R.I.P. Michelangelo Antonioni

The Italian director of films such as Blow Up and The Passenger (which was re-released theatrically just two years ago) passed away on Monday at the age of 94 .

Trailers: Dedication

Actor Justin Theroux makes his directorial debut with Dedication, a quirky indie romance about a belligerent writer and the effervescent illustrator who charms him against all odds. The always fabulous Billy Crudup stars alongside fledgling crossover actress Mandy Moore (who from the looks of it might finally give a performance that rivals her surprisingly adept comedic turn in Brian Dannelly's Saved!) as the central couple in the film. Dianne Wiest and Tom Wilkinson also star. The movie opens September 14th.

Trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/dedication/trailer/

R.I.P. Ingmar Bergman

The Swedish director of such iconic films as The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries passed away on Monday at the age of 89.

Trailers: The Darjeeling Limited

Let it be known that while the critical world collectively shrugged at Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, I considered it the latest in a long line of comedy gems from the brilliant director. Needless to say, I have no hesitation pre-ordering a ticket for The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson's latest and perhaps most mysterious film yet. While it's been known for awhile that Anderson was working on the film with Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman as his leads, the plot has been hard to come by and often misreported. We know from what he's spilled (and this trailer) that it involves three brothers on a journey through India, but the rest is bound to be a fun and surprising adventure. The film opens September 29th.

Trailer:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/thedarjeelinglimited/

The Devil Came On Horseback

Former Marine Captain Brian Steidle gives a firsthand look at the atrocities of the raging Darfur crisis in The Devil Came On Horseback, a disturbing new documentary from directors Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern. Steidle first entered Sudan as part of a group devoted to overseeing the ceasefire between the North and South and eventually ended up working in Darfur with the African Union once word spread of the mounting violence in the region. Steidle documented his time in the midst of the crisis with extensive photos and videos showing the horrifying death and catastrophe in Darfur. Much of that footage is reproduced here as shocking evidence of the ongoing genocide.

Beyond recounting Steidle's crippling Darfur stay in which he was expressly prohibited from taking action against the Janjaweed and other Sudanese sponsored groups raping and killing the Darfur people, The Devil Came On Horseback details his return home and eventual advocacy for action to be taken in Darfur. Once he granted the New York Times access to his library of never before seen Darfur photos, Steidle became an in demand guest speaker at every major news outlet reporting on the crisis. The film also shows Steidle making return trips to Africa to help as best he can and eventually visiting Rwanda as part of the film's insistence that a failure to act in defense of that nation's tortured masses should only further incite Americans to demand a call to action now. Despite the famed Rwanda slogan of "Never Again," genocide is once again transpiring and the film quite rightly expresses a bit of a pessimistic attitude with regard to the slow to act politicians worldwide. It points out trials being held in the International Criminal Court, in which Steidle testified, that hope to hold the killers accountable but has an overwhelmingly helpless feeling when it comes to actually ending the ongoing violence and devastation.

The film is probably more powerful for its content than its technique. The photos Steidle brought home with him are terrifying snapshots of outright evil and however they are pieced together, they cannot help but cause sorrow in all of us. Fortunately, Steidle is an articulate and consummately kind and compassionate subject, making the film's recap of the brutal, bloody events in Darfur pulse with humanity and reach out to audiences far more impressively than even the most well reasoned print resources ever could.

Grade: A-

The Simpsons Movie

In a sense, it's just more of the same but Matt Groening's big screen Simpsons adventure is still an undeniably funny and snappy satire. The show makes its leap to the big screen by setting itself up as a send up of all things cinematic, taking on the mock format for a bid budget blockbuster and then stuffing it with goofy gags and lowbrow hijinks along with the patented Simpsons sense of sly wit. Key topics for mockery here are the mundane state of TV and media and the mounting atrocities of environmental politics. Even with all the little doses of social commentary, the film still comes of as all in good fun. The main plot centers around a government plan to contain the despicable levels of pollution in Springfield. Like most Simpsons stories what starts out small gradually escalates with more and more little additions and tangents tacked on. In the end, this is really just a jumbo-sized episode of the FOX TV series with slightly grander ambitions and a teeny bit more twisted heart. Nonetheless, the iconic show more than ably transforms itself into a feature-length romp. After being on the air for 18 years, the show has still not yet dried out of its freshness due mostly to the fact that its thin conceit has been flexible enough to allow the show to remain vital and contemporary with each new year. It's still razor sharp and biting as ever.

