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It’s a common childhood fantasy: a kid who’s lonely and unappreciated, suddenly discovers that he/she has some innate characteristic that brings power and control, admiration and respect,  and a host of really great friends - all without the need for concerted effort, hardwork, etc. (I suspect that for many this fantasy last well beyond childhood!) Sometimes the discovery involves finding out that you’re the long lost heir to a throne (or at least a fortune). In this case, it’s Harry Potter’s discovery that he is the child of powerful wizards, killed by a bad wizard, and that everyone in the wizard community expects great things of him. The fact that he quite easily comes to acquire wizardly powers once whisked off to Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,  where he makes friends with some other nice wizardly kids and wizardly teachers, only enhances the basic fantasy. There’s a plot in this movie, having to do with a mysterious figure (the remnants of the bad wizard) trying to retrieve a mysterious object, but it’s really secondary to the film’s recreation of life at Hogwart’s, where the atmosphere of the English boarding school is quite effectively merged with magic. Even when the merging is not particularly creative (for, example, they play a game on flying broomsticks that’s vaguely reminiscent of soccer;  once you get past the special effects, however, it’s not really much of a game), it’s still entertaining. Daniel Radcliffe is good as Harry, and both Maggie Smith (as a teacher) and Robbie Coltrane (as Hogwart’s huge but lovable groundskeeper) create believable characters. The actors playing various students surrounding Harry, both those that are friendly and those not, also turn in good performances. By contrast, Alan Rickman’s depiction of Professor Severus Snade is wooden, and Richard Harris as Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster, could have sent his performance in by mail.  On balance, this is an entertaining film and well worth seeking out.

From the early reviews, I had expected this movie to be good. The word was that this latest variant of the Ripper legend had "atmosphere" and a fine performance by Johnny Depp.  I was disappointed on both counts - and then some.

The basic idea is that Depp is a brilliant detective who finds solace in opium after the death of his young wife several years earlier; the opium, however, induces "visions" of the crimes he is investigating  Coltrane is his rock-solid and rock stolid sidekick. Think:  intuition vs. reason, linear vs. lateral, emotion vs. non-emotion, etc.  Very quickly, as he begins investigating the ripper murders, Depp falls for Mary Kelly (Heather Graham) , a prostitute in the (small) circle of prostitutes being targeted by the Ripper.

There IS some atmosphere in this movie (not much,  but some); the problem is that the various elements of the have not put together in a particularly coherent manner. For example, Depp does have visions of the crime, often in advance of the event (really, really weird, right?  - haven’t seen that before!) BUT his visions in the end play absolutely no role in helping him solve the mystery. Basically, someone just TELLS him a key bit of information (to which the audience is privy early on) that leads him directly to the Ripper's circle and then directly to the Ripper himself. No sleuthing; no cleverness.

Another problem concerns the movie's use of the Masons. The basic idea is that "an important person" has been indiscreet with a prostitute (and more than just sex is involved); a group of other "important persons," who all happen to be Masons, decide to cover things up; one - the Ripper -- goes off the deep end (incorporating Masonic stuff into his murders); his brother Masons then cover up for HIM. None of this is entirely new. The suggestion that there was some sort of “Masonic connection” to the Ripper murders has appeared in several books . Then too the plot here is more or less the same plot in "Murder by Decree" (1979), which had Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes and James Mason as Dr. Watson investigating the Ripper murders. The problem is that this current movie incorporates the Ripper's Masonry into his crimes in a slapdash manner; "Murder  by Decree" was much better in this regard.

A final problem: to anyone familiar with the fate of the real Mary Kelly (who, by the way, almost certainly looked nothing like the fresh-faced Graham), the twist at the end of this movie is entirely predictable, especially as it is set up in such a obvious and clumsy manner.

The previews for this movie suggested that it would involve a streetwise cop (Denzel Washington), slightly corrupt but nevertheless effective, training a new partner (Ethan Hawke) - and that's the way the movie starts off. After a while, however, it becomes clear that the Washington character has a somewhat different agenda AND is the embodiment of evil (an appealing evil, perhaps, but evil and manipulative still). This is a gripping movie that conveys the Hispanic (and sometimes Black) criminal subculture of LA's grittier neighborhoods well - even if the plot depends too heavily on at least two very unlikely events. Lessons to be learned from the movie: always pick up the wallet of schoolgirls you've saved from being raped, especially if they tell you that their cousin Julio is an important gang member; never go to a block party where all the men are shirtless and have tattoos on their arms, and certainly say that card-playing is against your religion when they invite you to a few rounds of poker. 

