Spoiler disclaimer: This post does not contain specific details about the Iron Man movie beyond those available in the trailer. It does kinda ruin the ending to Elf, though.

I was never an Iron Man fan--even 20 years ago when my appetite for superheroes was voracious. To my mind, the whole concept behind the character was like an extended issue of What If?: what if Batman was a big pussy who needed a suit of armor every time he fought crime?! (I was pretty passionate about stuff like this, back in the day.) Plus, Tony Stark was always battling alcoholism or depression, and what fun was that? I wanted heroes who fought HIVE or ULTIMATUM, not the DSM.

But I'd heard good things about the film, and it was playing at the Cinerama, so what could I do? My 15 year-old-self would have traveled forward in time and kicked my ass if I missed the opportunity to see it. (Come to think of it, though, I still owe that kid a beatdown for The Phantom Menace.)

Iron Man wastes no time getting to the origin story. After opening with a few moments of Tony Stark wisecrackery (all of which was featured in the trailer), the industrialist is taken hostage by a gang of terrorists, confined to a cave, and given to understand that his days are numbered. "Wow, what a rip," though I, sitting in the theater. Even someone with as scant knowledge of the Iron Man mythos as I understood that giving Robert Downey Jr. the role of Tony Stark was a bit of superhero-movie-casting genius unrivaled since Nicholson portrayed The Joker; and yet here we were, 10 minutes into the film, and already Stark had had his Pivotal Moment, having transformed from hedonistic sybarite to somber hero.

We'll, I needn't have worried. The next set of scenes are set 36 hours earlier, and show Stark in all of his bad-boy glory. Robert Downey Jr. is truly a joy to watch, and the audience in my theater was in stitches throughout the extended exposition. And though Stark is Irrevocably Changed For The Better by his experience with the terrorists, Downey continues to play his part with a rakish charm throughout.

Indeed, watching Tony Stark is so enjoyable that, when the third act arrives--devoted almost exclusively to the modern day Iron Man--it's something of a disappointment, like a headliner who fails to live up to the opening act. "But Iron Man is Tony Stark," you might argue. Well, yes, that's true--according to narrative. But the Iron Man suit covers Stark completely, and, thanks to the miracle of CGI, is digitally rendered in most scenes. So, to me at least, there was no real sense of Robert Downey Jr. being "in" the suit. It was as if, after spending 90 minutes with one character as the protagonist, they abruptly decided to switch the focus to a different character entirely for the finale. In fact, I found myself improbably comparing Iron Man to Elf, the 2003 comedy that devotes itself to the story of Buddy (Will Ferrell) until the last 20 minutes, when suddenly it's all about Santa Claus. (Only later did I discover that Iron Man and Elf have the same director, Jon Favreau.)

Which isn't to say that the climax of Iron Man is bad (though it did evoke two of my Superhero Movie pet peeves, which I will detail in another post to keep this review spoiler-free). It's perfectly serviceable, but something of a letdown given all that had come before. I guess they couldn't have just omitted the eponymous superhero from his own movie, but if they make a prequel called Stark and just let Downey Jr. do his playboy act for two straight hours, I will be the first in line.

Black Sheep & The Host

So I'm out on one of my woefully infrequent nights of carousing, and at some point a buddy of mine opines that I would like the movie Black Sheep, and also, while we're on the topic, this other film called The Host. And somehow I write these titles down, which is fairly amazing since it required (a) paper, and (b) a working pen, and (c) the presence of mind to actually record the names of recommended movies for future references, three things I very rarely possess simultaneously. Anyway, as soon as I start writing, my buddy goes, "well, uh, I should probably warn you ..." and I am all like "Silence! It is too late to deter me, for my commitment to watching these so-called 'motion pictures' is already ironclad. Let us speak of them no more!"

Anyway, long story short, a week later both discs arrived from Netflix on the same day, and I was all like whuuuh?, and it took me a while to recollect the above (and possibly paraphrased) conversation. (I was never able to remember actually adding the movies to the top of my queue ... ah, late night inebriated Netflix queue adjustments ...) So The Queen and I watched them, and: hahahaha! Yes, you should see these films! And learn nothing of them in advance, as I did. (I will, however, forward the one disclaimer than my friend insisted in divulging: "When renting Black Sheep you want the 2006 film ... not the one with Chris Farley!")

Downfall

Maybe you've seen the various Hitler gets banned from a computer game videos and wondered what film the footage was drawn from. *** spoilers! *** it's 2004's Downfall. An absolutely fascinating film that shows a side of Hitler and his regime that you rarely see on screen: as a bunch of losers. (Not losers in the "sitting around in their boxer shorts at 11:45 in the morning eating chips and watching To Catch a Predator on TiVo" sense, obviously, but as the side that lost the war they initiated.) It's a testament to the skill of director Oliver Hirschbiegel that this portrayal of the "bad guy's point of view" manages to evoke neither sympathy for their plight nor revulsion at the horrible acts you know they have committed, and instead makes you feel like the proverbial "fly on the wall," watching the drama unfold with a dispassionate eye (or "dispassionate compound eye" I guess, to extend the Dipterian metaphor). And here, I'll spare you the trouble of pausing the film halfway through to visit Wikipedia: the exact cause of Hitler's tremors is unknown, though syphilis or Parkinson's disease (or both) are suspected.

51 Birch Street

At first I though this documentary Doug Block made about his own parents was just so much self-indulgent navel gazing. Then he began hinting at their Dark, Hidden Secrets and I got all intrigued. Then said secrets were revealed and I was back, to, "dude, did you just trick me into watching your home movies?" Perhaps I would have been as enthusiastic about this film as the critics if I hadn't felt suckerpunched. Or whatever the opposite of a suckerpunch is. Like when some guy says "I'm going to punch you in the gut!" and then he just gives you a friendly slug to the shoulder and you're all like "wtf man I was all tightening my abdominal muscles and preparing to die like Houdini, lame." Like that.

Juno

Aww, why the hate? Yes, it was aggressively quirky, but I still liked it twice as much as Little Miss Sunshine, to which it was often compared. I mean, at least this film was about a real issue (teen pregnancy), instead of a bunch of dilemmas as zanyfied as the characters themselves (I can't be a pilot because I'm color-blind, waaa!). I guess this is one of these deals where hipsters liked it when it was largely unknown, but then when it got popular and started winning things they decided it must actually suck (see also: Barak Obama).

There Will Be Blood

How sad is it that, during the climatic end scene, I'm sitting there on my couch thinking, "I'd bet a hundred bazillion dollars that someone has already mixed this monologue with that abominable Kelis Milkshake song and posted the resultant video to youtube." And then, after the film was over, I checked youtube and found it. And the topmost comment on the file was "i knew someone wuld make this!!!!!!"

I'm only and hour into the 100 minute King Kong, but I'm so bored that I figured I may as well start typing. According to the AFI, this film is one of cinema's "greatest," but, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I do not think that word means what they think it means. I'm guessing that, in this case, the ol' double-k got the nod for being one of the most influential films of all time, but lord knows that 's not the same as greatness. Needless to say the special effects are outmoded, but I don't hold that against the film. After all, the quality of a movie shouldn't be judged by the caliber of its effects--which is exactly the point: strip them away from King Kong and you're not left with much. The acting ranges from workaday to wretched, and while the plot is moderately interesting, the middle third, which serves only to showcase the Amazing Stopmotion Animation!!!, is interminable if you don't find the f/x breathtaking. I will give the film props for lethality, though: I assumed that all death in this film would take place off camera, if at all, but, no, kong fucks up half a battalion of folks with extreme prejudice. The subtext of the film--that the real monsters are the humans, while Kong just wants to live in peace--is intriguing; too bad the filmmaker doesn't do much with it. Maybe Peter Jackson utilizes the material better in his 2005 remake. 5/10.

Yeah, chickened out of watching Sophie's Choice this week. I will try to work up the nerve to do so next.

It was Ye Olde Tymey Romantick Comedy night in the Baldwin household this evening.