Grade: B+

Sunshine

Sunshine is a sci-fi adventure unlike any I've seen before. Visionary director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) has created his most expansive and exciting feature yet, taking his gift for the harrowing and the surreal into the depths of space where the possibilities are as boundless as his imagination. It's with this film that the oft-consider cult-ish Boyle embarks on a full-fledged journey into explosive fantasy filmmaking, the sheer scope of which he has not previously attempted. Thankfully, he's brought along his withering, stark sense of mortality and peril as well as his genius knack for making characters who we care about in the face of dangers of a somewhat absurd nature.

In this case, we're some years in the future traveling on board Icarus II, a spacecraft headed into the heart of the sun to deliver a bomb the size of Manhattan that is expected to reignite the dying star and save mankind from a deathly freeze. The crew on board is dealing with the physical strains of spending years hard at work in outer space as well as the psychological complications of their pressure ridden, highly dangerous voyage. They're all deeply plagued by the knowledge that the first Icarus project failed mysteriously and each crew member grapples in his or her own way with the thought that they too could end up failing, perhaps dying in the far reaches of space.

The crew's makeshift leader is the reluctant Capa (Cillian Murphy) who's called upon, as the ship's physicist, to make potentially dangerous choices regarding the most effective means of delivering the ship's payload. The rest of the crew includes the hot headed but steadfast Mace (Chris Evans) and the reassuring, but hardly optimistic Cassie (Rose Byrne). Exposing the unforeseeable twists and turns of Icarus II's journey would spoil the experience. Suffice it to say there's a lot more at work here than anyone would naturally expect upon entering the theater. The film itself morphs quite flawlessly with each new emergence of crisis. It progresses steadfastly from quiet character drama into a more intense thriller and then closes with a pulse pounding finale that's full of some of the best, and most emotionally gratifying special effects in years. CGI has never served a more wondrous and unexpectedly beautiful purpose than it does in the unforgettable final frames of this film.

The whole film is breathtakingly beautiful and yet equally haunting. There's an eerily gorgeous quality to a ship bathed in the bright light of a nearing sun and Boyle takes full advantage of it. The glowing wash of pure sunlight and the radiance of a devastating fire are somehow transformed into opportunities for lush, layered frames of shocking beauty. As vicious a storyteller as Boyle may be (and Sunshine certainly has teeth enough to back that up), he's also a great wonder with making beautiful and unforgettable frames out of his cruel and wondrous tales. He's truly one of a kind and can only be expected to deliver even grander and more satisfying mini-epics in the years to come.

Grade: A

DVD of the Week: Zodiac

David Fincher's latest, and I think greatest, film Zodiac could easily be filed away as one of 2007's first lost treasures (with many more to follow). It's box office reception upon opening in March was nearly arctic when compared with the major hauls of previous Fincher thrillers such as Seven and Panic Room and reviews for the film were deeply polarized. Alas, the same could be said of public opinion with many bemoaning the 156 minute run time of this serial killer procedural and crying out for the old school Fincher flair that's been washed clean from his palate this time around. Straying far from the quick-cutting, pop art nihilism of previous films like Fight Club, Zodiac is an assured and brilliantly unraveling mystery that demonstrates Fincher's genius for making straightforward feature films in a way his manic and neurotic earlier features had not indicated. This is a crisp and not at all overlong film that addresses the investigation into the infamous 1970s "Zodiac Killer" with a high quantity of obsessive detail and a rivetingly banal visual style. Here Fincher makes the mundane and pedestrian elements of life singe with nervousness of what they may hold. It's one of the most intense and seemingly unexaggerated accounts of a serial killer pursuit as I've ever seen with no shortage of chills and fascinatingly simple tricks and clues. It's a fine example of how sometimes real life can truly be stranger than fiction. Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Chloe Sevigny, and Mark Ruffalo star.

