GHCool

The first time one sees it, one is engrossed in the story. The second time, one tries to find the seams where the animation and the live action cross. The third time, one watches it strictly for the beautiful animation work alone. After that, one simply accepts that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Motti Wolkenbruch film made me laugh a handful of times, but mostly made me roll my eyes. The film is incredibly lame from a filmmaking perspective and especially from a Jewish perspective.

the manic shiksa dream girl trope is bad enough, but the overbearing Jewish mother trope in this one is even worse. Handing him the phone in the shower? Getting in a car accident because of her excitement about a shiduch? It's sort of insulting that almost all of the women in the film are either potential sexual conquests or shrill cartoon characters. The only exception is the orthodox girl he pretended to want to marry. She seemed to have something going on upstairs. But alas, she's orthodox and wears tzniut clothes, so the movie doesn't want us to be interested in her as a candidate.

the movie's biggest sin, however, is that it pretends that it's theme about setting on your own path is counter cultural. In fact, it is incredibly conventional. It's message of assimilation is designed to make general audiences complacent, not to challenge them.

What's everyone raving about? It is clear as day to me that this is a satisfactory movie at best and a dull movie at worst. It is not a great movie or even a very good movie. I realize I'm in the minority, but this movie was basically a remake of Flash Gordon (1980) combined with the Power Rangers movie with a few added clichés from Star Wars. While they were playing those 70s hits, I kept hoping for Queen to sing "Flash! Agh! Savior of the universe!" That would have actually been funny.

It's a mess story-wise. It doesn't define it's world; if anything can happen for any reason (or no reason), then nothing's compelling or suspenseful. Action sequences are indecipherable in terms of cause and effect. I kept thinking I should be caring more. Like when the sisters were fighting. There seems to be some history there that made the fight meaningful, but it didn't register. The villain, a ripoff of the Emperor, Skeletor, and Ming, isn't interesting in the least. His motivations are never firmly established.

After Big Bird loses track of his Japanese tour group, he only has a short amount of time to find them somewhere in Japan so that he can get his ticket back home. Its strange that an educational television special to introduce American children to Japan would be structured around Big Bird's desire to return home to America. For much of the show, it appears Big Bird doesn't even enjoy Japan! Consider this song he sings early in the film:

"Why did I come to this far away place? Why oh why oh why oh? Where everyone speaks in Japanese, But they say they're from Ohio.

"I miss New York Where you eat with a fork And English comes in handy. Things were sweet On Sesame Street Where people understand me!"

In the end, Big Bird learns that Japan is an interesting place with an interesting language and culture, despite the fact that nobody speaks English. That might be the intended message, but the message I got was "There's no place like home."

I sent a version of this review to Salon critic Andrew O'Hehir after he neglected to mention Nightmare Before Christmas in his review of Christmas films:

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is my favorite Christmas movie of all time. If you're a pop culture junkie, I assume you've seen the film, and if you're a good film critic, I assume you agree that it contains the "meaning of Christmas" aspect of Its a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street plus the "dark twist" of Batman Returns (although Nightmare is a superior film and a more relevant film to Christmas). Unlike Home Alone (which was released around the same time), it is also a film that has aged incredibly well. Watch it today and it still holds up as the state of the art in animation and a dynamic story.

The movie has a knack of feeling incredibly simple, but is actually quite complex in its construction. For example, a lot has been said about Paul Giamatti's performance, and rightly so since it is at the heart of the film, but I'm convinced that those who call American Splendor a character study are doing so in error. It is really an ensemble piece crafted so well that it feels simpler than it actually is. Consider the contributions of Hope Davis and Judah Friedlander (both of whom give performances equal to Giamatti's), who disappear into their roles. The same can be said about the entire cast. Consider too the on screen presence of the real Harvey, Joyce, and Toby, without whom the film would have not had nearly the color and texture that it has.

The movie does another neat trick by being both faithful to the comics and being an uplifting and original biopic of its own. The screenplay, which weaves reality, fantasy, documentary, and animation is build on so many layers that in lesser hands, the film would feel disjointed and confusing, yet the writer/director team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini never confuse us.

A good contender for my least favorite film would be Ben & Arthur; a film I would describe as less than amateurish. I saw it at the Silent Movie Theatre in West Hollywood with a bunch of hipsters who laughed, cracked jokes, and generally had a good time of "Mystery Science Theater-ing" the film. The movie is about two gay guys in Los Angeles who undergo all sorts of crazy obstacles to their relationship. The film has its heart in the right place (its kind of a weird plea for tolerance), but its so incompetently made and so wild and over the top in its plot and dialogue that it plays like a soap opera crossed with an after school special crossed with a West Hollywood camp.

