Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

Henry lives down Meh-heeee-co way, and he sends us reviews from time to time of films that open there before they open here in the US for some reason. It happens several times a year, and it’s always nice to hear from Henry when it does.

In case you didn’t see it, PARANOID PARK made it into my list of my twenty-four favorite films of 2007, and I highly, highly recommend it. Does Henry?

And I’ve got CATACOMBS sitting on top of my TV in the office right now, and I guess it’s going direct-to-video here in a few weeks. Worth my time to check it out?

Hi, guys. I just recently had the chance to catch a couple of things that I just discovered won't be opening in the states just yet so I thought I'd send you a lines about them. According to IMDB none has properly reached you over there yet, but if I'm mistaken just dump this. Feel free to chop at will and keep whatever you feel may be of any use. Both reviews come with heavy spoilers so, if you want to walk into the theater with a blank slate when you finally have the chance,then please don't read this.

Paranoid Park, the latest from Gus van Sant, is supposed to open (limited) on March 7 and it turned out to be an extremely thought-provoking experience for me although, oddly enough, as I approached what hopefully would be the best way to write about it, it wasn't the movie what I found myself thinking of the most but, rather, the reviewing itself. Eventually, the resulting feeling went from slightly unsettling to very vindicatory as it proved two of the most adamant axioms of my life as a moviegoer true; one: movie critics are the luckiest creatures in the known universe and, two: when it comes to digging out the truth about a movie, everyone is right.

Absolutely everyone.

Paranoid Park tells a simple story but is neither a simple nor a simplistic movie. We first meet Alex, the teenage skateboarding fan and protagonist; he's got a cheerleading girlfriend, parents on the brink of divorce, a little brother, a best guy-buddy to skate and hang out with and a best gal-buddy to talk about the more serious, sensitive stuff. Then, we learn that Paranoid Park is a local makeshift hangout for the hardcore skating devotees, tucked away from mainstream society and near the train yards. And, finally, from a fragmented, time-hopping storytelling structure, we find out that Alex has accidentally killed a man.

That becomes somewhat obvious from the get-go even if we're not flat-out told so until halfway thru: there's a cop asking around Alex's high school's skating posse, an unnervingly calm and courteous guy who never gets tired of assuring everyone that no one is a suspect; then, there's a local tv news story on a security guard found dead by the railroad tracks and Alex's shocked reaction. These scenes, stripped naked, are already both meaningful and consequential but, set in the larger context of rythm and mood that by then has been firmly established, play out very, unpleasantly stressful. Which, I feel, was the movie's main goal for it is, at its most basic, a morality play that asks you what it is that you have to do and feel.
We see what Alex chooses to do (or not to do) but the movie doesn't provide any higher, omniscient answers. Instead, it merely presents a thoroughly human portrait of regret and remorse that just about anyone can relate to since everyone in here is real and common. But that knowledge doesn't come easy; Alex is a pretty standard kid and I don't think I've watched a movie in a long time (probably, even, not ever) where the adjective has been any more relevantly appropriate; everyone appears to be a cardboard stereotype.
His girlfriend could have been just as comfortable in Bratz or a straight-to-dvd Bring it On sequel, or in any other "you beyotch"-kind of teen movie, all doe-eyed and high-pitch-voiced, whose idea of a great time consists of goofing around while trying on clothes and -not very subtly-cornering Alex into having sex only to immediatelly afterwards call her girlfriends and tell them about it while giggling.

His best gal-buddy stands in the opposite extreme; she's the tomboy, not an all-out goth chick but someone who wears dark clothes, rides a bike, displays an extremely pronounced case of acne and favors drinking large mugs of coffee while having no-nonsense discussions about life and nodding solemnly.

Alex himself, long-haired, laid back and as street-wise as any white, middle-class, suburban kid is apt to be, kills time driving around, listening to the radio and eating take-out from Subway. The genial thing is that, at second glance, they all still come off as cliches- but in depicting that is exactly where characterization veers off the familiar route: Alex doesn't drive a car of his own but burrows his mom's; he doesn't play a hip-hop cd full-blast (or maybe The Clash or The Ramones, the other classic variants) but turns the dial over and over, forever aimlessly, constantly looking to define himself, safely away from both Bill, Ted and Spicoli on one side and the citizens of a Larry Clark's landscape on the other. They're cliches, for sure, though not the movie variety: they are real-world ones, the latter likely a direct consequence of the former, cliches that transcend their nature and become flesh-and-blood precisely because of their essential self-awareness.

