Moriarty’s Movie Journal: Amy Adams, Spike Lee, Giant Crocs, Surfin’ Jews, ‘70s Hoffman And A Buncha Blu!

Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here. You know who’s a badass? Quint. Quint is a gen-u-wine badass. That boy announced a column with a punishing publication standard, he started it, and he has stuck to it. Bad. Ass. I am not a badass. I’m a distracted dad of two who is lucky he remembers where his computer is these days. Doesn’t mean I’m seeing less films... it’s finding the time to write about them inbetween other things that has become increasingly difficult. I keep a notebook with me when I see films, and I like to typically sit in the car for ten minutes or so after a movie to write down a few first impressions. I don’t take notes during a film... I think that’s no good. I’d rather see the whole thing, let it work on me (or not), and then put my gut reaction on the page as much as possible. You can sculpt a piece later, after digesting the movie a little more, but I think those first reactions can count for something. I do the same thing at home after watching something. Same notebook. A few paragraphs or, if inspiration strikes, more. Whatever it takes to sort out my feelings on the movie enough that I’ll be able to look at that later for reference. And, hey, it may not have seemed like it the other day in my CLONE WARS piece, but I’m glad the whole thing went down the way it did. I had to do some serious thinking about what it is I like... no, more than that... what it is that I need when it comes to writing about movies. Why do it? I know why I write movies. That’s an easy one to answer. I write the movies I want to see. It’s a clearly defined goal I’ve had since I was seven years old, and it’s never wavered. Not once. I think there is an enormous personal satisfaction that is hard to describe that comes from having an idea, writing it, handing it over to someone, and getting back a finished film as a result. But why do I also write about movies? What do I get out of that? Is it just for a paycheck? If so, I’m very bad at that, because there were a lot of years at AICN where there were no paychecks, and even now, I ain’t gettin’ rich doing this. Is it ego? Of course. That’s got to be part of it. But anyone who insists on sharing their opinion about ANYTHING, especially in published declarative form, does so because they have the ego to believe that their opinion has some inherent and important-to-be-shared worth. It’s more than that, though. When I first signed online in 1994, what amazed me the most was the idea that all these people were out there talking about movies. Seriously talking about them. People who were passionate and devoted. These days, that might seem absolutely commonplace, but at that point, it felt revolutionary. Up till that point, the only people I could talk movies with were my immediate friends, and my family, and everyone I knew put up with my level of movie mania, but none of them truly matched it. The internet in 1994 felt like stumbling into a community where I belonged, even if I had no idea before then that it existed. One of the reasons I continue to absolutely not see eye-to-eye with people who insist on trying to push me into the traditional role of a journalist is because I never once tried to become that. Ever. I didn’t find myself at AICN because I was a journalist and I was looking to emulate Pauline Kael and find a newspaper job, but wow, look, here’s this thing that’s even BETTER than newspapers! And I didn’t get here after working in the magazine game for a while and having to really hustle for freelance work, and maybe failing my way from one staff job to another before I found the internet, where I could reinvent myself with all these start-up outlets. I know guys who followed those paths, and they’re still online, still writing, to various degrees of success. Those guys fancied themselves “journalists” in a traditional sense, and they