As a lifelong appreciator of both film and video games, it breaks my heart to see just how godawful the results generally are when these two mediums attempt to cross-pollinate.
I’m feeling especially gloomy this week, as Max Payne – easily one of my favorite games of all time – makes the jump to the big screen, courtesy of director John Moore. If ever there was a game that had a shot at being a halfway decent movie, Payne was it – from its visuals and storyline, both heavily indebted to the film noir tradition, to its copious John Woo-inspired gunplay and its lineup of colorful supporting characters, it had all the elements in place to be an involving and stylish shoot-‘em-up a la Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City. Still, even though the film’s production designers seem to have nailed the game’s urban nightmare aesthetic and I do dig the casting of Mark Wahlberg in the title role, I can’t help but think that this regrettably PG-13-rated effort is going to be just another missed opportunity.
That will be a shame especially because cinematic video game adaptations seemed to finally be turning the corner, as evidenced by last fall’s surprisingly enjoyable action flick Hitman. Based on a series of games that invite the player to think like a well-trained international assassin and kill people in elaborate and methodical ways, the film (the English-language debut of French director Xavier Gens) instead goes the route of the typical globetrotting spy-on-the-run movie and actually ends up being more effective for doing so.
Our title character is a nameless contract killer raised in a monastery, rigorously trained in the deadly arts, and under the control of a top-secret organization called, um, The Organization, which the film informs us has ties to every government in the world. As ably portrayed by Deadwood’s Timothy Olyphant, Agent 47 – yes, he’s at least got a number, if not a name – is a stone-cold, cueball-headed death dealer with a flawless record of clockwork-like kills and immaculate escapes. Unfortunately, his perfect career begins to unravel when he somehow botches the assassination of a crooked Russian presidential candidate (Ulrich Thomsen) despite the fact that, as the heroic Interpol agent (Dougray Scott) on 47’s trail insists, the guy just simply “doesn’t miss.” Turns out there’s some shady business afoot involving the Russian secret police, and before long 47 is forced to go on the lam with a spunky St. Petersburg prostitute named Nika (Olga Kurylenko) as the bad guys, the authorities, and even the un-creatively named but decidedly well-organized Organization mobilize against them.
Yes, the storyline is pretty much rote – and much of it is poorly handled, to boot – but Hitman manages to stand head and shoulders over the usual video game adaptation in that it at least feels like an actual spy thriller, rather than just a silly, aimless spew of incoherent action sequences and winking references to the games. Those action sequences, in fact, are actually quite good – Gens, clearly inspired by the work of Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita, The Professional), does a fine job of showing off 47’s superhuman prowess in kinetic scenes that have him mowing down legions of bad guys with a gracefulness that the comparatively jumpy Jason Bourne would envy. There’s not much tension – except during a nicely done four-man, eight-blade swordfight sequence – but that’s not really the point here anyway; 47 is supposed to be the most efficient killing machine ever created, and the film gives us ample opportunity to see him doing what he does best.
What also works surprisingly well is the dynamic between 47 and Nika, which works toward fleshing out a character who, by design, has abandoned most of his more human feelings and flaws. While a guy like James Bond is apt to jump into bed with his female co-stars before the gunsmoke’s even cleared, Kurylenko (who’s also in Max Payne) spends almost the entire film throwing herself at the apparently asexual 47 to little avail – as if the desire for human contact, physical or otherwise, has been entirely eradicated by 47’s training. There are flashes of wit and humanity in they scenes they share, and these go a long way toward establishing a personality and a character arc for 47 – though, thankfully, there’s no sappy attempt to turn him into a caring individual, the downfall of many a movie about professional assassins.
Is Hitman at all faithful to the games that inspired it? Not being overly familiar with them, I can’t really say – and I can’t really say that I care. What’s important is that it works as a movie, and if all game adaptations can at least hold themselves to that easily reachable standard, this genre might someday stop giving off the whiff of suckiness that’s been attached to it for far too long.

This week’s neighbor-from-hell yarn Lakeview Terrace, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Patrick Wilson, looks like your standard Hollywood domestic shocker – or, it would look that way if you didn’t notice that the director was one Neil LaBute.

LaBute, a filmmaker (and playwright) I’ve been following intently since I caught his stunning debut, In the Company of Men, in the early days of DVD, is one of cinema’s foremost chroniclers of men – and often, also women – behaving badly, his characters some of the most manipulative and cynical creatures ever put on screen. What makes them worth getting to know is that LaBute has a Mamet-like gift for brutal, darkly comedic dialogue, and although he’s since branched out into films that take a slightly less poisoned view of humanity, he’s at his best when working knee-deep in nastiness. Hopefully Lakeview Terrace will be able to capture at least a little bit of the edge that made most of his earlier films so great.

Before we get to it, though, here’s a quick look back at some of the films that put LaBute on the map. I’ve had to leave out a few, but for space reasons only – 2002’s romantic drama Possession, LaBute’s biggest departure to date, and 2004’s return-to-form adaptation The Shape of Things are both worth well checking out if you’ve enjoyed any of his other work.

In the Company of Men (1997)
Still possibly LaBute’s masterpiece, this lacerating, pitch-dark indie flick – supposedly made for a paltry $25,000 budget – is the kind of debut that makes you stand up and take notice. Icily satirizing testosterone-fueled corporate culture, the film follows a manipulative, misogynistic white-collar sleazebag (Aaron Eckhart) who coaxes a meek, gullible coworker (Matt Malloy) into playing along with a nasty little ruse he’s cooked up as a way of symbolically getting his revenge on the female gender. The target of their sick, vengeful “game”: an innocent deaf woman (Stacy Edwards) who’s never done anything wrong to either of them.
The film never completely transcends its stagebound origins (LaBute adapted his own play), but it’s a riveting cinematic experience nonetheless – the plot is consistently shocking, the dialogue is razor-sharp, and Eckhart’s performance will chill your bones.
Worth Watching For: Almost everything in it – this one’s pretty perfect.
Unforgettable Bit of Dialogue: “Women. Nice ones, the most frigid of the race, it doesn’t matter in the end. Inside they’re all the same meat and gristle and hatred just simmering.”




Your Friends and Neighbors (1998)
Intentionally one of the least fun, least sexy movies ever made on the subject of sex, Your Friends & Neighbors is an ensemble piece about several well-to-do yet severely unhappy and unstable urbanites and their various (and mostly miserable) hook-ups and break-ups. In the words of the great Roger Ebert, it’s “the kind of date movie that makes you want to go home alone.”
The cast includes Ben Stiller, Catherine Keener, Amy Brenneman, and – of course – Aaron Eckhart.
Worth Watching For: Some of the most skillful injections of humor into otherwise mortifying scenes that I’ve ever seen in a film.
Unforgettable Bit of Dialogue: “The best f--- I ever had? That would be your wife. That was the best f--- I ever had.”


Nurse Betty (2000)
An odd mix of romantic comedy, postmodern gangster movie, and offbeat character study, Nurse Betty was LaBute’s decidedly unconventional attempt to connect with a mainstream audience. Renee Zellweger stars as Betty, a sweet but delusional waitress who witnesses her husband’s drug-related murder and afterward, following her own whacked-out logic, decides to hightail it to Los Angeles to rendezvous with her beloved “ex-fiancé” – who’s actually just a character on a daytime soap opera played by actor Greg Kinnear. Following her are a pair of hitmen, Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock, the elder of which develops a crush on Betty even though they’ve been sent to snuff her out.
Darker and more violent than just about any rom-com you’ve ever seen – people get freakin’ scalped in this movie – yet somehow still endearing and surprisingly touching, Nurse Betty finds LaBute flirting with Hollywood conventions while keeping one foot firmly planted in indie quirkiness.
Worth Watching For: Its head-spinning mix of tones and genres. The genuine chemistry between Freeman and Rock is pretty impressive, too.
Unforgettable Bit of Dialogue: “Know what bugs me the most about these soaps? It’s people with no lives, watching other peoples’ fake lives.”


The Wicker Man (2006)
What to say about this ill-advised remake of a classic British chiller? A box office flop on its release, the film has earned cult-favorite status among fans of the “So Bad It’s Good” genre, and for good reason – it’s one of the most astoundingly wrongheaded pieces of cinema you may ever experience. Nicolas Cage overacts up a storm as a cop investigating a young girl’s disappearance on a Pacific Northwest island populated by creepy pagans, but while the setup is unchanged from the well-remembered 1973 original, this one takes a sharp turn toward silliness early on and plunges ever deeper as it goes along.
Having proven his wit and his talent with so many earlier films, you’ve got to wonder if La Bute wasn’t just having a laugh at the expense of the studio when he was making The Wicker Man – how else to explain the uber-ridiculous fight scenes, the sledgehammer symbolism, the clumsy attempts at shock moments, and, well, everything else on display?
Worth Watching For: The outright zaniness of it all – this movie is so insane, you won’t even bat an eye when Cage starts sucker-punching old ladies and running around in a bear suit (thankfully, you can see most of the really wild stuff on YouTube if you’re not up for watching the whole movie).
Unforgettable Bit of Dialogue: “Howditgetburned???!!!!! Howditgetburned????!!!!!!”

