As much an appreciator of “serious” filmmaking as I am, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with movies that are silly just for silly’s sake – and I really respect actors that aren’t so self-important that they refuse to appear in those kinds of things.

So, this week, I raise my popcorn to Mr. Steve Zahn, a truly talented performer who has never seemed to mind being one of the best comic relief guys in the business. Though Zahn did have a more serious role last year in Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn – and he deserved it – I’m looking forward to seeing him this Friday in Strange Wilderness, a wildlife-themed stoner comedy from the entertainingly juvenile folks at Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions. The film, a raunchy, R-rated effort about a low-rent nature show host and his crew’s last-ditch attempt to capture a real-life Sasquatch, is probably going to get savaged by the critics, but fans of pure, unadulterated silliness should find plenty to enjoy.

The same could also be said of 1998’s Safe Men, a silly-with-a-capital-S heist comedy in which Zahn starred alongside Sam Rockwell – another fine actor who isn’t afraid to make an ass out of himself onscreen every once in a while. The film was instrumental in launching the career of writer/director John Hamburg (who went on to co-script both of the insanely profitable Meet the Parents movies), but mostly it’s just a good-natured goof that breezes by, earns a few big laughs, and quickly goes on its merry way – and, honestly, I find something very refreshing about that.

Zahn and Rockwell are Eddie and Sam, a comically terrible lounge act playing humiliating gigs for unappreciative audiences of all kinds. Sam is convinced that the duo is destined to be their generation’s Simon and Garfunkel; meanwhile, Eddie – whose estranged father, we learn, was a career criminal – is getting more and more discouraged by their increasingly pathetic attempt at having a musical career (Sam, he complains, can’t even be bothered to learn the lyrics to their songs).

Enter Veal Chop (Giamatti), a tackily dressed underling for “Big Fat” Bernie Gayle (Michael Lerner), one of the two Jewish crime bosses in Providence (and don’t think we won’t eventually get to meet the other one). “Da Chop,” as he calls himself, mistakes Sam and Eddie for the pair of professional safecrackers (Mark Ruffalo and Josh Pais) his boss is looking to hire for some robberies he’s planning, and soon the boys find themselves forced to put their song-and-dance routine on hold while they unsuccessfully pose as crooks.

Eventually, they cross paths with Goodstuff Leo (Harvey Fierstein), Big Fat Bernie’s arch-nemesis; Sam falls for Leo’s daughter (Christina Kirk), whom he embarrassingly bumps into while he and Eddie try to rob her house; and, finally, the whole ridiculous affair draws to a close at Big Fat Bernie Jr.’s bar mitzvah.

Safe Men’s charm is in its lighthearted, self-consciously wacky sense of humor; this is the kind of movie that assumes things like Casio keytars, Zubaz pants, and sledgehammer-wielding little people will automatically be funny, and for the most part is correct. And although the plot might sound perfect for a Coen Brothers-style black comedy, but there’s nothing remotely dark about this one – if the movie is to be believed, then Jewish gangsters from Providence are some of the nicest folks you’ll ever meet.

The gags, though hardly elaborate, come fast and furious, and connect surprisingly often – there’s a running joke involving the diminutive size of Rockwell’s ass, and the all-too-conspicuous padding he wears to bulk it up; Fierstein spends a good five minutes of screen time delivering a (hilarious) monologue about flammable women’s slacks; and even Ruffalo, who’d go on to be a fine dramatic actor, gets to take part in a super-obvious but still pretty damn funny spoof of Say Anything.

Zahn fans might be a little disappointed that he plays straight man to Rockwell (whose character seems to be borrowing Jim Carrey’s mop-top from Dumb and Dumber), but he’s still a lot of fun – as is Giamatti, another respected dramatic actor whose whitebread thug character steals nearly every scene he’s in.

Overall, if there’s anything to be learned from Safe Men, it’s that most movie comedies take themselves way too seriously, trying to advance feel-good messages or photograph their stars in the most attractive light possible while forgetting that their main reason for existing is to make people laugh. This movie doesn’t have a single other thing on its mind, and for that, you’ve got to give it credit.

I finally had a chance to see There Will Be Blood this week, and now all I want to do is talk about it, see it again, spend way too much time analyzing every cut and camera angle and acting nuance until my eyes bug out.