still work to appropriate the term to their new definitions. What-the-fuck-ever. I got here because of things like newsgroups or chat rooms, where it wasn’t about reportage so much as it was about dissection. I got here because I liked the interaction I had with Harry on alt.cult-movies or rec.arts.movies.current-films, or in #movies on IRC. It was an evolution of that conversation that finally ended up with me here on the site, writing about film and about the business. And if I ever seem pissy with talkback as a whole, please remember two things: I love the idea of talkback, and when it works, I really do think it’s Harry’s single best idea. And any disappointments I have come from seeing people treat it like a toilet. That’s all. Not everyone does, of course, but some do, and that’s what irritates me. I hate the idea that the conversation ever has to turn into this ridiculous personal ugly nonsense. I don’t understand the rage. The anger. It’s movies, guys. We’re talking about the greatest art form that ever existed, something so vast and amazing that it can include both shameless trash and transcendent brilliance, and both have genuine worth. There’s so many things we COULD be talking about that when someone wants to get off on some silly flame war or some racist rant or some childish recitation of some nine year old poorly-researched gossipy hit piece, it’s a drag. So enough with the politics. Enough with the personal. Enough with the careful navigation of the opinion-laced minefield that AICN can sometimes be for me. Either I have the conversation the same way I did when I first signed on in 1994, or I don’t do this at all. I used to argue for days about what was in the briefcase or whether Deckard was a replicant or any of a thousand other geeky things, and I loved that there were people out there willing to have those arguments in the first place. I’ve always watched more films than I could write about, but what if I start publishing those after-movie notes as a round-up column? I have a running list of everything I’ve seen at the IMDb (god, I love the MyMovies feature), and I’d love to at least try to share with you the journal I keep. When things are really worth it, I’ll always opt for the full review instead of just an appearance in this column, but at least this way, everything becomes part of the conversation for a moment or two. For example, here’s the full list of what I’ve watched in the last seven days: CJ7 ROGUE: UNRATED (DVD) STRAIGHT TIME (DVD) PROM NIGHT: UNRATED (BluRay) HEROES: SEASON TWO (DVD) THE SCORPION KING 2: RISE OF A WARRIOR (DVD) FELON (BluRay) SLEEPWALKING (DVD) MISS PETTIGREW SAVES THE DAY (DVD) MO’ BETTER BLUES (DVD) BURN NOTICE: SEASON ONE (DVD) CJ7 THAT THING YOU DO: DIRECTOR’S CUT (DVD) PENELOPE (DVD) SURFWISE (DVD) THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (BluRay) THE YEAR MY PARENTS WENT ON VACATION (DVD) HECKLER (DVD) HIS MAJESTY O’KEEFE (DVD) MAN ON WIRE (screening) SEX DRIVE (screening) MARRIED LIFE (BluRay) DIRTY HARRY (BluRay) WHILE SHE WAS OUT (screening) RAMBO (BluRay) I.O.U.S.A. (screening) CJ7 APPALOOSA (screening) That’s about an average week for me. I missed several screenings I was going to try to attend because I’ve got family in town right now, and there just wasn’t a way for me to get away. Normally, I’d see at least four screenings in a given week, maybe more. And that list doesn’t take into account the things that Toshi likes to watch repeatedly, like the ROBOT CHICKEN: STAR WARS disc. By “watch,” of course, I mean “have playing while he runs around the house and plays and occasionally glances as the screen.” He watches about seven minutes of any given movie while it’s on TV. There is PlayDoh in the room, after all, and what movie can compete with that? Well, actually, to be fair, one movie seems to captivate him right now, as I’m sure you noticed in the list above, and he’s asked for it repeatedly since it arrived in the mail originally:



I enjoyed Stephen Chow’s latest film when I saw it. The kid actors made me laugh in a LITTLE RASCALS/BUGSY MALONE sort of way. It’s radically different from his last few films, but I think he’s gotten better and better as a visual storyteller and a builder of sight gags. This is definitely a film born in the shadow of E.T., but like HARRY & THE HENDERSONS, the genuine charm of the creature and the particular variations on the genre conventions make the film worthwhile. It’s very broad, very silly. And you should brace yourself for a veritable onslaught of toilet humor. But there’s a gentle warmth to the overall film and Sony’s BluRay release of it looks and sounds fantastic.



I liked WOLF CREEK, but sort of hate the where’s-the-third-act? ending, and I heard nice things about director Greg Mclean’s second film. It’s gone straight-to-DVD here, and that’s a shame. It’s effective as a thriller, and the solid cast manages to make you really care about these people to an uncommon degree for this type of film. John Jarratt does some lovely understated work, Michael Vartan’s unlikely hero is actually sort of believable, Radha Mitchell brings a grounded quality to her role that works, and anyone curious about AVATAR/TERMINATOR SALVATION’s Sam Worthington can get a good long look at him here. MCLEAN KNOWS WHAT HE IS DOING. Biggest lesson of the film. I’ve got no idea what politics or focus groups led to this one going straight to video, or what economics forced the choice, but this would have been great fun to see with a crowd. I want to see this in a theater with my wife. It’s that sort of film. And it’s a beautifully photographed film that makes the most of the Northern Australian landscape. Put a group together yourself if you watch it at home. It’s worth the effort.



Warner Bros. released this one last year, I think, a largely-forgotten Dustin Hoffman vehicle from the ‘70s. I remember liking it the last time I saw it, which must have been around ’87 or ’88. I don’t remember it being as good as it is. I miss the days where Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro all seemed to be locked in this bout, duking it out for the title of “Best Actor Alive.” All of them chasing Brando, who took a fade for the most part, occasionally emerging to lay the whammy on the industry and then disappear again. The Method Actor’s Moby Dick. It was exciting to see what choices those guys made. They pushed themselves and they pushed each other. They were all making adventurous personal films and using their clout to get some difficult material made. They were chasing these great, dense, layered roles. Ulu Grosbard’s made very few films, but I think he’s a sturdy, occasionally inspired guy whose films worked in fits and starts. GEORGIA, his 1995 film with Jennifer Jason Leigh, is an overlooked gem, and so is this one. You remember Eddie Bunker in RESERVOIR DOGS? He’s Mr. Blue. He’s the guy who doesn’t look like an actor. He looks like Quentin just went out and found the real deal. He looks that way because that’s exactly what he is: the real deal. He’s a career criminal who landed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and inside San Quentin before he was 18 years old. He wrote a novel while in prison called NO BEAST SO FIERCE. That book became an obsession for Dustin Hoffman, who got Warner Bros. to buy it so he could direct the movie. He’s the one who hooked Bunker up with a string of writers like Alvin Sargent, Michael Mann, and Jeffrey Boam, all of them collaborating with him while he was still locked up. Keep in mind, this was the mid-‘70s, so this predates any of Mann’s films, and you can see the DNA of THIEF and HEAT here, no doubt about it. Then just as the film started to shoot, Hoffman balked and Grosbard stepped in to direct it. The finished film may not be exactly what any of them originally had in mind, but it’s got real integrity, and a beautiful fluid ‘70s visual style that really holds up. The film is of a moment, but it’s not “dated” in a bad way. This is just the state of the art of crime at a particular moment in 1978. It’s a very matter-of-fact look at one guy, Max Dembo (Hoffman) trying to make a life for himself after six years inside. Theresa Russell’s quite moving (and fairly hot) as a young woman drawn to Max’s aura of danger, and she seems to inspire the only moments of peace or calm for Max in the whole film. The rest of the time, he’s on ede. Each choice seems to exist independently for him. He doesn’t think ahead. He just does things. He just reacts. Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, and M. Emmett Walsh are all great in their supporting turns, and Bunker himself shows up in a small part, a real natural in his one scene. I’m glad Warner put this one out (along with the Rip Torn film PAYDAY, which I still need to write about at some point) and I’m definitely adding it to the permanent collection.



I can’t call this a good film, but it is an interesting one. You know the common (and largely correct) assertion that horror films are about stupid people making stupid decisions? Like “Why is she going into that basement?” or “No, don’t drop the gun! He’s not dead!” or “Why didn’t you call the cops?” or “Why are you facing the killer alone?” And the other easy complain is that most killers in these films aren’t characters... they’re stuntmen in rubber masks, and to the studio, they’re interchangeable. Well, PROM NIGHT’s characters pretty much make good decisions when confronted with danger or trouble, and they do call in the cops, and for the most part, it’s a crashing bore. And the killer is written as a character and not just a type or a mask, and it’s still pretty much a drag. PROM NIGHT’s characters are wafer-thin and the “drama” between kills is strictly for folks who think THE HILLS is (A) real and (B) interesting. If you ask me to describe this to you in six months, I won’t be able to.