Well, now... I wrote this column last week before leaving for vacation, back when there was still some hope that Babylon A.D. would turn out to be a halfway decent slice of sci-fi cinema. Looking at the early reviews, apparently this is not the case -- even director Mathieu Kassovitz has gone on record saying the film is a piece of crap. It seems that once again the talented French filmmaker has been disrespected and pushed around by an American production company (if you believe his version of the story), and although I honestly believe he's got a lot more great movies in him, at this point I highly doubt they'll be made here in the U.S. It's our loss.

The flashy sci-fi pic Babylon A.D. may end up being little more than Children of Men for the Transformers set, but I’m holding out hope that the film is more ambitious than its underwhelming trailers have made it out to be.
That isn’t because I’ve been clamoring for Vin Diesel’s return to the big screen – though I did sort of enjoy his wisecracking mobster act in the surprisingly good Find Me Guilty – but rather because the film gives director Mathieu Kassovitz a chance to redeem himself after fumbling the ball somewhat with his Hollywood debut. Kassovitz is a great filmmaker who, like far too many young, talented world cinema whiz kids before him, made a splash in his home country (in his case, France) before departing for our shores only to lose some of his mojo in the American studio system. In 1995, he wowed the world with the gritty, black-and-white French youth gang drama La Haine; seven years later, he sat in the director’s chair for the unsuccessful, critically panned (but, still, not entirely terrible) Halle Berry horror flick Gothika.
Kassovitz hasn’t directed another film since (although he’s had some notable acting roles in projects like Spielberg’s Munich), and while I can think of better ways to re-invigorate a directorial career than by hitching your wagon to Vin Diesel’s star, I have a feeling that he might find some Stateside success yet, even if Babylon doesn’t connect. I say this because Kassovitz has basically already proven that he can make a slam-bang Hollywood movie, even if the film in question wasn’t made in Hollywood at all.
2000’s The Crimson Rivers, Kassovitz’s final film before his U.S. career reboot, is a tense, intriguing, extremely well-directed thriller cut from the same cloth as Se7en and the Hannibal Lector franchise. About as far removed from the insulting stereotypes regarding French cinema – boring, pretentious, plot-less, etc. – as a French film can get, Rivers holds its own against its American counterparts in the often tired serial-killer genre and proves without a doubt that Kassovitz has just as solid a handle on mainstream entertainment as he does on more radical filmmaking.
The film opens with two seemingly unrelated police investigations, one extremely gruesome and the other just slightly out of the ordinary. The former finds brooding veteran detective Pierre Niemans (played by the great Jean Reno) called to a creepily quiet university town high in the French Alps to investigate the ritualistic torture/murder of a college librarian; in a small town not far away, meanwhile, young and impulsive police lieutenant Kerkerian (Vincent Cassel) begins digging into a mundane-looking graveyard vandalism case involving some local skinheads that quickly turns into something far more disturbing. By the time these two very different cops’ paths have crossed – later in the film than you might expect – they’ve both begun to piece together a horrifying, decades-old conspiracy involving a little girl’s death, sinister genetics experiments, and an educational institution that’s gone a few steps too far in the pursuit of excellence.
Getting an awful lot of mileage out of his two highly capable stars and some stunning-looking snowbound locations, Kassovitz keeps the tension high and the scenes cranking along even as Rivers’ plot becomes impenetrably murky toward the end. A shade or two lighter in tone than, say, Se7en, the film nevertheless pulls off some truly skin-crawling setpieces – Kassovitz has a way with revealing dead bodies – and effectively maintains an atmosphere of pervasive, intangible evil throughout. The highly energetic, David Fincher-esque camerawork is a major asset, as are co-star Nadia Fares (who kind of reminds me of a French Rachel Weisz) the surprisingly plentiful chase scenes and an out-of-place but very lively fight sequence between Cassel and a couple of punks.
The film smacks of Hollywood, but not at all in a negative sense – it’s an unabashed crowd-pleaser with superior technical craftsmanship, a plot that doesn’t leave you hanging, and lots of action. I’m not at all surprised that American studio execs saw dollar signs all over it, and figured that Kassovitz could do well for himself here in the U.S. They certainly had the right idea – now all they need to do is throw him a project worthy of his talent.

In the buzzed-about comedy Hamlet 2, out in limited release this week, a frustrated drama teacher (played by Steve Coogan) motivates his students and shocks the censors by producing a politically incorrect musical “sequel” to Shakespeare’s Hamlet in which Hillary Clinton and Jesus Christ are both supporting characters.
Of course, Shakespeare having lived and died long before copyright law was established, his works certainly can be freely adapted by anybody willing to take a crack at them – and while some folks, like Orson Welles and Kenneth Branagh, have taken pride in staying true to the Bard’s vision in their adaptations, plenty of others have dared to take some gutsy and occasionally dazzling liberties with the plays everybody knows and loves. In honor of Hamlet 2’s not-quite-reverent approach to the greatest tragedy of all time, here are a few films that really pushed the envelope in bringing Shakespeare to the screen – being something of a nonconformist himself, I think he would have enjoyed them a lot.

O (2001)

Shakespeare’s Othello revolves around jealousy, prejudice and back-stabbing, and where can one possibly find more of that stuff than in high school? Still, while transferring the story to a modern teenage setting might have been a no-brainer, Tim Blake Nelson’s O goes the extra step to be a compelling drama rather than just another gimmicky modernization.
Mekhi Phifer – in one of his best performances to date – stars as basketball phenom Odin James, the only black student at a prestigious private school who’s driven by duplicitous teammate Hugo (Josh Hartnett) into suspecting his girlfriend Desi (Julia Stiles) is cheating on him. Things, of course, get tragic and violent from there.
A powerful and surprisingly unsparing adaptation – it was shelved for several years after the Columbine tragedy – O is a terrific reminder of how relevant many of Shakespeare’s themes still are, and of how effectively they can be spun into contemporary narratives in the right hands.

Tromeo & Juliet (1996)
Leave it to the lovable sleazeballs at Troma Studios to turn the most famous romantic tragedy ever written into an orgy of blood, boobs, and body piercing that makes the Leo DiCaprio version look as tame as children’s theater.
That’s not to say that Tromeo & Juliet, one of Troma’s most ambitious and well-received low-budget productions, completely throws the text out the window – characters actually speak in verse, though it’s liberally sprinkled with cuss words – but somehow I doubt that the Globe Theatre ever featured mutated cow creatures or softcore lesbian action on its stage. Narrated by Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmeister (an awesome touch), Tromeo and Juliet finds its lovestruck title characters (played by Will Keenan and Jane Jensen) caught in the midst of a war between rival porn-producing families in an urban crap-hole setting, soundtracked by the likes of Wesley Willis and the Ass Ponys.
The film launched the career of its writer, James Gunn, who’d go on to script the surprisingly decent Dawn of the Dead remake and his later directorial debut, the underappreciated horror/comedy masterpiece Slither.

Macbeth (1971)

Unlike the 2001 Sundance favorite Scotland, Pa., which stages Macbeth in a 1970s-era fast-food restaurant, or the John Turturro cult item Men of Respect, which translates it into a mafia movie, Roman Polanski’s take on one of the Bard’s best-known tragedies is actually pretty faithful to the source material. It nevertheless makes this list by being so bloody, gritty and atmospheric that it plays more like an artsy, big-budget grindhouse flick than a stately Shakespearian drama.
Wild-eyed British actor Jon Finch plays the title role in this U.S./U.K. coproduction, which contains a memorably sympathetic portrayal of Lady Macbeth (Francesca Annis) and an exceedingly bleak tone that many critics saw as Polanski’s reaction to the murder of his wife Sharon Tate by the Manson family. As dark and cold as its rocky Welsh settings, the film is one of the most “realistic” screen versions of the story I’ve ever seen, though it also contains some decidedly trippy sequences – particularly those involving the story’s infamous coven of witches. The sound effect that accompanies Macbeth’s hallucinations in the famous “is this a dagger I see before me” scene is worth the price of admission alone.