I just got back from seeing the new "Complete Metropolis" with the recently discovered footage edited into the film. It was playing at the Laemmle in Encino. I was once obsessed with seeing as many VHS versions of the movie as possible in order to get the whole story. I think during those days, the Giorgio Moroder version was the most complete even though the music was absurd. With this new version, I'm confident that I've seen as much of Metropolis as I could ever hope to see.

The complete restoration is coming out on DVD at the end 2010, but I highly recommend that you see it in theaters if possible. There are 25 minutes of new footage. About half of that footage is devoted to a subplot regarding the man that Freder trades identities with. The rest are added shots here and there and a greater emphasis on the contrast between Maria's virtue and the Robot's lack of virtue. Some of it is redundant or distracting from the main story, but much of it makes character motivations and the social critique clearer. I guess, like Blade Runner, each version of Metropolis will have its pluses and minuses and fans can argue forever about which is the "best."

I never read the comic so I went in completely cold. After seeing it, I have even less of a desire to read the comic than I did before I saw it.

None of the characters or plot lines engaged me on a human level in the way The Dark Knight, Sin City, or the Spider-Man films did. In fact, I actively disliked every character and had not a care in the world whatsoever if any of them lived, died, achieved their goals, failed to achieve their goals or anything else. I agree with Rorschach when he criticizes Dr. Manhattan for making the entire movie unnecessary. The film is also extremely violent, which I guess is part of the book, but I wasn't prepared for it. Conan is right when he says its closer to Saw than Spider-Man. The ads make it look like X-Men or something.

I didn't think Watchmen was particularly insightful when it came to matters spiritual or scientific. The two most philosophical conversations both take place on Mars; one is kind of an Ecclesiastes-lite and the other is a sort of post hoc ergo propter hoc explanation of what the film considers a "miracle."

On the other hand, the visuals are extremely impressive. I know some people didn't like the compositing and animation of Dr. Manhattan, but I couldn't disagree more. Overall, I'd give the movie a 10 out of 10 on the production level and a 4 out of 10 on a story level.

I saw this film at the AFI Film Festival a couple of months ago and it stayed with me since then. This is not your typical war movie, nor is it your typical animated film. I'd say its kind of a cross between Waking Life and Grave of the Fireflies.

The film takes place in the present. The film's director, Ari Folman, comes to the realization that he cannot remember anything from the time he served in the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon War. The bulk of the movie are his interviews with his old army friends where he asks them what they remember from that time. Folman tries to see in their memories something in himself that has been missing, deadened, or dulled. Like Waking Life, there is no "plot." The filmmaker prefers a more interview-based film. This is an "idea film," a poetic film, and traditional narrative style takes a back seat.

Like Grave of the Fireflies, the animation in Waltz With Bashir shows the horror of war and its effect on individuals in ways that a live action recreation could never replicate. The film's themes of human memory and its elasticity are served well by this technique. Rather than a soldier escaping death by hiding in the sea, we get the larger-than-life memory of a soldier escaping death that would look too "real" in a live action reenactment.

I'm gonna disagree with the majority and say that Tropic Thunder had a couple of chuckles, but was overall a rather dull comedy and a not very funny action film. I felt that the actors were mugging for the camera and the cheap shots at Hollywood were so far removed from reality that most of the satire fell flat.

Consider the Robert Downey Jr character. Downey did as good a job as anyone could in that role, but the role itself was not funny past the first second we see him. It was basically the same joke told throughout the film and it was only slightly amusing the first time. I'm not sure if African Americans were offended by the role, but I wouldn't be surprised because the character is not making any satirical comment that relates to anything in reality. Its just a white guy acting like a black guy. Ha ha ha, right? Not really. The treatment of retarded people was also offensive, in my opinion, as was the treatment of Vietnamese people.

A lot of people have been said during the opening weekend of Iron Man that it ranks among the best comic book films of all time. I have to respectfully disagree and state that I am clearly in the minority of people who thought this movie was derivative, predictable, and didn't even involve me on an emotional level, except for in a couple of the flying scenes. I thought the best scene was when Iron Man was being shot by the two fighter planes. The whole Jeff Bridges subplot was the weakest part and by the time he put on his own metal suit and fought Iron Man in public, the movie lost me completely.

