Flawless

Ironic title alert: Michael Radford's so-called Flawless is a stoic, slow-moving caper of the dullest proportions imaginable. Demi Moore walks through the film wearing the same sullen, disinterested expression in every scene. In her blankness, she seems to be hoping to convey a repressed complexity. In truth, she conveys nothing but boredom and apathy. The film, much like her performance, is numb to its core. Its window dressing is an homage to old-fashioned thrillers that rooted themselves deeply in suspense rather than car chases. The gimmick doesn't work though. Resembling greatness does not equal greatness. Nothing here possess even an ounce of creative energy. It simply passes by. Pretty pictures filled with pretty words and not a single idea within them.

Moore plays a moderately high-ranking executive in a London diamond company in the 1960s who has been looked over by her bosses for many promotions on account of her gender and has a bleak professional future. She's convinced by a kindly janitor (Michael Caine) who fears his thin pension will not sufficiently fund his retirement to use their combined knowledge and resources to steal from their employers. He persuades her that they both deserve better and that the only way to get it is to take it for themselves. It turns out that she has access to the necessary codes and he has unsupervised reign of the facilities after hours. Caine turns in a simple, Michael Caine-like performance. He appears mostly bemused and mildly interested but certainly delivers more fully than the lifeless Moore.

Flawless is professionally assembled but emotionally inert. Radford clearly has a skilled eye but not much evidence is provided here as to the caliber of his soul. As polished a piece as this is, it has hardly any merits as both narrative art and commercial entertainment.

Grade: D

Run, Fat Boy, Run

"Friends" alum David Schwimmer makes an admirable directorial debut with this lightweight, mildly affecting comedy. Simon Pegg takes grander, equally impressive strides toward leading man status here as the disheveled and despondent Dennis, a loving father still mourning his cowardly retreat from the altar one year and secretly hoping to reunite with his son's charming mother, Libby (Thandie Newton). Throwing a wrench into his plans is Whit (Hank Azaria), Libby's new exceedingly perfect boyfriend with a remarkably successful job and side passion for running marathons in the name of worthwhile charities. As Whit sews himself more deeply into the lives of Dennis' family, he grows increasingly more motivated to make a change and win them back. He vows to run in the upcoming marathon Whit is competing in and prove, once and for all, that he does have the will and determination to actually finish something in his life.

The film builds stably up from its initial conceit. The humor can often be nothing more than pure sophomoric farce, but the characters, played warmly and realistically by the superb cast, never get dragged down into the gutters with the pranks and pratfalls. Most of the jokes fall into the Farrelly Brother-esque categories of physical grotesqueness and sideshow freakishness. Gags involve tumor sized blisters and the icky fluids they secrete, uncomfortable locker room moments, a thuggish gambling ring, and bra stealing transvestites. Through the weathering storm of bad taste, though, emerges a well realized character, or set of characters really. I give key credit to the actors here. Dennis could have been a one-note Adam Sandler type deadbeat but in Pegg's hands he's a conflicted underdog with subtle strengths. The same can be said for Azaria whose pretty boy know it all character could have easily been given a shallow treatment of pompous elitism but instead squirms through scenes with the believable discomfort of a competitive man with a perhaps too aggressively ambitious nature. Also due praise is Newton, an oft unregarded actress confined in mostly supporting roles until now. Her Libby is neither a demure wallflower or a scathing bitch. She's simply deciding, quite understandably, between a cold but reliably perfect existence and the chance she could take with Dennis in what could be a disastrous reunion but just might turn out to be the path toward bliss.

Solid performances and sturdy direction help anchor the tone-hopping, occasionally juvenile screenplay by Pegg and Michael Ian Black. However outlandish the story may become, there remains some thread of credibility, making the characters feel tangibly alive in ways other gross out jokesters never come near. Still, it's a mixed bag of cheap tricks, fun moments, and sentimental melodrama. At its best, it's a real charmer, but elsewhere it fizzles and dies.

Grade: B-

DVD of the Week: Southland Tales

The slang term "disasterpiece" never seemed particularly functional to me until right about now. Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly's deranged pop art epic Southland Tales is an offbeat nuisance that does just about everything wrong and yet somehow evoked from me nearly the same dizzy, head clouding, gut wrenching sensation Darko did years ago. It's not as complete a vision, but it's certainly grander in scope and ambition. Sadly, most of the elaboration fills our heads with moot points rather than sharper realizations. It's no Donnie, but there is that inescapable fascination we get while watching a brilliant talent fall on his face, and admittedly still coming up relatively unscathed. Kelly is funny, biting, belligerent, insane, and scintillating here over the course of a much too long 145 minute runtime (cut down from an original, less coherent version and not including the 3 part graphic novel prequel series with content that's not essential to understanding the film but certainly helps in parts). Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is cast here as Boxer Santoros, an action hero with amnesia who may be the harbinger of apocalypse. He's recruited by an entrepreneurial porn star named Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and convinced that he's been working on producing her screenplay which has seemingly tapped into a psychic energy making it quite prescient. Their stories tie into several parallel narratives involving a dangerously advanced government corporation called USident with global domination on the brain, or if not that, something equally as big and cartoonish. They have a curious interest in Boxer as well as the two seemingly ordinary Taverner twins (Sean William Scott in dual roles) who have some inexplicable connection to the big events in America's future. Trying to synopsize the plot further would only make it murkier. Needless to say, it's an elaborate tapestry of pop culture parody, sci-fi suspense, and social satire. It's a mess, but a brilliantly inspired mess with loads of eye candy and dazzling dramatic and comic moments. For Kelly fans there's bound to be a bit of a sinking feeling over the step down he's taken here, especially given how this was prophesized to be his big step up (the hype machine phrase "his Pulp Fiction" stings with particular vigor now that we've seen the final product). Call it trash. Call it a misunderstood masterpiece. I say "disasterpiece" and I'm sticking with it.

R.I.P. Anthony Minghella

Director Anthony Minghella, 54, died this morning of a brain hemorrhage that occurred during a routine neck operation. The acclaimed director won an Academy Award for his 1996 feature The English Patient. Subsequent works include The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain. Minghella's most recent feature was last year's highly underated sophisticate thriller Breaking and Entering starring Jude Law and Juliette Binoche. He had also recently completed filming on a pilot for "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency," adapted from the Alexander McCall Smith and starring singer turned thesp Jill Scott. The series has since been picked up to air on America's HBO and the UK's BBC.

DVD of the Week: No Country for Old Men

Viewers discovering this rattling, pensive American thriller on DVD late in the game may have a hard time seeing its splendor through the fog of hype and Best Picture mythology, but rest assured this Coen Bros. thriller is as solid as they come. And even more importantly it reestablished the Bros. as the movie masters we all discovered them to be back in their Fargo glory days. Several bad films and one horrendous Tom Hanks impersonation of Colonel Sanders later, they were nearly counted out. Cut to 2007 when Javier Bardem in a peculiar bowl cut reminds us why we loved the Coens for their offbeat choices and signature style all those years ago. It's also, very honestly, a superb piece of filmmaking. Perhaps it wasn't really the best movie of the year (I ranked it #8 on my top 10 this year), but don't hold its sweeping acclaim against it. For those who don't yet know, the central premise involves a ruthless assassin (Bardem in his Oscar winning role) tracking down an average joe who stumbled upon a stash of drug money (Josh Brolin). Hot on both their trails is a humble local sheriff with a genuine desire to do right in an increasingly bleak modern landscape (Tommy Lee Jones). Also worth a mention is Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald who has been mostly overlooked here as Brolin's innocent wife, but actually delivers some of the film's mot impassioned speeches and clinches the film in a climax as chilling as it is delicate and beautiful.

The Bank Job

Director Roger Donaldson tries to bring the generically titled, The Bank Job, into an exciting realm of crime caper non-fiction by holding tightly to the 70s era in which this true story took place and developing a tone of plausibility in spite of the roundabout scam portrayed here. Despite his best efforts, the admirable film ends up being as memorable as milk toast. It's a well styled heist film and does little to expand the genre. What it does get points for is stripping away the hammy comic stylings (Ocean's Eleven) and the super high tech gadgets (The Italian Job) that have made recent genre entries so run of the mill. It gets back to the mischievous fun of the formula in a charmingly retro low key style. Yet as characters come and go and the heist derails and gets back on track, I was left neither rooting for or against anybody. It is a capably made film but it never quite sinks its hooks in, and from that it can't be saved.

Jason Statham growls his way through yet another antihero role. Here he plays Terry, a local London crook who is tempted by the alluring Martine (Saffron Burrows) to take a gig above his skill lever - a sure thing bank robbery she happens to have inside information on. As it turns out, of course, Martine isn't telling the whole tale. She's been enlisted by British government agents to stage a robbery that cannot be traced back to anyone in authority. The target is a few salacious photos stored in a safety deposit box that are being used as leverage by Michael X, a corrupt activist modeling himself after Malcolm X but mostly using his connections to fund drug and prostitution rings.

Terry and his crew get in on the gig and end up well over their heads as the true nature of their mission emerges. The unraveling and double crossing is sometimes fun but very often by the numbers. Kudos goes to Donaldson and his cast for milking the circumstances as best they could, but the story, however historically interesting, somehow feels a little slight and nonchalant. By the time the credits roll all of the pawns have been moved back in place and the chessboard has been done hardly any damage at all. A folley good for lovers of this subgenre and those seeking a more gritty looking thrill ride to counteract the slickness of the modern action pic.

Grade: C+

Be Kind Rewind

From the brilliant mind of Michel Gondry (The Science of Sleep) comes the utterly monotonous Be Kind Rewind. It takes a lot of painfully contrived setup to reach the mildly funny but ultimately underwhelming payoff here: Jack Black is accidentally magnetized, by means that are irrelevant yet time consuming, and ends up wiping clean the VHS tapes in friend Mos Def's old-fashioned neighborhood video rental store. The duo then attempt to recreate the movies on the shelves themselves in a series of quirky "recreations" that play more like loose parodies. Black and Mos Def handle the oddball comedy here decently, but the spoofs are no sharper or sillier than a cheapo "Saturday Night Live" sketch. The dilemma being that this thing runs on to feature length, dawdling in forced subplots about the changing climate of the local neighborhood, the ugly face of modernization, and the lack of appreciation of "kids these days."

Even if you forgive the gaps in logic (and there are plenty), there's still just not enough weirdo charm in this to make it satisfying. Gondry's other works often fell into traps of indulgence and goofiness, but they were bolstered by likable, ratable characters that ultimately overcame the conceptual stubbornness of the piece. This film has nothing approaching that level of warmth. It's dumb and dull from start to finish and will likely be remembered as a blemish on a number of resumes, most prominently Gondry himself, who will hopefully go on to redeem himself with bigger and better projects.

Grade: D+