Titus (1999)

Broadway director Julie Taymor made her feature film debut with this visually stunning adaptation of Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s first and most notorious play – a charming tale of rape, murder, and torture that seems more like the work of the Hills Have Eyes folks than it does the guy who penned A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Rather than going for a straight-up retelling or modernization of the sensationalistic story, however, Taymor opts for a wildly stylistic, almost avant-garde approach to the material, creating a jaw-dropping hybrid of past and present, fantasy and reality in which motorcycles coexist with chariots, flashbacks are presented in music video-like style, and toy soldiers transform into actual Roman warriors. Anthony Hopkins, playing the title role, heads a terrific cast that also includes Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers; the ace production design, inspired by everything from ancient Rome to WWII Italy to Rat Pack-era Las Vegas, is handled by Fellini’s go-to guy Dante Ferretti.
This is a nearly three-hour movie, based on one of the most unpleasant stories ever written, but trust me – you won’t be able to take your eyes off of it for the duration.

Well, the wait has been an excruciatingly long one, but this week it’s finally over – The Dark Knight, our long-awaited second installment in the head-and-shoulders best superhero franchise currently running, is here at last.

With it, of course, comes the most talked-about performance of the year: Heath Ledger, in one of his final film roles, as The Joker. From everything I’ve seen and heard thus far – and, man, has it been a lot – this is a performance that’s going to get talked about whenever people talk about the greatest bad guys in movie history, so this week I thought I’d take a look back at some other big-name actors who were at their best playing the worst of the worst.

Sir Laurence Olivier as Dr. Christian Szell, Marathon Man

Alright a knight, an Oscar-winner, and the best-known Shakespearean actor on the planet, the ever-dignified Olivier decided to add another title to his resume in 1977: scary-ass mofo. His ex-death camp doctor Christian Szell wasn’t even the main villain in William Goldman’s espionage thriller Marathon Man, but that didn’t stop him from handily stealing the show – the scene in which he tortures Dustin Hoffman’s in-over-his-head hero with a variety of cringe-inducing dental implements has become one of the best remembered squirm sequences in film history, and rightly so.
Olivier earned one of his many Academy Award nominations for the role, reportedly inspired by real-life Nazi torturer Josef Mengele, and also placed the innocent-seeming question, “Is it safe?” up there with the most terrifying lines ever uttered in the movies.

Henry Fonda as Frank, Once Upon a Time in the West

In the 30s, he played a fresh-faced Abe Lincoln. In the 40s, he played a lovestruck Wyatt Earp. In the 50s, he played the most levelheaded of the 12 Angry Men.
In the 60s, he played a dude who shot a little kid in the face, point-blank, then chuckled about it afterward.
Sergio Leone’s epic horse opera Once Upon a Time in the West conjures up one of the most dog-eat-dog western settings this side of Deadwood, and the baddest dog of them all is Henry Fonda’s sneering hired killer Frank – so evil, in fact, he apparently only needs a first name. What makes Frank such an icon of western villainy isn’t just his decidedly casual sadism – it’s also the fact that Fonda’s got such an fatherly, heroic-looking face, it makes the sight of him gunning down an entire family or violently having his way with co-star Claudia Cardinale that much more disturbing to witness. By the end of the nearly three-hour film, you’re clawing at the armrests waiting to see him get pumped full of hot lead.

Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth, Blue Velvet

Nobody ever accused Dennis Hopper of being a particularly grounded guy, but his zoned-out characters in films like Apocalypse Now and Easy Rider at least seemed harmless enough to share a doobie with.
No so Frank Booth, the wild-eyed, sex-crazed, Roy Orbison-loving psychotic that makes Norman Bates seem positively well-adjusted. Played with a mix of soft-spoken menace and full-volume hysterical mega-insanity – sorry, but they haven’t yet invented a word that can accurately describe Frank Booth in a fit of rage – this character is terrifying even by the high standards of David Lynch’s wonderfully warped filmography, and arguably represents the finest work of Hopper’s lengthy career. Whether he’s dazedly lip-synching along to "In Dreams" with a fellow weirdo played by Dean Stockwell, beating the crap out of aw-shucks small-town protagonist Kyle MacLachlan, or horrifically redefining the “S” in S&M, this is one film character that you pray doesn’t have a real-life counterpart.
And, yes, I know that Dennis Hopper is probably the least-famous actor on this list, but I had to include him simply because Frank Booth would eat all of these other villains for breakfast – with a basketful of kittens on the side and a tall glass of anthrax to wash it all down.

Jack Nicholson as The Joker, Batman

Ledger may go down in history as the best onscreen Joker ever, but Jack Nicholson’s hedonistic perma-sneer perfectly suited the tone of Tim Burton’s original Batman film.
Nicholson demanded top billing to appear as the villain in Burton’s dark-yet-campy interpretation of pointy-eared hero’s origin story, and as good as star Michael Keaton was in the title role, ol’ Jack earned his top-dog spot in the credits with a performance that didn’t humanize the Clown Prince of Crime but rather played up his most entertainingly comic book-y qualities. Backed by Prince’s throbbing funk soundtrack and killer production design that perfectly realizes a sort of trippy cartoon version of film noir, Nicholson’s Joker is the loudest and most colorful instrument in a symphony of cinematic excess – and his work is one of the big reasons why Burton’s Batman still has plenty of admirers despite the overwhelming fan support of Nolan’s deeper, grittier caped crusader saga.

Al Pacino as John Milton, The Devil’s Advocate

Satan’s a character that tends to chew scenery in just about anything he shows up in – see, for instance, The Bible – so it’s surprising that it took until 1997 to cast Al Pacino as a thinly veiled version of Christianity’s number-one supervillain.
Trading the usual cloven hooves for a pair of thousand-dollar wingtips, Pacino plays the prince of darkness as a multi-millionaire Manhattan lawyer named John Milton, who bedevils innocent legal hotshot Keanu Reeves into joining his Satanic law firm (now that’s a redundant phrase, har har har) and does his bidding from a ridiculously luxurious office that would make Gordon Gekko green with envy.
Pacino doesn’t get to do his requisite screaming flip-out thing until pretty late in director Taylor Hackford’s overlong but trashily fun combination of legal thriller and religious horror flick, but his performance is an insidiously great one because he’s just way too damn persuasive about why being evil is so awesome – it might have been Billy Joel who said the sinners have much more fun, but nobody argues the point quite as eloquently as this sharp-dressed S.O.B. does.

To a young kid obsessed with everything 007-related, the late 60s spy spoof Get Smart – whose reruns once aired, conveniently, right before bedtime on Nick at Nite – was about the coolest thing on television at the time.

Sure, some of the gags were probably over my head, but all the goodhearted swipes at the Bond series were always appreciated, and even at that age I could recognize the late Don Adams’ innate and inimitable comedic genius – that man could pop off catchphrases with the best of them, and nobody’s ever gotten more comic mileage out of talking into a shoe.

With all that in mind, I have to say I’m a little wary of this week’s Hollywood remake of my beloved show. Yes, I think Steve Carell was the best possible choice to play Maxwell Smart, and he should be well matched by co-stars Anne Hathaway and Dwayne “Sorry, But I’m Still Going to Refer to You as ‘The Rock’” Johnson, but I enjoyed Bewitched and Scooby Doo on the small screen, too, and look what happened when they got made into big-budget summer movies. Get Smart had a madcap comedic energy that was all its own, and I can’t imagine that would be an easy thing to duplicate and/or update for modern moviegoers – though I’ll be the first one to sing the filmmakers’ praises if they actually get it right.

As big-screen spy spoofs go, however, fans of the old-school Get Smart series could do a lot worse than the 1984 comedy Top Secret!, featuring a pre-Iceman Val Kilmer in his first movie role. Written and directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker – the guys responsible for Airplane!, still probably the greatest spoof movie of all time – the cult favorite is wall-to-wall packed with clever visual gags, and makes today’s unfortunate glut of shoddily-constructed spoofs (which Abrahams and the Zuckers, sadly, are partially responsible for) seem even lamer than we already know they are.

Kilmer stars as an Elvis-like American rock-and-roll heartthrob named Nick Rivers who’s just hit the top of the charts with his hit song Skeet Surfin’ – a Beach Boys-esque tune about, well, surfing and shooting skeet (simultaneously, of course). In the film’s world, East Germany is run by some nefarious Nazis, who’ve invited Nick to perform at a concert that’s actually a smokescreen for a world-domination scheme involving the requisite kidnapped scientist, a magnet that attracts submarines, and a whole lot of cackling. Never mind the plot, however, since even the filmmakers admit that it’s just an excuse to string together gags that leaves no form of silliness unturned – from hilarious gibberish posing as German to an unexpected (and spot-on) parody of the 80s trash classic The Blue Lagoon to a ballet sequence that seemingly anticipates the arrival of Viagra more than a decade before it was invented. My personal favorite: a gag involving an industrial-size “marital aid,” the easy-to-miss punchline to which is the funniest line in the movie (it’s amazing what you could get away with in a PG-rated flick back then). A cameo by Pac-man ranks a close second.

