Saved!

I'm confused as hell by this flick and I don't think I'm supposed to be. It's a comedy, right? Christian high schoolers worrying about your basic teenage problems: friendship, love, sex. Think of any teen comedy and those elements are in this film. But it's also not at all funny in that it touches on how Christians feel about gays, sex before marriage, pregnancy, even cigarette smoke. And while it wraps up those issues with a neat bow at the end, I find it perplexing that this film was marketed so heavily to the Christian audience. Wouldn't a large majority of Christians take offense at 1) all the vague digs at their faith and 2) skipping over most opportunities to really talk about those issues mentioned above? I do think I'm missing the boat. I mean, it is a comedy, and we all should be able to laugh at ourselves. I just felt vaguely uncomfortable throughout the film, like it was trying to be more than it was supposed to be. Or less. Argh! In terms of the acting, Mandy Moore turns out to be a marvel, Jena Malone is, well, Jena Malone (never been a huge fan) and Patrick Fugit is scrumptious. I wish he'd do more, but I'm happy he's sticking with small, script-driven films instead of moving on to big budget stuff, as he could have after he broke out in Almost Famous. Too bad he's just playing the love interest in this film. Too bad we can't figure out what the film was really meant to be.

year: 2004
length: 92 min.
rating: 2.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332375/combined

Monster

I understand now why Charlize Theron got the Oscar for this. I thought going in that she would dirty herself up a bit and act a bit more raunchily, but rarely have I seen a transformation like this. Based on some of the original footage of Aileen Wuornos in the featurette, she became this woman in looks and in character. Dubbed the first woman serial killer, she was a big, strong, foul-mouthed, psychologically devastated prostitute. Theron becomes that, and you never get a peek of the glamorous movie star. (She does seem to have a bit of trouble with the fake teeth, but it fits in well with Wuornos' fidgety nature.) The director, Patty Jenkins, adamantly portrays Wuornos as a complete woman, one who loved deeply (her partner played by Christina Ricci), heartbreakingly tried to break away from prostitution, and wholeheartedly believed she was ridding the human race of evil men. Whether all of this is the absolute truth isn't possible to know, although they relied heavily on frequent correspondence between Wuornos and a childhood friend. The truth probably isn't as important as the solidity of Jenkins' case and the power of Theron's transfiguration. Theron says at the end of the featurette that on most films there are a couple-three scenes that you brace yourself for, but that in this film it was every single one. That's the truth.

year: 2003
length: 109 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340855/combined

Trainspotting

I really need to learn this lesson. I can't go to the theater to watch Scottish film; I need to rent them on DVD and put my headphones on. I had the problem with The Full Monty and I should have known better when deciding to go to a midnight showing of Trainspotting. Even though I'd seen it before, I still under stood not a word of what Begbie (Robert Carlyle) said, and barely anything else. I don't know why Scots English is a foreign language to my ears (remind me to tell you the story of my brother and I trying to order food in an Edinburgh restaurant in our youth) and it's a pity because the Scots are excellent filmmakers, as a rule. But a re-viewing of this film pointed out a lack of focus. Is it trying to be more than a horror story of heroin use? Is that advisable? Why the added story of lusting over the high school girl? Or the walk in the mountains, if only to give Ewan McGregor's character the opportunity to wax poetic about his homeland? How does the comedy fit in? As relief? Could be construed as flippancy. Sure, the dive into the toilet is hysterical as a description of need, but its juxtaposition with the depressing scenes is a bit off-putting. For a harsher film that shows the actual depth of despair associated with drug use, rent Requiem for a Dream (ick, ick, ick, but perfectly icky). I do like the ending, though -- the sarcasm implicit in the final scene points out that wanting the usual things (a car, a house, a family) isn't for drug addicts, even those interested in reforming their lives.

year: 1996
length: 94 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117951/combined

Vulcano

I'd never heard of the director of this film, William Dieterle, and if it weren't for a free showing, I would still be in ignorance. But without the star, Anna Magnani, I would bet it would be left in obscurity. Never having seen her acting, I wasn't familiar with her status in Italian cinema, but now I get it. Her expressive face, her laugh, her use of physical comedy... She is the embodiment of realism on screen. As a former prostitute sent back home to the island of Vulcano, off the coast of Napoli, she battles the recriminations of the women on the island and the naiveté of her sister who has fallen in love with a shyster. Not a perfect film at all (golly, those underwater scenes are dull), especially the ending that arrives abruptly and leaves you hanging about the outcome of Magnani's sacrifices. Dieterle does a masterly job in framing shots (could volcanic ash look any more poisonous and HOT?) and builds on the natural beauty of Italy. But the main reason to see the film is Magnani. If you don't enjoy her duet with the man from the parade, then you've missed how gifted she was. One of the most natural actresses I've ever seen on screen, no question.

year: 1950
length: 106 min.
rating: 2.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042030/combined

Million Dollar Baby

Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep may be the chameleons of acting, but Hilary Swank is made out of modeling clay. You saw this in Boys Don't Cry (her first and, fingers crossed, not only Oscar) and you'll see the effect again in this film. Working out 4 hours a day, including 1 1/2 hours of boxing, 6 days a week for 4 months helps quite a bit, but you could do that and just be another Ahnuld. Swank morphs before our eyes from a driven, unskilled woman with a dream to a world-class boxer. Because it is a Clint Eastwood film, it is spare and quiet (except when they're pounding the crap out of each other) and forcefully understated. Without giving too much away, a typical Eastwood moral is in store. It is achieved without the usual drama queen atmosphere, making it that much more powerful. Eastwood is creating a better film every time he tries (as opposed to Shyamalan, for instance), although each remains a bit cold. I don't know if that's due to its plainspoken-ness and precision but you, as the audience, are always slightly disengaged from what's happening on screen. It carries an emotional impact, but not as visceral a one as, say, Schindler's List. A minor complaint, however. If Swank doesn't win the Oscar, any respect I may have had for the Academy will vanish.