Bringing Up Baby: Knowing nothing about this film beyond the title, I assumed it was just the "oh no, we're pregnant!" film of its era, a 1938 version of Knocked Up minus the lingering shots of Seth Rogen's ass. As it turns out, "Baby," in this case, is a leopard, which the brother of Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) has sent from Brazil to Connecticut as a gift to -- ahh, you know what? The leopard doesn't really matter. It's really just one of this screwball comedy's endless MacGuffins designed to throw Vance and Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant) into a succession of zany situations. Lots of funny scenes (this restaurant bit, particularly from 5:37 on, is particularly inspired) and great lines ("Susan, you've got to get out of this apartment!" Huxley exclaims when he discovers the leopard in her room. "I can't," Vance explains, "I've got a lease."), but very little plot to tie it all together. Hypothetically the narrative is Huxley and Vance falling in love, but as Vance loves Huxley at first sight and Huxley is never given a reason to want to spend another moment, much less the rest of his life, in the company of Vance (aside from the fact that she's Katharine Freakin' Hepburn, obviously), this framing device is paper thin. Thus, the film feels less like a long, funny story and more like a standup comedy routine, a series of setup-straightline-punchline scenes just gummed together with a resolution tacked onto the end for the sake of closure. Which is fine, but wears thin at around the 45 minute mark--about half this film's running time. 6.5/10

City Lights: I was prepared to stoically endure this Charlie Chaplin "comedy" for the sake of checking it off my list, but holy smokes, I can't remember the last film that made me laugh this hard. Chaplin is so masterful that the gags succeed even when you see them coming a mile away--you know what the joke is going to be, but nothing can prepare you for Chaplin's sublime execution (e.g., the "Spaghetti Scene", which starts at 2:10 in this clip). Slapstick usually leaves me cold (I've never understood the appeal of the Three Stooges, for instance), but Chaplin imbues each pratfall with so much humanity that you feel like watching a close friend fall through an open manhole--now that's funny! I could level the same charge against City Lights that I did against Bringing Up Baby--it's more of a collection of sketches than a cohesive narrative--but the central premise, Chaplin falling for a blind flower girl, is so bittersweet that it pervaded every shot, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Plus, the final scene is amazing. 8/10

The next film in the AFI 100 Project will be ... oh, god. Sophie's Choice. If I'm going to break this resolution, I guess now's the time to do it.

I Am Legend--the new film with Will Smith and the first I've seen in a theater for maybe a year--starts out as pure Hollywood blockbuster schlock, with Smith barreling around the empty streets of New York in a sports car. He flushes herds of deer out from the jumble of abandoned automobiles, drives alongside the fleeing beasts at, like, 80 miles per hour (these being, apparently, post-apocalyptic turbo-charged deer), and takes potshots at them out the window with a high powered rifle, presumably in an effort to rustle up some grub. Like much of the movie, it is exciting, and cool, and scary ... so long as you don't accidentally think about the situation. Then you are, like, "why doesn't he just park the car, walk a block, and shoot one of the many deer that are just standing around Time's Square?" The inescapable conclusion is that Smith doesn't do so because it wouldn't take $85 million dollars to film such a scene, and the producers of Legend seem intent of squeezing as much cash into this film as they can (though another thirty bucks toward making the CGI look smoother woulda been nice).

So I set my phasers to "dumb" and settle in for some mindless entertainment--just as the film becomes surprisingly ponderous. Alternating between footage of Smith and his faithful dog battling monsters and loneliness in the present, and flashbacks showing how the world came to be depopulated, the second act of Legend is a philosophical, big-budget amalgamation of 28 Days Later, Resident Evil, and Children of Men. Which is to say that there is little new here, plot-wise (even though the source material, Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, predates all the aforementioned movies about half a century), it is at least well done. And, of course, Smith is a fine actor, able to hold his own even when his only co-stars are German Shepherds, mannequins, and mutants.

But then, about two-thirds of the way through the film, there is what appears to be a three minute commercial for Shrek, a scene involving the animated DVD that just goes on and on. I assumed this was just another product placement (such as the Apple products that Smith routinely depends on), albeit a particularly long, blatantly, and egregious one. A little Googling after I got home from the movie found no evidence of this, though: the two films were made by different studios, and there were no reports of money changing hands so that Shrek would get plugged in Smith's new film. But, really, that makes the scene even more unforgivable. And least product placement, evil though it might be, justified such a bizarre and jarring detour.

And the film never really recovers after that. Having lost its stride, it just sort of stumbles on for the remaining 30 minutes before collapsing over the finish line. Here again, as in the opening, the movie's worst enemy is thought on the part of the audience, a moment of which reveals that Legend's finale doesn't make a whit of sense. Too bad. Taken with the many other films that have told this same story recently, and you're left with a film that would have been more aptly titled I Am Forgettable.

Warning: I discuss the end of the film in the comments.

Primer: I'm a total sucker for movies that break open your head and punch you in the brain, so Primer was right up my alley. Friends accidentally invent a time machine; their relationship--and chronology itself--rapidly becomes complicated. It's one of those films, like Memento and Mulholland Dr., that pretty much necessitates repeated viewing. I watched it one night, spent about an hour the next morning studying this diagram, and then watched it a second time the following evening. I'd probably watch it again right now if I hadn't already returned it. It's not a fantastic film, but compelling as all get-out. Warning: aforementioned diagram gives away the entire plot of the film. You won't understand it, but I feel obligated to include a spoiler warning nonetheless.

The Illusionist: Conversation with The Queen, the day after I watched this film.

The Queen: Do you want to watch that movie tonight?

Me: Which one?

Q: The magician one.

M: Uhh, actually I watched it last night and sent it back to Netflix this morning.

Q: What? I wanted to see that!

M: You didn't, trust me.

Q: I was totally looking forward to it.

M: Maybe so, but you would have hated it. It pretended to be about magicians, and turn-of-the-century Vienna, and blah and blah and blah, but it was really just a very conventional romance gussied up like a thriller, full of twists you see coming 20 minutes before they arrive on screen.

Q: Even so, where do you get off deciding what movies I do and don't get to see from out queue? I at least wanted to compare it to the book.

M: I'm pretty sure you didn't read the book.

Q: I did! We both did!

M: Oh. Um, you're thinking of The Prestige. And you did see it. We watched it together, like, four days ago.

{Pause}

Q: Oh, that's right. Never mind.

Deadwood: Season 1: I'm not a much of a fan of westerns, but that's okay because Deadwood isn't must of a western. Set in a small South Dakotian gold mining camp in the 1870's, it certainly has all the trappings of a Western, what with the guns and poker and whiskey and breeches and tormented sheriffs and diabolical saloon owners and robots. But after the obligatory shoot-out in the pilot, it settles down to be a fairly conventional ensemble drama. One thing I love about the show is the short seasons: each only has 12 episodes. So instead of six episodes of plot, 12 episodes of mid-season-stalling-for-time, and then six episodes of wrap-up (as you would get with a standard, 24 episode serial--think LOST), every installment of Deadwood moves the story forward fairly significantly. A little too much, actually, given that major characters drop like flies, and plot twists to which other shows would have devoted an entire season (e.g., the coming of smallpox) and dealt with here in three episodes and forgotten. Still, highly recommended--doubly so if you enjoy hearing the word "cocksucker" spoken 304 times an hour. I was lying about the robots.

Off The Black: One of those films that I added to my queue back in the day and somehow percolated to the top without my ever noticing. Nick Nolte is fairly astonishing in his role as a drunken umpire rapidly coming apart at the seams, but everything else about this film hews pretty closely to the standard "indie" film formula: a buncha quirky misfits who form unlikely bonds as they navigate the extraordinary and banality of everyday life. Off The Black reminded me quite a bit of The Station Agent--which was too bad, because it didn't come close to stacking up.

Casino Royale: Great film. And actor Daniel Craig is easy on the eyes--or so The Queen felt compelled to mention about two dozen times during the movie.

Some people like books about cats that solve mysteries. Some people like books about rugged individuals wandering post-apocalyptic America. Me, I like books about magicians, escape artists, and mediums, set in eras when such professions were respectable. Thus my fondness for The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Carter Beats the Devil, Girl in the Glass (and why I will presumably love Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, if I can ever overcome my crippling fear of its sheer enormity and actually attempt to read it).

So picking up The Prestige was a no-brainer. Feuding magicians in the late nineteenth century, each desperate to discover the secret of his rival's greatest illusion? What's not to like?

After a brief introduction set in modern times, the novel is epistolary, supposedly the journals of Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier, illusionists who plied their trade in turn-of-the-(last)-century London. An altercation between the two men in their youth snowballs into lifelong tit-for-tatism, each oscillating between desire to see the other ruined and remorse over how prolonged and petty the grudgematch has become. Each man has a signature trick that involves teleportation: in The New Transported Man, Bordon steps into one cabinet and instantly emerges from another across the stage; during In A Flash, Angier disappears in a surge of electricity and re-enters the theater moments later, from the back of the galley. Though the tricks are nearly identical, their central mechanism are starkly different; the crux of the book is that each man is ignorant of how the other does his version of the illusion, and is haunted by the knowledge that his opponent might have a "superior" method.