Relax, I’m not gonna go all Howard Hughes and lock myself up in a screening room with a copy of the film and a steady supply of empty milk bottles, though I guess if somebody wanted to obsess over a movie while slowly losing their grip on reality, this would be as good a film as any to do it with.

I’m not quite that obsessed – truth be told, it’s not my favorite movie of the year, or even my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson movie – but I did walk out of the theater pretty overwhelmed, and certain that I’d seen something that will be talked about long after its (probably inevitable) Oscar victories are old news.

Rather than bore you with the ten million or so questions I’d love to ask Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis if I happened to run into them at Starbuck’s, however, I’ll just spend a minute here focusing on one small, bite-sized chunk of what makes the film the incredible experience it is: it’s got, hands down, the most memorable opening and closing scenes I’ve seen in a movie all year.

Smart filmmakers never underestimate the importance of beginning and ending their films on the perfect notes – if you can grab your audience by their collective jugular within the first minute and send them out two hours later with a line or image that will bang around their heads for the next month, you’re golden. Everybody loves a great ending, of course, but beginnings are equally important, and most of the time don’t get the attention they deserve (except over at Jim Emerson’s blog Scanners, with its ongoing and awesome Opening Shots Project).

Anderson is particularly skillful at both beginnings and endings, so I sort of figured he’d do something impressive with his latest. Who could forget the tracking shots that open Punch-Drunk Love and Boogie Nights, introducing and drawing us in to two very distinct film worlds right from the get-go? Or the spellbinding Ricky Jay-narrated bit about coincidences that kicks off Magnolia? Or that famous shot that closes Boogie Nights, where porn king Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) finally takes a good look at, er, himself in the mirror?

So, right, There Will Be Blood. Consider this a spoiler warning – I’m not going to reveal anything that doesn’t happen in the first five or so minutes, but it’s still better to go in cold and just experience it for yourself.

The film opens with one of its many arresting landscape shots, then provides us our first glimpse of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) – the man we’ll get to know in frightening detail over the next two-and-a-half hours – as he descends into a subterranean silver mine that’s more foreboding and otherworldly than any of the fantastical underground hellholes in the Lord of the Rings movies. The opening sequence, like the rest of the movie, plays out with deliberate intensity; between the creepily slow camera movements and Jonny Greenwood’s nerve-jangling score, it’s unsettling on levels both palpable and subconscious. By the time the scene is over, we know several things: one, that no risk or sacrifice or rationality can stand in the way of Daniel Plainview getting what he wants; two, he’s as hard and unforgiving as the rocky, barren country where he does his bidding; and three, most importantly, that the movie to follow is going to take us to places darker and scarier than that hole in the ground could ever hope to be, and – like Daniel – we’re going to be too fixated to even consider looking away.

Spoiler warning or not, I’m not going to reveal what happens in the closing scene, since I couldn’t hope to do it justice. Suffice it to say that it takes place in a mansion as eerie-looking as the silver mine in the opening scene, it reunites two characters that we absolutely needed to see together one last time, and contains a dramatic speech that will twist your guts in knots. It’s an exclamation point of an ending, the kind of thing that even viewers who didn’t appreciate the rest of the film will have trouble dismissing. It’s also the best few minutes of screen time in Day-Lewis’s already amazing career.

It’s true, these are only two scenes in a very lengthy movie, but they do so much to elevate everything that falls between them that they deserve to be singled out.

Alright, that’s enough out of me for now. I’ve got to go track down a screener copy of There Will Be Blood and a few dozen milk bottles… so, see you when I see you, I guess.

By now, the untimely passing of Heath Ledger yesterday has been widely reported everywhere; all that’s left at this point is for the details about his death to emerge, to cast a negative light on an actor who – I thought, at least – had done a better job than most in-demand young stars at keeping his off-screen private life private.

Whatever happened to cut his life so tragically short, though, the fact remains that Ledger did some amazing work in what ended up being an unfortunately brief career. Comfortable playing both charismatic action heroes (A Knight’s Tale, The Patriot) and fraught, conflicted dramatic characters (Brokeback Mountain, Monster’s Ball), Ledger lent appeal and gravity to even his less successful projects. I’ll admit I was pretty skeptical when he was unexpectedly chosen to play The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Dark Knight, but from everything I’ve seen so far, even that iconic and challenging role – one of the only villains Ledger ever played – seemed to be well within his range. It’s a performance I’m still very much looking forward to seeing, although now the surefire summer blockbuster will be emotionally affecting in ways the filmmakers definitely didn’t intend.