Never as consistent or laugh-out-loud hilarious as Airplane!, Top Secret! is inventive and energetic throughout and showcases one of the most charismatic performances in Kilmer’s career – he even does all his own singing and dancing. The supporting cast is mostly game (and screen legend Omar Sharif has some very funny moments as an ill-fated secret agent) but the film’s appeal lies not so much in the performances but in the inspired goofiness of the sight gags and production design, both uncommonly good for a comedy of this type. You’ve just got to love a movie that includes the only underwater barroom brawl in film history, and in which East German stationery bears the slogan “Better Government Through Intimidation.”

Easily and pretty cheaply available on dvd, Top Secret! is exactly the kind of movie that Get Smart should be, and has rightly earned its status as a classic yukfest of the VHS era. They simply don’t make spoofs like this anymore, but they sure ought to.

I don’t get any pleasure out of saying so, but M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water is officially my least favorite movie of all time.

That’s not because it’s terrible – but, holy sweet crap is it terrible – but more because I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that Shyamalan, who’d seemed to be so in touch with his audience on films like The Sixth Sense and Signs, could be responsible for something so woefully misguided, self-indulgent, and unappealing on every conceivable level.

As bad a taste as that film left in my mouth, though, I’m still pretty psyched for his new film, the unexpectedly R-rated apocalyptic thriller The Happening, and – although it might just be wishful thinking – I believe it might be one of his best films thus far. Why? Because everybody makes mistakes, and many of my favorite filmmakers have rebounded from their biggest critical and popular disasters with some of their most highly regarded work. Just as Steven Spielberg followed up his ill-conceived and unappreciated 1941 with his now-legendary Raiders of the Lost Ark in the early 80s – and then, in the early 90s, bounced back from the one-two punch of mediocrity that was Always and Hook with the instant-classic Jurassic Park – I’m hoping that the embarrassing performance of Lady knocked some sense back into M. Night, and that’s why I’m dedicating this week’s Movie Match to great films made by great directors in the wake of their biggest disappointments.

John McTiernan’s Die Hard With a Vengeance

The Last Action Hero, a hopelessly inept combination of kiddie fantasy-fulfillment flick and crude satire of violent action movies, was a total snafu of a film, even with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the lead and ace action director John McTiernan behind the camera. Although it very well could have derailed the director’s career, however, just two years later McTiernan delivered a crackling second sequel to his 1988 hit Die Hard, teaming Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson for an explosion-heavy romp around New York City that stands as one of the best summer blockbusters of the 90s. With its over-the-top but expertly choreographed action sequences – the tunnel chase, especially, is an absolute jaw-dropper – and the highly entertaining chemistry between its stars, Die Hard With a Vengeance quickly reestablished McTiernan as a force to be reckoned with in the shoot ‘em up genre… though he’s yet to recover from a more recent string of bombs that includes 2002’s dreadful Rollerball remake.

Tim Burton’s Big Fish

Some classics can’t be touched, as fanboy favorite Burton learned when he unsuccessfully tried “re-imagining” Planet of the Apes back in 2002. While cool-looking, his poorly received Apes flick just didn’t have much heart – though his follow-up, 2004’s Big Fish, had enough of that for a dozen movies. Maybe Burton’s most sensitive and sentimental film to date, Big Fish (adapted by scribe John August) is a modern fantasy about a charismatic young man named Edward Bloom (Ewan McGregor) whose life is one tall tale after another; it’s also a touching and keenly observed story about coming to understand – and appreciate – one’s family, as strange as they might be. Deftly mixing fairy tale elements and eye-popping storybook visuals with a streak of warmth and humanity that surpasses even his own masterpiece, Edward Scissorhands, Burton bounced back from his misfired monkey movie with a film that has quickly become one of my all-time favorites.

Kevin Smith’s Clerks 2

Smith’s filmography has its share of both obsessive fans and bile-spewing haters, and the latter camp was probably thrilled with his dopey 2003 dramedy Jersey Girl – the detractors couldn’t have asked for a better argument as to why Smith should quit filmmaking and head back to the convenience store where he got his start. And, actually, that’s exactly what Smith did with 2006’s Clerks 2, a 12-years-later sequel to the vulgar black-and-white comedy that gave him his big break. Returning to the Star Wars references and MPAA-baiting dialogue that had once earned him the adulation of myself and other teenage guys all over America – but, this time, with an added dose of thirtysomething cynicism and melancholy that really helped round out his cast of knockabout blue-collar characters – Smith played to his own strengths and gave the fans what they wanted, rather than taking another ill-advised detour into Lifetime-movie territory. The result was one of the funniest and best-written movies of his career.

Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center

I enjoyed Stone’s overblown historical epic Alexander more than most folks did, but the film remains an extremely high-profile megabomb – and a costly one, at that. In Alexander’s wake, though, came the most earnest and least self-indulgent movie the unpredictable director had ever made: 2006’s harrowing and fact-based 9/11 drama World Trade Center. Made – shockingly – without a political agenda, the well-directed and inspiring film wisely narrowed its scope to focus on one incredible story at the center of an unfathomable day of tragedy: that of Port Authority police officers John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno (played in the film by Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena), who struggled to stay alive underneath a horrific mass of rubble after getting caught under a collapsed tower during a rescue mission. One might have expected Stone to treat this subject matter with a lot more vitriol – his upcoming release, after all, is an incendiary George W. Bush biopic – but instead he crafted a well-meaning and refreshingly non-exploitative tribute to American heroism that silenced even some of his harshest critics.

Spike Lee’s Inside Man

Lee’s never been a filmmaker short on ideas, but he crammed so many into the loopy 2004 satire She Hate Me that the film quite literally collapsed under the weight; Roger Ebert, whose mediocre review was one of the only remotely positive ones the film earned, says it “contains enough for five movies, but has no idea which of those movies it wants to be.” Apparently, Lee learned a little bit about focus before returning to the big screen; his next effort, 2006’s Inside Man, was a tight, smart, highly entertaining heist flick that – while not amongst his most meaningful films – managed to score with one of his widest audiences yet. Solid central performances by Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster, as well as some especially nice work from co-stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Clive Owen, round out an ingeniously plotted crime drama that leaves two confused cops (Washington and Ejiofor) scrambling to figure out just what the hell happened during one of the most enigmatic bank robberies in movie history. Who knew that, after proving himself as one of the most notable “serious” American filmmakers of his generation, Lee could also fire off a near-perfect genre pic without breaking a sweat?

Well folks, the most eagerly anticipated movie of 2008 is finally upon us this week. Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about the Adam Sandler cinematic classic-to-be You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.

What, you’re not soiling yourself with excitement for Sandler’s turn as an Israeli Mossad agent who longs to be a hair stylist? Yeah, me either. It’s not any particular beef I’ve got with Sandler, but even with Judd Apatow listed as a co-writer and the great John Turturro showing up for yet another supporting role, Zohan looks to be one of this summer’s most misguided movies, vying for that dubious honor with Mike Myers’ The Love Guru.

Personally, I think Sandler’s big-screen comedic aptitude peaked with his first major movie, Billy Madison (yes, it’s an orgy of crude, juvenile slapstick hijinks, but hey, who doesn’t love an orgy?), and for years now I’ve been wishing he’d just scrap the juvenile stuff and do some more worthwhile film work – his 2002 collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love, is one of my favorite movies, and proved that Sandler has what it takes to transition to “serious” roles if he were willing to make the leap.

Until that day, though, I’ll leave you with four Sandler movies that ended up being a heck of a lot better than anybody could have predicted – in the hopes that Zohan might somehow manage to bring this list up to five.

Click

It’s a Wonderful Life it ain’t, but this potentially horrific (possibly unintentional) homage to Frank Capra actually ended up being one of the most bearable – and kinda-sorta lovable – Sandler comedies of the past decade. The plot, which wouldn’t have seemed out of place on The Twilight Zone, has workaholic architect Sandler purchasing an enchanted remote control from kooky scientist Christopher Walken that allows him to control time by simply clicking its buttons. As he uses it to fast-forward the “boring” parts of his daily existence – and occasionally ogle some jiggling cleavage in slo-mo – he begins to inadvertently skip over the important moments with his kids and his wife (Kate Beckinsale, clearly the kind of girl you want to pause, not fast-forward). Mostly sacrificing huge laughs in favor of sentimentality, Click is still markedly better than the average effects-driven big-budget comedy, thanks to its occasionally inventive script and a winning Sandler performance that has his character aging almost a half-century (aided by Oscar-nominated makeup effects) over the course of the film.