Having quite enjoyed the novel, I picked up the DVD for the 2006 film and prepared for disappointment. Surprisingly, the movie was as good as the book, as the screenwriter and director chose to adapt the story for the screen, rather than slavishly adhere to the source material. The framing device for the book (a man in contemporary time who is given the journals to read) is jettisoned entirely, and some aspects of the relationship between Borden and Angier and changed as well. I wouldn't say that the film's revisions were necessarily better, but they are certainly more cinematic. Thus, neither pales in comparison to the other, as both are sufficiently distinct to stand on their own.

Still, despite their difference, both the novel and the film tackle the same central question: what will a man do to be the best in his profession? In the case of Borden and Angier, it's not only a question of what they will sacrifice to perfect their own illusions, but to what lengths they will go to destroy their rivals. Like master magicians adept in misdirection, both author Christopher Priest and director Christopher Nolan have crafted thrillers that keep you so engaged that you don't even realize the profundity of the questions they explore, until you find yourself ruminating about the story in the days and weeks to follow.

When it was released to theaters last year, Rocky Balboa received generally favorable reviews, but even the kindest critic said it was pretty much a film for completists. If you've seen Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, and Rocky V (yes, there was a Rocky V), they said, you may as well go whole hog and see this one too.

Up until two years ago, I'd never seen any of the Rocky films. But I'd always been perplexed by the fact that the first had won the "Best Picture" academy award. Seriously? Rocky? It's just a dumb guy boxing, right? As far as I knew, it was the stereotypical (or perhaps prototypical) "sports film"--lovable underdog with a lot of heart works really hard, experiences setbacks, overcomes obstacles, and, against all odds, wins in the end. Plus, it was written by Sylvester Stallone--how good could it possibly be?

The answer, I discovered when my curiosity got the better of me and I finally rented the thing, was: pretty goddamned good! It was not the slick and generic sports films I'd expected, based on what little I'd seen of Rocky III and IV. Instead, it was melancholy, gritty, and authentic through and through, as much about the means streets of Philadelphia as about the titular character.

Enjoying Rocky did not increase my desire to see the sequels. If anything, it encouraged me to steer clear. I had no desire to see the Hollywood Blockbuster I'd expected the first to be.

Flash-forward to last week when, for some inexplicable reason, I added Rocky Balboa to my Netflix queue and sent it to position #1. Frankly, I was just interested to see what convoluted rationale they'd use to justify a 60-year-old Stallone re-entry to the ring.

Imagine my incredulity when, for the second time, the Rocky film I'd been prepared to mock turned out to be not bad.

Rocky Balboa is written like a direct sequel to the original film, not as the sixth in a series. The events of Rocky II-V happened, but are mentioned only in passing. All you know (or need to know) is that, at some point after the events of the first film, Rocky won the title of Heavyweight Champion, held it for some time, and has long since retired from the ring. Though Rocky's home is much larger than the amazingly tiny apartment he lived in for the first film, he is still a humble and modest guy, still resides in Philly, and still has Paulie as a best friend. Furthermore, the cinematography of the film is much closer to the rough-hewn Rocky than that of its polished predecessors.

Which isn't to say that Balboa clears the high bar set by Rocky. There's a lot of speechifying in this film, which mainly consists of characters shoring up one another's sagging morale with rousing motivational speeches. The film occasional wanders over the line separating "paying homage to" and "just remaking" scenes from the original film--and routinely barrels across the line between "sentimental" and "schmaltz". And Rocky's son simply doesn't work: the actor's not that great, the character is ill-defined, and he comes across as little more than a plot element Stallone felt obliged to include since he'd existed in some of the prior movies. (Perhaps in recognition of this fact, Rocky essentially adopts a new son a third of the way into the film. And a dog.)

Still, watching Rocky and Rocky Balboa as I did, with a few years separating the screenings, was very satisfying. I bet it would be even more so if you saw Rocky back in the 70's or 80's, and didn't bother with any of the sequels. It reminded me of the Before Sunrise / Before Sunset duology, with thirty years elapsing between the two films instead of 10, and the romance between a boxer and the Heavyweight championship title. (Cinephiles who bristle at the comparison are probably forgetting that the original Rocky had at least as much indie cred as Linklater's film--perhaps more, as at least Ethan Hawke was a bankable star at the time of Sunrise's release).

I wouldn't recommend Rocky Balboa to everyone. But if you enjoyed the first, and were always more interested in the Rocky the character than in Rocky the franchise, you'll probably be as pleasantly surprised by the final chapter as I was.

Warning: minor spoilers for all of the movies and shows mentioned, below; possibility of major spoilers in the comments.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand: Based on some excoriating reviews I read of X3 around the time of its release, I was expecting this to be, like, Daredevil bad. Well, it's kind of a mess, and contains a big, Brian Singer-shaped hole at its center, but doesn't do too bad of a job of wrapping up the trilogy (especially since it makes it clear that the trilogy is, in fact, at an end). Plus, there's worse ways to waste two hours than lookin' at Famke Janssen.

The Station Agent: I promised to review this film back in 2003, and never did. Now I've seen it again on DVD, and ... well, I guess I'm still not. But see it! It's great. And, if you've already seen it, hell, see it again--it's only 89 minutes. Worth it for Bobby Cannavale alone, who gives a such-a-good-actor-it-doesn't-even-seem-like-he's-acting caliber performance. The fact that everything else about the film is top notch is just gravy.

The Professional: WTF, did everyone who recommended this film to me see it when they were 11 and sugar high? Admittedly, if I had seen it in 1994 when it was in the theaters, and never again, it would almost certainly be in my personal pantheon of OMG GREATEST FILMS EVER!! But these days it just seems like the whole Hooker Hitman With a Heart of Gold thing is played out. Maybe I've been reading too much Thuglit.

Lost: Season 2: Yeah, I gotta admit--I thought this series had come off the rails, a few episodes into season 2. Bad enough that I found the hatch completely uncompelling, but it just seemed like they were going to keep launching new mysteries without ever resolving any of the old ones (kind of like (starting a bunch of parenthetical statements (without ever closing any (of the prior ones (this is driving you nuts, isn't it? I vented some of my frustration with this, about halfway through the season. But then things started looking up, when they started focusing more on the "people" mysteries (The Others) instead of the Thing mysteries (the hatch). By the finale, I was totally hooked again. ALRIGHT YOU STUPID EPIDODIC TELEVISION PROGRAM, I'LL GIVE YOU ONE MORE YEAR.

After Innocence: A documentary about people having their entire lives ruined when they are unfairly locked into a prision, and later freed after being exonerated by DNA evidence.

Jesus Camp: Actually, pretty much the same documentary as After Innocence, with religious dogma taking the place of jail. And without the part about them ever getting free.

The Descent: Horror movie about a bunch of hott spelunkers who get trapped in a cave and then have to fight off fast-moving subterannian flesh-eating mutants. Ya gotta keep an vigilant eye on your Netflix queue, lest stuff like this percolate to the top. You know the obligatory Scary Movie scene where a girl is walking around the house in her underwear and the music is super tense and then, suddenly, her cat jumps out of nowhere, yowling? Imagine that scene looped for 90 minutes and you don't have to see this. Basis for the hit TV sit-com: "The Smeagols."

P.S. )))))

Hot Fuzz was not the movie I'd hoped it would be.

And then, suddenly, it was.

The premise sounded great: Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), a gritty supercop from the mean streets of London, is reassigned to a quaint countryside village. Based on this, I expected something along the lines of Shaun of the Dead. In that, writer / director Edgar Wright pulled off the neat trick of both faithfully recreating and parodying the typical American zombie movie simultaneously. I figured Hot Fuzz would be similarly over-the-top.

Instead, the film quickly settles into a city-mouse-country-mouse comedy of manners, more Fawlty Towers than Dirty Harry. Angel wiles away his days collaring underage drinkers, eating ice cream cones with his big-boned partner (Nick Frost), and cursing the local paper for repeatedly misspelling his name as "Angle." When someone actually dies in the idyllic burg, Angel leaps into action, seeking clues and questioning suspects. But the townsfolk pooh-pooh his efforts, and insist that the death was nothing more than an accident. And although Angel is committed to solving the crime, he seems determined, alas, to do so via detective work and deductive reasoning, rather than to let his guns do the talking. One of Angel's colleagues even dismisses him as "Miss Marple." At this point, the comparison seemed apt: the film felt like a satire of PBS's Mystery.

Which was okay, I guess. But I knew going in that Hot Fuzz was 120 minutes long. At about the 75 minute mark, I could feel my enthusiasm waning. In fact, I was a little mystified about all the good reviews the film had received.

And then, hoo-boy. Things changed gears, and how.

