I’ve gotten terribly behind in my reviews as of late. Suffice to say, life has become filled with 36 hour days sandwiched into a 24 hour universe and boy… that’s a big sandwich to try to get down.

Having said that – I miss writing about these films – and you folks have been writing me to find out my thoughts on several films, which I’ve seen, but not written proper reviews for, so… I’m gonna file through a whole bunch of titles, give you abbreviated reviews/thoughts regarding the titles. Hopefully, this will be liked.

CELLULAR

This was a pleasant surprise. It seems the film was kinda buried by NEW LINE. I just never really got a clear image of what this film was in advance. But in many ways it kinda reminds me of that sleeper flick, THE TRANSPORTER with Jason Statham. He’s an action super-star waiting to be unleashed upon the world. Watching him in this, playing the heavy is just exciting. He’s got a “don’t fuck with me” way about him that is exactly what the film needed. Now, I get the idea that part of the reason this movie hasn’t been doing particularly hot… besides a lackluster advertising campaign, is that with Kim Basinger and Chris Evans… the film kinda just looks like a grade C thriller, but like those grade C thrillers of the 40s and 50s… that’s where there was some SERIOUS gold. I mean, look at films like SPLITSECOND or CRISSCROSS – these were not big studio movies in their day. Films like GUN CRAZY or DETOUR. They were just C-level entertainment that have, given the passage of time and distance… they’ve become classics. Is CELLULAR a classic? Not now. BUT – given it’s time on Cable, DVD and whatnot, you’ll see a fan base grow for this movie, much like what has happened for THE TRANSPORTER.

At the screening I was at, many of the other critics were confused about the film. They kept wanting to think of the film as a comedy, complaining, “I wanted to laugh, but never quite could.” WELL - You’re not supposed to fucking laugh ya twits, this is a HORRIFYING situation.

Imagine, you’re going about your day… your cell phone rings that “Unidentified Caller” ring you loathe, and you answer… And it’s a plea for help. Through developments in what you’re hearing, you discover, it’s true. You’re in Los Angeles, the worst Cell Phone city on the planet Earth… constantly watching the bars on the reception on your cell come and almost go. But a disconnect means DEATH for this sweet voice of a human being reaching out to you. There’s a degree of FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS at work here, cuz when the bell rings, would you answer? Could you not?

This is Dean Devlin’s first solo production outside the world of Roland Emmerich films. It isn’t a giant spectacle, it’s a small film with big dreams and big fears. A wonderful first film.

The key performance in this film, is Chris Evans. I found him captivating. And I was incredibly relieved. He’s playing Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, in FANTASTIC FOUR, and he’s got the best written role in that script. After this, I have the highest confidence in him.

This is a forward step in the right direction for David R. Ellis. FINAL DESTINATION 2 was a junky, albeit fun death fetish flick – that killed people real good, but never really made great characters. This time, I got caught up in it. I wasn’t looking to laugh, I was looking to be thrilled. Though, the half empty preview screening audience certainly didn’t seem to be along for the ride. Oh well.

COLLATERAL

Best Michael Mann Film Ever.

Sorry, I get a bit “Comic Book Guy” from time to time, but this film is the complete Thriller. CELLULAR is a good one, COLLATERAL is the great one. Along with MAGNOLIA and BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, this is one of the best performances out of Tom Cruise. Like both of those, here he’s playing a RADICALLY out of character role. Like those films, this proves just how great an actor he can be. Like when Jimmy Stewart was being twisted into a sick psychotic blood-thirsty freak by Anthony Mann… or when Burt Lancaster took his dark turns… here you have a likable, strike that, a FREAKISHLY CHARISMATIC LEADING MAN – being turned on his ear. It is disarming. You expect evil to be pock-marked, scarred or grungy. You expect evil to come blood-stained and obvious. The last thing you expect, is Tom Cruise… unless you’re a paranoid liberal that thinks evil comes in pressed-suits and ties, like me. Perhaps the best clean cut evil I’ve ever seen in a film, was Sam Neill in OMEN 3, just… ewwwwwww, ya know? That whole series was just great. BUT – anyway, Tom is so on in this movie that it erased every not-quite there film of his from my memory. Spectacular. The rest of the film? PERFECT.

