The Number 23 is like a Where’s Waldo? for the cinematic set. Jim Carrey does his best to be creepy as he goes around pointing out the endless appearances of the digit throughout the film, but it still feels more like an inane game than an omen from hell. It seems that the number 23, or its reverse, 32, (isn’t that cheating?) has come to spell disaster for Carrey’s Walter Sparrow. This does effectively make you sit around counting the letters in people’s names and tallying the sum of various numbers that might happen to turn up within the film. But how long can that novelty amuse you? Besides, half the fun is spoiled since so often the number 23 just appears outright on some random set piece rather than being buried within the scene (something that might at least reward repeat viewing).I honestly doubt that you’ll want to see this more than once, though (or at all). The film is a mash up of fun mystery and totally bogus serial killer melodrama. It’s not Carrey’s fault nor is it the fault of costar Virginia Madsen. Both gamely tackle the bizarre and silly material with utter, sometimes comically sincere conviction. In fact, not even train wreck director Joel Schumacher (the guy who made the bad Batman movies) is really to blame. He delivers a flat, heavy handed film but his flaws aren’t really what break this movie (though they obviously don’t help). There are really just too many kinks in the system for this film to land on its feet. A select audience of viewers who dig paranoia and boneheaded thrillers might be willing to embrace the wild premise, but for most people it’ll just never stop seeming as goofy as you’d think. I liked parts of this movie, mostly the early parts before it crosses the threshold into ludicrous murder conspiracies, but I wasn’t unnerved by its numerical monster one bit. It might have worked as a dark, strange, tongue-in-cheek Kaufman-esque comedy, but as a deathly serious drama it elicits far too many giggles.
The ultimate integrity offender is the script’s bad decision to visualize alternate narratives. The general premise follows Sparrow as he reads a mystery book called The Number 23 by an unknown author named Topsy Kretts (yes, it is really a play on “Top Secrets” and yes, it is ridiculous). As he reads, he begins to see a connection between his life and the life of the detective within the story, known only as Fingerling (another name too silly sounding to blend in with the dour narrative). Walter begins seeing himself as Fingerling and Carrey, Madsen, and the rest of the cast all play out the story of the text. These scenes are the most clichéd, unintentionally funny bits of bad noir I’ve scene in a long while. From the moment Carrey starts his “moody” narration you won’t be able to stop secretly giggling. Thankfully, those scenes become sparse as time goes on, letting us deal instead and with the events of the real world. The dramatic material featuring Madsen and Carrey as they cope with his onset of paranoia function better than any of the “twists” and “scares” that are stupidly dealt to the audience. The ending is leaden and foreseeable, but you won’t even really care by then. So much along the way ruins the illusion that you’ll already be disassociated from the characters. If you force yourself to really commit to the material, then there is more or less a satisfying resolution. However, I doubt many will make this leap since the whole film is really just a sloppy, manic disaster. I do think it is an ambitious disaster, though, and maybe even an entertaining disaster as well.
Grade: D+
Also new is For Your Consideration, Christopher Guest's latest quirky, fun comedy satire. He's made an impact with films like Best In Show and A Might Wind and now takes on the Academy Awards in a hilarious, incisive attack on all the Oscar hype, politics, and clichés. Eugene Levy, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, and a collective of other notables all give great performances. The scene stealer here, though, is Catherine O'Hara who is both authentic and foolish in the leading role as an actress past her prime and desperate to reclaim the buzz of her youth.
Chris Nolan may have made his name commercially with the franchise flick Batman Begins, but it was the puzzle box thriller Memento which first broke him onto the scene. His smaller minded follow up to Batman is The Prestige, a complicated, lushly dramatic tale of dueling magicians starring Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Rebecca Hall, and Scarlett Johansson. The performances are superb and though the twists might not be as shocking as the ads may promise, they resonate dramatically in dark and fascinating ways.