In some ways, Hot Fuzz reminds me of the Half His Heads Was an Orange joke, or any shaggydog story where much of the humor is derived from the overly-long punchline. And, in this case, the setup is pretty funny too--so long as you know it's not going to occupy the full two hour running time. It doesn't quite reach the heights of inspired insanity on display in Shaun, but it demonstrated that Wright's first film was no fluke--and has me looking forward to whatever he and Frost pair up in next.

Comments on my recent rental history. Spoilers ahoy for all titles herein.

The Legend

I wonder if this film gets any better after the first four minutes. Alas, I shall never know.

Brokeback Mountain

Watching this film, I couldn't help but think that this was going to be the go-to movie for a whole generation of gay, in-the-closet teens, much as my formative years were spent surreptitiously fast-forwarding through Meatballs 3 in search of the topless scenes.

Then I remembered that, since my youth, this zany thing called Teh Internet up and got invented, which means that all the good Brokeback scenes are probably available online, possibly as animated gifs. They may even have their own Facebooks pages, who knows?

Still, as a public service to any of you kids out there want to do it old school, get your mitts on the DVD and refer to this cheat sheet:

And just in case any heterosexual males inadvertently stumble upon this page: Anne Hathaway's knockers, 57:55.

Good movie. I expected it to mostly be a gimmick film (Gay cowboys!), but it was solid and well-made, far exceeding the controversial premise. And while some people had told me that it was boring, I found it pensive (where "pensive" is defined as "enjoyably boring").

Little Miss Sunshine

Studio exec: All right, you've got thirty seconds. Go.

Michael Arndt: What do Americans love? I'll tell you what Americans love: dysfunctional families. The Simpsons. The Sopranos. Supernanny. People love 'em.

S.E.: Okay.

M.A.: So, how about a movie ... about a family ... where everyone is really, really dysfunctional?

S.E.: Seems like it's been done.

M.A.: No, but we're gonna make 'em really, really, really dysfunctional. Like, the brother is suicidal. And the son won't talk. And the grandfather is addicted to heroin. And the little girl likes porn.

S.E.: The little girl likes porn? I don't know ...

M.A.: Well, okay, so the grandfather also likes porn. Doesn't matter, we'll hammer out the details later. Take home message: really dysfunctional. You with me so far?

S.E.: So far.

M.A.: Okay. So, what if we took this family, the whole family, and put them all in a VW bus. And made them travel across country. Huh? Think of it! Hijinks!

S.E.: Where are they going?

M.A.: Doesn't matter. To some dysfunctional thing, doesn't matter. The important thing is that they are all together, in a VW bus, for a long, long time. And totally--totally--dysfunctional. Do you smell sleeper hit? Because I smell something that smells like sleeper hit to me.

S.E.: How does it end?

M.A.: Oh, you know, whatever. We'll just tack the end of Napoleon Dynamite on there, people seemed to like that.

Arrested Development: Season 3

I didn't watch A.D. when it was originally airing, so I wasn't one of those people who was crushed when it got canceled. And, to be honest, three seasons seems like the perfect amount to watch on DVD.

Not that I don't love the show. But how many programs managed to demote themselves from "great" to "just okay" by virtue of running too long? Twin Peaks, for sure. The X-Files. And now, to hear my friends tell it, Lost. With only 53 episodes, Arrested Development avoids this fate-worse-than-cancellation, and actually gets funnier as it goes.

By season three they must have known they were on borrowed time, because they pull out all the stops. The show becomes so self-referential that only the devoted fan could hope to catch all the references to previous jokes, and it gets exponentially dirtier. (Michael's three second pause after the line "Who'd want to go into that musty old clap-trap" made me laugh until my stomach hurt.)

If you've only seen a few A.D. episodes here and there, rent season one and watch them in order. Though the second year doesn't live up to the first, plow your way through it so you can watch the third -- you won't regret it.

Superman Returns

Cripes, where to start with this mess? Let's just take it in order:

• Tip to aspiring filmmakers: make sure your audience can figure out what the hell is going on during the first 10 minutes.
• So let me get this straight: astronomers thought they saw the planet Krypton, so Superman spent five years flying all the way out there (in a spaceship?), only to discover that, nope, they were wrong, it's still a-blowd up. Um, jeeze astronomers: this seems like it would have been one of those "measure twice, cut once" situations, seeing as how you deprived the world of Superman for half a decade. What, smudge on the telescope?
• The airplane saving bit was really exciting! A shame, almost, in that you can't help but unfavorably compare the remainder of the film to that single, engrossing scene.
• Man, when did Clark Kent get to be such a cad? Using his x-ray vision to stalk Lois, trying to mack on another guy's girl, etc. Not to mention that he's a deadbeat dad. He's gone from defender of the American Way from Guy You Wouldn't Want To Sit Next To On The Bus
• I'm sorry, but this is the stupidest evil plot I've ever seen. Lex is going to destroy a perfectly good continent to make a pointy, unlivable one? And he'll get to be king of the new landmass because he was on it first? Yeah, that worked out great for the Native Americans.
• Superman is now flying around carrying a literal mountain of kryptonite? I think we're done here.

An Inconvenient Truth

Dear Al Gore: please run for President and select Obama as your running mate so I can vote for you the end.

A friend of mine was fond of calling Coldplay "Radiohead for stupid people."

I wouldn't go so far as to call Stranger Than Fiction "Charlie Kaufman for stupid people," but it would be fair to label the film "Adaptation for the strip-mall cineplex."

(And like all Kaufman and Kaufman-esque movies, the film is best if you go in knowing nothing about it. So stop reading now if you have any intention of seeing it.)

Kaufman, you'll recall, is the screenwriter of such brilliantly recursive films as Being John Malcovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Adaptation was his 2002 picture, which jumped back and forth between a struggling author and the characters he was writing. So similar is the premise of Stranger Than Fiction that comparisons to Adaptation are inevitable, though the two films tackle the subject matter from opposite angles: the focus in Adaptation is on the screenwriter, while Stranger Than Fiction adopts the protagonist of the in-movie story as its own.

Harold Crick is a thoroughly uninteresting man, one who brushes his teeth a set number of seconds every morning, and squanders his days as an auditor for the IRS. He is also, as he soon realizes, the main character of a work-in-progress being written by Kay Eiffel, a novelist with a penchants for snuffing her protagonists in the end. When Crick discovers that he (somehow) occupies the same world as his creator, he sets off to confront Eiffel, hoping to procure a "happy ending" for himself.

If Stranger Than Fiction were a Kaufman film, all of this would be explained: why Crick suddenly starts hearing Eiffel's "narration" in his head, how the two can inhabit the same universe, the extent of Crick's free-will, and so forth. Kaufman's great strength is his ability to create complex, meticulous, and extraordinarily well thought-out worlds; unfortunately, this can also be his weakness, and his films sometimes sag under the tonnage of clever.

Fiction, meanwhile, uses its high-concept conceit as little more than a framing device for a straight-forward romantic comedy. To that end, it wastes little time justifying the more bizarre aspects of its premise. On the one hand, that's a good thing, as torturous explanation as to how things "work" would certainly bog the film down; on the other, Fiction's failure to establish any ground rules for what is and isn't possible puts the movie in the realm of the Bugs Bunny cartoon, where anvils fall from the sky and characters routinely bounce back from death.

Will Ferrel is a good fit for Crick. As with Steve Martin before him, Ferrel has mastered the role of hilarious straightman, who elicits laughter via deadpan delivery and blinking befuddlement. Maggie Gyllenhaal is cute as a button as Ana Pascal, Crick's eventual lover, but their romance is the most unbelievable aspect of a film packed full of plot-twists that strain credibility. He works for the government, she's an anarchist, and they get together ... why? Crick doesn't even woo Pascal -- he just pines for her until she obligingly signs up as his girlfriend.

(Actually, I take that back. The most unbelievable aspect of the movie is the idea that Kay Eiffel, Harold Crick's author, is one of the finest writers alive. Throughout the film we hear prose from Eiffel's novel as voiceover, and, man, it sounds like nothing so much as a Hollywood screenwriter trying to impersonate "the finest writer alive." Seriously, couldn't they have cut a check to Marilynne Robinson and asked her to anonymously rewrite those passages?)

I like Coldplay, though I prefer Radiohead. And I enjoyed Stranger Than Fiction, even while recognizing it as, essentially, one broken story (the romance) packed inside another (the protagonist - author relationship). There's no real need to see this one in the theater, but it would be a worthy DVD rental on an evening when you want something that manages to be both slightly unusual and thoroughly conventional.