I’d like to think Ledger’s death might be some kind of wake-up call to other talented performers with great careers still ahead of them, but somehow I doubt it will be – so all I can say, pretty much, is what a shame.

A little bit of explanation: ‘Movie Match’ is a column I started back in fall 2006 in PLAY Magazine, where every week I pick a new release that’s looking good at the box office – or one that, at least, looks like it’s going to be a decent-sized hit – and match it up with another film available on DVD. The older movie might be from the same star or director, or it could just have a similar plot, style, perspective, or whatever; either way, the idea is to shed a little light on movies either a few years old or unjustly under-exposed that are still worth a look. Back when I was developing my taste in music, I discovered a lot of bands based on the “recommended if you like” concept (and still do, all the time), so I thought it might be interesting to apply it to movies, too. Generally, I try not to write about anything so obscure that it can’t be picked up at your local brick-and-mortar rental place, but as a recent convert to online rentals, I will say that those outfits won’t ever let you down in terms of selection.

If all continues to go according to plan, you’ll see another entry like this one right here every Tuesday.



If you had asked me two years ago which pre-1990s movie franchises had absolutely, positively zero chance of returning to the big screen, I think the Rambo series would have been right up there with Teen Wolf and Police Academy.

But then, of course, Rocky Balboa happened, and now Sylvester Stallone has seen fit bring back his other heroic – if sort of inarticulate – Reagan-era action icon, in a new film that sends Rambo on a mission to Burma (presumably without an accompanying soundtrack by Mission of Burma) to rescue some kidnapped aid workers and, oh yeah, kill people by the mega-crapload.

And you know what? I’m totally okay with all that.

I mean, sure, John Rambo is a relic, but after years of seeing super-slick, well-spoken, GQ heroes like Jason Bourne battling equally sophisticated villains onscreen, I think the time may be right to bring back the down ‘n dirty, meat-and-potatoes kind of action the Rambo series was all about. Especially since, you might remember, the last time Hollywood pulled an aging action star off the bench for a little rumble in the jungle, the results were actually pretty good.

Bruce Willis was the guy, and the Nigeria-set Tears of the Sun was the movie. And although it didn’t reap the same kind of blockbuster success as the Rambo franchise, the film proved that a fiftysomething star could blow stuff up just as convincingly as all the young bucks.

Willis stars as Navy SEAL A.K. Waters (we never do learn what those assault rifle-esque initials actually stand for), leader of a crack seven-man squad renowned for its ability to carry out orders with ruthless efficiency. Their latest assignment has them deployed to horrifically war-torn Nigeria to extract an American-affiliated doctor (Monica Bellucci) before a rebel death squad – whose associates have just murdered the president’s entire family – can descend on the remote Catholic hospital where she’s been working.

Things go awry not because the rebels arrive before Willis’s men do, but because Bellucci insists she won’t leave without bringing the hospital’s several dozen patients along with her. Willis, despite being such a hardass that he speaks mostly in imperative sentences of two words or less, finally caves to her demands – though his C.O. (Tom Skerritt), aboard an aircraft carrier off the African coast, refuses to send helicopters to pick the refugees up.

The majority of the movie plays out as a somber, scary game of cat-and-mouse, with Willis and his team leading the wounded and slow-moving refugees through the rainforest to the safety of the Cameroonian border, with the murderously rebels constantly breathing down their necks. It’s an uncomplicated but solid setup, and action vet Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Replacement Killers) does a bang-up job at making the jungle seem bristling with unseen dangers; the film’s first half is deliberately paced and impressively suspenseful, eschewing firefights for tense hide-and-seek sequences and none-too-subtle indications that the mission is going to end up dangerously FUBAR.

If you’re guessing that over the course of the film Willis gradually transforms from a hardened, duty-bound career soldier into a more sensitive, caring – but still ass-kicking – dude, well, you’re right. But while the film never quite delivers the mix of social consciousness and hard-hitting action it promises – it’s much more successful on the latter front – it does come off as a touch deeper than the average Hollywood shoot-‘em-up, and manages to avoid at least as many clichés as it includes (thankfully, Willis and Bellucci don’t end up making kissy-face in the midst of all the genocide).