A few final recs include A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints which stars Robert Downey Jr. as a Queens native with a dark past reflecting on his youth as he returns home for the first time in years. Shia LaBeouf plays the role in grimly nostalgic flashbacks that capture a hazy, exaggerated sense of joy and pain. Channing Tatum and Chazz Palminteri also shine is supporting roles. Lastly, Robin Williams and Laura Linney star in Man of the Year, a flawed comedy/thriller that's mostly mixed up but features great comedic jabs at the current political system and a sharp stab at the election process. It's not nearly as important a film as it seems to think it is, but when it lets loose and settles on simply being funny, it delivers some great fun.
Mutual Appreciation is a similarly low key indie from Andrew Bujalski, a rising director who has become my latest obsession. Bujalski captures small talk and everyday awkwardness with miraculous accuracy. This film, about an unspoken, silently shifting love triangle, could not be more precisely measured in its realism. It's a perfectly calibrated exercise in understatement and one of the best films of year.
Marie Antoinette is without a doubt Sofia Coppola's most polarizing film. She uses the template of the young French queen and builds upon it a narrative about young responsibility and the craving for rebellion. It's as if she took the story of an American party girl, recast her as a queen, and made France her angry father. The beauty of the film is that Coppola has personalized and contextualized the story of the notorious queen and made her someone that makes emotional sense in spite of history. War and poverty exist outside her bubble and therefore, on the periphery of this film. It's really about the intensity of her loneliness, the human weakness of her character. By no means should those pursuing historical accuracy consider this a source. It's been called indulgent and superfluous, but so was the actual Marie Antoinette. This just brings to life her plight and whimsy in a bittersweet reimagining fit to stand beside Coppola' finest.
The Departed has been touted as the best film of the year by many. I think they're very wrong about that, but I still think this is a great movie. Martin Scorsese returns to the hard boiled crime drama with Leonard DiCaprio and Matt Damon playing reverse moles infiltrating the operations of Jack Nicholson and Martin Sheen respectively. The cast is phenomenal as is Scorsese's grisly, unflinching direction. The narrative can wear thin and drag you threw tiring instances of excess, but it's still a very fine film worth seeing.
Yesterday was one of the best release days in some time. First and foremost, Michel Gondry's criminally overlooked follow up to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, is now available. It was bashed by many critics who deemed it a meandering farce, but I loved this film. Gael García Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg are perfectly matched as Stephane and Stephanie, a pair of adorably troubled neighbors who seem destined to be together. While it has the earnestness of a schmaltzy romantic comedy it also possesses a comic touch and a creative mind unlike any movie this year. We see Stephanie as Stephane dreams her and inhabit his mind in every possible way, living in his dream world of grandeur and self importance as he goes about his lowly life. It's a more peculiar and less monumental work than Sunshine, but it gradually creates a relationship with a complicated warmth that is more than worth watching. 
Also new to DVD is the Clint Eastwood Iwo Jima epic Flags of Our Fathers, which preceeded Letters from Iwo Jima and sadly fell quickly below the radar. It's not quite comparable in quality to Letters, but it is still a very fine film. It's part war epic, part memorial, and primarily an exploration of modern American media. When the classic flag raising photo at Iwo Jima makes its way back to America, government advertisers seeking to inspire the purchase of more war bonds recruit the surviving men in the photo to participate in a press tour. It's a brilliant film that raises very interesting questions about the nature of a "hero" and how authentic humanity fits into the media constructed images of such men and women. Adam Beach, Ryan Phillippe, and Jesse Bradford star.
A few final suggestions would be Running with Scissors and Hollywoodland. Both debuted to mixed reviews and meager box office intakes, but I think that they are both recommendable and very much worth seeing. Scissors features brilliant performances by Annette Bening and Evan Rachel Wood in a fairly run of the mill but still enjoyable "quirky family" dramedy. Bening plays a drug addicted woman who turns over custody of her young son (Joseph Cross, also of Flags of Our Fathers) to her strange psychiatrist and his equally absurd brood. It veers off course numerous times and gets relatively irritating after a while, but it delivers enough laughs and serious sidenotes to make it worth a rental. Hollywoodland is also helped greatly by its cast, primarily Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, and the freshly redeemed Ben Affleck. It's the speculative story of former TV Superman, George Reeves' supposed suicide. Conspiracy theorists have long claimed that Reeves was actually murdered and Brody's detective character sets out to find the truth. Affleck plays Reeves in flashbacks at the time of his death. 
