The Strangers

Well, I will freely admit that this movie made me more terrified than I have been since the 2004 presidential election.

Most people have called this a more comfortable version of "Funny Games", but as someone who is (possibly unnervingly) comfortable with repeated viewings of "Funny Games", I found "The Strangers" far more frightening. It is a basic home-invasion story, hence the Haneke comparison, but more similar in tone to Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs". Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are a feuding young couple who are attacked by masked instruders at their isolated country home after a friend's wedding. The plot essentially ends there. The use of negative space, however, does not.

The film's first-time director shows a masterful grasp of manipulating the audience through the simplest alteration of the onscreen image. Simply dropping music from many of the most suspenseful scenes subverts our horror-film expectations and makes it that much creepier when a villain is shown standing quietly in the background of a shot while the film goes on in the foreground. After all, if we were the ones standing around the dining room in flannel, smoking our cigarettes, violins on the soundtrack would not announce the arrival of an intruder. At times he lets the incidental sound do the work, such as when the arrival of a wispy blonde is heralded by what sounds like a battering ram knocking politely at the front door. We all know that whatever produced that heavy sound was not wielded by model Gemma Ward (playing the intruder).

The film is reminiscent of mid-period Hitchcock in its use of small details and everyday occurence to create its climate of dread. It deals ably with the modern horror-film question, "Why don't they just use a cell phone?" It has surprisingly little violence and seems at first to be unjustified for an "R" rating. Upon further inspection, though, perhaps this is an example of how more films should be rated. Instead of counting swear words or frames in which breasts appear, the MPAA appears to have considered the overall mood of the film and its very unsettling content. The film would be very frightening for viewers under 13, and even had this 27-year-old checking the locks twice at night. In deference to parents who might not want to spend all night reassuring terrified children, an appropriate rating has been assigned.

As for the ending, which has been criticized as pat and cliched, there is really no satisfying resolution to a film like this. Supernatural explanations for why the intruders can move so quietly and silence neighborhood dogs would have produced a feeling of disappointment in a film styled so realistically from the start. If they turned out to be a Manson-like family of real people, we would be discouraged as we learned human details about them which contradicted the fears and traits we had projected onto their tabulae rasae. Ending the film quickly and giving us as little information about the strangers as possible is the only workable compromise. It even winds up with a throwback horror cliche dating back to De Palma, and one after which the killers in "Funny Games" would turn to us, wink, and grin.

*Correction: 11:25 a.m.*: The last sentence of this post originally referred to the killers of "Funny Games" as "the heroes". While I'm sure Michael Haneke would smile wryly at that appraisal, I have changed the sentence to remove my personal value judgment from the review.

My Blueberry Nights

Look up Roger Ebert's notion of "vaporfilm".

This is my personal definition.

I saw this movie three weeks ago and retain precisely three impressions:
1. Neon.
2. Blueberry pie that looked tasty yet sexual.
3. Wong Kar Wai has made many better movies. In fact, all of them are better.

Now go watch one of those. Yes, even that wretched DVD of "Ashes of Time" where you can only see half the frame is preferable to this.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Certainly I can't be the only one to find George Lucas overrated, but sometimes it sure feels that way. He has either personally created or been a force behind two trilogies which seem to make a far better impression on nine-year-old males than they do on me. The first, of course, is "Star Wars". The second, of course again, is the Indiana Jones trilogy. (It's a shame that "Howard the Duck" was never extended into multiple parts so that I could have a trilogy of trilogies to write about here.)

Don't get me wrong; the Indiana Jones films are perfectly entertaining, impeccably staged pieces of popular entertainment. Because they were actually directed by Steven Spielberg and not by Lucas himself, they feature actors doing real acting. The shots follow one another gracefully. The action sequences are so carefully plotted that it is generally possible to storyboard them in reverse and arrive at essentially what Spielberg himself conceived before shooting. But I didn't see an Indiana Jones film until my early 20s, and even now I haven't viewed enough classic adventure serials to be truly familiar with the style of filmmaking that Spielberg is harkening back to. I enjoyed the films thoroughly, remember little of them years later, and haven't been stricken with a desire to rewatch them in the intervening years.