I don't get out to the cinema often these days. But there are certain classes of film that I will always make an effort to see in the theater, among them:

• Movies based on the work of Phillip K. Dick
• Animated movies aimed at an adult audience
• Movies written and directed by Richard Linklater

On the debits side of the ledger, we have this: the film stars Keanu Reeves. I don't really mind Reeves, but as the Matrix trilogy has a very heavy Phillip K. Dick influence, I was a little worried that this would just become the fourth in the series. Fortunately, Reeves spends much of the film looking and acting befuddled (the one type of dramatic role he invariably excels at), a far cry from the demigod of Neo. And the performances of his colleagues -- Woody Harlson, Mitch Baker, and Robert Downey Jr. in particular -- more than compensate for Reeves' limited range.

The film is set in a near future where a drug called Substance-D is destroying America. Reeves' character Bob Arctor, for instance, is hooked on the stuff, and it's slowly eroding his ability to tell reality from fantasy. He spends half of his time lollygagging around his pad with other addicts, and the other half working for law enforcement, where he has been assigned to spy on ... himself. One of the perks of working as a uncover narc in the future, it seems, is that you get to wear a "scramble suit," which conceals your identity from everyone -- even your superiors, who may inadvertently charge you with monitoring your drug-addled alter ego.

Scanner uses a technique called "rotoscoping, in which live-action footage is traced over and converted to animation. It is particularly well-suited to this tale, as it falls in animation's uncanny valley: it looks artificial enough to be perceived as animation, but realistic enough to put the audience on edge. In short, it makes the viewer feel like he, like the protagonists, has recently ingested a sizable quantity of illicit substances. It's hard to even criticize the technique, as even its deficiencies work in the context of Scanner. One thing that bothered me was how components of large objects would sometimes appear to move independent of the thing they were attached to -- the headlights of cars, for instance. And yet, these irksome details just served to heighten my feeling of hazyheadedness, the exact effect I assume Linklater was shooting for when he choose rotoscoping in the first place.

Unlike most films inspired by the work of Dick, A Scanner Darkly is based on a full length novel and is a faithful adaptation of the source material. Or so I'm told. I read A Scanner Darkly a number of years ago, but couldn't really remember anything about it. Seeing the film didn't so much remind me of how the novel went as remind me why I found it so difficult to recall.

Both the book and the film fall under the rubric of "complete mindfuck." That is, most of the time you're not sure what's going on, and, even when you do, you're not sure whether the events are real. As a result, you tend to sequester everything you see into a a little mental cubbyhole marked "Conditional," ready to purge it if a subsequent revelation reveals this particular scene to be false, or take it out and stamp it "authentic" if it is later verified as real. Unfortunately, you never really get any confirmation one way or the other in Scanner, so you walk out of the film with a head full of loose puzzle pieces instead of a complete picture. And we all know what happens to loose pieces over time: you lose them, one by one. I saw the film last week and already can only remember half of it.

I met up with some friends after seeing the film, and they asked me what I thought. "I don't know," I told them, "I need to think it over for a day." That was last Saturday, and I still haven't made up my mind. I liked it, I guess, but film and the animation style were so self-referential that I kind of felt like they all added up to nothing, like a snake that swallows its own tail and vanishes from sight. Admittedly, that analogy doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But, then again, the same may be true of the film. I have no idea.

I watched a DVD over the weekend. First time I'd ever seen this film. Obscure little flick, you've probably never heard of it. What was it called, again? Oh God! Book II or Grandma's Boy or something?

Oh, that's right: The Godfather. Little known fact: the movie stars Marlon Brando, before he hit the big time by appearing in The Island of Dr. Moreau.

So, yeah: my first time seeing it. And I'm pleased to report that it holds up just fine, even after 30 years of imitation mob movies and television shows. In fact, I'd call it one of my favorites ... were it not for one niggling little detail that worried away at the back of my mind for the duration of the film. You see, I'd never really seen young Al Pacino or young James Caan before. And, regrettable, I could not get over how similar they looked to Matthew Broderick and Will Ferrell.

I spent the entire film trying to reconcile the fact that New York's most ruthless and bloodthirsty Mafia family was being run by Ferris Bueller and Buddy the Elf.

... will be up by Friday.

(See also: How To Watch The Phantom Menace, How To Watch Attack of the Clones.)

Long, long ago, in a childhood far, far away, I was a child obsessed with Star Wars. By the age of twelve I already had every available piece of Star Wars trivia crammed into my head (diameter of the Death Star? 120 kilometers), including the knowledge that there would be nine films in total. Once, after gushing about the series to my grandmother (who couldn't have cared less), I was struck by a sudden, sorrowful realization, and blurted out "it's too bad you won't be alive to see them all."

Well, Grammy got the last laugh: Lucus truncated his series to a meager six films and the matriarch is still around. But if the thought that grandma would not live to see all of the Star Wars films was a major bummer to me at the time, the truth would have been devastating: That, by the time the final film rolled around, I would be so disinterested in the whole franchise that I wouldn't even bother to see it in a theater.

I tried to psyche myself up Revenge of the Sith by rewatching the first two films in the trilogy -- and, as an aide to readers who wanted to do likewise, I even gave tips on how to fast-forward through the boring and stupid parts. (See: How To Watch The Phantom Menace and How To Watch Attack Of The Clones.) And it actually worked -- for a few days, there, I was vaguely fired up to see Episode III, especially since everyone kept raving about how it was "the best in the series since The Empire Strikes Back" (pretty faint praise, when you think about it). But when The Queen and I found ourselves with an evening free we had to choose between Revenge Of The Sith and Batman Begins, and we opted for the latter. I like to think that my twelve year-old self would have taken some comfort in the fact that we still saw a movie about an awesomely cool awesome guy in a black cape and mask, albeit one unable to choke people to death with his mind.

Anyway, last weekend I finally watched Revenge of the Sith. And yes, it was quite a bit better than the other two, although that's akin to saying "Moe was the funniest Stooge."

My two previous "How To Watch" guides were so people could cram in anticipation of Sith without having to endure the full 4+ hours of Episodes I & II, so doing breakdown of this film might be pointless. On the other hand, I'm sure there's someone out there who, like me, wants to watch Episode III just to get the whole thing over, and wouldn't mind being steered away from the superfluous stuff. And so, here we go again: How To Watch Revenge Of The Sith:

Total time saved: 35:39.

Analysis: Yeah, not bad. It would be considered a fairly mediocre movie if it didn't have the whole Star Wars cachet going for it, but it certainly hurdles over the bar that was set so low with Phantom Menace.

Many people told me that Sith was all action, with little plot. I didn't find this to be the case. There was plenty of story in there, but, unlike Phantom and Clones, it all served to move things forward (instead of, as was often the case in the prior two films, plot being introduced via infodump, where one character halts the action and launches into a soliloquy wherein he explains some long and convoluted aspect of galactic history or politics).

The midichlorians ultimately amounted to nothing. It seemed as if Lucus introduced them in Episode I to explain something that didn't need explaining (The Force), but wound up generating more questions than he answered. So Anakin didn't have a father? And he was maybeconceived by the midichlorians, somehow? And Darth Sidious' former master may or may not have had something to do with that? I did a little poking around on the web to see if maybe all this stuff was addressed in the novelization or something, but, alas, no. Thanks to the midichlorians these prequels have more loose ends than a yarn store, and Lucus makes no attempt to tie them up.

But while I was researching the midichlorians, I looked up a couple of other questions I had about the story. Here are the answers.

Why, of all the Jedi, did only Obi Wan and Yoda disappear when they died? I got my Revenge of the Sith DVD from NetFlix, which means it came sans bonus disc. If I had all the extra goodies, though, apparently I could have watched a deleted scene that made sense of this. You know how, at the end of the film, Yoda tells Obi Wan about "one who has returned from the netherworld of the Force to train me, your old Master, Qui-Gon Jinn"? Well, there was a scene before that where Yoda explains that Qui-Gon Jinn had contacted him from Beyond, and revealed, among other things, that he had learned how to become so attuned with the Force that one could actually merge with it upon his death. This imformation is imparted to Yoda and, somewhere between episode II and IV, on to Obi Wan as well. That seems like a fairly significant plot point to omit, if you ask me.

What was the "Prophecy" again, and why didn't Anakin fulfill it? The Prophecy is mentioned often in the prequels, but nobody ever tells us exactly what it says. The closest we get is this exchange:

OBI-WAN: With all due respect, Master, is [Anakin] not the Chosen One? Is he not to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force?

MACE: So the prophecy says.

YODA: A prophecy . . . that misread could have been.