There was nothing wrong with it on a technical level. It is thrilling and awesome enough and all of that, but I think I've seen too many monsters/robots/superheroes fighting each other in public that it had better be shot differently or have different developments than the old "now we're in the lab -- now we're on the freeway -- now we're in the sky -- and back down on a roof" etc etc outline. Yawn. Nothing's at stake. That scene could have been as long or as short as the writers wanted it because its just a series of obstacles. What's the difference if the robots are fighting in 1 locations or 3 or 5 or 10 as long since each location has nothing to do with the previous or next one and eventually lead to the same conclusion anyway?

I liked the movie mostly because of its performances, specifically the Emile Hirsch's and Hal Halbrook's. I thought Halbrook should have won the Oscar.

As for the controversy surrounding what the meaning of the film and of McCandless's death was, I'm going to go with the Alaskan rangers on this one and say that McCandless was arrogant and suicidal. His mom and dad didn't seem like the best parents in the world, but I have more sympathy for them and their loss than I do for McCandless himself. Thousands of young American adults grew up under worse circumstances than McCandless, but most of them don't die for a half-baked political statement that nobody is listening to anyway.

The thing that irritated me about this movie is how ambiguously it treats its main character. Throughout most of the film, it portrays McCandless as an almost Jesus-like figure. Indeed, during his death scene, the editor inter-cuts images of McCandless suffering from malnutrition with angelic camera movements of the sky/clouds as if McCandless is ascending to Heaven. On the other hand, in his final moments, McCandless seems to admit to himself (and the world) that he may have made a terrible mistake and most of the colorful characters he meets on his journey seem to agree that his extremism will get him in terrible trouble.

I much preferred Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzley Man which is about a similar true story of a man who that died while camping in Alaska. Herzog is less ambiguous on the point that his subject's life and death is a warning against defying common sense for the sake of idealism and is a meditation on the human condition and its place within nature. Penn's film felt hero worship for a man who essentially tied himself to a railroad track and expected the train to go around him.

The real reason to see this movie is for Daniel Day-Lewis's incredible performance which reminded me of his performance in GANGS OF NEW YORK crossed with Jack Nicholson's in THE SHINING.

My biggest criticism of the movie is that it didn't follow through on the whole theme of the price of modernity. The price of modernity is even more of an issue today than it was in 1911, and on both an international and local scale. An outsider comes to town and suggests you compromise your way of life, and in return, society in general will prosper, but nowhere near as much as the stranger will prosper. And who's to say whether or not society really prospers?

All of this is fascinating, philosophically dense stuff, so it was a let down for me that the movie abandoned this theme and went for the mad psychopath plot crossed with the sad billionaire plot that we've seen before in countless other movies. I definitely recommend the movie, Daniel Day-Lewis's performance is certainly worth the price of admission, but from a thematic point of view, the movie is much more thin than it ought to have been.

The filmmakers made great use out of small, claustrophobic spaces as well as with the wide-open country giving them both a unique character and point of view not present in any other movie about India I've seen. It made me want to go on my own "spiritual journey." It is very difficult to light and shoot in spaces like the train, but Anderson, his camera and lighting crew, his actors, and his sound crew were able to pull it off and make it look easy.

The actors playing the three brothers were very good. Even though they didn't really look like they actually could be biological brothers, it didn't distract me because the acting was good enough for us to believe that they could be. However, the performance and character that made the greatest impression on the film was the mother played by Angelica Houston. She gets so little time on the screen and yet, the performance and the hold the character has on the brothers' psyches are remarkable. Angelica Houston deserves a lot of credit for creating a fully interesting and even sympathetic character out of what was essentially a selfish woman in such a short amount of screen time.

In the 1980s, a writer named William Gibson wrote a short story called "Johnny Mnemonic" about a futuristic courier that uses his brain as an external hard drive. In 1995, following Keanu Reeves's success as an action hero in Speed and right as the start of the dot com bubble, TriStar released a film adaptation of the short story. I read the short story in freshman English class in university several years ago and saw the movie on television several more years ago.

Both the film and the short story were instantly forgettable. In fact, I forgot I had even heard of Johnny Mnemonic until I popped in an old VHS copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (the Kenneth Branagh version) that I bought for 99 cents. They had trailers for theatrical releases that were upcoming at the time of the VHS's release. One of them was for Johnny Mnemonic.