That being said, this newest Indiana Jones caper essentially revisits the same territory. Our hero looks a bit the worse for wear and occasionally makes quips to that effect, and he has been given a sidekick, a chimpanzee with extensive knowledge of fighting techniques. Oh, sorry, that last bit actually belonged in the "Speed Racer" review. Indy's sidekick is actually a scowling adolescent played with the usual LaBeoufness by Shia LeBeouf, an actor second only to Keanu Reeves in his ability to subtly display all facets of human emotion. In a rarity for a Lucas or Spielberg production, the women in this film are given quite a bit to do. Cate Blanchett has finally finished digesting all the scenery she chewed in "The Aviator" and has come here for seconds. Her villainous Irina Spalko is a military Russian interested in harnessing paranormal phenomena for possible use in weaponry. She and Indy race each other for possession of a mysterious crystal skull that can give the bearer knowledge of all human wisdom.

It was on this lone but major plot point that my disappointment with this movie rests. If everyone in the movie had only begun this fight twenty years later, there would have been no movie, because the skulls would have been shown as human creations not more than one hundred years old. The presence of aliens, discredited skulls, and other ideas that I heard tossed around by people in macrame vests at Phish concerts drags the overall quality and believability of the film down.

The polar opposite of Blanchett in appearance and acting style, Karen Allen makes a welcome appearance, providing fans with the return of an earlier character and proving that an older woman can still play an action heroine and love interest with fire and conviction. She steers a rowboat through numerous waterfalls and pilots a jeep through the film's thrilling jungle chase centerpiece, all while making Indy fall in love with her all over again. Allen has expressed delight at her casting in various media outlets, and I for one think that (aside from Harrison Ford) she deserves much of the credit for making the film feel as comfortable yet exciting as it does.

Ford himself should be given a solid pat on the back, once it is no longer sore from all of his stuntwork. Watching his landings and jumps, it is obvious that he did much of this work himself, and his ability to make Indy seem both iconic and human is crucial to the film's success. Spielberg shows his touch with a few shots of a fedoraed silhouette or tricks with a whip that could easily tilt into camp but don't, and Ford deserves credit for these moments as well.

If you're a fan of the Indiana Jones films, you don't need to have read this far. Just go see the movie. If by some strange stroke of fate you missed the first few, you can jump in here without studying the Indiana Jones mythos and leave the theater entertained.

If you're not a fan of action movies at all or have something in particular against the Indiana Jones films, may I recommend the Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of "Sense and Sensibility" that I recently watched? It's about as far from this film as you can get.

Commando

I had the overwhelming feeling while watching this film that I was walking in the midst of events whose beginnings I didn't fully understand. There is an entire genre out there of films from the late 1970s and early 1980s wherein men whose families/lives/countries are threatened are inspired to become one-man vigilante armies, inflicting massive collateral damage on their way to avenging themselves against those responsible.

I have never until now actually seen one of these movies.

I begrudgingly admit to enjoying the movie more than I expected to, which is not the same thing as wanting to explore any other canonical works of the genre. Still, there were a couple of promising undercurrents of dark humor, not to mention the simpler pleasure of watching peak-period classic Schwarzenegger delivery. The film brims with all types of anxiety just offscreen: Reagan-era conservative paranoia, homophobia, the nervousness that '80s parents felt about losing children they didn't like that much in the first place. Against this backdrop, Arnold's refreshingly brief, unironic readings of each line provide welcome clarity.

The plot begins with a hilariously literal representation of our hero leaving behind a pastoral and well-earned life of calm and descending into an urban jungle to recover his offspring. Here is where Arnold and I diverge. I would have let the bad guys have the shrieking tot and enjoy my mountain lake home in welcome silence. This would also have saved the world from Alyssa Milano's future guilt-tripping of the entire world because none of us donate enough to Oxfam for her liking. But, plots must move forward or die and so Arnold teams up with Rae Dawn Chong, who has great legs and should have let them speak for her instead of trying to do any acting about the waist. A role like this could have been hilarious if played by 80's-era Melanie Griffith, who could make us believe that she eventually comes to sympathize with the stranger who has destroyed her car and cost her her job, all in pursuit of a child she's never met and can't be sure exists. As it is Chong looks mildly annoyed, as if Arnold has caused her to break a heel, and eventually moves on to what the script intends as sympathy but which reads as distraction. It's a performance that's enough to make you long for the subtlety of Madonna in "Who's that Girl?"

No one watches this type of film for the nuanced acting by the female leads, though. There are lots of explosions, some hilarious killings (many made more hilarious by how dated the outfits look), and the requisite amount of stormtrooper aim on the part of the bad guys. It's a cute way to pass an afternoon and, unlike many similar films today, knows when to stop. With a brisk running time, a classic Schwarzenegger performance, and a script that could wink at itself even before the costuming became hilarious, this served as a suitable introduction to the vigilante genre for me.