year: 2004
length: 137 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405159/combined

Firefly

If you watch sci-fi, when was the last time you got hooked on a good sci-fi TV series? If you said Red Dwarf, that's close. If you said Babylon 5, that's closer. If you said Quantum Leap, you're reaching. All these series went to completion (Red Dwarf is still running, bless the BBC). So how depressing is it when you find a series worth watching week to week and they cancel it, even before the first season ends! Of course cancellation isn't relegated to sci-fi (think Sports Night), but it really seems that all the smartly written TV series get cancelled. If this doesn't point to the idiocy of the television watching audience... I mean, it only aired on the Sci-Fi Channel. What else was competing with it?! This series had quirky characters, a bizarre setting (heart-of-gold rum-runners roaming from planet to planet), a uniquely designed spaceship and several good storylines, building on existing tensions between the crew and the setting. Not the perfect series -- the cheese factor is full blown -- but the combination of the actors (clearly having a ball) and the design of the show should have sent it on a successful voyage. Luckily, the crew will be back in a feature-length film, Serenity, this fall. As the producer says in one of the featurettes, perhaps someone will see the film and offer to host a TV series based on it.

year: 2002-2003
length: 15 60-min. episodes
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303461/combined

Finding Neverland

How can Johnny Depp have gone from 21 Jump Street to Victorian England? I remember one of the few episodes of that weird series in which he ably acted out The Little Tramp, and it made me wonder if he was going to go places. Obviously not just another pretty face, he seems to be able to do comedy and drama with the same ease. This dramatic role gives him the opportunity for understatement, and I have zero complaints about it, even if I felt he was eclipsed in some ways by Radha Mitchell as his wife and Kate Winslet as the Davies boys' mother. It's more precise to say that the ensemble underpins the screenplay, and it's as elegant a screenplay as the one for Closer. More so, as the themes are tightly woven and unfurl only as you're drawn deeper into the film. Reality vs. pretend, a child's view of the world vs. a more severe (and weary) adult outlook, the simplicity of childhood itself and how we lose sight of it as we age. All wrapped up in the tale of how J. M. Barrie created one of our most beloved plays, Peter Pan. You know you're in for a good experience within the first few minutes, during the conversation between the usher (yes, that's Gareth from The Office) and Depp. It's always a treat to see understated humor that makes you laugh out loud. (The penny-stamp trick is another howler.) I can't give this film a higher rating. Plenty of critics out there are getting all hoity-toity about the schmaltz. I don't much care that it fairly drips with emotion all the way through. It made me feel like a kid again while engaging me as an adult and that's the best kind of entertainment there is.

year: 2004
length: 106 min.
rating: 4.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308644/combined

Sideways

Why did I feel so ambivalent about this movie? Everyone who's anyone seems to have loved it, and it isn't that I didn't recognize its craft, it's that there wasn't much for me to cling to. The story of a schlub who's lost his way in life, only to be badgered by an old school pal to get back in the game until he finally does. Plus there's wine snobbery in it and a really strange wallet-pinching scene that must be there only for laughs. I did very much like Paul Giamatti's acting, even if it started to grate on my nerves (why not lose the annoying quality once you start to put your life together?), and Virginia Madsen especially in the excellently scripted conversation on the porch. I was overly (meaning without rationale) pissed at the Thomas Haden Church character. I know I'm supposed to be, but he's just everything unlikable about guys wrapped up in one guy. A guy friend of mine says that this film is, at its roots, a guy film and the more I mull it over, the more he may be right. Most critics and most of the Academy are men so this might be why it landed a spot on the Best Picture nominees. Whatever. Let's just hope they give the award to something more deserving.

year: 2004
length: 123 min.
rating: 2.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375063/combined

Hotel Rwanda

The smartest thing Terry George does in this film is make the first fifteen minutes look as close to middle class America as he can. There's no deceit here -- I think Americans believe Africa is only dusty, deserted, and poor. All bare feet and dirt floors. None of the "comforts of home." So I was pleased that George took the time to set the stage, because all you can think of for that first few minutes is -- God, this could happen here. It looks like here, it acts like here. (So let's remember why we're a pluralistic society, okay?) Most of us want to forget our role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Or lack of role. Which is probably why this film took so long to make. No one wanted to have this story re-told. Kudos to those who finally put up enough of a stink, and kudos to Don Cheadle for making a true hero out of the ambivalent savior to so many Tutsis and Hutus. This is the actor who widened my eyes in Devil in a Blue Dress and made my mouth flop open in Bulworth. I was ready to watch anything he appeared in after that. And, yes, this film is horrifying because there's no other word for the massacre of 1 million people, but the fact that George ekes two major laughs out of this picture is a testament to his skills. Although I have minor quibbles about the film (believe it or not, I don't think they went far enough in showing the violence, and it is the teeniest bit too schmaltzy in parts), this shouldn't dissuade you from putting it on your to-see list. I expect I'll rent the DVD as well, for the documentaries they're sure to add. I don't know enough about this travesty, and I really should.

year: 2004
length: 121 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395169/combined