You know why season two didn’t let me down? Because I didn’t like season one, either. I don’t get it. Every single idea HEROES has, I’ve already seen done in existing comic properties, traditional and post-modern alike, and I’m not convinced that any of these characters are richly imagined enough for me to look past the familiarity of it all. Let me know if turns out to be some urgent reason to watch season three, but otherwise, I may be done with this one entirely.



Randy Couture could kill me with his bare hands, so I’ll phrase this carefully: acting may not be his “thing.” What really blows my mind is that Russell Mulcahy directe this sub-XENA tripe. You’d never know it from looking at it. This is the sort of craven direct-to-video cash grab that gives craven direct-to-video cash grabs a bad name.



This, on the other hand, wasn’t half-bad. Written and directed by stuntman Ric Roman Waugh, it’s a surprisingly good lead performance by Stephen Dorff that makes this really worth a look. Val Kilmer also does some interesting work as John Smith, a veteran of the prison system who becomes a mentor to Wade Porter (Dorff). Wade was convicted for killing an intruder in his home, and much of the film reminds me of the first season of OZ, as Beecher found himself swallowed by the prison. We’ve seen this sort of things before, but Waugh offers up some punishing fight footage and enough narrative drive to make it work. A nice surprise.



No, sadly, the Bill Maher who directed this is not the same guy who religious fundamentalist whackjobs are probably going to kill after RELIGULOUS is released this fall. Working from a script by Zak Stanford, who also wrote THE CHUMSCRUBBER, this is a low key dysfunctional family drama starring Nick Stahl, AnnaSophia Robb, Charlize Theron, and Dennis Hopper. Robb impresses, as she seems to do consistently. She’s a smart young actress, but not in that spooky hyper-adult way Dakota Fanning or Haley Joel Osment were. And Charlize Theron continues to prove that she suffers real well onscreen. But as well-intentioned as this one is, it’s sort of a stiff. Theron plays Robb’s mother, a slow-motion car crash of a woman who takes off one day, leaving her daughter in the care of her emotionally stunted brother, played by Stahl. Hopper plays the father who left both Theron and Stahl so emotionally bruised, and he’s a cardboard cut-out monster when he finally shows up. Unless you’re a huge fan of the stars, this isn’t something you need to make an effort to track down.



I’m sort of amazed this didn’t get a bigger response at the box office coming on the heels of ENCHANTED’s popular success. Bharat Nalluri, the director of the film, exhibits a real flair for screwball comedy, and there are sequences here that are almost perfectly calibrated, and his cast are all obviously up to the challenge. Amy Adams plays the absurdly-named Delysia Lafosse, a struggling singer-actress who seems perfectly willing to trade ass for opportunity, and Frances McDormand plays the titular Miss Pettigrew, who gets drawn into Delysia’s orbit for one manic day. Delysia finds herself torn between the attentions of three men, only one of whom actually actually loves her. It’s a tough role to make sympathetic, since the film makes no bones about the way she uses sex as a commodity. Adams pulls it off, though. She makes you believe in all the vulnerability and fear bubbling just under the surface of this silly little flibbertigibbet. Adams is a deadly combination, a gifted comedienne who also happens to be adorably sexy. I’m fairly sure she’s going to be a major star for a long time, and ENCHANTED will mark the turning point where it started for her. This movie belongs to McDormand, though. Miss Pettigrew has been fired from every job she’s ever had as a nanny or a governess because she can’t help but speak her mind. She finds herself unemployable and has to steal a job lead off the desk of the woman who runs her employment agency, a last chance, and she ends up lying her way into Delysia’s employ. For the first time, though, Pettigrew’s brutal honesty turns out to be an asset. As she deals with Delysia and the rest of the supporting cast (including Ciarin Hinds, Shirley Henderson, Mark Strong, and Lee Pace), all in the course of this long crazy 24 hours, her honesty causes a ripple effect, forcing all of them to contend with the truth for the first time. My only real issue with the film is that the script by David Magee and Simon Beaufoy (working from a novel by Winnifred Watson) is just too linear, too simple. There’s not much comedic or dramatic tension. There are set-ups that never quite pay off so much as they just fizzle out. Things just fall into place. It’s enjoyable, but if they’d thrown a few more kinks in, the happy endings would feel earned instead of inevitable. Still, this one’s worth at least a look.