What's more, in a stroke of genial subtlety, the only solid adult presence to be found is the cop in charge of the investigation; Alex's parents, the only other authority figures in his view of life are, almost to the very end, not really there: they're at all times either a bit out of focus on the background, or talking off-camera, or getting their heads chopped off by mischievously clever framing, or turning their backs on us.

The reality of Alex as an existing human being is never closer to us than when he contemplates the result of his one fatal misstep: in escaping from the guard in the yards after being caught hopping onto the boxcars, he pushes the man one bit too recklessly and a passing train ends it all. Alex's almost blank face tells us everything, that there'll be a time for fear later on but, right then, there's only room for stubborn incredulity and dawning understanding. His face tells us everything but van Sant, breaking what heretofore had been leisurely, low-key storytelling, chooses to give us the most brutally graphic shot since Irreversible: the upper half of the guard struggles to crawl towards him- towards anywhere-, his legs and waist left behind, lhis innards dragging along limply and uselessly. It is a shot as farthest removed from exploitation as possible, one that makes any given one out of Saw or any of its torture-porn (in case you are still not fed up with the term) apostles look like an Itchy and Scratchy gag.

And, yet, there were plenty directorial choices that I didn't grasp at all, simple as that. Lots of shots of skating in Paranoid Park, many of them in slow motion, that neither set mood nor advanced story for me. And even more slow motion permeated the rest of the movie as well, one of the two ever-present aesthetic decisions that, along with the scoring, kept baffling me all the way. The music alternates between run-of-the-mill incidental orchestration and sudden bursts of goofy, jazzy/big-band-style cues that, you'd swear, are excerpts from a 50's comedy; whatever its purpose, it passed me by unnoticed.

Most disturbing of all, because I really feel I missed out big time on something there, was Alex's final talk with his father, when the camera finally stops its teasing and clearly presents him to us, a middle-aged tattoo-covered man that starkly contrasts with his reasonable, almost cultured voice, his only completely distinguishing feature up to that moment.

Which, at last, brings me back to my first lines.
Neither Bill Gates nor the New York State Lotto winner are the luckiest men in the universe- not even Mary Elizabeth Winstead's boyfriend. They had intelligence, or charm, or maybe even sheer, random fortune on their side. A man who makes a living telling people what they must like or dislike about a movie based entirely on his own personal taste has on his side people's willful acceptance that he's in on something the rest of us are not, that he's got some sort of third eye that allows him to see the invisible threads weaving the fabric of existence and that, people, is priceless.

And, let's be frank, who can actually grasp the ultimate truth of a movie? Of anything at all, for that matter? A guy I once met told me that his absolutely favorite movies were those full of black people shooting each other with a lot of blaring rap in the soundtrack. Can anyone tell him he shouldn't? That he should become infatuated with The Sound of Music instead? Likewise, I've read a lot of theories regarding the true meaning of David Lynch's Mullholland Drive and, you better believe me, a nice, hefty bunch of them do, actually, make quite a lot of sense. But they all can not be correct. Or can they? Do I- does anyone- have the right to try and dissect a movie he, admittedly, didn't completely understand? I just did, so I sure as fuck certainly hope so. If that wasn't the case, the aforementioned Lynch's entire oeuvre would have never been acknowldedged, nor Buñuel's, nor Fellini's. But there's a little more substance to my desire to believe so. 2001 was reviewed and re-reviewed, loathed, reviled and scorned by the very same people who, later on, declared it a masterpiece and if this doesn't prove that movie critics are just as thoroughly full of shit as the asshole who sat behind me in The Sixth Sense and, very patiently, explained to everyone within earshot that the ending meant that everything had been a dream then nothing on earth will, I suppose.

In the very end, though, I don't base my judgment on any of those purposefully heavy-handed arguments: I felt entitled to write about it because it's obvious that if I could enjoy and thank for the care put into the making of this movie, then there will be many more of you able to discern it for what it fully is, as a whole, because Paranoid Park is far from what Steven Soderbergh once described as Private Cinema (in alusion to his own Schizopolis pics) but merely moviemaking with a point.