Reign Over Me



I’ve never cried during an Adam Sandler flick – thought I may have shed a tear or two after having wasted eight bucks seeing Mr. Deeds – but this 2007 film, from writer/director Mike Binder, came the closest to making that happen.
Sandler, in his riskiest role to date, plays an average family man who became a withdrawn eccentric after losing his wife and daughters in the 9/11 attacks; his old dental school roommate (Don Cheadle) bumps into him one day, and takes it upon himself to reconnect with his old friend and bring him out of the depressed, lonely stupor he’s been suffering through.
Binder has a knack for character-driven films with engaging little touches of comedy (a combination he nailed in his previous film, The Upside of Anger), and Reign Over Me gets a lot of dramatic mileage out of its Cheadle/Sandler pairing without crossing the line into exploitation – an impressive feat, considering the subject matter. Had the film been released in November instead of March last year, Sandler might have even landed an award nomination or two.

Airheads



Dated as this grunge-era comedy is becoming, it’s still got laughs to spare – and features the kind of once-in-a-lifetime cast that’ll make it worth seeing no matter how painful the hairstyles are.
Sandler plays the dimwitted drummer of headbanger Brendan Fraser’s terrible hard rock trio The Lone Rangers (which also includes a very scraggly Steve Buscemi), who resort to extreme measures to get their demo tape played on the radio: they break into the radio station with plastic Uzis and hold the staff and d-bag DJ Joe Mantegna hostage. Coming off like a lighthearted cross between Wayne’s World and Die Hard (it’s even shot in the same L.A. highrise they used for the Nakatomi Plaza), Airheads offered Sandler one of his first major movie roles and surrounded him with the funniest lineup of supporting players he’s had to date – including Chris Farley, Michael McKean, Judd Nelson, Harold Ramis, and, in a particularly entertaining turn, a pre-Seinfeld, pre-career suicide Michael Richards.

Spanglish

Though Sandler’s finest performance to date can still be found in Punch-Drunk Love, he’s no slouch in this overlong but endearing culture-clash dramedy, directed by small-screen legend James L. Brooks.
Sandler plays a successful celebrity chef whose high-strung wife (Tea Leoni) has been making life difficult for him and his two kids; into their affluent household comes Mexican-born, mostly Spanish-speaking maid Flor (Paz Vega) and her daughter (Shelbie Bruce), good-hearted immigrants who gradually begin to affect their employers’ unhappy lives in some unexpected ways.
Brooks’ film is a bit messy and chaotic – sort of like real life – and Leoni’s character can be tough to take, but Sandler shines in his scenes with Vega (making her American film debut), and Spanglish manages to find some moments of real resonance in its dysfunctional but thankfully not soap-operatic portrayal of upper-class misery.

You didn’t need a crystal ball to figure out that, once the Lord of the Rings flicks and the Harry Potter series started setting the box office on fire a few years back, Hollywood would start churning out fantasy flicks faster than you could say “Hufflepuff.”

And soon, sure as a Hobbit has hairy feet, the attempts to capitalize on those series’ success started to pile up. Unfortunately, most of them proved to be less than magical from a critical and commercial standpoint, with misfires like Eragon and The Seeker: The Dark is Rising threatening to send the genre back to the obscure realm of late night Dungeons and Dragons tournaments and the aisle at Barnes & Noble you’d be loath for your coffee date to catch you hanging out in. Still, one franchise did manage to make some bank in the wake of Harry and Frodo: the Disney co-produced Chronicles of Narnia series, whose bigger, badder, more epic-looking second installment, Prince Caspian, hits screens this week. Having never made it through more than a chapter or two of the C.S. Lewis books the Narnia movies are adapted from, I was surprised as how thoroughly I enjoyed the first film, The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe, and I’m happy to see the series – thinly-veiled Christian allegory or not – continuing to pick up speed.

As much as I’m looking forward to seeing Prince Caspian, though, the fact that the Narnia series is getting a second installment irritates me just a little because my personal favorite fantasy trilogy, after a disastrous box office showing last year, may never make it to a movie screen again. That’s a shame, because The Golden Compass – the little $180 million fantasy movie whose U.S. box-office failure essentially killed New Line Cinema – is actually a pretty awesome movie, even if few people in this country appreciated it (the film, at least, pulled in some decent bucks overseas).

Adapted from the first novel in Phillip Pullman’s controversial "His Dark Materials" trilogy, The Golden Compass is a triumph of production design and special effects that, although it can’t really elaborate on some of the more interesting ideas in the book, is still a compelling fantasy story, very interestingly told. Set in a fantasy version of Earth where religion and science are involved in a centuries-old slugfest and all humans have talking animal familiars (“daemons”) that follow them everywhere they go, Compass is a “chosen one” tale about a young girl named Lyra (played by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards) who’s entrusted by her adventurous Uncle Asriel (Daniel Craig) to protect a sought-after, future-predicting device called an “alethiometer” from the clutches of a villainous, supposedly divinely controlled world governing body called the Magisterium. Not even counting the daemons, the film’s world is richly populated with intriguing fantasy elements: a mysterious substance called “Dust” that may possibly allow passage to other universes (awesome), high-flying airships like the one piloted by sky cowboy Sam Elliott (really awesome), giant armored polar bears that battle each other to the death (really, really freakin’ awesome), etc.

The film, which careens between locations and introduces difficult-to-explain fantasy concepts at a way-too-rapid clip, is probably best enjoyed after digesting the novel on which it’s based, but there’s plenty to appreciate in the film version anyway – from Nicole Kidman’s deliciously icy performance as the Magesterium’s number-one villainess Mrs. Coulter (named after Ann, perhaps?) to the aforementioned polar bear battle royale to a creepy sequence set inside a lab where the baddies experiment on innocent children. Director Chris Weitz, who’d previously worked only on comedies both broad (American Pie) and more subtle (About a Boy), keeps the film flowing at a pretty good pace throughout, and shows some serious flair during the action sequences – the climactic sequence, in which humans, daemons, polar bears, and the kitchen sink scrap on an icy battlefield, is almost Lord of the Rings-quality.

In hindsight, I guess I’m not exactly shocked that The Golden Compass didn’t find its foothold with stateside audiences – it’s a lot to take in one sitting, it lacked the fanatical built-in fanbase that the Harry Potter series enjoys, and its subtle but still-there commentary on religion certainly didn’t make it an appealing prospect for the churchgoing audiences generally credited for boosting Narnia’s box-office take. Still, the film remains an uncommonly intelligent and inventive stab at the big-budget fantasy genre, and is nowhere near the failure that some critics made it out to be. And although we may never see the next two installments in the trilogy hit the big screen, what happens after the film’s cliffhanger ending can pretty easily be picked up in Pullman’s novels – and, hey, when’s the last time a Hollywood movie actually made you want to read something?

This week, everybody’s favorite multiethnic pothead duo – Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) – returns to the big screen for another reefer-laced comedic adventure courtesy of creators Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg.

I’m very happy to see H&K get the sequel treatment, not only because I’m a huge fan of the original film, but also because – back when I was a full-time Play guy – I had a chance to chat with Hurwitz and Schlossberg, who even then were dreaming of following up their inventive, borderline absurdist stoner comedy with an even more ambitious Harold and Kumar movie. The writing partners not only got that sequel made, but they also got the chance to direct it – and being exceptionally nice, smart and funny guys (if I kiss enough ass, can I get a crack at scripting part three?) the opportunity seems extremely well-deserved. Here’s the thing, though: most early reviews of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, while surprisingly positive, have praised the film for its incisive political humor, rather than its stoner tendencies. Personally, I think it’s terrific that Hurwitz and Schlossberg have seemingly moved past the pot-and-potty jokes of the original H&K for some slightly more culturally relevant gags, but I hope that those who enjoyed the first film for its wacked-out drug humor don’t get, uh, burnt out on part two.

If you do happen to be seeking out a stoner comedy more of the shut-your-brain-off type, however, I can recommend one that’s very entertaining even if, like me, you see it stone-cold sober. Smiley Face, which played Sundance last year and is now available on dvd, is a very funny, very lightweight item from cult filmmaker Gregg Araki that just might be the ultimate pothead comedy. Why? Because moreso than any of the Cheech and Chong flicks, Dude, Where’s My Car, or even H&K, this one is almost completely plot-less, more of a stoned meander through Southern California than an actual narrative – in fact, I’m tempted to call it the "Ulysses" of pot movies, at the risk of offending lit scholars, stoners, and stoned lit scholars. At any rate, the film is a heck of a lot of fun.