Talk to Me

Talk to Me is a solid biopic that's part fish out of water comedy, part sentimental weeper, and part historical drama. Don Cheadle gives an absolutely electrifying performance as Petey Greene, an ex-con who became a talk radio phenomenon in Washington D.C. by speaking out aggressively and honestly about the state of things in the nation. Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has a run in with Greene while he is still doing his stint in prison and happens to mention (most sarcastically) that he should "look him up" when he gets out. To Hughes' surprise Greene takes this as a job offer and upon gaining his freedom seeks out Hughes to get his new job. After a great deal of coaxing, Hughes decides that the outlandish and down to earth attitude of Greene might be just what the station needs to reinvigorate its local following. Hughes even goes as far as to risk his own job by going over the head of the station president (Martin Sheen) to get Petey on the air.

Greene becomes an instant sensation and inspires the station's new "for the people" attitude toward programming that connects with the African American D.C. community. Greene's value only escalates as he's thrown onto air to mourn the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and hold the community's hand through very trying times. All the way through, Greene and Hughes maintain a close friendship and professional partnership that over the course of this somewhat shapeless point by point narrative becomes the most grounding and consistent element. The film follows the lives of the two men for over more than twenty years and touches on the many different states of their relationship.

No matter what the story at hand, the film makes clear it's intentions to play as a fittingly abrasive tribute to the late Mr. Greene for his talents and his actions. Greene was known for his loud, unfiltered commentary and the film very fondly depicts him in all his wise ass glory. There's no shortage of great moments in which Cheadle as Greene one-ups his verbal sparing partners, or boldly struts through a room taking the less assertive and more willing to compromise employees of the radio station by storm. The film sways back and forth, sometimes very suddenly, from outrageous comedy antics to shaking tragedy. Greene was as troubled and prone to addiction as he was ferocious and magnetic, and like most great public figures, the spotlight only worsened his woes.

Cheadle and Ejiofor make for simply stunning leads. Each has a very different role to play - Cheadle is the wild firecracker and Ejiofor is the flustered straight man - and the two men work off one another brilliantly. The bond between Greene and Hughes flies off the screen in their interplay. Also stunning is Taraji P. Henson as Greene's long term girlfriend who also shares a tendency to speak her mind in spite of consequence. They make for a captivating and hilarious on screen couple.

The movie doesn't escalate Greene's life into a more dramatically riveting narrative than it is. As a film on it's own, it's packed with great scenes but has much difficulty finding its beat over the course of so many years in narrative time. It's still dynamic and exciting, most specifically because Greene's life provides such satisfying material and the cast delivers such rich performances.

Grade: B+

DVD of the Week: Factory Girl

George Hickenlooper's hazy, dazed and fetchingly delirious Edie Sedgwick homage, Factory Girl, is arguably one of the most press hounded films of the decade. Everyone knows its many tabloid scandals (Did Tom Cruise really refuse to let Katie Holmes take the part of Edie? Was Bob Dylan accurate in his attacks of its credibility? Could Sienna Miller and Hayden Christensen really have gotten closer than usual during those Canada reshoots?), but hardly anyone has actually seen the film. Here's hoping we can change that. Despite some imperfections, Factory Girl happens to be an exciting and sometimes wonderful film, addled in the same sort of sympathetic way that Sedgwick herself was in her public life. There are moments when you may cringe, but in the end the faults make it all the more likable for its campy, messy Warhol-esque quirk.

Sienna Miller stars as Sedgwick in a riveting performance that marked the dazzling breakout moment for the Brit actress earlier this year. She's a remarkable look-a-like for Edie with a canny knack for nailing each and every indecisive, vulnerable glance. She radiates the "scared little girl in a big glamorous world" hybrid of tenacity and timid awkwardness with an effortless, Oscar-worthy glow of truth. She's matched beautifully by Guy Pearce as pop art maestro Andy Warhol for whom Sedgwick was a famed muse. Pearce is pasty, pompous and utterly fantastic as the strange and troubled artist who takes many new friends into his world of drugs and glamour, but doesn't really commit in true friendship to any of them.

The film is detailed in its capturing of the era of the Warhol art scene. The mania of Andy and Edie's pop art collaboration springs to life and then comes to a crashing halt all in 2 hours time. It's a film that's frantic and sometimes painfully off-key, but it breathes with a life and an enthusiasm that upends whatever rightful claims could be leveled at its veracity and style. It's certainly not a film for everyone, but I have my suspicions that for a certain audience this could very well be a delightful surprise.

Interview

Interview is a film comprised almost exclusively of one conversation between a self-destructive film starlet and a self-important political pundit. Sienna Miller stars as Katya, star of TV's "City Girls" and commercial crap films such as Killer Body 4. Writer/director Steve Buscemi plays Pierre Peders, the Washington hound sitting out on one of the biggest presidential scandals in years to do what he considers to be a meaningless fluff piece. They get off on the wrong foot when the irresponsible Katya shows up an hour late to their interview and then discovers that Peders doesn't know a thing about her or her work, since actresses are, after all, not his forte. They call it quits after a quick drink, but as fate would have it, the paparazzi mania surrounding Katya as they exit causes Peders to sustain a mild injury, and the actress kindly offers to take him to her loft and tend to his wound.

It's there that the film widens its horizons and the characters begin to dig deeper into their dialogue. They discuss everything from fame to personal relationships to hidden secrets and much more. They also do quite a bit of manipulation along the way. Each seems confident that they've got the upper hand and as the conversation progresses, they both strive to exert their influence over the other. The film gets by primarily on Buscemi's strong script, adapted from Theo van Gogh's film of the same name, and the sheer magnetic force of the two captivating leads. Buscemi continues to be one of the best at creating sly, subdued, losers with odd charm. He's brilliantly sleazy and strangely sincere here. He's matched ably by Sienna Miller who has proven herself to be the one of the few tabloid fodder actress with a true gift. She has the presence and depth of a bona fide screen star. Here she plays with her own image to great success dishing on the vapid joys of being a pop culture muse. It's her second breakout role in less than a year (the first being her brilliant work in Factory Girl early this winter), and a performance that should solidify her as a working actress of importance well beyond the glow of the flashbulbs.

As with most films of this type, the movie drifts in quality with the certain portions of the conversation being more impressive than others. There's a satisfyingly consistent tone of prickly wit and acidic bickering that keeps the film universally interesting, but some parts are bound to shine more than others. There's also not really a great end to all the talk. It reaches somewhat of a natural end, a nadir of evil manipulation and menacing confessions. There's just not a rich conclusion of character to each of these people. What we get instead is a confirmation of a certain level of cruelty between them, but no real explanation of how much of their exchange was a real moment of connection and what was merely empty chatter.

Grade: B+

Rescue Dawn

Director Werner Herzog has always been an exciting filmmaker, telling stories both real and fictional with great passion and commitment. With Rescue Dawn he mixes his two worlds together, adapting his documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly into a narrative film. Herzog makes the leap from fact based doc to "inspired by" cinema with enviable aplomb, delivering a feature with the expanse of fictional works but the clear cut veracity of documentary precision. The story here is inspired by the real life Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, (portrayed by the phenomenal Christian Bale) who was part of a secret mission to bomb Laos in the early stages of American conflict with Vietnam. It was his very first mission and very quickly into it, Dengler crashed his plane and was taken captive. He then meets up with additional American prisoners including Dwayne (Steve Zahn) and Gene (Jeremy Davies) who've already had there spirits beaten down by more than two years of grueling torment in the prison camp. The good-natured Dengler refuses to lose hope and instead begins plotting an escape that seems to his fellow captors to be highly improbable at best.

Herzog's great gift for capturing reality on film makes this very laboriously detailed account of Dengler's time as a prisoner and eventual attempt at escape feel all the more intensely urgent and uncompromised. It comes with a level of brutal honesty that typical Hollywood depictions of war often lack. Herzog is deeply dedicated to delivering the story in all its splendor and complexity. He directs the film with a visual delicacy that suggests authentic footage without the overuse of handheld grit. It's not at all about shaky frames, but instead about simply capturing the events with no concern for the unfortunateness of the material he may be presenting. The camera has no pretense and passes no judgements. We see the best and worst of Dieter's journey in as vivid a way as possible. There are strikingly beautiful images here and yet there are also some of devastating horror. Herzog also emphasizes all the layers to the conflict and characters. It's one of the most flawless and complete executions of a narrative that I have seen all year.

Much of the awesomeness stems from the fact that Herzog seems to have found a kindred spirit of unhealthy commitment in Christian Bale. Herzog's reputation as a wildly creative and daring filmmaker, willing to put himself in predicaments of his own to capture the right footage is matched by Bales' willingness to take on all kinds of physical harm for his roles. He's not just one of the outright best actors of his generation, but he's also the most noticeably willing to transform himself for each part. He very famously starved himself for a role in the cult hit The Machinist and here he allows himself to be submitted to many of the same tortures as Dengler was those years ago. He's dragged by a bull through town, dunked underwater and held beneath the surface, and eventually finds himself deteriorating physically while on a pitiful prison camp diet that includes sequences of Bale proudly shoveling worms into his mouth. It's a performance of striking emotional truth and a baffling level of self-destruction. Bale continues to secure his place as an incomparable screen presence with a performance that ranges from "aw shucks" sweetness to violent rage. He makes Dengler kind and cheerful even in the face of death, lending new depths to a personality that should realistically break under pressure. He's the most affable of the prisoners but he's also perhaps the most dangerous because beneath his charm there's a ruthless and skilled soldier with unstoppable determination.

Rescue Dawn is more of a cinematic experience than a mere feature film. It's an exercise in specificity and taking the long way around. It doesn't reinvent Dengler's story or take cinematic short cuts. It truly gives you the feeling of living with these men in this prison. It's a difficult film to get through at times, but it's a very rewarding and brilliant feature to endure. There's such an intimate connection formed with these characters that there's nothing to hope more for than their safe return home.

Grade: A

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix might very well be the least accessible of the Potter films to date. Casual viewers will probably be lost for some time if they don't come equipped with backstory substantial enough to understand what's been leading up to this fifth film. More or less, if you don't know what a Dementor or a Patronus is, the first 20 minutes or so will be a wash. There's some moments that recap the recent past, but it's clear that with each installment filmmakers assume more and more that people are approaching the text from a worldly Potter perspective. That being said, you won't find a connect-the-dots book adaptation here either. Of all the Potter films so far, this is probably the least religious to the original J.K. Rowling text. What is most similar between the book and film (besides the essential plot) is the comparable descent into darker and more twisted dramatic territory. Director David Yates has recrafted Potter here as a dejected, tortured teenager dealing with young love and post-pubescent surges of aggression (mystical in origin, of course). The photography is a moody shade of gray throughout nearly the entire film and there's hardly more than a second where the breakneck tension lightens up to remind us of the book's more frivolous charms. There's humor, but even the sidebars to the sidebars all play very intricately into the grander scheme of things, making this the most focused and cinematic of the Potter features yet.

Yates has found a way to condense and streamline the book's narrative, a feat of great difficulty when dealing with a novel so lavish in its detailed depictions of a complete year's worth of time. Potter-philes might wince at losses to their beloved novel, but the cuts make the leap to the screen go down smoothly. The tyranny of the corrupt Ministry of Magic and its Hogwarts representative, Dolores Umbridge, (Imelda Staunton) are front and center here as is the preparation of Harry and his friends for the coming battle with the evil Lord Voldemort. Most specifically, though, this is a character film following Potter's transformation from isolated and lonely problem child to full-fledged leader and diligent friend. It's the point of the fantasy epic in which a war begins and Harry steps up as more than just a very lucky boy who managed to survive a very dangerous curse.

Yates also has a great eye for mixing the fantastical with the mundane. The Order of the Phoenix is at once the most unglamorous and visually extravagant of the Potter films. Sets and characters are marked with the dirt and grime of a world on the brink of devastation and all the glory and beauty of the wizarding world gets snatched away by the coming peril. Despite the drab scenery though, the film still culminates in a massive mystical battle and the best special effects the series has seen so far. It's compelling, action packed, but also brutally, and refreshingly human. You'd be hard pressed to find more interesting and complete characters in any summer blockbuster this year.

Much of the credit for the integrity of the film's characters is due to the exquisite ensemble cast. Daniel Radcliffe delivers his first assured and rewardingly complex performance as Harry Potter in the film series so far. He's supported nicely if somewhat slightly this time around by Emma Watson and Rupert Grint as partners in crime Hermione and Ron with newcomer Evanna Lynch leaving a dreamy imprint as a new to the gang eccentric named Luna Lovegood who bonds nicely with Harry in his times of desperation. Michael Gambon makes an exceptionally likable and sympathetically world weary mentor out of Professor Albus Dumbledore. He also heads the titular defensive order of wizards which includes Gary Oldman as Harry's godfather Sirius as well the faculty of Hogwarts played by some of Britain's finest actors: Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson and more. The biggest reward of all, though, is Imelda Staunton delivering as eerie a performance as ever seen in the role of the smiling do-gooder menace Dolores Umbridge, a chirpy little lady who likes to make students bleed as part of her routine detention. She's such a phenomenal force of utter repression that she sends the whole film into a compelling, chilling overdrive as we play witness to the first signs of the Potter series' jubilant rebellion.

From start to finish, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is a perfectly calibrated thriller. It's by far the leanest and meanest of the Potter films yet and runs hand in hand with Alfonso Cuarón's Prisoner of Azkaban as the best of the bunch so far. Both stand as recreative works of genius that dredge out the dark heart of Rowling's children's books and reignite them with ingenuity of their own, taking a franchise known worldwide and giving it a fresh, exciting new pulse to keep us riveted. The Order of the Phoenix is not exclusively an extraordinary Harry Potter film. It's a satisfying work on the subject of government corruption, media manipulation, and the complicated lives of modern teenagers embattled with new and increasingly more perilous challenges (magical and otherwise).

Grade: A

DVD of the Week: The Astronaut Farmer

If the Coen Bros. ever dropped the dark undertone in their work and opted for a straightaway feel-good-movie-of-the-year sort of vibe, it might produce something a little bit like Polish Bros. studio debut, The Astronaut Farmer. The movie is about the most unlikely of "against all odds" challenges: average joe Charles Farmer wants to build a rocket in his back yard and travel into space without the aid of NASA. Despite the silly concept, the film manges to be inspiring and extremely likable. There's a definite Coen-esque love for oddball Americana and a touchingly juvenile passion to believe that the impossible can be made possible. The film also features great performances by Billy Bob Thornton as the aforementioned would-be astronaut and Virginia Madsen as his supportive but skeptical wife.

Joshua

Joshua is a snail's pace thriller about an unquestionably creepy and potentially homicidal 9 year-old. Though it makes some steps towards achieving originality in a genre already played out by The Omen, Bad Seed, and various others, it still ends up falling flat due to its nonexistent momentum and the one-note chills of its titular pint-sized villain. Joshua (Jacob Kogan) has a persistently blank expression, an obsession with death, and a habit of sneaking up on his parents when they least expect it. At least it's refreshing that he's not necessarily Satan's spawn or some other ridiculously convoluted villain. He's simply a dangerously clever child genius living with his two parents in a lush Manhattan apartment. His mother, Abby, (Vera Farmiga) has just given birth to a second child and while she and his father, Brad, (Sam Rockwell) fawn over the infant, Joshua begins to become frustrated. Both Joshua and his family get some tragic drama to their stories beyond the spooks and scares, which is nice, but ultimately futile as every attempt at seriousness seems undercut by Joshua's silly morbidity or the maudlin, patience testing storytelling strategies. To put it simply: Watching a child abuse his parents into neuroses is only entertaining for so long. After the umpteenth time Joshua does something weird, it's just more of the same. There's some sense that his misbehaviors escalate with time, but there's no level at which they stop being redundant.

The execution here is novel in its attempts at depicting a real horror to a real family. The cast, particularly Rockwell, is great. The film just doesn't work, though. It sulks and drags. The narrative casually bounces around as if there was no immediate destination for the feature. We see brief concerns at Brad's job. We find out that Brad's mother (Celia Weston) is trying to force religion on Joshua. There's so much minutia and yet nothing ever seems to be happening. In fact, all that's ever happening is that Joshua is driving his parents slowly crazy. It's a maddening process to watch and certainly not the kind of horror that resonates beyond the initial tugs of nervousness over what Joshua is capable of. It becomes very clear, very quickly that he is capable of anything, and from that point on its all about the long haul to the completion of his evil plan.

Grade: C

Evening

Evening is a film aiming for hazy nostalgia but that more accurately delivers limp, creaky melodrama. It stars Vanessa Redgrave as a dying woman named Ann who in her final hours begins to reminisce about her "first mistake," an event that slowly (very slowly) unravels in flashbacks/dreams starring Claire Danes as a younger Ann. It probably wouldn't be such a travesty to give away exactly what happened on the evening in question that proved so memorable for Ann on her deathbed, but I'll still keep the details to a minimum. What's established very quickly is that Ann, a struggling singer at that time, arrived at the wedding of her best friend Lila (Mamie Gummer) with some questions as to whether she was marrying the right man. These same questions occurred to Lila's troubled, alcoholic brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) who shares an even closer bond with Ann. Buddy insists that Lila has always been in love with Harris, (Patrick Wilson) the son of the former housekeeper at their Newport summer mansion. What follows is a play by play of Lila's wedding and the days leading up to it bounced back and forth and sandwiched between the story of the dying Ann years later muttering indecipherable phrases to her adult daughters Nina (Toni Collette) and Constance (Natasha Richardson). We also get brief glimpses of a delusional Ann hallucinating a bit with fireflies and an angelic night nurse that make very little, if any, sense. It's all part of a very deep flaw in the film which is that it's too exacting to be the kind of atmospheric experience it seems like it wants to be, making all its flourishes feel like wasted, frustrating stylizations. Each time the story shifts from a dream to a memory, from a memory to the present day, it feels like an awkward jolt. It's just too rigid a film to pull off a fluid, undistracting sway from place to place, time to time.

The characters in the film also leave a lot to be desired, particularly Harris whose charms are the most spoken of but the least developed. He inspires the attractions of Ann, Lila, and Buddy all together in drooling unison but Wilson, who has done great work in other films, does hardly anything besides stand still and be polite. If you expect an audience to believe that an entire family could go up in smoke over an obsession with one man, then you have to really explain the thing about him that's wild enough to secure such affections. He's not the only one, though. Every character comes with a somewhat unfinished edge in which we see them clearly in one moment only to see them behave irrationally in the next. They all seem to have been underwritten in the leap from the page to screen. (Evening is based on Susan Minot's novel of the same name.) With more page space maybe their very convoluted decisions could be fleshed out satisfactorily, but here too many characters, particularly Ann, seem utterly confounding in their final moments in the past scenes.

The present day scenes work much better as a general rule with some satisfying meditations on mortality and the sad, sudden, mundane qualities of death. Ann's demise spells new beginnings for her two daughters and Redgrave shares truly moving scenes with Collette, Richardson, and featured player Meryl Streep as an adult Lila (taking over for her similar looking daughter Gummer in the role).

I can't say this was a terrible movie. It's just the sort of film that has too few brilliant moments too far between. There are scenes of outstanding quality and a number of exceptional performances, but for every scene that sparkles there's a well-meaning dud just around the corner. Too little works here to really make it a worthwhile film.

Grade: C+

Broken English

Broken English is a smart, observant romantic comedy with wit enough to stride through cliché in such a way that we forgive any familiarities of plot and tone. There are more than a few moments of serendipity so great they feel as though they could occur only in the world of cinema, but the movie is so confidently executed with such great performances that it truly doesn't matter. The hook is that it's also probably one of the most astute studies so far of today's thoroughly modern, anxious, and unfulfilled New Yorkers. Parker Posey stars as Nora Wilder, a New York woman with plenty of beautiful clothes, beautiful friends, a bright and almost never ceasing smile, and a a buzzing social life to boot. Her conundrum is simply that she's miserable. She comes from the BlackBerry, Bluetooth generation of urban city denizens, all hustle and bustle but no substance. She's prone to anxiety attacks and has an almost neurotic desperation to find meaning in every facet of what she can't help thinking is an empty life.

Then comes Julien, (Melvil Poupaud) a Frenchman of more than a few stereotypes but with ample spirit and soul. He brings with him his casual, "life is beautiful," commitment free attitude and some added doses of romance to help shake Nora out of her rut. The encounter between the two proves awfully short, though, since Nora is unwilling to shake up her mundane life too much. When he asks her to fly to Paris with him, she turns him down by simply saying "I have obligations." Later regretting her decision to pass up on the one exciting part of her life, she journeys with close friend Audrey, (Drea de Mateo) who is experiencing a rut of her own with a husband of five years, all the way to Paris in search of Julien. The film is thankfully more about Nora's journey from a deadline-obsessed basket case to a calm and independent woman than it is specifically about the somewhat ludicrous only-in-a-movie search in Paris. Her relationship with Julien, which is rendered with a loveliness that could burst any skeptic's bubble, is only one facet of this transition. Posey, in particular, leads us by the hand on the voyage. In the opening moments of the film, she's all nervous tics and costume fidgeting. By it's end, she's achieved a graceful, relaxed screen presence that echoes a maturity earned through great efforts over the course of the film's narrative.

Credit for the film's triumphs is also due greatly to first time director Zoe Cassavetes. She brings to the film not only an ideal role for the often underused Posey, but also a breathtakingly authentic vision of New York and the lives of its self-appointed sophisticates. The entire production is wrapped up in a dreamy, girly grit that displays New York as part Cosmo slurping "Sex and the City" oasis and party gloomy, filthy dump. Her dialogue is authentic, snappy, and funny without feeling overstretched. She's got a great eye for locations and a great sense for using tight spaces, like the one utilized for Nora's apartment, as a way of getting both a dramatic sense of claustrophobic New York dwellings and a really great, boxed in frame. She turns simple shots of Posey in the bath or on the bed into portrait-like images frozen in time. The glamour and the hell of New York City get all wrapped up neatly into one satisfying, liberating narrative package.

It all leads up to a fortunate, fittingly simple final moment that's remarkably beautiful. So much so that I'm willing to completely overlook the fact that it borrows quite heavily from the final moments of Richard Linklater's masterpiece Before Sunset. Zoe Cassavetes has officially cast her hat into the ring in the race to be the next Sofia Coppola, and she's come up ahead of some of her more seasoned peers already. This is an assured and dazzling debut feature from a promising new young female voice of our time.

Grade: A-

Trailers: Gone Baby Gone

From director Ben Affleck (seriously) comes the autumn drama (and obvious Oscar hopeful) Gone Baby Gone, based on the Dennis Lehane novel of the same name. The film, Affleck's directorial debut and phase two of a path toward career redemption, (phase one, of course, was his well received and Golden Globe nominated performance in Hollywoodland) stars younger brother Casey Affleck as an investigator looking into the mysterious disapperance of a little girl. Honorable vet actors Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris round out the cast along with the actress being called "the next big thing" for three years running now, Michelle Monaghan. The film opens October 19th.

Trailer

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809700023/video/3269848/