Jamie Foxx – WHOA! Between this and his work that I’m hearing spectacular things regarding in RAY – he’s reinvented himself as a powerful dramatic actor. Great, I was tired of flinching everytime I saw him on screen. He perfectly off-sets Tom Cruise in this film. That opening cab ride he takes with Jada Pinkett Smith (another performer I usually loathe, but didn’t) was a magical brief encounter. One of those, “Did that just happen,” sort of conversations where you wish upon a star many a lonely night for, and when it comes you want to seem cool, not desperate. Engaging, not cocky. But more than that, you want to be the perfect dancer, cuz she is a keeper.

But best Michael Mann Film Ever? Well… I love Michael Mann, and saying that… well, it’s how I felt coming out of the film the 3 separate times I’ve come out of the film. It’s how I feel now as I type this. I love “Running Through The Forest Half Naked” aka LAST OF THE MOHICANS. I love HEAT – but I’ve always had problems with one of my favorite scenes in that movie, the sit down with Pacino and DeNiro. I just never buy that scene. I love it, but I don’t believe it would or could happen. It’s a creation. A scene that is there because how could you not sit them down for a scene, but it’s a bullshit scene. No way, no how. God, I’m glad it’s there, but it fucked up the film for me while being great. It’s a my problem thing. But in COLLATERAL, in that Jazz Club, you have a similar sort of thing. A moment of calm. Drinks, Jazz and a fucking great conversation. Slap dab in the middle of hell, they sit, have drinks, relax and chill. It was breath-taking. Exhilarating. Thrilling. In fact, that’s how I feel about the entire film. Mann never takes the cheap route, never being half-ass. Everything pays off, everything is surprising and everything works perfectly.

Last, but most definitely not least. The photography and the use of Digital over film… This is where digital filmmaking came into its own. This is what an artist using HD can do. This is what a GREAT filmmaker can do with it. This is simply gorgeous. In the same way that Mann defined the look of MIAMI, he’s redefined the Nights of Los Angeles. It almost made me want to come visit. Almost. And that’s a helluva thing. BRAVO!

THE BOURNE SUPREMACY

Yet another superior thriller. It isn’t the cinema that COLLATERAL is, but it’s great “pulp” thriller material. What makes this film work for me is Matt Damon. He’s one of the best hands down “thinking” actors working right now. You can see him thinking in his action. So much is told through his eyes, body posture and movements. He isn’t built to be a super-action star, doesn’t have the “face” for it. Matt feels like a dramatic actor. Not necessarily a romantic actor. Not really an action star. But he handles both wonderfully. The entire last two-thirds of this film is all about a man in love, torn apart. He’s a wounded dangerous creature hunting other predators. It is lovely. The expanding of his world… adding to Julia Stiles and Brian Cox and Franka Potente with Joan Allen, well… Joan is perfect for the film. I don’t think I want to see another chapter of the Bourne saga on film, but that’s because I don’t want it to become repetitive. That being said, Matt is so great in this character – it feels how I wish the whole Jack Ryan series had been played. This feels vital and real. The difference between this film and the first is… The first film was a mystery. This one is a revenge film. I like that. I like that a lot.

GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE

I love Oshii’s work. It seems most don’t. He doesn’t write, draw or direct simple genre efforts. He isn’t interested in simple straight forward stories. He’s a cinematic neuromancer jacking out reel after reel of 24fps data straight into our eyes and ears. He remembers tomorrow for us, and remembers it in greater detail than our past is to us. Oshii doesn’t walk the same plane of existence as us, reading an interview with him, is like reading an interview with Yoda. He speaks in logic circles regarding the higher evolutionary development of mankind, with a 20/20 hindsight on that which most of thinks will never be here, but that he’s apparently already lived through, and that I believe in. It’s just creepy as hell watching this stuff, cuz I’m not looking at “Commercial Product,” I’m looking at a man’s vision of the evolutionary future of mankind. And as I read about abandoned Soviet Moon bases and wet-worked jacked in monkeys and ROBOTS… I begin to wonder, how can any of us pretend to know for certain that Oshii isn’t just visiting us from a better tomorrow giving us a glimpse of where we’re destined to follow. His films are musings on us. The characters don’t speak like us, because their brains are not like our brains. They’ve been enhanced. So when they speak in a series of literati quotes that most of us could only dream of having in the recall buttons of our minds, realize… these characters have those capabilities. They have iPods inside their skulls that remember things for them wholesale. Is this great entertainment? For me, absolutely. Is it art? Of the highest caliber, most certainly. It is better than we deserve.

BEFORE SUNSET

Richard Linklater. The best American Filmmaker working today? I certainly feel he’s made an impressive argument for the title. He’s making great film consistently for next to nothing. His films are coming in quick succession at an impossible level of consistent quality. He’s being ignored by mass pop culture, but making important wonderful films. I feel that he seems like our leader of the American New Wave. With his Film Society, his filmmaking brothers, Tarantino, Soderbergh and Rodriguez – He isn’t the most monetarily successful (he’s working on it), but in terms of quality and quantity – he’s passing Soderbergh. Innovative digital works, animation works. Tiny stories about the heart at stages in life. Documentaries. Television (you should see his HBO pilot that HBO ignorantly decided not to pick up!). He’s leading the building of an entire studio here in Austin, yet…

He makes time for a film like BEFORE SUNSET. A wondrous further exploration of two chanced lovers a decade apart. One of my favorite movies is THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN by Truffaut. I love BEFORE SUNSET at that level. This is the only PERFECT film I’ve seen this year. Perfect in that, at no point could I dream of a better moment for the characters to be living, saying and being. These characters are more alive than most of the people sitting watching them. They ache on screen for us, they want to say things that they can’t say, do things they can’t bring themselves to do. They’re talking, talking and saying things they wish would be listened to. There’s such a sense of urgency to this film, that wasn’t in BEFORE SUNRISE.

In BEFORE SUNRISE, you had characters at the morning of their lives. Young, vital… filled with the dream of experiences yet lived. Hopeful about tomorrow and the days after. They were dreamers and lovers and invincible and cocky and filled with their own perfect visions of how the world moved, how pretty they were, how handsome they were. How ALIVE they were.

In BEFORE SUNSET – you see characters on the edge of their nights. They’ve lived and lost. They’re damaged, hurt and they’ve reached that point of knowing they know nothing, not even what they truly want. They’re exploring that. They’ve each settled into an existence. A reality. A grown up way to live. They’re neither happy with it, but they know that’s the way it is. As that sun is dipping closer and closer to twilight, they realize – they haven’t been as alive as they are right now, not since before the dawn of their lives. What the hell are they going to do?

I LOVE THIS FILM! Maybe it’s that these films are mirroring my own existence. It isn’t necessarily about that person you met at 18,19, 20 or 21, 22. It’s not about going and finding them and being happily ever after. There is no happily ever after, there’s simply the lives we live. What the film is about is whether or not we’re locked down into our existences. Resolute in our choices. Does the wedding band mean forever if there is a happier way to spend it? Are you so damn happy with being who you are and where you are, have you become a happy single. Set in your routine, your reading material, the way you take your coffee and smoke your cig? Is this the rest of your life? Is life meant to be as it was yesterday and the day before, and are we trapped to be the anonymous unhappy little beings we are or can we change that? Should we change that? RIGHT NOW! We 30-something balls of neurosis… Politically charged, but are we set? Before your sunset are you sure this is the life you were meant to face the night with? THAT is what this film is about. Question not only authority, but your own existence.

There’s some other films I need to write about, but that seems enough to digest for now. Hope you enjoyed it.