Charlie Wilson's War

How wonderful for humanity it would be if future life forms studied nothing but the selected works of Mike Nichols to find out what life was like in the 20th and 21st centuries on Earth. These future civilizations would come away thinking that Earth was inhabited by a race of acerbic, fantastically witty beings whose seeming mistakes were in fact calculated ploys to gain every possible advantage from the situation at hand.

In "Charlie Wilson's War" we have an example of just such a group of life forms. It is rare that a director is able to make war in Afghanistan substantially less interesting than the drinking of a glass of scotch, but in Nichols' film futures are decided by moments so fraught and yet incidental that the war footage (most of it authentic) seems almost like an intrusion when it finally appears. The plot follows the story of real-life congressman Charles Wilson, who was instrumental in funding Afghanistan's fight against Russia in the 1980's. What could have been an extremely dry and instructive movie, like so many dealing with Middle East politics, is instead almost a drawing-room comedy, all the more disturbing once you realize that these events actually took place and that lives and wars were decided offhandedly by Texas politicians with demonstrably shaky judgment.

Part of the film's triumph comes from Tom Hanks' performance as Charlie. There are shades of Forrest Gump in it, in the story of a southern man who finds himself in situations of grave historical import which he cannot begin to understand. But what a complex and difficult performance this is in contrast! Charlie's political background has taught him to hide his intentions behind dark, narrowed eyes, and no matter how much Hanks' mouth smiles, his eyes never open to the camera. Even we don't know at the end of the film whether he was truly dumb or just realized that playing that way was the easiest way to get what he wanted.

It is practically redundant to say that a Philip Seymour Hoffman performance anchors the film and confidently allows the rest of the plot to swirl around it, but let me repeat the tired evaluation yet again. As Gust, a rogue CIA agent who would dearly love more funding for his three-man Afghanistan team, he enters the film with a bang (quite literally) and spends the rest of his time forcing the actors around him to give their best just to keep up. He blusters, lies, sputters and manipulates, and still we root for him.

Other performances in the film are solid, but Hoffman and Hanks set the bar higher than most of their colleagues can quite reach. Nichols has a true talent for pulling career-high performances out of actors when the script provided will allow him to do so, and this film is no exception. Its tone is frothy comedy on the surface, but the mere idea that such a venue is where life-and-death decisions are made makes for a dark undercurrent that gives the film much-needed bite. I believe the word "underrated" will eventually b e applied to this film; current audiences seem to have thought it was yet another Middle East war movie and the promotional materials did little to discourage that opinion. But in truth the war seems secondary and far away from this film, much as it did to those whose lives are depicted in it.

The Living End

A strange thing happened to me halfway during this admittedly strange film: I began to like the movie.

At first I had thrown up my hands and regarded this as a dated and cartoonish yet necessary artifact of the era surrounding the birth of the AIDS epidemic. In its first half hour, this film is quite insistently just that. It is an early effort from former provocateur Gregg Araki, and the clothes and speaking style are so early-'90s that at first they drive the viewer to distraction. Despite the strange headgear and presence of portable tape recorders instead of blogs, the love scenes were surprisingly affecting when they began.

The plot concerns two HIV-positive men, a writer and a drifter, who forge a bond based on their shared sense of the "living end" of the title. Before drug cocktails made HIV and AIDS manageable diseases, it is easy to imagine those diagnosed responding just as these men do: with a violent and nihilistic road trip where they are somehow miraculously not arrested despite shooting policemen, robbing banks, and (in a killing that unfairly takes place offscreen) beating a homophobe to death with a boombox.

The crudely drawn edges of Araki's characters are practically beside the point. The characters serve more to symbolize possible reactions to the AIDS diagnosis: struggling but accepting fate or rashly living like one will die tomorrow are but two of the possible responses to this epidemic while it was in its infancy. Expecting characters with such a great symbolic burden to act subtly is an unrealistic hope, and the film's in-your-face style was probably more appropriate for the climate of fear and ignorance about AIDS in which it was released.

Unfortunately, even if the acting was intended to be subtle, such machinations would have been beyond the range of its cast. Unconvincing histrionics are the flavor of the month here, delivered by men who were obviously cast for their looks and possibly for their willingness to spend the night with Araki. The amateurish acting is matched by a camera style that would have been rejected by MTV as too jerky and unfocused. Despite these essential flaws, the film has a historical urgency that recommends it to anyone interested in queer cinema or even in the depiction of the Los Angeles art scene throughout film history. Scenes such as the one where the drifter examines his blood, seeking in vain for what makes it so different and poisonous, retain a touching quality that cannot be obscured even by the film's numerous missteps.