Spike Lee’s fourth film remains one of my favorites from his filmography. It’s funny... people reported the recent back-and-forth between Lee and Clint Eastwood over Eastwood’s Iwo Jima films, and very few of them made note of the fact that these two have butted heads before. When Eastwood made BIRD, the Charlie Parker biopic, Lee hammered him for what he saw as an inauthentic representation of black culture. Lee made this film as a reaction to Eastwood’s movie, something that seems to be playing out again right now with MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA’S serving as a response to FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. I found myself in the mood to see this again recently, then realized after a hunt through my DVDs that I didn’t actually have it in the house. This was a fairly early release by Universal on DVD, and as a result, it’s an okay transfer but nowhere near the standards of sound and picture that we see today. No matter. The film remains a lush and fascinating left turn for Lee after the incendiary anger of DO THE RIGHT THING. It’s one of the best films about the inherent selfishness of the artist, and it’s jampacked with great music and great performances. The movie features all of the stylistic quirks that were already ingrained in Lee’s work (certain signature camera flourishes, the outrageous names of his protagonists, digressions that were meant as metaphor), but it also seemed like a step forward in terms of overall film craft for him. The score is one of the best in any of his films, liberally leaning on huge helpings of classic jazz as well as original compositions by Lee’s father and Terrence Blanchard. I love the way he uses Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” towards the end of the film, and I think it’s ultimately a redemptive tale about learning that there is something larger than yourself or your work, something that almost all people in the creative arts eventually have to embrace if they want to find balance in their lives. I don’t find myself compelled to revisit all of Lee’s work on a regular basis, but MO’ BETTER is one of the ones that rewards me each time I do.



More fun than I would have expected. Matt Nix has come up with an ingenious way to do a spy show every week while staying in one locale. One of the things that strained the budget of ALIAS most was the idea that they were a globe-trotting series, having to use Burbank to double for... well, the entire world. With BURN NOTICE, Nix has devised a very clever way to clip the wings of Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan), a spy who has been disavowed by his agency for reasons he can’t understand. As he tries to sort out who issued the “burn notice” on him and why, he makes his home in Miami, where he starts to do some freelance work with the assistance of his best friend Sam (the always-awesome Bruce Campbell) and his sometimes-girlfriend Fiona (the surprisingly-awesome Gabrielle Anwar). It’s a simple premise, and more than anything, the execution reminds me of THE ROCKFORD FILES, one of my favorite shows ever. There’s an effortless tough guy quality to it, and it’s very funny at times. I haven’t seen any of the new season, and I was a little frustrated by how short this first season was, since the story is just ramping up at the point that they ended. I don’t add many series to the TIVO, since I have a problem justifying the disc space for anything besides my very favorite programs, but I imagine this is like a number of comic books, where I’ll gladly pick up the trades even if I don’t read the individual issues. As a box set, this was a genuine pleasure.