Most critics have suggested that this movie is better than the first. It isn't. There is even less plot, the fight scenes are generally flat and monotonous (the one exception being the action set in the Las Vegas casino) - and since the fight scenes are the reason you go to a Jackie Chan movie that's not good - and there is even less chemistry between Chan and Chris Tucker than in the first movie. Tucker, by the way, tries hard to be Eddie Murphy (at least the old Eddie Murphy, when he was still funny) and fails abysmally. Even the outtakes, usually the dessert at the end of any Chan movie, are not as good as usual.  At best, this might be worth a video rental.

Plot: Nerdy 15 year old girl, generally picked upon by cheerleader types, is visited by paternal grandmother and learns that she is heir to the throne of an Andorra-like principality between France and Spain. Complications, some downright silly and some occasionally funny, ensue.  I suspect that this film will appeal mainly to pre-teen girls who identify with the central character. Julie Andrews is good as the grandmother; Hector Elizondo looks good as the security guy but his talents, which are considerable, are wasted here.

The good news is that this movie is much better than the original, mainly because the apes are believable as apes (albeit advanced apes) in a way that was less true of the first movie. Tim Roth does an especially good job as the villainous General Thade (hate to  get THAT guy upset with me). Also, there is more to the shell story (astronaut from past crashes on planet ruled by apes) than before. On the other hand, "ape city" is just a tad too cute and compact; it reminded me of theme park of some sort. If you do see it, the ending - the FINAL ending - should be a bit puzzling; I THINK that I've got it figured out, but would be curious to know what others think.

I enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would; certainly the three hours or so involved passed quickly. Basically, the story takes place in the year or so that straddles the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and focuses on two all-American farm boys who grew up to be pilots (Ben Afleck and Josh Hartnett) and the military nurse (Kate Beckinsale) they both end up loving. The first third of the movie cuts back and forth between fun-loving escapades of our trio, Affleck’s stint in the RAF, and military machinations in Tokyo and Washington. The middle third is a rousing depiction of the attack itself (well-staged, I grant, but too obviously dependent on digitalized images in some scenes). The final third is an account of the Doolittle raid on Tokyo (which, at least according to this movie, was the morale-building turning point in the Pacific war.).

 You have to accept that Affleck and Hartnett not only got into the air at Pearl harbor but accounted for 7 of the 29 Japanese planes that were lost, AND participated in the Doolittle raid - but hey, it’s a movie. Less easily digested, for me, is the implicit propaganda.  For example, Doolittle (played by Alec Baldwin) says again and again that the purpose of the attack was only to bomb “military targets.”  I don’t recall that was exactly true in that particular raid, but more generally it certainly seems a limp attempt at whitewashing America’s willingness to bomb civilian targets later in the war (think: Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

 One thing that’s interesting about this movie is that I suspect it will sell well in both the US AND Japan. As usual, to be sure, the Japanese military is depicted as cheerless and dour and as a relatively homogenous group (were there REALLY only three basic uniforms that everyone wore) who lack the boisterousness and individuality of their American counterparts. Still, at one point early in the movie, a Japanese commander notes that since the US has cut off Japan’s oil, war is inevitable. The line is too brief, I suspect, for American audiences to take serious note of it, but it won’t be lost on Japanese audiences In fact, it represents one of the only times that Hollywood has ever acknowledge the series of economic and military sanctions (of which the oil embargo was only one) imposed on Japan by the US and others (the British and the Dutch in particular) in the decades before Pearl Harbor and which, in the opinion of most professional historians, helped to make war more, not less, likely. Then too Japanese commanders are depicted as saying that they would have preferred to avoid war and Japanese pilots, as they skim low over civilian areas on the way to bomb the naval base, make some attempt to warn children playing outside to seek protection. I don’t know if that happened, but, as I say, it will likely  appeal to Japanese audiences.

 What I find most interesting about the  movie, however, is it’s treatment of race and racial conflict.  First, as other reviewers have noted, no one watching this movie would come to know that pre-War Hawaii was a multiracial society or that there were tensions between the white naval establishment and the local Hawaiian and Japanese-American populations. Second, although the movie can’t ignore the fact that there were blacks in the US navy were systematically allocated to menial jobs, it does paint a rosy view of race relations in the military.  What it suggests, for example, is that the US Navy was a place in which blacks could EASILY earn the respect of their white confreres and white commanders by, say, winning a few prize fights (which is what the Cuba Gooding character does before the attack) and in which such sporting events drew black and white enlisted men together into an easy-going macho camaraderie.  No one familiar with the experience of Black servicemen during this period in American history can possibly take this seriously.  Nevertheless, the most problematic aspect of this movie lies in its depiction of the attitudes that held by each group of soldiers, American and Japanese, toward the other.