My interpretation was that Anakin does fulfill the prophecy -- three films later when he kills the Emperor and himself in the process, thereby reducing the number of card-carrying Sith in the universe to zero. But in searching USENET for other people's opinions, I found many arguing that Anakin fulfilled the "balance to the Force" part of the prophecy in Sith by setting into motion the events which left an equal number of Sith (Vader and Sidious) and Jedi (Obi Wan and Yoda) alive.

The problem is that The Prophecy is never clearly stated anywhere -- not in the films, not in the novelizations, not in the voluminous additional Star Wars material that exists, and not in any interviews with Lucus. And the two things we know about The Prophecy -- that the Sith get destroyed and the Force gets balanced -- seem contradictory (how is the Force "balanced" if all the Dark Side guys are dead?) My conclusion: The Prophecy is just a plot device, and only a fool would waste any time trying to figure it out. WISH I'D KNOWN THAT 15 MINUTES AGO!!

Jumpin' jehosephat, are those actually Hayden Christensen abs?! At at 31:08, Anakin saunters out of his bedroom shirtless adorned with abs rarely seen outside of a Captain America comic book. Frankly they looked a little too perfect to be true, and I couldn't help but wonder if maybe Lucus had added a little computer-generated definition. Unfortunately, this proved rather difficult to research, as searching Google for "Hayden Christensen shirtless" returned about 218,000 websites aimed at teenage girls and gay men. Switching to Google Images verified that Christensen is a pretty buff guy, though. One thing id for certain: if he had devoted the time he spent doing sit-ups to acting classes, these last two films woulda been a lot more bearable.

Okay, these movies weren't so great, but did get me marginally excited about Star Wars again. Are there any good books in the series? I trolled through a bunch of Amazon reviews and lists, and consensus seems to be that the creme de la Star Wars creme is: The Thrawn Trilogy (Heir To The Throne, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command), set five years after Return of the Jedi (and the very first non-novelizations Star Wars books ever written); the Han Solo Trilogy (The Paradise Snare, The Hutt Gambit, and Rebel Dawn), set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope; and Shatterpoint, a Mace Windu novel set during the Clone Wars.

On the presupposition that everyone who's interested in seeing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire has already read the book, I'm a little more liberal with the spoilers in this review than I am in most.

First, a disclaimer: I am not now, nor ever have been, afflicted with Pottermania. I liked the first novel okay and thought the third was pretty good, but have been less than enamored with the more recent entries in the series. I am not one to reflexively dismiss something as "kid's stuff" (one of my all time favorite movies is The Iron Giant, after all), but I haven't found Harry Potter to be especially engaging, either.

So in evaluating Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I am only interested in how it works as a film, and not in how faithfully it follows the book. Indeed, given that I disliked the corresponding novel (it was my least favorite in the series), the more the movie deviated from the text the better, in my opinion.

The good news is that it is evident, right from the get-go, that the screenplay is a considerable abridgement of the source material. The first 100 pages of the novel -- devoted to the Quidditch World Cup, including lengthy descriptions of how the children travel to the site and an entire chapter on play-by-play commentary of the event -- is packed into the first 20 minutes of the film. Unlike Rowling, screenwriter Steven Kloves seems intent on shuffling the kids off to school as quickly as possible: the Dursley's don't even make an appearance, and Dobby (along with the entire Elf Liberation subplot) is given the axe. By the time we arrive at Hogwarts, it seems like the filmmakers, against all odds, have figured out how streamline the 650 page book into a 150 minute movie.

The bad news is that Goblet of Fire (the book) contains so much superfluous material that, even after losing a huge chunk of it, Goblet of Fire (the film) feels too crowded by half. At one point they introduce a major character (Barty Crouch Junior) only to interrupt themselves halfway through to introduce a second major character (Mad Eye Moody), and then return to the original introduction once that is complete. Much of the first half of the film feels this way, with new people, spells, and concepts being revealed at a dizzying pace. At times it reminded me of those disclaimers tacked on to the end of a radio ads for contests, where they have digitally edited out all the spaces and left a monolith of information. Some characters (notably Cho Chang and Rita Skeeter) are given such a small amount of screen time that they serve only as reminders about the substantially larger roles they played in the book.

Once the Triwizard Tournament gets underway, though, the film not only finds its focus, but also takes a turn for the grim. When Radiohead made a surprise appearance halfway through I thought it odd to see them in a "kids movie," but that was before I realized that the final hour pretty much plays out like a typical radiohead song: dark, brooding, and at times downright ponderous. Indeed, between the horror elements and the introduction of sexuality to the franchise (we're treated to French schoolgirls in short skirts and a shirtless Daniel Radcliffe cavorting in a sauna with a voyeuristic female ghost), Goblet of Fire isn't really a kids movie at all. The age range for the audience seems to be shifting right along with the age range of the protagonists. The final film in the series may well be NC-17.

I was pretty ambivalent about Goblet of Fire. On the one hand, I like the darker elements (the introduction of Azkaban in the third book is why it was my favorite), but I came away from the film feeling much the same way as I did from the book, that Rowling is exceptionally skilled at coming up with clever ideas (or at least at lifting them from other works and reworking them until they seem passibly original), but isn't so good at cobbling them together into a coherent storyline. So much of the Triwizard Tournament doesn't makes sense (even in a world where magic is real and dragons are imported from Romania), and it makes even less so in a film where so much exposition had to be abbreviated to keep the running time under a fortnight. Still, Goblet of Fire is certainly the best of the Harry Potter movies, so if you've liked the series so far and you can suspend your disbelief a little more than I was able, you'll probably find it to be right up your alley, Diagon or otherwise.

This review contains mild spoilers.

Several weeks ago Some Random Guy From The Internet sent me email to recommend the film Grizzly Man. Well, you know me: I'll do anything I'm told to do over email, which is why I am forever purchasing penny stocks, verifying my Wells Fargo bank account, and watching you and your sister on your new webcam. So I saw it.

And hey, S.R.G.F.T.I: thanks! It was great.

Of course I was predisposed to like it, because Grizzly Man is a documentary and I loves me some documentaries. (I suspect I may have mentioned this here before, which is what earned me the aforementioned email in the first place.) That said, enough sets this film apart from most documentaries to prevent my liking it a sure thing. For one, the filmmaker, Werner Herzog, inserts himself into the narrative, doing the voiceover and occasionally even offering his own opinions on the events depicted. For another, most of the movie was not filmed by Herzog, but is, instead, literally found footage. How this footage came to be taken, and why it ultimately required a finding, is the story told.

Timothy Treadwell spent over a dozen summers living in the Katmai National Park & Preserve, frolicking with the grizzlies therein. You may think I am being glib but, no, the man actually frolicked -- talking to the bears in sing-songy voices, invading their personal space, and occasionally even touching them (invariably to their annoyance). One of many people interviewed in the film says that Treadwell "wanted to be a bear," and, at times, this seems like the literal truth.

For the last five of his annual visits Treadwell brought along a video camera. Because he didn't really do that much beyond hanging out with the bears, much of the footage is of Treadwell giving monologues about his life in the Preserve, with particular emphasis on the danger he faces.

Treadwell often referred to himself as the bears' protector, though it's unclear what protection he envisioned himself as offering. At any rate, Treadwell is the one who could have eventually used some protection: at the end of his thirteenth summer amongst the grizzlies, he and his his female companion were killed and eaten by one of his ursine "friends."

Now, I know is seems like I just ruined the end of the film for you, but they reveal this fact within the first five minutes, honest. And foreknowledge of Treadwell's fate is essential to fully appreciate the bizarre quality of his on-air soliloquies. Even while he reminds the hypothetical viewer about the dangers of grizzly fraternization, he seems naively unaware of it himself. Treadwell's ultimate goal -- both in living with the bears, and in filming his exploits -- seems to be the casting of himself as the protagonist in a Jack London short story or a novel serialized in Boy's Life. At times he seems less like a man living amongst bears as a man in the middle of a "Living Amongst Bears: The Roleplaying Game" campaign.

Herzog editorializes quite a bit in this film -- something I had been warned about in advanced and thought I'd hate, but actually didn't mind. A few times he even goes so far as to say "Here I disagree with Treadwell" and offers his own opinion in the voiceover, and I did feel that these rare instances did cross the line. But as one of my companions remarked, "all documentarians have bias -- better that they state them openly than pretend they are objective," and I agree with her sentiment.

One thing that Herzog does exceptionally well in Grizzly Man is keep the character of Treadwell (and he does seem to be a character, albeit one of Treadwell's own making) from becoming stagnant. Several times in the film I thought, "well, I think I've seen all there is to see of this guy" moments before Herzog unveiled some new fact, included an interview, or spliced in a piece of footage that gave Treadwell a whole new dimension. Even as you're walking out of the theater, you're still not quite sure what to make of the guy.