I consider it one of the great mysteries of the industry why Tom Hanks has only written and directed one film. Even if THAT THING YOU DO didn’t set the box-office on fire, this is Tom Freakin’ Hanks we’re talking about. He’s so well-liked by pretty much everyone in the industry that I would have thought a film this well-made and heartfelt would have earned him a second chance. He’s not just an actor who happened to make a film. Based on the evidence, he’s a genuine gifted filmmaker. I mean, Paul “Well-Sucked” Anderson has an entire filmography by this point. In what world is that fair with Hanks only making one movie? Maybe Hanks never wanted to do it again. If that’s the case, then we are all poorer for it. THAT THING YOU DO is the story of the one-hit wonder. Hanks is wise enough about the industry to know that every one-hit wonder story is a variation on a theme, so he tells the archetypical story, about the Oneders, a small-town band that rides one insanely catchy tune all the way to the top of the charts and right... back... down. The film’s got a warm sense of humor, knowing and economical. I’ve seen the film about a dozen times since it came out in 1996, and I’ve always considered it an unsung gem. I was surprised to see Fox put out a “Director’s cut” DVD, and even more surprised to see that the re-edit makes a difference. So often, it doesn’t. You get a new scene, or a few extra beats in a sequence that’s otherwise the same. But here, there’s a ton of character work that got left on the floor, including most of the work by Charlize Theron, who had a small role as Tom Everett Scott’s unfaithful girlfriend. There’s a lot more of that in this version, and there’s one scene with Ethan Embry that makes a later shot of him listening to a song mean something totally new.



Whimsy’s hard. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal hard. And I’m not sure ever quite nail it down. Director Mark Palansky and screenwriter Leslie Caveny try to turn the story of a girl with a pig’s nose into something akin to EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, but I don’t think the film ever figures out what it’s saying beyond a trite “don’t judge a book” message that hardly bears repeating at this point. Christina Ricci and James McAvoy try to create some sparks or something to eliven this one, but it just doesn’t work. In the end, it just lays there, never becoming the fairy tale it so desperately wants to be.



I’m not sure if this film is excusing Doc Paskowitz or indicting him. Doug Pray’s a damn good documentarian, and I think the real virtue of this film is the way it refuses to tell you what to think about Paskowitz. A brilliant man, he strikes me as the surfing world’s real-life Allie Fox. Fox was the protagonist of THE MOSQUITO COAST, a guy who dragged his family from crusade to crusade, forcing them to live like animals in order to satisfy some ideals he had in his head. Paskowitz and his wife had a huge family, but they raised the kids like a social experiment, removing them from any standard educational system and teaching them to surf while they led a nomadic life. It’s infuriating at times, and the kids all seem to have really struggled in later life, but there are also some amazing memories they shared, and when they’re eventually reunited, it’s obvious that these bonds run deep. If you’re a fan of the dysfunctional family documentary sub-genre, this one’s going to be a treat for you, but some audiences may find themselves ready to throttle Paskowitz well before the film wraps up its brief 93 minutes.



You want a reference copy quality movie for your BluRay system now that you’ve decided to buy into it? Something you can put on that’s going to push your sound system and also offer up a compelling visual argument for making the upgrade? THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. Considering Paramount’s gotten a late start in the BluRay game, they have obviously got the right idea in picking this title and in treating it right. It’s a hell of a transfer, and for the first time in over a decade, I watched the film, and it felt brand-new to me. Watching it now is a little bittersweet considering just how far John McTiernan has fallen in the time since he made this. He was on a hot streak that was sort of hard to believe. PREDATOR. DIE HARD. Then this. And the thing of it was, he wasn’t making films that were hyped from the moment they started production, like movies are today. He was just making cool genre movies, working from cool scripts. Those films were aiming to simply tell the stories well, and they happened to be pretty cool stories. McTiernan had a flawless eye for scope and kinetics, and his cutting style, a precursor to the spastic wunderkinds of today, is fast but crystal-clear. This film is more character-based than either of his earlier movies, more a suspense film than a flat-out action movie, but when it needs to turn on the juice, he gets it right every time. The sound design on this one is pretty amazing, particularly inside the submarines. I think this film is the pinnacle of Sean Connery’s career. I think everything built to him getting the Oscar for THE UNTOUCHABLES, and then this film was the first big choice he made after that, the first “serious” movie. INDY was the fun blockbuster, the financial reward for finally being taken seriously, and then THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER was the serious blockbuster. He’s awesome here, giving the kind of performance that defines a movie star. You want to know why he has to be respected? It’s all here, every bit of the particular charisma that he’d been fine-tuning since the early days of Bond to his big ‘70s movie star movies like THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING through the stuck-giving-great-performances-in-movies-no-one-saw years like HIGHLANDER or TIME BANDITS. And after this film, I don’t think he ever quite put it all together the same way again. It was sort of painful to watch him flame out in movies like ENTRAPMENT and FIRST KNIGHT and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. But after a certain age, he just got harder to write for. Ramius is a fantastic character, mysterious and fascinating if you haven’t seen the film before. Learning what he’s doing is half the fun, and then figuring out why... Connery dispenses little clues about the character in everything he does. It’s mature, nuanced performance work. He wasn’t just a great movie star in his time... he really was a very sly and witty actor who made choices that just resonate. When he had the right material, he could play the shit out of it, and McTiernan got lucky he caught him when he did. Alec Baldwin... why did you turn down another Jack Ryan film? If you and McT had teamed up for a second one, a GOOD one, everything could be different today. Don’t get me wrong... I’m laughing just as hard as anyone else when I watch 30 ROCK, but I can’t help but wonder what that series could have been like if you guys had done them all.