It was amazing how completely out of date almost every major idea in the film is. The story takes place sometime in the early 21st century. Johnny (Reeves) downloads important, confidential material onto his brain in Japan and is chased down and almost killed by the Yakuza (Japanese mafia) all the way to the United States. He must get to the United States in 24 hours or else his brain will die from all the excess memory stored in it or something. In order to free up space in his brain for computer data, Johnny had to dump some of the memory that was already there: his childhood memories. In the trailer, Johnny boasts that he can carry "almost 80 gigs" in his head. (I just bought an external hard drive the size of my wallet for about $100 that can hold 80 gigs.)

There have been some technology movies that now seem a little dated (WarGames is a good example), but I can't think of anything that has been rendered utterly meaningless in such a short amount of time. And unlike Hackers, Johnny Mnemonic doesn't even work as simple drama.

I have mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand, I admire the way the director, Sidney Lumet, and the editor, Ralph Rosenblum are willing to take chances and challenge us through an unorthodox editing style that reflects the main character's state of mind more than it serves to move the plot along. It should come to no surprise after seeing this film that Lumet came from a theater tradition where he worked for many years as an stage actor and director. His best films are character-driven, and Lumet has a unique ability to get the very best performances out of his actors. The Pawnbroker is as much Lumet's film as it is Rod Steiger's. This is the best performance of a very distinguished career.

That being said, the pacing is slow and some of the plot elements aren't made very clear (such as the money laundering scheme). With the exception of Sol and Jesus's relationship, the rest of the relationships in the film are handled a little sloppily. Despite the incredible and convincing performances, it is sometimes difficult to know exactly what each character expects from one another. There really isn't a goal that drives the plot forward, but that's not necessarily a weakness of the film. Lastly, this is a bleak film; one of the saddest and most hopeless I have ever seen. I would have liked to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, but perhaps there can be no "happy ending" for people like Sol Nazerman.

Transformers is surprisingly a really, really good movie. Sure, its camp and cheese and the plot doesn't make sense for even one second, but as far as movies like this go, Transformers is made with a certain precision and style missing in either of the Fantastic Four movies. Also, surprisingly, Transformers is quite funny too. I've laughed as harder and as often at the jokes and gags in Transformers as I did in most of the comedies I've seen this year. Again, they're certainly better than the gags in Fantastic Four.

Of course, the visual effects and sound design are the real stars of this movie, and boy do they deliver! The Transformers look like they are really in the environments they appear to be in. The sound design will probably go unmentioned in a lot of reviews and stuff, but they deserve a nod too because they managed to find create a new and interesting aural feel for giant robots built on past archetypes, but still completely original. There's one Transformer that transforms from a briefcase into a biped about 5 feet tall that has this voice, look, and way of moving like a little animal that I found fascinating, funny, and cool at the same time.

So in short, if you buy a ticket to this movie, you will be seeing probably the best Michael Bay film there ever was and perhaps ever will be. If you're looking for more than that, then this isn't the movie for you.

I just saw a terrible film called The Sleeping Dictionary. One reviewer on Four Word Film Review (www.fwfr.com) got it right right when he wrote, "From A to Zzzzzzzzz." The story is about an English colonialist jerk that comes to Malaysia to "civilize the savages" so to speak and ends up falling in love with his sleeping dictionary. A sleeping dictionary is a native Malaysian prostitute fluent in English that services Englishmen colonialists and teaches them her native language in return for ... well the movie never really makes that clear, but I can only assume he gives her money or something. Needless to say, the movie focuses a lot more on the "sleeping" part than on the "dictionary" part of the job description. Things get complicated for our young hero when the forbidden love affair gets compounded by her culture, his soap opera domestic situation, and his own boundless stupidity in every major decision he makes throughout the film.

So yes, the movie has some major flaws, but on the other hand, it delivered exactly the two things I rented it for in the first place: a beautifully photographed exotic location, and an even more beautifully photographed and exotic woman that plays the sleeping dictionary, Jessica Alba. My friend told me that this crappy movie was her at her most beautiful and damn was he right. She's not a great actress, and doesn't quite pass for Malaysian, and its pretty obvious that they use a body double for the nudity, but who cares? Jessica Alba has that rare face and figure that's more than just sexy, but also beautiful in the way that a Vivaldi violin concerto or a Rembrandt painting is.

(P.S. Sorry to all you feminists out there who discourage objectifying women, the "male gaze," etc. etc., but I hope you can understand that I mean no disrespect.)

All of these characters will be familiar to people of my generation that grew up on these TV shows. I vaguely remember watching this in my elementary school. This video is very strange because of its blending of name-recognition commercialism and realism in dealing with a serious topic, an "Alice and Wonderland" style, a realistic ending that doesn't quite solve the problem, and the fact that so many different characters from each with different copyright holders appear together. Its easy to laugh at this film, but its also kind of astonishing that it was ever produced in the first place.