Grizzly Man is one of the best documentaries I've seen; and, as I stated before, I like documentaries a lot, so that's saying something. And just a quick postscript for people who are hesitant to see this film because of the killing. There is no video footage of Treadwell's death, so you won't see it. There is an audiotape (Treadwell turned his camera on just before the attack but didn't have time to remove the lens cap), but Herzog declines to play that, either. At one point a coroner describes the audiotape, but he does so in a fairly clinical manner. There is one emotional scene in regards to the audiotape, but Treadwell's death is treated mostly as an ironic twist to his life, and is not, in itself, the focus of the film.

My opinions of the last four Batman movies -- Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, and Batman & Robin -- were, respectively, "so-so," "wretched," "good, but only in comparison to the others," and "it's stuff like this that makes me wish the Neanderthals had clubbed homo sapient into extinction back on the savannah." And after each and every one, even the ones I kinda liked, I walked out of the theater thinking the same question. Why, when scores of excellent Batman comic books have been written, does Hollywood feel the need to hire some screenwriter with zero comic book experience to come in and make up the entire mythos from scratch? And I'm not just talking about the big stuff, like "The Joker killed Bruce Wayne's parents?" and "Catwoman gains superpowers after being licked by cats??!" but even the minutia, like making Batgirl Alfred's niece. You could argue that things like Batgirl's identity don't really matter, but that's my point: if they don't matter, what's the point of changing them?

What I really wanted was for someone who wrote Batman comic books (or read a few, at least) to take a crack at the script. Who woulda guessed that Christopher Nolan-- the genius behind one of my all-time favorite movies, Memento -- was that guy? And the co-writer, David S. Goyer, is not only an honest-to-goodness comic book writer (he pens Justice League of America), but has worked on such films as The Crow, Blade, and the forthcoming film The Flash -- not to mention the sublime Dark City. Put 'em together and you get a Batman movie that (mostly) feels right.

Batman Begins at the beginning, even before the death of Bruce Wayne's parents (which is not at the hands of The Joker, thank God -- signaling that this new series is completely divorced from the earlier claptrap). In fact, we don't even get to see the familiar cape and cowl until the midpoint of the film, as the story focuses on the events and training that shaped Bruce Wayne into the legendary crimefighter.

Right from the gate it's apparent that Nolan's approach to the material is radically different from Tim Burton's, as he strives to make the narrative as realistic as possible. Burton created a fantastic, comic book universe for his Batman movies; Nolan grounds the hero in our own. In fact, my one gripe with Batman Begins stems from this fact. Nolan does such a good job of making the back-story believable that that Bruce Wayne's transition from "angry guy who's really good at martial arts" to "angry guy running around in a cape" is a bit jarring, taxing the audience's suspension of disbelief to the limit.

But, in my opinion, two things make up for all of this movie's other deficiencies: Alfred Pennyworth and Commissioner (sory, "Captain") Gordon. As the mythos of Batman has evolved in the comic books it has become clear that these two men are more than just supporting characters, they are every bit as integral to the success of The Batman as Bruce Wayne himself. Batman Begins treats them as such. As far as I'm concerned, this alone shows that Nolan (and Goyer) understand the story of Batman better than any of the previous screenwriters did.

Batman Begins is not perfect, and there's a few scenes and lines that ring false. But it's a quantum leap better than the older ones, and, as superhero movies go, on par with the X-Man series and Spiderman II.

A waited a month and a half after Batman Begins' release to see it, and then only because it was getting rave reviews. I assumed that no good Batman movie would ever be made. But when the sequel debuts -- and assuming Nolan is still behind the helm -- I may well be there on opening night.

(See also: How To Watch The Phantom Menace, How To Watch Revenge of the Sith.)

The general consensus is that Attack of the Clones, while not great, is much better than The Phantom Menace, though I've heard a few people express the opposite opinion. I think it basically comes down to one question: what do you find more excruciatingly unwatchable, Jar-Jar's slapstick or the Anakin / Amidala romance?

Me, I found the latter much more forgivable, thanks to something a reviewer once wrote about Titanic: while he conceded that the romantic dialogue in Titanic was atrocious, he pointed out that it was also a fairly accurate depiction of how young people in love actually talk, i.e., maudlin, dramatic, and as cliched as all get-out. I don't think for a moment that Lucas wrote lines like "you are in my very soul, tormenting me" because he was trying to emulate what 16 year-olds say when they are trying to convey the sentiment "holy shit, being a virgin sucks!" but if you pretend like that was Lucas' intent the film is much more bearable.

That said, skipping all the love scenes detracts not at all from the movie -- we didn't need to see the nitty-gritty of Han and Leia falling in love to know it was happening -- so feel free to do so.

Here, then, is the cheat-sheet for fast-forwarding through Attack of the Clones. As with the previous guide, this is intended for folks who have already seen the film and are only interested in refreshing their memories about the plot in anticipation of Revenge of the Sith. Again, my goal was to get the film down to about 90 minutes and to axe anything that wasn't integral to the story. I've also included tips on removing much of the love story, for those who can't abide it.

Total time saved: 41:21

Analysis: I so loathed Phantom Menace that I swore I wouldn't see Clones in the theater, but when my in-laws hornswoggled me into going I was surprised by how much I liked it. It's mediocre to be sure, but mediocre is still one infinity better than Episode I (though I realize that "better than The Phantom Menace" is damning with the faintest of praise, like saying "more delicious than echinacea!"). Watching it again on DVD gave me a glimmer of hope that Revenge of the Sith may be as good as some are claiming.

Some have claimed that the Star Wars movies should be judged lightly because they are, after all, kids films. I agree, insofar as the original trilogy goes goes. But Episode I was about taxation, fercrissakes. And in Episode II you have a clone army fighting alongside the Jedi but was secretly commissioned by the Sith to make the Republic more powerful so that they can subvert it. That's a little more involved than "The bad guys have a Death Star; the Death Star blows up planets; the good guys need to destroy the Death Star." The problem isn't that Lucas is making space operas for kids or that he's making political thrillers for adults, but that he's trying to make both at once, and that's how you wind up with Jar-Jar fart jokes in one scene and lengthy discussions of the Republic Senate's legislative procedures in the next.

But the big big problem with this whole trilogy is that I don't give a rat's ass about any of the protagonists. The Jedi -- Obi Wan, Qui-Gon, Yoda -- are too noble to be endearing; Anakin is a rageaholic jerk; Amidala isn't even much of a character, just the obligatory catalyst for Anakin's lovelorn dramatics. Furthermore, these first two movies aren't even about these people -- they are about Darth Sidious and his subtle machinations to seize power. This is in sharp contrast to episodes 4-6, which really were about the heroes: Luke, Han, Leia -- even Chewbacca felt like your buddy by the end of it all. I wouldn't want to go for beers and pinball with anyone in Phantom or Clones, except for Anakin's mom who was kinda hot until the Tusken Raiders got to her.

Lastly, I'd just like to say that Ewan McGregor's impersonation of Sir Alec Guinness is just shy of miraculous, and almost makes up for the fact that all the other acting sucks.

Plot Points For The People Too Smart To Rewatch This: Again, a complete summary of the film can be found at sf-worlds.com. But for those who just want the highlights:

• After several assassination attempts on Amidala's life, Anakin is assigned to protect her. This is the first time they've been reunited in 10 years, and Anakin reveals that he's been pining for her all the while. Though the Jedi Order forbids (? perhaps just "discourages") attachments, the two fall in love and are secretly married.


• A separatist movement, headed up by former Jedi Count Dooku, has begun waging war against the Republic with an army of droids. Worried about being overrun, the Republic Senate grants Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers to use a clone army, which, curiously, has already been created, having been requested ten years prior by another Jedi.


• The Jedi Council's mastery of the Force is fading, and they sense that the Dark Lord of the Sith is controlling much of the Republic's Senate. The council is unable to divine the Dark Lord's identity or goals, though, as the Dark Side clouds their vision.


• Anakin is chafing under the yoke of Jedi training, feeling like his exceptional abilities are being stifled. Though he often refers to Obi Wan as his "father," he also seems extremely resentful of him. When Anakin discovers that a Tusken Raider tribe has killed his mother, he slaughters them all, every man, woman and child.

Random Revelation: Hmm, an angst-ridden young man learning to cope with his extraordinary powers and being tempted by the Dark Side? The novelization of this movie should be called Harry Potter And The Order of the Jedi.

(See also: How To Watch Attack of the Clones, How To Watch Revenge of the Sith.)

No, I haven't seen Revenge Of The Sith yet. Stop asking.