A director by the unlikely name of Cao Hamburger made this piercing, intoxicating film about the uneasy childhood of Mauro (Michel Joelsas), and specifically the summer of 1970, when Brazil was battling for the World Cup with Pele at the head of their time, and when Mauro’s parents “went on vacation” and dumped him on the doorstep of a grandfather who turned out to be dead. The “vacation” is really an extended term in hiding from the law, and Mauro’s parents have to go deep underground, meaning there’s no way for them to find out that their son was left with a relative who is no longer there, forcing him to fend for himself. The script by Claudio Galperin, Cao Hamburger, Braulio Mantovani, and Anna Muylaert is filled with specific detail, evocative of a particular time and place, using the Moses story as a framework for showing what life was like in the Jewish Brazilian community, and what it was like to have a political opinion that flew in the face of the people in power. It’s a memory piece, and even though I didn’t experience it or anything like it, I love when a film is so well-realized that I feel now like I share that memory. That’s what a film can be for an artist... a memory or a thought or a dream, completely personal, that you somehow capture and are then able to share. Watching this community come together as the Brazilian team advances through the World Cup, game by game, you can’t help but get caught up in it. Every other difference falls aside as people cheer for their heroes. Watching people the last few weeks set aside their cynicism for a few minutes so they could cheer Michael Phelps and his record-breaking accomplishments, I totally identified with the way this film unfolds.



I don’t know. Somewhere along the way, I think this film got confused. I don’t agree with the thesis that all critics are merely hecklers in comedy clubs, that they are equivalent in terms of intent or merit. I think making that equation sort of derails anything good that the first part of this film manages to do. It starts fairly interesting, looking at what it’s like to be heckled and the various ways that people deal with hecklers. I think the idea of going to a comedy club and intentionally trying to fuck up someone’s act is a strange one, and I’ve never understood it. Some comics get such a reputation that people feel compelled to try. They’re convinced that they’re helping the comic, giving him a target for some of his best material. Sam Kinison got heckled by guys who really wanted to get blasted full-force, for example. But the second half of the film is mainly director Michael Addis and star Jamie Kennedy trying to paint all of criticism as the most extreme examples of the negative. Look, guys, sometimes critics are assholes. Absolutely. Sometimes they rip on things simply because everyone else is, or to make other critics laugh, or just because it’s easy. Absolutely. No doubt. I’ve written about that over the years here, because it’s always weird when you see it happening. But including the infamous Uwe Boll boxing match, like it’s some kind of wish fulfillment for all filmmakers... when it’s not. It’s one douchebag stacking the deck and beating up three out of shape nerds because he’s a terrible filmmaker and he’s been called out on it. It’s not impressive. It’s not revenge. It’s just pathetic. Addis is a hard-working TV guy, and he’s good at what he does, but I’m not a fan of this one. I just think it makes this facile jump from one idea to another, and the second idea doesn’t work for me. It’s not that I think critics are beyond criticism, either. It’s just that this film doesn’t earn the connection it tries to make. I don’t think what it says is true, and a documentary can’t fail any more directly than that.