And this surprised me. After the shot-by-shot Psycho remake/Finding Forrester double combo and the Cannes winner Elephant, Gus van Sant had gone all the way from the most absurd, simple-mindedly insipid mainstream to the grotesque self-indulgency of the very worst art house conventions (although, then again, what do I know, right? Wink-wink) and I expected just about anything from him but a good movie, which, in the end, I have to say this is. The most important thing to walk away from this with is that you must respect a man who could easily make his living churning out the real-life Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season and such other easy-to-swallow fluff and chooses, instead, making something that, to put it bluntly, will not make a dime.

In the other hand and anticipating its straight-to-dvd release on February 19, I've got the newest jewel on Lionsgate's horror crown: Catacombs, starring Shanyn Sossamon and (although her turn is barely more than a cameo) singer -and now actress- Pink.
Since I've already taken quite a bit of space, I think it's fair to offer the kind reader two versions of this opinion piece: one short, the other shorter yet. I'll start with the latter, showing some respect for all those of you who still have to download some porn.

This shit sucks. Skip it.

Now, for all the rest who are like me, slightly askew, sick people who forcefully have to watch every single english-language release (I mean, I was a ticket-paying audience member for Aquamarine, and let me assure you that I'm neither 14-years-old nor a female) I'll elaborate a tad further- although, really, not much more; this shit really, genuinely sucks and I don't want to wallow in it more than the strictly necessary time to warn you.

There is a title card at the beginning that informs us how, in the late 19th century hard-pressed to find any more burial grounds, the french decided to cram all of the Paris underground with corpses.It was something like that, in any case, but I'm not spending one second fact-checking for this. This information seemed to me like a sidebar trivia bit out of some magazine and ever since watching this abomination I've been convinced that that is exactly what it originally was. It's been too easy picturing some Lionsgate bigwig stumbling upon this somewhat "macabre" fact while moving his bowels in the crapper and figuring what a great way to make some money would be to make a movie about it. Never mind the idiotic question of "How do we write a feature-length movie based on a Jeopardy square premise?" since the most important one ("How do we sell it?") already had tha right answer, the only answer ("Print ''From the creators of Saw'' in all the ads!). Because the Saw flix just keep getting better.

And it could have been written, sure, never mind the idea's origin- but it wasn't. It doesn't matter that, when the credits roll, it says "written by Tomm Coker and David Elliot"- this shit was not written. There is this threadbare "plot" about an introverted american girl (Sossamon) going over to Paris to stay with her free-spirited, terminal-phase-alkie-voiced sister (Pink, in case you're not all that quick on the uptake) and how they go to a rave in the catacombs.

Once there, they hear the obligatory scary story of the baby who was born and raised down there by satanists and how now, as a man, he roams the dark tunnels looking for people to kill. Then, our shy heroine gets lost.
That is the basic set-up for almost an hour and a half of running in an almost black screen. She gasps and screams for help. then she runs. Shot of her feet, shot of her back, shots of her face, loud music in the background all along. Then she stops, changes directon, screams some more and goes on running; it could have been " From the creators of ''Enchanted'' for all the similarities.

Midway down the line, as if only now realizing they couldn't sustain a movie with a one-person cast- and one whose entire repertoire is made up by gasping, screaming, panting and hollering "Help!" at all times, to boot- the filmakers ( because it is a film and they made it, but I still feel like a moron granting them the label) throw a french-only-speaking rave-goer who is lost as well only to get rid of him five minutes later (he breaks a leg, in case you are that sick) and replace him with a masked guy (oh! the legend was true!) who chases her around and is, in turn, dealt with as well (clubbed to death by the shy heroine, if I remember correctly) ten minutes later, when we find out that he was only one of Pink's buddies pulling a prank (oh! the legend wasn't true after all!).

The one cathartic moment in the whole thing came when Shanyn clubs her sister and all of her friends to death, at last fed up with all her bullying, demeaning bullshit. I sat there watching, all giddy, knowing that fucking awful voice was being silenced for good, but my biggest joy came, of course from knowing the torment was almost over.
I like Shanyn Sossamon a bit- she sort of reminds me of this plump-version-of-her girl I was very smitten with about ten years ago, but she seems to be stuck in these unredeemable pieces of shit and I don't plan on ever seeing her again in this particular garbage.

From south of the border, where you can drink margaritas and court señoritas, I am Henry Darger.