In the unlikely event that you find yourself wanting more of the same after this, check out Araki's "The Doom Generation" and "Nowhere".

Sweeney Todd

This is one of those times when I struggle to describe what was essentially a perfectly serviceable film that fulfilled my expectations completely without exceeding them by an inch. Perhaps I'm not qualified to judge this film, having no familiarity with the source material and no comparisons for the singing and performances in this one. But assuming the film stands alone, it repeats but does not elaborate upon themes that Tim Burton fans will greet with familiar pleasure and non-fans will find repetitive and off-putting.

Johnny Depp gives a solid lead performance in the title role, courageously performing all of his own songs despite having no formal vocal training. His character at times seems an outgrowth of the miscellany of tormented adolescents-in-adult-bodies that he has played for Burton over the years. This comparison is practically invited by the filmmaker when he stands Depp alone in the frame beneath a slanted pane window and has him reflect on how his hands are now complete with blades in them again. Burton's partner Helena Bonham Carter gives a more musically rounded performance that is on par with Depp's in general acting ability. Together they are Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett, he a barber out for revenge on the judge who stole his wife and she the maker of meat pies who sees business opportunities behind Sweeney's body count. In a reversal of the general feeling that the rich were feeding on the poor in 19th-century London, our lead couple bake the best meat pies in town from Sweeney's victims.

The plot and tone of the musical have always seemed baffling to me. Perhaps if I'd seen it performed I would feel differently; the Blue Man Group's shows don't read well on the page either. But a dark and violent musical about a murderous barber seemed like a mishmash of elements each chosen for their dark whimsy which together added up to something labored and unnatural. The songs are of higher quality than can usually be found in musicals, but the story seems simplistic and melodramatic. These flaws are not entirely Burton's fault, but he did choose this material to adapt and that forces us to search the film for his motivations.

I was tantalized throughout the film by the thought of what Burton could have done with another adaptation: the Patrick Suskind novel "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer". At one point he was apparently attached to the project, and it fascinates me to think what he might have done with a story set in a similar milieu, with a similarly driven and haunted protagonist, but with a denouement so much more fraught and satisfying than "Sweeney Todd"'s ending. Alas, we will never know. Here we have the typical Burton protagonist, doing the typical man-child acting out on a typical expressionist set. A fine way to pass the time, perhaps, but enough to make one long even for the misbegotten thematic variation provided by "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".

I recommend this one for Burton completists, Depp fans, and those who admire the original material. If this doesn't describe you, try "Edward Scissorhands", "The Libertine", or "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari".

Speed Racer: The IMAX Experience

Shiny.

Shiny, shiny, shiny, and yet again shiny. Is there an object or person in this film not shellacked within an inch of its/his/her life? Wait, I know the answer to that. When I mentally compile a list of "Things I'd like to see 40 feet high", the phrase "John Goodman's Pores" does not appear in the top 10. Or the top 375. (Christina Ricci's legs, however, hover at about number 12.)

I have the benefit of being able to write about this film after having seen the box office returns. It appears that this little-$100-million-film-that-could was outdrawn by a rather threadbare-looking Cameron Diaz/Ashton Kutcher comedy with a plot ripped from a threadbare-looking Kate Hudson/Matthew McConaughey comedy. The film barely escapes deserving this fate, but I do feel it's better than the pummeling it's been given by the press would lead you to believe.

Complaints about lack of plot abound. I won't dignify them with a response. This is a film based on a Japanese cartoon about car racing. This is not a Wachowski Brothers remake of "Ugetsu". This movie should have cars. Lots of cars. They should go fast. Very fast. The rest is filler, and the less of that the better. The plot, such as it is, concerns Speed Racer and his confrontation with the seamy, money-grubbing side of futuristic auto racing. Luckily for the viewer, he decides to play out his moral quandary by participating in a number of impressive but not particularly meditative car races. *Spoilers ahead* Good triumphs and evil is vanquished. *Spoilers end here.*

The film has a lot going for it. The cast, while underused and made subservient to drifting reactor-powered racecars, is mostly solid. Emile Hirsch makes all that he can out of his few scenes which require real acting ability and looks pretty good under a helmet. Susan Sarandon and John Goodman could do these roles in their sleep, but they acquit themselves well considering the wardrobe (her) and facial hair (him) choices forced on them by their characters. Christina Ricci, that love child of Louise Brooks and an anime character, has been down this path before and remains plucky and watchable in her 30th retread of the spunky can-do female lead. Supporting roles are mostly filled well, with the exception of Matthew Fox as Racer X. When scowling and frowning are beyond your range and you seem unconvincing as someone whose eyes we don't see until three-quarters of the way into the movie, you might want to consider some acting lessons. Or maybe some more acting lessons.