Anna Faris, an actress I love to see in anything that doesn’t have the words “Scary” or “Movie” in its title, stars as Jane, a sweet but rather un-ambitious aspiring actress who’s more interested in her bed and her bong than in, you know, working. The film catches up with her one fine morning when, after a few breakfast bong hits, she scarfs a bunch of cupcakes baked by her creepy sci-fi nerd roommate Steve (That 70s Show’s Danny Masterson) and discovers not long after that the delicious treats were full of weed. Now stoned out of her mind, and with an electric bill to pay, an audition to make it to, and a plateful of pot-laced cupcakes to replace before Steve gets home, poor Jane must venture out into the world and accomplish these few otherwise simple tasks made near-impossible by the ganj-induced haze she’s stumbled her way into.

Smiley Face is Faris’s movie from frame one, and she gets to show off a wide range of comedic skills despite the fact that her character is baked beyond human comprehension – in a lesser actress’s hands, the “I’m so stoned” act would get tiresome over 80 minutes, but Faris is both endearing and very convincing as the kind of girl that occasionally gets caught up staring at the ceiling for hours at a time. The supporting cast is full of familiar faces, each one popping in and out of Jane’s misadventures for a scene or two – there’s John Krasinski, a straight-laced friend of Steve’s who drags Jane along to his dentist’s appointment; Adam Brody as a dreadlocked dealer who discusses Reaganomics and threatens to repossess Jane’s beloved pillow-top mattress if she doesn’t pay up all her unpaid pot debts; Danny Trejo and John Cho (Harold himself!) as a couple of sausage-factory employees who discover Jane passed out in the back of their truck, and so on.

The film is never anything less than silly and inconsequential, and that’s a big part of its charm – any big ideas or major twists of plot would have just gotten in the way of its lazy, breezy vibe. The ending is a bit of a misfire (and actually sort of a downer) but otherwise Smiley Face definitely earns its place near the top of the stoner-movie canon, and could really catch on as a cult favorite if the right people on the right substances happen to catch it at the right time.

In less than ten years of making movies, writer/director David Ayer has done a bang-up job of staking out his thematic territory – if you’re looking for a gritty, hard-edged crime drama set on the mean streets of L.A., he’s your man.

Though the South Central, Los Angeles-raised Ayer got his first scripting credits on a WWII action pic (2000’s decent U-571) and an entertainingly cheeseball blockbuster (the original Fast and the Furious), he really came into his own with 2001’s Training Day, a tough-minded inversion of the usual buddy-cop flick clichés about a morally corrupt LAPD detective (Denzel Washington) and his hapless new partner (Ethan Hawke). Bolstered by Washington’s fearsome, Oscar-winning performance, that film (directed by Antoine Fuqua) set down the template for much of Ayer’s most recent work, and he’s been successfully riffing on the same subject matter ever since. This week, he steps behind the camera to direct Street Kings – another L.A.-set cop thriller, this one made from a screenplay co-written by James “L.A. Confidential” Ellroy. Keanu Reeves heads up the cast as a vice detective searching for his partner’s killers and uncovering some dirty business within his own department; Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, and rappers Common and The Game co-star.

Street Kings is Ayer’s second directorial outing, and his first time working with a script that isn’t his own – but if his 2006 debut, Harsh Times, is any indication, he’s as dangerous in the director’s chair as he is with a MacBook.

Harsh Times, which Ayer actually wrote prior to Training Day, is a violent slice-of- life revolving around ex-Army Ranger Jim Davis (Christian Bale), who’s returned to his home turf of L.A. looking for a job in law enforcement. Though he shares his name with the decidedly unthreatening creator of Garfield, however, this Jim is no pussycat – in fact, he’s a total hard case, mentally unstable from his wartime experiences and prone to violent outbursts and criminal behavior. Hooking back up with his slightly more straight-laced buddy Mike (Freddy Rodriguez), Jim ends up blowing his LAPD interview and eventually resorts to petty crime in the old neighborhood; Mike’s career-minded girlfriend Sylvia (Eva Longoria), meanwhile, is immediately suspicious of Jim, and afraid of the influence he has over her already jobless and aimless (but decent) boyfriend. Violently set off by his rejection from the police department, Jim turns increasingly aggressive, lashing out at drug dealers and starting trouble with ex-girlfriends even as he considers a job offering from the Department of Homeland Security (who want to send him down to Columbia for some under-the-radar dirty work suiting his brutal skill set).

Less plot-driven than Training Day, Harsh Times is a more personal, character-centric effort for Ayer, and while it lacks the relentless intensity of the earlier film it mostly makes up for it with its sharply observed characterizations and sequences that simmer with nervous energy – he skillfully allows the lazy rhythms of Jim and Mike’s directionless trips around the city to flare up into violent confrontations throughout. Sure, you’ll know from frame one that the film will end up in bloody Taxi Driver-ish territory by the final reel, but there’s a realistic edge to the characters – especially Jim – that anchors Harsh Times in frightening believability.

Bale, as usual, is terrific in the lead role; he’s played his share of unhinged characters before (American Psycho, The Machinist, The Prestige, etc.), but Jim is an entirely different breed, lacking any kind of focus or clarity and taking out his aggressions sporadically at the slightest provocation. Also quite good is Rodriguez, whose ostensible “straight-man” role is more complex morally than Hawke’s rather Boy Scout-ish Training Day character. It’s pretty clear from the get-go that Jim is headed for trouble, but the film generates a lot of suspense as to just how far Mike is willing to follow him; Rodriguez does a terrific job of balancing his good-guy tendencies with his loyalty to his friend and capability to break the law as Jim does.

Altogether, the film offers a fascinating portrait of damaged characters in a burnt-out urban environment, one that Ayer knew firsthand and translates to the screen in ways that, at their best, bring to mind the work of Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, the Hughes Brothers, et al. He’s yet to make a perfect film, but I think if he continues on this trajectory of urban crime dramas Ayer could at some point make the Taxi Driver or French Connection for our generation – though even if he gives up that particular tack after Street Kings, he’s displayed enough talent to make him a filmmaker worth following whatever he takes on.

Every Hollywood career has had its share of both triumph and tragedy, but give George Clooney some credit – his has leaned pretty heavily toward the former.

Yes, he unfortunately is the guy who donned the be-nippled Bat-suit in the abysmal Batman & Robin, but aside from a few lesser duds here and there his filmography boasts a pretty high ratio of stellar projects – from last year’s terrific legal thriller Michael Clayton to late 90s masterpieces Three Kings and Out of Sight. Clooney’s track record behind the camera is even better – he actually netted a Best Director nomination for his second film, Good Night, and Good Luck – which bodes well for this week’s Clooney-helmed release Leatherheads: a rough-and-tumble period football flick that’s also a screwball romantic comedy.

For all of Clooney’s success, however, I’ve always felt like some of his films never connected with audiences or critics the way they should have. Here they are, in no particular order:

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

Clooney can’t take all the credit for the awesomeness of his directorial debut – with a script by the great Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation., Being John Malkovich) and Sam Rockwell playing the lead, he was in pretty good shape from the get-go. Still, as first efforts go, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a minor miracle, a whip-smart and highly offbeat black comedy about possibly deluded "Gong Show" creator Chuck Barris (Rockwell), who claimed to have led a double life as a covert operative for the CIA.

An energetic and visually rich film about a one-of-a-kind character, Confessions is a self-reflexive comedy, a bizarre spy thriller, and an oddly moving tale about self-image all at once, and provides enjoyable change-of-pace roles for Clooney, as Barris’s gruff CIA handler, Julia Roberts, as an alluring Company woman, and Drew Barrymore, as the television impresario/international superspy’s long-suffering girlfriend.

O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)

This stupendously original Coen Brothers outing might be better known for its terrific vintage/modern bluegrass soundtrack than for the movie itself, but it’s actually become one of my favorites in their entire canon (and that’s saying a lot).

Kinda-sorta inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, O Brother is set in the Depression-era South and follows a charismatic ex-con named Ulysses (Clooney) who teams up with two other chain-gang escapees (Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro, both great) to journey back to his wife and family and retrieve some buried treasure en route. Their comedic misadventures along the way – involving everything from a devious one-eyed Bible salesman (John Goodman) to the trio’s inadvertent brush with fame as a bluegrass group called The Soggy Bottom Boys – make for some of the most enjoyably silly Coen comedy since their early hit Raising Arizona, but the gorgeously photographed film somehow manages to live up to its epic inspiration by the end, too.

Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)

It’s true, this series is little more than a live-action GQ photo spread with a little sub-Guy Ritchie heist mayhem thrown in, but as pure popcorn cinema, you could do a lot worse than the Ocean’s flicks – especially the most recent one.