Did this show have an impact on its intended audience? Of course, its impossible to say for sure, but I'd like to think that it did. Seeing it now that I'm older and working in television animation was quite an interesting experience for me. Very few films, animated or otherwise, capture a moment in history so completely as this one captures the United States circa 1990.

Although I can see both sides of the argument very clearly, I must say that WHAT DREAMS MAY COME worked for me despite some of its story problems. It is a part of my DVD collection is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful films ever made. I have trouble accepting the way the WHAT DREAMS MAY COME deals with suicides and the happy ending has always bothered me, but up until that point, I find the film incredibly stimulating to the imagination and appreciate the level of artistry that went into its making. Consider:

Robin Williams in what I think is one of his greatest performances. Annabella Sciora in an equally convincing performance. Max Von Sydow in a role that kind of echos his performance in THE SEVENTH SEAL. The painterly cinematography by Eduardo Serra (who later was nominated for an Oscar for the painterly THE GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING). Production design and visual effects unequaled in its imaginativeness. A full soundtrack of earth, heaven, hell, and beyond reflecting the human condition while making an imaginary world seem real and tangible.

For all of these qualities, I feel like WHAT DREAMS MAY COME more than compensates for its philosophical and story-related flaws and what some have (unfairly) described as Hallmark card sentimentality.

I thought it was hilarious; and even more offensive than I thought it was going to be. I think fans of Borat will find it worthy, unlike the Jiminy Glick movie. I saw it in a screening with a nearly full house in Los Angeles and the entire theater was rolling in the aisles. It was about as good and as funny as I expected it to be, so I guess in my opinion, it did live up to the hype.

After seeing the movie I'm pretty sure that the Pamela Anderson bagging thing was scripted, but while I was watching the scene, I felt genuinely shocked and the thought didn't go through my head. What was especially funny to me was that whenever Borat was speaking Kazakh, he was actually speaking Hebrew mixed with gibberish. My Armenian friend who saw it with me said that Borat's producer/sidekick was speaking Armenian.

I thought the entire cast was excellent. The performances made the movie for me. It didn't seem very Scorsese-ish though. Its a cops and robbers kind of movie and it seemed to me like it could have been directed by anyone competent and didn't require a master filmmaker. It didn't explore the psyche of these people in the way that Goodfellas did, but as a popcorn thriller, it worked.

I didn't really like how the sound and picture were cut though. It felt a little choppy, but it was clearly the style Scorsese was going for. Like the music would cut out suddenly or it was competing with the dialogue. Sometimes picture edits would bump together like a jump cut. Did anyone else notice this?

I was never a big fan of Blake Edwards's original PINK PANTHER series. To me, the character of Jacques Cousteau was never really likable in the way that Austin Powers became years later or the way other Peter Sellers creations were. Cousteau has all the goofiness of Austin Powers, but none of the charm.

Now comes THE PINK PANTHER starring Steve Martin as Cousteau. I like Martin a lot and thought he would be able to bring some wit and intelligence to something that was traditionally very broad, especially since he co-wrote the screenplay. Not a chance. The phony French accent Martin puts on is degrading not only to the French, but to the audience as well. The whole film is an example of the notion that acting funny isn't the same as being funny.

Since THE PINK PANTHER did fairly well at the box office, I guess that it is within the realm of possibility that Martin will continue to make PINK PANTHER films in the way that Sellers (and others) did. I hope he has more sense than that.

After watching DIRTY LOVE, a friend and I had a discussion about what makes a comedy like this work and why DIRTY LOVE failed so miserably in comparison to a film like DUMB & DUMBER. Both films include characters that are stupid idiots who fart, pee, and generally act in an obscene and vulgar manner, but DUMB & DUMBER is undeniably the better and funnier film of the two (even people who loath DUMB & DUMBER would certainly agree on this point). Why? The answer we came up with is that it has to do with the human element of comedy. When there is no humanity to be seen in the characters, the audience finds it difficult to identify with the improbable situation the characters find themselves in. There is a big difference between seeing Jenny McCarthy wallow in a puddle made of her own menstrual blood for no reason except to degrade her character even further than she already has been degraded and a scene in DUMB & DUMBER in which Jim Carrey accidentally kills one of the last two of a certain kind of owl in the world. The DUMB & DUMBER example, crude as it is, is a comment on society and the values of the characters and also was an expertly set up and executed joke. DIRTY LOVE's supermarket scene is just embarrassing.