This is not to say there aren't problems. The film is too long. It suffers from many Charlie-and the-Chocolate-Factory-type scenes that seem designed just to show off a set or a particular digital effect. One climactic car race would have been quite enough and saved the audience another 30 minutes of viewing time. The race scenes are sometimes chaotically shot, violating the 180-degree rule or obscuring a crucial piece of information with a bit of flying debris. A problem particular to IMAX viewings is that, surprisingly, many of the digital effects show their seams when shown on a larger screen. Backgrounds look plastic and unconvincing, or a ragged edge of pixels shows around some shiny object or another. The Wachowskis don't seem to have the same affection for the material that we saw in their earlier projects, even the misbegotten ones. There's a certain love that drives the creation of worlds so complete and closed as we saw in "The Matrix", and "Speed Racer" feels strangely tossed-off in comparison. Of course, that certain love also spawned the most infamous use of dreadlocks in film since Jar Jar Binks, so perhaps we have blessings to count here instead that we are not watching a fourth "Matrix" film.

See this film if you have children. See it on an IMAX if you would like a candy-colored, empty-calorie way to pass an afternoon (or if you happen to have some pot you've been waiting to use up).

Otherwise, may I recommend: "The Fast and the Furious" (if you haven't seen it), "The Fast and the Furious" a second time (if you have), "Death Proof", "Thunder Road"

Lars and the Real Girl

A certain flavor of indie comedy tends to be a litmus test, and one that I often fail. The last time I remember this happening so clearly as it has with "Lars and the Real Girl" was when "Me and You and Everyone We Know" was released. Such high hopes, such poor execution. My opinion on this film varies so greatly from those expressed by most mainstream critics that I am forced to fall back on the old pearl-clutching question: "Did we see the same movie?"

The plot, such as it is, concerns Lars, a baby-faced 27-year-old living near Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. He is the lone oddball in a town full of gentle, friendly Midwesterners who appear to have been extras on the set of "Fargo" who wandered into this film when "Fargo" became too violent. Lars has an extreme fear of being touched, and eventually customizes his perfect woman on a made-to-order sex doll website. When she is delivered, however, he initiates a chaste and hesitant relationship with her, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she is made up of almost as much plastic as the average living resident of Los Angeles. The townspeople, for some reason, accept "Bianca" as Lars' girlfriend and welcome her into the community. A forced and unrealistic ending shoehorns all of these issues into a traditional arc of recovery, hope, and the obligatory love interest.

Wow. Not since "Benny and Joon" has a film so carefully and accurately depicted mental illness. Although we are told early on that there is a history of suicide in Lars' family, no one around him insists on treatment, and when he sees a general practitioner (who is "also a psychologist"), she decides that the best course of treatment is to allow the Bianca relationship to continue until she can tease out what lies beneath it. *Spoilers ahead* During the last scene of the film I watched in disbelief as a trick that I thought "A Beautiful Mind" had beaten into the ground was hauled out yet again for another lap around the track. It is disingenuous to convince the audience, through medical diagnoses and observed behavior in the film, that Lars is indeed mentally ill, and then permit him to box his symptoms up in the ground, bury them, and ask his pretty co-worker to take a walk with him. This single flaw was insulting enough to discredit the film on its own, but there are still more issues just in case that one isn't enough for you. *Spoilers end here.*

Probably the second most fatal wound for this film is the acting. Ryan Gosling fades out of most scenes he is in, which is quite an accomplishment when sharing screen time with Emily Mortimer. The lone compelling performance belongs to Paul Schneider as Lars' older brother, who does such a convincing job as the voice of reason that we automatically take his side, and root for him when he tries to tell Lars that his "girlfriend" cannot have taken nursing classes because she is MADE OF PLASTIC. The film treats this perspective as almost laughable, expecting us to take Gosling's side, when in reality we wish someone would listen to Schneider and slap some sense into this movie.

In slight defense of this film, it could have been much, much worse. The unaffected attitudes of most bit performers save this from being a macabre or juvenile comedy, and while Gosling's performance is not particularly watchable, it pales in comparison to what, for example, Ashton Kutcher or Shia LaBeouf would do with the role. Overall, this is a bland film with nothing to particularly recommend it and many strikes against it if you, like me, are tired of the look-Ma-I'm-cured attitude toward mental illness that passes for sympathy in many films today.

May I recommend instead: "Little Miss Sunshine", "The Virgin Suicides", "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"