The most laid-back, low-stakes film in the series, Ocean’s Thirteen isn’t really even about a robbery; in this one, playboy Danny Ocean (Clooney) and his all-star lineup of cronies are out simply to ruin the opening of scumbag Vegas mogul Al Pacino’s luxury hotel-casino, after he screws over their ailing pal Reuben (Elliott Gould, still one of my favorite people in the movies).

Throwing plausibility and seriousness out the window, Ocean’s Thirteen is the snappiest and goofiest of the trilogy, with highlights including Matt Damon wearing a hilarious prosthetic nose and the bumbling twosome of Casey Affleck and Scott Caan inadvertently sparking a labor dispute in Mexico (while involved in a patently ridiculous scheme involving magnetized dice).

The Peacemaker (1997)

A pre-9/11 “serious” action movie about terrorists plotting on U.S. soil, The Peacemaker seems a little quaint these days, but the film – the first release from Dreamworks, actually – still packs a punch thanks to Mimi Leder’s tight, tense direction and the couldn’t-miss pairing of Clooney and Nicole Kidman. He plays a cocky Special Forces officer, she’s a buttoned-down government scientist, and they’re both on the trail of some nukes stolen from a former Soviet state, which – of course – eventually end up on American soil.

No, this isn’t the most original action movie you’ll ever see, but it’s a cut above Hollywood’s usual Tom Clancy ripoff, and suggests that Clooney could have been a credible action hero if that’s the direction he wanted his career to go in. And although some folks, like Roger Ebert, weren’t crazy about the film’s clichéd defusing-the-bomb finale, for my money the ol’ “red digital readout” sequence has rarely been executed as intensely as it is here.

The Perfect Storm (2000)

This one did decent box office and earned a few solid reviews, but I’ve always felt that it deserved a level of appreciation it somehow never got – it has tons more heart than your average “big summer movie.”

Based on Sebastian Junger’s nonfiction bestseller, the film concerns the crew of the Andrea Gail, a Gloucester-based swordfish boat that gets caught up in a cataclysmic Nor’easter while making a last-ditch expedition to the dangerous area of the Atlantic known as the Flemish Cap. Clooney plays the Andrea Gail’s dedicated captain, Billy Tyne; he’s joined by a terrific supporting cast that includes Diane Lane, Mark Wahlberg, John C. Reilly, and the ever-underappreciated John Hawkes.

The film’s storm sequences – handled expertly by Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen – are visually spectacular and grippingly intense, but I think The Perfect Storm actually works best as a tribute to a particularly blue-collar brand of heroism; it’s the only summer blockbuster I’ve ever seen in which providing for one’s family and doing an honest days’ work are shown to be just as brave and courageous as, say, battling aliens or hunting for the Ark of the Covenant. Clooney’s monologue about the small joys of being a “swordboat” captain gets me all choked up every time.

A bit of explanation: I am a truly lazy, unfocused, and irresponsible human being. Or, at least, I was over the past two weeks, when I completely neglected to upload any new 'Movie Match' columns to this here blog. For the sake of completeness, however, I have included both of them below, hilariously inaccurate critical/box-office predictions intact -- keep in mind that when I wrote and published these, I had no idea that, for example, 'Meet the Browns' would end up on the dreaded IMDB Bottom 100 list, or that 'Run, Fatboy, Run' would place a miserable ninth at the box office in its opening week. Stay tuned for next week's column, when I'll predict that by the time the new Indiana Jones flick rolls around, we'll all have flying cars (electric, of course) and Lindsey Lohan will have joined a convent.

MOVIE MATCH: Long before 'Drillbit Taylor,' this little movie sparked Wilson’s career

We got spoiled last fall with those few months of rock-em-sock-em great movies coming out almost nonstop; unfortunately, we’re paying for it now during the weaksauce box office season we’re enduring at the moment.

Yes, it’s truly been a pretty cruddy month at the movies, and if not for Horton Hears a Who or maybe Tyler Perry’s upcoming Meet the Browns – his flicks seem to be getting better every time around – the pickings would be pretty slim indeed. Still, I’m going to be very cautiously optimistic about this week’s release Drillbit Taylor, if only because I’m a pretty big fan of star Owen Wilson and I really like the idea of him as a washed-up mercenary protecting freshman nerds from high school bullies. Plus, the film boasts an original story by John Hughes (yes, that John Hughes) and a screenplay by comedy it-guy Seth Rogen and former Beavis and Butt-head scribe Kristofor Brown – meaning that even if the humor is crude, it ought to at least satisfy anyone who can appreciate a good pee-pee joke.

Of course, maybe I’m just being overly positive about Drillbit since I just recently caught up with Wilson’s big-screen debut, a fantastic little indie gem that launched not only his career, but also those of his brother Luke and – maybe most importantly – co-writer/director Wes Anderson. Anderson’s Bottle Rocket, co-written by none other than Owen Wilson, was made in the mid-90s and, as IMDB.com informs me, tested as negatively in early screenings as any Columbia Pictures film up to that point. Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely sold on the film when I first saw it way back when, but now I have to seriously question what those test-screening attendees missed – this flick is a riot, and a very well-made one at that.

Bottle Rocket, basically, has a setup similar to a few billion other post-Pulp Fiction 90s comedies; the difference here is that, while many other filmmakers were content to simply rip off Tarantino’s hard-to-duplicate combination of witty repartee and splattery violence, Anderson instead toned down the ugliness and upped the sentimentality, creating maybe the most heartfelt and charming movie about armed robbery ever made.

The story is about three aimless young men from Middle America who ill-fatedly attempt to start a life of crime – there’s Anthony (Luke Wilson), a former preppie college boy who suffered a nervous breakdown and just got out of a mental hospital; his knockabout buddy Dignan (Owen Wilson), who fancies himself the brains of the operation but has a lot more enthusiasm than he does actual brains; and Bob (Robert Musgrave), a meek rich kid who’s recruited to be the gang’s getaway driver because he’s the only one they know that owns a car. Their plan, which Dignan has mapped out in comically meticulous detail, is to practice on a few low-level heists in order to catch the attention of Mr. Henry (James Caan) who runs both a landscaping business and, so Dignan is convinced, a first-class heist crew.

The film moves at a pretty leisurely pace – a lot of it takes place at a rural motel where Anthony, Dignan, and Bob hide out after knocking off a bookstore – and, like Anderson’s later films, is filled with quirky little details (Bob’s last name, for example), moments of unexpected sweetness, and the kind of hilariously dysfunctional relationships that he’s still exploring in films like last year’s underrated Darjeeling Limited. That said, the filmmaking isn’t nearly as accomplished as his later work, but the seeds of greatness are definitely there; the camerawork is often inventive, the use of jangly guitar-pop on the soundtrack is perfect, and the “big robbery” finale is a hoot.

What really makes Bottle Rocket special, however, is the cast, and that’s all the more impressive since the Wilsons and Musgrave hadn’t done any film acting before – aside from the Anderson student short this film is based on. Owen is particularly impressive, fleshing out a particularly well-developed character; Dignan remains lovable even as we pity his almost infinite stupidity, and Wilson nails the dog-chasing-his-tail qualities that make him tick. Caan is also a lot of fun as a balding suburban mobster (this guy sure ain’t no Sonny Corleone), as are Lumi Cavazos, as Anthony’s non-English-speaking love interest, and future Anderson mainstay Kumar Pallana as a safecracker who looks as if he’d have trouble cracking open a soda can.

The film’s got a lot of depth for something so breezy, and also might be the most accessible thing Anderson has done to date. It’s definitely worth seeing again especially if you enjoy Wilson, or if you’re trying to remember why you used to.


MOVIE MATCH: Miss ‘The State’? Then you’ll love ‘The Ten’

Chances are, if you grew up during the 90s and watched MTV for more than just the Salt ‘N Pepa videos, you at some point caught the network’s unfortunately short-lived sketch comedy series The State.

The show was a cult favorite at best, but it offered plenty to satisfy its alternative comedy-craving fanbase – from its memorably subversive and side-splitting sketches (like "Eating Muppets" or "The Jew, the Italian, and the Red-Headed Gay") to the one semi-famous catchphrase – “I wanna dip my balls in it!” – that still, sadly, makes me laugh to this day.

The good news about The State’s long-ago demise is that the show’s alumni have gone on to some pretty impressive comedic careers. Take castmember Thomas Lennon, for instance, who splits his time between writing mega-successful Hollywood comedies like The Pacifier and Night at the Museum and appearing as Lt. Jim Dangle in the ongoing, very funny Comedy Central series Reno 911! (which co-stars his fellow Staties Kerri Kenney-Silver and Robert Ben Garant).