I think this was released as part of a Burt Lancaster box set. It’s one of the thousands of programmers made during the heyday of the studio system that vanished into near-obscurity. Basically, the only thing a movie like this has going for it is the charisma of the star, and Lancaster’s got it in spades. This is a South Seas adventure movie that hinges on the use of coconut meat as currency. Seriously. That whole film is about Lancaster trying to corer the market on coconut meat trading, and somehow scoring some hot ass and becoming a king along the way. Director Byron Haskin knows how to make these genre conventions feel fun and fresh, but it is a cliché from start to finish. It’s a gorgeous Technicolor transfer, and as always, Warner tricked out the disc with a cartoon, a newsreel, and more. For added entertainment, every single time Lancaster speaks to a woman in the film, try to imitate his voice and add, “Because I’m gonna fuck you” to each line of dialogue. Might as well, since that’s obviously what he’s saying anyway.



My parents were in town last week to celebrate my son’s baptism, and one of the films we watched on BluRay was this Sony Pictures Classics release. I picked it because it was something I hadn’t seen yet, and they like Pierce Brosnan from his Bond stint. A little bit Hitchcock, a little bit Highsmith, a dash of MAD MEN, and what you’ve got is this dry little cocktail about marital dissatisfaction and potential murder. It’s a chamber piece with just a few players, and Chris Cooper, Rachel McAdams, Patricia Clarkson, and Brosnan all do wonderful work. You can tell that they’re enjoying the material, savoring each twist of the knife. Ira Sachs is turning into one of the industry’s quiet killers, a guy who is underrated. FORTY SHADES OF BLUE was also pretty damn good, and yet I don’t really hear people bringing him up as one of the directors to pay attention to. Whatever he’s working on next, consider me interested. And regarding the BluRay presentation... one of the reasons I wanted to watch only BluRay films with my folks was to see if they could tell any difference. With this film, they were both a little startled at the clarity. “Is that animated?” my mom asked a few times. They’ve got a hi-def set, but they haven’t bought a BluRay player yet. I think now, having seen this and a few other titles, they may at least be considering it.







DIRTY HARRY (BluRay) RAMBO (BluRay) These were two of the other films they watched, and DIRTY HARRY is a film my dad’s seen many, many times before. I wanted to use that as an example of something that he could be able to compare to what he was familiar with. With RAMBO, they missed it in the theater, and seeing it on BluRay, they were duly impressed by what they described as the “3D” presentation of it. The colors, the clarity... they were absolutely impressed. Lionsgate has jumped into BluRay in a big way, and they’ve got fairly high standards in terms of mastering for sound and picture. RAMBO looks spectacular, as crisp and colorful as anything I own. I know I never wrapped up my series comparing the films in these franchises. Are you even remotely shocked?















MAN ON WIRE (screening) SEX DRIVE (screening) WHILE SHE WAS OUT (screening) I.O.U.S.A. (screening) APPALOOSA (screening) I saw screenings for all four of these, plus the upcoming WHILE SHE WAS OUT, a film starring Kim Basinger. I’ll have full reviews of all of them at the appropriate times, but I can tell you that there’s not a bad one in the bunch. SEX DRIVE is surprisingly consistent, funny all the way through. MAN ON WIRE is one of the year’s real accomplishments, beautiful and strange and hard to shake. WHILE SHE WAS OUT is a tough-minded little thriller that marks a promising debut for a writer/director. I.O.U.S.A. pissed me off, but not because it’s a bad film. And finally, APPALOOSA... well, that one just plain kicks some ass. More on that soon. For now, I’m out. I’ve been nursing a rotten flu for the last few days, with a fever of 105 degrees when I finally walked into an emergency room Tuesday night. I’m on the mend, which means more time to sit and watch a few films while I’m recuperating, which should make for a good column sometime next week.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles