I’m beginning to buy into this whole rotating James Bond concept. Two years ago, when they introduced Daniel Craig as the new Bond in Casino Royale, I absolutely loved him. I thought the idea of Bond as a working class tough who secretly held a contempt for the elite was a great new wrinkle on the Bond mythos. And Craig, an excellent actor, with a believable physicality (that torso—yowsa!) and a kind of toughness that could easily melt into a wounded vulnerability, played the part to perfection.
Two films into the Craig-as-Bond era and I’m already kind of over it.
Here’s the deal. In Casino Royale, we had a fabulous contrast between this new, rough-hewn Bond and a glamorous, high stakes setting. So what if our new Bond looked like his tux itched and he seemed more comfortable drinking a beer (as he does in Quantum of Solace) than a martini? He was a glorious bull in a fabulous china shop.
But Quantum of Solace doesn’t quite have the sheen of Casino Royale. Yes, Bond stays at expensive hotels and beds at least one beautiful woman, but he spends lots of time running down alleys and hovering in caves and kicking bad guy butt. If the Bourne Identity series was an attempt to create an irony-free alternative to the Bond films, then the strategy has turned back on itself: The Bond films are now trying to resemble Bourne films—slick, quick, and dirty. But the Bourne films do it better.
It doesn’t help that they’ve made Bond particularly unlikeable in this movie. The film essentially picks up where Casino Royale left off—Bond is still reeling from the death of his lady love and he wants revenge on the man who killed her. Because of his desire for revenge, he’s more ruthless than ever as he tracks an underground circuit of eco-terrorists called Quantum.
I understand that Bond kills people, it’s part of his job. But this Bond kills mercilessly. At one point, he contributes to the death of a friend and then unceremoniously drops him into a dumpster. “He wouldn’t mind,” Bond says—unconvincingly.
As I watched this lethal Bond in action, I was craving some bad puns, a few winks, a sense of cavalier delight. Okay, I’ll admit it: I wanted a little more Roger Moore in my Bond!
So why the two and a half stars? Well, there’s M for one—the ever-reliable Judi Dench who hovers over her agents like part mother, part imperious general. The action scenes are slick and exciting, even if director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland) doesn’t quite know how to end them. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’s Mathieu Amalric is excellent as the louche bad boy who runs the eco-terrorist group with a bratty sense of entitlement. And yes, there is a Bond girl, a glorious pan-ethnic specimen named Olga Kurylenko who actually gets to kick a little butt herself. (Viva progress!).
Meanwhile, Daniel Craig is signed on for 2 more Bond films. Maybe they’ll let him have some fun in the next one? Otherwise, Clive Owen, start polishing off your resume.

Posted at 1:46 pm
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It occurs to me that there may be one perfect audience member for a Kevin Smith film and that person is. . . Kevin Smith. Who else besides Smith would have such a taste for extreme raunch and mushy, chick-flick style romance?
But Smith’s cinematic schizophrenia may actually work to his advantage. You see, he’s not the best director of romantic comedies (although Chasing Amy had a certain shaggy charm) and he’s certainly not the best director at raunch (he tends to go too far, and isn’t quite funny enough to get away with it). But put the two sides of Smith together and you’ve got something resembling a good movie.
Which leads us to Zack and Miri Make a Porno. The title gets points for literal-mindedness (although it loses points for accessibility—when I review it on WBAL, I’ll be shortening it to the more kid-friendly Zack and Miri).
Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) are best friends and roommates—no nookie—and they’re positively broke. So they get the bright idea to make a porno film and they enlist a group of cheerful exhibitionists to help them. The catch? They’ve written in a sex scene for each other and they fear it will ruin their friendship.
Did I mention the film is raunchy? There’s a whole lot of simulated sex and nudity (although the supporting cast—including former porn star Traci Lords and Smith regular Jason Mewes—do most of the heavy lifting.) And there is one scene so vile and disgusting it had my audience gasping with horror. (Ah, I just sold a few extra tickets. You’re welcome, Kevin Smith.) Some of this stuff is funny, mostly it’s just lewd.
The Office’s Craig Robinson is a welcome presence as Zack’s buddy who helps out with the film because he’s married and simply wants to see some bare breasts. (He phrases it more colorfully.) But the film belongs to Rogen and Banks, who work together quite well, and manage to evoke some real tenderness amid all the perversity. (The critic David Edelstein argued, heroically, that Banks was too hot for Rogen. But I kind of get the Rogen thing. Just as Gloria was too hot for Meathead, but we never questioned their love—that’s an All in the Family reference, for the Nick At Nite impaired—so it goes with the cuddly Zack.)
I’m still not totally sure who Smith’s audience is. Fans of the raunchy part will find the love story part too hokey, and fans of the love story will be turned off by the gleeful debauchery. But everyone will be moderately satisfied with what they’ve just seen. That’s sort of like pleasing all of the people, right?

Posted at 5:04 pm
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I can only imagine that admirers of Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married—and they are legion—will describe it thusly: A big gumbo of human experience—laughter, sex, music, pain, friendship, family, and love—all stirred together in one rich pot.
To which I say, what a crock.
As the film starts, Kym (Anne Hathaway, who’s excellent) is being let out of rehab to attend the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt). Kym, apparently, has been an addict for 10 years—she’s extremely needy, has a big dark secret (the kind of melodramatic plot twist that undermines the supposed naturalism of the story), and tends to think the whole world revolves around her pain. Somewhere, buried deep beneath the many cluttered layers of Rachel Getting Married is actually a pretty good story about the way an addict sibling can cannibalize an entire family.
Demme is certainly interested in the ways that Kym wreaks havoc on the entire affair—but he’s equally interested in throwing a heckuva party. The wedding, actually held at the family’s rambling Victorian home in Connecticut, seems to be taking place at a performing arts center, or maybe even Artscape (Rachel’s fiancee is a music producer). Every few minutes, a rock band sets up, or a fiddler takes out his violin, a DJ spins some reggae, or a standup comedian riffs for a few minutes on the nature of love.
One of the film’s narrative devices is this: Demme gets the party cooking with laughter, singing, maybe a wacky family game and then—blam!—some hideous family secret or awkward revelation will disrupt the merriment. Because that’s life, right? If he says so.

Posted at 2:17 pm
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Outrage is a completely legitimate feeling for a film to evoke. Indeed, collective self-righteousness and indignation can be very cathartic for an audience. But Changeling spoon-feeds us our outrage. It’s outrage for idiots.
Angelina Jolie—sporting flapper attire and alarmingly red lipstick—plays Christine Collins, a single mother in 1920s Los Angeles. One night, she comes home late from work—she manages telephone operators (in a nifty period detail, she glides from station to station on roller skates)—and is horrified to discover that her 10 year old, Walter, is nowhere to be found. She calls the cops, but they patronizingly tell her that she should sit tight—boys will be boys; he’ll be back before night’s end. He never returns.
It so happens that just as the LAPD are launching their investigation into Walter’s whereabouts, they’re under fire by a local pastor and radio personality (John Malkovich), who aims to publicly expose the department’s greed and corruption. The LAPD needs a feel-good story—so they invent one. They reunite Christine with her son, but there’s one problem—it’s not really Walter. She protests immediately, but is accused of being irrational, an hysteric. Eventually, her protests becomes so inconvenient to the LAPD, they institutionalize her.
The plight of Christine Collins is based on a true story. And the woman was truly a martyr of sorts—thanks to her dogged pursuit of the truth, she was able to take down the LAPD and even bring justice to women who were wrongly institutionalized. But director Clint Eastwood is far too heavy handed in his treatment of this material. The villains—the police chief and captain; the doctor at the mental institution; another doctor who tells Christine that a boy can shrink 3 inches if he’s under enough stress—are almost caricatures of evil. Plus, it’s all so painfully literal minded. (How much more interesting would it have been if we weren’t sure if this lad were really Walter?) What’s more, when we find out what did happen to Walter, the film takes an uncomfortable turn for the macabre.
As for Angelina Jolie? She’s a very talented actress, but her newfound propensity to play aggrieved women—first Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart, now this—should be discouraged. Jolie’s greatness does not lie in her ability to mope majestically.

For the rest of this review, check out the December issue of Baltimore.

Posted at 2:10 pm
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For a completely different kind of heroine, I strongly recommend Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky. His Poppy is willfully cheerful, loving, and giddy—at times obnoxiously so. Leigh dares to ask: Can such good cheer be threatening? If so, why? If this were an American film, Poppy would be a dumb blonde, a bright-eyed naif, a la Anna Farris in The House Bunny. But Poppy is no dummy. She’s chosen to live a life that is open and generous, and a little bit ridiculous. Featuring a brilliant turn by Sally Hawkins as Poppy, and by Eddie Marsan, who plays the bitter, closed off driver’s-ed teacher whose life is irrevocably changed by this life force.

Posted at 2:06 pm
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Teen idols have always had to suffer the indignation of having to act wholesome, even if it couldn’t be further from the truth. (David Cassidy was notoriously hooking up with groupies and getting baked on the set of The Partridge Family). Cassidy, of course, hated his squeaky clean image. The kids from High School Musical 3 seem to love theirs. (Or, at least, they fake it extremely well).
The film—the first big screen version of Disney’s runaway hit TV franchise—starts with our hero Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) on the basketball court with his East High Wildcats and—quelle horror!—they’re losing. Suddenly, from the stands emerges the white-clad figure of Troy’s girlfriend Gabrielle (Vanessa Hudgens). The two begin singing at each other—Troy’s face positively racked with intensity and teen angst; Vanessa as ethereal and dreamy as an angel. You’ll never guess who wins the game. Cheesy doesn’t begin to describe it.
And yet, who can resist? All the kids are pretty and the songs—cheerleaderish, Disneyfied versions of the kind of pop and hip-hop you hear on the radio—are fast-paced and energetic. Also, despite Troy’s perma-angst-face, the stakes are blissfully low. Will Vanessa get early acceptance at Stanford? (Like, duh.) Will jock Troy disobey his father’s wishes and go to Julliard? (I’ll never tell.) Will the kids at East High put on the best darn high school musical evah? (You have to ask?)
Thank goodness for the presence of the rich, spoiled, spotlight-hogging Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale), the only nod to the Gossip Girl and The Hills world the rest of us live in.  She—and the cast’s nonchalant multiculturalism and hipster fashion—are the only thing separating this film from Beach Blanket Bingo.
But you know what? High School Musical 3 may be corny and conservative, but it’s fun. Frankly, it’s kind of nice to take a cynicism holiday every once in a while.

Posted at 2:09 pm
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Have we simply run out of good cop stories to tell? Since Serpico, it seems that every other cop movie is some iteration of the same theme—corrupt cops,  compromised values, and torn loyalties. Sometimes, we throw in gangsters (The Departed; American Gangster). Sometimes we give it a twisted buddy angle (Training Day; Blue Steel). And sometimes, we show how all this corruption affects a cop family (We Own the Night; The Big Easy.)
Pride and Glory falls into the latter category—it’s about a big, Irish family of cops, mostly good cops who are nonetheless willing to turn a blind eye to some small-level corruption.
Ray (Edward Norton, in a credible slow burn) is the most conflicted of the bunch. He was forced to lie on the witness stand about a cop killing (that also left him physically scarred) and the experience made him so depressed and guilt-racked, he pulled himself off the streets. Now there’s been a drug bust gone wrong—four cops are dead and Ray’s police captain father (Jon Voight) has convinced Ray to take the case. Of course, all evidence leads to massive corruption in his older brother’s division and specifically points to his live-wire brother-in-law Jimmy (Colin Farrell, who’s terrific).
Compared to last year’s We Own the Night, Pride and Glory does a much better job of fleshing out the characters and giving their choices real consequences. Ray’s division chief brother (Noah Emmerich), for example, has a wife who’s dying of cancer—if Ray rats him out, where will that leave his family? And the film is gritty and genuinely gripping, even if it succumbs to melodrama too often (beware of the scene with the Post reporter and the frazzled disgraced cop—it ends exactly as you hope it won’t).
It’s clear that director Gavin O’Connor has studied the likes of  Sidney Lumet, Martin Scorsese, and Spike Lee—but he’s not the artist those men are, just a skilled imitator. Still, I’ve seen enough unskilled imitators to (somewhat) appreciate what O’Connor has done. In the meantime, can someone make a movie about a law-abiding cop? Anyone?

Posted at 2:28 pm
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The trailers and poster art for Oliver Stone’s W. make it seem like a scathing work of satire but in reality, it’s a fairly standard biopic, with a healthy dose of Freudian speculation about the relationship between the elder Bush and his wayward son. Sure, there are some funny moments—a guy like Dubya would have to yield a few chuckles—but it’s mostly benign and dare I say . . . sympathetic? (This from the guy who gave us Natural Born Killers and JFK?)
Of course, the film is already controversial—and unprecedented. While there have been many presidential biopics—Stone has done one of his own (1995’s Nixon)—this is the first time one has been filmed while the president was still in office. In that sense, W. works best as a novelty film—and Stone seems to know it.
Why else, then, would he start the film with a “name that cabinet member” tableaux, as George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) and his advisers sit around the Oval Office coming up with the phrase Axis of Evil? You spend the first few minutes trying to figure out who’s who—it almost feels like a Saturday Night Live skit (alas, Tina Fey is nowhere to be found).
There’s Richard Dreyfuss, exuding sour superiority as Dick Cheney. Oh, there’s Toby Jones approximating Karl Rove’s ardent nerdiness. There’s—whoa, is that Thandie Newton?—doing a sort of wax museum version of Condoleezza Rice.  (I confess it took me a while to figure out that Scott Glenn was playing Dick Rumsfeld—he just doesn’t look like him.)
These impersonations have different degrees of success. Jones, Dreyfuss, and Elizabeth Banks (as Laura Bush) nail it—but Newton and the usually great Jeffrey Wright (as Colin Powell) seem restricted in their parts. Likewise, Ellen Burstyn simply doesn’t have the monumental bearing of Barbara Bush and, while James Cromwell certainly feels stern and patrician, he never believably evokes Daddy Bush.
Of course, the whole film would go bust if Josh Brolin wasn’t a believable George W. And he’s nearly perfect. In the White House scenes, he brilliantly captures Bush’s bemused expression, his thinly concealed mirth, his schoolboy-stomping-his-feet-in-the-playground style of leadership. It’s uncanny. But as the younger George—first as a frat boy at Yale, later a n’er-do-well son who can never please his father—he doesn’t quite convince. He plays young Bush as kind of earnest and bummed out, which hardly tracks with my opinion of him. (If anything, I’d expect him to be more carefree, with  a kind of permanent sh*t-eating grin.)
When W. ended, my (obviously liberal) screening audience clapped politely. They clearly wanted something more—more insight, more laughs, more outrage, more of an opportunity for shared catharsis. My audience wanted a scream; Oliver Stone gave something slightly above a whisper.

(FYI: For a richer, more complex and far more insightful examination of the Bush family, check out Curtis Sittenfeld’s brilliant American Wife. Also, you can read my review of that book here.)

Posted at 4:07 pm
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What Just Happened? is the kind of film that presupposes we want to hang out with a stressed out Hollywood producer who’s having a few very bad days.
Films like this can work—when they’re hilariously funny or rife with fresh insights—but What Just Happened? is only mildly funny and, if you’ve ever seen The Player, State and Main, or watched a single episode of Entourage, its insights are few and far between.
Still, it’s nice to see Robert DeNiro playing a real character, not a parody of himself. He’s Ben, the Hollywood producer (he’s about to be featured in Vanity Fair’s 25 Most Powerful in Hollywood issue) who’s been feeling rather powerless lately.
For starters, he’s got two ex wives—he’s even in couple’s therapy with the second (Robin Wright Penn), although it’s not to get back together, it’s to make the breakup more palatable (now that’s a good joke).
Meanwhile, his Sean-Penn-headlined action thriller just tanked at a screening because the whiny, drug-addled, would-be auteur director (a cliché) kills the dog at the end (another cliché).
As if that’s not bad enough, he’s beginning production on a Bruce Willis film and Bruce (playing himself) shows up on the first day heavily bearded and pot-bellied because he feels it’s true to the character (this, apparently, is loosely based on Alec Baldwin’s similar behavior on the set of The Edge).
It’s fun to see Penn and Willis poke fun at themselves (“as long as it’s still got an edge,” Penn says, when told his film has been edited). And DeNiro is convincing as a nice guy in a not-so-nice industry who is trying desperately to stay above the fray.
But John Turturro is way over the top as an anxious agent; Stanley Tucci is wasted in a small role as a screenwriter who may or may not be sleeping with Ben’s ex; and the film, inevitably, becomes a bit tiresome. With all this great talent assembled (including director Barry Levinson, in fine form) I wish they’d come up with a more compelling reason why I’d want to spend time with Ben at all.

Posted at 4:01 pm
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Turns out the ’80s teen sex comedies Losin’ It, The Last American Virgin, and The Sure Thing were cinematic classics. How else to explain why Sex Drive so shamelessly cribs from them? Oh, well. It’s not like today’s teenagers will know the difference.
Those of us over 30 can do this in our sleep: Ian (Josh Zuckerman), our sensitive, virginal, donut-shop employee hero wants to drive across the country to hook up with a “sure thing” he met on the web, and is joined by his horndog pal Lance (Clark Duke) and his tomboy best friend Felicia (Amanda Crew) who is—altogether now—secretly perfect for him.
Still, Sex Drive does have some distinguishing features—although not all good.
First the pluses: James Marsden is positively inspired as Ian’s amped up motorhead brother—a guy so rabidly homophobic he simply has to be gay himself.
Then there’s Seth Green, the film’s most unique and hilarious creation, a passive-aggressive Amish man the gang meets on the road who helps them with their engine trouble—and doesn’t let them forget his kindness.
What doesn’t work? Lots of bathroom humor (heck, I didn’t even like that when I was a teenager) and the curious character of Lance.
As I mentioned above, Lance is Ian’s over-sexed buddy. He’s got tons of bravado and lots of suave-guy sex tips for Ian. He’s also kind of pudgy with glasses. In any other film, Lance’s confidence would be an act. We would find out at some point in the film that Lance was full of it—maybe a virgin, certainly no super stud.
But in Sex Drive, Lance is everything he claims to be. Wha? It just makes no sense—unless the film is trying to tell us that confidence is all it takes to land women. (A far deeper premise than I’d give this film credit for.)
Oh well, Sex Drive offers a few laughs, and a whole lotta nostalgia for the ’80s. I may have to break out the Betamax.

Posted at 3:58 pm
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