicks, that by Wednesday he'd be drinking his own urine and that by Thursday he'd be carving his own arm off...

127 HOURS is the intense shock-rock account of how young adventure-seeker and canyoneer Ralston (James Franco) got his right hand and forearm trapped under a rock in Blue John Canyon near Moab, Utah in April 2003, having not told anyone where he was going, and of how he survived for five days and ultimately escaped his 800-pound stone cufflink.

127 HOURS is like a gruesome car accident - you don't wanna look, but you can't turn away.

When Ralston falls down a gulch and realizes his arm is trapped under a falling boulder, his dismay is soon overcome by frustration when he can't shift the boulder or pull his arm loose. He screams, "This is insane!" as we all would, because in this modern world, things like this not only don't happen to us, but CAN'T happen to us. Like the abandoned couple in OPEN WATER, we think we're too technological, too evolved, too sophisticated for these menial mishaps. Ralston peers up at the sliver of blue sky above the gulch and sees a faraway plane. It's surreal that in this world overrun by people, not one other soul knows where he is...

He thinks back to his last hours in civilization; how he didn't pick up his mother's call, how he didn't tell his co-worker where he was going, and even how he misplaced his Swiss army knife, saddled instead with a cheap multi-tool, which would have to go above and beyond its call of duty to pull off a gory task.

He starts a filmic commentary on his vidcam, one of his first ruminations that his hand has not had circulation for 24 hours, "It's probably gone." Horrifying thought! Even if you did escape now, that part of your body is destroyed irrevocably. Then the corollary thought: how long can the rest of your body maintain with one part of it slammed off from regular function? The blood is being squeezed through forcibly-created pathways to avoid that dead junction - how long before the machine busts a piston? On the third day, Ralston starts talking of his heart palpitating three times faster than normal.

He starts conserving his food (2 burritos) and water (1 flask); jerry-rigs an ingenious sling to try to shift the rock; chips away at the stone with the multi-tool. He dreams... of his ex-girlfriend, of parties, of being freed - and wakes to stone-cold reality (isn't that the worst, stomach-curdling feeling in the world?); noises in the dark, delirium, wild thoughts...

Director Danny Boyle is intent on making us feel everything Ralston felt, force-feeding us his emotional arc, through periods of sanguinity and desperation, frivolity and fear, and his ultimate descent into insanity and then clarity and then a hybrid of both; after all, how insane/sensible do you have to be to realize your only option is to break both the bones in your forearm and carve it off to escape?

James Franco goes where few actors have been - no, not down a gulch in Utah - into the mind of a man who calmly assessed self-mutilation for survival. And went through with it! Of course, our own primal fears were awakened long before Ralston made the decision. It is WE who are trapped, it is WE who will die slowly or risk brain-searing pain, and ultimately... it is WE whose arms Ralston is cutting into!

Boyle and Franco take us there, capturing not just the mental state, but (with the jolting use of fizzling audio and red meat editing) also capturing that ineffable yet jarringly familiar sensation of electric, teeth-fraying pain, as Ralston cuts through his tendons, nerves exposed. At that point, we would welcome fingernails down a blackboard.

When his arm comes away and he stumbles backwards - that blank look - it's like his brain has fried its last cell trying to process what he has just done. What was going through Ralston's mind at that point in real life? The brain as an organ assessing how to cope with a body part suddenly non-existent on its radar?

Ralston retained enough peace of mind to apply a tourniquet before the cutting got too deep, retained enough sanity to take one last picture of his cut-off arm; had enough strength to then rappel down a cliff face and walk in the direction of his car before coming across hikers and being rescued.

Astonishingly, Ralston retained consciousness through his rescue and hardly even had to be helped walking; a testament to the human body's resilience, that's how fit and/or adrenalized he was. Ralston made it because he was in peak human condition from his extreme sports escapades. It's got nothing to do with his "soul" or fighting spirit or that stupid "premonition" of his future son.

From Ralston's book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, 127 HOURS is pure visceral emotion. It will leave you spent, if you haven't fainted first. The film's coda shows us the real Aron Ralston with wife Jessica - sitting in the sun, relaxed, quiet. A welcome relief from the foregoing intensity. Ralston continues to climb and trek; we see a prosthetic climbing apparatus attached to his missing limb.

Still, the most incredible, inspirational thing I took from Ralston was how he kept his three-day growth as a three-day growth over five days. If I could do that, I would be soooo sexy.

Extraterrestrial aliens land in Los Angeles and humans battle them. That's why it's called BATTLE LOS ANGELES. Creative. Filled brim to barrel bottom with explosions, running, army jargon, and characters we care about just slightly more than the assholes on JERSEY SHORE.

It's as if SAVING PRIVATE RYAN were directed by someone with all the tools but none of the heart of a Spielberg.

Here's a sampling of dialogue: "Move! Move!" "Take cover!" "Cover me!" "Go go go!" "Get the hell in there!" "Get the hell outta there!" "Right there, right there!"

So cute how movie takes its time introducing all the soldiers involved in the battle with a title card, stating their name and rank, as they go about their soldierly day before the fracas begins: one retiring, one with pregnant wife, one getting married, one visiting his brother's grave, one in psychiatric session, one with his soldier boy mates, one a virgin, one newbie officer... We don't care.

Though the aliens are landing all over Earth, the movie focuses only on Aaron Eckhart leading one squad of green soldiers in an attempt to evacuate Santa Monica before the army nukes it.

Pathetic attempts at camaraderie, storyline, plot and especially characterization: there's the new lieutenant blankly wondering how to lead; the guy breaking down "They're all gone! They're all gone"; the guy that says, "Get ahold of yourself!"; the retiring soldier pulled back in for one last battle (Eckhart); the arc of Eckhart's troop hating him for getting his last squad killed and the teary-eyed reconciliation as he tells them all those dead men are burned into his memory and starts reciting their names and dog tag numbers... Like we care.

Just when we think it can't get more boring and witless, they find a wounded alien and try to figure out where its heart is by stabbing it everywhere. That would be nice if you were sharpshooting from a bell tower, but you're pumping giant-caliber ammo and rocket grenades into these things. Does it really matter their most vital organ is "to the right of the heart area"? Does anyone care?

Pick up civilians Bridget Moynahan and Michael Pena and some kids - devices to protect from enemy fire and make the troops more vulnerable. That's if we CARED about Pena and Bridget and kids staying alive. Michael Pena dies just to get out of the movie.

Eckhart draws fire away from the squad and destroys an alien craft - makes Bridget Moynahan wet between the thighs. Speaking of which, Michelle Rodriguez is here as a girl-soldier, but she forgot her battle gear, which is a halter top and bare midriff, so she's clinically useless.

The mothership looks suspiciously like the DISTRICT 9 design. But there's no confusing that classic movie with this dreck that serves no purpose whatsoever. This movie is literally so shallow that once we find out the aliens are apparently here for Earth's water, that's the end of their backstory or connection to anything regarding scientific interest, ancient legends about visitations, or military coverups. The news reporters don't even seem too amazed that they're reporting on actual extraterrestrials - we hear more energy from newscasters when mongoloid Sarah Palin writes a Twitter message.

Somebody should burn every DVD and BluRay copy of BATTLE LOS ANGELES, incinerate the original reels, and arrest the writer and director on felony charges.