The script, by Alex Lasker and Patrick Cirillo, could have used a touch more detail about the real-world conflict that the film is based around, but on the other hand it’s actually pretty compelling to be along for the ride almost exclusively with Willis and his team, who – initially, at least – are only interested in completing the mission and not getting shot to pieces. It’s true, the film occasionally borders on the exploitative with its brutal imagery of innocents being butchered by the rebels, way beyond what you’d expect in your average action movie. Still, Tears of the Sun is nothing if not well-intentioned, a film that – like Black Hawk Down and last year’s The Kingdom – at least attempts to advance a humanitarian message while still providing the kind of bloodshed that keeps action fans’ asses in the seats.

As for Willis, he acclimates himself nicely to a character that doesn’t get to throw out wisecracks every time he waxes a bad guy, and his age is never a distraction; this is the movie that proved to me that a fourth Die Hard, which we eventually got last summer, was a viable idea.

If the Rambo trailers are any indication, Stallone shouldn’t have much trouble following suit – and here’s hoping that the more recent crop of action-flick ass-kickers, Jason Statham and Gerard Butler and all the rest, can age as well as these guys did.

Post-apocalyptic action movies may not be as trendy now as they were in the 80s — I guess that's one of the downsides of the Cold War being over — but every once in a while a filmmaker comes along and reminds us of how cool Mad Max and all its many imitators could be.

This time around, it's Neil Marshall, director of The Descent, who'll be unleashing his end-of-civilization thiller Doomsday on March 14. The trailer is up now at Yahoo! Movies — you can check it out here — and, from the looks of it, this one's taking a decidedly old-school approach to the post-apoc genre, tattooed psycho-punks and all.

I have faith that Marshall, who whipped up some very well-orchestrated scares in The Descent, will knock this one out of the park. Still, the trailer seems a little scattered thematically, recalling both the grim, super-serious, politically inclined approach of most recent post-apoc movies (Children of Men, 28 Weeks Later) and the comic book thrills offered by Escape From New York, the Resident Evil series, etc. If Marshall can successfully combine the two angles, as George Miller did so successfully in The Road Warrior (also an obvious influence here), then Doomsday could very well end up being a genre classic.

Plus, Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell — you just can't go wrong with those guys.

A first blog post is sort of like a first kiss – sure, it’s very exciting and all, but it’s also pretty clear to all parties involved that you don’t have a clue what you’re doing.

So let’s just keep it simple, shall we? The aim of this blog, Cinematic for the People, is to share some information, discussion, and opinions (and yes, I am aware of what certain unsavory body part that opinions are like) about anything and everything involving the movies. I’ll be touching on all the big-deal Hollywood blockbusters, of course, but also as many independent, foreign, classic, or otherwise obscure films as I have time and space for. My goals is to have something to offer to both the casual cinema-goer who catches a flick or two per month as well as the hardcore movie-geek who owns every Criterion Collection DVD or scours the internet hourly for the latest tidbit about what material Spider-man’s eyeholes will be constructed out of in the series’ next installment.

My taste in movies is all over the map – Nosferatu, Singin’ In the Rain, Oldboy, and, uh, Half-Baked all comfortably share space on my DVD shelves at home – so I hope to cover as wide a range here as possible, and not to trash anything that isn’t actually trash (though I certainly believe there's a distinction between “good trash” and “bad trash”).

I do have a particular affinity for the great “underdog” films that, for whatever reason, didn’t connect with the majority of critics or moviegoers – like Punch-Drunk Love, whose incredible closing scene supplied the title of this post – and also for movies made by scrappy, resourceful filmmakers who didn’t let their lack of money, access, or support get in the way of them getting their vision to the screen.

What’s to come? Well, we’ll see – 2007 was a particularly terrific year for movies, so here’s hoping that this year will give us lots more memorable films to talk about in the coming weeks and months. Feel free to drop me a line here at the Register at nscalia@nhregister.com, and check back every few days for updates of all shapes and sizes.

Until then, try to have yourself a transcendent experience in a darkened room surrounded by loud noises and complete strangers. Trust me, you’ll love it.