I had never intended to see it soon after it's opening, although I have resigned myself to the inevitability of seeing it in the theater eventually. Actually, I was kind of excited about it for a little while, but my enthusiasm seems to have peaked about a week ago, and my interest in the film has been dwindling ever since.

So in an effort to rekindle the Star Wars flame -- or possibly snuff it out entirely -- I decided to rewatch The Phantom Menace. I wanted to reacquaint myself with the story, and this seemed the best way to do it -- even though, truth be told, I was dreading the screening. I'd seen The Phantom Menace twice before, and pretty much hated it both times.

What I really wanted was an abridged version of the film, with just the plot and the cool scenes but none of the crap. Such a version is rumored to exist in the form of The Phantom Edit, but I had no idea how to secure a copy. The next best thing would have been a knowledgeable friend sitting next to me as I watched the DVD, telling me what stuff I should fast-forward through.

Well, I'm that knowledeable friend now. If you foolishly decide to watch The Phantom Menace yourself, here's all the skippable stuff.

I started compiling these fast-forwards with two objectives: to get the film under 90 minutes, and to eliminate as much Jar-Jar Binks as possible; halfway through the film I spontaneously added a third: to omit all the midichlorian flummery. (This might be a bad idea -- it's possible they play a role in Revenge of the Sith, though I'm guessing that, like Jar-Jar, Lucas is going to pretend like he'd never introduced them.)

Total time saved: 42:42 (although I'll admit that including the end credits in the time is kinda cheating).

Conclusion: Rather to my surprise, The Phantom Menace was every bit as bad as I remembered. I thought that perhaps it had gotten worse in my memory, but, nope: it's full-on travesty. The saddest thing is that the first 10 minutes of the film are very promising, making minutes 11-138 all the more tragic, like spotting a $100 bill on the sidewalk, bending over to pick it up, and having a piano dropped on you.

"Unlike you I am not an idiot and have no intention to rewatching Phantom Menace, so why don't you sum up?": You can find a very thorough summary here. In a nutshell, though, there are three main points:

• Senator Palpatine, in the guise of Darth Sidious, engineers the invasion of Naboo, knowing that the Republic's Chancellor will be unable to deal with it. When his prediction proves true, Palpatine arranges for a vote of no-confidence in the current leadership, and, in its aftermath, is voted into the position of Chancellor -- his true aim all along.
• Qui-Gon and Obi Wan, two Jedis, encounter a boy named Anakin Skywalker, who has more innate ability with the Force than anyone they have ever met. Anakin is taken to the Jedi Council where he proves his aptitude with the Force. The Council refuses to train him, however, saying that he is too old and full of fear. Qui-Gon defiantly decides to train Anakin himself, and the Council grudgingly agrees. When Qui-Gon later dies, he makes Obi Wan promise to continue Anakin's training.
• Qui-Gon and Obi Wan are attacked by Darth Maul, a member of a group called the Sith that was thought long extinct. The Jedi Council considers the reemergence of the Sith be be worrisome in the extreme.

Don't panic, it's pretty good. Or, more to the point, it's not too bad.

"Bad" is certainly what I was anticipating from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie. My low expectations were the result of two things: (a) a scathing pre-release review written by MJ Simpson, Douglas Adams' biographer, who blasted the makers of the film for, in his word, "leaving out all the jokes"; and (2) my personal opinion that Hitchhiker's is fundamentally unsuited for the big screen. Yes, I know it's already been made into a radio play and few television shows and a text adventure game and, for all I know, a breakfast cereal. But of all the forms of media, film is the least kind toward absurdity, and Hitchhiker's is a profoundly absurd work.

Both of my concerns proved to be true: The silliness in Hitchhiker's didn't translate well, and they took out most of the jokes. Fortunately, the second ameliorates the first, and the whole thing turns out about as good as this particular adaptation could possibly be.

Here's an example that Simpson, in his review, cites as proof that the material was given a joke-ectomy:

Book

"I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

"That's the Display Department."

"With a torch."

"The lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But you found the plans, didn't you?"

"Oh yes, they were 'on display' in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the leopard.'"

Movie:

"I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

"But you found the plans, didn't you?"

Which isn't to say that Hitchhiker's trademark silliness is completely missing -- it's there, but watered down and spread out. The movie intersperses bits from the book -- scenes lifted directly from the novel, guide entries, etc. -- with traditional motion picture fare like action sequences and muted bits of exposition. It's as if they decided to just split the difference between Hitchhiker's outlandishness and Hollywood's reluctance to think outside the proverbial box. Granted, Hollywood gets the upper hand in the end, but up until that point it works pretty well.

Martin Freeman makes for a pretty good Authur Dent; Dent isn't the complete loser he was in the books, but he's still pretty useless. Mos Def does an okay Ford Prefect (though his performance is so sedated that he makes Ford seems like a secondary character) and I liked Sam Rockwell's Zaphod quite a bit. And Zooey Deschanel is very pleasant to look at, though the character of Trillian was considerably altered in the adaptation (she's a lot nicer in the film).

Truth be told, I agree with almost everything MJ Simpson says in his review -- the film isn't terribly funny, the plot is now full of "convenience and unexplained happenings," Marvin is all but superfluous -- but I don't agree with his conclusion that the film is "vastly, staggeringly, jaw-droppingly bad" and "the script is amazingly, mindbogglingly awful." More to the point, I think that the movie would have been worse if they had been more faithful to the book, and I'm a bit surprised they managed to make it even halfway decent. Not exactly a rave review, but better than the one I'd expected to write.

Word on the street is that Revenge of the Sith is dark -- like really, really dark, darker even than The Empire Strikes Back. That's too bad. I'm sure I speak for all Star Wars fans everywhere when I say that the comic hijinks of C3PO, Jar-Jar, and those loveable Ewoks have been our favorite parts of the series.

Fortunately the film doesn't come out for another week, so it's not too late for George Lucus to turn that frown upside-down. And I have a great idea as to how he could do it. I think he should reveal that the grill on the front of Darth Vader's mask is, in fact, a built-in harmonica, and during those lonely moments when Darth is by himself -- eating a microwave dinner at home or waiting for a bus or whatever -- he will sometimes breath out a few verses of "Oh, Susanna" to keep his spirits up.

Maybe the helmet's technology could even allow him to sing along while playing:

Oh I come from planet Tatooine,
The weather, it was dry.
Was a Jedi knight, but now I'm bad
Oh Padmé don't you cry.

Amidala
Oh don't you cry for me,
Cuz I'm happy on the dark side with
My master Palpatine ...

I like comic book movies, even when I don't particularly care for the comic books they are based on. Hellboy, Blade, The Crow -- even The X-Men is an example of a film I enjoyed way more than the source material.

I've read a couple of the Sin City trade paperbacks, and found them largely uninteresting. The characters, action, and dialogue all seemed lifted from Mickey Spillane novels and back issues of The Punisher. Plus, I'm no fan of Miller's art -- where others see a distinctive style, I see a guy who can't draw a straight line. And if I wanted my story in black & white, I'd just read a novel.

But black & white motion pictures I like. And as I said, I'll go see pretty much any comic book movie, regardless of my opinion of the book. So I caught of late show of Sin City last Friday. Based on the trailer my expectations for the film were moderately high, and they were exceeded by a considerable amount.

Sin City contains three stories which, while distinct, share a few overlapping characters, settings, and elements. They are told in a noir style that's so hyperbolic as to border on parody: all the women are buxom, all the men can take a bullet and shrug it off as a flesh wound, all the villains have a distinct look and a distinct method for dispatching their victims. Bruce Willis stars in the first chapter, and essentially reprises his world-weary tough-guy role from Pulp Fiction and Unbreakable. (That's a good thing -- he's really good at that role^*.) His portrayal of a good cop beaten down by the unrelenting corruption of his force sets the stage for all the subsequent tales, each of which features a few of Basin City's rare noble citizens struggling for justice in a town where everyday life is akin to that of a maximum security prison.

Frank Miller is cited as the film's co-director (he's even given top billing over Robert Rodriguez) and his presence is noticeable. The movie has just the right amount of "comic book physics" -- cars go over hills and catch 10 seconds of air, strongmen shatter wooden doors with a single punch -- but still feels tethered, if just barely, to the real world. That the scenes look just like something out of a graphic novel is not my subjective opinion -- check out these side-by-side comparisons of panels from the books and stills from the movie and marvel at the exactitude. It's as if the Sin City graphic novels were the storyboards for the film.

And, in fact, I think that's why I didn't like them. I went back and reread The Big Fat Kill after seeing the movie, and it doesn't seem like a finished product; it seemed like the rough draft for something great. And that something great is now showing at a theater near you.