And then, of course, there’s Michael Ian Black, probably The State’s most recognizable graduate thanks to his ubiquitous presence on VH1’s I Love the 80s, I Love the 70s, and I Love the 90s series as well as his many commercial gigs. Like Lennon, Black has also embarked on a screenwriting career, which brings us to this week’s release Run Fatboy Run – a Black-penned tale of romance, rejection, and, um, running directed by David Schwimmer and starring Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg (who co-wrote with Black). The film looks funny, and maybe even sweet, but definitely pretty mainstream considering where Black came from – and if you’re an old-school State fan like me, it’s probably not exactly what you’d hope for one of that show’s kookiest cast members to come up with.

Don’t worry, though, because I do still have a movie for you. The Ten, released last year, is probably the closest thing to an actual State movie we’ll ever see; it’s a sketch-comedy anthology film featuring ten interlinked vignettes, each of which takes on one of the Ten Commandments. Writer/director David Wain is yet another veteran of the show – he’s also the guy behind the cult-fave summer camp comedy Wet Hot American Summer – and the film’s cast is split between State alums (Black, Kenney-Silver, and Ken Marino, for starters) and surprisingly big-name actors like Live Schrieber, Gretchen Mol, Wynona Ryder, and Adam Brody.

Like just about all sketch-comedy movies, The Ten is hit-and-miss, but the comedy is pretty bizarre and clever throughout, even when it’s not laugh-out-loud funny. Skits include a foreign-film parody about an American librarian (Mol) who has a very unusual sexual and spiritual awakening while vacationing in Mexico; a rather creepy tale about a newlywed (Winona Ryder) who falls head over heels for a ventriloquist’s dummy; a “false idol” story about a skydiving accident survivor (Brody) who becomes a national celebrity; and even a raunchy animated segment about an untrustworthy rhino and some deviant wiener dogs. The segments are linked by a framing story in which Paul Rudd introduces all the various commandments, though he gets increasingly tripped up by falling in and out of love with Famke Janssen and Jessica Alba (Moses never had it so tough).

As is probably obvious, Wain’s sense of humor hasn’t really changed much since his television days, and while The Ten isn’t too over-the-top in its outrageousness, the freedom of the R rating gives him the chance to get away with some things that even MTV would have balked at (i.e. the dummy sex scene). It’s a lot of fun seeing performers like Ryder and Schreiber let their guard down to embrace the film’s State-style absurdity, and there are at least three or four sketches on display here that rank with the show’s best material – the final one, involving the commandment about keeping the Sabbath day holy, is an absolute riot.

If nothing else, The Ten ought to tide State fans over until MTV finally releases the full-series DVD set they’ve been promising for years. It was a comedy series that, like its contemporaries Mr. Show and The Ben Stiller Show, never got the appreciation it deserved, but did at least launch the careers of some very funny people – and I, for one, am happy to see them working to keep the show’s spirit alive.

I'll admit, there's probably at least one movie-related news item per day -- and usually quite a few more than one -- that gets my film-geek blood racing, but every once in a while one little scrap stands out that really floats my proverbial boat.

Today, it's the news -- via JoBlo.com and Collider -- that Shane Black has a new film in the works, his first since 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I wouldn't hesitate to put Kiss Kiss up there with some of my favorite films of all time, and unlike most of the other flicks on that list (say, Taxi Driver or LoTR: Fellowship of the Ring), it's one that's not too depressing and/or long to watch multiple times in the same week, night, or whatever. The film, if you haven't yet seen it, is a comedic neo-noir that plants its feet firmly on the comedy side of things, paying loving tribute to "serious" private eye movies throughout -- and also, to a lesser but no less amusing extent, skewering the ever-loving crap out of Hollywood phoniness (which Black surely knew first-hand as the young, in-demand screenwriter of such action classics as Lethal Weapon and The Long Kiss Goodnight). Black's dialogue is some of the sharpest and funniest I've ever heard in a movie, and Robert Downey, Jr. is perfectly cast as the thief-turned-actor-turned-detective who carries us along through Black's self-reflexive, endlessly witty string of twists, double-crosses, and, uh, severed finger gags.

So, um, where were we? Oh right, Black's new movie. Well, actually, there isn't much to report on it as of yet, but what I do know is this: it's going to be called The Nice Guys, it'll be produced by long-time Black supporter Joel Silver, and -- best of all -- it's reportedly going to be another "detective story." I know lightning doesn't always strike twice with these things, but hey... it seems like Black has all his ducks in a row so far. Personally, I'm extremely happy that he's even getting the chance to give this genre another shot, since Kiss Kiss absolutely (and quite undeservingly) tanked at the box office. Here's hoping moviegoers will catch on this time around.
And, because I just couldn't end this post without it, here is just one of my favorite scenes from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, featuring Downey and Michelle Monaghan. Did I mention I freakin' love this movie?

While some filmmakers aren’t satisfied unless they’re creating genres all their own – Darren Aronofsky, Richard Kelly, Wes Anderson, et al – others make their mark simply by injecting some new blood into existing ones.

British newcomer Neil Marshall fits into that second category, and though he’s got only a few films under his belt at this point, he’s already established himself as a genre director worth keeping an eye on. Marshall emerged on the scene in 2002 with the unique creature feature Dog Soldiers, a tense and visceral werewolf movie with a Predator-like setup; this week he returns with Doomsday, a post-apocalyptic combo of biological horror and over-the-top comic book-style action. Judging from the film’s trailer, Doomsday treads some very well-worn cinematic ground (it’s tough to watch the previews and not be reminded of 28 Days Later, The Road Warrior, Escape From New York, et cetera), but I have a feeling that in Marshall’s hands it won’t end up being a more-of-the-same kind of movie.

That’s especially true since Marshall’s last movie, also built upon a familiar-sounding premise and with a virtual unknown cast in the lead, ended up being one of the finest horror films of the new century.

I’m talking, of course, about The Descent, Marshall’s successful 2005 film (released the following year in the U.S.) about a group of female cave explorers being terrorized by some truly creepy subterranean beasties. The film wears its influences right on its blood-stained sleeves – essentially, it’s an underground version of Ridley Scott’s Alien – but is so exceptionally well-made that it feels like a true original anyway.

Opening with a horrific sequence that has nothing whatsoever to do with caving (but does, thankfully, have actual bearing on the plot later on), The Descent quickly falls into a compellingly tense groove, as an all-woman group of outdoor thrill-seekers get together for a self-guided caving expedition in the Appalachians. These ladies, refreshingly, aren’t your usual horror-flick airheads, but rather a nicely fleshed-out set of characters; the one we associate with first is Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), who’s recovering from the death of her husband and daughter and is still struggling to keep it together. The film’s first act creates an impressive amount of dread and sets up plenty of conflicts within the group to play out later on – I hate to sound so clinical, but having taken my share of screenwriting classes, it’s awfully nice to see a movie actually do some of the things it’s supposed to.

At any rate, things turn seriously scary soon after the ladies descend into the abyss, when a cave-in blocks the only exit from the dank, dark, deep-underground series of caverns they’ve unwisely chosen to spelunk in. After a few internal squabbles – and a terrifyingly claustrophobic crawling-through-a-tunnel sequence that makes me shiver just thinking about it – an even more immediate threat emerges: sightless, cannibalistic, frighteningly humanoid creatures who proceed to pick off and devour our heroines one-by-one.

Marshall delivers the jolts fast and furious as the film progresses, deftly combining the intense psychological terror of being trapped alone in the dark with the expected (but well-executed) creature-flick bloodletting. The monsters themselves are particularly effective, since Marshall creepily keeps them in the dark for most of the film, revealing them in all their gruesome glory only at the exact right moments.

The most surprising element of The Descent, however, is the film’s worthwhile attempt at psychological depth, an area in which it actually surpasses many of the films that inspired it. By giving us a hero who’s battling her inner demons as well as flesh-and-blood ones – and also setting up a juicy conflict between her and headstrong group leader Juno (Natalie Mendoza) – this movie resonates the way horror films way too seldom do, especially in the beautifully bleak ending of the film’s original British version (which you can catch on the unrated U.S. dvd).

Certainly not for the squeamish, claustrophobic, or weak of stomach – no, the gorehounds won’t be disappointed here, either – The Descent makes the most of its stripped-down setup and innovates not because it’s drastically different from a hundred other horror films you’ve seen, but because it’s clear that the filmmakers here simply tried harder to make it memorable. It bodes extremely well for Marshall’s future as a reliably entertaining genre director (could he be the next John Carpenter?) and sets the bar pretty high for filmmakers looking to follow the same path.