 While watching some of the hoopla surrounding the movie’s debut in Hawaii, which was broadcast worldwide, I saw a brief segment in which a plastic ET-type was interviewing a veteran of the Pearl Harbor attack. As they talked, the veteran related how over the years he had formed a friendship with a Japanese pilot who had also participated in the attack. “And you’ve forgiven him,”  ET guy said smugly. “Yes,” said the veteran, who then quickly added “and he’s forgiven me.” In the short instant before the camera cut to another scene, you could see the look of utter bewilderment on ET-guy’s face. After all, what would there be for a Japanese solider to forgive? In fact, lots.

 The Pacific war was a war in which soldiers on BOTH sides were motivated by a strong racial antipathy and in which both sides routinely committed atrocities that flowed quite easily and naturally from this antipathy. As Michael Zezima makes clear in his recent book on WWII (“Saving Private Power”), for example, American soldiers - like Japanese soldiers - killed prisoners, destroyed hospitals, killed civilians, etc.  They (American soldiers) also (and commonly)  parboiled the flesh off of Japanese corpses and made the bones into ornaments. In retrospect, I can myself recall an uncle who returned from the Pacific war with a necklace made of Japanese teeth.

 This antipathy did not spring up full blown after Pearl harbor. It was nurtured and legitimated by folk tradition and duly-constituted authorities in both nations. There is simply no  hint of this in the movie. True, “it’s just a movie” (which is the usual defense against movies that distort history).  Even so, it strikes me as just a bit hypocritical to criticize Japan for new textbooks that minimize Japan’s wartime atrocities and then to raise nary an eyebrow when Hollywood promotes versions of history like the one implicit in this film. But then that’s just my opinion, and hey it’s just a movie.
 

I should have realized something was amiss when I came across a Mel Gibson film, carrying a 2000 date, that I didn't remember having played in the theaters. The fact that the previous viewer had watched about 15 minutes, and then stopped (without rewinding), made me nervous. Then, as the opening credits rolled, and I realized that this was a Wim Wenders film, I REALLY got worried. I know that lots of people like this guy, but I have consistently found his films to be slow-moving, not that interesting, and boring. This film, it turns out,  was no exception.   I now know that other reviewers have suggested that it's all about characterization, about Mel Gibson parodying his usual cop persona - but I STILL l found it slow-moving, not that interesting and boring.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around a group of people, unable to afford the sort of insurance and other arrangements that provide a safety net for the middle class, who live in a downtown hotel. One of their number had in fact been the son of someone rich, and when he dies, his father uses his influence to get the government to send in Mel Gibson to investigate.

As much as I enjoy movies, I could only endure the first 45 minutes here - and then ejected. Maybe it improved, but I doubt it.

Morgan Freeman is an effective actor so long as he plays the same role (think: intelligent, insightful cop; intelligent, insightful con) - which is why he was so miscast in Nurse Betty. Here he’s doing his “cop” thing again, and the result is good movie. Not as good as Seven, perhaps, but probably better than Kiss the Girls, where he also played (as here) the role of Alex Cross.

The basic plot here is simple: Very clever guy kidnaps a child who is the offspring of an important couple in order to have a duel of wits with Alex Cross. Along the way, it turns out that there are some currents at work that neither the bad guy nor Cross anticipate. Be forewarned: the preview to this movie leads you to expect a plot that is somewhat different from the one that appears on the scene, partly because the preview includes one crucial scene that never appears in the movie and partly because some of the tag lines in the preview are out of chronological order.

As always, the most irritating elements of the movie are those seemingly incidental details that reinforce prevailing bigotry and injustice. In this case, for example, the Cross character makes several extended allusions comparing the kidnapping to the Lindbergh baby kidnapping c. 1930, and comparing the present kidnapper to the Bruno Hauptmann, who was convicted (and killed) for kidnapping and killing that baby.   For a long time Hauptmann was indeed one of the most hated men in the US. Still, over the past 2-3 decades several different books by different authors have argued, very convincingly in my view, that the evidence against Hauptmann was weak (and in some cases, “massaged” if not manufactured); that he was poorly served by his lawyer and that there was glaring problems with the legal process that led to his conviction; and that much of his conviction can be attributed to anti-German sentiment that was carefully fanned by the press (e.g., even to the point of insuring that he was regularly referred to as Bruno, even though his first name was Richard). There was a time when it looked as if there was going to be clearly identified as a miscarriage of justice and corrected - but this movie suggests that it’s still easier to ignore the messy uncertainties about the case and to re-present the black and white simplifications preferred by an outraged public seven decades ago.

Though you would never know it from Hollywood accounts, WW II  - at least in Europe - was for the most part a conflict between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. In that context, the battle at Stalingrad was significant because it marked the first serious and unqualified defeat of Nazi forces. This film purports to be about that battle, and indeed, starts off well.

Jude Law is among a contingent of Russian soldiers who arrive amidst the widespread desperation and disorganization that was characteristic of the darkest hours at Stalingrad. Such soldiers faced two choices: die while fighting better equipped German forces, or retreat, and be shot by their own officers for cowardice. Very quickly, however, it becomes apparent that Law is an expert sniper, and the story of his “kills” (mainly of  German officers) becomes widely publicised by a Russian political officer/journalist (Joseph Fiennes) with the full approval the new Russian commander at Stalingrad (Bob Hoskins, playing a surprisingly convincing Khrushchev). The stories have sufficient propaganda value that the Germans send in an aristocratic sniper of their own (Ed Harris) to kill the Law character. Along the way there is a subplot involving a romantic triangle between Law, Fiennes and a Russian soldier (Rachel Weisz).

Unfortunately, any attempt at a “panoramic” view of the battle evaporates after the first 20 minutes or so, and the focus becomes the so-called duel between Law and Harris, which quickly  becomes boring and repetitive. I like Ed Harris a lot, but in the end both he and Law are cardboard characters, ie, they both have a nice front but no depth.

This is a movie that I’ve been anxiously awaiting ever since I first heard  it was about to be released. The premise seemed delightful: F.W. Murneau, who in real life had directed the classic (and still impressive) Nosferatu in 1922, had in fact recruited a real vampire to play the title role. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t deliver.

The plot: Murneau (John Malkovitch) moves his movie crew from Berlin to a small Czechoslovakian village to film his vampire scenes. The rationale is that Max Shreck (Willem Dafoe), the actor playing the title role, is a “method actor” who insists on remaining in character (he will only film on location; only work at night; etc.).  Very quickly we learn, of course, that Shreck is an aging vampire, who has agreed to do the role in exchange for being able to feed at the neck of the luscious and decadent star of the movie. Unfortunately, he can’t quite restrain his thirst until the end of filming, and one or two members of the film crew are either weakened or killed, causing Murneau no end of logistical problems. Dafoe does an excellent job of recreating the manners of the Nosferatu character in the original film, and this - along with the faithful recreation of scenes from that movie - are this film’s major strengths.

Generally, however, it is disappointing.  Several plot elements pop out of nowhere without being explained;  we don’t have a clear sense of what drives the major players (including Murneau and the Vampire); the movie doesn’t generate any real sense of horror; etc.

There are two scenes in the movie, nevertheless, that hint at what might have been. In one, the Vampire comes to sit beside two crew members as they’re drinking around a campfire at night, and they all  begin discussing Bram Stoker’s Dracula (the novel). The Vampire is old, and his memory of the past is imperfect but he does remember enough to be able to say what he found to be the saddest part of the novel (which Murneau had given him to read). It’s the scene where Dracula sets the dinner table in his own castle for his guest; here, after all, says the Vampire, is someone who was once a king, surrounded by courtiers and servants, but is now reduced to setting his own table. That, he says, is sad. In another scene, the Vampire is brought before Murneau’s camera for the first time and very quickly adapts well to stage direction, despite his perpetually gloomy countenance.  When an assistant starts to apply make-up, Murneau shouts “no make-up, ever, for him” and the Vampire, after thinking about, shouts back that he “wants make-up.” Had the themes running through these two scenes been emphasized more, and then juxtaposed with scenes that elicited true horror, the film, I think, would have been outstanding.

Because the theatrical trailers for this movie looked good, I was surprised to find  it being soundly panned in every single newspaper review that I read. Now that I’ve seen the movie, those reviews are slightly puzzling. Likely, I suspect, it all has to do with violence and Elvis

This is, there is no denying, a movie whose central characters engage in a lot of casual violence. My sense is that most of the middle class types who write movie reviews, and who generally don't blink an eye at ongoing real-life violence  (the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children who have died as the result of ongoing US economic “sanctions” is the example that comes easiest to mind), are downright appalled, bless their smug hypocritical little hearts, at pretend violence in movies. The fact that the central characters in this movie are also, for the most part, working class types who take Elvis (not the early, good-looking, thin Elvis, but the later, fatter, garish Elvis) verrah, verrah serrousl-y - probably makes it that much more unappealing to middle class critics.

In any event, the violence is well-choreographed and stylish in a Quentin Tarantino sort of way; there is no sadism or misogyny; the cinematography is often innovative; there's lots of action with lots of different things happening (as in: it's a long movie that passes quickly) - and you come to care for the central characters, despite their misdeeds.  At a time, when Holly-trash like Traffic and Gladiator are raking in the kudos, it's not really that bad a movie.

The plot is serviceable. Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner, along with a few friends they met in da joint, dress up as Elvis impersonators (Russell wears white Elvis clothes; Costner wears black Elvis clothes - get it?, one's the good Elvis, one's the bad Elvis) and rob a Vegas casino. Assorted security guards get killed in slow motion.  Russell is the electronics guy and so doesn't engage in the free-for-all firefight  - which, I assume, is the director's way of establishing him as the good guy  (in a relative sort of way).  All this happens early on in the film. They get away, but there are  various double dealings and the money changes hands several times. Courtney Cox is the love, er, sex, no make that love, interest  with a precocious kid (who must be the only kid in the US who still wants a cowboy outfit). She takes a liking, er, lusting, er, liking to Russell but is not above some double dealing herself. There is more violence, but it's not without comic relief.  It quickly becomes an “on the road movie” with Russell and Costner driving separately in pursuit of, er, various things. There's still more violence, but you don't feel bad about it.  Along the way, David Arquette, Christian Slater (who I like but whose career seems to be in the toilet), Jon Lovitz, Kevin Pollack, and Ice T all have supporting roles that are (1) brief and (2) throwaway (often in a very literal sense).

 This isn't as good as Snatch or Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels but it comes close, and so I suspect that if you enjoyed those movies, you might enjoy this one,

This is an outstanding movie, NOT because of its plot (which drags at several points), but because of its characterization and mood.  The basic storyline is simple: three convicts (George Clooney; John Turturro; Tim Blake Nelson) escape from a chain gang in Depression era Mississippi in order to retrieve money stolen in a robbery years before the area where it is buried is flooded by the TVA. With bad guys in hot pursuit, the next hour or so is a classic "on the road" movie, in which our lads meet a bewildering variety of characters, establish themselves as country music stars unbeknownst to themselves (and by the way it's pretty clear that this is going to be their salvation), narrowly escape a number of dweadful predicamints, etc.

Supposedly, the story line has been borrowed from the Odyssey. Just in case you miss that, the lead character (Clooney) is named Ulysses Everett McGill, Homer is credited for the story, etc. In fact, it's really the Cole's notes version of the Odyssey, which means that the resemblances are extremely superficial. For instance, they meet John Goodman, a giant of a man with an eye patch - get it? he's Cyclops - and things don't go well. Still, the structure of interaction with the Goodman character bears no resemblance to what happens when Ulysses and his men meet the Cyclops in the original poem (an incident that had always one of my favorites in the Homeric narrative).   This is really a somewhat darker remake of "It happened one night" with a "buddy theme" at its core rather than a "heterosexual romantic tie" - although the final part of the movie, which involves Clooney trying to prevent his former wife from marrying again, tilts the movie more overtly towards IHON.

The music is wonderful, and used to excellent advantage. I've already ordered the soundtrack. (NB: Once you've placed your order for the soundtrack from Chapters.ca, you're told that you get a "Dapper Dan" tin - of the sort that appears in the movie - for free. I'll be getting mine; will you be getting yours?) The "siren" scene, in particular, is likely the best merger of cinematography, music and open air eroticism that I have ever seen. Another very memorable  scene is the one where the boys stumble across a nighttime meeting of the Klan in the woods. Although many reviewers compare the hundreds of hooded figures marching and dancing in patterns to a Busby Berkeley number (and there certainly is a similarity), it's really Busby Berkeley meets Triumph of the Will - and quite powerful in conveying the racist menace lurking beneath the comedy.